Jennifer Michie

Tag: cleaning (page 3 of 5)

January 18, 2014 / 0 Comments

The Washing Machine Blues

Whirlpool Surgomatic Washing Machine Ad

I’ve got the blues, the washing machine blues that is! Our machine stopped working last weekend, and a repairman came this week and he “thought” he fixed it. However, after my first load of laundry in 6 days was done yesterday we realized he didn’t fix it, so unlike the lady above, I am not really smiling.

We had wet clothes hanging in every available doorway and on every available space. Looks like a trip to the old laundromat for us this weekend! Because “Mount Laundry” is getting bigger by the day!

December 1, 2013 / 2 Comments

The First Day of December

Jennifer Michie Advent 2013

I have a pumpkin pie in the oven, bread torn and drying out, ready to be turned into stuffing, Christmas music playing and I am cleaning the house and beginning to put away Fall in preparation for decorating for Christmas.

This afternoon we will celebrate Thanksgiving. We are a few days late, but it still counts!

I can’t believe that today marks the first day of Advent and the first day of December. Where has this year gone? It seems to have vanished with a blink of an eye! We are trying to keep things a bit more simplified this year. We even bought a chocolate Advent calendar instead of using Eglantine.

Which doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but it is for me. I love Christmas! Our house is usually decorated within every square inch of itself. However, I don’t think it will be that way this year. I love my new job, but it is keeping me very occupied. So something’s gotta give somewhere and that means that this year we are keeping the house decorating elegant yet simple.

April 22, 2013 / 1 Comment

Snickerdoodles

We tried a new pizza place down the street on Friday night, it was delicious! A great date night treat! Stone baked pizzas, that were fresh, with homemade, locally sourced and organic ingredients and some items imported directly from Italy.

The dough was so thin and crispy, it was the perfect size! It was so good that after a full day on Saturday, getting up before 6am and running around all day and doing some serious gardening we went back for dinner. Mr. Michie picked up a pizza for himself and some lasagna and a salad for me.

We planted flowers this weekend, washed the outside windows and cleaned everything up. I am trying to fight off a bad sinus infection, so Mr. Michie took care of me for the better part of the weekend. We made a pot roast with lots of veggies and served it over a saffron infused risotto for Sunday dinner, it was heavenly.

We also made some snickerdoodles to snack on. Happiness is a snickerdoodle!

March 18, 2013 / 0 Comments

The Hits Just Keep Coming

Well the hits just kept coming this weekend. Between the fish, the late nights at work, the endless bleaching of the cupboard floor and all the other craziness, my washing machine now has something wrong with it.

I’m telling you I could write a country music song about fish and life and things breaking, but I don’t have a dog or a woman who left me and took my truck, so I guess it wouldn’t be as an exciting song as it could be. But, I could think of a few of my favorite country tunes that would just about sum up this week.

I called the store where my washing machine was purchased from, only to have the women on the other end of the phone tell me to do everything I had already done. So now it will be a service call to Bosch and I hope that I can get someone to come out a little later in the afternoon, as I can’t leave work early this week because we have exams going on.

So, I took myself off to the laundromat  What an experience that was! I think it might have even been in a worse state then it was in the last time I was in there, which was almost 9 years ago.

But hey, we’ve got clean clothes! The dryers worked like a dream, everything dried in 30 minutes, I can’t do that record speed with my washer/dryer. I read my book, I watched the rain, I put my back against the dryer to keep myself toasty and I just was. There was no other place to be other then where I was right then and that counts for something.

I snapped these shots with my little wildfire, not as nice as Mr. Michie’s IPhone, but they did the job! I came prepared with my bounce sheets (I always stock up when I go home), my laundry detergent, my book, some water and a ton of change, although I had to get more from two different places as there is no change machine in the laundrette.

I hope this week has better things in store for me.

March 7, 2013 / 1 Comment

Paring Down

I’ve been doing some major “Spring Cleaning” in the cottage, with still more do. We are normally very good about recycling, reusing and donating things to the charity shop, but this year we have truly taken a more minimalistic approach to heart and are trying to get rid of the things we don’t really need. Paring down in order to be better organised and our home a more relaxing environment in that it will be a little more devoid of clutter, but still cozy.

I am also taking this idea into my blog. I have a few things I have been working on behind the scenes with a lot of help at times of Mr. Michie, if I couldn’t quite get a css code right. I am going to be paring down, streamlining and doing a little de-cluttering.

Stick with me, there are some BIG changes to come and I will be telling you more as I get closer to unveiling my plans.

February 20, 2013 / 1 Comment

Purging

The past two days we have done some serious purging in our house. This has been our second major clean out of the year since we attacked the attic.

This time we attacked the kitchen and pantry. You can now clearly see the floor in our pantry and actually walk in without having to hold on to the door jam to get what you need or balance mixing bowls on your knee to get the bowl you are really after. It is AMAZING!

All of our cookbooks are now lined up on one shelf, well almost one shelf, we ran out of room and had to move to the next shelf. I have a thing about cookbooks, they just kind of jump into my hands.

We had 2 big trips to the recycling center and 3 big trips to the Charity shop (it sounds scarier then it is, we walk, so it would have been one round trip in a car). It feels good to purge, to clean, to simplify. Everything just feels brighter and refreshened.

I think that removing the clutter, removes some of the stress from day to day living. We have made a pledge to simplify this year and to make sure that we can eat at our dinner table at night, which is not always easy as Mr. Michie normally has a lot of papers to grade and that is his easiest place to work. But, we are working with that to make our lives easier, more enjoyable and our home life a little more stress free.

After working all day it is nice to come home to a house that is organized (at least semi-organized) and things are easier to get to, so you can enjoy them more and enjoy your house more. As Martha Stewart says, “Its a good thing!”

January 28, 2013 / 1 Comment

Spring Cleaning

We worked extremely hard yesterday putting away all of our Christmas decorations and giving the house a thorough cleaning.

Next week, I am going to really tear apart our bedroom and get the closets more organized. I know that we will most likely end up with a bag of items for The Salvation Army and a bag of items to be turned into fabric scraps and dust rags.

The house looks so bare now, but it feels clean. I have decorated for Valentine’s Day and left one little tiny tree up, that I have adorned with Valentine hearts. Nothing wrong with a little twinkle and glow.

Our weekend in pictures:

Goodbye Genevieve see you next year!

Mr. Michie took out the garbage and recycling and we saw a double rainbow the complete full arch, that was a nice gift.

Potato Soup for dinner. I kind of followed Paula Deen’s recipe for it, but then went off the rails and made it completely my own. It was warming to the soul and we sat on the couch like vegetables, completely worn out and watched “Two Mules for Sister Sara”. Happiness!

January 23, 2013 / 1 Comment

Twinkling

Well, my friends, I have a secret, I am not even embarrassed about it and I have admitted it here and there in some of my January posts: I still have all of my Christmas decorations up.

Okay, I am now giving you a moment to gasp and compose yourself again.

Moment over, here is my reasoning: it is dark when we leave for school in the morning, dark when we come home at night. The cupboard has no windows, so I rarely get natural light within my day. So, the thought of coming home to the warm twinkling glow of lights, makes me smile.

We came home tonight and laid in bed with our little Christmas tree on, watching big fat flakes of snow billow around outside. It was heaven!

I will work on starting to take everything down this weekend, giving the cottage a truly good “Spring Cleaning” and decorate for Valentine’s Day.

However, I have one little tree that is too cute to put away. It shall stand with its white lights and I will hang Valentine hearts on it.

I read a very dear someone’s blog today and I am delighted to know that I am not the only one with a hint of Christmas still up (although mine is much more than a hint)!

Twinkle lights are good for you, they are good for the soul, don’t let anyone tell you any different!

January 14, 2013 / 3 Comments

Our Weekend

We had a really fun weekend this weekend. We worked hard and we played hard. We tried a new recipe on Friday. I read the wonderful Katie at the Kichen Door blog and she featured this recipe on butter-roasted cinnamon chicken:

We really enjoyed it, but there are a few changes we would make, a bit more cinnamon to make it a little warmer and I thought about adding either some golden raisins or some chopped dried apricots or both to make it a bit more moorish!

The crunch of the almonds was a nice addition to the softness of the chicken and the wheat.

Saturday after running a few errands we went on a date! Mr. Michie took me to see Les Miserables. I saw it last year for the first time on the stage with my theatre buddy. It was wonderful. We both truly enjoyed it. Then, he took me on a date to one of our favourite little Irish pubs.

Mr. Michie had the sausage and mash:

and I had the steak and guinness pie:

Happiness!

Sunday morning it was freezing. I got a hot chocolate before we went grocery shopping:

After shopping and some brunch, we put on our work clothes and got to it. We cleaned our attic. That might not sound like a big deal, but for two people, we have a lot of stuff. It was really just more boxes up there then anything else. Well, that and all of our Christmas things. I have so much Christmas stuff, that Mr. Michie says one day the ceilings will fall down because of it and we will be covered in Christmas!

My coat got caught in the door and the button broke and since I had already used my spare, it was a trip to the haberdashery for more. I chose these and spent a bit of the early evening sewing them on. I like them, they give my coat a more vintage appearance.

For dinner we used the pizza dough recipe again from Annie’s Eats and made her Chicken Ranch Pizza, but put a few more veggies on it. It was delicious. We feasted on the couch and finally got caught up on the first season of Once! Now, I can’t wait to start the second!

For dessert it was hot chocolate and junior mints (a gift from my mom), a little Sunday night treat. This morning the snow didn’t come quickly enough, so off to school we go. I am still doing my snow dance, I hope to have just one snow day this term, they are so much fun.

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