Time for me to have a "Clean House"

I've been catching glimpses of those Clean House shows on... what is it the Style network or something?

How do people's houses get so messy? Geez, it's like they never even open any boxes that they get.

I can kind of see my own house turning out that way if I continue with my pack rat behavior of never really getting rid of anything. So I think it's time for a major spring cleaning here. I need to throw out anything I've never even looked at for the past few years. Easier said than done though because once I start looking though stuff, then that's when I start making up excuses to keep it. Maybe I should do my cleaning blindfolded.

The best thing I've bought this year!

So, it hasn't been that long into 2009 yet, but I have been so cold in our house since we got these wood floors. We should've gone for the radiant heat, but the sales person said we didn't need it since it never gets cold in So Cal... yeah, right!

We used our heaters a lot in December and ended up with a huge electric bill. So we started using them a whole lot less, basically not at all.

So I started shopping for an electric blanket/throw. I wanted one that was soft, not stiff, had a decent length cord, and would keep me warm, of course... and had good reviews. Seemed like the place I usually buy all of my stuff from, Amazon, was out of stock on most of their electric blankets... I guess other people have been buying them up too. The decent priced ones that got good reviews were all out of stock and everything else was starting to get more expensive.

I looked around a little more and found a throw on JC Penney's website and went ahead and ordered it. It came faster than it would've taken for Amazon to even ship out the one I wanted from them. I ended up getting something similar to this. Same brand, but mine doesn't have 10 heat settings, it only has six.

I'm loving it so far. Keeps me nice and warm and uses a lot less electricity than our heaters. Next time, I'll probably go with something a little bit bigger, but this does the job. I hope it lasts for a while.

Are all cockatiels like this?

We've been cockatiel sitting for someone while their house pretty much gets rebuilt (busted pipes flooded their whole house). So, we've had the cockatiel since around October.

She's so odd. At first, we thought that her eating every time she saw us was just eating because she was stressed out about being in a new place. Turns out that's not really the case. When we moved her into the garage while our floors downstairs were being worked on, it seemed like she barely ate much at all!

She only eats when there are people around. Seems pretty weird to me. And, man, is she a real attention seeker. All kinds of loud shrieking sounds if you just leave her sight for a few seconds. I really think she's just one really spoiled bird.

Another weird thing is that she likes sitting on people's shoulders, but when you open up her cage and stick your arm in for her to climb on, she seems so freaked out about going out. Once she's out she's fine.

Such a weird bird. Anybody else have cockatiels like this??

Back on the old mattress...

That mattress that we bought last year is back in the guest room. It was too soft for me and hurt my back to sleep on it because it made everything in the middle of the mattress sink lower than anywhere else.

I slept on my old, firmer mattress last night and my back felt a lot better in the morning. So today I swapped mattresses again. The guests can have the pillowtop memory foam mattress. I'm happy with my old one. It is kind of weird though since I feel so low to the ground now since the pillowtop one was a lot thicker, but I'll get used to being this low again.

Cockatiel sitting... and floor work finally finished!

We got our floors finished on the stairs and in the hallways upstairs. :) We still have some of our stuff in the garage that I hope gets moved out of there soon so that we can park both cars in it again.

It was really dusty during the construction upstairs. So terrible. Dust was all over the place and is still dusty in some places.

We've been watching this cockatiel for a friend and she's been with us probably since around the same time we started getting work done on our house. Cockatiels seem really needy to me and always want attention. Well, at least is the case with the one we've been cockatiel sitting.

If you leave the room (especially while she's eating), she'll make some really high pitched bird sounds wanting you to come back. I guess she really doesn't like eating alone. :P

It's pretty funny when she starts whistling though because she learned some pretty crappy whistling from her owner. Sounds just like him. LOL... and my friend compared the bird's bad whistling to a car stalling. Haha! I'll put up a video of that when I have the time.

Still not finished

I would've thought that our floors would be finished by now, but nope.

The contractor guy who did the downstairs floors said he'd be back in early November to do the upstairs. The only reason they didn't get a chance to finish was because the painters we hired took longer than expected, making the floor guys start two days later.

Anyway, we've gotten estimates from several other people on how much they'd charge to do our stairs and floor upstairs. And it's cheaper just to go with the original guys, but they've been too busy with other jobs. I'm glad they at least left the carpet in since it would've been such a mess to walk on whatever's underneath it.

Under construction...

I remember way back in the 90's when people would start websites that would just stay "under construction" forever - with all of those construction animated GIFs - the best you could do with animation back then since Flash wasn't around yet. This post has nothing to do with any of that. :-P

This blog is about things in my home and the biggest thing going on right now is the interior/exterior painting and also laminate floors being put in. So right now we've got furniture in unusual places. Our piano is in the kitchen, we've got some living room furniture in the pantry, the family room is empty with the exception of a bucket full of stuff. We moved a lot of stuff from the family room into the garage, but most of our furniture is sitting in the living room.

The painting is mostly done, just a few touch-ups needed here and there. Work was started yesterday on the new floors. The carpet was removed from downstairs, so now it's down to the bare concrete.

I've been taking pictures every step of the way and I'll post a few once all the work is finished. Might be a while before that because the floor guys won't be starting work on the stairs and upstairs yet. Since the painters took longer than expected, the floor guys started two days later than they were supposed to, so they have other clients scheduled and only have enough time to do downstairs for now. At least they kept the carpet in for now on the stairs and upstairs so that we'd still have something clean to walk on up there.