Last year, we did not get very many trick or treaters. We didn’t this year, either.

In an effort to give away candy, and because this thought had occurred to me two or three months ago and I really wanted to do it, I decided to create a ghost in the front yard. I managed to get it up before my wife got home, so her and a few teenagers walking by got a good laugh out of it.

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Over the past few weeks, we determined that we were going to get Behr paint from Home Depot. The idea is that we will paint most of the interior walls the week after my wife finishes her finals and before she starts working this summer, so that we can get rid of the awful mint green that permates the majority of the house. Consumer Reports had nice thing to say about the paint, and we found some paint chips that had the colors we were looking for and hung them on the wall.

Being as busy as we were, we had only managed to narrow down the selections but had not made any actual choices on paint yet when I went to Home Depot yesterday morning. I had a few tools I needed to get, and figured that I might as well wait until I could get a free light bulb. I happened to notice that Behr was running a promotion for a 25% rebate on paint. I came home, we chose our colors, we measured our walls, and we were out the door to get our paint. We were going to buy it in a week anyway, so this way we can get some of the money back in a few months.

Measuring how much paint we needed was a fun experience. What we did was basically measure each surface that was going to be painted for each color. We had one column that had the height and width that would be painted, and another column for the height and width of anything that would not be painted such as doors and windows. I then threw all of those numbers into a spreadsheet, had it figure out the square footage, and add and subtract all of the numbers for us.

The paint requirements for the house spreadsheet is pretty simple, and could easily be made more useful. However, this was a one-off thing so I just went quick and dirty. The amount of paint needed was off a little bit, because I assumed that one gallon of paint could cover 350 square feet of wall space. According to the guy at Home Depot, the stuff that we bought covers about 400 square feet per gallon.

If you are interested in downloading the spreadsheet, take a look and let me know if you find it useful. We wound up buying 5 gallons and 1 quart of paint, and 3 gallons of primer. Our kitchen will be yellow and orange, and the yellow will carry through the hallways and the living room. Two of the walls in the living room will be a darker yellow. Our bedroom will be a different green than is in there now. The dining room is going to be red.

Coming just in time to spoil our plans to leave the state for the weekend, Winter wanted to show everybody that while Spring weather has begun to peek through every few days, it is not quite here yet. I am not sure exactly how much snow we got, since I was out shoveling 6 or 7 times and the wind left drifts everywhere. It was an interesting mix, though. Light powder, that then melted and became slush before freezing into ice, covered with more powder which then began to melt into slush. There was a great layering effect that happened.

I am very glad that we tried finding some snow shovels on clearance in the past few weeks. Our old plastic snow shovels were all torn up at the ends; one of them had lost about an inch and a half all told and the other was all curled and splitting. Our new shovels have a nice metal brace at the end of the shovel to help get the ice up and to keep the plastic from breaking. I also bought an ice pick for the driveway that has already shown us more value than the buck and a half it cost us.

All told, I think that I spent about 6 or 7 hours out shoveling. Thankfully, our neighbor has a snow blower and he did about a quarter of my driveway for me, which saved me about an hour and a half of work. The plows were able to clean up the streets and what was left melted off nicely, which meant that I got a couple of quality runs in this weekend without having to worry about footing.

Buying your first house means that your budget gets stretched a little thin, and comparison shopping becomes more important. The best deals can usually be had online, when compared to looking around in a brick and mortar store. You save the gas to get there, you can comparison shop more easily and effectively, and prices are often lower. You need to be careful not to lose all of your savings in shipping costs, but many home goods merchants online will waive shipping fees.
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I no longer own any Epson inkjet printers, but I have owned one in the past. When I had the printer, I really liked it. The prints looked great, especially the photo prints (when printed on the photo paper anyway), and I was able to swap out the individual colors as they needed replacing. That is definately something that I look for in a color printer.
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Knowing the right people can make all the difference sometimes.

Today, I got a care package in the mail.

The box materialized out of thin air while I was away from my desk for a few minutes today.

My wife and I acquired a treadmill this weekend from her grandparents. It is an old treadmill, but it does not have a huge footprint and it seems to be in good working order. It will need to be cleaned and serviced before we begin using it since it has been sitting in a bedroom unused for a few years, but it will be nice to have an option of somewhere we can get a lot of movement without leaving the house. Maine winters can get cold, and it should be a good way to warm up a little.

I do not think that it will work for actually running on, however. I think that it will have to be limited to brisk walking. That’s all right though.

The absolute worst case scenario is that it breaks and we are unable to fix it, in which case I can just pick it up and carry it back and forth around the basement. It is heavy enough to give a great workout that way. Bringing it down from an upstairs bedroom on a split staircase and then bringing it to my basement sure drove that home.

For now, though, it is the best time of year to get outside to go for a walk or a run.

A week ago I put up a new shower curtain rod in the bathroom. It was one of those ones that curve out away from the tub so that it seems like you have more room in the shower without actually installing a larger tub. It works out great. It took me a while to get it up, however. First, the old shower curtain rod was painted onto the wall with what seemed like 5000 coats of paint, so removing it was a little more difficult than just taking out some screws and not letting it drop. Once it was done, though, I had to install the anchors for the new shower curtain. I did not realize it at the time, but I was using too small of a drill bit for the sheetrock anchors that I had.
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One thing that took us over a month to get was a lawn mower. When we moved in there was still snow on the ground, but it did not take very long for the grass to grow enough to be unmanageable. We wound up buying a craftsman lawn mower from Sears. It was nowhere near a top of the line model, but it works well enough. The first 3 or 4 times I used it it was very difficult to get started, but now it works like a charm. Our half acre takes about 45 minutes to an hour to mow.

The biggest problem that I have mowing our lawn is that there are some steep points that lead down to the water where it is not really safe to mow, and off one side of our driveway there is too much poison ivy for me to venture into yet. I really need to get an edge trimmer, but I have not bought one yet because I might be getting a hand me down from my fiancé’s grandparents.

Choosing the lawn mower did not take very long. I waited until the lawn mowers were on sale at a few different stores, and then went out and chatted with the salesman at Sears and chose one of the models that they had on display. With proper care, this lawn mower should hopefully last long enough for us to acquire a larger lawn where a bigger mower might be desired. That will hopefully not be for 10 or 15 years.