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We just can’t seem to get motivated to finish our home renovations

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I vowed earlier this year that this would be the year that we’d finish our renovations. So far that hasn’t happened!

We’ve actually been putting off finishing our renovations for 6 or more years! Can you believe that I’ve been living in a house that has two by one strapping spaced about a two feet apart all across the living room and dining room ceiling for 6 years or so? All that’s left to be done to finish the ceiling is for us to put up the tin ceiling tiles that we purchased about 8 years ago.

My husband and I both ended up having some bad health problems about 6 years ago so it made sense to put a hold on our reno. We also had some bad family tragedies happen around that time too .. but now, even though I’m still sick with Crohn’s we should be able to slowly start finishing the renovations that we started.

I mean .. all we have to do is put those tin ceiling tiles up, cut and apply baseboards, quarter round and maybe some molding around the top of the walls where it meets the ceiling and we’ll pretty much be done our living room dining room renovation.

Then we can either start on the kitchen or the basement. We just have to get motivated to get started!

I’ve been trying to motivate myself by looking at decor websites and magazines …I’m really interested in the look of a stone sink for our kitchen .. but I’m not sure it’s quite as easy to care for as a stainless steel sink … it also might cost more … so we’ll see.

Have you ever done renovations on your home? If so did you kind of stall at some point? If you did, what did you do to get yourself motivated again to start working on your renovation projects again?

Ow my aching back!

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I’m starting to wonder if we need a new bed, or rather mattress.

When we moved into our house in 2001 we bought a new bed for our bedroom … we had a double bed in the apartment, but we treated our selves to a queen sized bed when we finally graduated to new home owner.

I can’t remember what brand of mattress we bought, but it was a name brand and I’d selected a firm mattress because they’re generally better for you than soft mattresses.

I’ve been happy with our bed for the most part, but I remember that the first month we slept in the bed my back ached almost every day, until I got used to the new mattress. Now, for the last year I’ve had a bad back – so bad that I can’t sleep at night unless I put pillows under my knees. I know I have back problems, but I’m wondering if getting a new mattress might help too. Maybe one of those memory foam ones … do they come in firm?

Have you ever wondered if it was your mattress that was causing your back to ache?

Dry cracked skin

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Talk about strange internet searches. Earlier today I found myself on Amazon looking for Udder cream.

Why?

Well a long time ago my mom brought home this cream that she’d purchased while she and my dad were vacationing in Texas. My mom used to always get dry cracked skin on her heals and in the winter the skin on her hands, especially her fingers, would get so dry that sometimes it would crack and bleed.

So she found this cream that was originally made for putting on cow udders or teats to keep them from cracking.

Now this was back in the 80’s or maybe early 90’s … before it became quite common for people to use products made for cows.

Anyway .. back to my search for udder cream. I kept getting results that brought up face cream but of course that wasn’t what I wanted at all. I eventually found the exact product that my mom used 20 or so years ago and it’s Bag Balm. Hey … I was close … udder, bag … LOL

I was looking on Amazon, because, even though I could remember the exact name of the product I knew I could find it if I saw it in a department store or drug stores beauty aisle, but I haven’t seen it. Unfortunately for me, Amazon.com doesn’t ship this product to Canada. Hmmm.. I forgot to check on Amazon.ca but then they don’t have half the stuff that the US site does so they probably won’t have it. Now at least I know the name of the product and I can ask around.

I hope I find some soon … my heels are awful! No matter what I do I always get hard skin on the edges of my heels and the sides of my feet … I think that if I can get my hands on some Bag Balm or a similar product it might help.

Anyone know where I can get some Bag Balm in Canada? Toronto to be exact?

How do you take care of your skin?

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I guess I’ve been fairly lucky to be blessed with good skin. Actually my whole family has nice skin and I guess you could say good genes as far as aging goes, because everyone in my family, from my parents to my brothers and sister all look at least 10 years if not more younger than they actually are.

Oh sure, I had some skin problems when I was a teenager. A little bit of acne and some blackheads but nothing too bad.

I do battle enlarged pores on a constant basis though. If I don’t take care of my skin -well, especially on my nose, I’ll get some blackheads.

Lately I’ve taken to cleaning my face with Noxema. I did that when I was a teen and about a month ago I started using the skin cleanser again.

What I do is get a face cloth and wet it with hot water. I then place the hot cloth over my face to open up the pores. Then I gently massage some Noxema into my skin and rinse it off with a warm cloth. When I’m done cleaning my face I rinse the cloth out in cold water and pat my face with the cold cloth to close my pores.

My skin always feels fresh and tingly clean when I’m done. I like washing my face that way in the morning because it’s invigorating.

At night I usually just wash my face with a mild soap and then use facial creams that are meant for night use.

I guess that since I have Crohn’s and I’m sick quite often it’s at least nice that I have fairly good skin and look younger than I am.

How do you take care of your skin? Have you had problems with acne, blackheads or enlarged pores?

How do you deal with comment spam?

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I’m so sick of spam and comment spam. I should be … I’ve been dealing with it for close to 20 years!

I was an early internet or shall I say World Wide Web user (1991 – remember BBS) and I started my first website in 1995. That’s a long time to have been dealing with spammy emails and now that I blog (my husband and I have 19 blogs between us) I have comment spam to deal with as well.

I’m so tired of getting emails and comments on my sites that are full of keywords and multiple links. You know … if the comment or keyword had anything to do with my article or post I might let it get by and I do occasionally … but most of them have nothing to do with the topic of my post.

I’ll write about my dog and get people leaving keywords and links for scammy products that will make you rich on the internet. I write about my dog and I get weight loss and lipofuze reviews links. I write about my garden and get spam comments filled with real estate or finance links and keywords.

Arghhhhh!

We changed all of our blogs over to DoFollow three years ago and since that time the spam comments have quadrupled!

So how do I deal with it? I moderate comments on our blogs heavily. If a comment is clearly spam, doesn’t make sense, has nothing to do with the topic of the post or simply says “nice post” or a new one – I’m having trouble viewing your sight with such and such browser It goes directly to the Akismet spam pile.

If a comment is somewhat on topic but full of keywords I’ll edit the comment to remove extra links (or nofollow the ones that are kind of relevant to my topic).

If someone is clearly spamming … such as hitting several of my blogs within an hour or two I might leave their comments if they are on topic but I delete their name link and any extra links. People that hit a good chunk or all of our blogs within a few hours are clearly going through a DoFollow list.

I mean, our blogs cover a variety of topics – two are humor blogs, two are guitar and music related, one is about my garden, another about organic gardening, one is about web design while another is about blogging and tech gadgets and two are personal, another is about celebrity news etc … most people aren’t interested in all of those topics on the same day let alone within an hour or two! LOL

As for email spam … well I used to get over 1000 emails a day thanks to all of our websites (plus mailing lists that i run that are associated with three sites) and the spam that they seemed to generate (as well as genuine email requests). Now I run our main email accounts through Gmail and forward the mail back to our email accounts and Google filters out most of the spam.

How do you deal with comment spam on your blog or website? Do you moderate? What’s your policy?

I know that my way of dealing with comment spam is likely a lot harsher than others, but with all of our websites and blogs we get anywhere from 50 to hundreds of comments each day … For me, the way I’ve described how we deal with comment spam above, is the best way, but it may not be the best way for you and your site.

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