This week has been producing some remarkable sunsets. We have a lot of clouds that make each day grey and a lot of rain – sometimes a bit of snow. A typical January for this area.

But rather than the clouds making each day gloomy, the grey has enhanced the natural colors, such as the bright red berries of the dogwood tree, the red cardinals, and the green grass that is trying to poke through the muddy lawn.

This sunset last night had a touch of pink and I happened to have my camera with me, so I got a nice shot. I think I should carry my camera with me more often. I like nice sunsets – especially when they do not involve an endless horizon of water. I think the dark tree branches make a nice frame and the darker hills in the background give the photo depth.

I’ve got a Cincinnati home security system at my house and the kids keep setting it off. I don’t think they’re trying to sneak out because they’re only 8 and 10 but I put them down to bed and not 2 hours later they’re up at one of the doors or windows trying to get it open! I don’t know what’s gotten into them and I’ve been trying to work with my husband to get it all under control but you know, I guess it’s not the worst thing to deal with this now rather than when they’re 16. If they had boyfriends or something I would be worried but I think they’re just being kids and getting into mischief like kids tend to do and it’s really hard to get mad at them for that, you know what I mean? I love my children but sometimes they push my buttons too far when I’m at home – guess that’s what I get for being a stay at home mom!

Well, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men . . . when I got to the U-Haul store I was astounded to see the price of cardboard boxes. Every box was at least $5 and some were selling for as much as $30. That is just crazy for cardboard boxes! I can buy plastic tubs for less than that and not have to worry about water damage, mildew and rodents getting into the cardboard.

I went to K-Mart and bought 8 large plastic bins for under $35. After the yard sale this spring, I can still find a use for the plastic bins – they are almost a lifetime investment for storage whereas cardboard only lasts until it gets wet, torn, or starts to naturally degrade.

In all these years that my neighbor has had this swing, I have never seen her sit on it and actually swing. But we do have a lot of squirrels and birds who love this swing. I wish I could have snapped this photo with a couple of bright red cardinals on the swing with it sprinkled with fresh snow. I really like red cardinals and they look especially bright against the dark brown of wood and the white of a fresh snowfall.

I’ve always like the idea of garden arbors and started investigating them online. I was surprised to find so many different styles and sizes available. I guess I need to start my search by deciding on whether I want a wood arbor or a vinyl one.

Of course wood can be painted, but I think the point of wood is to have a more natural feel. If you are just going to paint the arbor, you should probably get one that is vinyl and have it factory painted in the color of your choice.

Everything in my neighbor’s yard is a natural wood – I am pretty sure it is all cedar. Even the siding and roof on her house are cedar and the whole effect is very rustic. My house’s exterior is a red brick veneer, so it is not as rustic as hers, but I still like the idea of wooden arbors for a natural look rather than a color.

While inspecting a property out in the country, my client took me around to the back of his house and showed me his little backyard retreat. He had fenced a section of the yard to separate it from the rest of the farm, installed a shallow in-ground pool, and put up this quaint wood arbor. I thought it was very artistically done, especially considering he is an auto mechanic.

We got started with some serious overhauling of the landscaping last summer and I think if the weather allows, I can get an early start on planting both a vegetable garden and relocating the shrubbery in the front of the house. I want to put in some raised beds and add some windowboxes across the front of the house. I have two windows in the living room, one window in the dining room and one window in the front bedroom that I use for my home office.

The one window in my home office is not suitable for window box planters because it is centered on the wall along my front porch. But the other three windows along the front would be great if I planted flowers that do well on an east facing wall.

I have imagined a row of three window flower boxes with lots of bright green foliage and perhaps some bright red geraniums. I know geraniums come in several different colors and shades of red. I want to get something bright, that shows up well against the red brick of the house and the fireplace.

Somehow it is just not as satisfying to rake the leaves from the backyard into a pile and then have to dump them into oversized brown paper bags and wait for the county yard waste truck to drive through collecting the bags. It’s just become another mindless, isolated chore that has to be done. I miss the good old days of leaves burning and all the neighbors gathered around, telling stories and jokes and being part of a close knit community.

I would not think there is that much work for actors in Philadelphia. But actually, it is not far from NYC and is a lot cheaper to live in Philly than to live in New Jersey or New York. So when he gets work in NYC he gets a short term apartment in New Jersey. New Jersey is actually nice once you get away from NYC and the banks of the Hudson River. In fact, most of New Jersey has nothing to do with New York City.

My favorite spot in New Jersey is Atlantic City. Most people probably think of Atlantic City as a min-Las Vegas, but i think of it as the beach and the boardwalk. I spent many summer weekends on the beaches of the Jersey Shore, swimming is the surf and walking for miles up and down the boardwalk and the beach looking for seashells. And I promise you, my summers at the beach were nothing at all like the TV series, Jersey Shore.

Keith’s parents live in rural New Jersey, about an hour east of Philadelphia and that is too far for him to commute to NYC for acting jobs. They have a small dairy farm and we were out there visiting his family over the holidays. I flew into Philadelphia and Keith picked me up at the airport. Then we drove out to his family’s farm in Jersey. That was a nice drive – nothing but open fields and a lot of cows. It was nothing like the opening scenes in “The Sopranos” when Tony is driving from his home in New Jersey across the river into the city.

I’ve know Keith and his family since college and they are like a second family to me. I’ve been to their farm several times and they always make me feel like I am one of the family and very welcome. On this visit, we hung out with Keith’s dad a lot, while his mom was busy shopping and baking – getting ready for Christmas.

Keith’s dad was telling us about Arosa Energy, a company that helps homeowners, farmers and businesses with New Jersey solar power. He says that there are a lot of ways to be able to afford switching to solar power or adding solar power to your property. Now there are federal tax credits and rebates from the state, which really help with the initial cost of installation.

His dad is planning to work with Arosa Energy to add solar panels to the dairy barn and the farmhouse. He was told that there will be so much energy generated from that many solar panels that he can actually sell the excess energy to the electrical utility provider company. I think that New Jersey solar energy is going to prove to be a great investment for his dad and the farm. We might end up back at the farm in April to help with the solar panel installation. I wouldn’t mind going back to help – I think I would learn so much from working on it – and it would be great to spend time with Keith and his folks, too.

There are challenges for a lot of reasons. Some people are getting married and need a starter home. Other people are retiring and need to downsize from a large home that requires a lot of maintenance and high utility bills to something much smaller and easier to manage. Others have to move because of employment, like my friend, Wes.

Wes is a DJ and if you know about the entertainment industry, DJs tend to change jobs frequently. They are subjected to ratings changes, format changes, and flaky management at the corporate radio stations of today. Wes was let go from a large market radio station changing format and he found a job in middle Illinois. He needs to find affordable housing in Rockford and if he can’t find what he needs available now, he will have to find temporary housing and build his own house.

Wes already knows about manufactured homes in Chicago from living and working in the Windy City the past 6 years. Now that he is moving to Rockford, he doesn’t have a lot of money from the sale of his house. Six years is not usually long enough to build up any equity at all, and with the depressed real estate market, many people are underwater with their mortgages instead of having the equity they were expecting.

Notice the car up on cinderblocks. The only thing missing is the pitbull chained in the yard.

It only takes one electric bill over $400 to get my attention. That’s when I searched out Home energy efficiency tips and decided to take action to reduce the leaching and keep as much heat inside my house as possible. A total inspection of a home can discover a lot of simple fixes to keep the heat in and the cold air out. One of the little things that I took care of over the weekend was purchasing precut foam insulation to install in all the electrical sockets. It cost less than $20 and only took about 30 minutes to unscrew the cover plates, drop in the insulation and then re-attach the cover plates.

For bigger jobs, like insulating the fireplace covering and adding more insulation to the attic or crawl space, there are home insulation contractors who can help. I don’t know very much about insulation and can’t afford to waste it or do it incorrectly, so I would defer to the professionals for a job like that.

Its been many years since we lived in a condo and had to pick up our mail from the apartment mailboxes that are in a row by the entrance to the garage. In some apartment communities the mailboxes and vending machines are located by the leasing office instead of the garage area. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the mailbox islands, located in the community’s parking lots, too.

Some people in office condos have to retrieve their mail each day from commercial mailboxes in the building lobby or near the parking garage. When i first worked for an insurance company, that is how our mail was delivered.  The only downside of that was we could not tell when the mail had actually arrived without going out to the mailboxes and looking inside. But somehow we managed.

The good thing about a wet winter is that we almost always need the rain and it helps replenish the water levels so that we do not have a drought next summer. I remember a couple of years ago the water shortage was so bad that I had to install rain chains on the house and the garage to conserve rain water for the garden and the lawn.

With enough chains rain accumulates in a barrel or other collector and can be used when needed. The chains have a practical use but they can also be decorative. I picked out brass chains that match the hardware on the doors of my house and the fence gates.

Wish I could say that I was the first one in my neighborhood to install a rain chain, but one of my neighbors beat me to it. I had been thinking about it and then one day I drove the back way to the grocery store and passed his house. Sure enough, he had install chains and collection barrels. So that motivated me even further to go ahead and do it.

I am what some people might call a very light sleeper. While my husband could (perhaps literally) sleep through a sonic boom or a freight train driving straight through our family room, I am awakened by every single creak in the middle of the night. While this is normally a figment of my very active imagination, I love the security of knowing that if any of the noises I hear are ever NOT in my head, I’m protected. Thanks to our security system, any alarm that is activated in our home results in an alarm to our monitoring company. From there, the company calls us and can get our permission to call the appropriate authorities. While I sincerely hope we’ll never have a need for their services, the peace of mind I get simply from knowing the alarm is there if we need it is enough for me. I sleep like a baby. Correction: I would sleep like a baby if I could get my husband to stop stealing all the covers ever single night. While I don’t have a solution for that, I can recommend you check out www.ATLANTAHOMESECURITY.com to see if installing an alarm can help you sleep like a baby, too.