Welcome to Ciderbrook

Winter is loosening its grip here in Western New York.  It's not over, of course, and will show it's snowy face again before too long, but we are actually beginning to see some nicer days.  I don't know about you, but when the weather begins to turn nice, I start getting restless, and I begin to think about all the projects I want to do!  One project we have wanted to do for a long time is put some new outlets in the kitchen.  It's a lovely old kitchen and I'm so grateful that it's almost totally original.  However, that means that the electricity is almost all original too, and it's not sufficient for modern appliances.  We can't, for instance, run the microwave and the toaster at the same time, or the electric tea kettle and the electric canner.  There's also only a small number of outlets, and those are badly positioned.   After getting our RO water filter, we needed a new place to put our coffee pot and electric tea kettle.  So after...

 Happy March, everyone!  It certainly started like a lion this year.  It was 50 degrees and beautiful yesterday, and today we woke up with an inch of snow and blustery 20 degree weather.  Winter in the northeast, I guess.  You never know what's going to happen from day to day.  Every year, we try to do a No Spend January, when we only spend on bare necessities like food and toiletries.  It helps us to reset our thinking, after a long holiday season of shopping and spending.  We did very well this January.  Not only did we not buy anything unnecessary, we also worked on eating down our pantry and spent very little on food too.   The other nice thing about a No-Spend-January is that it gives us a lot of time to think about what we do want to buy or spend our money on.  It's so easy to impulse buy something you think you need, and you may later find out that you didn't need it at all, or that something cheaper would have done...