It has been so cold here the last week! And not just cold....its been bitterly cold. The overnight temps for our area (just outside of Portland) have been at about 9 degrees. Most of the week our daily highs have been under 32 degrees, a few days were in the mid 20's. I cant ever remember a time that its been so cold here. In fact, the meteorologist said that we have beat the old record lows that were set 30 years ago for 3 days in a row!
Needless to say, we haven't been doing much outside of the house! The first few days of the cold weather were last weekend, when we went to get our tree. That Sunday we had to relight our pilot light on the furnace about 8 times...it kept going out leaving us with no heat. We were pretty worried that it had gone out, the furnace is original to the house and 37 years old. We have known since we bought this house that we would have to replace it at some point, but this would not have been the best time to do so! Luckily, it was an easy repair, and we were up and running again Monday afternoon. We did decide to replace the furnace next fall because the repair man told us that we could get about half the cost back in tax credits. I was so grateful to have a warm house again, and to have the furnace be an easy fix. It would have been a very miserable week around here with no heat!
Looking for something to do, the kids and I decided to make some ice wreaths. The weather was perfect for it, and we wanted to find the positive in all this miserable coldness. I found the idea here, and was pleased with how easy they were to make. The worst part was braving the freezing weather outside to assemble them!
We used two round cake pans, with a upside down cup held down with a rock in the center of each one. I filled the pans with water, and the kids put in cranberries, and bits of cedar branches that were left over from our garland. Then, we left them outside overnight to freeze!
The next morning we brought them inside to remove them from the pan. That part was easy, I just ran a little hot water over the back and they came right out. Getting the cup out was a little harder. The rim of the cup had not sat flush with the bottom of the pan, so I had to chip away at the ice that covered the bottom of the cup, and ended up filling the cup up with hot water so that the rim of it would get hot enough to melt the ice. It finally worked, and with a little twine, our wreaths were up! We put them up on the back fence together:
Killian's:
And Rowans:
The kids are excited to check and see if they are still together each morning, and hopefully the birds or squirrels will enjoy eating the berries once they fall off!
Needless to say, we haven't been doing much outside of the house! The first few days of the cold weather were last weekend, when we went to get our tree. That Sunday we had to relight our pilot light on the furnace about 8 times...it kept going out leaving us with no heat. We were pretty worried that it had gone out, the furnace is original to the house and 37 years old. We have known since we bought this house that we would have to replace it at some point, but this would not have been the best time to do so! Luckily, it was an easy repair, and we were up and running again Monday afternoon. We did decide to replace the furnace next fall because the repair man told us that we could get about half the cost back in tax credits. I was so grateful to have a warm house again, and to have the furnace be an easy fix. It would have been a very miserable week around here with no heat!
Looking for something to do, the kids and I decided to make some ice wreaths. The weather was perfect for it, and we wanted to find the positive in all this miserable coldness. I found the idea here, and was pleased with how easy they were to make. The worst part was braving the freezing weather outside to assemble them!
We used two round cake pans, with a upside down cup held down with a rock in the center of each one. I filled the pans with water, and the kids put in cranberries, and bits of cedar branches that were left over from our garland. Then, we left them outside overnight to freeze!
The next morning we brought them inside to remove them from the pan. That part was easy, I just ran a little hot water over the back and they came right out. Getting the cup out was a little harder. The rim of the cup had not sat flush with the bottom of the pan, so I had to chip away at the ice that covered the bottom of the cup, and ended up filling the cup up with hot water so that the rim of it would get hot enough to melt the ice. It finally worked, and with a little twine, our wreaths were up! We put them up on the back fence together:
Killian's:
And Rowans:
The kids are excited to check and see if they are still together each morning, and hopefully the birds or squirrels will enjoy eating the berries once they fall off!