In The Berries

I have resurfaced after another extremely busy week here at the little island pad. After thinking our flooring ordeal was finally over our dishwasher went on error the very first time we used it after being reinstalled.  The original plumber then went MIA and refused to answer the flooring company's pages.  It took another week for a serviceman from another firm here in town (this one highly reputable and one I have used before) to fit us in.  He had to reinstall the dishwasher as the plumber had kinked the line so water could not drain.  This is a temporary fix as a new hose has to be put on and due to the difficulty in getting simple parts from GE it may be weeks before it has its permanent fix.  Not on our dime but yet again, a huge inconvenience.  We were without our dishwasher for the whole of my stepson's five day visit including a couple of family dinners with Mom.  PAIN IN THE BUTT!
If we had to do it over again I would not have ordered GE appliances.  It is too hard for repairmen to get parts in Canada.  If any of them die we will choose another brand.


So far the flooring is creak free except one board in the kitchen.  We will be talking to the flooring company regarding said board.  At this point I am thinking of injecting glue between it and the next one myself - I am so sick of this crap!

We are within 2 weeks of finishing a huge company project, our very first online course which has taken hundreds of man hours between hubby and I to write, tape, edit and produce.  We just want to get selling it which should happen by September.  We own a sales training company and are slowly trying to do things so that hubby does not always have to be the front-man should he choose to semi-retire at some point or if illness struck.  In this way we can have a permanent long-term income.  The book was first and this large course is second.  We will then produce many smaller courses in the future to keep things fresh.  We have produced this course around all of our live clients and it has been a long tough road.  We thought it would take less time but the next one will as we have learned all the critical lessons on the first one.

As you can see, Mom and I were able to pick some blackberries.  They went into the freezer as we will wait for cooler temperatures before making the jam.  I also managed to get my foot caught in the brambles and came home bleeding.  The things one does for free food :)  I need to get out there another time or two so I can freeze more for muffins and pancakes.

If life wasn't busy enough we are in the process of downsizing our vehicles.   This is one area of our life that hasn't been frugal for a while.  When we left Alberta we went from 3 to 2 vehicles.  Then when my stepdaughter came to live with us she had a car and when she left we traded in her car for a small truck to haul things like our kayaks around in.  Back to 3 vehicles.  It makes no sense for two adults who work from home to have 3 vehicles but if it was up to hubby we would have a fleet of vehicles and need an acreage to contain them.   If travel is my thing (he likes it too) vehicles are hubby's thing.   I have been trying to convince him for some time that we need to consolidate back to 2 vehicles.  Yesterday we traded in his sportscar (he has always had one since I met him) and bought a 4 door 2012 car with only 22,000 km and now we will sell my 2009 car.  We always pay cash and don't lease or get loans on our vehicles so even though we have had lots of vehicles they haven't costed us a lot of money other than in insurance.  This consolidation will save us about $1500 a year and we ended up with a much nicer newer car.  Our truck is a 13 year old vehicle but is perfect for what we use it for and we intend to keep it long-term.  I just took a call from an interested buyer on my old car so hopefully we can sell it quickly.

It would be really great if things slowed a bit but that doesn't appear to be happening so I am just going with the flow.  If you don't hear from me for weeks at a time - things are fine - just busy!