Toys for Tots 2016

I have been involved in the annual Toys for Tots toy drive for the past few years and is something I like to do. At first, I would just buy some toys at the toy store on Black Friday or early December and donate at work. A few years ago no one volunteered to head the drive at work and there were no donation bins. I was disappointed and had to find another drop off location, barely making the deadline. After this, I decided to take a more active role and became the coordinator for two of our offices in two different counties. I combine donations with another office and we drive them all to the USMC Reserve Center in Hialeah, FL where the toys are collected and distributed to the community.

We had a good collection this year. The main coordinator is new this year so I helped him out. We got started a little late but have a good plan for next year so hopefully we can get even more toys in 2017.

Christmas Cookies

This year for Christmas I decided to make gingerbread cookies. Lots and lots of gingerbread cookies. These were to be Christmas presents for my family. I figured that I would give them my time by making something for them rather than buying something for them.


This is the first year I was making gingerbread cookies on a large scale. I've made several dozen chocolate chip cookies at a time but those are drop cookies and not decorated. These gingerbread cookies will take much longer. This year was to be the first time on a large scale. Now I'll lean from mistakes this year so that if I do it again it won't take as long because I'll know what I'm doing.


We used the Betty Crocker gingerbread cookie mix and used salted and unsalted butter, basically whatever we had in the freezer. After it was all done, we didn't notice a difference in taste between using salted and unsalted butter. The Betty Crocker mix is simple, just add butter and water. I didn't want to search for a homemade recipe because I knew that this was going to be a lot of work and was going to keep this part simple.


We made one batch at first to test out the recipe. It worked fine. I had a nice picture of me rolling out the gingerbread in my nice clothes on that test batch but that wasn't reality so it didn't get posted.


Now that one batch was made, time to make the rest, another eight bags of gingerbread cookie mix. All of the gingerbread dough was made at once and then refrigerated overnight. The next day I got to cooking. Actually rolling. I had to roll out and cook for hours. There were no pictures of this. Cookies were everywhere. Both the kitchen counter and myself were covered in flour. Well not that bad but the counter was covered and I had flour on my arms, pants, and face.


I had three trays of cookies going at a time. One baking, one cooling off, and one being loaded with cookies.

Decorating was just as hard as rolling out and baking them.

So if rolling out and baking sounded like a lot of work, the decorating took just as long. This year we have long dining room table for the first time. That is one of the reasons I did this, we finally have a place to decorate them all.

White, red, and green holiday icing.

It was fun making different faces. They start to look funny after decorating for a long time. The steady hand isn't so steady anymore. Also this is a good shot of the different sizes. We had big ones, regular size ones, small ones, and a gingerbread house for the little gingerbread man.

Here is Toby looking desperate to get a cookie. I did learn that making gingerbread cookies and leaving them out to cool and leaving them out for the icing to dry will drive the dogs crazy. They whined and whined for days while our little factory was churning out gingerbread men.

Eight full boxes of gingerbread men and one full tin (not pictured). Lots of gingerbread men for the whole family. After it was all finished, over 175 gingerbread cookies were made!

What did I learn for next year?
- Make more big gingerbread men and less medium-sized ones; big cookies are easier to decorate and have more room for detailed decorations also they aren't as tedious to roll and cut out
- Make the dough all at once and let it cool in the refrigerator
- Watch out for the little scavengers! They will find a way to steal a cookie off the table if you don't watch them.

Draining the Pool

My pool was a mess. It was a deep, dark green swamp with algae floating on top. How did it get there? A lot of factors. My filter cartridge housing cracked and was leaking so the filter wasn't working well. As we attempted to patch it, the water kept getting greener and greener. Then the Barracuda automatic vacuum broke and I needed to replace the rubber feet and flanges for it to work again. I kept dumping $100of chemicals  a month into the pool and nothing fixed it. After reading up on the internet, I ultimately realized that I needed to drain and change out the water. I am supposed to change it out every 2-3 years but I had the same water for 5 years, and that was just too long. Now I know.


Of course whenever I went to the pool supply store they just recommended more chemicals. I'm done with pool supply stores. They can test my water and I will buy liquid chlorine from them once every other month but I'm buying my supplies online now.


To drain the pool, I rented a submersible pump from Home Depot at $40 for 24 hours. I rented it the night before, set up the hose to drain into the park behind my house and tested the pump. It worked well and I decided to turn on the pump first thing in the morning and begin the drain. My pool is 13,000 gallons so it was going to take a few hours to drain. I think it ended up taking 3-4 hours. I intentionally didn't use my pool pump to drain the pool so I wouldn't burn it out if I lost suction.


How did I clean it? While draining, I kept the walls wet and the algae just washed right off. I made sure not to let the pool dry while it was draining. It was much easier to clean this way.

Look how green it is!

Look who is following me....Sparky is always curious.

Have to keep those walls wet and wash the algae off. Notice I started first thing in the morning so the sun wasn't drying the pool and I could get all the cleaning done during daylight.

 I would wash the algae off with the hose as best as I could. Then I would go eat breakfast and wash the walls again. Then I set up the equipment while the pump kept draining the pool.

That's a lot of algae but the pump is sucking it all out. Another reason why I didn't use my pool pump to drain my pool - I didn't want to flush out all this fish-smelling muck from my pool piping.

Now I am ready to get to work inside the pool and start cleaning.

To clean the pool, I bought about 10 gallons of chlorine. That was more than I needed but I just used the left over to treat the pool afterwards. I did a chlorine wash by using a 2 gallon garden watering can to sprinkle a 1:1 chlorine to water ratio over the rinsed walls. I used a pool brush to scrub the walls after I poured but this didn't do much other than spread out the chlorine wash all over the walls. After I got a section of the pool walls wet with this mix, I rinsed it off with a hose.

 

Here I'm spraying the walls of the pool after rinsing the walls with a diluted chlorine wash. Oh yeah, I ruined the color on those pants from the chlorine splashing on them. I planned for that.

 

This is the pool with about half of the walls washed. I had to finally turn off the pump because it wouldn't suck up the last bit.

For good measure, I went around the pool with a pressure washer. My pool's surface is made of gunite. Using a pressure washer will generally destroy the surfacing so I only used the pressure washer on a low setting (low PSI nozzle) and mainly used it to sweep water and debris to the pump. I also used the pressure washer to get rid of stubborn spots on the tile. Don't forget to wash under the lip of the top of the pool, this is a good spot to use a pressure washer. You don't see it from the top so algae will build up here.

Last bit of water with lots of chlorine from the final washes

Pumping out as much as I can with the submersible pump.

This was the last bit left in the pool. I used a kayak hand pump to get out the last bit of water and a dust pan to sweep up the last bit of sand and dirt from the wash.

I washed as much as I could and dumped the final buckets of water into the yard and killed the grass where I dumped it. It looked pretty clean now. Cleaning out the spa was harder. It was hard to use the pressure washer in such a small area and I couldn't see out my goggles because so much water was splashing into my face. Also sweeping up the debris from the bottom was tough because there was no room to maneuver. Ultimately I'll have to hook up the pool vacuum and dive in the water to get the last bit of debris.

Filling up the pool with the hose.

After this photo, I started scrubbing the tile from the spa. I will no longer leave the floating chlorine tab dispenser in the spa. That is what left that white staining.

Here it is nice and clean getting filled up. I did take out the hose after this and filled up the spa first.

Here we go the next day. It took about a day and a half to fill up the pool. I estimated that this cost an additional $150 on my water bill. Look how clean it is now. $1000 in chemicals would not have done that.

These are the tools I had to buy/rent special for this project. I bought a gardening water can for about $5, rubber steel-toed boots for $40, rented the pump from Home Depot for $40, and bought a pressure washer for $300. I plan on using the pressure washer and boots for many other projects.

A week prior, I also replaced the cracked filter cartridge housing. That cost me $400 and came with a brand new filter. Now the water will not have to be cleaned in a dirty filter.


I did buy some extra tools for this project. Ultimately I didn't need the pressure washer but used it anyway. We have been wanting one for a while now. I figure that if I had to pay a professional to drain my pool, I would have spent the money it cost for the pressure washer to pay for a professional cleaning.


This blog post is about a month late. I drained the pool in late November so it was still in the 80s here in south Florida. I just got busy and things at work really picked up so I missed posting this for November.

New Kitchen Gadget - Egg Sandwich Maker

I have a nice assortment of kitchen gadgets. Here is a new one that I bought at BJ's for $25. It is an egg sandwich maker because I thought it would be nice to have a kitchen gadget for that since I often eat egg sandwiches for breakfast on the weekends.

Putting a big bagel in there takes longer to cook. After a few attempts we got the procedure down.

This is cooking two egg sandwiches with using English muffins instead of bagels. I can put an extra egg white into the machine by using a smaller muffin.

This is how the muffins came out. I put cheese and sausage at the bottom and an egg plus an egg white on the top. One is lopsided because the (turkey) sausage patty was not centered.

This is how the bagel came out. Toasted and the egg was cooked. No sausage though.

I think that I'll be using this often. The eggs come out thoroughly cooked without frying while they cook on the non-stick surface. I can add sausage, cheese, and vegetables to the sandwich and it all cooks together in under seven minutes. 

Driveway Expansion

As I stated in previous posts, we decided to extend the driveway and fill in the space in front of the house that is normally used for a garden or bushes. Here are some older photos from past posts:

This was the original set up for several years and just grew wild while the sprinklers stained the house so much we got a warning from Code Enforcement. 

This is what it looked like after I dug it up and removed the sprinklers when I renovated the driveway.

I never took a photo of the prep work but if you zoom in, you can see that we installed rebar by drilling holes into the house slab and the concrete driveway. We then cut the rebar to size and connected the house to the driveway with rebar. More rebar was then run the length of the garden and tied to the other rebar.

The prep work was done on a Friday in June 2016. We could have poured the concrete the next day, but the prep work (foundation) had to pass inspection first. It passed inspection the following Monday. Then my schedule never matched up with my friend from work who helped me. Then I went on vacation and sprained my ankle. Then he went on vacation. Then it rained every day for the next three months.



We tried to get it done on one of those days that rained. We bought a pallet of concrete at Home Depot (that's 6,720 pounds of concrete) and loaded each 60 pound bag by hand. It took three trips in my pick up truck. I guess I could have done it in two but didn't want to break my truck.

I also rented a mixer and we started working on the slab that morning. Then the rain came down hard. We spent another hour saving the concrete to keep it dry. It was a mess. We poured 4 square feet that day and had to stop.

So finally in October 2016 after the hurricane, we were finally able to pour the new slab.

Had to load each 60 pound bag into the mixer. We did four at a time.



Pouring concrete.

Load with water and mix again.

Keep adding concrete.



I just did the labor while my friend levels and smooths the concrete.

Pour again.

I ran out of concrete and bought another 20 bags that day. I was a mess at Home Depot. Thankfully there are a lot of dirty, dirty people that shop there so no one looked at me funny.

Keep mixing...

...and mixing..

Pour again.



It passed inspection

Still drying days later

View from the street.

This is a pile of tree branches we cut up the same day. I took this picture a few days later, but this is to show that me and my friend's teenage son did some tree trimming before I began laying concrete. I also rented the mixer and dug up a bush before they got to the house. 

 What does pot roast have to do with anything?

I talked to my friend the next day at work. Everyone was sore and tired after that day. Tired to the point of exhaustion. I was fine. I did not work out for two days after we worked but I was not sick. I have to credit the pot roast. The picture is how I prepared the pot roast the night before. The morning that we started, I turned on the crock pot and let it cook. It cooked while we worked. I didn't need to cook dinner that night and ate as much fresh meat, vegetables, and rice as I wanted. I went to bed full after eating real food. If I had to eat take out, I think I would have been sick.





Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew visited Florida on October 6th and 7th, 2016.


When we all knew that Hurricane Matthew was going to hit Florida, we began to get ready. On Tuesday October 4th, 2016, knowing that I was short hurricane panels, we went to Home Depot and Lowes to see if any were left. Earlier this summer, I had installed rails for hurricane panels on two windows but never bought the panels. Of course none were left in stock and people bought up all of the plywood. I even saw people buying sheets of 3/4 inch premium hardwood plywood to put over their windows. What a shame that such nice wood was going to be ruined by the rain.


Since there was nothing we could buy at the home improvement store, we went hunting for gasoline. Many gas stations were out of gas. The ones that did have gas had lines of cars into the street. I decided that the best place to go was a truck stop. The closest truck stop was on the Florida Turnpike so I hopped on the turnpike, paid the tolls, and went to the closest rest stop for gas. The gas station was busier than usual but I filled up my truck and two gas cans. As I thought, most people didn't want to pay tolls to get gas. The next stop was the grocery store to get emergency supplies. The store was all out of water except for cases of water bottles. Even though I wanted gallon jugs of water, I had to settle for the bottles and got two cases of 24 bottles. We also picked up canned goods and a few other non-perishable items. That was it for Tuesday preparations.

No bread

No canned goods

No crackers?

On Wednesday, I asked to take off on Thursday to prepare for the hurricane. Since I was the first to ask off, they gave it to me. I got off work on time which was good. After work, I immediately went looking for an air conditioner window unit. Everyone expected to be without power for several days so I wanted to hook up an air conditioner to my generator to be comfortable during the recovery. I figured I could enclose the Florida room of the house and wait for the power to come back from there. I just could not find a store that sold air conditioners. Even though air conditioning is used year-round in south Florida, most stores consider them seasonal. People at Lowes and Home Depot told me the are constantly telling corporate that south Florida needs to keep "seasonal" items in stock such as lawn mowers, grills, etc. Since I couldn't find an air conditioner, I called around until Home Depot said they had them in stock. I bit the bullet and bought a $500 air conditioner. I guess I could have returned it used. Home Depot was a mad house. They were rationing plywood to 10 pieces per customer and the lines for plywood were like the lines at Disney World!


When I got home, it was time to put up the hurricane panels. It wasn't long before I had to ration the panels. I measured the panels and estimated that I had enough for the windows. Apparently all of the panels have to overlap. I did not account for that so I had a lot less than I anticipated. I had to leave gaps between the panels on some windows leaving exposed areas. I didn't put any up on the garage windows because the shed is in front of those and I then parked my truck between the shed and garage windows to protect my truck and the windows.

Note the gaps between the shutters I had to leave since I was short on panels.

Side note: The area I'm walking in will be featured in another blog post about laying a concrete slab

I was off work on Thursday and everything was prepped for the hurricane. Since I had off, we went to the grocery store again and got lunch meat for sandwiches to eat during the hurricane. Its a good thing we went early because the store was closing at 2:00pm. We got home around 1:00pm but before we drove around the neighborhood to see how others prepared for the storm. There were people still putting on panels as it began to rain. Some parked cars on their lawn to protect their large windows. Most people put up manufactured hurricane panels. Many also put up plywood to protect their windows. One person put up a picket fence in front of their living room window because the store was out of plywood!

See the fence used as protection. Also notice they trimmed the tree so branches wouldn't hit the house.

Last picture taken before the storm came. More wind than rain.

Roads were empty and all businesses were closed two hours before police shut the roads down

Once it started raining, we returned home to watch the news and wait out the storm. A little later at 3:00pm, all roads were closed. We began watching the local news which went live and commercial free with non-stop coverage of the hurricane. The bad part of the storm finally hit at 8:00pm and that is when we began losing power as the power company began shifting power around the grid.


Fortunately for us, we never completely lost power. It was only down for a few seconds at a time. By 10:00 pm, it looked like we weren't going to suffer a hit from Hurricane Matthew and I fell asleep on the couch. At 2:00 am, the Hurricane had passed without hitting us and I went to bed.


My family in Jacksonville lost power for about a day and had minor damage to landscaping but they made it out fine in the end. I surveyed the my property to assess the damage which consisted of minor fence issues. I spent Friday fixing the fence and bringing all of the plants, grills, patio furniture, etc. out of the shed and putting it back in the yard.


Hurricane Matthew was a good trial run for another hurricane and now I have nine months to prepare for the next season.