Tag Archives: seasons

5 Ways to Prepare Your Home for Fall

08/27/2021 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

fall, autumn, weather, season, summer, tips, advice, home

As the days get shorter and the nights become longer, you’ll soon be thinking of ways to keep yourself and your family warm and happy as you begin transitioning from the summer. Aside from that, you’ll need to carry out some fall-related chores in your home.

Doing so will ensure that your home and loved ones are ready for the cooler season and that you won’t have any household-related problems when you eventually transition into winter. Here are five ways you can prepare your home for fall starting from today:

1. Mow Your Lawn

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a small patch of grass outside your home or you have acres of lovely lawn you can admire from your abode. Even though it’s getting cooler and the days are getting shorter, your lawn will still grow, albeit not as much as during the summer.

With that in mind, it makes sense to keep your lawn trimmed until it gets to the point where it won’t grow much until next year. If you do not have a lawn mower already, now is the time to get one so that you are not falling behind with your grass cutting. You might want to think about getting a robotic lawn mower as it can be less work than using a traditional lawn mower. However, you will need to assess the size and positioning of your lawn before choosing.

2. Have Your AC System Serviced

If your home has an air conditioning system, there’s no denying that it will have been in constant use throughout the summer. As fall approaches, it won’t get used as much until temperatures start rising again next year.

It’s worth getting your system serviced; otherwise, you may need help from a 24 hour AC service if it suddenly decides to stop functioning as usual. Plus, getting it serviced now will be cheaper than potentially getting the system replaced due to a complete system failure.

3. Deep Clean Your Oven

It’s no secret that the oven is the least cleaned of all appliances or areas in your home. You undoubtedly use your oven on a regular basis, and you’ll likely use it quite a lot for cooking up feasts towards the end of the year.

The beginning of fall is one of the best times of year to deep clean an oven. That’s because it won’t be getting much use at the moment, giving you ample time to scrub any baked-on grease and food away and ensuring that internal components of your oven are also clean.

4. Prepare Your Fireplace

It goes without saying that when the darkness sets in early each year and temperatures drop, you’ll want to use your fireplace every evening. As you can imagine, you need to ensure your fireplace is in good condition and won’t cause any accidental chimney fires.

Have a professional sweep your chimney to remove any soot, and clean out your wood-burning stove so that it’s ready to use. Also, stack up some logs ready for use in winter or to use instead of your home’s heating system during fall.

5. Get Rid of Any Unwanted Junk

Last but not least, you’ve probably accumulated some items throughout the year that you’ve meant to discard.

One task you should do during fall is throw away, recycle, or sell any unwanted junk. Your home will feel more spacious, and you’ll have an enormous sense of achievement.

Going Reviews

Keep Her Warm and Fashionable with Bootzies: The Original Boot Tights

02/11/2016 R.C. Liley 6 Comments

To avoid any confusion, this is an old post (as you can tell by the pictures of my daughter) that I simply updated. She grew out of the Bootzies, but they were enjoyed while they fit her. Hopefully you’ll give them a try for your little one!

Woot, Summer is gone and Fall/Autumn has arrived! For most of us, this means cooler weather and pumpkin themed everything is starting to appear.

Time to put away your little girls’ t-shirts and short-sleeved onesies and break out the long sleeves, pants, and socks. If your baby is anything like Avery when you try to dress her, the thought of dressing her in more clothes is daunting.

Going Mom and I essentially play a mini version of Twister sans the color dotted mat every time we dress Avery. What’s that? But you love playing Twister? Yeah, so did I, before dressing an unruly baby with crazy-limb flailing about.

A while back, I saw pictures of other babies dressed in boot tights called Bootzies and thought they were (for lack of a better, more manly word) adorable. I wanted these for Avery and knew they’d be perfect for when the Texas heat simmered down.

I reached out to Bootzies asking if they’d be interested in sending some of their Boot Tights in trade for a review, and they graciously agreed!

The creator of Bootzies, Christina, was inspired to create these functionally fashionable boot tights for her infant daughter, Julia. She thought it would be a cute to have cowboy boots for her, but obviously knew the real thing would not be practical. After a little brainstorming, Christina came up with Bootzies. These would allow babies to comfortably scoot, crawl and walk without losing her socks or shoes. Plus, it would always look like her outfit was complete!

Immediately after receiving 3 stylish pairs of Bootzies Boot Tights, I dressed Avery to see how she liked them.

I appreciate how these are pants and socks in one which makes dressing her easier and she doesn’t have socks to pull off right away. I’d say she took to liking them rather fast. Just minutes after having them on, she looked ready to start marching…..and she doesn’t even walk yet!

And with that, I let her march/crawl around the house to get a feel for her new attire. Starting in the kitchen, we crawled around to check things out.

Let me note right now that the Bootzies provide little traction for your crawler when on a wood floor. The carpet is fine, but smooth surfaces provide a challenge when crawling since they slip around. Once they can walk, the grips on the feet will come in handy, but until then have fun watching them scoot around!

Of course, all is well when there’s a walker around to help stabilize in the standing position.

All of the movement must of made her hungry, because before I knew it, she was reaching in the freezer looking for food.

I guess she lost her appetite after only finding frozen broccoli and brussels sprouts since she quickly moved on to see what was happening out of the front window.

I later tried on another pair which I think are my favorite. Dressing her was even easier since I had a better hang of it, and still really love not messing with socks that will ultimately get pulled off within minutes.

This time we started in her room where she had to check out her mini bell wreath on the closet. Then she moved on to her giant farm animal cards and seemed quite interested.

From there, we migrated into the kitchen where she handled the slippery surface better than before.

She even moved some of the rug just to stay on the wood floor. I guess she likes a challenge!

I’m very excited and grateful to have these Bootzies to dress Avery in as the temps drop and the seasons change. Not only are these precious, they make the hassle of cold weather dressing much more bearable!

Besides being slippery on hard floors like wood or laminate, my only other minor issue with these is the grippy part of the foot will easily get turned to where it’s on top of her foot. Obviously, that makes it slippery, but I’m hoping that as she grows, this will not be a problem. Either way, these will get a lot of use this season!

Want to pick up some Bootzies for the little fashionista in your life? With sizes ranging from ages 0 all the way to 4 years old, there’s bound to be a style you’ll love for your little one. Check out their online store here and put in your order before the cold sets in.

Be sure to show Bootzies your love on Facebook and Twitter too. Send pictures of your baby in Bootzies to info@bootzies.net for a chance to have them showcased on their Facebook page and added to their online Gallery.

Have you seen Bootzies before?

Do you have a little girl you know that these would be simply precious to wear?

Full disclosure, Bootzies provided me their products free of charge, but all opinions are strictly my own.

Life, Promo

Our First Mow With EGO

03/24/2015 R.C. Liley 3 Comments

The EGO Power Plus team recently sent me their Power+ 56V Lithium-Ion Cordless Lawn Mower to use and review on my blog, and I just used it for the first mow of the season!

This is not my review, just my initial thoughts after using it this past weekend. While I was excited for what was in the box, Avery was more excited about THE box.

And a mighty cool box at that! Just the quality packaging let you know EGO is a company that puts care into their products and wants them to arrive safely to their destination. Here are the specs as listed on their website:

4.0Ah 56 -Volt Lithium-Ion Battery: Industry’s most powerful battery
30-Minute Charger: Industry’s fastest charger
Up To A 45-Minute Cut Time: Battery run time meets or exceeds charge time
Fold Flat In Seconds: Convenient storing and cleaning
20” Cut Capacity: Reduces the number of passes required to cut your lawn
True 3-In-1 Function: Superior mulching, rear bagging and side discharge performance
LED Headlights: Allow for mowing anytime
600W, High-Torque, Magnetic Motor: Designed for high power output at 3300RPM’s
Convenient Push-Button Start: No more pull cord, easily starts at the press of a button

Out of the box and ready go in a matter of minutes, their cordless mower is perfect for those too impatient to read through assembly instructions.

The battery already had a good charge when it arrived, but I’m a charging nazi and feel like everything I own must always be charged or charging. So, I set the ultra-cool, futuristic battery on its charger to make sure I had a full charge before mowing the grass.

I was prepared to wait at least 30 minutes for the battery to charge, but it was ready to go in less than 10! I hardly had time to go pee and blow my nose, geez! No, it doesn’t really take me that long, so no wise cracks (not here either) about it. 🙂

It was dark to where I needed headlights, but honestly, why wouldn’t you use headlights on your push mower if you had them? Seriously, how cool is that? I think I’ll mow at night sometime soon just because I can!

For the first mow of the season, we use a very low setting to scalp the yard in order to foster new growth and bag the dead grass trimmings. The rest of the time we choose to mulch fresh-cut grass when it’s green and thriving as it has a lot to give back to the ground, but the dead stuff sitting around all winter doesn’t have much to offer.

Scalping would put EGO’s claim to have the most powerful rechargeable mower on the market that still delivers the performance of gas. Upon starting the electric beast (no pull string battle!), I set off to cut our grass.

Compared to gas mowers, the EGO is pretty quiet (thanks for catching my typo, Gary!). Of course, cutting grass will be noisy to some degree since debris and other things being hit by the blades make noise no matter what you have. But this battery-powered machine performed like a champ and it’s 20 inch deck had me finished in no time.

Or so I thought. Avery pointed out a few spots I missed and demanded that I hold her so she can show me where to go.

What a great helper, we’d have such a messy lawn without her low level eyes to spot my imperfections! Her not being scared of the mower is a testament to how non-threatening the noise level is, don’t you think? After finishing, I tried sweeping off the mower as it was driving me crazy that it was dirty.

I know, I know, it’s a freakin’ mower, that’s what it’s for! Go ahead, tell me again, Going Mom already laughed at me anyway.

While mowing, when I went over an area that rose up coming in contact with the blades more than normal, an orange light would flash letting me know of the issue and if it got worse, the mower to auto-shutoff. This was no problem since it easily started right back up, and I had the setting on the lowest level to scalp the yard, so during normal use I don’t expect this to happen.

I’m used to spending close to an hour mowing like I did last season with our reel mower, which I still think is cool for the exercise factor, just not the clean-cut grass part. With the EGO, I’m done in less than 30 minutes and our yard looks great!

Looking forward to using our EGO Power Plus Mower this season, and will post a full review after several sessions, including at least one at night! If anything does go wrong, it’s great to know Avery can help us fix whatever it is. Apparently she’s quite the expert in battery-powered lawn mowers. Or so it would seem….

Do you have or have you heard of the EGO line of battery powered yard tools?

Are you an electric user or gas junkie when it comes to power tools?

Gas is a big enough of a pain for our cars, so I absolutely love not having to worry about it when it comes to other power equipment. Plus, it’s much cleaner and safer for nosy kids who like to touch everything!