Our New Hot Tub

You may have noticed that our projects are rarely planned out in advance or budgeted.  They are more spur-of-the-moment one-of-us- didn’t-sleep-the-night-before and had a brilliant idea.  In addition to our guest bathroom tub surround remodel and our home office re-do, we recently decided to purchase a hot tub. 

Just an idea out of the blue.  Nothing on the original 2020 horizon.

With the lock downs and uncertain travel restrictions, our vacation plans went down the tubes. 

The pools we use in our community had closed down for several weeks and we really missed them.  So, we decided to take part of the money we’d spend on a vacation and buy a hot tub. 

And.

Everyone else in the US had the same idea.  By the time we thought of it, hot tubs, above ground pools, boats, you name it were all on backorder with big lead times.

After a big mess trying to order through Amazon, I had a wonderful experience with eBay and Pacifica Hot Tubs.  They over-delivered, were responsive to every question and made our tub to order.

A 110 volt is just fine since we wouldn’t need the big guns heating up here in Arizona, but we still needed to hire an electrician to run a dedicated line for it.

We hired a hot tub moving company to bring it from our driveway to our backyard.

A portion of our patio that never gets used outside our bedroom door was a perfect spot.  So far we’ve used the tub every single day.  We’ve started sprucing up the area and making it a little more spa looking.

Here’s what I found so far:

From Costco

• A really cool looking outdoor clock that turns bronze and lights up at night.
• Cheerful striped beach towels

From TJ Maxx

This beautiful Thomasville garden stool perfect for holding a drink and our Bose Bluetooth speaker. This speaker is on sale right now!

From At Home

Planters, basket, faux plant. This was actually challenging because stores have pretty much cleared out summer making room for Halloween and Thanksgiving. We wanted planters that matched the others on our patio.

From Home Depot and Lowes

Palms and summer-friendly plants

From Amazon

• Spa pillow

This is all a work in progress, but so far it’s a restful place to be and is more than meeting our expectations.

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What I’m Doing

One of my favorite things about writing this blog is sharing what I’ve read and what I thought about the books.  I love hearing your thoughts and suggestions as well.

And then along comes this past week.  Guess what I finished?   Not a thing.  Yep, it’s true I didn’t finish a book and I just finished an audio book this morning.

So what the heck have I been doing?  The same thing half the rest of the world has been doing.  Watching Disney+.

Hamilton.  Everyone I know has ordered Disney+ and is watching Hamilton.  Did you?  Love it?  Is King George the Best.  Thing.  Ever.?  I wish his part was twice as big.  Loved the play on stage in person and love watching it again in my family room.

I have caught some old nostalgic movies and I’ll spare you the reviews because they’re not so good.  But they bring back some fond memories.  When they get too slow or too corny, I just fast forward or hit pause.  This is the best $7 we’ve spent in a long time.

What I’m Eating

While most people in the rest of the dang country are out enjoying a summer BBQ, we like to hole up and plan an indoor meal to beat the heat.  I tried this Pioneer Woman recipe for Fall-Off-the-Bone Slow Cooker Glazed Ribs.  True to the name, they fell off the bones which was just perfect. 

This is how they looked in the crock pot. Just leave them alone for eight hours.

Coming out of the crock pot, they don’t look all that tasty, but once they are glazed, who cares?

Instead of glazing with sauce, we mixed up our own sauces for our plates.  Mine was plain ol’ bottled bbq sauce with a big helping of Tabasco.  These really came out tasty and I got to make them just as hot as my heart (and tongue) desired.

We baked potatoes in the toaster over (less than 30 minutes) and served them along with freshly sliced tomatoes and watermelon.

Simple and delicious.

Do you have a spiralizer?  They were really popular a few years ago and we bought one.  Like many kitchen gadgets, we probably don’t get as much use from it as I would have thought.  But one perfect use is for zoodles.  Zucchini substituted for pasta.  I am not on a low-carb diet, but I do like a hunk of crusty bread with my marinara dish and sometimes the noodles just overload me. 

When I use zoodles, it’s a much better balance.  No, they aren’t like those yummy imported noodles from Italy, but when it’s Meatless Monday, they make me very happy.

I hope you are having a fantastic weekend and, like us, figuring out a way to enjoy your summer. God bless you.