February 2021 – Two Birthdays and One Serious Cold Snap

February 2021 and January. We had a truly beautiful first half of winter – we literally set records with how warm it was! By the time mid January came around we all agreed that no matter what the weather was like for the last half of winter: we had been spoiled and had nothing to complain about. Remarkably it was still cold enough for ice fishing and we still even had enough snow for snowmobiling. So, everyone was close to happy, and I doubt that’s ever happened before. To be fair though, with Covid and all we went through last year, it sure felt deserved. Lodi and I have our birthdays in the first two months of the year and man how that sucks after the holidays.

I’ve always loathed my late February birthday.

February in northern Minnesota is probably the worst month to live here and this February 2021 proved why for a couple of weeks. After such a lovely January February reminded us that we do, in fact, live in northern Minnesota. We had almost two weeks straight of highs in the negative digits and hitting -30s at night.

I ran a ton of hot water through all of our pipes during those rough days and nights hoping our septic didn’t freeze.

(My Facebook feed was flooded with sun dog photos and I couldn’t help myself but to take a couple too. Its not every day that it gets SO cold so fast that the sun dogs ring all the way around the sun!)

We burned all of the 120 bags of pellets we purchased this fall. Lodi picked up ten more and we just about ran out of those too before the cold snap finally broke!

When I moved in I opted to not get satellite TV for the house. At the time streaming was not all that well known nor popular but getting Dish was a few hundred dollars to setup and as long as I have a computer and internet (which is mandatory for me) I can totally live without it.

I had Amazon Prime but firesticks and rokus didn’t exist back then so I installed the Netflix app on my Wii and just made do.

Nowadays, with my Amazon Firestick, we stream Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video and Disney+ but, like most folks these days, we don’t pay for all of it. (With that cold snap in February 2021 we definitely watched more TV than usual, Disney+ is my favorite.)

Lodi has Verizon so we’re still happily enjoying the first year free of Disney+. A friend of ours has Hulu and gave us access in exchange for access to our Disney+. (So currently we’re getting Hulu and Disney+ for free!)

The price of $13.99 a month for Netflix is their Standard plan BUT they also offer a BASIC plan that’s only $8.99 a month! Who knew?! Login to your Netflix account and go into account settings and simply switch back to their basic plan.

It works great for us because we never stream Netflix from more than one device at a time and we absolutely have NOT been able to see a quality difference in the videos. That’s saving us nearly $50 a year – more than a month’s worth of gas for me in my Honda.

Another savings I discovered in February 2021: Amazon Household. If you have a prime account you can add one other adult to share all of the benefits instead of you both paying for prime – that’s saving us over $120 a year.

Its awesome and no one seems to know about it!

We celebrated Lodi’s late January birthday with a retreat. A room with a hot tub. Relaxation for a couple of days. Time together. A nice restaurant. An excuse to get dressed up. It was HEAVEN.

It wasn’t far from where we live but just to get out of our regular routine felt like a vacation. We practically dissolved in the hot tub and wow how that felt amazing with the cold (average) temperatures we went back to at the end of January.

I think I enjoy our northern Minnesota home more in the off season than I do in the summer time. (Not including the weather of course, I am totally a summer person…) Many places around here close down in the winter but a few remain open. We found a lovely little resort to stay at and explored the nearby town’s breweries, pubs and pizzerias. (Lucky for us they let things open up at 50% capacity at that point.)

Thinking about that though its probably true of all “locals” for people who live in touristy areas like we do. Can’t say I look forward to the crazy summers around here where our population quadruples.

Locals practically run and hide lol.

With Lodi now only one year away from the big 40 we agreed he could have as many 39th birthdays as he wanted as long as I get to continue having as many 34th birthdays as I want lol (Yes, I just turned 35.)

Like usual, after the holidays, I have trouble getting my groove back. February 2021 was no different and I had to give myself a real kick in the butt to start working on house projects again. (To be fair when its that cold outside its hard to get motivation to do much of anything…)

Yes we are absolutely still working on the basement though I know I haven’t mentioned it in awhile!

We moved our furniture down there and spread out but the living space is just not quite done yet. We’re also not spending any time down there right now because we’re not heating the space to save on heating costs.

It will be a whole different story this summer though when that basement will be the coolest part of the house when its 90 degrees out!

We have plans for a DIY coffee table and are just finishing up the rolling barn doors we made for the bathroom and the closet. Once we get those two projects done though the living room will finally be done so I can post a reveal here on the blog.

And then there’s still the kitchen, bathroom and stairway to finish lol damnit, all in due time!

As usual I am glad to have January and February behind us – dreaming of spring and my vegetable garden!