Friday Five of Gratitude (Days 13-17)

Happy Friday! I’m going to catch up on a week’s worth of gratitude in one fell swoop! Today’s Friday Five is a Friday Five of Gratitude.

Days 13 & 14: Grateful for mammograms.

Ladies, if you are over 40, get a mammogram.

I had a mammogram on Monday of this week. I ended up having four sets of images done, then they sent me home and said I was good until next year.

And then they called me a few hours later to say they found something.

On Tuesday, I went back for an ultrasound. I saw the dark spot on the monitor.

The radiologist said that she thought it was a benign cyst, but it would need to be drained and looked at, to make sure. They couldn’t do the procedure on Tuesday; I had to wait until Thursday.

Day 15: Grateful for Plumbers.

I had been smelling a burning, campfire-ish smell in our home that seemed to be coming from the hot water. Never a dull moment in this house, right?!?

There are many things I will DIY, but plumbing and electrical – beyond basic stuff – aren’t things I’ll DIY. I figure that the consequences of me screwing something up are too great with those two areas (flooding the house? burning down the house? No, thank you!), so I call in the pros.

The plumbers came out and, while investigating the burning smell, found that the plumber who had installed our hot water heater two years ago had done it improperly. It wasn’t installed to code because the expansion tank (what prevents pressure increases when the water heats up) had been installed improperly and, thus, wasn’t working.

Thankfully, they fixed it before we had a problem/flood. So I’m grateful for plumbers!

P.S. They don’t know where the campfire-y smell was coming from, but I cleaned the shower heads and that seemed to help.

Day 16: Grateful everything was fine.

On Thursday, I went back for the cyst aspiration. It was an easy procedure and it went perfectly. The cyst was benign and, after they drained it, it disappeared.

I am so incredibly grateful to be fine.

Day 17: Grateful for Shelving.

After the plumbers left on Wednesday, I decided to add some much-needed additional storage to our pantry. Here’s what our pantry looked like before:

Click on the photo for how I transformed our pantry!

And that was great, but I wanted some additional storage. Also, as you can see in the photo, my crock pot – which is a bit heavy – was up on that high shelf, and I wanted it where it was lower and easier to access (I use my crock pot probably once a week!).

I’m not sure why I wanted a bulletin board in the pantry in the first place, but I decided it didn’t really need to go there. I put the bulletin board in the laundry room (yes, I know I need to show you my redone laundry room!) to create a family command center of sorts, and put shelves in the pantry where the bulletin board was.

The extra shelving works great! Such a better use of space than that bulletin board! And the best part is that it cost me nothing, because I already had the shelving and brackets from a previous project! Win-win!

I hope you all had a great week! What are you grateful for today?