Our first winter

Our house has two levels so I knew it would take a lot to heat it. I didn't expect the heat to stay on most of the time.

We have the thermostat set to 65 while we're gone and 68 when we're home. That means it's comfortable upstairs, but chilly downstairs.

Brad gripes that we should turn the heat up more, but I keep thinking about how hot it gets upstairs and how much energy it takes to get the downstairs up to snuff.

Plus I think it may be a little drafty down there. I noticed a little hint of daylight sneaking around the side of our front door near the floor where it doesn't quite touch the weather stripping. I'm hoping a quick trip to the home improvement store for some extra stripping will do the trick.

There is also a really random draft coming from under one of our kitchen cabinets. It's a spacer cabinet beside the oven, and I can't for the life of me figure out why there's a draft. I stuffed an old towel in the cabinet and it seems to have taken care of the cold air, although I wonder if there is a bigger problem there. If we ever save up enough to replace the countertops I'll investigate deeper.

We got our first winter utility bill in the mail the other day and I was very pleasantly surprised. Remember I had a miniature stroke when I found out how much we had to deposit to have the utilities turned on, a figure that was supposedly double the average utility bill from the previous owner. The deposit was $500! That means their power and water/sewer averaged $250 a month. Our highest bill to date is $135.

Either they ran the heat with the door open, or the system for determining deposits is flawed.

The good news in all this? When the summer rolls around and its time for our deposit to credit back to us, we won't have to pay a utility bill for almost six months!

P.S. Here's a photo of our now crippled tree. I hit up an after-Christmas sale for a new one (bigger, fatter and multicolored - awesome).