it is cold and i am tough

[Zoe Girl]

it is getting pretty cold here in Denver. i love it since it never lasts as long as the midwest. i moved the indoor thermometer to my window sill in my bedroom and it is down to 54 degrees now. the blinds on that window broke so that doesn't help, i am slowly covering windows better (rental so not much incentive). But i actually sleep fine in that temp with a hood up and an electric blanket. the main windows all have insulated curtains and i am going to make something in the oven also.

afgan, action novel and hot tea night!

[Tradd]

My thermostat stays almost always at 60* all winter, in northern IL. The colder the better, as far as I'm concerned.

[awakenedsoul]

I love this time of year. We have extremely hot summers. Now that it's cool I can bake bread, make cookies, and brew yogi tea. I also love preparing the casseroles that my mom made when I was young. Today I cooked artichokes and hamburger with country gravy over pasta. I'm eating homemade toll house cookies, too. It's fun to be able to cook and bake all that stuff again.

I've got the flannel sheets on the bed, and the alpaca blanket that I knit last winter. I wear my hand knit wool socks under my Uggs slippers. I'm toasty and warm...

Enjoy your novel!

[ApatheticNoMore]

I'm cold. Flannel top and bottom sheets. Probably 4 blankets (though 3 of them are very old so ... can't expect much of them), 2 throws tossed on top of that (new but only one of them is well made - the other was a waste of money). Mostly cotton materials.

Apartment is not well insulated, and the built in heater threatened to blow up the place (scary) so I mostly use a space heater.

Poor poor pitful me. And summer is too hot, I have a window box A/C and am glad for it, but the building concentrates heat.

[Blackdog Lin]

For me, the dream of a hot-tea-and-good-book filled evening never exceeds the reality of my shivering.

I love the idea of it.....but I always end up too cold to enjoy it. Long live central heat, and for me to have enough funds to run it.

:)

[lessisbest]

It's 12°F now (3:20 a.m.), -3°F with wind chill, and the high for today is supposed to be 10°F, so this is about as good as it's going to get. Not your typical Kansas weather, but it does happen, it just doesn't stay this way for long periods of time (thankfully). Other than residual heat, we don't heat any of the bedrooms or the basement.

We cover our windows with a layer of bubble wrap for additional insulation - http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/bubblewrap.htm.

It's an easy fix because you can get large sheets of bubble wrap free at most furniture stores, and you can easily remove it after this Artic front has gone through. I do suggest you use distilled or reverse osmosis water to hold it to the window because minerals in hard water can actually etch the glass. My other tip is to cut the bubble wrap just slightly smaller than the window so it will stay stuck longer.

If you ever get the chance, invest in an electric mattress heater, not an electric blanket. We turn it on 15-20 minutes before we go to bed and turn it off when we hit the sheets. You can also use hot water bottles to warm the bed. My daughter uses a couple "HotHands" hand & body warmers (available in sporting goods department at Wal-Mart) when the temperature dips this low to warm her bed, and she says she's even tented the blankets in the middle of the bed and heated the air gap with a hair dryer for a few minutes to warm it before going to bed. Another good investment was a feather blanket for these extremely cold temperatures. If you have a sleeping bag, open it up and toss it over your regular blankets.

[dmc]

The cold is the reason I moved to SW Florida. High's in the 70's and 80's this week.

[rodeosweetheart]

The cold is the reason I moved to SW Florida. High's in the 70's and 80's this week.

Yeah, we tried moving back up north to the cold to Michigan last year, and I have been trying since January to get out of here. The summer, on the other hand, in Northern Michigan-- fabulous. But now it's 12 degrees again and every time I walk outside, I am gasping for breath, as cold air exacerbates asthma. Winter = stuck inside; feel like I am in a prison work release program.

House is snug, but it gets really old not being able to walk from the car to the store without puffing on an inhaler.

[Zoe Girl]

okay i am grateful that my level of cold here is not like the cold some of you have. i am not missing the michigan of my childhood i will tell you, so Colorado is not that bad. i need an extra blanket and heated things throughout the house like the space heater, and then i am pretty cozy, Some of these cold temps in other states would be awful as i also have asthma and raynauds (a circulation thing).

my friend in the cutest apartment in a victorian home said her bathroom is 10 degrees on FB, feeling not as tough but i am okay with that!

[rodeosweetheart]

okay i am grateful that my level of cold here is not like the cold some of you have. i am not missing the michigan of my childhood i will tell you, so Colorado is not that bad. i need an extra blanket and heated things throughout the house like the space heater, and then i am pretty cozy, Some of these cold temps in other states would be awful as i also have asthma and raynauds (a circulation thing).

my friend in the cutest apartment in a victorian home said her bathroom is 10 degrees on FB, feeling not as tough but i am okay with that!

I cannot understand why anyone would have her bathroom be 10 degrees--wouldn't the pipes freeze??

[Alan]

I cannot understand why anyone would have her bathroom be 10 degrees--wouldn't the pipes freeze??Yes they would. Maybe she meant 10C which would be 50F.

[jp1]

We're having extreme cold in San Francisco too. It was in the low 40's this morning so we had to run the heat. Thankfully it's a clear sunny day so our apartment, well insulated and with large south facing windows, will be up to around 75 when I get home from work. I grew up in Denver, in an old house where all the furnace vents were near the center of the house and mom thought 65 at the thermostat was plenty warm, so I've never had a love of cold weather. What we've got today is about as much as I care to deal with.

[Packy]

I have gone through more wood this week than in the previous month.

[creaker]

I'm cold. Flannel top and bottom sheets. Probably 4 blankets (though 3 of them are very old so ... can't expect much of them), 2 throws tossed on top of that (new but only one of them is well made - the other was a waste of money). Mostly cotton materials.

Apartment is not well insulated, and the built in heater threatened to blow up the place (scary) so I mostly use a space heater.

Poor poor pitful me. And summer is too hot, I have a window box A/C and am glad for it, but the building concentrates heat.

I have a padded mattress cover and I think it's well worth it. A lot of heat leaves in that direction.

[awakenedsoul]

I use a feather bed mattress cover. I love it. I'm going to put the flannel sheets back on my bed today. It was COLD last night! I also use a heating pad on my back and hips before I go to sleep. It really warms me up. If I wake up in the night, I turn it on again to keep my muscles warm. It has an auto shut off that kicks in after an hour.

Last night my pipes froze. I didn't think to turn the faucets on to a drip, especially since we've been in a drought. Usually they thaw out and all is well. I have the old galvanized pipes...

[ApatheticNoMore]

Well I have a padded cotton mattress cover that goes over a latex mattress topper (because the mattress was too hard) on top of the mattress. Latex being the anti-memory foam, whereas memory foam traps heat, latex runs cool so it does make for a cool bed. There are many months that's preferable, just not right now.

I'm much warmer than I was last year though, since I bought flannel sheets and another blanket and a few throws. Still have a slight blanket obsession and droll over blankets still, even though it doesn't actually work if you have so many blankets it crushes you :). The alternative is a duvet type arrangement but I don't really want to do that. Maybe what I really should get is some flannel PJs instead.

But if I heat the room and hour or so before bed and a little while after lying down and I'm not too bad under those layers of bedding - before when I barely had any blankets I was running a space heater all night on the coldest nights and sometimes STILL cold. It's getting cold in California, but cold is relative (low in the low 30s lately).

[Tradd]

While I like the cold, I still dress in layers at home and have a nice fluffy down comforter and two other blankets on my bed, plus jersey knit sheets (like t-shirt material).

When I get too warm in an enclosed space in the winter (car or building), I get very congested. I've always been that way, but I don't like hot weather anyway.

[Zoe Girl]

i really like my duvet deal, i can keep the same cover and change the weight of the comforter inside for seasons or just add a blanket.

in my very coldest times i wear my long underwear to bed, around the house under flannel PJs but just the long john pants to bed. Mine are silk, i invested some time ago and they are the best. silk is very effective and lightweight so i can wear them under jeans if needed. i used to do that before i gained so much weight and have hot flashes, now i am not always cold like i used to be