We will have to start paying for the solar loan this fall but for now, this is awesome!
I like this electricity bill!
Category Archives: House & Home
I’m finally cooking scallops!
I love scallops but am always nervous about cooking them. But since they were defrosted from our freezer issue…they had to be cooked!
They needed a bit more sear (I took them off too soon) but they were yummy!
Guess what we just discovered?!
The damn garage freezer motor stopped working so we had a mad rush to go buy a freezer. And of course there are basically none in stock anywhere so we get what we get.
At least we’ve done this multiple times and we have a system down pat.
I’m not 100% sure why we’re not getting the full life expectancy out of our freezers but my guess is that they don’t like to be moved multiple times over hundreds of miles. Or be in the garage.
Walking to a fire!
When your neighbor friends are having a small bonfire and joke that you should come over? Off we go, drinks in hand, to walk five houses away!
Yay for sunny days!
Sun dog v43
Brunch is served!
We’ve started doing Sunday brunch with Anna and David. Sometimes we order out, sometimes we go out, and sometimes we cook. Today we cooked.
- 2 kinds of bacon (sweet and hot and Kirkland regular)
- 3 kinds of sweet rolls (cinnamon, apple cinnamon, and caramel)
- 2 kinds of scrambled eggs (plain and cheesy)
- 2 kinds of drinks (fuzzy navel Bellinis and Bloody Marys)
- 5 kinds of fruit (not pictured—apples, oranges, cantaloupe, strawberries, and pears)
- and friends and parents!
Our shower is fully dismantled now.
No better time to have an unusable shower than when we have houseguests! Tom tore all this apart but we’re still waiting for the contractor to see just how bad it really is.
I tried to get some new birch artwork.
The story of my life.
I’ve been casually looking at birch prints, saying if I ever found one I loved (and it was in budget) I’d get it. So when I saw this artist on Facebook and fell in love with the style, I searched and he had birch options! So I found one I absolutely loved and after much thought, went ahead and got it.
Aaaaaand…it looks totally different and I don’t like it. I mean it’s similar and obviously the “same” but it doesn’t have the same feel at all.
The birch trees don’t look enough like real birch trees. (The ones along the right side don’t look like birch trees at all.) The limbs on the left set of trees look like half circles instead of branches. The path is too defined. There’s too much orange and red. The style is similar but not what I wanted.
Now, caveat, these are copies of originals. As in painters copy the style of the original. But I thought it would be a much better copy.
They do have a return policy so I started that process. Their customer service is pretty good and they gave me some options:
Thank you very much for your purchase. I’m sorry that you do not like the painting. We want you to be satisfied with our services. We have the following options for you
1 – you can return with prepaid return label . After the return, we issue a full refund. Please request the return label if you wish one
2 – we can provide a replacement of the same piece/s in form of prints on canvas. This way the image of the master original will be reproduced by a machine in its original size. This option does not require return
3- Free exchange for a different painting altogether or exchange for the same painting that you will like better
For all options we will be sending images for approval prior to shipping . Only after you approve the new piece, we will proceed with the shipping.
I was debating 2 or 3 and ended up going with 3 to try again…and that piece was just as bad. I don’t think they looked at my feedback at all—they just grabbed another off the shelf and sent the pic. Nope. I’ve asked for a return label.
Just out of curiosity, I asked what Facebook thought and everyone agreed it was pretty much a shitshow. So I’m disappointed.
The first batch of Papa’s cookies!
The joys of home ownership.
Apparently the main bedroom shower grout has been leaking for a loooong time. Likely before we even moved in. And it’s not covered by the home warranty since it wasn’t a plumbing issue.
Yay for home ownership, right?
A friend’s dad is a contractor so he came over to check it out. He doesn’t think it’s too bad but we have to pull off the tiles to look behind to make sure.
It’s time to smoke the briskets!
Anna had three briskets in her freezer and we’re both on Project Freezer Cleanout…
Tom’s view vs. my view.
Enjoying the Yukon for the first burn of the season… Before it gets too chilly tonight and then snows later this week.
Poor bacon.
This is how my day is going. And guess what? It happened on the second batch, too.
You learn something new every day!
Today I learned that some of my socks have definitive letters on them for (L)eft and (R)ight. Huh.
The kids are swimming again!
The kids were super excited to get back to the pool! They haven’t been in lessons in over a year, but they both got right back into it like pros.
These were some goooood donuts.
Before and after.
But man are they filling!! The kids even got into sharing them—we cut each one into four so we can all try every one! (This is a special treat. They aren’t local… but we picked them up locally through DwellSocial.)
168% is more like it!
WOOHOO! This is the first day we’ve given power back to the grid! It really helps once all the snow and ice melts off the panels!
KitchenAid in the house!
So we’ve hated the Bosch dishwasher ever since we moved in. I mean it’s a decent dishwasher but the layout just didn’t work for us. Tom jokingly told me HELL NO WE’RE NOT SPENDING MONEY ON SOMETHING THAT ISN’T BROKEN. But it was bad. And I hated it. Every single day.
We knew the brand we wanted (ever since we bought a KitchenAid for our Jacksonville house) but Tom still gave me shit. But it eventually wore him down and he finally got on board and said we could get one when it went on sale—but in the middle of Covid no one had it! It was advertised but they weren’t in stock and you couldn’t order it. So I just kept checking. And then a few months later, Costco had a really good sale so I bought it immediately. It took two weeks but it was so worth it. It’s amazing. And Tom tells me every day how much he loves it.
I love it when I’m right.
There is a little learning curve to loading it but it’s already sooooo much better than the other one!
The cherry vodka matrix!
After the boys did their Matrix we wanted to try one, too. The only thing we found that we really all agree on was Cherry vodka and pop. So you can see our 7×4 matrix below. Probably half of them were beyond awful so we had just the tiniest sip and dumped them. One vodka was definitely the best (Oma’s) and one was the worst (Effen).
Hello Fresh has spoiled us.
We have been loving Hello Fresh so we thought we’d try a bit cheaper alternative. It would have been perfectly fine had we started with that one and not Hello Fresh. We are really spoiled by all the ingredients for all the meals being separated into bags…because when we opened this box and saw a completely jumbled mess of food Tom and I looked at each other like WHAAAAAT IS THIIIIIIS?!
So we had to split it all up and bag it so we could just grab a bag and go. It wasn’t hard but…like I said, we were spoiled.
I forgot to bring the wine inside!
The good thing about having snow on the deck? Extra freezer space. The bad thing? Out of sight, out of mind. Whoops! (We let it defrost in the fridge and it was perfectly delicious the following night!)
Oliver Blueberry Moscato – didn’t taste like blueberry at all but was very yummy
The Manhattan Matrix
One of the YouTube channels Tom watches is called How to Drink with a non-professional home bartender that likes to “make drinks and drink them!” He’s funny and we enjoy listening to his reviews.
One recent episode was called This episode tried to kill me where he did a Manhattan Matrix…with like 42 different versions to try (6 vermouths by 7 Bourbons)! The boys decided to try it with 3 vermouths and 3 Bourbons…
Both looking up the recipe that was used because neither could remember and they wanted to do it exactly right.
Don’t worry—they did not drink all of all the trials. It was mostly small sips of each one. They also rated them all 1-9.
When the office throws up.
Since Tom will officially be working from home and we need the space, we are starting to go through the bins in the office…which means sorting has to happen elsewhere.
I love having a handy hubby.
Not only did he install three toilets this weekend, today he ripped apart our old dining room table in order to make a new office desk! (We thought about trying to sell it, but we wanted to keep the chairs and thought that would be a much harder sell. E needed a desktop so…)
Plus now he has lots of pieces and parts for future projects!
And we found a hidden H!
Fixing a bagel problem!
When you get stuck with the bottom half of the everything bagel that has no flavoring on it…
We’ve reached peak adulthood!
You know you’ve reached peak adulthood when you get excited about three new Toto toilets.
After renting for so long and having to deal with (forgive the pun) lots of crappy toilets, really good toilets were on my list!! And, frankly, I’m tired of all the plunging and these are supposed to be the best!
Of course the first toilet went in super easy—isn’t that always the way? Lulling you into a false sense of security. Tom raved about how easy it was. The next two weren’t horrible but they each had minor issues—including one seat that was missing parts so we are without a toilet in the master bath until the replacement comes in Monday (local stores don’t carry this brand and it would take Lowe’s another 7-9 days to send the replacement).
Now to see if they live up to their expectations!
Almost half of our energy use today came from solar!
This is so cool. I can’t wait to see what it is in the summer when it’s actually sunny all day long!
Overall we’re only at 21% solar since the install but it is winter. I love all the charts and graphs…but I really think the solar should be yellow instead of green.
What do you think Michigan smells like?
I’m homesick for sure, but I’m not sure these are the scents of Michigan…but I’m not sure lilacs, horse crap, cherries, and fudge would be a good combo. (This doesn’t smell bad but it doesn’t really make me think of Michigan.)
Just 14 months and 7 days after we ordered it…
So way back in November 2019 we backed this awesome table on Kickstarter. It is the size of a bench (18″)…but expands up to 118″. Cool, right? We certainly thought so, so after much debate (since it was expensive), we did it. We also figured since this was their second Kickstarter they knew what they were doing. The estimated delivery was supposed to be the following month.
Without going into too much detail, it got pushed back a little at a time for a variety of reasons. And then they stopped communicating. And then they’d come out with more delays. Now, we know stuff happens. You have materials procurement issues, warehouse delays, a factory closure, or any other assortment of shit. But they were ridiculous—plus they weren’t communicating. And then…Covid. Which REALLY messed with things. Everyone was furious. Some managed to get their money back (it was a long and arduous process since by that time we were far beyond a credit card’s chargeback time limit). Some received communication but most didn’t. There was lots of drama.
And then fast forward months and months and people started receiving them…and it wasn’t good. Broken pieces, missing pieces, super soft/unusable table tops…and we got worried. We wondered if we shouldn’t try to get our money back. But we held out because we really wanted it…aaaand I knew how much work and effort it would take to attempt to get our money back.
And then we got the call! I almost didn’t answer it because it looked like a spam call—but I recognized the Canadian call and took it. And scheduled our delivery!! Three days later we had it!
So without further ado, here it is!
So now we have to get rid of the two tables we have—our original butterfly leaf table that we’ve had for probably 8-9 years plus the smaller temporary one we bought for this kitchen after we moved in. Normally that wouldn’t be hard but we need to keep the chairs… So Tom may end up cannibalizing the tables to make other things!
I can’t wait to have our first big dinner at this table!!