We’re headed to Michigan in our new car…which is stuffed to the gills!!
Category Archives: House & Home
Now he knows how to make Cornhole boards.
Tom volunteered to make some cornhole boards as recognition awards for work. Needless to say they took much longer than anticipated (I honestly don’t even want to estimate the number of hours), but they turned out amazing. He did all the woodwork at home and the laser etching at work.
I’m gonna like this thing.
Doctor Who is back in place!
So one thing I didn’t think about when getting a new car…my beloved Doctor Who decals!!
Since we now have a Cricut I thought I’d just make them, right? Well that turned into an hour plus Google project because I couldn’t find the exact graphics—free or paid! So then I decided to just go buy them again…except the online store is long gone. Not on eBay, Etsy, Amazon…or anywhere else either. So back to Cricut it was.
So I present to you the finished project. I actually upgraded my Doctor and Weeping Angel a bit and I like them more. I also had to rethink placement due to the wiper blade.
This will make my car MUCH easier to spot in a parking lot now!!
Our first charcuterie platter!
I don’t remember what foods I liked or didn’t like as a kid. I wish I did because my kids food (dis)likes right now drive me to the brink of insanity and I want to know if I was as annoying as they are or if they are a special kind of annoying… 😜😂 It’s a crapshoot if Katie will eat anything I ever make (chances are the answer is no unless it’s boxed mac and cheese or plain noodles) but at least Owen eats a lot more variety than he used to.
So tonight we went to Anna and David’s house for dinner and we brought charcuterie. For the adults. Because all four kids wouldn’t touch this. (It didn’t look pretty but I was more about just getting it on the tray vs. presentation. And the tray wasn’t big enough for everything anyway because I don’t do anything half-assed when it comes to food.)
Oh well. It was more for us! And after we were all stuffed…it didn’t even look like we touched it (I missed that pic, though).
What a disappointing start to something that should have been much more happy.
OH FFS. So if you’ve been following along…we dropped off my new car to be fixed because they screwed something up between our test drive and when we drove off the lot a few hours later. It had 40ish miles on it when I dropped it off. Tom just picked it up (because I refused to go) and it now has 110 miles on it. 😳😳😳
When Tom questioned it, they were all 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️ well we had to fix it. Yes, obviously, but will they at least fill the gas tank? Nope. (Oh, and did I mention the loaner they gave me was on E when I got it.)
And they had to replace not only the tire but the rim as well. Seriously?! The invoice lists “parking lot damage” and they replaced the “WHEEL ASSY-ALUMINUM” and “STEM-TPMS.”
I posted on Facebook and a few people said to return it. Well I know that sounds easy but it’s definitely not—it’s not a lemon and they are taking care of the issue—they just aren’t handling it like we hoped they would. A simple We screwed up installing X. We are so sorry and we’re fixing it would have gone a looong way. But to claim a flat spot on a nitrogen tire on a brand new car that was only on the lot a week (at most)? And drove fine 3 hours earlier? 🤔 That’s really fishy.
Also, when questioned about the mileage, the service guy said “It said 105 when I saw it this morning.” And the mileage in/out on the invoice says 105/105 which is obviously from today when they input the info when they finally fixed it—not from the time I brought it in two days ago. How does the service guy not know they put 70 miles on it while they diagnosed it?
Again… Really? That’s the story you’re sticking with?!
And also!!! While Tom was dealing with this, I was trying to get our account set up online. While we were doing the sale, our sales guy asked what I wanted our PIN to be—I assumed it was for our account or something in the Hyundai app (no, he never told us or showed us anything and to be honest I forgot). So I try to login and… nope, no place for a PIN. And I never set up the account so I don’t know what the password is. Did he do it? Did he create some generic password like Hudson? No idea. So I had to reset the password. Annoying but fine, whatever. But then I tried to use the app and it needed a PIN…and my PIN (the one I gave him) didn’t work. And I couldn’t change it because I didn’t have the answer to my secret question…because I never created one. And I couldn’t add or change it because I didn’t know it. See the catch-22 here? So I had to call Hyundai and the rep couldn’t even get it working and it took three tries to reset everything. So what on Earth did the sales guy even do? I’m guessing nothing? But who knows because he never told us.
And did I mention that they also forgot to give us our second key when we left?! When we discovered it we called and our sales guy was adamant that he gave it to us. Turns out it was still in his pocket. We also realized when we got home that we didn’t have the any of the paperwork and so we asked about that and they swore they gave it to us. We absolutely positively did not have it so they made copies of everything for us and then later we discovered it in the glove box where they obviously put it and didn’t tell us.
I am just so damn frustrated with everything. So you know the surveys we get after a sale that they want 10s on? Not happening. Too many stupid little things and too many big things. They are going to get an earful.
STILL NO CAR.
You won’t believe this. They told me they had to order a new tire because…there was a flat spot on one of the tires. I said that’s odd, no? New car and all. Service guy said “It depends how long they sit on the lot, etc.” So you mean to tell me this brand new car that just arrived on your lot late last week…has a flat spot from possibly sitting too long? Really? That’s the story you’re sticking with?
I would more believe I picked up a nail in the parking lot or on the drive home than that load of BS. (But if that was the case, I’m sure they’d tell me it was my fault.)
So, in trying to be positive, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that something abnormal happened and this is an odd case. The negative side of me says they screwed something up and just don’t want to admit it so they are just fixing it under the guise of a bad tire.
And I don’t like it.
Oh and I forgot to tell you.
One of the other reasons I had to come back was because we discovered they took my Doctor Who license plate frame off…and didn’t give it to me! But you can believe they put their own advertising frame on it. So it’s not like they just added theirs—they had to remove MY frame to get to the plate, move my TRAVCTY plate to the new car, and then…throw my personal property away? Toss it aside? Who knows what with it, but I didn’t get it back. So while I was waiting, I talked to my sales guy and he came back with it in about 10 minutes saying I was lucky because they were just getting ready to take the car for detailing.
So wait, what? I was lucky? No, I think you were lucky that you didn’t lose my personal property because you either A) didn’t care or B) weren’t paying attention. I mean it was only a $10 frame but it’s the principle of the thing.
And then! I asked the sales guy about the $50 gift card we were supposed to get…because we didn’t get anything in our paperwork. And he tells me—while buzzing through the service waiting area, pretty much without stopping—that he just needs the code and to go to their website and look up the inventory (?) and then find and send him the code…and then he was off.
Um…okay…what?! I’m guessing since the deal was done it felt like he didn’t really have any time for me so that was nice. But I had time to kill so I tried looking for a code on their site and couldn’t find anything after like 10 minutes. So when I managed to grab another sales guy I asked and…are you ready? IT WAS A GIFT CARD FOR TEST DRIVING A HYUNDAI. Soooo not really any extra special bonus for us like we were led to believe. It was something anyone could have gotten FOR FREE yet the manager offered it to us during negotiation as a bonus. Yes, technically it was a bonus since we didn’t know about it…but sorry, that just feels slimy.
So I was not really in a good place when they told me they had to keep my car. I was told it should be done later that evening or tomorrow morning. I said I’d just come back in the morning.
Wanna guess where I am?
Nope.
Hyundai’s service department waiting for a loaner because they screwed something up when putting on the locking lugnuts Saturday and after being here 1.5 hours already today they have “narrowed it down” to one of the tires and it might take another 1-2 hours. This is not an auspicious start to our Hyundai relationship.
That said, of course we cannot be 100% sure it was the lugnuts…but all we know is that the drive home was NOT smooth so something definitely happened between the time we test drove it and the time we left with it. The only thing we could think of was the “bonus” they gave us of the locking lugnuts.
Holiday Shop Setup!
So this is what the Holiday Shop at Owen’s school looks like at the very beginning. It’s a LOT of work to get the whole thing set up in three days. I don’t know how they do it every year so I volunteer for about 6-8 hours.
I AM MINIVAN FREE!!!
So we did a thing today. Pretty much unplanned, which is how we roll. 😂🤷🏻♀️
Monday I innocently checked our Sienna loan for some reason I can’t remember and saw it was almost paid off. The mistake was telling Tom but I was excited. He knows I don’t want a minivan so he always has some cars he’s thinking of so he/we started watching hours of YouTube reviews…
Then we decided to just check them out since December is the best month to get a great deal. (Well…except for the two we were looking at since they’re both new and well rated and hard to find. 😂) So we test drove the Kia Telluride last night and it was okay, but figured we should at least see what our car was worth so we started the day by just getting a CarMax appraisal…and it was really really good (holy crap Toyotas hold their value!) so then it was off to Hyundai to at least test drive the Palisade to compare…
And the dealer agreed to price match the Carmax appraisal and then had two small incentives, plus we got a lower interest rate (2.9 to 1.9) so we said what the hell. 🤷🏻♀️
Our payment did go up by $25 (we had wanted it to stay exactly the same) but considering everything it wasn’t that bad. Of course I always forget insurance also goes up… 🤦🏻♀️ And I still hated the entire process (“let me go talk to my manager”)…but in the end, I AM MINIVAN FREE!!!!!
These are sad faces because even though I never wanted a minivan we have lots of good memories in this car…plus I’m an emotional sap. It was sad, though, to have to put everything into garbage bags—I wanted to at least go home and empty it out.
HAPPY FACES! This mama is soooo happy to be back in an SUV you don’t even know. And there are so many safety features on the Palisade I can’t even remember them all. Now to register the car in Michigan when we go home for Christmas…
Happy Friendsgiving!
Tom did a thing. (A brined, spatchcocked, and smoked turkey.)
A family photo before we left…
Dinner prep was fun. I got to make gravy. 😄 I didn’t take any pics of the rest off the food but it was all yummy.
A real non-selfie family photo since we had someone who could take the photo for us!
Decorating turkey cookie pieces.
Snuggling with Katie and Anna’s brother’s dog, who I nicknamed Peanut because he was all of maybe 2#, tops.
He cuddled in my lap for at least two hours. No, I don’t want a Chihuahua.
I like nights like this.
2015 pistachios: gross or delicious?
When you take some pistachios labeled 2015 out of the freezer and you’re pretty sure you’re going to throw them away because they’re four years old but you taste one and damn they’re still just as good as new.
Our cruise shirts are done!
As soon as I knew we were going on a cruise, I knew I wanted to make personalized T-shirts for all of us…thus begin the search on Amazon and Etsy and eBay… betsy was the winner with the best choices but I knew that I wanted to create my own with our names or initials (or something) and not just buy a generic one. So then I managed to find a friend with a cutting machine who volunteered her machine and her services…
It was actually quite a long drawn out process because she had really not done many T-shirts before and I had never done T-shirts before and it was literally just a comedy of errors but we had a great time working on them together.
So without further ado…
They are all the same on the front but the kids have a warning on the back of theirs and Tom and I have a similar warning on the back of ours. (My dad and stepmom escaped warnings on their shirts.) I figured we are literally only going to be wearing the shirts for a few hours on debarkation day so it really didn’t matter what we put on them…and we thought it was hilarious.
The sidenote to this whole story is that Tom and I are now the proud owners of a Cricut Maker and a crap ton of accessories. I had thought about getting one of these machines in the past but knew I would literally go down a huge rabbit hole of projects and expenses so I always passed. So when this came up Tom asked me again if I wanted to get one because he wouldn’t mind having one in the future for some of his projects…so many hours of research later (and YouTube videos and reviews watched and debating the merits of the different machines and getting input from friends)… we decided on one. So stay tuned for many projects!!
A biscuit from my bestie.
It pays to live close to your bestie. Anna posted on Facebook that she made fresh biscuits and I invited myself over and the biscuit was still warm. And oh so delicious.
Tom is a happy boy!
A fire and football on the big screen in the back yard. It would only be better if Michigan State was playing! We’ve had a fire in the new Yukon fire pit three of the four days since it arrived!!
Our basement window visitor.
He’s been there for quite a while…
It’s a good night for a fire.
I might be sitting in front of a fire under a blanket because it is nice out…but still a bit chilly. Tom loves me. 🥰
Unripe tomatoes? No problem.
These were all from a tomato plant we didn’t plant but that came up on their own from seeds the Chipmunks dispersed last year…so they got a late start and will never fully ripen. I hated to waste them so tried roasting them. DELISH. They turned out sooooo good. I ate a bunch straight from the pan and froze the rest.
Attack of the fruit flies.
We have been inundated with fruit flies so I tried a bunch of stuff today. I put four bowls out and the only one that got any was the one on the counter.
I probably had 8-10 of these bowls of bugs over two days.
The things you buy for love.
Neither of these are appealing to me but I know Tom would want to try them.
Birthday dinner a day late…
But it was sooooo worth it. We tried a new place for my birthday dinner (recommended by a friend)! Wow. It’s delicious. Pig Candy Grilled Cheese and White Peach Sangria for the win! Oh yeah, and of course a margarita (Mango Chile).
I love orange tag day at Sam’s!
If you walk into Sam’s Club and see this and get excited, we should be friends.
Packing it up for the freezer!
It’s a nice night for a fire!
And s’mores. The kids wanted them so I told them they had to get it all ready. I never saw them move so fast!!
This is what the laundry room floor looks like when kids do laundry.
Yes let’s just leave the laundry basket right there. And don’t pick up any pieces that missed getting in the washer or making the transfer to the dryer. 🤦🏻♀️
Oh! And of course clothes are always left in the washer.
We might like chips.
Organizing the pantry today…
Kids ruin everything.
I have had this game of Life for probably 35 years. I have moved it around the country for almost 20. And never once did anything happen to it—it was basically pristine. I let the kids start playing with it and within six months all the buildings have been removed from the board, consequently buildings are missing, and the box has been stepped on and crushed.
This just pisses me off…and kinda breaks my heart. I know it’s just a game and it’s just a “thing” but it just reinforces that our kids (and I’m thinking kids in general) just don’t give two shits about taking care of their things OR things that belong to others (not all the time of course, but more often than I’d like). I try to instill good behavior—and I know overall they’re great kids—but something like this seriously makes me want to throat punch them.
#itsbeenamorningyall
Want to know how to make a grown woman cry?
Get into the shower this morning and realize my cleanser is open AND upside down, then looking down on the shower floor and seeing two huge puddles of cleanser. 😳😭
You can bet your ass I quickly scooped up as much as I could and put it back into the container…but I probably still lost a month’s worth. 😭😭😭
SO YOUR BONUS TIP OF THE DAY IS TO MAKE SURE YOUR CLEANSER IS STORED CAP UP. Just in case the flip top hits something just right and pops open.
Sidenote: Also, because I am me, my immediate second thought was I wanted to take a picture of it to make a tip graphic for my business…but I was literally naked in the shower. So I didn’t.
Where’s the technology?!
With all of the technology today, why the hell are there new window stickers that do this? Seriously?
