Cool Site!

Tuesday night I had a slight catastrophe in the kitchen. I had just filled my water jug with ice and I let the freezer door swing closed. It didn't slam just closed like normal. And then the most horrible thud along with the cracking and crashing of glass. Fear seized me. What would await my eyes when I turned around?

When I turned around I saw what I feared. Something had fallen on the stove top. Several years ago we had to buy a new stove and I finally got my dream of a flat surface stove top. (I LOVE it! My stove actually gets cleaned!) So when I laid eyes on a broken candy jar on the top of my precious stove, my stomach ended up in my throat. Thankfully, the only thing that broke was the jar... in a million pieces!

But as I was cleaning up the candy pieces and bits of broken glass, I found that I stove didn't escape completely unscathed. One of the control knobs had broken beyond repair. This upset me pretty good because as I mentioned... I love my stove! It's the newest appliance that I have and I want to keep it the shining star of my kitchen. So I decided to immediately find a replacement knob on the internet.

In my searching, I found this really neat website: ManageMyHome.com. There are all sorts of tips, ideas, and support to find there as well as a link to replacement parts. (It's a Sears website so it took me to their parts site, but I ended up not buying from them.) The really cool thing I found was you can set up an account and keep track of everything for your home on this site including PDFs of manuals for the appliances you have in your home! I am a manual reader and keeper, but it just so happens that my stove was delivered without one so this is perfect.

So if you are a home-owner, check it out and see what wonderful things you can do for your home. Starting with recycling all your appliance manuals, decluttering your home, and storing them in cyber-space.

And I did find a replacement knob... on RepairClinic.com. I chose them because they allowed returns on all of their products. The Sears site did not. The base price was slightly more, but I found an online coupon code for the site that gave me a 10% discount! The killer was the shipping! That's highway robbery! It doubled the price of my item.

The important thing is my stove will be back to it's former glory soon.

Wednesday's Word

Today I noticed Emeline using a word that just seemed out of place in the conversation of a five year old. In fact, I notice these words quite frequently coming out of not only Emeline's mouth, but Holden and Owen's too. I'll try to share these on Wednesdays.

SIMILAR, adjective. Resembling without being identical: This teddy bear is similar to yours.

Not "sorta the same" or "kind of alike", but "similar".

Just like the five year old who's going on 15 to say something like that.

Somethin' New

In an effort to write more regularly I am devising topics for each day of the week. This may work. I will know what I am going to write about on X-day-of -the-week and having a clear purpose will be more like an assignment rather than and open ended do whatcha kinda thing. We'll see..

School's Out...

School's out school's out
Teacher let the monkeys out
One went east, one went west
One went up the teacher's dress!

WoooHooo.... Summer break is HERE!

A Reverse Buckwheat

Owen so cute! Now I know that I am partial. I could go on and on 'til I was blue in the face about all the cute things our O-Boy does and says. I won't do that now, but I did want to share this adorable little tidbit.

Owen has taken to saying "o-tay" for "OK". Cute!

He's Buckwheat from the Little Rascals in reverse... Bone straight hair that's so blond it's nearly white. Creamy skin. Bright blue eyes. But he's got the lingo down!

And he's got the rascal part down too. This whole "reverse" thing is a little bit ironic because of what happened this morning while Owen was playing on Baby Shield. Baby Shield is a program I downloaded to make it safe for Owen to click around with the mouse and tap the keys without doing any harm to the iMac. However, certain key commands still work with Baby Shield on. I am completely unaware of most of them until he hits the magic sequence of keys and poof the computer's normal state changes. An investigation ensues to determine not just how to undo what he did, but what he did in the first place. This morning he did just that and the screen looked like photograph negative. I just so happened to be on the phone with Aunt Juli who knows lots about Mac OS so she was helping me uncover the caper. After about 10 minutes of searching on apple.com, Mac OS help, and Google she found the key command. Control, Option, Command, 8... what? Reverse black and white on the screen.

Leave it to the most mischievous character in "our gang".

Spring Cleaning

Spring is just naturally the time to renew and refresh. I am not really "into" cleaning, but I do what I have to. Since I've been having dreams about people coming over to my house and picking up brooms and dust cloths I decided it was time to embark on Spring Cleaning... Chloe-style.

My version of Spring Cleaning is not an all out attack on dust and clutter. Although I did just participate in a multi-family yard sale to rid my attic of stockpiled baby clothes (seems we've run out of babies to pass things to) I didn't get rid of much in our living space. I like to take things slowly working on one room or closet at a time using the entire spring to complete the process.

I started by cleaning out the kids' closets, drawers, and toy boxes. It's so nice to be able to fit their things into the storage compartments that are designated for them. I am moving onto the spare closet now. We removed everything last week so the spiders could move on before I got in there with them. Old house plus dark cluttered closets equal Brown Recluse Spiders in these parts. And we all know I don't want to encounter one of those biting buggers.

Another aspect of Spring Cleaning is giving everything a fresh wash. Walls, baseboards, curtains, carpets, linens. I am wishing I could just take a pressure washer to it all. But since I can't and I am cleaning everything by hand, I've decided to try to do a Green Clean. Yes, I am trying to use Earth-friendly cleaning products; making my own when possible (wallet-friendly). So when cleaning my bathroom yesterday I broke down and used a 50/50 vinegar-water solution. It worked great!

I am going to try this recipe for polishing the wood furniture in the house: one teaspoon lemon juice in two cups of vegetable oil. You just apply with a cloth and buff.

The vinegar solution worked really well, but the scent wasn't that great. I'd like to find a recipe that smelled a little better. Perhaps I'll try this the next time I start cleaning with vinegar to offset it's unpleasant odor: place a drop of essential oil on a light bulb (one that's on, of course) to fill the room with the scent. I have to admit even though the vinegar scent lingered for a few hours after the cleaning, when I returned home later in the evening the house smelled fresh and pure not like vinegar at all.

Anyone have any Spring Cleaning/Green Cleaning tips?