jrwarfield

While Grant isn’t helping Paul with his lawn service, working contract work for my company, or looking for a job, he is making friends. We haven’t named this squirrel,but we started leaving our old bread out on our balcony rail, and we have had LOTS of squirrel visitors. One of the more noticeable friends was a blue jay that made it a habit of coming and checking our area a lot. Now, that Grant and I are trying to eat healthy, we aren’t eating as much bread,but it was fun watching all the wild life outside our windows.

I was wanting a spoon holder, but I hadn’t found one that I liked yet. This wasn’t the total look I was going for, but it was free, and I figure it looks very eclectic! So, this is a very short post,but what else can I say,but it was a cool random thing in the mail.

Gail, Grant’s mom visited us this January, and while Grant was getting some pictures off of her camera, he noticed pictures that we had never seen before. She had pictures on her camera still from our wedding shower which I think was in June of 2008. So Grant copied these pictures, and I now have  these pictures which is very exciting. So, here is a picture of us more than 1 1/2 ago.

So, here is the tale of our KitchenAid Mixer. I grew up with only using a hand mixer, mainly the Braun brand because it is German, and my mom is gung hoe about it. So, the first time I ever saw a KitchenAid mixer in action was when my mother in law Gail was making our wedding cake. Hers was an older model,but it worked great, and I was very impressed. I still had my hand mixer, but we registered for a KitchenAid anyway. Grant’s sister, mom, cousins, and aunts all came together and bought us a 5 quart mixer, and I was so excited.

This is the Mixer that we got in black. I was so excited about using it, and when I started to use it, I was very disappointed. Mine made some weird high pitch noises anytime I had it on. Grant assured me this wasn’t normal, so we went to Bed, Bath, & Beyond and exchanged it for the same thing no problem. That was mixer #1. So, mixer #2, this mixer worked great until you added any liquids to the dry ingredients. If you did, then it would start a weird grating like you were rubbing metals against each other, only they weren’t. So, back to Bed, Bath, & beyond for us. That was Mixer #2. Then we got the Mixer #3 the replacement. We both had high hopes for this one,but right after we got it, it went into storage while we were looking for jobs. So, it was in there for over a year.  During that time, Grant and I were able to house sit for the Amaros who had a Professional KitchenAid mixer. I used it and fell in love because it had a stronger motor it didn’t have any issues with the thicker doughs.

So, we are finally in our apartment, with our smaller nonprofessional mixer still in the box. I knew that we had discussed exchanging it for the professional series, but it is $100.00 more than the one we had. We figured we should save up, and do this sooner rather than later because otherwise it might never happen. Well, the hand mixer I had was dumb to say the least. It would mess up, I couldn’t make an icing for a cake I wanted to make this week, and that was the last straw. So, I talked to Grant about getting the Professional mixer. We called Amanda(Grant’s Sister) who had the original receipt thinking we would need it for this. She found it, sent it to us, and then we lost it… go figure.

We knew that she had used a 20% off coupon on the purchase and figured we couldn’t use one again when purchasing the mixer, but we decided to go look and give it all a try.

We got to the store, finally picked a color that we liked, “Pearl Metallic,” and went to pay. Since it was on our registry, they looked it up. Then they said it had cost $299.00 which was subtracted from the total amount of $399.00, then they let us use the 20% off coupon which took off $80.00. So our total was about $22.00, but I had a gift card for $25.00 from Christmas from my mother in law Gail which we used. So, we were able to upgrade to the brand new mixer that  I wanted without paying a cent out of pocket. THEN on top of that there was a $40.00 Rebate for this too, and today the 27th was the last day to purchase for this rebate. So, we made $40.00 for the upgrade. This was such a God thing; we didn’t need this new mixer. I mean I needed some form of a mixer, but I could have bought a cheap hand mixer or stuck with the KitchenAid that we already had,but it was definitely so exciting to get what I want without spending money since we are on the don’t spend money budget!

Here is our beautiful Mixer in its new place. I honestly haven’t baked anything with it yet, so I am praying that it works, and I don’t have to mess with exchanging again.

When I had first ever used a KitchenAid mixer, I was dissapointed with the fact that it never mixed well enough. I was having to clean out all the areas with a spatula. Well, now I know that there is a way to adjust it so it goes closer to the bowl and mixes better. So, if you have ever had issues that is something to look into. I am soooooo excited about baking with this, and I will be sure to post whatever fun recipes I come across with my new toy!!!

I have been working on organizing as much as I can when I am off of work. So my latest project was my kitchen cabinets.

My Cabinets were a mess,but when you just put stuff away so it isn’t in your way, it just happens that way. Mugs are always an issues, so I looked at a whole bunch of different options from mug trees to hanging from underneath the cabinet.

Sorry about the fuzzyness of the pictures, but our camera’s battery was dead. Just random appliances that just make it into our cabinets are sometimes awkward for storage.

Tupperware is always a hassle, so I was lucky to find a single solution for all of these issues at Ikea. Not my favorite look,but the shelves that I ended up using were made of metal where other store’s were plastic, and I just don’t want to mess with them breaking.

Sweet tea supplies,but be organized! ;p

After the shelves, everything cleaned up very well. I still had to stack some of my mugs,but that is because I have too many and am not willing to part with very many.

And again everything so much easier to find. Sigh, I am content.

I finally got under our sink orderly, and I got the “wow” from Grant meaning, finally you are done, and I don’t have to be bothered with it anymore.

I decided to do this to my laundry stuff, and Grant told me he wanted it differently, so we will see how our compromising works out.

Everything started with the fact that our amazing apartment is pantry-less, and we are tool-less. When Grant and I first got married, we never got any tools. We got so many other things, and we figured since we made our wedding so cheap we would just buy some tools later. Well, later has come. Now that we have an income, and a place we decided to buy some tools. The tools that Grant bought were a little bit more on the expensive side, but we wanted to invest rather than a crappy 20 dollar drill that breaks half way through all of our projects.  So here you can see the first set that Grant purchased.

So here you can see the Makita drill set that Grant bought. We used it to put together our pantry,and it worked Great. It came with a flashlight, a drill, and a driver drill? I think is what it is called.

In order to finish this pantry project, we need the wood cut for us at Home Depot because as you can see above, there is no saw of any form in that set. So, Grant and I went to Home Depot. We waited for about 15 minutes because not a single employee could use the cutter, and the ones that did were in a meeting. Grant and I were about to walk out and just go to Lowe’s across the street to have them cut the plywood we needed when the found someone to help us. They turned on the machine, and all we need was our plywood sheet cut into 3,  22” runs of plywood. Then we needed one of those runs to be cut smaller into shelves for the pantry. The man who came to help us told us he couldn’t cut the shelves because the saw only cut vertically. Once we explained to him that he should make the vertical cuts, then turn one of the pieces horizontally to get the cuts we wanted.  The worker, did get this concept for a while, and then ended up cutting on of the pieces an inch too long. This was not a good Home Depot Experience. So we get back to the apartment, and Grant started working with the pieces that we did have.

Here you can see Grant working. He wasn’t too happy with me taking this picture, but he always takes pictures of me when I don’t want it so HA. Anyway, here you can see him using his Amazing Laser level that he got from his Grandpa. Man this thing has come in handy so many times for people like Grant and I are who very picky with how things are hung and spaced.

Grant Drilled the sides of the wood into the wall so we were making as few holes as possible in the wall.

Here you can see the shelves we drilled into the wood rather than the wall -Great thinking Grant! This closet was supposedly for coats, but our bedroom closet is VERY large, and so this sorry excuse for a coat closet is now my pantry WOOT!

Here is the pantry filled which is pretty sad because it is already filled up with stuff. We might have to keep the ugly black shelf after all.  There are still a few organizational things I want to put in there. Above the cans, I want to put some drawers that pull out for some more storage, but other than that I am very excited with how it turned out.

Here you can see that I have doors on this closet which is amazing! So my pantry is looking very good.  I am so happy to have a husband who will take the time to  fix things like this for me, especially when he does such a GREAT job!

Now, you are seeing another picture of a different tool set, Why you might wonder, well I will tell you why. Grant was very frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t fix the shelf that the man cut too big, so we started looking into tool sets by Makita that had saws with them. So, the set that Grant has above is the home version rather than the contractor set. It is more light weight and portable, where the tools below are the contractor grade with bigger and longer lasting batteries.

So, Grant was able to sell his first set on Craigslist, buy the set below for a little bit more money, and he got a lot more tools. They also had a deal going on where he gets a free tool, and he will be able to get the Driver drill that he had in the first set,but not in this set. The main saw that he was wanting is the jigsaw which only works with the contractor grade batteries. So that was the main reason that we switched to this tool set, and of course it has more tools! So, that is the next tool that we will be saving up for.

Next Project = Hanging our shelves for my books!