She makes my day

Those of you on Facebook have probably already seen this, but I just had to share incase anyone missed out. Seriously. So much happiness comes from having Shelby around.



Is there really anything else to say?

SCUBA: you're doin' it wrong

Everytime I'm in the shower, I get some really good ideas.  Drying off, though, apparently wipes my creative slate clean, and I'm done for.  I've tried to write in steam (always disappears).  I've tried to actually write in water on the shower wall and pretend I can see what I just scribbled.  That never works.  I've tried to take notes on my iPhone, but as it turns out - Apple has something against steam and even more of a prejudice against a steady stream of water.  I thought maybe a dry erase board with the good markers - you know, the fat boy Expo ones - would work, but I don't have a dry erase board handy.  So, a couple of weeks ago, I turned to my Facebook page and asked someone to experiment for me.

Of the 3 people that responded, I got 3, "Yeah, I've had that idea, too!" but no one willing to test the idea.  I couldn't stand it anymore and I didn't want to waste money on a dry erase board that might get all beady and not take marker in the shower.  After a particularly creative Google search, I came up with a diving tablet - what a good idea!

I immediately went to Amazon (my go-to place to price shop) and found this, the Promate Scuba Dive Underwater Writing Slate.  I ordered one and even though it got delayed in Texas due to their brutal weather, my Prime membership had a box on my doorstep by the end of the week.  And I am in love!!

The tablet itself isn't cute, and the pencil is WHOA GRELLOW (not at all like John and Sherry's grellow, but a much more neon-get-the-attention-of-fish-Mountain-Dew color), but the nylon strap and plastic C Clip type thing could easily be switched out to something that matches your decor a little better.  Hanging this would be really easy, especially if you have a piece of wall to hang it on (aka not tile to drill through) - but I'm thinking even if you have an all-tile bath, you could use suction cup hooks or even Command Hooks to hang this bad boy.  We're actually using our Walmart pocketed shower curtain liner to store ours - hollahhhhhh.

Walmart

This thing rocks.  But that's another post for another day - specifically the master bath post - so let's stick to the SCUBA tablet.

Already, I have oodles of to do lists and blog ideas that I can't show you - it would ruin the surprise :-)  The real reason that I can't show you a picture of my actual tablet are the drawings of the naked lady and the manbits - yep, that's right, poor man's porn, right on our SCUBA tablet.  JUST KIDDING.  There really are those cartoons, but it's just because me and Pat are apparently twelve years old.  (Plus, there's plenty of free porn on the Internet for whether you're poor or not.  It's just frugal.)

On that note, time to go make pizza.  FAMILY, be prepared - you'll all be getting shower-ready SCUBA tablets for Christmas.  You know, to jot down ideas for posts for me.  It's wayyyy easier for me if you could just think of stuff for me to write about, mmmkay??

Food: The easiest steak and cheese ever

1/2 lb - 1lb shaved steak

mushrooms - fresh preferred, but canned are fine, too!

3 cloves fresh garlic

salt, pepper, onion powder to taste (don't overdo it because

you'll be adding twice!)

tasty bulky rolls or subs

4 slices American cheese

KETCHUP (optional ;-))

I don't know if the title to this post is silly, because I'm not sure that there is a steak and cheese that's hard to make.  I also know that there aren't any pictures in this post (or a lot of my posts) because I don't know anything about photography and I also don't usually have anything by my iPhone handy.  I'm asking for a real camera for my BIG present this year, but I do have a small point and shoot that I'm going to try to have around.  Do any of the decent rookie-range DLSR's have Wifi or Bluetooth capability?  Seriously - that's the reason I don't use a real camera.  Because I have to use a cord.  Pa-the-tic.  But I digress.

The other day, we were wandering through Dave's and came across some very thinly shaved steak on sale for a great price.  (Seriously, $3.49 for a pound of ANY cut of beef is a good price in my book).  We snatched up the last package because I had it in my head that I could make a French Dip out of it.  Uh, duh, Codi - that's roast beef.  So, back to the drawing board I went and the beef stayed in the fridge for a few days while we made some other goodies (and not so goodies) for dinner - posts to follow ;-)

I ended up going with something I had never made, and honestly never really enjoyed, either.  Shaved steak sandwiches.  I figured, what the heck, it's going to be easy.  And it was.  But GOOD too!

I started out with a hot pan (about 3/4 heat), some oil, salt, pepper, onion salt, and garlic.  I added fresh mushrooms and kept adding just a little bit of olive oil to them to keep them coated as they cooked.  As the mushrooms finished up (neither of us is a huge fan of peppers or onions, traditional Cheesesteak additives), I simply moved them to the side of the pan and dumped in the steak.  This steak was sliced thin enough that it was almost stringy, great for this application.  The heat went down to about 1/2 heat on our hot burner.  A little more onion salt, garlic, salt, pepper, and oil was thrown on top so that all of the beef was coated in the same mixture of spices.

After only about 6 minutes of semi-constant moving with the tongs, the steak was browned throughout and there were a few crispy pieces.  I mixed the mushrooms throughout the meat at this point and simply laid a few slices of American cheese over the mix.  When it started to look gooey, I used tongs to mix everything up and then dump a scoop directly onto the bottom half of a bulky roll.  I like mine with ketchup on the side to dip in  :-)

These were seriously the tastiest steak and cheese sandwiches that I have ever eaten.  The amount of flavor in the beef was phenomenal, with a mix of spices that I probably won't be able to duplicate.  A cheese with a little salty tang like American is really nice with these, but you could use almost any kind of cheese that you had on hand, sliced or shredded.  Good quality bulky rolls rounded out the meat by giving you a little bit of starch.

Overall, we would definitely have these again!!

Shelby goes to the vet

Besides not winning Mega Millions, Pat and I haven't been up to too much.  I've been meaning to bring Shelbs to the vet for a while now, mostly just to get a relationship going with someone, but also to get her tested for heartworm.  When we got her, she had been tested and was negative, but the lady at Greyhound Friends told us she hadn't been started on a preventative.  So, when I got a day off this week, we packed up and made our way to a vet that had been highly recommended by a friend of my aunt who used to have a greyhound.

Shelby was a little wigged out by the traffic (we had to street park and then walk on the sidewalk to the office), but it was her first time in the big city.  Since she was freaking out less than she does around basketballs, it couldn't have been too traumatizing for her.  Once we got in the office, she was great!  I took out her medical records for the receptionist to copy and realized that she had gotten one dose of Heartgard (well, the generic) back in January and that we could have just kept her on it after that.  Doh!  Oh well, it may have saved the $45 test fee, but the same blood gave us the answer to her being Lyme negative, which meant that she could safely get the Lyme vaccine.  I was skeptical about the Lyme vaccine - it's not supposed to be very effective in horses - but Dr. B told me it was about 80% effective in dogs and that was good enough for me.  She had to get the Lepto vaccine anyway (strangely, she didn't have it?) and it was available as a combo with Lyme.  Sold!

So, now we go back in 4 weeks for her Lepto/Lyme booster, and also to get her Rabies 3 year.  My little dog is becoming a true pet!

Now she just needs a brother or sister I think ;-)

Major Appliances

When we were looking at houses, appliances were something that we gave a lot of thought to.  We didn't know for sure if our house was going to come with them, but we knew we had to budget about $5,000 if not.  It's funny that when you think of appliances, you don't (or I don't) think of a washer and dryer - so that was another thing.  We also knew that if we got into a house with really terrible/old/energy sucking appliances, we were just going to keep them for a little while and then switch them out to something more efficient. That may have actually been preferable since it wouldn't have been such a big upfront cost the day after our closing, but, alas, we ended up in the "K" house which included only a dishwasher.

I want to preface the bragging about the great prices we got by saying that Jacob at the Fall River Sears Outlet HOOKED US UP.  He was really great to work with (I wanted to ask him if he wanted to come out with us for a round of drinks after he got done), plus he knew his stuff and it seems like he got us the absolute lowest prices in his power.  It's nice to have someone that knows the computer system, knows the rules, and knows how far they can be stretched.  Especially since we went back on two separate occasions, I have no doubt that he saved us some extra loot.  If he hadn't been able to link our 3 orders, we would have had to pay delivery on each order (total of $139.98 saved right there) or qualify for big discounts on warranties.  So, Jacob, huge fist bump.

Without further ado, here's what we got and how we're feeling about them 4 1/2 months after the fact.

Refrigerator

SAMSUNG RF4287HARS

Oh yeah, that's right, we did it.  The Samsung fridge of my dreams.  Why we did it?  Because I was in love with it, it got really good reviews, and we got a deal on it.  From top to bottom, this baby is beautiful.  It's got the best shelves I've ever seen in a fridge (customizable not only up and down, but front to back), cool white/blue lighting that doesn't remind you of the cafeteria from 7th grade, and a third compartment.  The third compartment allows you to choose a temperature that is best for your application - we choose to put drinks in there most of the time (it is perfectly tall for beer soda cans and our juice bottles happily lay down) but that could change at any time.

We also liked the amount of space in the freezer (I look back on our shopping adventures for this fridge and I'm wondering why we were so worried about space - we are 2 people and will stay that way, but this thing could easily hold food for 5).  Other units may have actually had the same internal space, but there was a particular Kenmore model that looked like they weren't using the space very well when you opened the drawer.  And let's face it, folks - perception is reality when you're talking to me :-)

When we were buying, this fridge was going for $2800 or a little more from all of the major stores, only down to about $2300 from places I had never heard of, mostly online wholesalers.  We couldn't justify paying almost $3 G's for an icebox, and I didn't feel comfortable buying blindly online, so this is the appliance that actually started our discount search.

The one we got has a dent in the left side about half way down that's completely hidden by the counter it is next to as its only flaw.

$2,800 + tax + delivery (no extended warranty) $1994 including tax, delivery & a 5 year complete home warranty

4 Months Later: We still love this fridge.  In fact, we're even in love with this fridge (raise your hand if you're a boy and can explain the difference - I'll give you a dollar ;-)) There's nothing about a single compartment that we would change, I'm just mad that the front isn't magnetic!  I think that's the rule with SS appliances, but-but-but...I want to put my gold star up there!  Haha, no, it's ok.  It actually keeps things looking a lot better, and I still have one side that is accessible and magnetized for anything I actually need to keep on the fridge.

Stove/Oven

KITCHENAID KDRS505XSS

We chose this model because we were really interested in a dual fuel unit - we knew without a doubt that we wanted a gas stovetop, but had heard that gas ovens can be finicky and tough to get a good steady temperature in.  When it comes to baking, I really need all the help I can get.  We knew we wanted to shop Sears Outlet if possible, and it's a good thing because as it turns out, dual fuel models are $$$.  Consumer Reports gave the whole Kitchenaid line really good reviews (which honestly surprised me because I think of my stand mixer when I think of this brand name, not large appliances), so we had it narrowed down to their dual fuel line.  The choices were double oven or not double oven, and since they had a slightly dinged model (2 small dings that I finally caught in the right (wrong?) light after having them in the house for 2 months, plus one on the corner that we knew about) of the double oven, we took it since we knew we loved the idea of 2 different temperature settings.  In all reality, we are benefiting from the double oven most because of the electricity savings (we just use the top oven which is so much smaller than a standard oven would be), but eventually maybe I'll be baking two things at once ;-)

$2,499 + tax + delivery (no extended warranty) $1,851 including tax, delivery & a 5 year complete home warranty

4 Months Later: We still love the set up of this oven, with one exception - the stovetop configuration.  It is a 5-burner stove.  You will never be able to use all 5 burners at once, or even 4.  Kitchenaid put the 2 small burners in the back, and 2 large burners up front.  The 2 big guys should really be diagonal from each other since you could never fit 2 large pots or frying pans next to each other.  We can't figure out why they would do this to us!  Oh well.  The 5th burner is a fun long center burner that we mostly use with the griddle option.  Pat makes his English muffin sandy's in the morning on it :)

Dishwasher

KENMORE SOMETHING OR OTHER

Sooo...I have no idea which Kenmore model we got.  At the time, it was one of the highest rated on ConsumerReports with a moderate pricetag.  Now, since it's discontinued, it's gone.  I could get off the couch right now and check on the inside of the dishwasher, butttt...yeah.  I'll update later.  ANYWAY!  It doesn't have the silverware tray in the door, which I thought I really wanted, but as it turns out that could make the door really heavy and be harder on the hinges.  Also, it has a stainless tub, which is nice for sanitation and longevity.  We actually ended up getting this appliance new.  We knew which model we wanted, but when we went to Sears Outlet, the one they had had a LARGE scratch all the way across the handle.  We don't mind dings and dents where no one is going to notice, but this was obvious.  I think it had been a floor model and the constant opening of the door and slamming it against the ground probably wasn't helpful.  Anyway, since the dishwasher was recently discontinued (probably why it had been taken off of the floor), a NEW one from Sears was only $50 more than they wanted for the used one.  SIGN US UP.  I have no idea what it should have been before it got discontinued, but the savings were significant.  I'm actually surprised that we paid as much as we did since dishwasher features just weren't that important to us, but what's done is done.

$719 including tax, delivery & a 5 year complete home warranty 

4 Months Later:  This is a pretty cool dishwasher.  It washes dishes well, and isn't loud.  (What other features should a dishwasher possess?)  It's also nice, as it turns out, that the silverware isn't in the door.  Now that we've got Shelbs, I'd be too nervous that she would slice her nose off if the door got left open.

Washer

KENMORE 4027

Our washer is the only appliance we didn't get from a store, and therefore don't have a warranty with.  Right after we made an offer on the house, a trusted coworker said he was selling his washer and dryer, were we interested?  They had been used for about 4 months and had since been sitting in his garage because his wife wanted to redecorate (that makes her sound ridiculous, she's a super nice lady).  We knew they were Kenmore and we knew they were frontload and we know Sam takes good care of his stuff.  For $500 cash for the set, we went and picked them up (in the horse trailer, GENIUS!  Best moving transport ever).  We got the washer, the dryer, and the 2 pedestals for $500, so in theory we can cut that in half and say that the washer and pedestal was only $250.  We were preparing to get a pretty crappy washer for $250, but as it turns out, this was one of the highest rated washers from CR.  The pedestal alone was almost as much as we paid.

$1088 + tax + delivery $250

4 Months Later:  STILL LOVING!  The washer vibrates a bit, but we think that's probably because we have it on a concrete floor and we haven't gotten the feet adjusted all the way.  If we put a rug under it, the problem would be solved.  Do we care about the slight vibration?  No, because the dryer is in the basement and it runs so quiet/our house is so soundproof from floor to floor that we have never heard the machine running.  THANKS SAM!

Dryer

KENMORE 9903

So, if you read the washer blurb, you know that we got a dryer from a friend at work.  This isn't the dryer.  We realized that we only had a hookup for a gas dryer in our basement (no 220v), and the dryer we got from Sam was electric.  We could have run 220v to the laundry side of the basement, since we had an electrician come to do 220v for the oven anyway, but we actually wanted to have a gas dryer, just didn't originally think we could.  I don't know that this model is the specific gas counterpart to our washing machine, but it looks really close.  That'll matter to me someday when we have an actual laundry room :-)  This model had everything we were looking for (spaciousness, controls on the front panel, gas, a steam setting, and a wrinkle release setting), and the price was right.  I think there's a scratch on the top somewhere, but it's in the basement, who cares?  Especially since it'll be built into cabinets some day.

$899 + tax + delivery (no extended warranty) $744 including tax, delivery & a 5 year complete home warranty

4 Months Later: For the most part, we really like the second part of our washer and dryer set.  It has plenty of controls, works well most of the time, and looks good.  However, we've been experiencing some drying issues every once in a while that we think have to do with the door popping slightly open, which breaks the seal and then obviously shuts the dryer off.  We're going to do some adjusting of the door, and if that doesn't work to keep the dryer tightly shut, call the home warranty guys.  As long as the door stays shut, the dryer does exactly what it's supposed to - dry!

April Fools, Funny Videos, Best of LifeHacker

Yahoo has some great ideas for harmless April Fools Jokes that I wish I had seen before the end of work yesterday.

"Breakfast Prank

Does your family enjoy a hot breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast? Then prepare them a special breakfast on April Fool's Day using tiny quail eggs, fried sunny-side up, a small slice of toasted cocktail bread and fried sliver of bacon.

Serve the miniature April Fool's Day breakfast on the largest serving plates you own. Fold a bath towel as a napkin beside the breakfast plate, place large serving forks and spoons on the towel for your family to eat with, then call your crew for breakfast. The smell of fried bacon will whet their appetites and the prank will be on them.

Blue Water In Bathroom

While your famished family is foraging in the kitchen for real breakfast food, slip off to the family bathroom for a blue water April Fool's Day prank.

You will need small blue (any color) dye pellets, the type used to tint children's bath water, for this prank.

Unscrew the caps on the end of the bathroom sink faucets and shower heads and insert a couple of blue dye pellets, then replace the faucet end caps. When family members turn on the water, it will run blue for a few minutes. The shrieks, panic and laughter will last longer.

Source: Martha Stewart

Underwear Row

When family members open their underwear drawer to reach for clean undies, they'll get more than they bargained for if you stitch the waistbands together to create an underwear row.

Use a quick whip sewing stitch to connect the top corners of the underwear to each other, so when the top pair of undies is grabbed and removed from the drawer, an entire row of undies comes out.

If you don't sew, use small safety pins to attach the underwear tops together."

Seriously, how fun?  I've still got some time to get Pat with the colored water prank, I'm just trying to figure out how to get the color to either last longer, or not start for a bit - because honestly, this prank would best be executed in the shower.  The key to that, though, is that he needs to be IN the shower when the water turns color.  Hmmmm.


We spent a whole day of work this week looking at our favorite funny YouTube videos after this video went viral:

Poor girl probably still doesn't get it.


Here's some others that we came up with and couldn't get enough of!

And of course this crazy video (fake or not, I don't know, but it gets me every time. Pat's new go-to "jerk-phrase" is "I PINCH YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!") had to be seen after the big hype over the Mega Millions drawing - we all went in on tickets - a lot of tickets - and it was a dreary day on Saturday that was only compounded by the cold, rainy weather.

And of course, my favorite LifeHacker tips and tricks from the past week or so.  If you haven't spent any time on LifeHacker, seriously, start now.  Jump on over there.  It's way more interesting than this blog (but don't worry, if you click on the link I have provided, a new tab will open) ;-) I gave the link to the blog format of LH because I'd rather see the articles in chronological order.  For the "most popular" list, just omit the first "blog." from your address bar.  

(Interesting side note and poll!  I have my Facebook status updates set to Most Recent, just like my LifeHacker - do you like that set up, or do you like to see what everyone is talking about first?)

Find out which alcoholic drinks are the healthiest (with links to calorie charts!)

No kitchen should be without these tools and LifeHacker shows you how to buy them on a budget.

Draw Measurements on Clear Food Storage Bins

Nest Full Of Eggs

Also on the topic of food, they pointed me towards this article that showcases Food Network's 100 Greatest Cooking Tips.  Sweet!