Ills, Thrills, and Frills

ILLS

It's cold season again - time to pull out the Vicks VapoRub! Fortunately, the only one that has gotten much of anything so far is Connor. Poor little fella. And rather than give him cold medicine, his dad and I have been slathering his little footsies with Vicks VapoRub day and night! It's done wonders for my sinuses, too. I've also done what I can to fill him with vitamin C. In addition to red bell peppers, I've been feeding him oranges. I love good Clementine oranges (which, by the way does NOT include the pathetic bags at Wally World!) and they are just now coming in season here. I got a bag the other night, and Connor will eat two in one sitting! More, if I would let him. Which I won't. The diapers I'm getting are bad enough without letting him overdose on the things.

THRILLS

Last weekend we had a swap and shop activity in our ward. Ben and I started off our date night there right as it started, and do you know what I found???? A Kitchen Aid counter top mixer! So of course I snagged it right away and got Ben to take it to the car. Later that night I received a call from the sister who had donated it letting me know that the mixer worked perfectly fine, but there was one little thing wrong with it. The lever on the side (see the picture below) that was supposed to lift the bowl for mixing had not worked for some time. She generally propped it up with a pan or something to get it just the right height.

Tuesday I finally got to try it out. My adult life has now been divided into two major time periods: Life Before Kitchen Aid, and Life After Kitchen Aid. WOW. I made some french bread in there and... WOW. And then of course I had to try some pumpkin muffins. But of course, I had to try my hand at figuring out how to fix that lever. So I unscrewed the base from the top and gave it a look. This is what I saw:

See that white plastic piece in the middle there? It was broken. So I called the company who referred me to a repair center in Dallas, and within about 10 minutes I had ordered the part for $7.25 + shipping. Yesterday it arrived. Then, just using these tools...

...I took out the broken plastic piece...

...and replaced it with the new one. And now, of course, it works perfectly. I love being a "handy man"!

FRILLS

Some of you may remember the bathroom renovation project we tried to do before we moved into our new home. And some of you may also remember that we had some unexpected problems and that it took a lot longer to finish our "little project" than we expected. However, a couple of weeks ago Niel and Julie came up for a visit with their kids to help us get it finished. I have been meaning to give you the final pictures for over a week now, but I kept forgetting. But today is the Big Day. Presenting... our new bathroom!

And just for the record, one gorgeous thing about the bathroom that you can't see in these pictures is all the beautiful texture on the top half of the wall - courtesy of Julie! (I love having a talented family!)