If you have ever owned a home with a garbage disposal in the kitchen, then you know they don’t last forever and will eventually need replacing. The person at Home Depot said they last about 10 years. We’ve been in our home for 14 and we just now had to install a new one. We don’t know how long it was in the place before we moved in. A mid-range new unit runs over $100.00. ($149.00 to be exact.) If you are anything like we are, you will want to save on the installation if possible. My husband and I spent some time replacing our garbage disposal yesterday, and I wanted to share a few things that we learned in the process. .
1. Watch this video before you start. Make your husband watch it too. If he is anything like mine, he will not want to but he admitted afterwards that he was glad he did. It gives you a list of all of the tools and materials you will need in order to install your new unit.
2. Look at the unit you will be replacing and how it is connected. Determine the correct size of the unit you will be replacing before purchasing a new one.
3. Will you need to purchase an installation kit as the video says? Don’t let the salesperson at your local home improvement store talk you out of it if you think you need one. If you end up not using it, you can always return it. It will save you a trip to the store in the middle of the process.
We purchased our new disposal without doing any of this beforehand and it resulted in two trips to Home Depot while we were installing the new unit. The first trip was for the salesperson to talk my husband out of getting an installation kit, and the second was actually to purchase the kit. What should have taken an hour at the most, took four instead.
4. Read the installation instructions that come with your new unit. Again, your husband won’t want to do this, but trust me…he won’t be sorry if he does.
5. Do not believe the person at Home Depot when he says it will be simple. In theory, it is, but you know the person that made the video I shared used the art of editing before he posted it! Duh!
In retrospect, the most difficult part of the installation was hanging the new unit. They are heavy and neither my husband nor I were able to hold it up in place long enough in order to connect it. I have no upper body strength, and my husband has a physical condition that prevents him from lifting his arms over his head. Just as I was admitting defeat and calling my son for help, my husband gave it, one last shot and got it connected.
6. Learn to cuss. As a young child, I used to watch my father do things around the house like work on plumbing, etc. Things always seemed to go better when Daddy cussed. I tried this myself once and it worked. I think my husband cussed just as the disposal unit finally slipped into place.
7. Maintain a sense of humor throughout the process.
So, four hours, a migraine and a stiff neck later, I have a new garbage disposal! We saved at least $100.00 by installing it ourselves.
8. I almost forgot to mention one last thing we learned while replacing our garbage disposal and you should remember while you are replacing yours. When the old unit is disconnected and the new one not yet attached…remember…DO. NOT. Turn. On. The. Water! Unless, of course, you mean to mop your kitchen floor in the process.
So here is my creation for today. It uses an oldie but goodie stamp set Thoughts and Prayers.
Hope you enjoyed your visit here today. Until next time…
You know you are loosing it when you ask where your cell phone is while talking on it, or you mistake a kitchen cabinet for the refrigerator when you are putting away milk. You also know you are loosing it when you put something away for safe keeping then can’t find it when you need it. (This is true stuff here! I’ve done all of these.)
You know you are loosing it when you walk around the house for 10 minutes looking for your glasses only to discover they are exactly where you left them…on the top of your head. Honestly, I get so used to having them up there sometime, I don’t feel them after a while. And sometimes, when they aren’t up there I think they are and reach for them.
I used to do the same with my classroom keys when I was teaching. No, I didn’t wear them on my head; I’d wear them on a lanyard around my neck. I would on occasion find myself teaching and keeping 35 kids in line, while looking for my keys to open my classroom closet only for one of my students to say to me, “Mrs. Cauler, they are hanging around your neck.” Invariably, the class would erupt in laughter, and so would I. You just have to learn to laugh at yourself!
I think the root cause for having these kinds of memory lapses is having children and a husband! They are also the reason for gray hair and wrinkles. A colleague once told me of the time she asked a 97 year-old nun in Colorado Springs her secret to such beautiful and wrinkle free skin. Sister’s response was, “I’ve never been married, and I’ve never had kids.”
You know your husband is loosing it when he can’t figure out why his socks are too tight and you have to tell him he inadvertently pulled a pair of your socks out of the laundry basket; not his.
Here’s my card for today. I used the Sheltering Tree stamp set by Stampin’ Up!
Hope you enjoyed your visit here today. Until next time…
Today I am sharing two cards that remind me of a very happy thing; my trip to Italy in 2006 with my sister. While we were there I remember seeing lemon trees, and I even purchased a few pieces of Deruta Italian pottery that was manufactured and hand painted in Umbria, Italy. I purchased what I would call a serving platter, pasta serving bowl, and wine pitcher that are adorned with lemons. You can see a photo of the pattern here. I received my inspiration for these two cards from these three pieces of pottery. I used the Sale-a-bration set A Happy Thing when I created these two cards. I also used the masking technique which I will explain at the end of my post.
I have always loved the way navy and yellow look together. I think they are classic, and the colors always remind me of summer! The “Thanks” card is embossed in gold and colored with Daffodil Delight Blendabilities.
The sentiment on this friendship card is embossed in gold, but the lemons are not. They are stamped in the Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with Daffodil Delight Blendabilities.
What is the masking technique? If you are familiar with the stamp set I used, you know there is only one lemon image in the set. Masking is when you stamp the image on scrap paper and cut it out. You then stamp the image again onto the card stock you will be using. After stamping, you cover it with the cut out image, re-ink your stamp and stamp another image right next to the first one you stamped. When you do this, it will look like one is behind the other. That’s why it is called masking.
Hope you enjoyed your visit here today. Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
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As my husband and I were finishing dinner the other evening, he asked me to read the bill for him. The restaurant, dimly lit, made it difficult for him to see it. I sighed, pulled my glasses out of my purse, and looked at it.
“It’s $45.00,” I said. This wasn’t bad as far as I was concerned since we each had had two beverages and shared an appetizer along with an entre apiece.
My husband opened his wallet, removed his credit card and handed both the bill and the card to the server as she walked by.
When the server returned with his credit card and the check, my husband again asked me if I would write in the tip amount and total. I complied and in the process asked rather sarcastically,
“Would you like me to sign it for you too? I could, you know. I know how to sign your name exactly as you do. Nobody would ever know. I just have to make the ‘G’ look like an ‘L’ and write Lary …. I know your ATM pin number too, you know. If I wanted, I could clean you out.”
I like to tease my husband about this kind of stuff, because he once was married to a woman who did just that while he was on active duty and deployed overseas. When we married 14 years ago, we were sure to keep a few financial things separate. However, as time has gone on, we have mixed more and more of our assets together. I know it is mean to tease him, but sometimes he is so “tease-able” about this issue that I have to admit I get a little passive aggressive pleasure out of watching him squirm. Not a great quality of mine, I know.
“No, that’s okay,” was his response. “Besides, you can’t make the ‘C’ for our last name like I do.”
“Do you really think that?” I asked him. “I’ll just write your signature onto this piece of scrap paper and we will compare the two.”
Upon comparison, the two were similar, but my duplication of his signature in no way looked just like his. You could definitely tell which was counterfeit.
“I have told you the story about my dad being a forger, haven’t I?” I asked him.
I had, but I will retell it for you.
Both of my parents were born in the late 1920’s to early 1930’s. They both came of age and married each other in the early 1950’s, so you could say they were the typical 1950’s and 1960’s couple. My dad went to work every day, came home, and in the summer time worked in the garden. My mother stayed home with us kids most of the time. There was a brief period when my sister and I were very young that Mom worked at the soda counter in a local drug store. That didn’t last very long. It was just to help make ends meet while my father was laid off from his job at the steel mill in Youngstown, Ohio. He soon found a job again with the water company, and my mom quit hers. My mother especially, they both believed certain things were a “man or woman’s” role. Earning a living was a “man’s” job, and staying home and running the house was the “woman’s.” My mom eventually did go to work when both my sister and I were in high school, but she made sure her friends and family knew it was because she WANTED to go to work and not because she HAD to. She was always sure to let my father know that he was the MAN of the house. She strived to never do or say anything to make him feel otherwise.
My father did nothing other than going to work every day, and working in his garden when weather permitted. The routine, mundane household chores were up to my mother. Dad’s philosophy was, “Why should I have to do that stuff when I got three women living in this house?” The three women were first my mother, and then eventually my older sister and me. My sister and I were also his reasoning for never getting my mother a dishwasher until we were both grown and out of the house. He believe he and my mother had brought two perfectly good ones into the world.
That was my father and by the values of those times, he was a good one. He went to work every day, handed his paycheck over to his wife, and let her manage everything relating to home and children and finances the way she thought best. He could do that because my mother could be trusted, and she was good with money. My father loved us. He would do anything for us. We knew that then; we know that now. He proved it daily.
My mother was of the opinion that a woman should make her man feel like a man as much as possible. Mother did everything for Dad. From ironing his boxer shorts to pressing his hankies, she did it all. To prove even further that my father was the MAN of the house, the KING of his castle, the HEAD of his household, everything was always in my father’s name even though everything was in joint ownership with my mother. The car title was in dad’s name only, but it was their car. The telephone and utility bills were in my dad’s name only, but Mom always made sure she paid them on time. Their personal checking account…that was different…it was in both their names.
I mentioned earlier that my father went to work, and on paydays, he handed his check over to my mother. But, he didn’t sign it. He didn’t need to. I told you Mother did EVERYTHING for Dad. Whenever she deposited his paycheck to their personal checking, she always signed it for him… with his name, not hers. Whenever she wrote a personal check against their jointly owned checking account, she always signed his name, not hers. You know, you gotta make a man feel like a man! (I say with a bit of sarcasm.)
Mom always kept some cash stashed away in a drawer for day-to-day expenses. My father knew this, so when he needed or wanted money, he went to the stash and took what he wanted. After all, he had earned it. There were no questions from my mother, no arguments. As long as there was money to pay the bills, take care of the family, and save a little, Mom never said much.
One time my mother wrote a check for me to pay my college tuition, and she signed my father’s name.
“Mom, you can’t do that! Why don’t you sign your own name? Aren’t you on the account?”
“Of course, I’m on the account. But I sign your dad’s name,” she admitted.
“Mom, that’s illegal!” I exclaimed.
“Tell your father to have me arrested,” she chuckled. “Let me tell you something,” she schooled me. “If I wanted to, I could have cleaned your father out financially years ago, and he knows it. If your father ever went to the bank and signed his own name, they would arrest HIM for forging his signature.”
WHA….????????
God bless my mother and father! My father was the KING of his castle. My mother? She was NOT his minion! They were married for over 50 years. Maybe the rest of us could learn something from all of this.
Today I am sharing a card that I made using some of my favorite Christmas colors; blue and silver.
I love the way this turned out! Some things you need to know about when making this card. I used silver embossing powder on the doily. I had to versa mark quite a bit of the doily in order to get all of the lacy edge covered. You might even have to versa mark and add embossing powder several times to get it completely covered. I’ve seen this done before, but never tried it myself. Another thing you need to know is I embossed the stamped image of the ornament in silver powder as well. I did the center and the holly leaves and berries twice, cut and punched each out, and attached them using dimensionals to add depth.
Hope you enjoyed your visit today. Until next time…
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