the sometimes senseless ravings (and the occassional rant) of an aspiring marine ecologist who may enjoy killing things a little too much

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Finally!

so, i started knitting a baby blanket around thanksgiving, hoping it would be finished by the time max arrived. it wasn't. i was about 3/4 finished with the last set of colored blocks (about 85% finished with the blanket) when i went into the hospital.

this week, i finally completed the blanket.

have a look at the finished product:
















now have a look at max enjoying the finished product:

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Love, Thy Name Is General Electric























so, i'm sure you all know about this economic stimulus tax rebate thing that all american taxpayers will receive in the next month or so. basically, everyone who pays taxes gets $600 back from the government plus $300 for each 'qualifying child' (max doesn't qualify, boo). chad and i got a letter in the mail telling us that our $1200 will be here soon a few weeks ago, and we decided that we would use our rebate to procure new appliances for our kitchen. chad hated our refrigerator with its non-functioning ice maker, and i hated our stove, which just plain sucked (umm, i burned absolutely everything i baked in the oven for a month or so before i figured out the trick of preheating the oven then turning the temperature down to 75 degrees below the recommended cooking temperature).

i guess we could have just paid the $952 we owed the government (that's state and federal combined) this year and considered ourselves pretty much even after the rebate, but we knew we'd have to pay some taxes this month (and thus had planned accordingly), so we settled on buying a new stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher, just so we could have everything match.

so chad went on an appliance quest a couple of weeks ago, comparing appliance brands and the stores that sell them. we wound up buying GE appliances from home depot - all for the low, low price of about $1250 after rebates (it was about $1450 before the rebates). at first we were going to go with maytag, since there was a $200 manufacturer's rebate with the purchase of 3 maytag appliances, but the qualifying dishwasher for that deal was 3" taller than the space we have.

i will admit that we did not get our dream appliances ('cause that would be way expensive, and we are so not rich), but we got better ones than we had before. our only 'splurges' were the 21 cubic ft fridge instead of the 18 cubic ft one and a smooth top range (which i have been lusting after for forever) instead of the kind with regular burners. we got a pretty standard dishwasher, but it is shiny and new.

i must say, i LOVE the new stove. love it. the ceramic cooktop heats up much faster than regular electric burners, and they cool down quickly. there's even a light that tells you when the little burner circles are still hot. plus, the oven bakes like a dream, no tricks required.

chad was concerned that the fridge would be a lot smaller than the side-by-side we had before, but we actually have a lot more room now in both the fridge and the freezer, even though it's a plain old freezer on top model. plus, you know, we now have an ice maker that works, and that saves a lot of space, since we don't have stacks and stacks of ice trays in there.

as you can tell, i'm pretty stoked about the new appliances. now i just need to convince chad that we need new countertops...