New Year...Deep Clean

I'm not one for New Years Resolutions. I just think people make them, they follow them for a month or two, then break them. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose. I just make short term, and long term goals. They are typically connected to New Years at all.

As soon as the New Year was over I'm said, "Ok let's get cleaning!"

I happily took down the Christmas decor. Usually it's a, "Crap we have to take down all the pretty thing!" This time it was, "It's great to get the Christmas decor down. One more thing done!"

The first thing I deep cleaned was the kitchen floor.

Travis is so apprehensive with moving the fridge out to clean under it. He worries about the waterline, and the cords. Boy did it NEED it!

There was a layer of dust under there. Having allergies, and asthma I felt so satisfied with cleaning that dust out! I followed up with cleaning under the stove as well.

I kind of wish I had house cleaning services. The night after cleaning I was feeling really stuffed up!

What things in your house need to be deep cleaned?

Disclaimer: This post may include link(s) where I have gotten paid for.

A Game on the Fridge #kidcraft #tictactoegame

Games are fun! Isaak in particular loves to play them. We set out to make our own Tic Tac Toe Board Magnet Style.

Here's Isaak's latest post on ParentSavvy.com.

Tiles:

I priced out tiles at Home Depot, and found they didn't sell very many small tiles. In particular they didn't have any individual. 

I bought a mat of them for $3. That was cheaper than buying single tiles! Isaak plans on using the rest for something else. 

They were easy to rip off! I already used the mesh that held them all together for another project. Not very much goes to waste in the Apel house.

Here's what the tiles look like off their mesh:

We had 10 tiles. Enough for 5 X's and 5 O's.

Magnets:

The standard circle magnets fit these tiles perfectly. We had just the right amount, which is 10.

Glass Paint:

I got Glass Paint to review on facebook. I'm not so sure I'm in love with it. I do want to try to paint something on a hard canvas, put glass on it, and paint lines on the glass. I find that this paint is goopy, somewhat transparent, and dries fast! Maybe there's another brand that's better?

Otherwise for this project if I had to do it again I'd go with enamel paints. They can be found at craft stores in the model section. You would just need 2 colors + a black.

Colors:

The good thing about a set over individual enamel paints is that there is a variety of colors!

Isaak choose to mix a blue and green together for the O's, and a yellow and orange together for the X's. I like the colors we got, but the X's are way easier to see than the O's. Try and pick light colors.

 Remember the X's and O's will be black.

The X tiles painted:

X's and O's:

Glue Time:

Isaak loves hot gluing anything! He took charge and glued the magnets on the backs of the tiles. Check to make sure you have them all on the right side. Two didn't stick to the fridge, so he had to reglue them.

Magnet Completion: 

Time to Play!

Make a Tic Tac Toe Paper, stick to the fridge and play!

It was fun! What game would you like to make?

We Got a New Refrigerator

We had a bit of a hiccup this weekend.

I noticed last week that our water wasn't as cold as it should be. I didn't think too much of it. I just cleaned the fridge, and thought maybe one of the boys bumped the thermostat. They both helped me remove things, and put things back in. We bumped up the thermostat.

Soon after that there was a funky smell in our refrigerator. 

We found the funky smell. The eggs smelled horrible! Daddy said, "Are you kidding me? Are we going to have to go back to buying the cheaper eggs because they last longer?" Then we smelled the milk. It to was spoiled. It smelled like feta cheese. Needless to say the problem wasn't the brand of eggs I bought.

Our refrigerator died. There was a slight coolness, but it wasn't as cold as it should have been.

I wasn't too sad. We've had problems with that refrigerator since we bought it. The water in the door stopped working right before our warranty was up. We got the money, but chose not to spend it on a new fridge at the time. The refrigerator worked, just not the water in the door.

Now we had no choice we had to get a new refrigerator. 

Friday night and Saturday were too busy to go looking for a new fridge! 

Finally today we ventured out to get a new refrigerator.

We had a GE before. This time we went with a Whirlpool. One thing I do love about Daddy having a smart phone is that he can look up ratings online.

Things we were looking for:

• We were eying one that was more money, but all the controls were on the outside. I could just see the boys getting curious, and pushing buttons they know nothing about. I also asked the sale's man about that control panel going out, and if it would be more money to fix than the other fridge that had the controls on the inside? He said, "Yes it is more." (I was thinking after the warranty dies off.)


• I had a difficult time picking out which shade to go with: White, or grey? I like grey better, but all our other stuff we have is white. But the white things we have have grey on them. Daddy convinced me that as our other stuff dies we'll slowly get all grey things. 


• Picking out a grey refrigerator I wanted to make sure magnets still stuck to them. Kids artwork has to be hung on the side of our fridge. It's just part of what we do. Magnets do stick on some, and not on others. Luckily magnets do stick on the one we bought.  


• I wanted a refrigerator and a freezer that are side by side. That's what I'm used to. I could see having a lower drawer style freezer, and forgetting about things that are under other things.

If I didn't have kids that are always hungry I may have gone with something smaller.
 
The Whirlpool was on sale, we got it for 20 months 0% interest, a rebate, a warranty, same day delivery, and they hauled off our old one for free.

 

What I'm loving the most is that our water now works!

What I'm hating the most is moving food around. I moved as much as I could into the deep freezer because I new the new refrigerator was coming. When it came Daddy and I moved the stuff in the deep freezer up into the new refrigerator to thaw out the deep freezer, and clean it.

I wanted to go grocery shopping, but there are tornado warnings and storms all around us. We have no milk, no eggs, and need some things.

What do you look for in a refrigerator?