Uh oh...

Two weeks and no posts? Don't give up on me faithful followers! I have not abandoned you! I've just failed my responsibilities for a short time, but I'm back. Let's forgive and forget, shall we? Moving on...

A few weeks ago I started having a little bit of car trouble. The engine light came on. I've had this happen before, and all it signaled was my gas cap not being tight enough. Been there, done that. I tighten up the gas cap and wait for my engine light to go off. And I wait. And I wait. Finally a few days later, it does!

Then a few days later, my engine starts making a funny sound. Uh oh is right. I drive it to Wal-mart and back to listen to it. The knocking only happens when I accelerate. Okay. I bring it home to my handy husband and say "husband, please go fix my car, it's making a funny noise." I'll give him credit - he did go out and putter with it for awhile, but couldn't figure it out.

Now it's time to take it to a shop and have someone (who really knows what they're doing) take a look at it. Mr. Mechanic had it for a week, and finally tells us on Friday "well I think you need a new engine. I don't want to mess with it since you have a warranty, so I'd suggest you have it towed to the dealership in Duluth." Of course we don't have a Kia dealership in Hibbing. Or anywhere on the Range for that matter. It's Ford, Dodge, and Chevy, all day long. Thank goodness for AAA (love you Dad!)

A few hours later, Mr. Tow-truck-driver picks up my car and heads off to Duluth with my car. Now we're starting to sweat a little, because I've kept up with the maintenance up until we moved here. With the nearest Kia dealership being 2 hours away, it's not exactly "convenient" for us to jog down there all the time. Travis has been doing my oil changes. So we had to round up all my records that Monday (which, for the record, were all in my glove box but the the mechanic swore he couldn't find them) from the two dealerships I'd taken my car to, and fax them to Duluth Kia. They receive them, and we wait. And wait, and wait.

Fast forward to Friday when we finally get an update.
Mr. Kia Mechanic: "yep, looks like you're going to need a new engine."
Me: "......."
Mr. Kia Mechanic: "do you want us to do that for you ma'am?"
Me:"uh. how much is that gonna run me?" *at this point I'm having chest pains*
Mr. Kia Mechanic: "Oh yea. Nothing! Kia is going to cover that for you."
Me: "REALLY?!?! Oh Mr. Kia Mechanic, I could kiss you right now! You just made my day!"
Mr. Kia Mechanic: "err, great. so should I get started on it?"

It finally took another week to get my car back, brand new engine tested and running good. My bill for the whole process? $16.80, only because I asked them to rotate the tires too. Hooray!

So here are the lessons I've learned: Always take your car in for regular maintenance. It's a pain in the butt, but will pay off in the end.

Be nice, you catch more flies with honey. I wanted to get upset with how long the process was taking, and how they better pay for my engine since I'd been doing regular oil changes. And how the heck does an engine go after only 4 years anyway? But I didn't. I was patient and nice. I'm pretty sure that rotating tires costs more than $16, but I didn't question it. (Ok, that's not entirely true. I did have a minor freakout when the cashier said "that'll be sixteen eighty" and I thought she meant $1,680. But that was a small oversight.)

Kia may not be Mercedes, Toyota, or Ford for that matter, but if the car keeps on running and the company is willing to fix it's mistakes and take care of it's customers then I'm sold. This may not be our last Kia.

And there you are.

Have to add this one

We found some hay bales! I will slowly be adding to my pumpkin collection :o)

The Playhouse is Gone!

Hoooooray!! The playhouse has finally left our yard to reside somewhere else, we've been paid for it, and it is gone! This project was a lot more than I was anticipating, I'll tell you that. Once Travis posted it on Craigslist, we had tons of interest in it but there was always one problem - no one could figure out how to get it home. The playhouse is 8x12x8, so we needed a big trailer. No one seemed to have a trailer big enough to haul it away. Finally Travis talked to his dad, who had a snowmobile trailer big enough to handle it. Ah-ha! So Travis relisted the sucker with a "delivery" fee, and *poof*! Gone!

I am so in love with our back yard now. It feels like we have a lot more space.
The playhouse used to block the right side of the garage from this view. Even pre-clean up it looks so much better.
Here you can see the square shaped patch of dirt where it was. We plan on planting grass there next spring. But you can also now see all the way to the tiny tree wayyyyy in the corner of our yard. Nice!

Everything looks pretty green in those pictures, but I'll let you in on a secret: leaves are starting to change! There is only a few patches here and there, but it's true - hints of red and orange are starting to blaze all over the place. This only goes to show that I am right on time with my fall decorating! I'll spare you the brunt of it, but here are a few pictures.
I love this cute candy corn berry garland I found at Country House. The little "Give Thanks" hanging pillow was only $2 on sale at Joann's.
Some leaves adorning our bookshelves in the family room. The pumpkin has little mini pumpkins surrounding it. I should have taken a closer picture.

And yes, I'm sure you noticed the giant TV next to the bookshelves. We finally broke down and upgraded from our 23" box TV. Wal-mart had this 42" flatscreen beauty on sale for $540-ish, and they threw in a $100 gift card which essentially paid for our groceries for 2 weeks. Not a bad deal. And it's paid for thanks to the sale of our playhouse :o) I have to admit, as I sit here watching Sunday football, I don't know how on earth we watched TV on something so small before. I can actually see the players! I can read the score! It's like a football-season miracle!

This week I'll be on a mission to find bales of straw to decorate our front porch. Stay tuned!

Labor Day

Ah Labor Day. The weekend that closes Summer and ushers in Fall. You can tell Fall is coming by the crisp air, and the way the light starts to change. It's like someone has turned a switch, and all of a sudden the days are shorter, the evenings a bit cooler.

Many people mourn the end of summer. Certainly the kids do. Here on the Iron Range, kids don't go back to school until after Labor Day. I, on the other hand, love this weekend. I always say "Fall is my favorite". I love everything about it! I love the leaves changing, bringing out the sweaters, football, and pumpkins all over the place! My house is no exception. I love decorating for fall.

So I trudged downstairs to riffle through our decoration room to see what all I had. I came back upstairs with an arm-full of stuff. After putting out my fake leaves and hanging up few wreaths, I decided that we were seriously lacking in the fall decoration department. We live in a much bigger house than I've ever had to decorate! I needed more stuff. More Stuff.

Off to Joann's we went (why yes I said "we". I also needed extra hands to hold whatever bounty I found). Joann's just so happened to be having a big Labor Day sale, 40% off on all fall decor! Hooray! I did keep myself in check though, and managed to spend less than $50 thanks to the sale. The grocery store also started selling pumpkins in the produce section. So all I need now is a bale of hay for the front porch and we'll be set! Pictures to come eventually!

Cousins and curtains

When you live in a small town, chances are that you're related to someone. Or the whole town - one way or another. Travis has a multitude of cousins and second cousins, enough to make up a small town. We always joke that he had to come all the way to Florida to find a wife because he was related to everyone up here.

This weekend we went to a second cousin's wedding, and sure enough we knew most of the people there one way or another, and there were probably 200 guests altogether! I asked Travis "do you think that when people get together up here, they have to find out if they're related first?" I was joking, but his answer was "yeah, probably".

So the Anderson clan and family took over Fortune Bay Casino for the night, and probably consumed all the beer in the place! You know Northern Minnesotan's, they can really put away the alcohol. We danced the night away and managed to get home at the decent hour of 2:30am. Here we are early on in the night:
I was laughing at something Trav's mom was saying about the picture she took of us right before this. We had to redo a few times :o)

It's a good thing that my husband really loves me, because we take the saying "Happy wife, happy life" pretty seriously. Well, I do at least. Travis is kind enough to humor me and go along with it. So today, after only a few hours of sleep, I asked him to help me hang some curtains. Luckily for Travis, he also knows that a happy mother-in-law means a happy life too. My mom is determined to dress every window in our house, slowly but surely. She sent us these lovely curtains for our bedroom just this week, so of course, we had to put them up today in order to get pictures to send to her.
They are from The Country House magazine/website. Not to be confused with the Country House store in St. Charles, MO. Also one of our favorite places to shop. These curtains are great because they are lined to keep the sun and cold out. As you know, we get our fair share of cold here in MN. But what you may not know is that from May to August, the sun also likes to rise at some ungodly hour like 4am. No joking. It's like we live in Alaska or something. So these should help us sleep in a little, or at least until the alarm clock goes off.

So that's what we've been up to. Being party animals and home bodies, all in one weekend!

Bear River Fair 2010

It's that time again - time for the fair! Since I no longer write for the Cook News Herald, I was able to relax and enjoy the fair this year. Last year I was on patrol for a good story to write! This year we only spent a few hours there, but somehow managed to still take part in a lot! I volunteered to help out with the concession stand for a few hours, and Travis ended up on a softball team with his cousins at the last minute. They ended up winning, so he had to go back this morning for an 8 am game. Talk about early! I opted out of that trip and stayed home to sleep in :o)

As always, we had a good time with friends and family. Our cousins usually camp there over the weekend since they're on the softball team, so we hung out with them afterward and it turned into a bit of a party. That's how we roll in Bear River! All 3 "B's" were present - bonfire, bean bags and, of course, beer!

I have pictures of the softball game, but unfortunately nothing really after that. So enjoy!

Travis played catcher. He was doing great up until this pop up, and he managed to fall flat on his butt!

Can't take him anywhere! He was appropriately nicknamed "Poopy Pants" for the rest of the night.

Here's the team after the game. They played for Zup's grocery store, but only 1/2 or so had the team shirts on. And they're pretty much all related too - cousins everywhere!

The 8 am game didn't go quite as well as yesterday. From what I heard there was a lot of falling and missing balls. Oh well, you win some - you lose some!

Swiss Family Robinson

They lived in a tree house. Most of our week has revolved around our tree house. It's a very loose tie, but there is a connection! We have an ugly (UGLY) tree house in our back yard. Well, let's say we used to have an ugly tree house in our back yard. Now we have an ugly shack:
This beauty used to be the second story of our tree house, underneath was a little garden shed. There was a wooden ladder so you could climb up and the porch had railings all the way around. This 8th World Wonder is insulated, has electricity and even a window. The roof on it is newer than the roof on our house!

From day one I have said "that sucker is coming down!" We have no need for the Taj Mahal of tree houses in our back yard, so Travis got his brain working on this little project. By some engineering feat, he managed to knock down the bottom half with the top remaining in one piece. How he did this, I have no clue. Houdini doesn't reveal his secrets.

Now you're thinking, why wouldn't you just knock all of it down? Well my friends, my dear husband wants to sell it. Like as a playhouse. This is conceivable, no? It would make a very cute little girl's dreams of playing house or school come true. And she could even play in it during the winter! Obviously though, not in it's current conditions. The little bit of sun bleached pink (which used to be Pepto Pink) is probably not enough to convince a naive little 8 year old that this is her own barbie dream house. So off to Lowe's we went to take a gander at their "oops" paint.

We found lots of gray, and lots of wood varnish, but nothing that we really could use to cover this bad boy up. Then we wandered over to the builder grade paint section - you know, cheap but does the trick? Right next to that is a whole "Barn Paint" section. Perfect! The only setback here is our limited color choice: Red, Green, or White. I guess barns don't really come in a whole lot of colors unless you're going the Morton route. Lowe's only had red and white in an acrylic based paint that does not require a primer - so guess what we picked?

Our progress so far:
Just a little more trim painting with the white, put the railings back up, and we'll be all done! Then all we have to do is sell it! Good thing Travis is on a little vacation so he can devote all his time to this project. I sure hope it's worth it!