The Big Haul

I feel so much lighter! No, I haven't lost weight! (But I wish I had...) The guys from the Lupus foundation just recently came and took bags full of my extra stuff I've been sorting out of all my clutter! Now that my closet is clean, I'll have a few more...but, no worries - I feel a Goodwill run coming on soon...you hear that, Shelly? (Tuesdays are $1.49 day! Shelly and I like to play the $1.49 game...who will win THIS time???)

I had so many bags of clothes from Aaron and Bridgette's closet - those kids are growing like weeds...and they are both out of kids' sizes for good. (Boo hoo!) Aaron has been for about a year and a half, but Bridgie is in Junior's size now. Sniff, sniff...they get so big so quickly...and we can almost share shoes - only one size off. That's WEIRD!

I also had a bunch of glasses to get rid of, because the last set kept breaking when the cubes from the ice maker would fall into them. Granted, they were CHEAPO glasses, but have you ever had that problem with a set of glasses? After it happened about 5 or 6 times (I had a set of 12 or 16...we entertain a lot), I just bought new ones, and boxed the balance of the cheap ones up. These seem to be doing better. They got all cloudy from the dishwasher, too, because I wasn't using a rinse agent enough. Besides, our dishwasher is THE WORST - always has been, since we've been in this house - it's about 12 years old, and has been dying these past 3 years here. It's almost dead.

Our dishwasher AND oven are going on the fritz, so we're kind of in the market for new ones. Do you LOVE your oven and/or dishwasher? What features would you suggest I look for? I'm a pretty basic cook/baker, so I don't need anything SUPER fancy - I'm going stainless steel, because I went that way when our fridge pooped out last year. Any advice???