Multitasking

Someone has been skipping naps recently. However Cole couldn't stay
awake even during his haircut.

Weekend Plumber

Our plumbing fixtures in the house definitely needed some upgrading. Here's one side of our kitchen sink. In addition to the plumbing work I did this weekend, Cole was doing a bit of his own plumbing.



Even worse was the garbage disposal side. The food would get stuck on the bottom of the rubber piece and start to stink. Even scrubbing it wouldn't remove the food/mildew stains. Needless to say, it was time to upgrade the strainer baskets and the rusting garbage disposal.



Here you can see the matching strainers for both sides of the sink. We had these in our old house after remodeling our kitchen so I bought these off of Ebay and efaucets.com for pretty cheap. The strainers are made by Mountain Plumbing.



Here's the new garbage disposal drain. It has a built in stopper too. Previously we didn't even have a stopper.



Can you tell which one is the new one? I bought a Viking 1 HP garbage disposal as a scratch and dent closeout. It's much quieter and performs a lot better than the previous Whirlaway model. In case you are in the market for a new garbage disposal, I recommend reading this thread on the best garbage disposals.



Another problem that plagued all of the faucets in our house was leaky cartridges that then rusted the hardware leaving stains on the counters.



Here I changed out the faucet to a model that the previous homeowner installed in the rest of the bathrooms. It's not the best quality but it gets the job done until we remodel the bathrooms.....sometime after the kids go to college.

Easy TJ's soup

We made this Tomato Lentil soup after tasting it at Trader Joe's. It's really simple and surprisingly very good. Just heat up the soup with the lentils on the stove and serve with sour cream (plain Greek yogurt for a healthy substitute) or Parmesan cheese.

Happy Halloween

We carved pumpkins again this year and the kids helped out a little more by scooping or attempting to scoop out the pumpkins. In the end, Daddy carved both pumpkins.




Here's Cole as a firemen and Lauren as a witch. They really enjoyed trick or treating this year and even managed to say "Trick or treat" a few times.