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Our House 5: Geothermal Heating

Our House 5: Geothermal Heating

I have been really into geothermal heating for some 15 years now. I remember talking with a coworker about geothermal when they were building 15 years ago, but they decided not to. Since then, I’ve wanted to use geothermal heating. What is Geothermal Heating and Cooling: The simple answer is that geothermal relies on the […]

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Our House 4: Architect Help

Our House 4: Architect Help

After pondering these 4 options, we didn’t end up thinking any one of them would be the best use of space. So we turned to an architect to help us with the plans. The architect we chose was a local firm, IOTA, and specialized in local market, infill redesign, and offered a 4-hr package or […]

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Simple Oatmeal

Simple Oatmeal

We go through oatmeal in our house, left and right. In my quest for better tasting oatmeal, I stopped buying Quaker Quick Oats, and started buying Quaker Old Fashioned Oats. They take longer to cook, but have a far better texture. We just add a little brown sugar and cinnamon for the perfect breakfast. It […]

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Our House 3: The Addition Plan Concepts

Our House 3: The Addition Plan Concepts

In 2006, with 2 kids and a third on the way, we decided it was time to finish the upstairs with an addition.  My wife and I spent may days going through iterations of layout and design to try to figure out a way we could get what we wanted upstairs. We wanted to add […]

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Our House 2: The Kitchen

Our House 2: The Kitchen

In the first few months, we decided to change the kitchen cabinets and counters and flooring. We changed the cabinets to cherry, and picked out some very interesting knobs and pulls. We also bought a larger refrigerator. The smallish 16-18 cubic foot one that came with the house seemed to be just a large dorm […]

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Our House 1: The Background

Our House 1: The Background

We purchased this house in 2002 as a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, home with a vaulted living room, a sunporch, and a somewhat finished lower level. Our home sits on a (relatively) large lot in Minneapolis. The lot is 40×200, which is 0.18 acres. Again, it’s relatively large for a South Minneapolis lot.  The home […]

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Blueberry Kale Smoothie

Blueberry Kale Smoothie

Kale? Don’t worry, your kids won’t even taste in there. When they admit they like it, I tell them it has kale in it. I want them to be ok with spinach and kale and know they are eating it.  In this case, I used purple kale from Trader Joes and the color matches the […]

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Starting Your Own Blog Part 9: WordPress Posts and Categories

Categories When posting blog entries, you should organize them into categories. WordPress allows you to create categories and sub-categories. These categories can be added to a sidebar, or a menu. Take a look at my “Recipes” menu, and you’ll see subcategories of Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, etc. When I enter each recipe, I select the appropriate […]

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Starting Your Own Blog Part 8: WordPress Pages and Menus

WordPress Pages Pages are for creating a page that doesn’t change much. These include such pages as “About Me” or “Resources”. They may update over time, but for the most part are pretty static and stand alone. Pages are easy to create. Just click on “Pages- Add New” and give it a name.  Once you […]

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Starting Your Own Blog Part 7: WordPress Widgets

WordPress Widgets Widgets are plugins that can add features to your blog such as Search capabilities, a link to the Archives, a list of Categories, Recent Posts, and more. Plugins are visible to the general public and usually show up on the sidebar, or above or below the content.  You can see on this screenshot […]

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