I have had a Riccar for eighteen years now. At the time I bought it, I was horrified at the price which at the time was $550 ish. However, I had gone through several sweepers in a short time frame. This thing is a workhorse. We live in a 2800 sq. ft. house with mostly carpet. I am just now ready to look for a new one. My mom and brother both have Riccar. They are the ones who pressured me into getting one. Theirs are still going strong. Mine has never been repaired only belts changed and general maintenance. Next to my Speed Queens, the Riccar is the purchase I am most proud of.

I love my Tramontina stainless steel pans and enameled dutch oven. I purchased the pans from Walmart and the dutch oven from Sams. They rated well and I can see why. They were very cost effective and a pleasure to cook in and clean. I also have antique cast iron skillets and Lodge skillets. I far prefer my antique ones as the finishes are so nice and smooth. As long as I have used my Lodge, it still isn't as smooth and will never be. It is worth it to keep an eye out for them in antique shops and Salvation Army stores. Some people don't know what they have and give them away; some people know what they have and give them away:)

I have 9 pair of Chaco sandals. They are the only thing I wear for about 7 months out of the year. They helped me through a nasty bout of PF and are perfect for my high arches. This is even though somewhere along the line they sold, and the arch bed has become a little flatter. I highly recommend them. I become a little queasy thinking about trying to find comparable footbeds for the winter months. Around home I wear Giesswein in those months. Clarks used to be good,but man they have tanked. I was just thinking yesterday about writing a letter to them and asking them why they chose the route they chose. I actually had a clerk tell me the footbeds have become so flat, thin and poor quality so people could put their own orthotic in them. Isn't that thoughtful of them?:\ Yep, they thought their way out of a customer, and I've talked to quite a few people who are saying the same thing. Shoes aren't being made well anymore for the American crowd. I am going to try Kuru next.

We bought the washer and the dryer. Love them both.

Arizona Mattress Company - latex mattress. Love, Love, Love this mattress. I often forget it when I name the FEW items we have been truly satisfied with that we have purchased, but this mattress is great and definitely part of the list. Sometimes my husband or I will look at the other after an exasperating day and say, "But you know what? We're going to sleep on our mattress tonight and that almost makes everything o.k." Then we will just smile.

Going on seven years here. Love,love, love them! Will never own anything else. I put them up there with my Cuisinart food processor and my Riccar sweeper. I'll go to my grave claiming it!

Thanks for the replies you guys! I watched the you tube. I'm always impressed with the easy nature of Wisconsin natives:). We are staying in a cabin. Although we will have access to motored boats, we would also like to rent kayaks in the area for some morning trips. We intend to spend much of our time on the lakes and rivers, but it is fun to hack around town also. I appreciate your input.

We will be visiting the Rhinelander, Wisconsin area later this summer, and I am wondering if any of you are familiar with the area. We are interested in good eats, neat little shops, coffee houses and out of the way adventures. All who are going love outside sports. I see people getting good results when calling out here as there seem to be people from all over, so I thought I would give it a try.

So sorry you are going through this. It is one of life's tough and sharp corners for sure. We have had our vet come out and put our dogs down. We love me up, give them treats and cuddling, and then with us all there, we give the vet the go ahead. I wouldn't do it any other way. Also, as to the question of when one knows it is time, our vet told us our dogs will tell us by them no longer being interested in the things they normally are interested in. An example for us with labs and lab crosses has been when they no longer were interested in playing ball or going out to the barn or going to the woods. Everyone's indicators would be different according to the type dog they have and the way they interact with that dog. That bit of knowledge has helped us tremendously in making those tough decisions. Again, I am so sorry. Some of my hardest days have been losing an old pet. I try to tell myself we gave them a great life with lots of love and attention.

I can always count on this forum covering a topic of recent discussion in our household! Sometimes it's unsettling. I am a migraine sufferer. Primarily I have two days a month of hormonal headaches. I also get headaches from a rotator cuff injury. Activity can cause pain to travel up my shoulder then my neck and right into a horrific headache. As I've gotten older, I have found letting go helps a little bit. Headache day? What has to be done and what can be put off? Go slow. Recently, I had planned on taking my youngest to an inside pool for a free swim afternoon. I awoke with a horrible headache but thought the pool was benign as far as a headache. We went. An hour into swimming my headache GREATLY subsided. I was swimming slowly on my back and listening to my breathing underwater. I was astonished. Now know that any strong smells trigger headaches for me. Usually if I have a bad one hefty activity also sends it through the roof. I was astonished! The next time I have a bad headache I'm going back to the pool to see if there is validity in swimming to alleviate the pain.I found a study regarding floating in water and how it is helping with a variety of pain such as headaches and arthritis. Scientists are using a kind of sensory deprivation tank that is a bigger and deeper than a tub. I can assure you that if we had gone to an outside pool with sun and heat I would have been sicker n a dog by the time I got home! I wonder if hearing my breathing underwater and the rhythm of the water is kind of like a sensory deprivation tank experience. My older daughter was getting headaches during swim team season. We discovered she had sinus issues which she just had surgery for. The pressure of going underwater in the pool was causing the headaches. I hope you find answers as to what is causing her headaches. I just had to chuckle when I saw this topic as we had a lengthy discussion about pools and headaches. It's hard to imagine I may be swimming next to some one someday who is testing the pool to see if it is causing a headache as I am testing it to see if it is relieving my headache!

Speed Queen has been one of the best purchases I have EVER made. It is like stepping back in time when a person could buy an appliance, expect to use it for many years to come and experience few repairs at fair prices. Ours is a workhouses. It is very quick and clothes are clean when they come out. There are so few purchases I can say positive things about even years afterwards!

This is no good for you but it's been in our family for years and is delicious. It's just called Oven Fried Chicken. 4 c flour 2 T salt 2 T baking powder 8 t paprika 3/4 c shortening Mix dry ingredients well and then cut in shortening. Double gallon freezer bag it and keep in the freezer. This keeps a long time. Place pieces of chicken in the bag and press from the outside of the bag to cover the pieces. Bake them in a 450 degree oven for 45-50 minutes. This is very crispy and much loved. It is also a quick easy meal to make in a pinch.

I just went to a shower a couple of weeks ago where they served make your own fruit pizzas. They had nice sized sugar cookies, a cream cheese type frosting for each person to apply and assorted fruit like blueberries, strawberries, grapes, banana slices etc. I was so impressed and it was yummy.

Every so often we find little marks on our clothes after coming out of the dryer. Our dryer looks like yours in back. The marks come out, but, yes, it is annoying. I feel like a traitor saying this because I absolutely LOVE Speed Queen and would never own anything else. The dryer we had before would occasionally leave small marks as well and it was a Maytag.

I get calls from all over the country. I have had the same number since cell phones just started becoming big so I sure don't have a number someone else had. I get court calls, collection calls, credit services calls. For a while I was religiously going to the do not call registry and filing a report. I literally would sit down each day with the numbers and enter them. I finally hounded down one of the people who was more frequent and demanded to know where he got my number. He told me to talk to Verizon about that as Verizon sells numbers to these companies. I confronted Verizon who denied it. Several months ago I was in a large group of people and this subject came up. Several people said they found out that their numbers had been sold by their phone carriers. I was so careful to never give my number out. What a chump.

We've had chickens for years with few predator attacks as we live on open prairie and have had dogs through the years. One year we had a series of leg bites in a few chickens over a series of a few nights. We didn't know what to make of it as nothing on the potential list seemed to be a possibility. It ended up being a baby possum. The mother had been killed a week or so before and it was at an age where it was trying to strike out on its own and wasn't sure what to do. We would have never thought of that on our own but finally caught him one night. We relocated him to an abandoned farm down the road a ways.

Acute sense of smell!! Like an animal. I could smell perfume from 30 ft. away.

One of my favorite purchases in 26 years of marriage has been my Riccar. When we were first married we went through sweepers from Walmart every one to two years. Those sweepers ran anywhere from $90-140 dollars. We moved to a much bigger house with much more carpet. When the sweeper I had pooped out, I finally complained to my mom. She said go to a sweeper store (Mr. Sweeper). I went. When the man told me the price I had a hard time keeping a straight face. I went home and my husband and I laughed about it all weekend. $500 dollars for a sweeper?! I went down to my mom's house and asked her what she was smoking when she recommended a broke, young married couple get a Riccar sweeper. She laughed and asked me to remember when I was still at home and her Hoover finally gave out. I remembered. I did the math. She had had the Riccar 10 years and expected it to last 10 more. We had spent more than that already in cheap vacuums. We bought the Riccar. The Riccar is going strong at 17 years of age. We now also have a Riccar sweeper for upstairs. Mom moved to an apartment last spring and we took her Riccar...27 year old sweeper. The best thing is, Mr. Sweeper can work on them right in his shop. We take ours in once in a blue moon for new belts and a general look over. He's like the Maytag man in the old ads. I hope THAT poor man retired before Maytag went to crap:)!...That's another review for another day.

I can answer this question. At forty-seven I am starting to lose flexibility quickly. I have done Jillian Michaels on and off in the past. I like it but can't say I think it is the best thing for this age. I couldn't put a finger on it, but I knew some things she asks people to do wouldn't be the best for all bodies. After a few weeks, although I would feel great, I would l feel like a tight rubber band if that makes sense. Something seemed to be missing. I learned about Classical Stretch here where I lurk (scary, huh?). I forgot to mention that my husband fell and broke his back a few years ago and arthritis is setting in. He said to order them if I though they would work. I checked out the videos and after a couple weeks of debate ordered Season 7. I think it is fantastic. I have been doing it almost daily for two months now. The workouts range from 20-25 minutes. There is quite a bit of movement taken from tai chi which I never really understood before. She gives good explanations and is real down to earth. I would really like to meet her, and I have never said that about an exercise guru before. My flexibility is greatly increasing and all through my day I am smiling as I realize the series of movements she puts you through are just exaggerated versions of what we ask our body to do each day. I look back now and see I was on the edge of someplace I never want to be. An example would be If there was a mess on the floor, I was starting to drop a damp cloth and let my foot do the majority of cleaning before bending and swiping it up with my hand. Overreaching for out of reach things would make me pause and question if that was going to be sore later. Writing that makes me reflect that that may seem pretty lame, but I assure you I am on the move the better part of my day. I just wasn't making my body do enough extra stretching to make regular activity effortless. Also, I have suffered from a shoulder problem since high school sports. This is the first time EVER since the injury that my arms and shoulder feel great. Classical Stretch makes me work my arms harder and in a way that Jillian Michaels never has. All that being said, it can be monotonous after a while, but what I get out of it cancels that feeling. I will definitely be ordering more seasons. I may also order a tai chi video out of curiosity even though I think most those workouts are much longer. I find myself watching older people now and asking myself what Classical Stretch could do for them to enhance their daily movements. So much of it is physical therapy movements and would help them greatly. How's that for a too long review?!

I am so glad to hear someone else tell such a story in the Midwest. I may be the dissenting voice here but I like spiders for the most part. One night about ten years ago, we came home late from a family get together. It was about this time of year. My two kids and I had stopped on the sidewalk to discuss what might still be in the vehicle when we saw by the light of the security light the largest spider I have ever seen. It was the size of a tarantula. It slowly went down the side of the sidewalk and slipped into a half moon hole about three inches long. I couldn't believe my eyes. Both kids became quiet. Finally I asked them if they had seen it. Both nodded. We all described a spider that could fit in my hand but not easily. I checked back on the hole from time to time but never caught a glimpse of it again. When we tell this story to people they just look at us funny. I grew up in the country. I was in the woods and out on the prairie exploring every nook and cranny. I have never seen the likes. This spider was not a wolf spider. We get some huge wolf spiders. The legs on this spider were the thickness of a tarantula's legs and did not have the same proportion to its body that a wolf spider would have. I think maybe we don't know about everything that lives amongst us.

:mellow: anyone out there with a dual fuel range? anyone?

I need a new range immediately as the board is going out in my current one. I have known this was coming for some time. I live in the middle of nowhere, so I really need to rely on local businesses and repairmen. This is fine with me as they always get here within the day and are very reasonably priced. However, the selection of ranges locally leave a bit to be desired. I need a slide-in model and that greatly reduces my options as well. I definitely do not want an all gas range. We broil quite a bit, and we like how things taste out of an electric oven better than a gas oven. I would really like a dual fuel (Frigidaire Gallery) which the locals don't carry as part of their line. They can get one in (expensive) and will repair it. I would be ahead to order one myself with free shipping and no tax and then have them repair (awkward). My other option is an electric coil model. I can food and I dye wool and those activities require my burners to hold quite a bit of weight. There are only two models available that meet my requirements and as they are coil, they don"t have many extras. My local guy said to be careful with the newer electric coil models because they can't bear the weight that they used to be able to carry. However, they are half the price of the dual fuel ranges. All that being said, I am having the worst time deciding what to do. Do any of you have dual fuel? Do you like them? Are they worth it? Are there things I should be concerned about regarding them that I may not know? Does anyone have experience with a more recent coil burner? Any guidance would be appreciated. This has been my biggest stumper in a long, long time. I guess I should be thankful for that. I have lived with bad appliance choices in the past and I do not want to repeat those experiences, kwim?

The only time I ever saw a judge bit in the face at a dog show it was one of those. They are smart and need a strong leader.

Thanks for the replies! I will check into the extenders and keep searching for the others:)

I am having a baby after a fifteen year lull and am looking for a type of onesie that was available back then. Someone told me it was a spanish design, but I'm not sure. It was expandable so the baby could wear it much longer than a regular onesie. The bottom where it snapped was shaped like a traingle and there were additional snaps up the sides of the garment. First, you snapped it up on the top snaps, and then every couple of months, you snapped it down an inch or so. The design was genious and money saving. Do any of you recognize what I am speaking about, and if so, do you know where they can be gotten? Any help would be greatly appreciated:)