We have just added more Lodge cast iron cookware to our line. We now have a wider selection of skillets, griddles, pots and dutch ovens than before. Lodge cast iron cookware is really great stuff. It’s not just for the campfire either. This cookware does a great job every day on your stove.

     This isn’t you mother’s cast iron either. Lodge now comes pre-seasoned and ready to use. Yes, it has a bit of oregano, basil, garlic and just a hint of thyme in it. Yeah, okay, not that kind of seasoning. Let me just quote what Lodge has to say about it:

For more than 110 years, Lodge Manufacturing has been perfecting the process of making cast iron cookware. But the process was never complete until countless meals, desserts, soups and stews were prepared to create a treasured black patina. Only then was cast iron “seasoned.”

In 2002, the Lodge team developed a proprietary vegetable oil spray system with high temperature gas ovens to season the cookware before it leaves our South Pittsburg foundry. No hassle, no magic, no work—simply an heirloom finish everyone can use right out of the box!

    So come on in and check out our selection, and try some Lodge cats iron cookware for yourself. Oh, and by the way, you’ll like our pricing on it as well. Check around and you’ll be pleased!

     I got going today with the nice weather and got my Christmas lights put out. Did two houses today. I put up the Christmas lights at my mother’s house for her as well as mine. I dealt with two absolute opposite types of lights. LED’s and old mini lights.

    The old mini lights were at her house. My mother throws nothing away, ever. So her light sets are old, and tired. They have many broken bulbs, more than half the sets don’t light. I spent way too much time just testing lights and seeing what would work and what wouldn’t. I put two strings up that were working just fine, but by the time they were on the house, they quit. Change the bulbs, check the fuses, etc. What a hassle. Not quick, not easy, and not much of a display when all is said and done.

   At my house I used the same Holiday Creations LED lights that I used last year. I pulled them out of storage, drug them along my gravel drive (I make a ground level display Santa’s runway each year!) plugged them in an voila, they’re lit. I’m done. No mess, no bulbs, no dainty handling to keep them from breaking, no half-lit strings, just simplicity. And when they’re lit, I was reminded how vibrant the Holiday Creations lights are. The colors are truly amazing! It was so easy to put my lights this year I decided to add another runway to my display. I went and bought more Holiday Creations LED lights and found out something else. They’re even easy to get out of the package! I have spent hours in years past pulling mini lights out of their packaging. These pop right out in seconds. How cool is that!

   So Holiday Creations LED lights save oodles of electricity, look amazing, last from year to year, are durable and even easy to get out their packaging! What more can you ask for?

     -Clark

     Once again this Christmas season, we have partnered with Lights For Life Inc. Lights For Life is a Loveland based charitable organization that recycles holiday light strings. They  use the proceeds from this to help children with cancer. This a great use of recycling, helping the environment and children in need. For more information go to www.lightsforlife.com

     Even better than that this year we are giving you $3.00 off of Holiday Creations LED lights when you bring in your old string of lights, working or not. Bring in any strings and receive $3.00 off per string per box up to five boxes, or a total of $15.00 when you purchase Holiday Creations LED lights. This offer is good now through the month of December 2009. (There was a big box doing a similar thing, but their offer is already over with, and their recycling proceeds went who knows where, but likely not to charitable donations. Nothing against their efforts, but we feel ours are just a little better!)

   Holiday Creations LED lights are the official holiday lights of Centerra, and can be seen at highway 34 and I-25 in Loveland. They’re amazing, brilliant, dazzling and very high quality. So this year, you can have the best display of lights in your neighborhood, save money, save electricity and help children!

   (By the way, yes this is very similar to my last blog. We find people looking for this information by different titles, so a couple of blogs to help you all find this out. Yes, it’s entirley possible that this time of year I could get confused and double blog, but not this time! -Clark)

     Once again this year we are the stocking the Official LED Holiday Lights of Centerra. These are the amazing lights that you see sparkling and glowing so brightly and beautifully at I-25 and Highway 34. The Holiday Creation brand LED lights are very high quality and will make your Christmas light display the envy of all in your neighborhood.

    Even better than that we are taking your old light strings in for recycling. In conjunction with Lights For Life Inc. we will take your old light strings, working or not. The lights get recylced by Lights For Life and the proceeds from this go to help children with cancer. This a true win-win situation. And to make it even better, we will give you $3.00 off per box of Holiday Creations brand LED lights when you bring your old light strings in. That makes this a win-win-win situation!

    So dig out your old lights that are tangled and half-working, bring them in and get money off of the Official Holiday Lights of Centerra. Put up these lights and you’ll have the best and brightest display of lights you’ve ever had, all while saving electricity, saving money, and helpings children with cancer! You’ll be glad you did!

  ( The $3.00 off offer is good through December 15, 2009, with a maximum of 5 boxes, or $15.00 off. But, if you have dozens of old strings try, “twisting our arm” and I’ll bet you can talk us in to $3.00 off on all the strings you need to buy!)

-Clark

No, not talking about a new type of hockey, but one more cool product, puck lights. You may have seen them here and there, they are small, hockey puck size lights that are often mounted under cabinets, desks and other such places. They often have halogen or xenon bulbs, but the newer ones are lit by LEDs.

We have new Dot It lights by Sylvania that are really cool! First of all they are LED so they stay cool, but that is not the kind of cool I mean. They have motion sensors that turn the lights on and control the brightness. I put a couple in our cupboards at home and what a difference they make! Now that dark corner cupboard with all the bowls and pots that you can never see has light in it. The Dot It lights are battery powered and mount in seconds with an adhesive backed magnet. Just a simple wave of your hand and the cupboard is well lit, and it even shuts itself off if you forget to.

The Dot It lights and all our other puck lights are some of the simples things to install and use, and are a great example of a simple thing that makes life just that much better. Some times it’s those little things that add just the right accent, and just the right practical touch, and the puck lights are just that.

     Well, it has been quite some time since I have blogged. No real reason, other than laziness. However, I have recently tried one of the coolest new products in the store and just had to blog on about it. It is the Simple Human motion sensor soap dispenser. Motion sensor soap dispenser? What? Why? Well here’s the what from the Simple Human Web site www.simplehuman.com:

The sensor soap pump dispenses soap touch-free to help avoid cross-contamination. Simply place your hand under the sensor to dispense soap automatically. An optional LED light timer blinks for 20 seconds to indicate how long to lather for germ-free hands. Four volume settings allow the pump to dispense preset amounts of soap or lotion. Operates on 4 AA batteries (not included).

     That’s a nice description of what it does, but it doesn’t begin to say how cool it is!

    As for the why, I thought, okay, I’m being a bit extravagant, but I want to try one for the kitchen. We had a soap dispenser built in to the sink, and frankly, it sucked. The soap never came out well, it was a hassle to fill and the soap turned green. Too weird. My wife got a soap bottle to put near the sink, but it was always dirty and you could never tell when you were about to run out. She also never liked to touch the soap dispenser with gooey hands while cooking, especially if preparing meats.

     So we’ve all seen this type of dispenser in public restrooms. How nice not to have to touch anything in a place like that. Well, it’s the same at home. It works really well, is simple to set up and is fun to use. You can easily adjust the amount of soap that comes out, and easily tell when it is running low. This would be great for kids, or us guys who often have really dirty hands. I won’t mention our price, because it’s lower than you’ll likely find elsewhere, which also makes it less extravagant and more fun! We liked ours so well we got a second one for the bathroom.

    I highly recommend the Simple Human Sensor Soap Pump!

     Are you looking for those wonderful and gorgeous lights that you see on the trees at Centerra in Loveland? Have you driven by I-25 and highway 34 and said, wow, those lights are amazing, where can I buy those? Well, look no further than our store for them. Yes, Orchards Ace Hardware has partnered with Blazen Illuminations of Loveland to bring you the Official LED Holiday Lights of Centerra this year! We have all the lights that you saw last season and they’re at a much better price than you have ever been able to purchase them before.

     Last season the lights were available to buy in the $20.00 range at Centerra. This season we have them as low as $9.99, most of them at $14.99 per box. We have the C-6 or pinecone variety available in multi colored, white, red, green, and the remarkable blue. We also have mini string available in all those same color varieties.

     The lights are truly a higher quality LED string than anything else you’ll see in the market. These lights, by Holiday Creations of Centennial, CO, have true Diogen LED’s in them. Each LED is colored, not just a white led with a colored lens over them. This gives them their true and consistent remarkable color. They use hardly any electricity, can be strung end-to-end a long, long way and really, really sparkle and look great!

     We have a wide variety of other LED lights as well this season including, icicle strings, wreaths, and garland. They are in the Celebrations brand and run a little less money, but are not as good looking.

     So remember if you like the Christmas lights that you see at Centerra in Loveland, come on in and we’ll get you what you want!

    One more new product we now have in stock is heat shrink tubing. Yes, very true, we have stocked heat shrink tubing for years, but only in short, packaged lengths. We now have heat shrink tubing in rolls and you may purchase any length that you desire. What is even better about this is that we not only have it in black we also have it in clear! Yes, clear het shrink tubing! It’s really versatile, and can be used for many, many purposes. It is really clear; you can easily see right through it after it has shrunk. Use this for protection of handles, tools, hoses, wires, cables, etc. not only for sealing wire connections. I don’t know how much more exciting can make clear heat shrink sound in a blog, but come see it; it really is cool!

     We have yet another fun new product line in the store: Split Loom Tubing. Yes, we have carried split loom tubing for many years, but only a fraction of what we now stock. We have just brought in colored split loom tubing! We now have red, blue, yellow, white & orange in three diameters and sell it by the foot so you can get just the length you need.

     What is split loom tubing? Well some may now it as convoluted tubing, but we hate to have any convoluted products! It’s the plastic flexible tubing with that is split so you may insert wiring, small tubes, cables, whatever inside it to protect them from abrasion and to help manage tangles. You’ve seen it under the hood of your car, on the back of you home theater system, on computer desks, and anywhere else you may need it. It’s uses are only limited by your imagination. For instance, my cat has a nasty habit of chewing cords, like the one that runs from my alarm clock. So I put the split loom over the cord, and now he only chews on it, saving him from a shocking experience.

     What’s even more fun is that we now have metallic split loom tubing! This comes in red, blue and chrome. All you guys out there with hot rods and Harleys who have wanted to dress up your wiring, come take a look at this. Also available in three diameters, this metallic split loom really looks sharp!

     -Clark

    Today is Halloween, so you know what that means; trick or treaters, falling leaves, the beginning of the sugar holidays? Well yes, but that’s not where I’m going. It’s the start of the snowy season. Growing up in Colorado I can hardly remember a Halloween where it did not snow. At the best it was cold, way too cold to wear your cool costume. After awhile we all figured out how to get a costume to fit over a ski jacket. Well today is warm, sunny and beautiful out, so it seems like I’m being proved wrong today, but none the less, snow season is just around the corner.

    Snow season means that you’ll want to use your snowthrower when we do get that big snow. Well, NOW is the time to get your snowthrower out of storage and get it running again. Every year when that first big snow hits we receive dozens and dozens of phone calls about a snowthrower that won’t start. Most of the time, it’s a very simple thing to fix. Most of the time, the problem began with the last time a snowthrower was used and the fact that it wasn’t put away properly.

    It is very important to use fuel stabilizer, such as Stabil, in the fuel for your snowthrower. The key is to put in Stabil right away when you’re at the gas station filling your gas can. Stabil will keep fresh fuel fresh, but it won’t make stale fuel fresh again. It is more important to use this for your snowthrower than other gas equipment because your snowthrower is more likely to sit for 8, 10, even 14 months between uses. In that time, with modern fuel you’re very likely to have fuel trouble.

    So you forgot to use Stabil and now you can’t get your snowthrower started. Here’s a trick we’ve used many times with good success: Empty all the fuel out of the tank. Replace it with fresh fuel. Prime the engine, really prime it. Prime it to the point of flooding by pushing the primer bulb 15-20 times. The engine will be flooded, so let it sit for an hour or so. After the flooding goes away the engine will likely start more or less normally. Run it for several minutes, and then it should run normally after that. What this does is pump the fresh fuel that you’ve just put in through the line and through the carburetor and flushes out the old stale fuel.

    Remember Now is the time to do this, when it’s nice out, when there’s not snow on the ground that you need to clear right away, and when you have time to get it fixed if it’s something more major. We recommend Mac Equipment here in Loveland for all small engine work.

A word of warning, it is not the manufacturer’s responsibility to use fresh fuel or keep the fuel in good condition. That is your responsibility. No manufacturer warranties will cover bad fuel and you will have to pay for repairs.