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How to Make 4 Dozen Mini-Muffins at One Time aka Best Christmas Gift

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

I am ridiculously excited about one of my Christmas gifts. My husband comes up with great ideas. When I told one of my friends about my gift I was super excited about she just looked at me and said, “Carolyn, I thought you were going to show me some jewelry or tell me about a trip.” Ha Ha!! This is my life now I guess and anything that cuts an hour of cooking time is a huge deal to me.

How to Make 4 Dozen Mini-Muffins at One Time

My kids are not the best breakfast eaters in the world which I am sure a bunch of you can totally relate. The only thing they like to eat in the morning are frozen mini-muffins. I bake them myself to try and make myself feel better that they only eat muffins every morning before school. This means I make a double batch about every other week to keep a lot of muffins in the freezer.

The process is to make the double batch of banana muffin batter and then use my normal size mini-muffin pan and bake a batch for 15 mins then let them cool at least 5 mins before removing them and starting over again. This means I am having to watch the oven and do the process again and again for over an hour.

Enter my husbands surprise for me….

48 count Mini Muffin Pan Christmas Gift

Ta Dah!! A gigantic mini-muffin pan!!

Yes, you all can look at me like I am crazy…this thing makes me so happy!

You can get your own with this link.

No, my husband did not pay that amount. He said he bought it for $19.99 at a local Kitchen & Co.

What was your favorite present this year?

Filed Under: In The Kitchen

How to Get in the Weight Loss Zone

by Carolyn 2 Comments

I am not a doctor so please don’t take this as medical advice. 

Many years ago I “got in the zone” and lost 30 lbs in a couple months. I had gained a lot of weight the first year I was out of college and living in New York City. I was working non-stop, drinking most nights and there was a 24 hour McDonalds across the street from my apartment building. It was a recipe for major weight gain.

How to get into the Weight Loss Zone

After 3 years in the city, I transferred “home” and started to slowly adjust to a more normal way of life. I still could not get the weight off even though I was constantly telling myself to stop eating so much. I was also exercising pretty regularly but nothing was happening. This is when I finally figured out how to get into the Weight Loss Zone.

If you talk to anyone that has lost a significant amount of weight in a rather short period of time, they will tell you that they understand what I am talking about when I say “the zone”. Here are my tips on how to get in the weight loss zone so that you see results.

  1. Eat basically the same things at each meal. Sure you can mix it up slightly but what you want is for there to be hardly any decision making in your head. You don’t want to have options where your head is thinking…”hmm, what should I have for lunch today?”. You want it all laid out, for example, for lunch today is my turkey sandwich with hummus spread and a small bag of pretzels. A weight loss system or plan could work here but I just figured out what calorie range I wanted to be at and put together some normal meals that came to that amount of calories. I can’t remember exactly but I think my breakfast was a bowl of cereal, lunch was turkey sandwich and pretzels, I can’t remember my snack and a lean cuisine for dinner. Then my popsicle trick (click here) for after dinner.
  2. 3 days uninterrupted. You do not want to start at a time where you know you need to go to a business dinner the next night or if a friend is having a big party that weekend where you know you will probably blow your momentum. You need to start to feel some success so that you have strength to get yourself through the tough situations. Here is what I did. I started on a Monday that I knew I had no major plans during the week. I ate food that was pretty healthy, exercised every day (I took a 45 min speed walk which was 15 mins longer than my normal amount) and did my popsicle trick. I remember that after the first week I had a hardly any results and was a little frustrated but then 10 days into it I had a big drop and then it started slowly and consistently coming off. When you start to see some success you have the strength to go to a dinner out and make the right choices.
  3. You have to want to feel a little bit of hunger. This is important!! I am the type of person that makes sure I never feel hungry. If I think it may be a longer time until I get a meal I will overeat or have a snack. I do everything in my power to never feel hunger but during the time I was losing weight this weird thing happened. I enjoyed feeling a little bit hundry. In my mind, it meant I was succeeding. Alert: this is where I say that too much of this is unhealthy but a when you are losing weight you need to be ok with slight hunger.

After losing almost 30 lbs I went back to eating regularly. I wasn’t overeating or in an unhealthy environment at that time so for me going back to my “normal” eating was just maintenance. I was easily able to maintain the weight loss. This way of losing weight was good because my weight gain was from a temporary change in environment and in my normal environment I was able to maintain my normal weight very easily. So I just needed to have a short period of time to get myself back to my normal weight.

I hope this helps someone. If anything, it has reminded me how to get myself into a zone to accomplish anything.

Good Luck!

Filed Under: Fitness

Vow This Year to Get Laundry Under Control

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

In previous years when making resolutions I would vow this year to get laundry under control. Over the years of adding 3 kids to our brood I have finally found how I best keep laundry under control. I thought I would share my method since I love to peek into other mothers world’s to see how others “get it all done”.

Vow to Get Laundry Under Control

Tip #1 – Have a Main Laundry Day

Personally I start on Monday since all my kids are in school that particular day. I start with my and my husbands clothes and sort them into 3 piles –  whites, colors/shirts and colors/pants. This way my shirts that may be more delicate aren’t tumbling around with Matt’s heavy jeans. I start our clothes and try to get as many loads through the day complete as possible.

I hang to dry most of my clothes. I like to put all my clothes into the dryer for 5 mins to get the wrinkles out and then pull them out to hang to dry the rest of the way. This way I avoid ironing. Now, I am a super distracted person running from task to task so I MUST SET THE TIMER ON MY PHONE!!! When my timer goes off I know to run up and pull the clothes out of the dryer.

I loved reading the blog A Slob Comes Clean and if you want to read about her Laundry Day click here.

Tip # 2 – Have the right tools

I was using a small sink in my upstairs guest bathroom to soak one shirt at a time if there were stains. This caused a back up in laundry. Usually several of my boys shirts need to soak overnight in Oxyclean before being washed. I needed to purchase a small tub to be able to soak several shirts at one time. No, I do not have a sink in my laundry room. 🙁 So sad but I use this bucket and it works for me. I like the low sides so I can easily fill it in my sink and keep it on the counter when I have something soaking.

Tip #3 – Don’t sort the kids clothes

Yes, throw all the colors in together in one load! Unless it is a brand new red cotton shirt they will all be just fine. I wash them all on cold. I do one load of my boys clothes and one load of my daughters clothes. Trust me, I am particular about my laundry. I don’t like anyone else to do it since I hang dry most of my clothes and some of my daughters too.

Don’t you love reading how others do daily tasks? I know I do.

Filed Under: Cleaning Tips

Merry Christmas

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas

Have a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is on Santa’s good list.

Filed Under: Family Updates

Update Your Outlets to USB Ports

by Carolyn 4 Comments

We were recently at a party at a friends newly constructed home and my husband was so excited to see these outlets. He wanted one in our house too and went straight to Lowe’s the next day. It is such an awesome thing to have with all the power cords we need for our iPads and iPhones. I am going to have him give you some tips on how to update your outlets to USB ports too. Here is Matt, my awesome and super handy husband….

Home Improvement | Upgrade Outlet | USB Port | Update Your Home | Update Outlets to USB Ports

There are multiple options when it comes to selecting an outlet with USB ports.  We went with the one pictured, one normal plug and 2 USB ports.  The Best of Both Worlds if you ask me.

Update Outlets to USB ports

Make sure you turn off the power at the breaker before starting to remove the original outlet.  You can do this a few different ways, I use a volt meter as seen in the picture below.  Another easy way to do it by yourself is to use a clock radio.  Plug it is and turn it on with the volume up sort of loud.  You need to be able to hear it when you are at your breaker box.  Most of the time your breakers are not well marked when it comes to wall outlets, so it becomes a trial and error to find the correct breaker.  This can mean a lot of running back and forth if you are by yourself.  This little trick will save you a lot of trips to the breaker box.  When you don’t hear the music, you found the correct breaker.  It is now safe to go to work.

Update Outlets to USB Ports

The only thing to remember is that when you buy the new outlet, you will probably need a new wall plate too.  As can be seen in the pictures above, the wall plates are different.  The old one just had cutouts for the outlets themselves and the new one is a rectangular cutout.

Thanks Matt, I need to have him become a regular on my blog. He is not afraid to get into things and try to fix or build it himself. An awesome skill that I wish I had, he will tinker with things by himself to try and figure it out first before asking for help while I am just the opposite. I scream for help at the first little frustration. Can you say no patience? Ha Ha.

And now our home is up to 2015 technology, well at least one of our outlets.

Filed Under: Decorating, Get Organized

Fennell Family Life – Weekend Update

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

The weekend before Christmas is always full of great events. Our neighbors had a fun party on Friday night. We have a great neighborhood and know a lot of people but now I was able to meet some new friends.

On Saturday evening we took our boys to a basketball clinic at our school held by the University of Louisville Women’s Basketball team. Very random since we do not live in Kentucky but they were in town to play a local school and did a clinic at our school. My boys had a lot of fun.

Louisville Basketball Clinic

My boys are in a stage where they tell me they don’t want to do anything. I told them about the clinic and they fussed and carried on, saying they weren’t going. They only want to go to things where they know they have friends at the same event. I need to constantly tell myself not to listen to them and to push them to do things like this because they always end up having so much fun.

Basketball Boys Clinic

I have family that works at University of Louisville so that is another connection we had to the school.

Then last evening we hosted a work party for my husband. It was a good time and very nice to meet some of the people he works with on a daily basis. I don’t really get to meet a lot of his coworkers since they work on a secure site so I can’t go visit him there. They are all great people, no duds in the bunch. 🙂 It was also a great reason to use our Christmas china. I can’t even remember the last time we used it.

Christmas China

The next couple days are crunch time. I have a couple more gifts to get for a few people on the list. I have never had such an issue with gifts. Some people this year are very difficult to come up with ideas.

I had better get moving and get some of my to do list accomplished.

Filed Under: Family Updates

Family Room Lighting Updates

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Our Christmas tree is up and beautiful. We have a new 12 foot tree and I love looking up at it. One problem that is highlighted by this tall tree is our ceiling fan. I would love to replace it with a chandelier. After having 8 years of kids in this house, it is time for some replacing and changing of several items in our family room.

Christmas Tree Ceiling Fan

After looking online, I have found several options. I need a big pendant light that has a lot of light bulbs. It also needs to be large enough to fit in with the two story ceiling. It can get dark in this room so I need to brighten it up. Whenever my father comes to visit he constantly talks about how dark it is in here and that I need more overhead lighting and lamps. I also want to change my family room to a more coastal feel. So here are my favorites.

Parrot Uncle Pendant Light

 

This would fit the bill. I just went thru some pendant lights at ParrotUncle.com. They have great affordable options for large pendants and chandeliers. I love the antique wood and metal finish. It looks like a substantial light that would fit the space.

I also need a floor lamp. I put away all our lamps when we had twin toddler boys. They would climb everything and I was worried they would knock them over. 🙂 I am hoping at almost 8 years old I can trust them not to climb on the tables. I need something by our chair so I can actually read or work in comfort. Working at the kitchen table is getting old and I would love to have another option to sit but it is too dark to even read a magazine sometimes.

These wooden floor lamps are definitely the vibe I am going for, coastal and modern.

Parrot Uncle Wood Floor Lamp

There are several that I would love to add to my room. I am a terrible decision maker, it took me 6 months to decide on a new rug. I’ll do a rug update in the next few weeks too. Luckily I remembered to do some before shots and would love to do a before and after post on my room changes once I get it completed. I am taking down the red curtains and going to change them to a blue-green color. I think it will really brighten up the space as well as some more lighting.

Are you thinking what I am thinking? That Santa needs to bring me a chandelier/pendant light to replace the ceiling fan. Happy Holidays!

 

 

Filed Under: Decorating

Bonus Cleaning – Dusting Cloths Review

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

There is nothing like hosting a party to get you motivated to deep clean the house. I needed to dig deep and thoroughly dust the entire house.  A couple months ago I had bought some store brand dusting cloths. I normally buy Swiffer brand but the other brand was on sale so I thought, “Hey, I’ll give those a try.” For fun I thought I would do a side by side comparison.

Review of Dusting Cloths

I pulled out the two cloths and as you can see there is a pretty big difference between to the two. The Swiffer brand is soft with lots of quilting. The store brand is thin and feels very waxy.

Comparison of Dusting Cloths

My testing shelf. It is extremely dusty and the black surface made a great photo of the dust.

Before shot of the dusting cloths review

So now let’s get to using the cloths. I did a big swipe with each cloth. The dust was picked up by both brands. It held onto both of the cloths so didn’t just fall to the floor but I did feel like the store brand had a few fly aways into the air.

Dusting Review Action Shot

My final thoughts on the two brands.

  1. The Swiffer cloth is much softer and thicker.
  2. They really both did the job sufficiently.
  3. If you have an allergy to dust I would definitely use Swiffer brand due to the airborne particles I saw.
  4. Both of them do the job sufficiently so it comes down to whether the feel of the cloth is worth the more expensive price. Everyone has a different budget so that is up to you. If you use a bunch of these regularly then it is probably best to go store brand but I will probably buy Swiffer just because the feel of it is important to me. My husband would totally roll his eyes at this but hey…he isn’t using them so I get to pick! 🙂

Filed Under: Cleaning Tips

Personalize your Phone Charger

by Carolyn 1 Comment

Is everyone “borrowing your phone charger? We have several family trips with extended family and since we all have iPhones, the chargers get all mixed up. Sometimes I would be packing up at the end of our trip and had no clue if I had already packed our charger cords or if mine was still one of the many near an outlet.

Phone-Cord-Washi1

So I saw this idea to personalize your phone charger with washi tape. It has made it so easy to keep track of my charger. I haven’t lost it yet and everyone knows it is mine.

Just take your favorite washi tape and wrap it around the outlet and the cord. This way each piece is marked as yours. Mine is peeling up a bit so I may need to redo it soon, but it has lasted almost a year which I think is pretty good for keeping up with my phone cord.

Now if only my kids would remember to plug the iPads in when the battery runs low instead of just leaving it on the table, we would be all set. Sigh… 🙂

 

 

Filed Under: Get Organized

Favorite Advent Toys That Kids Love

by Carolyn 19 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Every year when we pull out the Christmas decorations, our kids love these 2 Favorite Advent Toys. I love that every day during December they play with these and it helps them to remember that we are really celebrating the birth of Jesus. The fact that they are only out for one month during the year makes them special.

I love having some kid friendly nativity sets and advent toys around the house at Christmas. These are played with the most every year that I pull them out. Here are some favorite Advent toys that kids love. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Christmas Tips

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Welcome to Fennell Seeds. I am Carolyn Fennell and I have twin boys and a little girl. Do you feel like you are struggling to keep up with your house, life and all the little things? Let's figure out short cuts and helpful tips together. Welcome! Read more...

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