Growing skills in parenting and organizing.
Walking into a newly built home always brings house envy to me. The fresh smell and new fixtures makes me realize that our house needs some updating. It is the little things in a house that makes it feel new or out of date. The few things I always feel makes a home feel new are door hardware, lighting and fresh carpet.
About 6 months ago we replaced our rug in our living room. It helped to freshen up the space but I was ready to get to step 2 immediately…replace the door knobs.
This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.
My boys are obsessed with muffins. In fact, they are the only thing they have eaten for breakfast before school for the past year. Now I am not a super health food Mom but I do believe in a good breakfast so I have opted to make their muffins from scratch.
Why does it seem to be that you are either good at baking or cooking but not both? 🙂 I am a decent baker but am not a good cook. Maybe it is because I am pretty good at following a recipe exactly?? I don’t have many (if any) recipes on my blog because this just isn’t a huge skill of mine but over the past year of making muffins for the kids I think I have perfected the crispy edge.
This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.
Do you love to look through cookbooks too? The pictures and the possibilities of amazing food on each page are so fun to look though. I like receiving cookbooks as gifts and they are also great gifts to give at bridal showers, birthdays, and holidays. One time a friend sent me a cookbook that took the gift to a whole other level! I want to share with everyone how to upgrade the gift of a cookbook into something amazing and thoughtful and it doesn’t even cost anything extra!
This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.
Do you love your Keurig like I do? It is one of my favorite Christmas gifts I received last year. The crazy thing is that I don’t even drink coffee on a regular basis. This past winter I made a list of my favorite non-coffee drinks using the Keurig. Now that it is in the 80s and warm here where I live, I have been testing out iced drinks. I am drinking one right now as I am typing.
When I first went to the grocery store to check the aisles for iced beverages I didn’t see anything that caught my eye but as soon as I checked Amazon there were many options. Here are my top 4.
Do you have bags of chips just piled on top of one another in your pantry? I did until I figured out how best to organize bags of chips.
I had so many piled up that I was starting to buy more pretzels and tortilla chips when I had half-open bags that I just couldn’t see.
This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.
Did you think Keurigs were just for people making coffee? Well, guess what. You can make other things too. When I found out that you can make soups and drinks that aren’t coffee in the Keurig I thought I would give it a try. Here are my top 3 delicious non-coffee drinks plus my thoughts on making soup in the Keurig.
I feel like I need to share this awesome app for keeping up with a grocery list for the family.
In our family we have had several grocery list systems over the years. A long time ago, when it was just me going to the store and I would just make my list on a piece of paper on my counter. I would keep the paper out during the week and just add what we needed to my list. This worked for a while but sometimes I would be out running errands and would decide I wanted to go to the store and didn’t have my list or would lose it. Also, it was just another piece of clutter laying on the counter at all times.
When we had a couple of kids my husband started going to the store more often for me but he would just grab the things I just asked him for and wouldn’t get the items I needed on my list because he didn’t have it. We even tried to keep a list on a white board on our refrigerator.
Now we have finally hit our stride. We use the app Cozi to keep up with our grocery list.
It is easy to click on the app on my phone and add something to the list any time I think of it.
The big bonus is that my husband and I share the same account so it doesn’t matter who is at the store. Both of us have the same app and see the same list. So if I added paper plates 2 days ago, when he goes to the store on his own to get more BBQ sauce he can see that we need paper plates without even asking me.
He can check off that he bought it and then it is no longer on the list. I love it! This is a good example of how technology can be amazing and save so much time and energy.
Have you converted from paper lists to using an app? Which one do you like?
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.
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….
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?
