Wednesday, November 30, 2011

One Ingredient

It's amazing what one ingredient can do.

It can take something from YUM to . . . huh.  From, "Mom, can I have another one?" to "No thanks, I'm not really hungry right now."

What's 1 cup of sugar anyway?  Of course in Kool-aid I can understand - after water, it's the main ingredient.

No, I wasn't trying to be healthy.  Blame a quick glance at the recipe, assuming I knew all I needed.  Take it from me, be sure to add the sugar in this recipe.  With it my family and I highly recommend them.  Without . . . not so much.

REAL GOOD NO-BAKE COOKIES 
Bring to Boil:  1 cup sugar and 1 cup white Karo syrup
Add 1 1/2 cups peanut butter.
Mix together and pour over 6 cups of corn flakes.

If I wasn't so uptight over the fact that I'm not eating what I would really like to be right now, I could probably come up with an amazingly symbolic lesson, but as it stands, make up your own.  WITH the sugar.

Laundry Love

I know what you're thinking.  "Did she really just say laundry and love in the same heading???"  Yes, dear reader, I did.  A couple days ago I read this post talking about a family's laundry system and immediately fell in love.  I presented it to the kids, wanting to get them on board, and they responded very positively as well.

And so, today we began.  Baskets in place, we sent a few loads through.  Because of space everyone is sharing a basket with someone else.  Melanie shares with Madeleine, and delightfully volunteered to fold her clothes as well.  (Yippee!)  Only time will tell how well this will really work, but I can think of few hiccups in this system.

While telling a friend about it, she mentioned something a friend of hers does to make sorting easier (that has been one of Adam's complaints with the girls' clothes - that he doesn't know whose is whose).  For instance, the oldest girl gets one dot on the tag of her clothes, the second two, third three...  You get the picture.  So for one, it's an easy tool to glance at the dot(s) and see who the item of clothing belongs to, but as said oldest girl grows out of something, another dot is added, continuing things down the line.  Easy as pie.  (Which isn't actually very easy, at least not easy to make it look lovely, but we can talk about that another day.)

Something else we've been trying to do, and with our new basket system will definitely push harder, is having everyone put their socks into a lingerie bag when they take them off instead of tossing them into the basket.  What does that spell?  No sorting socks!  Some are better at this than others, but it's time to make another push for that.

Bottom line - the coolest moms make jobs easy so there is more time to be the cool mom and less time being the slave driver.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Welcome


Welcome To My House
Some houses try to hide the fact that children shelter there,
Ours boasts of it quite openly, the signs are everywhere,
For smears are on the windows, little smudges on the door,
I should apologize I guess for toys strewn on the floor,
But I sat down with the children and we played and laughed and read,
And if the windows do not shine, their eyes will shine instead,
And when at times I'm forced to choose the one job or the other,
I want to be a housewife, but first I'll be a mother.
--Author Unknown

I read this while glancing through a book yesterday and had to come home and find it to share.  For more on my feelings about that, read this other post.

While I'm on the topic of awesome moms, isn't this a fabulous cake?   I'm definitely going to have to make that for someone's birthday soon.

And speaking of cooking, I am make two of THESE last night.  Don't you wish you were going to be at our Thanksgivings?  The second is mainly to ensure I have leftovers.  YUM.

Friday, November 18, 2011