7 Quick Takes: January 29, 2010 (Vol. 28)

~ 1 ~

I have been totally digging being able to read all of the results that have been coming in from the Many Little Blessings Reader Survey.  If you are a reader, you can still take the survey (and get entered into a drawing).  I promise to share some of the results later.  Fun stuff.

If you are a blogger and you haven't done a reader survey yet, I would recommend it.  I'm learning all kinds of things about the people who read the blog.

~ 2 ~

I started using Simple Mom's Daily Docket this week.  I really love it!  It's a free download, so go check it out!  (She actually has several free downloads that might be of interest.) Maybe the daily docket won't be what you are looking for, but it has really helped me to prioritize what I want to get done each day.

~ 3 ~

This week, I made (for the first time) Double Fudge Coca Cola Cake.  Yes, it does taste as good as it sounds like it would.  My Mom makes it, but I never had.  I'm pleased to say that it came out just as tasty as I remembered.  (I'll post the recipe in the next week or two.) 

Here's the thing -- I had a Hanukkah Miracle (or maybe Loaves of Bread and Fishes), of sorts, with this recipe.  I saw that the recipe called for three tablespoons of cocoa powder.  I freaked out when I opened the familiar chocolate brown Hershey's container because, at best, there were two tablespoons worth.  Luckily, I just squeaked by with enough.

Then, I went to make the frosting (which has to be put on the cake when it's still warm) and saw that it also needed three tablespoons of cocoa powder.  When it's 1 a.m. and your cake is coming out in about 20 minutes, this is not a good thing.

It was trivial, I know it was, but I prayed, "Please God, Please.  Just let me come close to three tablespoons."  Well, wouldn't you know it that out of what looked like nothing, I managed to get three tablespoons and still had some to spare!

~ 4 ~

Speaking of stressful things, I was so disappointed when I found out that Harry Connick Jr. will be playing at the Super Bowl (since the Saints, his hometown team, made it in).  Why is this?  Well, it meant that even though he was supposed to play at Blissdom on Saturday night, now he would be doing it on Friday night - at exactly the same time as the Savvy Blogging Round Table Discussion and Dinner.  Boo!

It was time for a tough choice, and I was none too happy to have to make it.  So, sadly, next time I see Harry will be on the TV during the Super Bowl.  I just couldn't pass up attending such a wonderful event (Savvy Blogging).   Maybe next time, Harry.

~ 5 ~

Because of number 4, I already want the Colts to win, but now this will give me a little more gusto with my cheering them on.

~ 6 ~

It is almost three o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm still wearing pajamas.  (But, I need to pick up the pace and get a couple of things done post haste, so I'll skip out on pictures for my post this week.  Sorry!)

~ 7 ~

I can't believe next week at this time, I'll be at Blissdom.  Let's just hope that I manage to actually pass out the cute business cards I put together and also manage not to do anything that will make everyone tweet, "Did you see what Angie from Many Little Blessings did?  *GASP*" 

 




 

This post is linked to 7 Quick Takes and Weekly Wrap Up.

Strategies For Getting Caught Up On Email for the Easily Distracted

Did that title catch your eye?  It probably means that you are a lot like me.  I have the best of intentions to get caught up on email, but then one email makes me say, "Oh yeah -- I meant to check that on Facebook."  Or, maybe an email mentions an idea that I want to look up.  Then, instead of looking it up later, I bring up Google.  An hour later, when I'm doing something completely unrelated to what I originally went to look for, I remember that I was working on email.

I'm not going to pretend that by giving strategies that it means that I'm keeping up with my emails.  Just ask Brenda, I'm not.  But, here are a few strategies that always seem to make me clear out my inbox (at least partially).

Work Offline: I have been making it a practice to take my laptop along with me to the boys' piano lessons.  We spend an hour at the teacher's apartment, and I spend most of that hour just working on email.  Because I'm offline while doing it, all of the emails have to wait until I get home to send.  But, it also means that I can't pop online to be distracted. 

Just this week, their teacher said that she had been meaning to ask me if I wanted her security code so I could get online.  I told her that as much as I would love it, I found the time to be most productive because I was offline.  I was proud of myself for not caving in to my usual distracted behavior.

Set a Timer:  I really enjoy using Tiny Timer to set a timer for working on my email (or other tasks where I tend to get distracted).  What I will do is decide how long I want to work on email and then put it in the timer.  Then, I can't do anything else on the computer (other than email) until the timer goes off.  I have been known to then give myself a little time to play around after the timer goes off, and then set it again.  The timer, of course, is great for any number of purposes though -- check it out.

Delete Emails that Don't Need Answers:  I have a tendency to forget to delete emails that ought to just be deleted.  When I let them build up, it makes me overwhelmed to check my email.  I am always more apt to work on my email when my inbox isn't brimming over with messages.

Set up Filters/Separate Email Accounts:  I don't tend to use filters on my email, but I do have a few email accounts.  While this may seem counter intuitive to being caught up on email, it helps me to have specific email accounts for specific tasks.  For instance, my email account for Catholic Mothers Online gets a lot of email, but it is also not something I need to check every day.  But, when I do check it, I tend to work through it all in one setting.  (This works for me because I use Outlook Express for most of these and can change between email accounts with two clicks of the mouse.)

Five Sentence Emails: Based on the idea on Sentenc.es - A Disciplined Way to Deal with Email, I work hard to keep some of my emails as brief as possible.  This helps me to move through some of them faster (and I'm less likely to let my mind wander).  Then again, I also manage to write emails that are as long as this post, so that does cut down on my efficiency.

Put Email on my To Do List: Sometimes, I just have to write a specific goal on my to do list, when I get really behind.  For instance, I may write, "Answer 20 Emails" as a to do item.  I really enjoy checking off tasks, so this is like a challenge to me.  It helps to keep me from being distracted when I know I can make a notch on a paper for every email sent.


Anything that I missed that works for you?  Do you tend to keep up with your email or let is pile up?







This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Easy Visual Reminder for Sorting Similarly Sized Kids Clothes

If you have children that are the same gender that are in similarly sized clothes, you probably have had the problem that we have run into here from time to time.  There would be a shirt with some very non-specific size like "medium" or there would be a 8/10 sized shirt that ran either much smaller or much bigger than the size would indicate, and then we'd forget who the shirt belonged to.  This got especially confusing because shirts that we would associate with Noah would become Jack's shirt after Noah grew out of it.

So, one day I went through all of the boys' shirts and put a single dot on the tags of Noah's shirts.  On Jack's, I put two dots.  And, now when Noah outgrows a shirt, I just add another dot to the tag and it's easy to remember that it's now Jack's shirt.

Of course, while my kids love tagless shirts, it has thrown me for a loop on how to keep up with them with dots.  On some of them, I've just done it very small on the back of the shirt on the collar area (depending on the shirt).

So, for poor Jack, this means that hand-me-downs will always be plentiful and easily identified.  Sorry Jack, but my checkbook appreciates it.







This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

A Little Effort Ahead of Time Can Really Save You Later

Last night, we were rushing around close to dinner time.  We hadn't planned what to have for dinner, so we were left with that far too familiar dilemma about what to make when it was already getting close to 6 pm.

Thanks to some pre-planning, however, we were able to have a tasty dinner in no time!  I know -- I just said we hadn't planned, and now I'm saying that we planned.  We hadn't planned for dinner that night, but we were able to take advantage of the fact that I had previously purchased and browned several pounds of ground beef.  I made a couple of pounds of that ground beef into sloppy joes (which I made into two different meal portions), and then I made the rest of the ground beef into taco meat.  I froze all of these into meal sized portions in Ziploc bags.

So, although we hadn't planned for dinner, we were able to quickly throw together a meal of sloppy joes thanks to some time spent after a trip to the grocery store.


Do you have any go to meals or quick tricks that help you on nights like this?  Trust me -- I could use them!

 





This post is linked to Tasty Tuesday.


photo by AZAdam

Cleaning My Itty Bitty Craft Room...Once Again

Do you have a room or area of your house that always seems to get messy?  I would like to say that my craft room is that area in our house, but I would be overlooking my desk and the counter.  (I will admit, however, that I did notice that two of the most problem areas are my areas in the house.)

Since I am having a group of women over this weekend for a mixed media painting class, I figured that I better get my craft room in order.  Since it's a mere 35 square feet, we won't use it for the class, of course.  But, I suspect everyone will see it at some point, so I have to be prepared.

Brace yourself -- this is what the room looked like right before I started to clean:

Unsettling, isn't it?

It's true -- I couldn't even walk into the room.  Every surface had something on it, and it kind of freaked me out every time I walked past it.  This was definitely not something that I wanted to show off to my friends.

After a couple hours of clean up, one bag of stuff to give away, and one bag of stuff to throw away, here is what I ended up with:

 

It's not as beautiful as the craft studios that I see in books and around the Internet, but I have to admit that I am pretty pleased with how it looks right now.  If it can just stay looking like this until the end of this week, then I'll be set!

What are the most problem areas in your house?

 

This post is linked to Tackle it Tuesday.

Flash Freezing Fruit to Save Money and the Environment

Forgive me, but I should have posted about flash freezing before our weather went to flash freezing in the blink of an eye.  However, I got to think about it while cleaning out my freezer and coming across cherries and blueberries.  So, I decided to go ahead and post about it right now anyway.

Why flash freeze?

By flash freezing locally grown fruit (or vegetables, like chopped peppers, for instance), you can not only save money, but you are also helping the environment.  For instance, because my family enjoyed blueberry muffins this summer when I made them, then I bought several pints when the prices were very low this summer at the grocery store.  I saved quite a bit of money, and the blueberries all came from the next state over from ours, rather than buying them during the winter and heaven only knows where they would have to ship them from (that's where the helping the environment comes in).

I didn't purposefully set out to flash freeze cherries though.  But, I bought some and we ate through them like crazy.  So, I bought more, and we didn't really touch them.  So, instead of letting them go to waste, I flash froze them instead.  I did this with bell peppers from our garden too.  Rather than let them go bad, I chopped them and flash froze the pieces.

To flash freeze produce (such as the cherries that I have pictures of), I washed them all first.  (For cherries, leave the stems intact.)

Then, I made sure that everything was very dry.  I both dried them myself, and also allowed them some time to air dry.  If you leave water on them before putting them in the freezer, of course, they will get very icy.

Spread whatever you are freezing out on a cookie sheet or whatever type of pan you can fit in your freezer.  Make sure to leave space in between items, or they might stick together as they freeze.

I let these freeze for around 30 - 45 minutes, or until they were cold and solidly frozen.  Then, I just bagged them into freezer bags in small portions, and put those smaller bags into a larger freezer bag that I put the name of the contents and date on the outside of.

This is a fun and frugal way to enjoy locally grown goodies in the middle of winter, as well as to avoid possible waste around your home.








This post is linked to: Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, and Frugal Fridays.

Are The Toys Still Organized?

I recently had a reader ask about the organization that we did with Molly's toys. She was curious how things were going with the bins and picture labels, three months after I originally posted about it.

I really wanted to take an opportunity to write about it because I think that often, as bloggers, we get a great idea and post about it right away. But, then we often don't post later to say, "Wow -- this totally didn't actually work for us" or "Things are still going great with this!"

I am thrilled to report that Molly (and everyone else in the family, as they were often culprits in not keeping things organized as well) has continued to enjoy this system and has been keeping her toys clean and organized. Of course, there are times that everything is sitting out. But, it's easy to get it all cleaned up.

As a matter-of-fact, I realized how well the system was working when she was putting some toys in one of the tubs, and then saw a Care Bear in the Littlest Pet Shop tub. She laughed and said, "There's a Care Bear in the Littlest Pet Shop box," as though it was the funniest thing she had seen in a while. She then promptly removed it and put it in the correct box.

I had previously tried over and over to organize toys into tubs, but it always ended up disorganized later. The labels, however, seemed to make all the difference. And what a difference that is!

Thanks for the great question!

An Unexpected Source of Blogging Topics

A few weeks ago, I grabbed out my blog idea notebook and noticed that there weren't tons of ideas left in it. I realized that I needed to do some brainstorming. But, then I realized that I had overlooked a very important source for topics.

I got comfortable out on my porch, grabbed my camera with its 8 gb card and my blog idea notebook, and got to work. I went through the whole card (although this could work just as well with photographs you have stored on your computer), and jotted down topic ideas based on pictures that I had taken.

So often, I take pictures of something and think, "I should write about this on the blog." But, then sometimes I just don't get back to it. Now, however, I ended up with four pages of blog topic ideas (12 - 15 ideas per page), just based on the pictures on my memory card. Next to each of those topics, I just wrote a simple "(with picture)" as a way to remind myself that it was something that I had a picture to go with.

I was so jazzed to have so many ideas right on hand! Maybe you have a treasure trove of blog topics waiting for you on your computer or memory card as well.

Do you have any unexpected sources of blogging topics? Do you organize pictures that you take to remind yourself to write about them later?

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Picture by chromewaves

Our Homeschool Classroom

This summer, the room that we use as a toy room and school room was a mess. But, now as we have ventured into the beginning of the school year (today!), I finally got it all cleaned up and organized. (What a huge relief!)

The boxes that I plan to use for Work Boxes for the kids (once I can get that organized; these are modified from the actual Work Boxes system)

We added a bulletin board this year. I thought it would be nice to be able to put things up occasionally. Although not shown here, it currently has our latest art assignment from each of the kids posted.

Our white board had been just sitting on top of the book shelf (last year), but Eric hung it up for me this year, and it really seems to be working really well so far. (I had told him not to hang it up before, though I'm not really sure why now.)

Our bookshelf, which I store all of our current books on. Because we have a lot of books with Winter Promise this year, we only put up the Winter Promise books that we are actually using right now (and put the rest in a basket all together in the closet).

Baskets of books, paper, art supplies, and a variety of school supplies all stored on shelves that Eric built into the closet.

Our work area, complete with a seat for each of us:

Eric converted our coat closet into a storage closet when we were still working on school at our dining room table. We're still using this for storage now, but it is considerably more organized now that we don't have to store everything in it.

This post is linked to Not Back to School Blog Hop and Tackle It Tuesday.

Organizing Our Homeschool Papers and Plans in Weekly Files

I was really inspired this summer when I read about the file crate system that Dawn is using. I thought, "Wow -- I like that idea!" While she uses hers for school and just about every aspect of their daily life (menu planning, etc.), I was just interested in getting our school stuff organized.

Because of this, and because we are using Winter Promise as a good chunk of our curriculum for this year (social studies, science, and reading), I actually didn't date our folders, but made 36 "week" folders. I realized that we might not finish a folder in exactly a week from time to time, but I think this will make me feel less stressed out if I am "behind" than if there were dates assigned.

But, just in case there are some things that are time sensitive, I have also made twelve folders in the back for each month of the year. That way, I can throw things in there ahead of time (like, for instance, if there is a Christmas activity that I know we want to do) even if I don't know exactly which week we will be on at that point.

(I just used an $8 file box from Target and put five folders inside each hanging folder.)


Inside each folder, I currently have our papers and assignments for all of our Winter Promise things. In addition to this, I have already cut out all of the Timeline Figures that we need to put in our timeline book for that week.


Each week will also have our weekly schedule (I'll only do these no more than two weeks ahead at a time), which I am using from Donna Young's website. I will also check our monthly folders to see if anything needs to go in them before that week, as well as putting in any needed copies or various other papers that we need that week.

My planning was so crazy and disorganized last year. But, this year -- I already feel so much more relief that it is all organized and ready to go!

This post is linked to: Works for Me Wednesday (Back to School Edition) and Thirsty Thursday.

Storage Solution for Baking Supplies

For years, I kept all of my sugar (white, brown, and powdered) and flour (a couple of varieties) all in my pantry.

This wouldn't have been a huge deal, except I had a baking shelf, and it was near the bottom. This meant that I sometimes didn't know when I was about to run out of something, and sometimes I stocked up because I was just sure I was running low when I wasn't.

In fact, one year, I apparently kept being sure I was low on brown sugar, only to finally count bags of brown sugar to see that I had five bags in the pantry!

Plus, I have to be honest, I was afraid of putting my hand in the paper bags of flour and sugar (which I stored inside a large ziploc bag) because I got a paper cut on one once that got infected. Ouch!

Then, one day, I had to get something for my Mom in her lazy susan to find that she kept all of her flour and sugars in large reusable containers. I was so excited! I just knew that I had to do that too.

So, I rearranged how we had some of our food stored, and went to Walmart and picked up two sets of containers. Each came with four containers of various sizes -- the largest was big enough to fit in an entire 10 lb bag of flour or sugar. I was able to use all but the smallest size of each set for various flours and sugars. (I am using those for leftovers instead.)

Not only do I not risk paper cuts now, but now I can see exactly how much I have (so I know when I will run out!). But, the best thing of all is that I love how easy it is to use these while I'm doing a lot of baking.

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Things I Love Thursday

Using Picture Labels to Help Pre-Readers Keep Their Toys Organized

Last week, I wrote about organizing Molly's toys. I had to continue to work on the toy organization this week because I wanted to place picture labels on each bin, in the hopes that it would be easier (for everyone in the family!) to put the toys in the correct bins.

If you missed it last week, here is what the bins looked like to start with (although this was actually when I was mid-way through organizing -- trust me though, it wasn't pretty to start with):


Here is what the bins looked like last week in my post about decluttering her toys as my "after" picture:

As I said though, I wasn't done because darn it -- I've organized these toys before! I have done it many times, and each time, all of the bins get all mixed around. So, it was my hope that if I added picture labels, everyone would clearly be able to see what types of toys should go in each bin.

After the fun of setting up something representative of each bin and taking photos of them, I had them printed -- two pictures per 4x6 print. I then laminated each picture (with the actual word labelled on the back of the picture), hole punched it, and used yarn to attach it ot the appropriate bin.

Here are the bins with their pictures attached:

And a close up of a couple of the bins:

It's been just under a week since I finished it all up, and I have to say -- so far, it's been a success! I'm so psyched! Hopefully this is one toy organization system that will finally work out for us.

How do you keep toys organized?

This post is linked to: Works for Me Wednesday, Talk About Tuesday, and Tackle It Tuesday.

Trying to Tackle A Four Year Old's Toys

I have been working on decluttering around the house now that we have finished our homeschool year. It was something that I had really been wanting to do, and it seemed like a good time to work on it.

I was surprised when I whipped through several areas that I thought would take a long time. But, I was not surprised when it took me several days (working off and on) to finish going through Molly's toys (which we keep in the room that we use for school as well).

I forgot to take before pictures, so really, these are "during" pictures (but, I'm afraid to say that it does not look a lot different than the before pictures, other than that in the before pictures, the white shelves were full):

And, thankfully, here are the after pictures:

Actually, I have one more thing to finish off before I will officially consider this project done. Eric and I worked to take pictures of a sample of what is in each basket on her shelves and then I'll make a laminated tag with the picture on one side (I already got each picture printed as a 3"x4") and the words on the opposite side.

Here are two samples of the pictures that will be on her labels (for Care Bears and for Calico Critters):

This post is linked to: I am Blissfully Domestic, Talk About Tuesday, and Tackle It Tuesday.

I just ordered the newest version of the Catholic Woman's Planner!

I just ordered the latest copy of my very favorite datebook -- the Catholic Woman's Daily Planner from Family-Centered Press. The newest versions run through next school year -- August 2009 - July 2010.

Not only do they have a Women's Planner, but they have ones for men, students, and also a nature journal. In both the men's and women's versions, you can add in a menu planning section and/or a lesson planning section. Of course, you can also add neither of those, and leave it as is.

My favorite size is the small size, which is 5.5" x 8.5", while the larger size is 8.5" x 11".

And, just so you know, I don't receive anything for writing about this each year when I buy it. I just really love it, and it works for me, so I always like to pass along word. (Plus, I want to make sure people know, as they seem to sell out quickly at times.)

Thanks to Michele and family for such a wonderful product!