Thursday, March 21, 2013

Another Gadget

As I was cooking dinner again last night, another one of my favorite kitchen gadgets came to my attention.  It's the immersion blender my mom gave me for Christmas.  I started to pull out the big regular ole blender, but then spotted this new little treat and thought, oh ya! 

I used it to make a southwest sauce to go with the southwest chicken quesadillas we had for dinner.  The chicken I used was left over from the chicken fajitas we had the night before.  Yeah to me for making double use of one package of chicken.  (This is mainly because, if I cut it up right, I can feed all 3 of my girls on 1-1/2 pieces of chicken.  Don't worry, what we save in food by having girls, we make up for in clothes and shoes and accessories).  What I like about this gadget is that it is relatively small and doesn't take up much space, it's easy to clean and a bit easier to manipulate what you are trying to blend than just dumping it all in the blender and leaving your creation to the mercy of the blade at the bottom. 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Go Go Gadget...

I wouldn't say I love to cook.  I like it, but can't go as far as to say I LOVE it.  I do it.  Cook that is.  All the time.  I cook dinner 5-6 nights a week and sometimes all 7.  However, I do love a good kitchen gadget.  And I love to look around in kitchen stores.  My current favorite is Sur la Table.  That store have everything you could possibly want for your kitchen and oh so many things that you didn't know you wanted but really really do once you've seen it. 

I don't have a lot of neat kitchen gadgets myself, mostly because my kitchen is in desperate need of a demolition and so I am currently lacking space for anything but the absolute necessities. 
So when I do get a new gadget, it is seldom.  Recently, my mother in law gave me a pancake pen (which I think she got at Williams Sonoma).  Some of you may be thinking, I've had one of those for years, and you are just now getting one...and excited about it??  Yes and yes.  It's such a simple device, if you can even call it that.  It squirts out pancake batter.  That all.  It squirts it out.  But it makes pancake making so much easier, more precise if you really like round pancakes which I do, and less messy. 

Maybe I could learn to love to cook if I had all sorts of cool gadgets.  And a really awesome kitchen.  And more time.  And fewer children.  And children that liked whatever I cooked.  And more time.  And a really awesome kitchen. 

Friday, March 15, 2013

Urrgghhh!! and other sounds of frustration!

Bear with me as I try to navigate through all the info I am going through in trying to work on my blog design. You may see some weird changes come and go, reappear and then disappear again.  I don't know what I'm doing.  It may take me a while to figure it all out and settle on what I want my blog to look like. 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

I Have and Idea! or Two

Have I mentioned before that I have a lot of ideas?  I do.  Sometimes I get frustrated or overwhelmed because I have what I think is a pretty good idea, but no idea of how to make it come about.  I sometimes spend what seems like endless amounts of  time "researching" some of my ideas online.  Which brings about another problem.  I feel really unproductive when all I do for a couple of hours is surf the web in search of answers to my how do I do it problem.  Maybe if I were getting paid for my time I would feel differently, but I'm not, so I don't. 

And then sometimes, by surfing the web (do people still say that?) I get more ideas.  And then there are so many things floating around in my head that nothing gets done or comes to fruition.  It's really frustrating!  Then I look around at the breakfast dishes in the sink and the laundry that I haven't even started and the fact that I am still in my p.j.'s and fuzzy slippers and it's getting on toward lunch time and I feel even worse. 

I think some of this may be a result of being an empty nester from 7:45-2:45 everyday.  I have more time on my hands now.  Time to theoretically get things done and explore my ideas.  Before, I might have had different ideas on things I wanted to do, but I would get so busy with the kid(s) at home that I never even pretended to follow through with any of them.  Plus, I would feel really guilty if all my kid did was see me sitting at the computer, for no apparent reason, not getting paid, for way too long, neglecting her and whatever else needed to be done. 

Maybe I just need to be better organized.  (another idea of mine).  Then I'll have time to take care of all my house and kid and wife duties AND complete an idea or two.  First, I need to organize all of the crazy ideas floating around in my head. 

My current main idea is to grow my blog, make it bigger, better and gain more readers.  There is SO much info out there on blogging though that it is terribly overwhelming and frustrating and a little depressing.  What I really want is for someone to just do it for me.  For free.  And then I'll take it from there.  And all the credit.  :)

And because I would rather read a blog post that has pictures, here are a few. (that have nothing to do with this post).



This is me trying to take a picture of myself with the new wireless remote I got for Christmas. 
 


The sunset from a recent trip to the beach.


An interesting bit of tree near the afore mentioned beach.



Friday, March 8, 2013

50 Beads of Different Colors

I gets lots of ideas.  Ideas on all sorts of things.  Ideas on ways to make money, ways to organize my house, ways to decorate or rearrange my house, ways to make my kids behave, ways to teach my kids, ways to help them become better people.... you get the idea.  There are lots of ideas floating around in my head.  Some turn out to be pretty stupid.  Like the time I tried to convince my friend to go in on an ironing business with me.  I HATE to iron.  What was I thinking???  Some turn out to be just too expensive.  Most of my house ideas fall into that category.  Some turn out to be too difficult. 

Recently, I had an idea to help my kids to be nicer to each other.  This idea was based off of a previous idea that fell into the too difficult category.  I won't go into all the details of that one because it was, well, too difficult and didn't work out anyway. 

My recent idea though seems to be working.  To some extent anyway.  The idea is, we have a jar of beads that sits on our kitchen table along side an empty jar.  Every time the girls do something nice for someone else (sans being asked), they get to put a bead into the empty jar.  When they do something nice for their sister, they get to put in 2 beads (cause it's harder to be nice to your sister).  Once the bead count gets to 50, we get to go get a special treat like get ice cream or something of the sort.  They just made it to 50 for the 3rd time.  In fact, they are doing so well, we decided to up it to 100 beads.  Meaning, either it'll take longer to get the treat or they are going to have to be even nicer to each other. 

All of this is really in an effort to get our kids to stop thinking about #1 and think of others first.  It's little things, like if you are in the basement retrieving your blankie and you see your sister's blankie down there too, pick it up and bring it to her.  Or if you got some smarties at school that day, share some with your sisters, even if it is just one tiny little smartie. Or when you are clearing the table and your sister is in the bathroom and hasn't cleared her place yet, get her plate for her. 

They are really in to it.  Granted, sometimes they are only doing something nice for the sole purpose of getting to put in a bead, but still, they are being nice.  I'm hoping it'll catch on at some point and they will just be nice to be nice for niceness sake. 

And you know, when someone does little nice things like that for you, you can't help but feel good and do nice things back. 

So,yay for the kids being a little bit nicer to each other and more thoughtful and yay for me coming up with an idea that actually works!!