Morning cartoons were created so that parents can crawl back into bed with each other…

don’t deprive yourself of this luxury!

There is nothing more exciting to my little Beach Rose than to go exploring in the woods, on the beach, on a walk to the corner.  “Exploring for treasures” is what she likes to call it.  And though she is the treasure for me, it is quite lovely to see the world through her eyes and get as excited about nature as she is.

Discovering “treasures” can be even more fun when you know what they are called!  So often my Baby would find a shell at the beach and ask me what it was called and I didn’t know.  So, I said to myself, well it’s easy nowadays to get an answer for just about anything, so how do I make this info readily available at my fingertips for our nature adventures?

A mini-library by the front door.  Books and pamphlets on birds, bugs, flowers, trees, seashells, animal tracks, etc…

She is so proud of herself when I tell her to run and get the seashell book and find the shell in her hand and she does!  And it is great to embrace how little I know.  The wiser you get the more you realize what a fool you are…isn’t that the saying???

Well, with these resources literally at our fingertips it really makes it fun and easy to learn something new every day!

Well, how well should I know my iron????  What kind of silly question is this?

Per usual, I speak from experience when I say that it is soooooo important that you familiarize yourself with your iron or whichever iron you’re about to use (at a hotel’s, a relative’s, etc) on your beautiful dress.

Learn from me.

Do as I say, not as I did!  Save yourself the trouble, my dear!

I was on my honeymoon at a resort in the Caribbean, getting ready to go out to a beautiful, ritzy restaurant.  I decided that my gorgeous dress with layers of tulle and was a bit too wrinkled from the trip in the suitcase to be seen in that evening.  So I turned on the iron, waited 10 minutes and plopped it on the top layer of my dress, the 1st layer of tulle.

I’m going to let you guess what happened next…

Yup.  You got it.  I watched in horror as my dress was eaten up by the iron.  And by the time my delayed reaction of yanking the iron off my dress was realized, the room smelled like burned toast and there was a gaping hole in the back of my little black cocktail dress.

Almost 2 decades later and it still hurts to think about it, never mind talk about it.

What I should have done was get to know the iron.  Read the settings which usually have a number corresponding to the type of fabric you are about to iron.  And therefore, you turn the dial on the iron to the number that indicates the fabric you are about to iron, so that you don’t burn delicate clothing!

And I believe that with extremely delicate items of clothing, perhaps after setting the iron to the correct temperature you want to “test” on the tiniest portion of the fabric, in the most inconspicuous place, in case it does burn through.

So perhaps starting with the dress inside out and working on that layer first, at the lowest possible setting on the iron may have saved it that fateful night…

We’ll never know, but at least I may save you from the same kick to the stomach!

 

Perhaps you’ve had a different experience than I with this cute little brown sugar bear.  It is made of specially fired clay that, after being soaked in water for 20-30 minutes, is supposed to help maintain the moisture in your bag of brown sugar so that it remains soft and clump-free for up to 6 months.

I don’t think so…at least, not in my home!  My box of brown sugar was hard as a rock a couple of weeks after I’d put the cute little bear in there, and there were clumps of rock-like pebbles of brown sugar surrounding it since they’d gotten wet when they first made contact with him and then hardened up.  Yuck!  And frustrating, since I was trying to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and my tummy was grumbling and now I had no brown sugar immediately available!

Here’s my secret.  It’s fail-proof.  I’ve never had a problem since I started doing this…

Once you’ve opened that bag of brown sugar, grab a small ziploc plastic bag to seal it in.  Then store that bag-within-a-bag in the brown sugar box or whatever container it came in or you like to store it in.

Always soft and always moist.

Sorry little bear.  Maybe I’ll try to use you in a bag of crackers or chips to suck out moisture and keep them crispy.  But, I’ll be sure to put your heavy little body at the bottom of the bag to avoid digging into a bag full of crumbs the next time I want a handful of Cape Cod’s!

This is what happens to me all the time…well, whenever I’m about to fry something anyway…I get excited about heating up the oil and turn the stove burner on too high.  The oil ends up much hotter than I needed it to be and … now what do I do?

3 things I can tell you from experience:

1. Start your burner at medium heat.  You’ll most likely find that frying temps of 350 – 375 degrees are found at a medium heat setting, or thereabouts.  Adjust the dial as necessary.
2. If you’ve become overzealous and you started by setting your burner on high, your oil temp is probably sky-high, as shown above.  You can either add more oil to the pot to lower the temperature (if you happen to have more oil on hand and don’t mind using up a lot more of it) or …
3. you can remove your pot from the burner, allow the oil in the pot to cool to the temp you want while you turn the burner down to around medium!

All my towels are white.  To me, nothing says clean like a freshly laundered white towel.

And you can tell when it’s time to toss it, because white hides nothing!  So, any stains or tears or lots of pulls in the towel can be noticed right away and it’s time to retire the offender.

Just like nothing is as enticing as a clean white towel, there’s nothing more appalling than a graying or yellowing “white” towel.

How do you keep your white linens from getting stained if you’re using them to wash your face or hands free of makeup or dirt from your garden?  Well, as you may have guessed, it’s near impossible.  You will end up with a gray version of your lovely white washcloths or hand towels.

Which is why two of the greatest things ever invented are the dark washcloth and the dark hand towel…

I wash my face every night before I go to bed.  Every night.  And when I used to wash it on my beautiful white face cloths, I’d cringe at all the smudges of black from my mascara, brown from my eyeliner, and the rainbow of colors from my eyeshadows .  I admit that I’ve thrown away my fair share of white washcloths after only a few uses.  Because they were embarrassing to have around.  Dirty looking.  And the hand towels that my manly hubby’s hands used…well, needless to say, we had a lot of “greige” in our linen closet.

Until I went to a bed and breakfast on vacation where they had laid out some navy blue washcloths and hand towels with specific instructions as to using these towels only, when washing your face and hands.  And using their beautiful, soft fluffy white towels for your body when getting out of the shower.  Made so much sense!

And thus, my purchase of navy blue washcloths and hand towels for our home.  My whites stay white and my face and hubby’s big, beautiful hands get washed!

 

 

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante

I really wanted to love this novel.

It is so highly acclaimed.  It takes place in Italy.  It is one in a series of 4 books.  And it is about a friendship over the course of a lifetime.

But, alas, I didn’t care for it.  It was long, drawn out and too detailed.  It took forever for the author to get to the point and I don’t think the point was that interesting, never mind compelling enough to read further books on the subject.

Although the story is meant to be about a friendship between 2 girls growing up in poverty in Naples, Italy, the friendship felt very one-sided.  Elena is almost pathetically obsessed with her “friend” Lila, who is a snobbish, selfish girl who barely pays her mind.  And the theme continues throughout the book, with Elena living her life to please Lila, who doesn’t notice, nor care.

I don’t think I’d invest the time required to read through another of these books.  There was no cliffhanger at the end of the 1st one making me feel compelled to learn more.  I’d be more than happy to hear about what the other 3 books were about (which could probably be surmised in 3 sentences, 1 for each) and call it done!

Pick the bigger pot or pan.

Nothing more frustrating than having a clean stove top and watching your pot of boiling potatoes boil up and over the side of the pot.   Scrubbing burnt potato foam off your burners is no fun!

With a pot not only do you risk the very probable possibility that whatever you’re cooking will spill over, but you may also spoil your dish.  With less liquid in the pot, burning can happen more rapidly.

With a pan if you are cooking ground beef, for example, it will be overcrowded in a small pan and will not cook evenly and will end up boiling rather than searing or sautéing.  Yuck.

Even if you think that you may be able to fit it into the smaller one, do yourself a favor…grab the bigger one.