Bar Keepers Friend

As I was growing up, my mother was somewhat ineffective in imparting many of her household cleaning lessons to me but one thing that really stuck was the necessity of scrubbing and wiping down the kitchen sink every time you leave it. I am straining toward that goal with my own children (with moderate success) but had been fighting a losing battle.

Our kitchen sink is a builder's grade (junk), formerly white, ceramic-ish sink, and metal pans create hideous black scratches across it which no amount of grumpy, sweaty scrubbing can remove. I've tried spraying it with bleach and leaving it overnight, vinegar in varying strengths, all your classic powdered scrubs, and TONS of the ever enjoyable elbow grease. Nothing worked! I looked into painting our sink - not recommended. I looked into replacing it - we'd have to replace the countertop too and at this point in time I'd MUCH rather go to Hawaii.

Gross right?!

I semi-resigned myself to never having a totally clean-looking kitchen until I saw Bar Keepers Friend in Bed, Bath & Beyond and it sparked a faint memory of someone extolling its virtues. I casually purchased it, completely oblivious to the change my life was taking from that simple impulse buy.

Back at home, I sprinkled some Bar Keepers Friend on my damp kitchen sink, lightly scrubbed, and the black marks magically disappeared - instantly! I was so excited that I decided to try it out on a pan I'd consigned to lost after a quesadilla incident involving an 11 year old. In 3 minutes flat the pan looked brand new, absolutely no vestiges of its fiery ordeal. I took my magic cannister throughout the house, erasing rust rings in the bathroom, coffee stains in white grout, calcium buildup on 6 stainless faucets - all with the slack wristed effort of an indolent teenager.

The places where it's chipped are still there but you can't have it all!

Bar Keepers Friend has become my go-to cleaner for the entire house, I simply cannot use enough magniloquence to extol its virtues - you gotta' try it for yourself!!

Graduation and the Home School Mom

Today is a bittersweet day for this home educatin’ mama – today my eldest son concluded his high school studies.  I have been feeling the weight of the emotion of his graduation for several weeks now but today it slammed me in the gut that this now concludes my portion of his formal education!

Unless you are a homeschooling parent who has accompanied your child on this journey since day one (in this case since he was 4 years old) you won't be able to fully grasp the tremendously heart wrenching joy with which I find myself facing this day, June 11, 2013.  I have had the privilege, for the vast majority of his life, of being the sole person responsible for providing an education that ensures he faces adulthood as a godly, intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, knowledgeable, wise, mature man and now my role has concluded. 

Oh, I know I will still advise him, spiritually guide him, and perhaps even help him a bit with his college studies but after 13 years, I am no longer his teacher and that is such a hard thing to come to terms with. I have spent countless hours researching curriculum, developing our daily schedule, laughing with him, learning with him, arguing with him, being frustrated with him, and experiencing the joy of watching his eyes light up as he grasps a concept. 

I am immensely proud of the young man he has become and I know God has huge things planned for Him that he will accomplish. We educate our children at home, primarily so that they will become God fearing people of character who will make an impact in this world for good. As I look at my graduate, I see that he is a leader, he is strong in his faith, he is massively intelligent, he is polite, he is respectful, he looks out for the underdog, he is kind, and he is loving.

So, as my role as his teacher comes to an end, I can look back on this chapter of our lives with great joy and pride… even as I mourn (oh, and there's still the matter of my two remaining students).

Are you clean enough?

I'm not usually one for potty humor (shhh...that's a lie - I have 3 boys, we find certain things hilarious around here) but I am finding the new series of commercials by Kleenex Cottonelle quite amusing. I'm a sucker for hidden camera-type things and they use real people in a hidden camera situation in these commercials to funny effect.

I was selected by Crowdtap and Cottonelle to test their Clean Care Routine and must admit that it does make a lot of sense as to why one would need water incorporated into their bathroom routine. Europeans have used bidets for centuries but incorporating water into our bathroom routine is a foreign concept (dumb pun intended) to most Americans. I must say that prior to this experience, I had not discussed bathroom habits with those around me so I had no idea that people used flushable wipes for anything other than toilet training toddlers (tiny tidbits of alliteration for you there) but now I know that a few folks (who demand to remain nameless in this post) have been regularly using them for several years.

The Cottonelle Clean Care Routine suggests using the wipes first and following up with toilet paper but my recommendation is to reverse that order. I haven't purchased flushable wipes since my youngest finished potty training but I am told that these are larger and thicker than most flushable wipes. I could do without the scent but I am quite picky about such things and really don't see the need for scented anything "sanitary". We are Charmin users around here and found the Cottonelle TP to be rougher than Charmin but it is very strong and my family didn't go through the 18 pack they sent me nearly as quickly as they do Charmin - maybe because it's rougher or maybe because of the addition of the wipes, or both.

In conclusion, the Cottonelle Clean Care routine makes a lot of sense and has definitely made a Cottonelle wipes purchaser out of me but I will more than likely be pairing them with Charmin toilet paper.

I'm a Dot Girl!

Crowdtap recently gave me a very charming bottle of Dot Marc Jacobs perfume to sample and share with my friends. I think this is seriously the cutest perfume bottle I've ever seen!

I am, however, pretty picky about perfumes and scents in general so I wasn't sure if I would care for this perfume. Dot says that it: "carries a lush, exuberant floral scent... with top notes of red berries, mid notes of jasmine, and base notes of creamy vanilla bean".  I found it to be a light, pleasant fragrance - probably because I'm drawn to most things with jasmine in them.
My only issue with this perfume is that it wears off very quickly, I'm not the type to want my scent to travel into the room 5 minutes before I get there but I would like a subtle hint to remain all day and this seemed to fade to almost nothing within a few hours. They do have a sweet purse-sized version which would take care of this issue and look 'totes adorbs' in your purse!

As part of my Crowdtap opportunity, I got to host a Dot Girl Cocktail party so I wrangled up some of my best girlfriends and put together a Girl's-Night-In spa night.

Tons of yumminess!

We had tons of yummy food and drink (of course), dotted (painted) our own glasses, applied super cute dotty nail decals and did our own manicure/pedicures, we had a paraffin hand bath (great excuse for me to buy one - got a deal on Amazon), sampled the perfume, and enjoyed a makeup demo by one of the girls. 

Makeup demo!

I asked all of my guests to dress like the Dot Marc Jacobs perfume bottle, with prizes going to the top three winners. The overall winner received the purse-sized mini bottle of Dot (as well as some other goodies).

Congrats to Mikea!

My guests all really liked the scent of the Dot perfume and didn't object to me spritzing not only their blottercards but themselves as well. 

Nobody left the party empty-handed, I gave each of my guests a goody box filled with treats and a sample of the Dot Marc Jacobs perfume. It was a delightful night!

HTC Windows 8X Phone

I was recently selected by Crowdtap to host a party featuring the Verizon HTC Windows 8X phone. I must admit that I was thrilled to be selected for this mainly because the party kit included a free phone! That being said, I never would have selected a Windows phone because I'd heard negative things about the early ones and therefore dismissed them from  my phone selection process. So I began to research this phone - strongly doubting that I would want to give up my Android phone. However, the more I read about this phone the cooler it sounded!

                                                              Yay, the kit is here!!

 Now that I've been able to spend some time with it, I've found that the HTC Windows 8X phone is pretty sweet! Coming from an Android phone I thought there would be a learning curve for this phone but it is super intuitive and user friendly. The start page has the Windows 8 tiles which are fully customizable and allow you to move them around, remove and add them, and change their size.

The screen is large and crisp with bright clear graphics. This phone uses SkyDrive to automatically save and share your photos and documents between your phone, computer, Xbox, and other devices. SkyDrive is super cool and is one of my favorite things about this phone so far. With my other phones it has always been such a pain  to get my photos off of them and onto my computer but SkyDrive does it automatically! Sharing Microsoft Office documents between my phone and desktop is super easy and is proving to make my life much easier.

Internet browsing is SO fast and basically like a tiny desktop in my hands!
There are different "rooms" that I can set up and invite folks to where we can share calendars, documents, and pictures.

SmartGlass is an included app which allows interaction between my phone and Xbox 360 - it allows you to view what games you have, use the phone as a remote for the menu, and (my favorite) utilize the keyboard on my phone as a keyboard for the Xbox.

The camera on the HTC Windows 8X boasts an 8 megapixel camera and 1080p recording but what's super cool about it is the ultra-wide lens on the front-facing camera which allows you to fit a lot more people into the frame. The only downside about the front camera is that it doesn't have a flash, so low light pics don't come out wonderfully. 

 We actually fit 9 people in this picture (at my party) and could have probably squeezed a few more in!

          Front camera with no retouching!                          Taken in a completely dark room.

In summation - the Windows app store is sorely lacking many of the apps I rely on and I haven't found voice navigation but all the fantastic features of this phone have made me deem it worth losing those apps (for now - I hear they're working feverishly to offer a lot more apps) and make the switch. In fact, after my party my husband (who had recently given his phone a coffee bath) decided against buying an iPhone and purchased an HTC Windows 8X phone instead!
Thank you Crowdtap and Verizon!


                                                           

To read or not to read...

Early in my life I developed a love of reading. I think this was greatly fostered by the fact that my mother was a reader AND we did not have a TV for much of my childhood. The library was a wonderful place full of adventure, mystery, and Elizabethan romance just waiting there for me to discover. I worked my way through all the "classics" and countless others not considered worthy of that moniker. I would stay up late into the night voraciously finishing a book only to experience the subsequent sorrow at having to say "Goodbye" to the characters and their lives. I would envision where they were now and what happened after the book ended. I loved reading!

But somewhere along my adult life, especially after I had children, I no longer had the time to devote to my old friends. Magazines and small easy-reading materials took their places - things that I could finish quickly in the 5-10 minute segments squeezed in around my kid's needs. I didn't even realize that I had failed to impart this old love to my sons...until my oldest read "The Hobbit" for school and loved it so much that he requested and read the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and then the rest of Tolkien's works. I often found him (after bedtime) sitting in bed- reading! The spark had been ignited!

My middle one has always given me trouble when I give him reading assignments. When I read to him, however, he never wants us to stop. His favorite thing to do after we finish a book is to find and watch the movie. We recently completed "Children of the New Forest", scoured the internet for the movie, joined Netflix to get it, waited 2 weeks for it to arrive, and sat down with much anticipation to watch it. It was a C movie at best and slaughtered the book, which Mason incredulously pointed out throughout the entire movie. His conclusion was that the movie is never as good as the book because it forces someone else's image of the text onto you - oh, and that we had just wasted 2 hours of our lives! Score one for books!!

Now my husband is not exactly a bibliophile (unless you count computer manuals) and we have the occasional discussion as to the importance of public libraries. His argument is that soon books will all be electronic anyway and should we be putting our tax dollars toward libraries when there is so much need elsewhere. I feel that there is something intrinsically wrong with that way of thinking, but on the other hand most of the books that Mason and I have read this year we downloaded and read on the computer. Shouldn't we be putting that money toward social programs, crime prevention, roads, etc... instead of these gorgeous buildings for people to look at free porn? Still I can't help thinking that with the demise of public libraries, something good and amazing about our society would vanish. There is just something about holding the written word in your hand, feeling the pages, reading the notes previous generations have inscribed in it, curling up in a comfy chair with it, even that musty book smell that I don't particularly care for, that you cannot get electronically! Walking into a public library means stepping into a world where anything is possible; a place where you will be inspired, challenged, enlightened, angered, and astounded as you meet new friends and visit new worlds. All for free!! Well, assuming you return them by the due date!

Reading books enriches our lives, expands our horizons, dispels myths, opens our minds, and entertains us in a way that television could never do. To witness my children walking into this world is an incredible thrill and has stirred that old yearning inside me - time to go make some new "friends"!

Under Pressure!

Many years ago, we bought a really cool pressure cooker at a fantastic value. It has taken up considerable pantry space ever since, as we have both been too afraid to try it out. Once in a great while I would haul it out with fresh resolve to actually use it, only to be overcome by vague childhood memories of stories of exploding kitchens and scalded cooks. Add to that the fact that I do not often cook meat and the pressure cooker has remained in pristine condition.

Well, I volunteered to bring dinner for our bible study group and started looking around on the Internet for an easy bean recipe. I discovered that people cook beans in pressure cookers and instead of taking 1-1 1/2 hours to cook, it takes 15 minutes!! Bonus!!! I found a great site http://www.vegancoach.com/pressure-cooker-beans.html called Vegan Coach where they have posted an instructional video on making pressure cooked beans. Watching the video gave me the confidence to actually try it and I decided to document my experience (in ridiculous detail) and share it with you!

Ah beans, the musical fruit, turns out that a lot of that "music" is caused by not soaking the dried beans long enough. Because I live in a house with 4 naturally musical guys, I soaked mine about 17 hours (recommendation is overnight) and this is what they looked like:

That's 4 cups of dried turtle beans (black beans are also called turtle beans, who knew!) in enough water to really cover as they'll expand to 3 times their size.

Important tip alert: DO NOT ADD SALT until after your beans are done cooking. Apparently this will toughen the skins and keep the beans from cooking properly.

Drain and rinse the beans in a colander and place in the cooker with 12 cups of water. The rule is 3 cups of water to every 1 cup of dried beans.

Close the lid of the cooker AND LOCK IT!!! I set it to High Pressure, for 18 minutes, and - SUPER SCARY part - I pressed the start button and proceeded in an orderly fashion (if running away with flailing arms is orderly) to the other side of the kitchen. Where I observed the cooker, it did nothing for quite some time until suddenly the red pressure indicator popped up! The false calm I had settled into was again replaced by apprehension. The cooker began to make all kinds of sizzling and whistling noises and then the 18 minutes of cooking actually began. It sounded like the faucet was running at full blast the whole time, so not a quiet undertaking. And, when you add in the pressure building and de-pressurizing time, actual cooking time is really about 10-15 minutes longer. Still much shorter than traditional methods.

OK, on to the reveal...ta dah....perfectly cooked (maybe even slightly overcooked) beans!! I added in a ton of salt and spices (unsalted beans = YUCK) and very yummy beans were enjoyed by all!

Pressure cooking was fun, and it appears the opportunities are endless. Pressure cooked cakes, chili, sauces, and more! Wonder if I could squeeze a turkey in there!!

Bon Appetit!