While it is always good to shop small when you can to support small and family owned businesses, this year shopping small feels even more important.
COVID-19 and all that has come with it this year has been tough on everyone; some more than others. What better way to show some love to owners of small businesses than to support them financially this year? With the help of some of my friends, I have created this list of small businesses for you to check out. Please note, some of these don't serve customers outside of their geographical area, but most do! Would you like me to add your favorite small business(es) to the list? Follow me on twitter (@mommaofmanyhats) and tag me in a tweet about your favorite small business and I will check it out! I can't wait to see what you suggest! I hope that you and your families have enjoyed a joyful Thanksgiving weekend full of family time. Check out the list!
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Whether masks are mandated where you live or not, many households now have this new accessory in their home. Depending on how many you have and how often you need to use them, this has added a whole new dimension to your laundry routine. This is the solution I came up with for our family. What you will need is:
Find a good spot to threat the ribbon through and tie a knot. When you get home from an outing, have everyone put their masks directly into the mesh bag before washing their hands. Now all masks are in one place (you don't have to hunt for them when it is time to do laundry) and any possible germs are isolated.
When you're ready to wash them, zip up the bag and follow the directions that came with your masks! I plan sanitizing the area the bag hangs in while I'm washing the mask bag as well so I have a clean starting point to hang the empty bag when my laundry is done. Stay safe and stay healthy! Over the past month we have been getting used to new realities. We can’t always find what we are looking for at the store. We are limiting how often we go out to get what we need. It is harder to find some items online to have shipped to the house. Shipments on products are delayed and not getting to us as quickly as they used to. I don’t mind these things because I know that times are not normal and everybody is doing the best they can. I am happy to have these inconveniences if it means that needed supplies are getting to someone and someplace that need their items more urgently. The extra time at home, however, allows us to use our problem solving muscles a little more and some of the solutions I come up with make me chuckle. Here’s one I would like to share with you that made us laugh at our house because...I made doggie waste bags. About the same time that states were starting to close schools and social distancing restrictions were put in place I noticed we were running low on our doggie waste bags. So, I ordered some thinking they’d get here in plenty of time...3 weeks later and they weren’t at the house and we were running out! I wasn’t too worried because we, like many, have an impressive collection of plastic grocery bags. I usually donate them to church for our food pantry to use, but with the social distancing restrictions in place and church services being televised I haven’t taken them in for a while. We have a small dog, so a whole plastic grocery bag seems overkill. I feel bad enough as it is using a small plastic doggie waste bag to pick up and throw away something so biodegradable, but I have to be a responsible pet owner! So the thought of using a WHOLE plastic grocery bag for a little dog’s needs wasn’t sitting right. I began to wonder if there was a way I could fashion more than 1 doggie waste bag out of a grocery bag. Here’s what I came up with. So, there you go! If you are low on doggie waste bags or simply want to find a good use for all of those plastic grocery bags you have laying around. Give this a try!
Sixteen years ago I was in college and my little brother was in elementary school preparing for his First Holy Communion. My parents had to be out of town for some reason the weekend of his First Communion retreat, so I came home and went with him to this day-long sacramental preparation. During the day they showed a video called “Grandma’s Bread” that tells the story of a little boy named Mario whose grandmother passes away unexpectedly a couple days after they make Easter Bread together (13 years later, I laughed out loud as I watched the same video in a different church hall as my daughter prepared for her First Communion). At the end of the retreat that day, they sent everyone home with a recipe for Easter Bread. When I made Easter bread and brought it with me to Easter dinner at my grandparent’s house that year my Nanna smiled and told me that her grandmother used to make Easter bread and she hadn’t had it in years. That sealed the deal, a tradition was born and for the past 16 years, I have made Easter bread to go along with our family Easter meal every year. Over the years I have taken the recipe they shared at my brother’s First Communion retreat and I’ve made it my own and I am sharing it with you below. Enjoy! Ingredients: Yeast mixture: ¼ cup warm water 1 tsp sugar 2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast Dough: ½ cup sugar 1 cup scalded milk ⅓ cup butter (soft or melted) 2 beaten eggs Pinch of salt 4 cups flour** Egg Wash: 1 egg 1 tbsp water sprinkles (I typically use colored sugar sprinkles)
*Traditional Easter bread typically includes colored hard boiled eggs folded into the braids and the bread is often braided in a ring. While many recipes tell you that you don’t need to hard boil the eggs first, I have found that they sometimes are more soft boiled after baking them in the bread when raw and suggest soft boiling them before you color them if your family prefers hard boiled eggs to soft boiled eggs. **I have made this recipe using gluten free flour. The consistency of the dough when gluten free flour is used makes the dough more breakable and harder to braid. It is doable, just go slow and pinch it back together if a “dough snake” breaks. The loaf also does not rise quite as much with gluten free flour in my experience. You might have read in an earlier post about the stash of presents I have tucked away for when they are needed. My youngest is an early riser. As he has gotten older, he has become more independent when he wakes up and will play independently and not always come and wake me up. One such morning he found the stash of presents and a car kit caught his eye. The kit included a couple wooden cars, axles, wheels, and paint to decorate the cars with. He decided that this is what he was going to do with his quiet morning.
When I woke up, I found him at the kitchen table having so much fun...with paint everywhere. We cleaned up most of it, but there were some smaller spots of paint on the floor that I didn't see right away. These dried on my laminate floor. I couldn't get them up with any of the cleaners I had in the house. I tried to scratch at it with my nails, but didn't want to try something harder because I didn't want to leave marks on the floor. Sitting on the floor I was trying to think of what I had in the house that might help. I was about to text my husband to ask what I should get from the hardware store to help me get the paint up when I had an idea. I had used nail polish remover before to help clean up messes. I wasn't sure if it would work because I had used so many different cleaners and they didn't work, but I figured it woudn't hurt. Lo and behold, it worked! Some nail polish remover, a paper towel, and a bit of elbow grease and the floor was no longer speckled! Have you used nail polish remover to get up messes? Tell me about it! Like most teacher moms and dads, we dream of the summers where we can shift our attention from school to home. There are SoooOOooooo many things that we want to accomplish over the summer. This summer my "to do" list is quite daunting, but it is summer! We're going to get it done and have fun too! Right?!
This first week of summer, I hit the ground running. My nephew has been with us this week so cousins can go to camp together. It has been an awesome and busy week! So much fun and so many memories made! I am so glad that we planned this week and so thankful for the opportunity to make it happen! But, I'm looking around my house and man, has it been on the back burner...again. This morning as I was getting ready to take a shower and begin the last day of camp shuttling/errands/etc for the week, I had a thought. What if I could clean my bathtub while I took a shower? Hmmm, maybeeeee... I grabbed my trusty magic eraser and set about giving it a go. In about 25 minutes I was dressed and ready to go...and my bathtub was clean too! I'm sure that there are many out there that already do this or something similar, but WOW! I've always thought of cleaning the bathroom as something that I just have to set aside the time to do all at once. That's the way we did it growing up. It got me to thinking...Added to my "to do" list: figure out ways to incorporate bathroom cleaning into my regular bathroom activities. How do you clean your bathroom? Got any time saving tips?! Grocery shopping is actually something that I enjoy. I find it very therapeutic to walk slowly up and down the aisles planning meals and searching for deals. For those of you with young ones at home, you may know that shopping with my children doesn't exactly look like that.
My children have wonderful imaginations. It is truly a blessing, but sometimes it can make grocery shopping...interesting. The local Food Lion turns into a dance stage or a living video game, or a bad guy infested street. I'm sure that we have amused many a shopper on our weekly trips. These trips to the grocery store take about 2 hours and are emotionally and physically draining. So many of them end with everyone in a bit of a cranky mood...and then I get home and I realize I forgot something because my thought process got interrupted due to the need to ask one of my children to stop twirling and leaping down the aisle...or asking another to please get up and walk instead of crawling...and, no we're not going to be buying goldfish crackers today...please stop pressing buttons on the lottery ticket machines....EVERYONE NEEDS TO PUT A HAND ON THE CART....5, 4, THREE, 2....thank you. Does this sound familiar? If it does (and even if it doesn't) I want to share with you something that has changed the way my weekends work. WALMART GROCERY PICK UP! I'm going to be 100% honest, I've never been a huge fan of Walmart. Since I graduated college I have worked hard to avoid it (Target coming to town definitely made that easier). It can be crowded and there is so much stuff. And so many people. And whoever planned the parking lot for the shopping center our Walmart didn't do a great job. But, about a year ago a new Walmart Market came to town. And a few months ago, it started offering grocery pick up. And it is amazing. Here's how it works. You go to grocery.walmart.com. They'll prompt you to put in your zip code to check and see if you have a Walmart near you that offers grocery pick up services (my fingers are crossed for you!) If they do and you already have a Walmart online account you use that sign in. If you don't have an online account through Walmart, it is easy to set one up. Once you have an account you shop. Use the menu to shop by store section or the search bar to shop for what you're looking for. They have price breakdowns too right there so you can compare how much per fluid oz and make sure that you're getting the best deal for your money. I've been told that I have a song for everything...looking over some of my blog posts, I'm starting to see that might be true.
I was talking with a friend a couple weeks ago about our homes...and keeping them clean...and how it is so hard. The clutter...it is everywhere! I have another friend whose house is always beautiful. It could be featured in a Pottery Barn ad tomorrow and her house would be ready to go! I asked her what her secret is. She said that her husband has a chore that he does every morning before work and that she works to make sure messes made each day get cleaned up that day (getting her kids to help). This made me think maybe I could have a clean house too. Come on, stop laughing, it might be possible! Okay, I'll be honest, I'm skeptical. But I'm going to try. My first hurtle is going to be getting the house there to begin with. This is going to take some time. I have a tendency to hang on to things "just in case" someone needs it later. So, here's my plan:
It will be an interesting project. As Mary Poppins says: "In every bit of work to be done there is an element of fun. You find that fun and, snap! The job's a game!" Who else has done a similar project? Any tips you have for me?? I'll have to let you know how it goes! |
My Homemaker hat
I imagined that I would be like June Cleaver, only work outside the house and maybe get caught vacuuming in heels and pearls a little less often. Turns out I'm a little more like a mix of June Cleaver and Frankie Heck...most days it feels like I've got more Frankie going on than June. I'm definitely a work in progress. :) Archives
November 2020
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