You’ll remember, of course, that we put up a pool this year.  It has been wonderful for the children to swim on hot afternoons.  Sister has taught herself how to go underwater and do flips (front and back).  She has also learned that you can open your eyes beneath the surface and that you only have to hold your nose if you want to.  Brother is learning how to deal with all of Sister’s antics and how to give orders safely perched upon the ladder.

We learned about something else around here too - something not so wonderful.  Swimmer’s ear.  Sister complained of pain in her ear so we went to the doctor who prescribed heavy-duty ear drops to clear the infection - which they did.  It was a somewhat unpleasant experience with crying and pleading and a few angry words (That was just me; you can only imagine how Sister took it.)  so we are not keen on repeating the experience.  To that end we put  2-3 Swim-Ear drops in Sister’s ears each time she gets out of the pool.  I could have purchased some at the store to the tune of $4 per ounce but chose instead to make my own with equal parts rubbing alcohol and white vinegar and packaged them in this pretty container.  Cheap solutions work for me.

For other great tips check out this list.

  I love a burning candle - the soft glow of a flickering flame, a light scent wafting through my home.  My kids love candles too.  At least they like blowing out my candles when they think I’m not looking. :)  I used to be a candle Scrooge, for lack of a better term.  I would buy candles galore or receive them as gifts and never burn them.  Happily I’ve mended my ways and discovered a few tips in the process. 

*Trimming the wick to 1/4″ before lighting is critical to candle life and prevents smoking but if you can’t (or don’t want to) buy one of these, use a spare pair of toenail clippers instead.

*A coffee cup turned upside down makes a good enough snuffer.  Of course you can always blow out your candles but watch for flying wax.  A wick dipper is the best choice for candle snuffing and you don’t even have to buy one if you have a wire hanger and a little imagination.

*Candles have a memory of sorts and will “tunnel” unless you let them burn long enough to create a pool of wax to the outer edge.  Also, most the the scent release comes from the melted wax so doing this can provide a stronger fragrance.

*Save yourself time searching for matches by placing small boxes or matchbooks near each of the candles you light most often.  (I use the candle on my piano almost every night so I’ve hidden a box of matches behind the sheet music stand.)

 *Candles made with paraffin are essentially made with petroleum and burning them releases carcinogens into your home.  Yuck!! Soy or beeswax candles are a cleaner (and healthier choice.)

*Soy candles though more expensive combine more readily with scents and will add fragance to a room even when they are not burning. 

*Beeswax candles though more expensive tend to burn longer and cleaner than any others and make the best choice for an emergency kit.

Other candle resources:

http://www.naturalhealthweb.com/articles/Nelson6.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_candle

http://www.candles.org/about_tips.html

Click here for more Works-For-Me-Wednesday ideas.

Here’s an odd problem.  You know those cute shirts that have hoods attached.  They come in two varieties:  The kind zip that up the front and work more like a jacket and the kind that go over the head like a shirt.  They make a great Fall/Winter top.  Especially for a busy, little boy who might not have time to slip on his jacket before heading out into the cold.  Unfortunately, this second kind which goes on smoothly and works well to keep little ones warm has a serious flaw.  They are next to impossible to remove from said busy boy.  More than once I have started to pull one off only to have it get stuck at the point where Brother’s face is completely covered and his arms are pointing straight to the sky.  We pull and tug and Brother yells a muffled, “Help! Help! I stuck!”  After much ado, Brother always escapes but the whole scenario can be avoided with one simple trick.

Put the hood up first!

For more handy dandy tips click on over to Shannon’s place.

  Long ago in a life far away, I needed some contact cards for my doula business.  Now anyone who’s ever been a doula knows it’s not a particularly lucrative field (though the intrinsic rewards are outstanding).  Anyway, I was looking for inexpensive business cards that I didn’t have to buy by the thousands.  A little bit of searching led me to VistaPrint.  Since that time I’ve used their service for address stamps, more business cards, notepads and most recently postcards (of the “We have moved” variety)    The quality is great.  The service is outstanding.  Any product can be personalized with ease and best of all, I got everything for the price of shipping.  Cool, huh?

In case you were wondering, this is not a sponsered post.  I just found a print company that works for me.

Click on over here to find out what’s working for other bloggers this week.

A set of keys for the new house, a set of keys for the apartment, a key for the car and a sundry sort of membership/discount cards conveniently designed for travel, these are the current contents of my keyring.  I have even more keys.  The parents’ houses, other people’s cars, safety deposit box, an office.  It seems my circle of friends is a very secure lot. I wish I could scale down but every key I own is necessary in some way so I have developed a few rules for managing them all.

1. I do not need every key all the time. This means I only carry keys that are used daily.  Ones that are called into service less often remain at home until I need them.  On occasion I have been somewhere that I wished I had a key with me but these times have been few and don’t justify lugging around those extra ounces in my purse.

2. Keys that are not used every day must have a label.  A few weeks ago I saw that the key cutting station at Lowe’s had some custom key designs available.  (flowers, a college logo, or even the word “home”)  This is a good idea IF you can remember what designs signify what locations.  I try to be specific enough with my labels that anyone ”in the know” can find the right key quickly but vague enough that they mean little to a stranger (eg -”Grandparents 9410 back door”, “Will’s Cutlas trunk”).

3. Purge excess, out-of-date, or unknown keys annually.

4. Each set of keys has its own ring and each of these mini rings is stored on a carabiner. Here’s a visual for clarification.

This has been soo helpful.  Dropping my car off for maintenance, I can easily hand the mechanic what he needs while safely keeping the rest in my possesion.  On a hot day, I can start the car cooling and still keep house keys in hand to lock up. 

5. Finally, all of my membership cards are on their own ring and also get purged periodically.  This keeps them from getting in the way of my keys and from multiplying out of control.

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about keychain management but it works for me.

Works-For-Me-Wednesday is hosted by Rocks In My Dryer.  You should go there.

We’ve done the final inspections on our new house (Yes, I know you’ve heard nothing about this until now.  I’ll fill you in when I’m a little less preoccupied.  Say… when we’re moved in. )  Anyway, it’s simple little place that will suit us well for a year or so except for one big thing.  The walls are white….ALL the walls.  It’s not “antique white” or “off-white” either.  It’s bright white.  I know I want to paint before we move in but a visit to the local paint center completely overwhelmed me with color.  I know some people consider wall color as easy to change as curtains but I am not one of them.  I stood baffled in front of the rainbow display.  I know what I like on the paint chips but how can I be sure that it will look good on the walls?  At home, I found the Behr ColorSmart System and Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer.  The confusion is gone and I am having so. much. fun!  I’ve tried combinations I’ve never considered before and been pleasantly surprised.  I’ve tried “sure things” and realized they were not what I thought.  Most importantly, I now know what I want to do in the house.

If you’ve got a painting project ahead of you, skip over here and here.  It worked for me.

WFMW is hosted at Rocks In My Dryer.  You should go there.

A couple of nights ago Will came to bed with a neckache.  I tried to massage out some of the knots but didn’t have much success.  What I needed was heat… something to loosen the muscles first.  I thought of the electric heat pad sold at our last garage sale (”We never use this!”)  I thought of various creams that might help.  Icy Hot (among others) came to mind but I quickly dismissed them each in turn.  Nothing like the smell of menthol to give you nightmares.  Hmm, what to do….?  I stumbled through the dark toward the kitchen to see what inspiration I could find there.  On the way, I was almost bowled over when a stray laundry basket attacked me out of nowhere.  (Okay, it didn’t really “attack” me.  It was sitting in the middle of the room waiting for someone to empty it of clean socks.  What?  You have this problem too, right?)  Anyway, I made it to the kitchen but there was no chocolate inspiration to be found until I opened up the “carb” cabinet.  “Noodles, beans, rice….. Hmm, rice.”  I snagged a package of brown rice, returned to the basket of unmatched socks and found a large one suited to the plan forming in my head.  Back in the kitchen once more I emptied the rice sack into the sock and sealed it with a hefty knot.  My creation went into the microwave for a minute or so and voila… homemade hot pack.  I suppose if one had a sewing machine or an inclination to sew, one could replace the knot with a neat seam or some pretty ribbon but for a late night, need it now solution this worked for me Will.

Skip on over to Shannon’s for more inspired ideas.

This is a skill that I guess I take for granted because I am always surprised when people ask, “How did you do that?”

This is your fitted sheet waiting to be folded.  (Not that you would throw your clean sheets on the floor intentionally but if you had a little boy that liked to pretend to be a superhero or a little girl that loved making tents and such … or if you were taking pictures for your blog, then this is the way your sheet would look.)

Step1:  Find a corner of the sheet and slip it over your arm (inside out) until your index finger is in the corner.

Step 2:  Repeat with the opposite corner.

Step 3:  Bring the two corners together.  Your index fingers will be touching on the inside of the sheet.

Step 4: Allow one side to slip off your arm and over onto the other arm.  You should now be looking at one corner (right side out) inside the other.

Repeat Steps 1 to 4 with the remaining two corners.  You will need to drop your first set to do this but don’t worry: they will stay together. 

Step 5: Once you have two corner sets slip one set onto each arm. 

Step 6: As in Step 3, bring the two corner sets together until your index fingers touch from the inside.

Step 7:  And then, as before, Allow one corner set to slip off your arm and over onto the other arm.  You will now have all the corners tucked neatly into one another and hanging from one arm.

Step 8:  You can run your opposite hand down the edges or give the whole thing a little shake to smooth out any strangeness before the next step.

Step 9:  Lay your sheet on a flat surface like so.

Step 10:  Fold the top third down (Don’t worry that it’s a little bumpy.)

Step 11:  Fold the bottom third up. (You’re in the home stretch now!)

Step 12:  Fold the right third in….

Step 13:  and then the left.

 Isn’t it lovely? … Ok, maybe “lovely” is a stretch but it works for me. 

Skip on over to Shannon’s for more Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips.

Also - Sister took most of my pictures for me… Didn’t she do a great job?

Did you have a good holiday?  I hope so.  We took it easy this year.  Hung out with the family, roasted some hot dogs, set off a few fireworks.  Okay, that last bit is a complete understatement.  Independance Day ranks right next to Christmas on our favorite holiday list.  In fact for us, it is very much like Christmas.  We go to the store with our budget in hand and leave the store with our budget in the trash.  See.

I should tell you that we didn’t set all of these off… yet.  We usually do two shows each year.  One on the Fourth for our Tulsa family and friends and then another sometime in August for the family out in Gate.  This year we are adding a show in Arkansas for a different group of relatives.  …. because we are crazy people, I tell you.

To our credit we only go crazy like this on special occasions.  It’s not an everyday sort of thing (so you can just stop looking for that insane asylum number right now).  And for Independance day the craziness seems limited to the four walls of the TNT Fireworks Superstore.  This is why: 

• You can get the most of “bang” for your buck.  (Punny but true.) Mom and Pop shops may be nostalgic but they can’t offer the best deals.  For even more savings don’t wait until the last minute.  Shop the first day they are open when almost everything is “Buy One, Get One Free.”
• They are willing to negotiate.  If you’re spending a lot of cash (or even if you’re not) don’t be afraid to ask for discounts and/or substitutions to get the widest variety for the least amount.
• TNT has a “NO Duds” guarantee.  They store and later sell their product in a climate controlled environment.  So in spite of the rainy/muggy weather outside, everything you buy will work.
• Similarly, climate control means a pleasant place to shop…especially with kids.
• All the staff really knows about the product.  They don’t just guess or read the label.  They’ve actually seen each thing work and can describe it to you.
• It is run by a local church who uses the profit for their ministry.

Disclaimer: If this post reads like an advice column it’s because it was written for the WFMW that wasn’t.

Throughout the years we have owned cats off and on.  The “off and on” is important because during every “off” time we gave all our kitty stuff away and purchased anew at the next “on.”  And that is important to explain because I want to you understand that I have tried a LOT of litter boxes. … Well, not me personally … the cats have tried a lot … well, actually each cat only tried one but that’s not the point.  The point is:  I know about litter boxes.  (I put the point in bold in case you got lost in all the rambling at the beginning.) I also know the two most important questions to ask yourself when purchase a new litter box.  Is it easy to clean?  Will the cat be able to kick/track litter everywhere?  One hopes the answers will be “yes” and “no” in that order but only time will tell.  Last week, I discovered for the first time ever a perfect “yes/no” combination.  The Omega Paw Self Cleaning Litter Box is incredibly easy to clean (”self-cleaning” is a bit of a misnomer) and it’s completly enclosed except for the entrance so litter stays in.  For the little bit of litter that gets tracked out, I added a simple, litter mat and voila!  No more mess.  All told I spent about $35 dollars on the solution which is quite a bit more than your standard litter box cost but I figure I’ll make up the difference in headache medicine.

If you haven’t already, click on over to Shannon’s for more Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips.