Author Archive
Today I decided to get off my butt and make something. I think most people who know me know that I am happiest when I am in the Lab creating something. Anything!
I’ve noticed that here in the midwest my skin tends to dry out more than I am used to and I require the use of a more intense lotion. But I really dislike thick, heavy, greasy creams and won’t suffer through them even if they work beautifully.
All of my creations are formulated and handmade from the ground up. I start with an idea of what kind of product I want and what I want it to do. Then I will move into formulation and create my product based on the individual oils and other ingredients that accomplish my goal. When it comes to scent, I first look for essential oils that do a particular job and then create a blend that smells a certain way based on the type of product, its color, the season, how the product is supposed to make you feel, etc.
I’m sure that this recipe is not mine because I cannot remember creating it and my formulations are either much larger or smaller for testing. I have personally used it many times and really wish I could remember where I got it and when I wrote it down. If anyone has come across it, please let me know so that I can give proper credit.
This whipped butter is extremely easy to make and does not incorporate water so there is no need for a preservative if you are not making it for clients. You will want to add an antioxidant though, to keep the oils from turning rancid. This is the purpose of the vitamin E so don’t leave it out unless you are going to substitute another antioxidant!
Also, I know there will be some people out there reading who will feel a bit cheated that I didn’t specify the butters and oils to use. It’s really okay! This is where your own creativity comes into play. You might say, I only have shea butter, can I use that? Or, I only have 1.5 ounces of aloe butter but I have 2.5 of cocoa butter, is that okay? YES! Use one butter and one oil, use a mixture of different ones, it’s all up to you. There are many people out there who purchase bases from suppliers, stir in a scent and repackage it, but I like to have control over every aspect of my products from scent to texture to benefits. Use a therapeutic essential oil blend as a scent to help with eczema. Use aloe butter to help with sunburn. Use lavender to calm you or grapefruit to energize after a morning shower. Use rosehip seed oil for mature skin, olive for sensitive skin or if it’s what you have on hand. Safflower, peanut, wheat germ, sweet almond, it’s all up to you!
My kids would live on breakfast foods if I let them. I have never seen two people more in love with pancakes, waffles and cold cereal and willing to eat them three times a day forever. That being the case, there is a dire need to keep these things in the house in order to maintain a happy household. Short story, I can cook but I don’t like to. I would rather do almost anything other than cook. And I would go through a fortune in ready made mixes, so I make it a point to trudge through an hour once a week to keep the young ‘uns at peace. The secret is to make a bunch, freeze them, and have them heat them in the microwave or toaster when they want them. Everyone’s happy!
4 cups all-purpose flour
8 Tbs sugar
8 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 cups milk
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla
Heat your pan or griddle to medium low heat. This is essential! Don’t try to cook this recipe too fast or they will be burned on the outside and runny in the middle.
Combine all of the dry ingredients and mix together. Next, add in the liquids and eggs. At this point, I thoroughly mix until smooth although some people advise to mix just until moistened. Use whichever method you prefer, lumps just irritate me. I then pour the mix onto the griddle by scant 1/3 cup because it makes pancakes the perfect size to store in my bread bag. When bubbles form on top, turn over and cook until golden.
This recipe will make about 30 nice and fluffy pancakes. If you don’t mind flat pancakes, thin the mixture with about 1/2 cup of milk and you will have a few more.
I use a particular method to freeze them so that I don’t have to put wax paper in between the pancakes in the bag. I first allow the pancakes to cool to room temperature on my cooling racks. Obviously the first ones done will also be the first ones cooled. When 6 are cooled I place them on a cookie sheet and into the freezer for about 10 minutes. Then I remove them, place them in the bread bag and put another 6 in to freeze. Keep repeating until all are done. This method allows the pancakes to freeze but not stick to the cookie sheet or each other in the bag. It’s pretty frustrating to reach in for a pancake and have it break in half because it’s stuck to the one beneath it.
So there ya have it. Happy Monday!
We love tomatoes at this house. No, seriously. I don’t think that you quite get me when I say we love tomatoes. Take a lookie loo.
The Great Tomato Garden of 2008
There at least 27 plants that I can remember, of 3 different varieties. We had Roma, Cherry and Beefstake. Yum. And they were all started from seeds I might add, for those who know that I have a brown thumb. Unfortunately, we ended up moving from that house about two months or so after this picture was taken. Issues. Another post maybe.
We ended up with about 50% of the harvest, not being able to get back to get the rest. I’m sure the owner had to give some away! I planted so many because I wanted to take a crack at canning homemade salsa and tomato sauce. LOVED how they turned out, HATED dealing with the darn tomatoes! Blanching, peeling, coring 47 pounds OMG. June Cleaver had to be a drinker. Now, we don’t have a garden. And I’m okay with that because if I ever get the urge to do that again, assume I am a podperson and shoot me in the head.
But I really do love a certain taste and texture to my tomato sauce. Well, necessity being the mother of invention and all, I have come up with a new way to make ‘homemade’ sauce. Still involves canning, which I don’t mind a bit, but the prep is nominal. By the by, no laughing.
Need a quick side dish for a 4th of July BBQ? I made this dish in about 10 minutes and it is delish!
1 box garden rotini pasta
1/2 block colby jack cheese, cubed
1/2 bag sliced pepperoni, cut into quarters
1/4 - 1/3 cup parmesan reggianno
3 - 4 Roma tomatoes, diced
10 - 15 large olives, diced
2 - 3 green onions, minced
1/4 - 1/3 cup Italian dressing
Any other goodies you want to throw in: broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms, spices, etc.
First, cook the pasta until al dente, about 9-11 miutes. While the pasta is boiling, cut up the rest of the ingredients and place in a large bowl. Reserve the dressing for last.
Cut up the goodies
Drain your pasta and thoroughly rinse with cold water. You definitely do not want to skip this step because it stops the pasta from cooking and keeps it firm.
Drain and rinse
Carefully mix the pasta with your other ingredients. Don’t be too rough so that the pasta doesn’t fall apart. Finally, lightly toss with the Italian Dressing. If you have time, chill for 2 -4 hours so that the flavors develop. If not, enjoy!
Enjoy!
Crafting a resume can be a daunting task in itself, but creating one when you have to translate your military skills into their civilian equivalent can be even more difficult. When you are a spouse trying to put everything together for the (ex) service member it becomes complex, especially when you know very little about their day to day responsibilities, as in my case. This is by no means all-inclusive and does not cover every variable associated with each branch of service. I am simply relaying what has worked for us, with the examples presented geared toward the US Navy. Hopefully this series will give you some tips to help in creating an attractive resume and also some that are military specific, including job boards and resources for transitioning military.
Drafting a military to civilian resume can quickly overwhelm even the most savvy of writers. There are so many things to take into account, especially with the knowledge that you must make the best impression possible within the 10-15 seconds the employer will spend looking it over. Too much info in too little space can be thrown aside by the employer because of time constraints. Too little info can also be thrown aside because on the surface it may look like you have no experience or are unqualified. Where can you go if you need help?
This perspective is coming from someone who previously chose to homeschool. Although I am not currently homeschooling either of my children, I did for awhile and really miss being such a positive force in my child’s learning. Our life situation changed drastically a little over a year ago and I made the difficult decision to send my kids to public school. It is a decision that I am not happy with but, in trying to do what is best for my kids, it is one that I don’t have the confidence to change right now. Hopefully I will be able to give someone some insight into what it takes to educate at home, the easy parts, the hard parts and the most rewarding moments I have ever experienced. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe I can offer the tiniest bit of insight into what may be a difficult decision.
My decision to homeschool came rather suddenly. My oldest son had always done well in school, academically and socially. Ever since he could really interact with people he has been a social butterfly, and probably always will be. He always got along well with other kids and could always manage to charm adults as well. He performed well academically and was frequently regarded as being unusually intelligent for his age. Not a genius or anything, but he developed a real love of learning and it showed.
It has long been advised that when paying off debt you should put more of your money towards the debt that has the highest interest rate. The rationale behind this is that by getting rid of that one first, you will be saving money in the long run because of the amount you save in interest. To get started you would list your debts in descending order by interest rate and begin paying as much as you can towards paying off the first on the list. Then, take that payment and add it to the payment you have been paying on the second card, getting that one paid off faster. You keep going this way until your debt is paid off, commonly called Snowball Effect. Suze Orman advocates this approach and you can find more information at her website. Her plan directs you to basically find a total amount you can pay towards the debt per month. On each debt, pay more than the minimum required by something like $10 and pay the rest of your budget on the account with the highest interest. It looks to me that this approach will also very sloooowly increase your credit score because you will be paying more than the minimum on each debt and that is something reported to the credit bureaus.
Another approach would be to list your debt in ascending order, paying the minimum amounts on everything but the first card listed. Towards this debt you would pay the rest of your ‘debt budget.’ The rationale behind this approach is that, in a time where it is difficult for a lot of people to stay away from credit, you will receive nearly instant gratification, making it easier to stick with your debt payoff plan. Although less popular, this way is not always any worse than the traditional way as you can see at The Simple Dollar. Dave Ramsey advises using this method as part of his Baby Steps and many people, including myself, have had success with this.
The Debt Planner in MS Money is pretty much what I call a Dummy Program. You punch in your numbers and it tells you what to do, even going so far as to automatically schedule monthly occurrences for the accounts you enter into the debt plan. Unfortunately, if you go through it you have to do what it says. There is no tweaking, that I have found, that will allow you to use the planner with Dave Ramsey’s snowball method.
It will take you through different scenarios based on the amount you allocate monthly towards the debt included in the plan and any one-time payments you might make. It will tell you the minimum payment required for all accounts and ‘what if’ plans if you increase your monthly debt budget by $10, or whatever. But it will allocate that extra $10 towards the account it chooses based on the traditional debt reduction guidelines. This means that the extra will be added onto the higher payment for the account with the highest interest.
It is a great tool, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not the method I am going to use. It is thoroughly ‘idiot-proof’, provided you have the required information handy (which would be your statements and such) and will set you up painlessly, especially if your financial institution allows for full integration with MS Money and you can set up your payments within the program. The following is a quick and easy tutorial on how to set up this traditional Debt Reduction Plan using MS Money Debt Planner.
We sure have had some bad luck when it comes to our memories. Ever since my husband and I met we had been collecting personalized Christmas ornaments and handmade our ornaments every year with our children. We started with barely anything on our tree and ended up with many beautiful and special additions. Unfortunately, these ornaments were mistakenly placed in an artificial tree box and the tree was sold at our garage sale. Please, if you ever buy something at a yard sale that contains something possibly sentimental that may have mistakenly been placed inside another box, please please double check with the family and return it if at all possible.
Anyway, next I thought I was going to be smart and put all of our pictures from our digital camera on an external hard drive for safe keeping. Yeah, it hurt when I dropped the hard drive on the floor and it never worked again. There were approximately 2-3 years of pictures on there.
We’ve gone through a couple of video cameras in the last 12 years. The first was a full sized VHS camera. Yep, used VHS tapes and everything. Then we upgraded to an 8mm camcorder, and finally to a digital camcorder. Of course, we didn’t consider how we were ever going to watch those 8mm tapes from an analog camera that didn’t hook up to the computer without a video capture card that I have never been willing to purchase.
Now I have a bug up my behind to get everything digital backed up on external hard drive, zipped on CDs and burned to DVD along with keeping the original tape in a safe place. Overkill? Maybe, but I am not taking any chances.
After hooking everything up, we found that our 8mm tapes were destroyed. We don’t know how it happened but everything was wiped out. But we did learn how to do the transfer after a long search on the interwebs turned up nothing helpful. We don’t have a VCR and I wanted to get everything onto the computer eventually so here is how we made due with what we had and hopefully it will be of use to someone out there.
Here in this little town in Wisconsin the weather has been almost unbearably hot. We had two days in a row with heat advisories and the days would have been well spent at the beach. Unfortunately, I’m not a lake kinda gal. There’s just something about stagnant water with green things floating on top that just doesn’t give me the welcome mat. Maybe I have been spoiled by the ocean, with the beautiful waves crashing on the shore and the constant renewal.
I suppose I’m just a little weird when it comes to the ocean as well. While living in California I loved going to the beach and swimming in the ocean. But when we lived in Hawaii, the only time I felt comfortable in the water was when we would go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. This picture isn’t of Hanauma Bay but gives an idea of the beauty of the area.
To beat the heat I’ve made up a couple of yummies that I would like to share. The first one is a Strawberry Lemonade recipe that I found on the ‘net. The only changes I made were omitting the sugar because I used a tub of sweetened, sliced strawberries that I got for way cheap awhile ago. I like my lemonade quite tart and this was delicious.
The other yummy was homemade ice cream sandwiches. This one is really easy and flexible.
I found the recipe awhile ago, not sure where, and it called for refrigerated cookie dough. Since I make my own instead, I decided to use that. In either case, you want a fairly soft cookie. I made them double sized, put a couple of scoops of vanilla fudge swirl ice cream in between and froze them for about 20 minutes. They turned out really well but next time I will make the cookies a tad smaller because it’s just entirely too much to finish in one sitting!
A quick post today, but one with a great link that I just discovered. Sometimes meal planning is difficult for me and we might end up with the same meals over and over again. This is when we become bored and are more inclined to eat out. Other times I just want to use up what I have in the back freezer or cupboard. I have some great recipes that I found from the ‘net and a lot that came from my mother, grandmother and aunts, but there are times when I’m not wanting to go through those to find a recipe using the ingredients I have on hand. Wouldn’t it be something if Google put their awesome search capabilities to use on just recipes?
Well, they have! Cookin’ With Google is a great resource. When you click on the link you will be taken to a no-frills page with a simple search bar. Type in just a couple of ingredients. Go ahead, first I tried “chicken pasta” just to see what would come up. You’ll get a couple of Google ads then underneath there will be the option of narrowing your search to different types of dishes such as seafood, low-fat and crockpot. Or, if you prefer, you can start the hunt for recipes under that.
You can add as many ingredients to the search as you want and you will get plenty of results. The results include recipes from sites such as Rezipezaar, Allrecipes, Cooks.com, GroupRecipes, and other ‘food’ websites. I didn’t see any results from blogs, which is where I tend to find my best recipes.
Try it yourself and see if you like it. I will definitely use it often.
Several years ago I wanted to update my blog and create a whole website integrating a common theme. After doing a bit of research I came do a stunning conclusion: I have no idea what I am doing.
I had created a couple of websites from the ground up, but it was extremely labor intensive to accomplish the smallest task. I was using CSS and HTML, with Dreamweaver, and I learned quite a lot in a short amount of time due to necessity.
When it came to my site, I decided to ask for help. Okay, I decided to have someone else do it. A friend of mine does this sort of thing and is pretty darn good at it, so I turned to her and her expertise. She created the OnBeingMe theme, installed Wordpress, and a couple of site pages. It turned out really well and was a good representation of me at the time.
My needs have since changed and, while I know a heck of a lot more about PHP, CSS and HTML than I did, it would still be extremely labor intensive for me to go about creating my own theme.
Let’s face it. I don’t have a whole lot of time on my hands and am a sucker for instant gratification. I set out on a search for some ready made themes that I could just upload and activate. It’s difficult to find quality themes that can stand on their own right out of the box, and I am grateful for the hard work that designers put into creating some really good ones. One of the best things about maintaining my own website is being able to have everything exactly how I want it. Having an aesthetically pleasing, ready made theme is nice while I chip away at my own a little at a time.
The good ones are not easy to find though, so I wanted to share the nicer ones that I have come across lately. more…
Does Natal creep out anyone else or am I the only one? Without going into conspiracy theory overdrive, the applications of this technology are a bit frightening. Of course, if Microsoft has it, the military is already using it. 
Crafting a resume can be a daunting task in itself, but creating one when you have to translate your military skills into their civilian equivalent can be even more difficult. When you are a spouse trying to put everything together for the (ex) service member it becomes complex, especially when you know very little about their day to day responsibilities, as in my case. This is by no means all-inclusive and does not cover every variable associated with each branch of service. I am simply relaying what has worked for us, with the examples presented geared toward the US Navy. Hopefully this series will give you some tips to help in creating an attractive resume and also some that are military specific, including job boards and resources for transitioning military.
Some ratings translate well into civilian jobs. For example, a GSM (Gas Turbine Systems Mechanic) or a GSE (Gas Turbine Systems Electrician) can find many opportunities using those search terms. Some power plant employers even specify that they prefer applicants who are prior or transitioning military in the GS rating. more…
I am usually pretty skeptical when it comes to those ‘As Seen On TV’ products. I look at them and ask myself how they could possibly work or see that they are a huge waste of money, whereas the DH wants every one of them because the 2 minute spot has convinced him that he can’t live without them. Lo and behold, sometimes the DH is right! I’ve branched out a bit since my first experience in 1999 and have tried a few of the other TV products with varying results.
I am in love with Hercules Hooks! I have to say that this is the most amazing and handy product to have around. more…
Over the next few days I will be doing some housecleaning on the site. Hopefully the end product will fit my current needs a little better and allow for easier readability. Bear with me because it will probably take a while.
So, I am a full month into my new budgeting routine and I have to say that it’s going pretty well. I set up the budget in Microsoft Money and it has done wonders to keep me on track. more…
Crafting a resume can be a daunting task in itself, but creating one when you have to translate your military skills into their civilian equivalent can be even more difficult. When you are a spouse trying to put everything together for the (ex) service member it becomes complex, especially when you know very little about their day to day responsibilities, as in my case. This is by no means all-inclusive and does not cover every variable associated with each branch of service. I am simply relaying what has worked for us, with the examples presented geared toward the US Navy. Hopefully this series will give you some tips to help in creating an attractive resume and also some that are military specific, including job boards and resources for transitioning military.
It’s often a bit mind numbing when you first sit down to create your resume. You know what you want to end up with but it can be difficult to break things down into individual steps, especially when the military has been your career. There aren’t many people who truly retire when they end their military career. It is much more common to gain civilian employment past your 20 years. more…
I am usually pretty skeptical when it comes to those ‘As Seen On TV’ products. I look at them and ask myself how they could possibly work or see that they are a huge waste of money, whereas the DH wants every one of them because the 2 minute spot has convinced him that he can’t live without them. Lo and behold, sometimes the DH is right! I’ve branched out a bit since my first experience in 1999 and have tried a few of the other TV products with varying results.
I have seen the BumpIt advertised on television for awhile now and had wanted to try it. more…