Recently Helpful

So... welcome to my new blog! I've been thinking lately about all the cool things that I most recently find useful and thought you might be interested.

Yogurt - Once we hit the sloggy dog days of winter we sometimes experience the sluggishness of system that is advertized in "activia" ads. Ironically I happen to think that for whatever reason Activia is one of the best tasting yogurts so I have started buying it frequently and trying to eat at least one of those cups of it every day sometimes more. I happen to have 2 toddlers though and as small as one of those yogurt cups are they seem to get dumped on the couch pretty often. Then I happened to find Dananino and didn't even notice til we got homebut it comes in little tiny cups that are much easier for a toddler to hold and more likely to get eaten instead of dumped.

Netflix - Seriously I know its been around for a while but we JUST got it and I LOOOOOOVE it. We happen to have a Wii so we hooked the internet to our Wii and downloaded the netflix app and now we can watch all kinds of movies and tv shows on our tv. It is so nice and probably saves us some amount of money over all the late fees from the movie rental store. Handy to have this in winter like when the roads are really bad and you do not want to leave at all but do want to watch lots of movies.

Womans Day Month of Menus - Ok so I randomly ran across this one time. I got a pile of magazines from a neighbor last summer and was flipping through them when I noticed that Woman's Day publishes a whole month menu. I was desperately trying to figure out how to do menu planning for my family at the time and was working on my idea at the time which was make a list of meals the family likes and just stick to those with the occasional new recipe for variety's sake. So after a month or two that got a bit old and I wasn's sure how to know when I was making something too much or how to vary side dishes or how to know how often to add a new meal and when I did how do I figure out what to add if I don't happen to be craving anything in particular. So eventually I noticed that this month of menus is published online and can be viewed or printed off at no charge. So what I do is I print it off and then look it over. Any meals that I do not want to even try to make I just alter. If there is any part of it that I can use I do so for instance "eggplant pasta" we don't like eggplant so I would look for a pasta recipe that we haven't tried. If we try something and don't like it, I just throw that one away. I have also started adding 1 breakfast recipe and 1 dessert per week. I keep the month plans in a pocket of a three ring binder and then print off the actual recipes and put them in clear plastic page protectors. Then as I go through I take them out. I have gotten enough recipes now that I keep ones that are not actively on the menu in a pocket expandable file folder until its time to bring out the menu again. I make meals in any order we like so its basically just a list of ideas which is so much nicer than a blank slate or a sheet of paper with a couple ideas on it. It makes creating a grocery list so much simpler too.

Castle - Thats a tv show and one of my top favorites at this moment. Its a crime drama somewhat similar to Law and Order and CSI. The main difference is this show has a more lighthearted tone. One of the main characters is a writer of crime drama fiction books and teams up with a homicide detective to get inspiration for his work. They do a pretty good job of adding comic relief with it so its not all scary but there is enough suspense to keep me interested.

Light pink and Beige - There seems to be quite a bit of these two colors in the fashion world  recently and I am finding out how useful they can be as wardrobe staples. My two favorites right now are a loose fitting tee in light pink and a pair of pumps in beige.