Friday, October 30, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Coupon Insert Preview

There will be a Red Plum (RP), Smart Source (S), and Proctor & Gamble (PG) coupon insert in this Sunday’s paper. For a preview of the individual coupons included, please check out Sunday Coupon Preview or the Coupon Clippers.
Click on 11/1 in the calendar (you may need to change the month to November), and you can see what coupons are available in the insert. Of course, there will be some regional variations.

Coupon Insert Preview for this Sunday from "Cents"able Momma!

Mr. Puffy Pumpkinhead Freezy-Cool Whoopie Pie

Mr. Puffy Pumpkinhead Freezy-Cool Whoopie Pie
another genius, fun recipe from Hungry Girl!

PER SERVING (entire recipe, 1 "whoopie pie"): 168 calories, 2g fat, 356mg sodium, 31.5g carbs, 7g fiber, 14g sugars, 8g protein -- POINTS® value 3*


Ingredients:
1 VitaTop (Deep Chocolate, Double Chocolate Dream, or Triple Chocolate Chunk), frozen
3 tbsp. Cool Whip Free, thawed
2 tbsp. fat-free cream cheese, room temperature
2 tbsp. canned pure pumpkin
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 no-calorie sweetener packet (like Splenda)

Directions:
Carefully slice VitaTop in half lengthwise, so that you are left with 2 thin round Vita "slices." Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine all other ingredients. Stir until smooth. Spoon mixture into a small sealable plastic bag, and squeeze it down toward a bottom corner of the bag. Snip a tiny bit of that corner off with scissors, so that you have a makeshift piping bag for distributing the filling.

Lay the bottom slice of your Vita flat, with the cut side down. The exposed side will be the "face" of Mr. Puffy -- it is the smoothest, most beautiful surface to work on. Carefully draw a jack-o-lantern face on it with the pumpkin mixture: 2 solid triangles for eyes and a squiggly mouth. (See photo!) Set aside.

Lay the top slice of the Vita flat, with the cut side up. Squeeze ALL of the remaining pumpkin mixture (there will be A LOT!) evenly onto the exposed side. Gently place the other Vita slice -- with the "face" up -- on top, creating a sandwich with a pumpkin-mixture filling.

Freeze until solid, about 1 hour. Enjoy!

MAKES 1 SERVING

Help kids understand what it means to have a job

Help kids understand what it means to have a job

This is something that my kids struggle with every day. Interesting article. Comment and let me know what you think.

~Andrea

100 custom Holiday Postcards for $6 shipped

100 custom Holiday Postcards for $6 shipped

Thanks to Money Saving Mom (

4-8-holiday-photo-card-001

Many of you were excited about the 140 custom Holiday labels for $3 deal I posted earlier this week so I wanted to tell you about another great deal from VistaPrint on custom postcards.

If you like to send Christmas cards each year, but you're looking for an inexpensive alternative to regular Christmas cards, you can get 100 custom Holiday cards for only approximately $6 shipped. Here's how:

::Just click here and click on the 100 free postcards offer.

::Search for holiday postcards or choose to upload your own photo or design.

::Design and customize your postcards.

::You should get 100 postcards for free and only pay around $6 total for shipping.

If you'd prefer to send a card than a postcard, you could stick the postcards in envelopes (just add on coordinating envelopes to your order for around $3.75). Plus, you could order matching address labels to go with them. All for around $13 total (well, the stamps aren't included!).

You could also design these postcards as gift tags for homemade gifts, goodies, or gift baskets. Or for all your gifts, for that matter!

Thanks, Wichita Coupons!

Apple Crisp from Zesty Cook

This sounds delicious and it only has 7 ingredients, found in just about every kitchen in America. Enjoy.

How To Soften Butter: Quick Tips from TipNut

You decide to squeeze in some baking when you realize: uh-oh, the butter is rock hard. Time is short and you don’t have enough of it to wait for the butter to soften. Here are a few quick ways to soften that butter up so you can get back to baking.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Three Ways to Make Fried Rice FAST!

Click here http://xrl.in/3ewh to see the great recipes from Mary Hunt!

Good Tips to Prevent the Spread of the Flu

Thoughts from an experienced pharmacist…

 

The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat.  In a global epidemic of this nature, it’s almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions.  Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.  While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, can be practiced:

  • Frequent hand washing
  • Hands off the face approach:  Resist all temptations to touch any part of the face, unless you want to eat or to bathe
  • Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt).  H1N1 takes 2 – 3 days after initial infection in the throat/nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms.  Simple gargling prevents proliferation.  Gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one.  Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method
  • Similar to above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water.  Blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population
  • Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in vitamin C..  If you supplement with vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has zinc to boost absorption.
  • Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can.  Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling but in the reverse direction.  They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate, or do any harm.

Please pass these tips along…..

Quick and Easy Activities for Kids

Our Play: Quick and Easy Activities - Parenting.com


http://www.parenting.com/activity-parties-gallery/Activities-Parties/Play-Li
st-Quick-and-Easy-Activities

Berry on Board. Helpful BlackBerry Apps for Parents. | CrackBerry.com

Berry on Board. Helpful BlackBerry Apps for Parents


http://crackberry.com/berry-board-helpful-apps-parents

Make Your Home a Haven

Make Home a Haven: Sweet Treats and Tasty Tricks http://bit.ly/4DSywP

Top 10 Time-Saving, MacGyver-Style Cleaning Tricks [Lifehacker Top 10]

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 10/17/09

Very few people truly enjoy spending time cleaning, and fewer still love buying expensive cleaners for every little task. Here's a handful of clever, time-saving DIY substitutes for common household cleaning jobs.

Photo by epicture.

We've already shown you 10 tricks MacGyver would be proud of, but how about when the Mac comes home to a dirty apartment? We'd like to think he might use the following cleaning methods:

10. Use cola and foil to polish chrome

Chrome looks great when it's new, and rather sad when it's accumulated dirt and discoloration. Chemical-filled and wallet-lightening cleaners aren't necessary, though. Apply a little cola—Coke, Pepsi, or whatever generic you've got handy—and rub down your shiny surface with aluminum foil, and you'll retain the eye-catching shine to your antique bar, Harley, or whatever else has a glint to it. (Original post)

9. Use baking soda and vinegar to fix funky towels

Over time, and with many washes, your bath towels will build up detergent and fabric softener residue, leaving them both unable to absorb as much water and smelling kinda funky when they do. Rather than give Target another lump sum, run them through the wash once with hot water and a cup of vinegar, then again with hot water and a half-cup of baking soda, as wikiHow suggests. That strips the residue from them, leaves them smelling fairly fresh again, and makes your post-shower experience a dryer one, at that. Photo by evelynishere (Original post).

8. Use salt to wipe up spilled egg

Even if you happen to have paper towels handy, spilled eggs tend to leave everything they touch feeling slimy and not-quite-hygienic. Sprinkle a good dose of table salt on the egg, wait about 10 minutes, and you'll have a semi-solid mass that's easy to pick up, and won't leave your towel or broom a sticky mess. Brian Lam of Gizmodo demonstrates the tip, brought to us by Urawaza author Lisa Katayama. (Original post)

7. Pour Coke into a dirty toilet

Out of Soft Scrub or other toilet-scaling potions? wikiHow recommends pouring a can of Coke into the bowl, letting it sit in the bowl for an hour or more, and then scrubbing the bowl clean. It doesn't save you the manual effort, but your bowl will eerily get clean—and your soda habit may possibly diminish. The cola color should flush away, but if you've got soda water on hand, that might do the trick just as well. (Original post)

6. DIY Drano for plugged pipes

Some landlords explicitly forbid tenants from using Drano, and some folks don't love the idea of pouring it down the same sinks they drink and shower from. Reach instead into your cupboard and pull out some—yeah, you probably guessed it—baking soda and vinegar, and match in the amounts prescribed by the Bonzai Aphrodite blog, along with some very hot water. That should agitate and gently dissolve anything that's not too greasy or stone-solid in your plumbing. If your problem specifically involves some stuff that's, ah, stuck in the toilet, try grabbing some dishwasher detergent. (Original post)

5. Use Kool-Aid lemonade to clean a dishwasher

Cleaning a dishwasher seems weird and unnecessary from a glance—doesn't the thing fill itself with soapy water all the time? Over time, though, iron will stain the surfaces and lime deposits build up on the surfaces of your dishwasher, leaving it a place you don't want to stash the plates you eat from. Real Simple finds a solution in unsweetened, lemonade-flavored Kool-Aid packets. Load a packet into your dishwasher's detergent cup, run it empty through a normal cycle, and the citric acid in everyone's favorite bug juice de-gunks the surfaces it would be a pain to reach. (Original post)

4. Clean and de-scratch an LCD monitor

The basics of cleaning any LCD monitor start with avoiding alcohol—cleaning with it, at least. Turn off the monitor, dampen a soft, lint-free cloth with water, and wipe. If it's one of those fancy high-gloss monitors, there's just a footnote of using a micro-fiber cloth and cleaning in small sections. The since-defunct Hackosis once offered tips on fixing a scratched LCD monitor, including using petroleum jelly to temporarily smooth and visually restore scratches and re-lacquering screens with notable scratches. If you've got something small, you're in luck—the pencil eraser method might work. Photo by Gepat.

3. Get rid of underarm stains

We know you use deodorant. We know you wash your clothes. Perspiration stains still somehow work their way into your lighter-colored clothes. Men's Flair runs down the best sweat-cleaning methods, such as citrus and baking soda/Borax combos, and we can also recommend an aspirin-based solution. What this guide also teaches, though, is that drying clothes in the sun helps to whiten them more than a dryer. (Original post).

2. Clean a DSLR lens

Unlike with LCD screens, a little alcohol solution is actually a good idea when you're cleaning your DSLR lens—just not too much. Digital Photography School lays out the best tools, including cleaning cloths, blowers, UV/skylight filters, and a few other items. One of the cheaper items you can supplement your camera bag with is found in all kinds of boxes: silica gel packets. Stashing them in your bag keeps moisture away from the lens, which in turn requires less time for cleaning, which frees you up to actually, you know, shoot pictures. Photo by Claudio Matsuoka. (Original post)

1. Get marker off any surface

We know how to get accidental permanent marker off a dry-erase board—write over it with a dry-erase marker, then wipe away both layers. If you or a youngster managed to run a Sharpie on something else, Public Realty Blog suggests baking soda toothpaste. Maybe it's a ringing endorsement for its ability to remove plaque and grime from your teeth. Even if not, keeping a spare tube handy seems like a good idea, as evidenced by the video demonstration. (Original post)



If you had to deliver a cleaning tip or two to, say, a kid fresh out of college in their first apartment, what would you suggest to save time and money? Tell us your own tips in the comments.



Things you can do from here:

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Familiarity and Contempt

The remarkable can so soon become unremarkable just by its closeness. The greatest gift can fade just because it is so accessible. Discontentment seems native to the human heart, at least in this sinful world. And I think we all are prone to allow the greatest, closest gifts to fade simply by virtue of their familiarity.

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