Nutella Breakfast Shake

I got this idea from a recipe on Pinterest.  It was a breakfast shake with peanut butter.  I do like peanut butter, but not for breakfast.  I had been seeing lots of things on Pinterest with Nutella, so I made my own recipe for a Nutella breakfast shake.  I love it!

1 frozen banana

1 cup rice milk (maybe a little more)

1 T. wheat germ (for added fiber and vitamins)

2 T. Nutella

1 T. ground flax seed (can be done in blender)

1 handful fresh spinach

Blend all ingredients together in a blender, pour into a cup and enjoy!

Update:

I just started adding flax seed and spinach. Lots of added nutrition and still yummy! The color is a little unsettling, kind of greenish brown, but tastes so good! And so good for you!

Squeaky Hinges

I love to read!  I read all sorts of things.  I am a member of 2 different book clubs.

Last year in July, I read the same book for both book clubs.

We read The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  

I loved the book and I was able to see the movie with one of my book clubs too!

I thought it was done very well.

I love that you can read fictional books and learn helpful things.  At one point in the book it lists a variety of uses for Crisco, one of which was to grease squeaky door hinges. 

Minny says,  “I reckon’ if there’s anythin’ that you ought to know about cookin’ it’s this (pointing to Crisco). The most important invention since they put mayonnaise in a jar. Got gum in your hair, got a squeaky door hinge, Crisco. Got bags under your eyes, wanna soften your husband’s scaly feet, Crisco. But it’s best for frying chicken.”

 I filed this away in the back of my mind hoping to try it out some day.  

A couple of years ago, I used graphite to try to get rid of the squeak in our garage door hinges (the small door to the house) and our front door hinges.  This is what you are supposed to use.  It only worked for a couple of days and it made a big mess!

A few days ago, I decided to try this Crisco tip on our garage door.  I used generic Crisco, because that's what I had.  My son, Ryan, helped me to get some of the pins out.  The bottom pin was especially difficult to remove.  It was really stuck in there.  We had to remove the entire hinge from the door and the jamb to get enough room to pound the pin out.  It took way longer than I expected it to take, but we got it out, greased it up and put it back.

Now the hinges in the garage door are like a dream!  No obnoxious squeaking any more!

Today, we did the same thing on the front door.  Luckily, this time was a lot easier!  It only took about 5 minutes to get the tools and supplies ready and finish the project.

Another door that is now like a dream!

Now when I open these doors, I open it, close my eyes and say ahhhhhh!!!

I used to cringe almost every time I opened either one of these doors before.

So far, the garage door is still squeak-free.

Who says you can't get anything out of reading fiction?

Free ebooks!

I recently found out from a post on Facebook by one of my friends how you can get free and inexpensive ebooks from Amazon for Kindle.  I do not have a Kindle, but I do have an iPad 2. Amazon provides a free Kindle app for use on the iPad, Android tablet, iphone, ipod touch, Windows phone 7, and Blackberry.  You can also download the free Kindle app to your computer, Mac or PC. I personally prefer to read while on the couch or in bed or while waiting for an appointment, so portable is better for me.

Here is the link to Amazon's free Kindle apps.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sv_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Here is the link to the website where you can subscribe to the daily emails from Pixel of Ink that show the newest free and bargain Kindle ebooks.

http://www.pixelofink.com/

You can browse by genre, i.e. business, Christian fiction, cookbooks, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, nonfiction, romance, and science fiction, or by age, i.e. children's books and young adult.  They have different e-mail subscriptions for some of the different categories.

You need to visit the different websites to subscribe to the different e-mails.  I am currently subscribed the the regular Pixel of Ink and the Pixel of Ink-Young Edition daily e-mails.  I won't be running out of reading material for the rest of my life, between these free ebooks and the library!  You do have to be careful though.  Make sure that the title you want to download is still free before you click the "Purchase" button.

Happy Reading!!

Melinda's Baby Shower

This is Melinda's 4th baby boy, so she doesn't really need anything other than diapers and wipes.

I made these invitations to hand out. I made them with Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio. My sister, Melinda, is a demonstrator. (different Melinda) 
Then I had them printed at Walgreen's using a coupon code for a discount.

Melinda supplied the beautiful picture of her beautiful baby.

Here is a link to my sister's Stampin' Up! website.  http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/melindas/ 

Kristin and Terra helped me A LOT with decorating and food!

Look at them working hard while I'm taking pictures...

Then Terra got to hold baby Samuel.  What a sweet baby!

I think the guests had a lot of fun chatting and eating and holding the baby.

This is a picture of me with Melinda (and baby Samuel), Kristin and Terra.

The baby shower turned out very well and Melinda felt very loved!  

That is the important thing!

I couldn't have done it without Kristin and Terra!

Our New Couch

This is our new couch! We bought it at Costco.

We love it!

It is so comfy and it looks great in our family room!

It really helps to open up the room.

It feels so much more inviting!

No Soliciting!

In our neighborhood, we have A LOT of solicitors! It really gets annoying after a while.  

No, I don't want to remodel my kitchen that is 4 years old!

No, I don't want a $5000 fence in my backyard!

No, I don't want them to inspect my roof!

No, I definitely DO NOT want a new Kirby vacuum!

If I do want any of these things, I will call them!

So, I had a great idea one day.  I made a No Soliciting sign to put in my window next to my front door.

I love it!!

It is so simple.

I really do want to support Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and 

I have A LOT fewer unnecessary doorbell rings!

I have had a smelly bathroom for a long time.  I didn't know what to do about it.  I would clean the entire bathroom and it would still smell bad. Then I realized the smell was probably coming from the shower drain.  I would clean the cover to the drain with a toothbrush (an old one for cleaning!) and clean out as much hair and gunk as I could, but it just wasn't enough!
Last night I decided to google "how to deodorize a shower drain."  Man, I just love the internet!!
Who knew there were that many stinky shower drains?

These are the links that I found:

www.sheknows.com/living/articles/808474/clean-out-your-shower-drain-without-chemicals

www.ehow.com/how_5616661_deodorize-smelly-shower-drain.html

I used the process from the first website and the amounts of baking soda and vinegar from the second website.

It has really made a huge difference already!!

I still had to clean the inside of the pipe with the old toothbrush to get the rest of the crud down the drain, but after using the baking soda, vinegar and boiling water, it came right off.

Now maybe when I clean my bathroom, it will actually smell clean! I will make myself a note to do this at least every 6 months. (Clean the drain...I plan on cleaning the bathroom a lot more often than that!)

Happy cleaning!!

Here is a picture of my clean shower drain.  I had to crop the picture, though, because now I need to google how to get stains off of your shower floor.  I scrub and scrub and scrub and it still shows grime.  Oh, well, another day, at least it smells better!

Hunger Games/Christmas Tree

Ryan, Nathan and I went to the midnight showing for Hunger Games when it first came out.  We had a lot of fun! Nathan and I have read all of the books. We thought they did a good job on the movie.

We didn't start on our way home until about 3am.

I had just gone to my dad's house in Keokuk to visit them while they were there for Spring Break.  My dad asked me if I wanted a little Christmas tree. 

 I told him no...again.  He had asked me the last time I visited too. Then I thought about Goodwill.  I told him that if he really wanted to get rid of it, we could take it to Goodwill.  He said that would be great.

So we did! At 3am! Ryan propped it up against the front doors.  We thought it was so funny! Well, it was, at 3am!

Naked Eggs

This is an experiment in osmosis.

We think it is pretty cool!

You start with raw eggs, vinegar and clear jars.

Use as many eggs and jars as you want.

Fill the jars with vinegar and carefully put the eggs in the jars.

Wait 24 hours......

Then, empty the vinegar (carefully) and pour in more vinegar.

Wait another 24 hours...

Your eggs should look like this.  The vinegar has dissolved the egg shell. 

You can carefully rub off any remaining shell with your fingers.

Then, we put corn syrup in the 1st jar, tap water in the 2nd jar, red food coloring with water in the 3rd jar, blue food coloring with water in the 4th jar, green food coloring with water in the 5th jar and tap water in the 6th jar.

Wait another 24 hours....

The shriveled egg was in the corn syrup.  Water is sucked out of the egg by osmosis.  The corn syrup has less water in it than the egg, so it balances itself out.

The 2nd egg was in water. There is more water outside the egg than inside, so the egg sucks the water into it.

The 3rd egg was in vinegar, so it should have stayed the same as it already was.

This is the egg from the corn syrup. It looks kinda gross! And the yolk is very firm.

These other eggs are gushy and squishy.  Kinda rubbery and fun to play with. 

But be careful not to pop them!  What a mess you would have then!

The next 3 eggs are really cool!  They look like really bright Easter eggs.

The water isn't nearly as colored now, because the color was sucked into the eggs along with the water.

Nathan is looking at the red egg...

After we popped the red egg, we felt the membrane.  It looks and feels like a popped balloon.

We dropped all of the eggs in the sink at various heights to see how high we could get them before they popped.  This is a messy part, that's why we did it in the sink.  We had 6 eggs because we originally intended to pop just the 6th egg, but then decided we might as well pop them all! More mess, more fun!

Because these eggs have been out of the refrigerator for so long, and because they were soaked in water, vinegar, corn syrup and/or food coloring, we strongly suggest that you do NOT eat any of the eggs from the experiment!

April Fools' Day

My boys, Ryan (19) and Nathan (15), started talking about April Fools' Day the day before, on March 31st.  I was a little worried, but not too bad. They haven't really done anything bad in the past.

I was asleep in my bed in the middle of the night.  Cory was sleeping in the guest room because of my snoring and cough. Nathan came in, I assumed to say goodnight.  He put his hand on me and I just wanted to sleep, so I brushed his hand away.  I didn't want to upset him, so I patted him.  That's when I felt the fur!  I opened my eyes and there was Bobo!  In case you don't know who Bobo is, here is a picture.

The funny thing is, I wasn't scared.  I guess I'm too used to Bobo being around, even in the middle of the night.

Then when that didn't work, Ryan jumped up and tried to scare me.  That didn't work either.

Then they went to bed and I went back to sleep.

When I got up in the morning and went downstairs, every cabinet door and drawer was open in the kitchen and family room!

Every Single One!!

I didn't get a picture of Ryan, but here is a picture of Nathan innocently sleeping after the pranking.

After that, I went to make my breakfast....

I thought about taking a picture of the milk, but it was so gross!!  They used every color of food coloring I have!  I know it's just a mental thing, but I couldn't drink it.  I opened a new gallon for my breakfast.  They both drank the colored milk.

I was worried about what might be in store, but apparently that was as far as they had planned.  The rest of April Fools' Day was calm. They know that I am the one that feeds them every day and I know where they sleep!

Happy April Fools' Day!!

My New iPad 2

Isn't technology great?!?

I got an iPad 2 for Christmas.

I am using my new iPad to connect to my computer to update my blog!

It's so cool!

I thought I couldn't do it, because in order to get pictures on my blog, I have to use my computer.

Now I can use my iPad to connect to my computer to add the pictures.

Now as long as I have a Wifi connection, I can access my computer!

WooHoo!!!

Clean Washer

On Pinterest, I found how to clean my washer at  http://www.somewhatsimple.com/how-to-clean-your-washing-machine/  It has been needing it for quite some time, I just didn't know how to go about it.  

Look at that!  Gross!!

It sounds easier than it is and takes some elbow grease, but look at the awesome results.  

This is during...

And this is after...

 Before, I was worried about how much of that grime was getting on our clothes.  Ewwww!

Now I don't have to worry if our clothes are getting clean anymore.  It's like new!

Green Grass in January!

I took this picture on January 11, 2012.  I just couldn't believe that the grass was still green in January!

Of course, the next day we got a little bit of snow and the schools were closed.  Now the grass looks dead, like it should in the dead of winter in Missouri.  The nice weather was great while it lasted!

My Birthday-January 31st

My birthday started out as a regular Tuesday.  I took Nathan to Kuk Sool Won for his 10:00am class.  I picked him up early so he could take a shower after Ryan.  Then Ryan, Nathan and I left for their 1:00pm Vocal Fusion class at Mozingo's Music.  After their class, we went to lunch at Dragon Buffet in Lake St Louis with Gale, Beth and Zach.  Gale and Beth gave me these flowers for my birthday.  Aren't they pretty?

After lunch, we went home.  Sister Natalie Palmer came by to say Happy Birthday and gave me these flowers.

Pretty, pretty!  I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends!

In the evening, Nathan wanted to go to the Into the Woods production practice.  Ryan, Cory and I took him. We went to Culver's to eat dinner while we waited for Nathan to be done.  Then we went to McDonald's because Nathan wanted to go there with his friends afterwards.  We had McFlurries for dessert while Nathan ate his dinner with his friends.  We were getting ready to leave when Beth whispered something to her friends.  All of a sudden, they all started singing Happy Birthday to me!  I was embarrassed, but pleasantly surprised too.  I told everyone thank you and started to leave.  When I turned around, the McDonald's guy said "I heard it's someone's birthday."  He gave me this cake...

Fun, huh!?!

All in all, a wonderful birthday with my family!