Jan 28

Always sold out!

Around our house there are only a few foods my son will eat!  Smiley fries is one.thing that my son will eat besides pizza for dinner.. and apparently very popular with someone else. It’s sold out almost every time I try to get some at Kroger.

The solution isn’t to just swap foods in this situation.  We try not to clear the shelves when we go, but it’s hard when your child only eats one type of food – and it seems someone else does too.

I’ll keep an eye out for more and we will try to swap to other chicken nuggets, but running out at our house is not an option.

What do you do when someone’s cleared the shelf of something you need?

Jan 15

Another Broken Crock Pot?

Did it again! Broke another crock pot…. I’m not even sure how it broke.  This one was stored under the sink in our utility room.  It went into storage just fine, in one piece! My middle son took it out for me to cook in and this is what he found.  The last crock pot was melted when my middle son pushed it to the back of the stove and cooked on the front burner – allowing the pan to touch the little plastic front during the entire time he was fixing macaroni and cheese. You could actually see the wires though the melted plastic!

This time the inside crock portion is shattered.  It’s broken in multiple spots.  So what are the suggestions for a replacement crock pot?  I’ve drooled over the ones that have wifi built in. You would too if you had ever come home and had to throw away dinner because you forgot to turn on the crock pot and dinner has sat un-refrigerated for 10 hours….

I do have an instapot which has a slow cooker setting on it, but does it really work as a crock pot?  We’ve used the Instapot to cook dinner quickly, it works great as a pressure cooker, but I haven’t ventured into trying it as a slow cooker.  Any advice?

 

Jan 07

My Tribe?

As we get older it gets harder and harder to find a tribe that we all fit into.  In high school and grade school most of us have clichés that we fit with…. or at least hang on the outer fringes of.  In all honesty I’m not completely sure if I felt a complete part of any of those clichés while there (being an odd duck), but I did have friends and I still keep in touch with groups from each of those places, and I know that I can contact them at anytime and they will have a smile for me.

I moved on to college and made friends there, I had friends there…. all of whom are now scattered around the country.  I don’t get the chance to speak to them much, but with the invention of facebook I do know what most are up to and can give an encouraging word once in a while.  One just moved to Florida, one is up by Chicago, one over by Peoria….  and more….

I moved on to marry and have kids.  As the kids are younger, we make friends that are our kids parents.  With my older kids, I made some great friends at first… then we moved…  – Yep still keep in touch with the first group some…. also the great invention of facebook!  Moving into a small school where the parents already clichéd. My older son’s class was already gelled, so that was another lets be a satellite around the edge…..  I have some good friends from my middle son’s class.  But kids by that age are busy, and just get busier!

As the kids get older there life moved on to friends through online…. they aren’t local….  That doesn’t allow for a hey, let’s run to the mall?  Want to grab lunch?  Road trip anyone?

I do have good friends, both in person and online, but my question becomes how do moms make friends that are really their tribe?  How do you go about developing a circle of friends of that are your mirrors – close enough that you want to do things together?  And do mom’s need friends like this?

I started debating it because I came across my registration to a get together where I belonged to an online group that has a get together each year…  I misunderstood – as it was for older moms and I thought open to anyone.  So for the get together I saw nothing wrong with taking my mom….. To me it made total sense…. older mom get together, mom, didn’t seem a problem.  Through emails where I mentioned bringing her I heard nothing…. I later found they had been discussing not wanting me to bring her and hadn’t told me…  One person then called me and said that I wasn’t welcome to bring her…  Of course I had been hearing from the other side (my mother) that she was worried about me driving up by myself, it was too close to fly…  and I had been looking forward to the activities.  Several were things though that I thought my mother would have enjoyed more than me…. Things like a beer tour, I hate beer, but my mother likes it!  Even a tea house (I’m a coffee drinking but my mother likes tea)…  To me, I was going to be the odd duck, so it was a pretty horrid thing for them to do without discussing it with me first about why I thought she would fit in….

So I left the group… It was a group that I had felt was my tribe.  I had actually suggested an article to them about finding your tribe, and the group had starting calling itself a tribe after to top it off… I’m still friends with some, but ughhh, it was a tough time.

The trip fell during my husband’s birthday and my son’s fall break, so my mother ended up coming down.  Because of my son’s uniqueness and my husband still working, we ended up doing a staycation, just my 8 year old, my mother and I.  We had to skip the tours we would have done, but we still did a few things.

I do still belong to an online tribe that I love, I’m probably old enough to be the mother of several, but they are wonderful!  I have an 8 year old besides younger kids and was lucky enough to find a group of mom’s of younger kids.  I love the group… I may feel old enough to be the parent of the group, but so many of the problems they face are things that I have been there.  And it’s pretty much a judgement free zone!  I’ve met a lot of moms that I’m friends with and can’t imagine parting with.  If at any point we relocate somewhere else, they will be the first ones I get in touch with to find out about where to live, what schools to choose, and more….

So how do you find a tribe? Is it a life long tribe?  Is it just one BFF?

 

Jan 03

Sweeper for metal?

Visiting Ace Hardware, I found the most unusual sweeper – It just works as a magnet that you roll around and it picks up all the metal objects that are dropped!  It won’t work with aluminum, but metal and it’s all picked up.  I was debating how well it would work with the pins in my sewing room on the carpet.  I suspect it won’t work as well as I would hope, but I did think about it for a few minutes.

While running a vacuum around the floor of my sewing room I end up with a pincushion of a hose attached to my vacuum. This looks like it would work a little better and protect my vacuum!  Still thinking about whether to give it a try.

Dec 28

iCoffee

At the recommendation of a friend I decided to try an iCoffee… I’ve been using a Keurig, which I love, but I’m always ready for an upgrade!  I started by watching YouTube video reviews.  Always a good choice when debating whether to buy something.  All the reviews sounded great!  Cool design, pretty colors, and less bitter coffee due to the fact that the needle spins in the coffee grounds.

This was sounding like a great choice.  Link below let:s you help me out and buy one on Amazon.  Now for my review:  What I found when I actually got one.

  1. It doesn’t have a clock or anything like the digital display my Keurig had.  the only digital display is for size of the cup.
  2. It goes up to 12 oz, not the Carafe I had before – but I knew that ahead…..
  3. It takes FOREVER, and I do mean forever to warm up.  And it doesn’t stay warmed up throughout the day, it requires me to wait frequently while it warms up.  Warm up is long enough for me to run down the hall, use the rest room, fix some toast for Breakfast and then be back to hit the button to make my coffee.  No Bueno!
  4. The taste was fine.  I can’t say I can tell a huge difference, but after the long wait it could just be I was desperate.
  5. Every person that comes over I have to give a short tutorial on how to open it to put the pods in…. and explain the wait….

All in all I now know I would have chosen differently, but I will use the iCoffee for a while before upgrading, and it does take all K-Cups, which is pretty important to me.