by kathilipp | Oct 24, 2013 | Home |
What Do You Want to Get Done Before Christmas?
I am a list maker. I love a good list.
As I’m sitting here making lists of things I want to get accomplished before the end of the year, one think looms heavy in my sight: Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE Christmas. LOVE it.
But most of the Christmas prep does fall to me. And some years, it’s downright overwhelming. Because not only are there things I want to prepare for the holiday, but I also want to get some major stuff done around the house like:
Clean out the garage.
Sort through my kitchen cabinets.
Swap out summer clothes for winter clothes (in CA, you never do this until November 1st.)
Etc.
So I would love to hear from you: What is it you want to get done in the next two months? Because wouldn’t it be great if we could all get it accomplished together, cheering each other on, swapping ideas and tips, strategies and solutions?
Share it all in the comments, and we’ll tackle a project a week. It could be as big as cleaning out a room, or as small as washing the pillows in your house.
Share it in the comments, and let’s come up with a master plan to get organized, and make Christmas manageable!
by kathilipp | Oct 2, 2013 | Home |
They are the words you never want to hear:
“Your house is on fire! Get out!”
A complete stranger was pounding on my door, yelling at me to get out. In days past, I’d always played the “What would I grab if my house was on fire? game and now I have the answer:
My dog.
Not even his leash. Roger was home so while I had my cell phone in my pocket, I took the dog and the clothes I was wearing on my back. Roger stood out in front of our house, shoeless we surveyed the scene.
We live in townhouses and the house two doors down from us was on fire. It was easy to see that it was a goner. The house next to ours, it was clear, was going to be in rough shape as well. The fire hadn’t traveled to our house yet.
And that’s when I had a terrifying thought: Where was Jeremy?
It was the first day of school, and with Jer, I didn’t know his new schedule. There was no way he could be in the house, right?
Roger ran back into the house, straight to Jeremy’s room, flew open the door to find a sleeping Jeremy, fresh off his first day of college, back in bed, sound asleep.
Yep. We are the parents that grabbed the dog, but forgot the kid.
Fortunately, everyone on our block was safe, but it gave me not only a new respect for the fire fighters who saved our house, but also the need for our whole family to get up on their fire safety.
You never think that a fire is going to happen to you – until it does. I now have the peace of knowing that I’ve done everything I know how to do to keep my family safe. And if you have small kids, it’s especially important to help them grow in their fire safety knowledge.
Two great resources.
- Download the for free (for kids ages 2-6 – and let me just say I played it and TOTALLY CRUSHED IT…) I would absolutely recommend having it on your phone and while you and your kids are waiting in line at the grocery store or are in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, whip it out so your kids can play and learn. I had a bunch of my friends with little-uns try it out – the four year olds were WILD about it – the older kids (six and seven) all shared concerns that it might be too babyish, but kept coming back for more and playing.
For older kids (7-10) download this free e-book Rescue Dogs, Firefighting Heroes and Science Facts Some of my favorite authors- Another great Sparky resource is this Fire Safety Checklist to go over with your kiddos. There were some great reminders to me as well.
- Have your dryer serviced regularly and clean out the lint – not just in the lint trap but in the hosing behind the dryer.
Is there something you’ve done to teach your kiddos safety in the home?
by kathilipp | Sep 23, 2013 | Home |
Better Than Starbucks Day #2: Creating an At-Home Cafe
When she came to my house, I knew she was looking for support and a few (OK, maybe more than a few) laughs. But as Tonya came into my kitchen, she revealed her true purpose for being there, “I knew you’d have good creamer for the coffee…”
Even if you don’t love coffee, I think it’s important to have a basic set up for when friends and family come over and need a cup. Not want a cup. Need a cup.
In my house it’s:
- Jesus
- Family
- Coffee
(And let’s be clear. On bad days, number’s 2 and 3 can get switched.)
When my friend Bronwyn moved from our hometown to an Austin suburb, she left a lot of love. Girls who “got” her and who she “got”. That’s hard stuff to leave. That’s until she found her new group: Her coffee group: “I felt the pain of loneliness until I found the gals here in TX I now share my Thursday mornings with. We rotate whose home we meet in and enjoy breakfast and the much needed fuel for our lives COFFEE together. It is during this time that we share life; the struggles, joys, frustrations and vent about all things we can’t take to our husbands. The coffee dates are the food for our souls.”
If she misses a Thursday coffee date, her husband Jason tells her to call her friends and go out, “You need them and I need you to be with them” he will say.
I LOVE having my own little cafe at home. I love having people over and mixing up new and fun drinks to try. Here are just a couple of things you may want to invest in to start your own at-home cafe:
Get Your Equipment Set Up
Frother When Tonya, heard that I was going to be talking about at home cafes, she posted on Facebook,”I was at IKEA and was going to buy another cruddy frother. I put it back because your’s was STELLAR. Please tell us what that one is.” I have tried many a frother, but my favorite is this Bon Jour Rechargeable. It actually froths the milk – not just moves it around. It gets nice and frothy and not only do my drinks taste great, they look AMAZING.
- Espresso Maker An Aeropress Coffee Maker the BEST system for making espresso shots and is less than treating your family to Starbucks drinks and treats.
Have Some Choices
One of the reasons that going to a coffee shop is such a great option is all the varieties of flavorings available. Here are a few items (besides the basics) you may want to get to set yourself up as an at home barista:
- Coffee Flavoring
- Creamer
- Peppermint sticks
- Good quality cocoa
Do you need to buy all these things at once? Of course not. Coffee with milk and some kind of sweetener will get you started. But, it’s fun to be “the coffee house” and let people experiment. Plus, even if you did go on a caffeine-induced shopping spree and bought all those fun extras, you could make up for it in a year with avoiding one Starbucks run a week.
Use Great Mugs Using your favorite mug, and having a few mugs put away for friends that are “their mug” at your house instantly makes your friends feel like they have a place in your home.
Yummy Treats are a Must When you make a loaf of banana bread at home, and then compare it to paying $2.25 for a single slice at Starbucks, you’ll feel like a genius for never leaving your house.
Learn Some Moves Ashley Row is a blogger over at www.joyfulthriftyhome.com who knows the secret to making all those great drinks we love: “I come from a family of coffee drinkers so it was no surprise when I became one myself. After college, I even worked as a barista in a local coffee shop where I learned all about making fun coffee house drinks. I no longer work there, but I do volunteer in my churches coffee shop where I still get to act as a barista. One of my favorite things is using the skills I learned as a barista to make make different kinds of coffee drink recipes and share them with family and friends.” Check out her excellent post on How to Make Coffee House Quality Drinks at Home
Tell me your favorite drink to make at home (and if you know it by heart, give us the recipe!) and you’ll be entered to win an ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP to MOPS for you or a friend! Enter by Friday midnight and we will announce a winner on Monday!
by kathilipp | Sep 22, 2013 | Home |
Better Than Starbucks- Don’t Go Broke on the Beans
Today is the first day in our five part series on saving money by making great coffee at home. People have a hard time believing me, but it’s true – I like the coffee I make at home just as much as I love my Grande nonfat misto which I consider the best kept secret at Starbucks. So when I’m out with friends, or traveling, I happily order my favorite drink, but you can tell how much I’ve cut down my Starbucks runs because the barista recently came up to the window and said, “Kathi! I thought I recognized the hum of the motor on your car! We’ve missed you!” Now that’s frightening.
All week we will talk about not just saving money, but making the at-home coffee experience the best it can be so Starbucks can stay a treat – and not have to be a necessity.
Saving Money on the Beans
Check the Sale Rack Recently, I’ve seen my favorite brands of coffee on sale in the back of our supermarket (you know, that weird looking shelf that has the unsold Easter candy and matzo on it.) Just this week they had my favorite blend of Starbucks Decaf (Blonde) on the shelf for 50% off. So that $8.99 bag is marked down to $4.49, plus I get a free tall drip coffee at any Starbucks by turning in the bag. (A tall drip is $1.85 which is a drink I would normally order there while driving or traveling, bringing the price of my beans down to $2.64. Huzzah!!!) I bough six bags- which should supply my decaffeinated needs for several months.- Keep Your Ear to the Ground (or the Web) Subscribe to money saving sites like Money Saving Mom to find out about all the coffee deals going on out there. Crystal has a network of women who are out looking for deals for you, so you won’t miss valuable coupons like this one for $2 off 2 bags of Starbucks beans If I’d seen that coupon before buying my decaf beans, that would have lowered my price to $1.64 a bag.
- Stretch those Beans Once you’ve made your first pot of coffee, don’t throw away your coffee and filter. Just add about 50% more ground coffee the next day and I bet you won’t even taste the difference. (And once you’ve stretched it to two days, go ahead and add those grounds to your outdoor plants as a natural fertilizer.)
- Use Expired Beans No one has ever died from using expired beans, and unless your one of those people who is so picky about your coffee you travel with your own coffee pot, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. The decaf coffee I bought has three months until the “Sell Date”. Don’t believe them. My daughter’s boyfriend worked at Starbucks and saved up about a dozen of the bags that employees get once a week for free (plus a mug and other fun goodies) and gave it all to me for Christmas. Because I had just laid in a supply of beans, I had more coffee than a girl could handle. (Hard to believe, but true.) I lived off that coffee for over a year and never detected a drop in the quality of the beans.
- Use Beans You Don’t Like Remember that bag of beans you bought at Costco of French Roast that were SOOO cheap and what a genius you felt like for saving money, but then you got them home and realized they were WAY too strong? Oh, just me then? Anywho… I took those beans, ground up some, and mixed them with a light roasted coffee that I bought that normally would be too weak – turns out the custom blend was perfect.
- Choose a Finer Grind The finer you grind, the less coffee you can use to get the same results. Experiment with grinding to a powdery consistency and see if you can use less beans.
- Make Your Coffee Last It’s tempting when your coffee has grown cold to just want to make a new pot. Instead, make your coffee last as long as possible by using insulated containers to keep it totally drinkable.
- A Desk Drink Warmer
- Contigo Mug
- Insulated Coffee Pot
Yes- true coffee coinsurers will balk at some of these suggestion, but I figure if you’re going to drink coffee every day of your life, it’s worth testing out what is important to you when it comes to coffee. Don’t blindly follow what your coffee snob friend says, experiment, and figure out what works for you.
And the best way to save money on beans? Win them! Tell me your favorite way to stretch your coffee budget by midnight Friday, September 27th, 2013 and I’ll send one person (picked randomly) a bag of my favorite Starbucks coffee. Only true coffee lovers need apply.
by kathilipp | Sep 22, 2013 | Home |
Better Than Starbucks- Day #1 Don’t Go Broke on the Beans
Today is the first day in our five part series on saving money by making great coffee at home. People have a hard time believing me, but it’s true – I like the coffee I make at home just as much as I love my Grande nonfat misto which I consider the best kept secret at Starbucks. So when I’m out with friends, or traveling, I happily order my favorite drink, but you can tell how much I’ve cut down my Starbucks runs because the barista recently came up to the window and said, “Kathi! I thought I recognized the hum of the motor on your car! We’ve missed you!” Now that’s frightening.
All week we will talk about not just saving money, but making the at-home coffee experience the best it can be so Starbucks can stay a treat – and not have to be a necessity.
Saving Money on the Beans
Check the Sale Rack Recently, I’ve seen my favorite brands of coffee on sale in the back of our supermarket (you know, that weird looking shelf that has the unsold Easter candy and
- matzo on it.) Just this week they had my favorite blend of Starbucks Decaf (Blonde) on the shelf for 50% off. So that $8.99 bag is marked down to $4.49, plus I get a free tall drip coffee at any Starbucks by turning in the bag. (A tall drip is $1.85 which is a drink I would normally order there while driving or traveling, bringing the price of my beans down to $2.64. Huzzah!!!) I bough six bags- which should supply my decaffeinated needs for several months.
- Keep Your Ear to the Ground (or the Web) Subscribe to money saving sites like Money Saving Mom to find out about all the coffee deals going on out there. Crystal has a network of women who are out looking for deals for you, so you won’t miss valuable coupons like this one for $2 off 2 bags of Starbucks beans If I’d seen that coupon before buying my decaf beans, hat would have lowered my price to $1.64 a bag.
- Stretch those Beans Once you’ve made your first pot of coffee, don’t throw away your coffee and filter. Just add about 50% more ground coffee the next day and I bet you won’t even taste the difference. (And once you’ve stretched it to two days, go ahead and add those grounds to your outdoor plants as a natural fertilizer.)
- Use Expired Beans No one has ever died from using expired beans, and unless your one of those people who is so picky about your coffee you travel with your own coffee pot, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. The decaf coffee I bought has three months until the “Sell Date”. Don’t believe them. My daughter’s boyfriend worked at Starbucks and saved up about a dozen of the bags that employees get once a week for free (plus a mug and other fun goodies) and gave it all to me for Christmas. Because I had just laid in a supply of beans, I had more coffee than a girl could handle. (Hard to believe, but true.) I lived off that coffee for over a year and never detected a drop in the quality of the beans.
- Use Beans You Don’t Like Remember that bag of beans you bought at Costco of French Roast that were SOOO cheap and what a genius you felt like for saving money, but then you got them home and realized they were WAY too strong? Oh, just me then? Anywho… I took those beans, ground up some, and mixed them with a light roasted coffee that I bought that normally would be too weak – turns out the custom blend was perfect.
- Choose a Finer Grind The finer you grind, the less coffee you can use to get the same results. Experiment with grinding to a powdery consistency and see if you can use less beans.
- Make Your Coffee Last It’s tempting when your coffee has grown cold to just want to make a new pot. Instead, make your coffee last as long as possible by using insulated containers to keep it totally drinkable.
- A Desk Drink Warmer
- Contigo Mug
- Insulated Coffee Pot
Tomorrow – we’ll talk about how to create an at home cafe for you and your friends.
by kathilipp | Sep 12, 2013 | Home |
You have breakfast, lunch, you are dressed and ready to walk out of the door but what about the children? Are they ready? Are they even awake yet?
Yep – I’m the mom who pulled up to the drop-off point at school while my son asked, “Hey! Where are my shoes?”
Which is better than my friend Kay who got pulled over in her PJs and barefoot (and was asked to step out of the car.)
Or maybe you are one of those moms that has dropped their child off at school only to realize they are still in their pajama’s, or the child does not have their backpack, lunch or homework.
A goal for many wives and moms is to make mornings smooth and get everyone where they need to be on time…even dad! How does that get accomplished? Many of the tips that I have shared all week can be used on the kids as well. For those whose children are out of the toddler stage in elementary school, you can begin to incorporate them into the nightly preparation times and teach them how to get their things ready.
- Get yourself ready first. This way you can focus on the children!
- Pack back packs before bed: Do they have their homework, library book, show and tell item; all papers are signed and checked?
- Fill their water bottles and pack lunch items before bed as well.
- Have the children set out their clothes and shoes the night before on their dresser. This will lessen morning temper tantrums and in decisions.
- Do all baths and showers the night before.
- Make sure they have decided what they want for breakfast.
- Tuck the children in bed at a decent hour. Children usually need 10-12 hours of sleep so plan accordingly. This will help ensure they get up easily too.
- If you have several children or several family members but 1 bathroom delegate bathroom time. If more than one is brushing their teeth at the same time it will more likely turn into play and a mess.
Here are some other thoughts on getting kids ready on the morning.
Top 10 Morning Madness Tips for Getting Kids up and Ready
What have I missed? My kids are older now and can take care of getting out the door on their own. As the saying goes it takes a village, so tell me what works in your house for making sure the family is up and ready to go on time. I am sure all my readers can benefit from all of the great input.
t maker. I love a good list.
