Home Management

Another Mysterious Creature

The more time I spend in my garden, the more crazy things I see. This, for instance. Looking more like something from Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends than from nature, this insect was very tiny (under an inch long), very colorful, and covered with stripes. And I suspect it eats petunias. Or else it eats [...]

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What is This Mystery Flower?

If you’ve been reading my little mom blog for a while, you probably know that I garden. A lot. I have an extensive flower garden, and Joe and I have five separate vegetable beds. I know plants well. Last week, when I was transplanting some shasta daisies that sprung up in the grass, I found [...]

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Get Free Stuff From SwagBucks

A little over a year ago, I joined SwagBucks after hearing about it from two of my favorite bloggers. One was saving up SwagBucks to buy a KitchenAid mixer, and the other was using hers to pay for a family vacation. Since August, I have earned 14 $5 gift certificates for Amazon.com – that’s $75 [...]

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Council of Media Moms featuring a MomAgenda Coupon Code

I remember clearly when I learned about momAgenda on Cool Mom Picks. It was 2007. I was finishing graduate school, working full time, recently married and expecting my first baby. After reading the (short) review, I had to have one. That very day, I went to the website and ordered a day planner in lime [...]

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Getting Greener with Diapers.com

Green-Baby-Products-Diapers.com-FuzziBunz-Wipes

My household, while aware of global issues, is not especially green. We do some environmentally-friendly things, especially when they cost less than their wasteful counterparts. We have mostly ditched paper towels and paper napkins in favor of cloth ones. We use washable kitchenware instead of disposable plates and flatware. We switched from disposable diapers to [...]

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Our First Asparagus Spears of the Season

No matter what the calendar says, it’s not spring for me until the asparagus spears start to peak purple heads above the ground. Since spring officially began, we’ve been scouring our asparagus patch almost every day, hoping to spy a tip breaking through the winter hardened earth. Finally. Spring. The first two spears emerged last [...]

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10 Ways to Use Coffee Filters

I bought a package of coffee filters at Sam’s Club. I think there are 1,000 of them in there, and I paid just a couple of dollars for it. We color coffee filters. We paint them. We stick them to things. More on that next Tuesday, when I share 10 crafts to make with coffee [...]

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10 Uses for Empty Egg Shells

We have been eating a ton of eggs lately. Since I was required to quit working on go on bed rest in November, we have been living on Joe’s income. Living on one income isn’t easy, but one way we’ve managed is to cut our grocery costs. We buy our eggs for $2 a dozen [...]

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A Letter to Heather Solos, Author of Home Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living

Dear Heather Solos, I know I agreed to review your new book, Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living – Cook it, Clean it, Fix it, Wash it, but I can’t. It’s not that I don’t like it. I do like it, actually. I like it a lot. I like your writing style, your sarcasm, and [...]

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10 Ways to Use Cheap Flatware

I have three sets of flatware, and (though we’re cleaning house and purging a lot of items) none of them are going anywhere. I purchased the first set at Walmart in 1997. It was cheap in the worst sense of the word. This is the set I have employed for the uses below. It’s no [...]