FINISHED!

Last week I told you I was working on an afghan that I started when my mom gave me a crochet refresher course in July.

It's a fairly simple afghan with single crochet stitches, each row done individually so you always start on the same end and finish on the same end. It has 17 sets of 10 rows of the cream color and 16 rows of the variegated blue in between, for a total of 186 rows.

I squeak in at 5'1" and I'm holding my arms not quite straight up and it's still pooling a little at my feet. It's going to wrap around me nicely in the cold winter months.

Which I must say I am looking forward to immensely, because in the last couple of months I have a new symptom I get along with my migraines. Hot flashes! I don't get them any other time, thank goodness! But many of my migraines are tied in with my hormone fluctuations, so it's possible that the hot flashes are not too far behind. Technically I am old enough.

So I'm looking forward to the cold weather, using my afghan, and already planning the next one, with pretty colors but no fluffy yarn to mess with.

WFMW — Kitchen Scissors Sticking?

I have Pampered Chef kitchen scissors that are roughly five to seven years old. I use them primarily for cutting meat up, raw or cooked, although not at the same time.

These particular scissors are spring-loaded, so after you get done squeezing them they spring back on their own. I think it's supposed to make it easier on your hands by being more ergonomic. Personally, they are harder to squeeze in the first place so I think it's a trade-off, but I like them anyway.

Not too long ago they started getting kind of stuck in the squeezed position and weren't springing back on their own. I worked at them, kind of twisted on them thinking that the blades were off, but nothing really worked. Then I sort of had a brainstorm. Occasionally it does still happen.

Pam cooking spray — kind of like WD-40 for squeaky door hinges. I sprayed it in the area where the scissors rubbed together, squeezed them a few times, and they worked like new. I threw them in the dishwasher for a good cleaning and they were still great when they came out.

Every so often I have to spray them again now when they get a little stuck, but it works like a charm. Who knew Pam was WD-40 for your kitchen tools? Works for me.

Visit Kristen at We Are THAT Family for more great Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips.

Recipe Organization

This is a project I've needed to work on for some time, but I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my recipes.

I am not a recipe card in a recipe box girl.

I am not a cookbook girl. I have very few cookbooks. Most of my recipes come from people I know, magazines where I've torn them out, or ones that I've printed from the internet. Otherwise it's just stuff I make because I know how and there is no recipe.

This is where the majority of my recipes live. And if Reese reads that, she'll crack up since my inanimate objects are living again.

That's a horrible picture, but this binder is about two inches thick. Here's an idea of what the Main Dishes section looks like.

The main divider tab has a pocket, so I've used it for chicken and pork recipes I want to try.

I have some plastic slash pockets that don't have the label tab built in located directly behind that one, each for a different main dish category including fish/seafood, pasta, and beef.

Again, those are recipes that I have not tried yet. For the ones that have passed the family test, they go in page protectors behind all those slash pockets, not in any particular order.

Back in the Desserts category, I have lots of older recipe cards, so I use some photo page protectors right now for those in addition to page protectors for the larger pages.

I also have recipes written down in these three little journal-type books.

Don't let me fool you for a second into thinking that they are even remotely close to being filled up. From our first home in college to military moves, I decided I'd have a different one each place we lived. Obviously that didn't last forever, because we moved more than three times.

At the back of each book I made my own little index, because I'm organized like that.

At the beginning I would only write in pencil, being an accountant and all, because it all had to be the same. Eventually I got over that. Sort of. I kind of get twitches looking at that picture with different colored inks.

Then I'd just write the recipe in the book and number the pages myself.

I need to get those three books into something else, or into my other binder. I've toyed with doing a Tastebook, but then I'd just have a cookbook. I want something I can manipulate myself and add things whenever I want to. Basically the binder I have now, just better.

My plan is to either copy the recipes I've already put in a blog post and paste them in a Microsoft Word document, or type them in if I haven't already. If I have a picture I'm going to add it also. Then I'll print it out and put it in a page protector, pretty much like I do now. Here are the first five, not in page protectors yet:

I'll probably alphabetize them eventually too. Because I'm weird like that. I do alphabetize my spices, but I don't alphabetize my canned goods. Probably because I don't keep too many canned goods on hand at once.

The ones I've printed off the internet I will probably retype so they match the others, but I'll save those for last. I will probably have to get a couple of binders when it's all done because I anticipate that it will take up more space than it does now. I don't really have any spare room in that binder right now anyway, so it's a good idea to split it up in some logical way.

The other reason I opted for this instead of a Tastebook was because I thought that someday my girls might like to have some of these recipes. This way they could pick and choose and instead of having to pay to buy a cookbook, they could just put their own recipes together in a binder. With page protectors, of course. They are a girl's best friend.

Well, that and a labelmaker.

Menu Plan Monday — August 17th

Last week was a complete success. I actually stuck to my menu plan 100 percent. That's a first!

The 5-Minute Southwest Layered Salad blew us away. It was so good. Here's what I had to say about it earlier this week after we had it for dinner. It was definitely one of the highlights of the week. The copycat recipe for the TGI Friday's Pecan-Crusted Chicken Salad was excellent and it really did taste just like the real thing. I did do one thing differently. I bought balsamic vinaigrette dressing (Newman's Own) instead of making it from the recipe.

Hubby is going to be gone all week, so I'm going to go with a simple menu plan.

Monday — Ice Cream for dinner at Dairy Queen. Yep, because every kid should do this at least once every summer (or once a month every summer if ice cream is a food group at your house like it is at our house).

Tuesday — Breakfast for dinner. I'm planning Pancakes with Strawberry Topping, Blueberry Muffins from a boxed mix (because that's Caboose's favorite kind), and probably some bacon. I hope to get some eggs boiled before then, too. I always have pancakes left over and Chatty loves to eat them for breakfast for a few days.

Wednesday — Spaghetti.

Thursday — Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

Friday — Hubby comes home, and I'm torn between picking him up at the airport and going to Ikea or taking all the kids for a treat to Steak and Shake. I have all week to decide.

Saturday — 5-Minute Southwest Layered Salad, because it was so good and I'm actually craving food in my food.

Sunday — Eat out since we ate in all week, unless we don't on Friday, which would be a treat and an exception.

For more great menu ideas, probably some that are a little more elaborate than mine this week, go visit Laura, The Organizing Junkie.

Crochet

When my parents came for a visit several weeks ago, one of the things on our agenda was for Chatty to get crochet lessons and for me to get crochet refreshers from my mom.

First off, here is the final product of Chatty's lessons:

Her grandma made the yellowish one, and she made the bluish one.

Here she was getting started with her lessons.


I can personally vouch that sticking out your tongue helps during pressure-filled moments.

And they're still smiling!

That's a good thing, because Chatty's a leftie, and we're all righties. She tried to do it with her left hand and decided she liked it better with her right hand. She crocheted that whole purse with her right hand!

I'm still working on the product of my lessons (except I did do some scarflets). Here's my big project in process:

You can tell it's an afghan, right?

Every 10 rows I put in a row of the fluffy variegated blue. I'm about 30 rows from being done.



That blue is my worst nightmare. My mom told me how to sort of fluff it after I stitch it in, and my OCD gets the best of me when I'm doing it. I really don't like using that fluffy yarn anymore, even if I do love how it looks.

Next one I make will get pretty colors, but not fluff.

This post is linked to Show and Tell Friday hosted by Kelli at There is no place like home.

Food in my Food

I'm ruining my reputation in one fell swoop.

It took so long to build it up, and in one measly meal, it's gone.

Maybe I'll blame it on Laura, The Organizing Junkie, for having this in her meal plan several weeks ago. I think that sounds like a good plan.

Here's a picture of the culprit before I ate it at dinner last night, touching, all at the same time.

It's called 5-Minute Southwest Layered Salad. It took Hubby and me a little more than five minutes to assemble all six plates, but not too many more than that.

It could have also been that I was over at the other counter part of the time making the Pioneer Woman's Shortbread Cookies. You know, just in case dinner didn't work out.

I have to be honest, as we were assembling these, I got second thoughts about this. Third and fourth thoughts, too. It has salsa and ranch dressing on it. Both! Not to mention black beans and corn. Together at the same time.

But by golly, I was going to have to take a big girl pill and eat some of this if I expected my kids to do it. They were watching me pretty closely out of the corners of their eyes wondering about me. Either that or I was a little paranoid with worry.

I didn't mess around and dug right in. My first comment: "This is surprisingly good." And it was. You know what's even better — everyone liked it! And even though it took a little more than five minutes, it was really very quick. We will definitely have this again.

It's meatless, too.

Just in case any of you out there are watching to see if this food in my food becomes a habit (Hubby, Mom, kids, Uncle John), don't count on it.

WFMW — Getting Chewing Gum out of my Dryer

You knew it was just a matter of time.

My husband wields ink pens in his pockets.

My daughter wields gum in hers.

Here is the link to how we dealt with the ink pens after they met up with the dryer, just in case you need to know. And here is the original story if you want to see how it got there in the first place, which basically means what Hubby did to get it there.

So the chewing gum — I think I knew what to do because of my experience with the ink pens. Of course I found the gum all over my dryer as I was moving a final load of laundry before I went to bed around midnight, and of course my OCD issues would not let me go to bed until I dealt with it.

So I pulled out the bottle of nail polish remover, which I have only because I paint my toenails, and the bag of jumbo cotton balls. By the way, the Swisspers jumbos from Wal-Mart are divine.

Also, if you have the non-acetone kind, it probably won't work. I only have one kind, so I didn't do a comparison, but I believe it's the acetone that removes it.

I probably should have opened a window for ventilation, but I was lazy. Plus I was going to bed soon anyway, so if I got a little loopy, who cares. And I lose multiple brain cells at my age every night when I sleep anyway, so what's a few more, right? Ventilate properly if you do this, although it really wasn't that bad. I even had my head stuck in the dryer for a minute or two.

When I was finished, I took a wet towel and wiped down the inside of the dryer. Since I couldn't really tell where I'd put the nail polish remover anymore, I wiped the whole thing down. Then I threw in a couple of dry colored towels, because I didn't have any wet ones, just to see what would happen, and nothing did. The house also didn't blow up and no fire started.

Then I took the colored clothes from my washer, but only the ones that weren't good ones like the old pajamas and stuff, and put them in to dry for about 15 minutes. I checked them to see if they had any damage, but they were fine, so I took the rest of the clothes and put them in to dry along with those. Then I went against the common advice and went to bed with my dryer running, but I do regularly clean out my dryer vents.

Miraculously, the clothes that were in the dryer originally with the gum — none of those clothes had gum on them. I have no idea why, but I am very thankful since I know I couldn't have used nail polish remover on clothes.

Go check out other great Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips and ideas at We Are THAT Family.