Save Your Mayo Lids, Save Your Ruined Jam, Save Your Dry Cake

My public announcements for the day: Mayonnaise jar lids fit on canning jars.

If you make a batch of jam, and don't believe the people who say you can NEVER double a batch of jam, and your jam doesn't set...congratulations, you've made strawberry syrup. Put it in your milk, on your ice cream, and maybe even on your sandwiches. It's just like the squeezable jam I've seen at the grocery store!

If you make a loaf cake, and it's a few days old, you can always stick a slice in the toaster, top with a dollop of Samoa Cookie ice cream, and douse it in strawberry syrup. It will cheer you up, I promise!

Seven Red Things

Su tagged me in her "seven red things" meme a while back- this was really fun!  I'm not going to tag anybody, but it's a fun post to do if you want to pick it up.

Here are seven red things from around the house:

The red Kitchen Aid.  I LOVE this thing, and as you can see...it gets used a lot.  It's almost never clean.  (Don't look too closely at the reflections...but if you DO see the 5 pound Costco bag of pretzels, I confiscated that from my baby when she dragged it into my bedroom, asking for a light snack.)

Double whammy- red silicone spatula and an....?  I don't know what it is, it kind of looks like an urn and it's a great size to hold all my kitchen utensils.  Another lovely (wedding) gift from my interior-decorator aunt.

This Santa present has been a HUGE hit this year- it's an easel.  I regularly find the chalk in my large stockpot with an old make up brush- the baby likes to dab on her powder in the mornings.  *sigh*  And, as Ernie excitedly shouted from underneath the easel one day "Mommy!  This is from IKEA!  Santa shops at Ikea!  See?  The sticker right here says so!"  I am SO not used to having a girl who can read.

Those egg shakers are still hanging around, but have much more tape now than when they started out (check out the sidebar for more information on these- they were a huge hit with my kids and nursery classes.)  They live in a basket next to the piano now, with castanets, scarves, and ribbons.

Voting day is coming!!

Our church magazine, The Ensign.  We have "The Friend" for the kids, and "New Era" for the teens.  This is geared towards adults (but I noticed a few kid activities and messages for teens in this issue, which is nice.)  This is a beautiful painting of Daniel in the lion's den- you can't see King Darius' face very well, but it's priceless.

And finally, a red chair.  We bought our chairs a few years apart at the same store, as our table/family grew- they're all the same style, but two of each color (natural, black, red, blue.)  LOVE them!

Geekery: Sharing Anything on the Web, in Google Reader

If you use Google Reader to see your blog feeds (and I love my reader- I subscribe to 307 blogs!) then do you know you can "follow" people and see things they share?  It's true.  My sister and I love to send ideas back and forth to each other this way- "Did you see what Jenny did?"  "My hips are growing just looking at that!"  "Quick- make me this and put it in the mail."

Sometimes I see ideas that aren't in my blog feed- maybe it's a newspaper article, or maybe it's a recipe I plan on making that night that I want my hubby to see (I share with him, too.)

So, if you have Google Reader, do this:
Under "Your Stuff" click on "Shared Items."  It has an orange icon next to it.

Now look up in the top right corner- see the "Note In Reader" button?  Click on it, and drag it up to your tool bar.  (I use Google Chrome as my internet explorer, but it should work in any explorer widget toolbar.)

Now on any web page, click and share!

An Announcement and a Warning

We all know that all phones are required to dial 911, even with no plan.  If it has battery power and can see a cell site, it WILL call 911.  Federal law.

Did you know that a key-locked phone will also call 911 if you hold down the 9 key?  Yes.  It will.  No, don't try it- Mimi's already done that for you.

The sheriff's office didn't think it was very funny when they called back!

Catch Up On Kindness

I feel like an absolute cad. There are so many fabulous folks out there, doing fabulous things, and I never thanked them publicly!

I've won TWO giveaways from the fabulous Simone over at Craftevolution. First, it was a bag of fabulous hand-poured glycerin soap in yuzu scent, which is absolutely divine, and then I won a sweet little cache of wooden eggs for crafting. I still haven't settled on what to do with them, but if I procrastinate much longer I'll need to wait till next Spring!

Su, over at Vively Online, awarded me with my FIRST EVER blog bling (way back in early March...oops). I have an award! Thank you so much, Su- that's really, really sweet of you!


(And LoLo, I haven't forgotten about your meme...)