Ideals to Life

Our family has chosen to do a reduced-gluten diet at home so a lot of my baking is done with a gluten-free (wheat-free) flour mix. I determined early on, though, to not let that choice restrict our enjoyment of eating and have strived to convert many of our favorite traditional dishes to a gluten-free variety.

This original Blueberry Buckle recipe is a treat that a good friend of mine makes and that my family has fallen in love with. Here is the original recipe and the converted gluten free recipe. The directions are the same for each combination. Which ever one you choose, I know you won’t be disappointed!

*Gluten free flour mix: 6 c. brown rice flour, 2 c. potato starch, 1 c. tapioca starch

Directions:

Cream oil and sugar, then add the egg. Combine dry ingredients and add to oil and sugar mix alternately with the milk. Spread into a greased 9″ square pan. Top with blueberries. Mix topping ingredients and sprinkle over the blueberries. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

There is a pile in everyone’s kitchen. You know, the one where mail is thrown, receipts from $1 purchases accumulate, and notes from school, last month’s magazines, kids’ artwork, and “I’ll get to that right after…” items are put. Most of us have more than one of these piles throughout our house, but there is invariably one on the kitchen counter.

Take some time this week to sort through and clear away that pile. Remind yourself of the counter space that lies underneath. I promise it is there!

So much important information travels in and out of our email. Appointments, play dates, announcements, order and shipment information, social events, school updates, newsletters, sale flyers, personal correspondence….the list goes on. Yet the emails inevitably become one big blob. A blob in which dates are forgotten, deadlines missed, and personal response never makes the transition from an intent to reality.

With a few simple organizational adjustments, you can remove the element of chaos from your inbox.

First, organize your inbox with the ultimate goal of making it your email-based “to-do” list. You want to keep your main inbox folder clear of all emails except those where immediate action is need.

The key is to create folders within your inbox to store your emails. You want to create a place for each email that you want to keep, but no longer requires immediate action. You do this by creating named folders. A few examples are: Kids/School, Pictures, Recipes, Work, Church, Purchases, or a folder named for a specific person. Your understanding of categories that work for you will develop over time. As soon as an email no longer requires immediate action, it is either sent to a new home in one of these folders or is deleted. It should not sit in your inbox for longer than 3 or 4 days, and certainly no longer than a week. If you have not acted on it by then, you probably won’t. It will just move its way further down the list and be forgotten. These forgotten emails gather over time and create an ever-looming feeling of being behind.

Very briefly reevaluate your inbox a couple of times a week to make sure that emails have been responded to or have been put into the correct folder.

This is a simple organizational adjustment that will help your relationships, schedule, and stress level. An empty, or nearly empty, inbox is a beautiful thing.

Our mixers get a lot of love in the form of sugar, butter and flour. The obvious post-baking clean-up is fairly routine: clean the mixing bowl and the beaters. If you are like me, though, you probably don’t always give the entire mixer a wipe down after every use.

Take a damp rag, and maybe an old toothbrush, to your mixer this week. Dust off the flour, get the old cookie dough out of the crevices, and make it shine.

Cleaning your lamp shades is your deep cleaning task for the week!

*Tip - Use a lint brush on your cloth shades and just a damp cloth on shades with a smooth surface.

Very few surfaces in our homes are cleaned as frequently as the table top. But when was the last time you cleaned the rest of the table? You know, that spot under the table where your child wipes his hands when you aren’t looking, the back of the chairs where sticky fingers have been, or that place on the table leg where spaghetti sauce dried on its way to the floor? And if you are like me, you might be surprised at how much dust has accumulated on the chair rungs.

So this week, take a few minutes and a damp cloth to those forgotten surfaces and make your table shine.

Two words: Magic Eraser. If you have not yet discovered this mommy-must-have, you need to add this cheap product to your cleaning tool belt. My favorite part (other than the whole “magic eraser” part) is that they are chemical free. You just dampen the special sponge and erase away!

Your deep cleaning task this week is to “magic erase” your home. Wipe off the scratches and marks from your walls, baseboards, and doors. If you are like me, you have probably gotten to the point where you don’t even notice the marks on your walls. However, I can guarantee that you will notice their absence.

Here is a new use for all the broken crayons you have lying around: melted crayon art!

Supplies:
Crayons
Paper
Candle

Directions:
Peel the paper off of the crayons. Light the candle and hold a crayon above the flame for 2-3 seconds or until it starts to melt. Then quickly move the crayon over the paper. The child can choose to do a drip collage (picture below) or press the crayon onto the paper to draw a picture of their choice.

*Tip - Set aside a small jar, box, or bag that is dedicated to storing your broken crayons. This keeps your main crayon box tidy and saves your broken crayons for this fun rainy day craft!

Door knobs are a forgotten surface in the house; a surface that probably sees more traffic than the bathroom.

This week, your deep cleaning task is to clean all of the door knobs in your house. Simply take a cloth and a glass cleaner or a mild all-purpose formula and do a quick wipe down.

Clean off the top of your fridge.

Remove the unnecessary clutter and wipe it down with a damp cloth. And don’t forget to dust off the flour and sugar canisters you have up there!