A Mom’s Year – Page 19 – Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time

January 25, 2014

Organize: Popsicle Stick Cleaning System

Family members are still straggling downstairs this morning, but as soon as everyone’s awake and functional we’re going to do our weekly Popsicle Stick Cleaning Session. My kids love this!

Just kidding. They don’t love it. But it works.

I keep a bunch of popsicle sticks with jobs written on them in a “To Do” jar. When it’s time for a cleaning session, I go through the popsicle sticks and select the jobs that need to be done, lay the sticks on the counter, and then summon the troops.

Depending on the number of tasks, we might set a timer for 15 minutes to make it a bit of a race. If it’s been a while since we’ve cleaned, we forget about the timer and power through until all the sticks have made it into the “Done” jar. Sometimes, if we’re all in fairly cheerful moods, we’ll put music on and make it a party. Other times, we work in gloomy silence until it’s all over.

January 23, 2014

Sun Dogs

We woke up to this beautiful sight out our front windows this morning. Known officially as “parhelia,” sun dogs are the wintery version of rainbows, with ice crystals instead of water droplets refracting and reflecting the light.

Tim calls this one Sunrise on Tattooine:

January 23, 2014

Eat: Ina Garten’s Couscous with Toasted Pine Nuts

Lexie made dinner for us last night. Wait, let me write that again so I can really savor those words: Lexie made dinner for us last night.

Sometimes when a teenager surprises you, it’s with an ear gauge or a dent in the car. But some teenage surprises are really wonderful, like unloading the dishwasher without being asked or discovering a love for cooking.

I truly didn’t see that last one coming, but Lexie’s new love of all things culinary has been a welcome surprise. When we go to the grocery store, she tucks a basket under her arm and sets off purposely to collect the items from her list. And, bless her heart (and ours, as it turns out), everything on that list is healthy, real food that’s helping us all eat better around here.

I have four of Ina Garten’s cookbooks on the shelf―what I love about her is that she takes the most basic of ingredients and uses them to create something really special. I read once that Ina doesn’t have fancy ovens or other equipment in her kitchen because most normal people don’t, and she wants to be sure that when she creates a recipe the rest of us can actually make it, too.

Lexie made the couscous to go with a simple cod dish (cod cooked in melted butter and sprinkled with salt, pepper, dried thyme, rosemary, and oregano). The most amazing thing about this recipe is that even though most people in our family don’t like onions, raw or cooked, they gobble this up. Good old Ina.

Ina Garten’s Couscous with Toasted Pine Nuts

from Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That?
serves 6 to 8

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
2 cups chopped yellow onion (2 onions)
3 cups chicken stock
1-½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups couscous (12 ounces)
½ cup pine nuts, toasted*
½ cup minced fresh parsley

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onion and cook over medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender but not browned. Add the chicken stock, salt, and pepper and bring to a full boil. Stir in the couscous, turn off the heat, cover, and allow to steam for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork, stir in the pine nuts and parsley, and serve hot.

* To toast pine nuts, place them in a dry saute pan and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, tossing often, until lightly browned.

January 22, 2014

Make: Chinese Year of the Horse Printable Chopstick Covers

Last week we shared a Chinese Year of the Horse necklace DIY and today we have an easy project that would be fun for all ages. To make your Year of the Horse chopstick covers, all you have to do is print out the Year of the Horse Chopstick Holders pdf, color the horses, cut them out, and use a small bit of tape to secure them to a pair of chopsticks (I bought ours at Target). Easy!

We’re planning to make the chopstick covers with Lily’s classmates at their Chinese New Year party next week, plus we’ll make some extras to put at each place setting for our family’s Chinese New Year kick-off dinner on Friday, January 31.

P.S. You can have the chopsticks poking through the top of the horse’s head or off to the side. Whatever you prefer!

January 21, 2014

Work: Pink says “We’re all in sales now” + Discussion Map

I’ve been immersing myself in business books lately for work I’m doing with a client. One book I really enjoyed is Daniel H. Pink’s To Sell is Human.

As a writer and editor, I haven’t read many books about sales and marketing but that will probably change now that I’ve come across Pink’s central message: “Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.”

Pink’s definition of sales veers away from the traditional image of a salesperson trying to persuade a customer to purchase something and focuses instead on the idea that we’re all constantly trying to move people. Pink asks “What percentage of your work involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value (attention, effort, time, money, etc.) for something you can offer?”