Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
Also if one of your ingredients is oil, measaure that first and them add the sticky substance like peanut butter or honey.
To get something out of a tight space, a heat register or under the fridge, add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum hose. It can be bent or flattened to get into narrow openings.
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose or tights. Place pin in seam of slacks and …. ta da! … static is gone.
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it. I have also used cayenne pepper to keep the neighborhood cats out of my flower bed in Austin. For some reason they love it as a litter box. So buy the large size at your favorite Wholesale Store.
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair.
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm.
This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
First reports from the fire inspectors for Country Music Star Trace Adkins home said that the total loss of his 5,000 square foot house started in his dryer! No matter what the cause, there are lots of house fires that start in a dryer. Let’s eliminate that possibility for our homes with a few easy tips from a appliance repairman.
Have you ever had the heating unit go out on your dryer or think it is about to fail because the clothes aren’t getting dry? Well here is a tip from a repairman. Go over to the dryer and pull out the lint filter. I’ll bet it is clean since most of us clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes. Now take your “clean” filter over to the sink and run hot water over it. (The lint filter is made of a mesh material). If the hot water is sitting on top of the mesh you have a big problem! Dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that’s what burns out heating units. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s there. Those dryer sheets make your clothes soft and static free.
Now take one of your dryer sheets out of the box. Feels waxy doesn’t it? This substance builds up on your lint screen and can stop the air circulation inside the dryer and vent. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down! The best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush every six months. Put it on your calendar! Your dryer might last a few years longer too.
Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and an old toothbrush and I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it .. the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!
Another Tip: Twice a year you should clean the plastic hose pipe that vents to the outside. Use the vacuum cleaner to suck out accumulated dust and lint.
So clean them both and don’t forget to schedule the dryer cleaning on your calendar six months from TODAY!
Since Carter was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes it is even more important that he understands portion control. But the real truth is that we ALL should be aware of not only the food /fuel that we are putting in our bodies but the portion size. That is just as important for the obesity epidemic in this country as well as any other food related disease.
Quality AND quantity are essential to our health.
Tweak of the Week: Portion Distortion
Go Green: Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it “home”, can’t digest it, so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
First DON”T boil your egg! You will have rubbery whites with dry yolks that have a gray/blue edge around the yolk. That is your clue you have overcooked the egg. See the post on how to make a Perfect Hard-cooked Eggs or the blog post on how long you can keep eggs.
After your eggs are done, drain the hot water from the pot used to cook the eggs and shake the pot back and forth to crack the shells. Then plunge them in enough cold water to cover the eggs until they cool down. The water seeps under the broken shells, allowing them to be peeled without a struggle. Start peeling from the large end of the egg, which has an air pocket. This lets you get under the membrane without digging into the white.
