Idea Queen Tips & News

I’m pretty big on checking stats. You could say I’m a bit of a data-freak. Checking visitor counts and other information on the site is almost a daily routine.

So I was a bit surprised when I looked at yesterday’s stats just for the blog. Since the update went out via email to those of you subscribed to receive them, I expected a jump. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But what is odd is the fact there were zero “real” comments waiting for me today. Just your normal spam bots attempting to post their ads on my comments (sorry, not happening here!).

I don’t expect everyone to comment. Heck I don’t do that on other blogs, so why would I expect it on mine? If it’s a really good post or have something to share, I’ll leave a comment. But I don’t leave comments on every post of every blog I read. That would just be silly and way too time consuming.

But it makes me wonder - is there nothing worth commenting on here? The blog is getting read on a regular basis, so there must be a general interest to visit for. Maybe there’s just nothing to share on any of the related posts, or no time to do it. I mean we are all busy moms, right?

I don’t know, I may be out of line here. But I am questioning if I’m posting good enough content for you. After all, we all want to do the best job we can do with whatever it is we are doing, right?

This recipe comes from our potato recipe collection. Worth trying if you are wanting to make your own potato chips!

Homemade Potato Chips
6 or more medium lg. potatoes
Oil or fat for deep frying
Salt

Wash and peel the potatoes. Slice very thin. An old fashioned cabbage slicer can be used (careful of the fingers) - or use a sharp knife or food processor with a thin slicing blade. Put the slices at once into a bowl of cold water and let stand for at least one hour. Ice water is best, but you can set the whole bowl in the refrigerator if you wish.

Dry well by shaking them in a towel. Fry in hot oil at 390 degrees F. until a light golden brown. Don’t try frying too many at once, better to put one layer on the frying basket. Drain on paper towels or any kind of plain crumpled absorbent paper. If you haven’t any paper, use a worn dish towel. Salt lightly. These can be kept for some time if they are sealed into plastic bags or containers after they have cooled.

See more potato recipes at Idea Queen.

Does it seem odd I post about my favorite time waster right after a post about trying to get my house organized? Honestly though, this game doesn’t hold me back as much as you’d think it would. It’s more of a “quick break” than anything else (and trust me, I’d be taking these breaks regardless).

The best part of Plant Tycoon is the fact you have no choice but to walk away from the game for periods of time. The object of the game is to grow various plants and find new ones from cross breeding them. Thing is, it takes over 40 mins for plants to grow. That’s over 40 mins I take to get up and DO something while I wait. It’s only on my breaks that I tend to them and actually play.

The playing time is shorter than the growing time, so really this is a perfect game to have up while you are cleaning house or doing other things. Reason being you would get extremely bored just sitting there watching them grow. Now they do have random bugs to catch, although that gets boring too. In between tending to the plants, I let the kids watch and catch the bugs. My 5 year old thinks it’s pretty cool, and she’s pretty good at it too!

So if you are looking for a fun game to play, check this one out. With built in breaks away from the game, you’ll actually get something useful done while playing it!

Here we are with another week gone by. Last week I focused on the laundry room in hopes I’d get a little more organization in there. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen short.

What I did not realize in that room was how much laundry there really was to be done (I dread seeing my water bill next month, it’s not going to be pretty). I also didn’t realize what a mess of laundry I had waiting to be put away. It didn’t matter how much I put away, it all kept coming back! Which is the case with laundry I know, but trying to “catch up” made my head spin.

I’m not discouraged nor do I see this as a failure. Laundry is a time consuming task. But what I did get done is pretty amazing. See I have a tall hamper and regular sized laundry basket in there for dirty clothes. Before I started, the hamper was overflowing and the basket you couldn’t see at all. Now the basket is almost half full and the hamper is empty. Yes, I got that far.

While the clean laundry is still piled up, it’s not any worse than it was when we started. In fact, that looks slightly better. Not anywhere close to done though, although it’s good to know we can get something to wear out of the closets instead of laundry room.

So now I need to make a choice. Do I tackle the laundry room another week, or move on to something else? Now that the dirty laundry is completely caught up, it should be a whole lot easier to stay on top of it. Plus of course laundry has become more of a daily task. Although there really is a LOT of work still to be done in there.

Despite the fact it’s not finished, I am voting to move on to a different room. It really has been bothering me a bit, because our laundry room is not a “public” room if you know what I mean. Company rarely sees it, and I can easily shut a door to keep it that way (it’s actually our back porch right off the kitchen, and no one uses the back door in the winter).

So because I’m bothered by the first impression of the house, I’m moving on to the front room/dining room/living room. It’s the largest room in the house, and what you walk into coming in the front door. It’s also where I sit at the computer, where we watch TV, and where we eat. Granted it gets cleaned often because of the amount of time spent in this room by the whole family, it’s seriously cluttered. My desk is piled with papers and other junk from top to bottom, the shelf above the TV has stuff that shouldn’t be out sitting on it, the table/sewing machine by the door has junk on top of it, and other areas of the room need to be de-cluttered.

Will I be coming back to the laundry room? Absolutely! I’ve just decided it’s time to move my focus on the main room for the time being, THEN go back to the laundry room.  This room shouldn’t take me nearly as long, and I might even be able to get back to the laundry room before the end of the week.

If you’ve been following my story about getting the house organized, you might benefit greatly from this ebook. I absolutely fell in love with this ebook the first time I saw it, because I knew once I was ready to really dive in, it would be very valuable to me.

The ebook gives you tips for every room in the house, including the garage, basement, and even closets. But it doesn’t stop at tips for organizing - it goes one step further and teaches you how to STAY organized. For me staying organized is the biggest challenge.

Interested? Be sure to check out Organizing Your Home at Idea Queen!

One of our favorite crafts to do in the spring is the nature craft pictures. We make a day of it, first by taking a walk to find items then coming home to make the pictures.

While it’s not even close to spring yet, I think we’ve come up with an idea on how to still do our favorite craft while there’s still snow on the ground.

Instead of using leaves and flowers, we can use twigs instead. There’s plenty of fallen branches from the ice to use. Instead of using a green or brown paper, you can use white or gray instead. Using the twigs, make a tree on the page then use cotton balls to make piles of snow around the tree. If you use thick twigs, you might want to help the kids out with a glue gun or other glue that will stick a bit better.

Have fun!

It’s a snow day. No where to be, nothing to do. Not even if we wanted to. So we’ve got all day to come up with ideas for dinner tonight.

Luckily I went shopping yesterday, so there’s quite a large selection of meal ideas in my kitchen. We knew the snow storm was coming, and I made sure our food was stocked.

Whenever I’m deciding on what to make for dinner, I always start with a main type of food.  Usually this is a type of meat or pasta. After I know the type, I plan accordingly. This makes it a whole lot easier than digging through cookbooks without a clue, or trying to think up some general recipe.

Right now I’ve got chicken, hamburger, steak, pasta, and a few other meats in the freezer. So really I could make just about anything. Unfortunately nothing sounds appealing at 8am, so I might hold off until noon to decide and pull something out to thaw.

How do you decide what to make for dinner? Do you start with a meat and go from there? Or do you plan ahead of time and buy specific items for a full week or month?

Need some motivation to keep up with your New Year’s Resolutions? How about getting that energy from a candle?

Does that seem like an odd suggestion? Maybe not! Prairie Soy Candles has just introduced a new scent titled “Aromatherapy: Energizing”. This unique scent is a combination of fragrance oils and essential oils. Spearmint, peppermint, wintergreen, aroma with a faint base tone of citrus designed to get you energized and motivated.

Candles are made with 100% soy wax, a small amount of beeswax, and cotton wicks. No dyes or additives, making a clean burning candle. See all scents, styles, and sizes on Prairie Soy Candles online store.

Everyone has their own way of making mashed potatoes. I was spoiled early with my mom’s mashed potatoes, because they were just so perfect. Luckily I watched closely every time she made them, and am able to make them just as easily.

It may take some practice, but making perfect mashed potatoes really isn’t that hard. All you need is potatoes, milk, butter, salt, and pepper. Just skin the potatoes, boil them on the stove, drain, and put in a bowl. You’ll need a hand mixer to get them just right, adding your butter, milk, salt, and pepper slowly to get it “just right”. As my mom always said “add your milk slowly - you can always add more but you can’t take any out”.

I’ve since come up with my own tasty version that is just as good (if not better) as you’d get in a restaurant. My version uses red potatoes, not skinned, with garlic salt instead of salt and pepper. It’s made exactly the same way as above, just with a few different ingredients.

The garlic mashed potato recipe goes extremely well with other easy dinner ideas, such as steak and pork chops. I tend to make a lot of the mashed potatoes, because they are good even reheated.

Need some cute eCards for Valentine’s Day? American Greetings has lots to choose from! Plus you don’t have to worry about spyware or other computer problems by visiting this site.

With their free trial, you can send out all your Valentine’s day cards for free before you decide to use them for other holidays. I was especially impressed with the number of different holiday cards they have available. Just about everything you can think of is listed here, including the major holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas.

For those that send out a lot of ecards or print cards at home, they’ve got a whole lot of options for a pretty good price. Worth trying out free for 30 days!