Rather than fretting over what holiday gifts to buy family and friends EVERY year – why not simplify your life?
Personal family calendars are an easy, thoughtful gift that let you share your own ‘year in review‘ though your very best pictures.
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My sister insists on wooden knitting needles. As she’s a genius knitter, I bow to her expertise when she tells me that wood is the best choice for working with real wool.
Lightweight yet strong, wooden knitting needles are naturally warm to the touch, which is apparently much nicer for those knitters who are troubled by arthritis. Or, I suggest, for those who just love the feel of smooth wood!
As for decorating your place for Halloween on the cheap -- "Decorate your home and yard with everyday items and almost-trash, like leftover candle stubs and toilet-paper ghosts," the glossy magazines tell you. Right. Not. Who was the genius to suggest that lighted candles and paper products were a good mix? Now throw in gangs of rambling trick-or-treating kids wearing capes and robes and all manner of flammable costumes? Uh-uh.
One of the best things about Halloween is that it's a night to let fantasy run free... So instead of money, why not spend a bit of creativity? Sometimes those quick homemade Halloween costumes can be the best costumes, if the ideas are good ones.
Whether it’s your family message center, an ever-changing scrapbook page, your photo gallery, or a do-it-yourself collage of spontaneous artwork, the front of the refrigerator is one of the most important pieces of real estate inside your home.
Oh, but those stainless steel appliances that look so elegant and modern? They’re a problem. Because it’s true — and the sales guys won’t think to warn you — your magnets won’t stick to most stainless steel refrigerators.
Designers and decorators and magazine editors don’t quite get it. And I guess the appliance makers don’t either.
They may think we should revel in a pure clean uncluttered fridge front, but guess what?
We don’t.
We don’t want to live with a blank-faced fridge.
We love our fridge magnets — the holiday souvenir magnets and giftshop impulse-buy magnets, the tacky ad magnets from the pizza take-out, magnetic note pads, plastic alphabets, and strange glue-smeared scraps of felt on magnetic tape, made by loving preschool hands — all of them!
Our magnets help us to organize and celebrate our family’s daily lives. Right there at eye level — right in the heart of the house.
What the home appliance manufacturers need to do is sit down in my kitchen for a cup of coffee and look around. Maybe in your kitchen, too. Definitely in my friend Kathy’s kitchen…
Then maybe they’d begin to understand why North America resounds with the wail — “My fridge magnets won’t work on stainless steel!” And then maybe they’d get their act together to give us the one feature in a refrigerator that’s needed above all others: the ability to decorate the front of it with magnets.
Does it matter?
I say, yes.
So I’ve looked into this stainless-steel-fridge-magnet issue a bit, and here’s what I’ve turned up: 7 solutions!
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Now here's the perfect potted plant for those of us who can't seem to manage to take care of a single houseplant! Terracotta pots... in a terracotta pot! I cringe…
Inspired by seeing Jen365's blog featured on CNN, Lisa Murray decided to shake up her life in a light-hearted way, break out of her rut and out of her shell…
