DID YOU KNOW?

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.
Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simple chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla icecream.

OTHER GOOD THINGS TO KNOW:

1. Reheat Pizza
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 micropizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

2. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar andcalories per serving.

4. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place themin a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

5. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

8. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants withcayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and thesquirrels won't come near it.

9. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. Reducing Static Cling
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. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- ta da! -- static is gone.

11. Measuring Cups
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 rightout.

12. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalk board eraser and keep it in the glovebox of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

13 Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside , just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.

14. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot 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...

15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

16. Get Rid of Ants
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 & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

17. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material - I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well,...the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn'tgo through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free -- that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water and an old tooth brush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share!
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 & a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds.Then when I rinsed it the water ran right through the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

UTD
LTD
ML
Worked
Yoga
FTL
CTL
Worked
Showered
PUAnna
Shopping
US/PA (Unloaded Shopping/put away)
CTL
LTD
MD
UTD
LTD
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FTL

oh and took down the Christmas tree!

jeez..how bloody mundane!

Open Calls

Anna's plan is to first be in commercials and then be in a TV show and then have her own TV show.

I think this plan started when she saw Mary Pat in a commercial last fall. From that day on all Anna has done is ask me if I called her to find out how to get in commercials. I told her that if she was still interested after the holidays I would follow up.

January 2nd, the first day back of school - she got off the bus and asked if I had made the call. She was determined and her dream was not going away!

So, today I picked her up at 1:45 and drove into town. It took no more than 5 minutes. I handed in her application and a couple photos that I had printed, then they took 3 shots et volia we were done!

They told her they would call in 2-3 weeks.

Huge photo in the paper

Scott and I were in the paper today. Page 2 of section B. When I first saw the picture I gasped - horrified. It was HUGE! And there I was looking right at myself in black and white and very HUGE!

All I can say is, I am so thankful that it was a great shot! No double chin.

Scott thought he looked sexy. Go figure? 10 and sexy?

Oh...the article was about H2H - we're leaving to go to Honduras in just over 2 weeks and we can't wait!!

Santa finally brought Butterscotch!

This morning, next to the tree (not under), Anna found Butterscotch! He had this note in his mouth:

January 8th, 2008

My dear Anna,

Finally! Christmas Eve was one of the busiest ever. I made it back to the North Pole, slept for 2 days straight and ten took Mrs. Claus on a very relaxing beach holiday!

When we returned, the Elves had caught up with their toy making and there was a Butterscotch with your name on it!

I was glad to see that your parents left your Christmas up with the lights on tonight so I could easily find your house. It doesn’t look very much like Christmas with not very much snow at your house anymore.

Enjoy Butterscotch Anna! And remember to write me again next year with your wishlist….a little earlier so we don’t run into the same problem again next Christmas.

With all my love,
SANTA (and the Elves)

p.s. Remember to be good!

Butterscotch Arrives

Today, with no warning, no email, no nothing, Butterscotch arrived on our front porch in the biggest box ever!

Thank God! So, I put it together, hid it in the laundry - good place because it's such a bloody mess in there no one can find anything anyway.

Have to think of a creative way to "give" him to Anna!

Beauty and the Beast?

Shannon called last night to let Anna know that there were tryouts for Beauty and the Beast today at the high school. Of course, Anna HAD to also go. So, we made a last minute change of plans and instead of going skiing - we went to tryouts.

The newspaper had the tryouts listed as 9:30. We got there at 9:25 and there were plenty of people already there. In fact Alaina had gotten there so early - they were first in line. Anna was number 58. I had to sign a gazillion sheets of paper, list her experience (none) and sign her in.

She then got the number 58, had ot pin it to her shirt and have her picture taken. Then all the girls (and a couple boys) lined up in the hall - 1 to 60. Then they all filed into the auditorium and were gone for over an hour and a half!

At abt noon Anna finally came out. She was all smiles and several of the girls were telling her she had done a good job. And of course I had loads of questions - I wanted to hear all about her tryouts!

Apparently they all went in, learned a song and then one by one got up on stage and sang a song! Wow....I can't believe she had the guts to do that. When I asked her if she was nervous she said, actually it's easier to be on stage in lots of people than just a couple. Is she really my daughter?

And that was that - there were over 100 kids there, there would be 30 call backs and then 6 children picked for the show in April.

They were going to call every single person tonight and let them know.

So after skiing, we called into our homephone and got the message:

"Thanks but no thanks."

I told Anna - and she was just fine with it and she and Lila just went off to choreograph their latest High School Musical Masterpiece.

And me.....I suprised myself....I felt like they had rejected my beautiful Anna...how could they?

I had to force myself to get over it....why was it so easy for her? She's the one who really wanted a part. I have no idea how we would have swung it if she had gotten the part....