Time to Try on Fall Clothes

Yesterday I did one of my favorite things: pulling out the bins of fall/winter clothes and trying things on again. It's a really good idea to do this seasonally because 1. things sometimes have lost their appeal since last season (purge!!) and 2. it lets you know what the gaps are in your wardrobe. I pulled out my sweater bin and realized I didn't need 3 gray turtleneck wool sweaters, for instance. My kids thought it was hysterical that they were trying on foot pajamas and snow pants in August, but it's a great thing to do on a rainy summer afternoon. If you're really ambitious, you can buy up summer items for next season at a big discount this month. I was in Target yesterday and saw kids low-top Converse for $4.99. I bought 2 pair for my kids, in the next size up!

Attention Fellow Book Lovers!

I recently read about a cool website, www.whatshouldireadnext.com, which recommends books, based on what you just read.

"Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers'
favorite books (over 47,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next".

Isn't that a great idea? I tried it and am going to take their advice!

An amazing new snack food

Okay, so when we were on vacation I tried a snack food that drove me absolutely crazy. It's called Glad Corn: http://www.gladcorn.com. I usually only go for the sweets (not the crunchy/salty thing) but this stuff is simply incredible. You know when you eat popcorn and get to eat the best half-popped stuff at the bottom? This is exactly what this tastes like. I tried the original flavor and the jalapeno and liked them both. The problem is finding it. If you're lucky enough to live near Whole Foods, that's where I found it on vacation. Has anyone tried it??

Happy Sister's Day!

About 2 years ago, we started a little tradition in our family that every August 1st would be a new holiday called "Sister's Day" and September 1st would be "Brother's Day". It works well in our family since we have one boy and one girl. Usually what we do is give a tiny gift (I gave my daughter a small jewelry box) at breakfast and then we do a really fun family activity including taking the special kid out to lunch. This year we're going to Horseneck Beach and having lunch at a funky little restaurant overlooking the bay. It's a great excuse to celebrate each child with something other than a birthday.

I thought of Sister's and Brother's Day and timed them as I did because there were no real holidays in Aug. or Sept. that involved celebration...and we love celebrations in this house!

Organizing on my vacation

My mother was so excited to have me at their house for a week because she knew I'd be dying to help out around the house! I must say, if all the houses I worked on in MA were already as organized as my mom's, I'd have nothing to do! But there were a couple of small areas that we worked on.

The first was her kitchen cabinets. It's just her and my dad living there now, so when I asked her about sets of dishes she had upstairs in the kitchen and got answers like "oh those...I use them once a year when I have book club at my house", we moved those things out of the MAIN zone and into the STORAGE zone (i.e. shelves in the basement!) Then we thinned out the existing dishes, glasses, etc. This is one of the things I picked up at Target to give her more space in her primary dish cabinet:


It's what most of us probably need, right? For just $5 (or so) you can easily create more space. My mom had cereal bowls stacked on top of small salad plates and was having to move them each time we wanted to unload the dishwasher. No longer!

Her favorite thing we did was thin out the pantry a little (my relocating hardly-ever-used kitchen appliances to the basement) and then stacking up the canned goods on risers like these:

Fabulous, right? And just $8 at Target. We were able to get 3 and outfit the whole pantry!

Home Sweet Home!

It feels so good to be home after 16 days on the road, 5 states visited (!!) and seeing lots of loved ones. This was, by far, our best family vacation to date. And in this culture of flying, it feels good to have a good "old fashioned" road trip filled with fun surprises along the way. My kids were amazing.

After about a week of being away from New England I start to get a little home sick for 1. donut shops 2. water 3. Red Sox 4. our wonderful accent. It seemed fitting when we passed an IKEA in CT with a massive (wicked massive!!) billboard reading "HOME IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD". I couldn't agree more!

So I got to check out some fun stores while we were away and picked up a reuseable shopping bag I'm crazy about, www.envirosax.com. It's one of those that rolls into a little ball (about the size of a wallet) and opens into a full sized shopping bag. It's perfect if you're going into the city for the day and want to consolidate bags, or if you're simply running into the pharmacy and don't want to waste a bag. I got a really cute green one and plan to use it every day! Remember, it's the small changes that tend to get us into new fabulous habits!

It's your turn!

I'm going to be out of town with sporatic access to my site, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask you wise readers to take over! Email me YOUR favorite organizing trick and I'll post it on the site. What cool ideas do you have? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, because the folks who read this blog read it because it's NOT fancy advice! partridgeathome@yahoo.com.