KitchenHub

I’ve been using KitchenHub for a year to keep track of my family’s schedules, to-do lists, family birthdays, shopping lists, and notes.  Here are some of the things like about it.

-You can make multiple calendars, one for each family member, or one for each activity.  You can choose to view items from one calendar at a time or you can view items from multiple calendars at a time.

-Calendars are color-coated so that when you choose to view multiple calendars at once, you can see which items belong to which calendar.

-You can view the calendar by day, week, or month.

-You can make multiple to-do lists, and select which ones you want to view as well.

-It allows you to easily set due dates for task item, and change those due dates as needed.  This is nice for me because I don’t have to keep rewriting to-do lists.

-I like keeping my schedule on my computer instead of carrying around a calendar.

-It has a nice homepage display that displays all of the calendar, task items, and birthdays that are scheduled for the current day and gives you a preview for the upcoming days.

-The homepage displays a weather forecast.

-It’s easy to make notes.  They look like actual post-it notes, and they put a day and time stamp on them.  I use this feature to write brief observations of Emma for the day, and then transfer them to a journal when I have time.

-You can make multiple shopping lists and organize them how you want.

-The design is simple and attractive, and the program is easy to use.

-The customer support has been great.  I wrote them with a list of minor suggestions that I think would make the product even better, and they wrote back with follow-up questions and were happy to hear from me.

It does other things as well that I haven’t used. For example, you can integrate your email with the program. It also has a feature that allows you to collect recipes.

If you’re looking for a new calendaring system, this is definitely worth checking out.  I’ve tried using Outlook, which my husband loves, but I don’t like it as much as this program. 

Scanning Away

In February we purchased a flat-bed scanner.  I had boxes and boxes of school notes, scrapbooks, and memorabilia that I couldn’t bear to throw away previously.  One of the boxes was full of binders, one binder for each year I was in school.  It was simply too much.  Now that I’ve scanned them all, I feel great about trashing most of it.

Scanning takes a lot of time and I’m slowly getting through my boxes.  My goal is to reduce all of my schoolwork to one binder and my scrapbooks to two binders.  I want to pass something useful and interesting to my children rather than dumping boxes of stuff on them for them to wonder what to do with.

All of this scanning is giving me a clearer idea of how I want to document Emma’s and our family’s life.  It will involve scanning regularly and taking a serious look at what we have, and deciding if what we have is worth keeping.

It’s been nice to have everything scanned, what I’ve done so far anyway.  It’s easier to look at the paperwork and find things.  I can scroll through the pages and zoom in.  It takes up no physical space at all.  I’m glad I kept a lot of my stuff so that I could digitize it.  But I sure wish I had had one a long time ago.

Things I've Come to Realize About Meal Planning

 

1. Getting food on the table is an art, not a precise science. I can plan all I want, but things will change; it takes a stroke of talent and some practice to use that to my advantage.
2. The majority of meals I prepare a week should be super easy, like sloppy Joes or pasta. I don't have to be adventurous with a new recipe or something complicated every time I cook. That's too much pressure.
3. It helps to have a list of food ideas to refer to when I get stuck with ideas for snacks, breakfast, dinner.
4. When I sit down and meal plan, I need: a pencil, a good eraser, paper to write out the menu for the next week, paper to write my grocery list, the local ad, and my list of food ideas.
5. For my family of two adults and one 19-month-old, I think I need to plan on making four to five meals a week. This gives us enough food for dinner and lunch every day.  (How many meals do other people make a week?)
6. Cooking is becoming fun, especially when I make it a focus of my day rather than an afterthought.
7. It's rewarding to see my family eating at the table. In the end, this is what meal-planning is all about: Yes, it's about making sure that my family doesn't starve, but it’s also about enjoying time with the people I love, gathering my family and friends to the table to talk about our day and share ideas. This makes all the hard work (even the cleanup) worthwhile.

Before Sitting at the Computer, Make a List

It’s so easy for me to lose focus when I’m working on the computer.  I get on to do A, B, and C, spend a whole lot of time doing D, E, and F, and and then completely forget that I was supposed to do A, B, and C. 

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Making a list before I sit at the computer has been my answer.  I still might get sidetracked with D, E, and F, but when I have a list, I’m reminded of why I chose to sit down in the first place.

Meal Planning Inspired by the Very Hungry Caterpillar

I was reading Emma The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the umpteenth time when I had a little epiphany: If the Very Hungry Caterpillar can have a different fruit each day, my family can too! And if we have a different fruit each day, we can plan on a different vegetable each day while we’re at it.  This might help our family eat more kinds of fruits and vegetables throughout the week.  And as an added plus, it could give me a framework to plan my meals and snacks around (I have had issues meal planning.) 

So I went to a website http://www.foodfit.com/healthy/healthywinterfoods_fruit.asp to get an idea of what kinds of fruits are in season for winter, and noted the ones I haven't eaten in a while, and put them down on a chart. I did the same for vegetables using the same site. I also checked to see which of those items were on sale using the local ads.  Then I bought the produce.  I’m considering getting a vegetable/fruit box through a local co-op where they pick and choose the fruit and vegetables for you. 

The result?  We have several fruits and vegetables to choose from throughout the day and throughout the week.  I have found that it has been easier to plan our family dinners because I know what kind of produce I’m going to have on hand.  And it has helped me figure out what I need to buy at the grocery store.

While I was at it, I went ahead and assigned different breakfast ideas to each of the days and a plan for dinner.  It’s a simple chart, but it’s been helpful to me.  I do my grocery shopping on Wednesday, so that’s why it’s in the second column.

 

I Should Have Taken Home Ec.

I was running new blog title ideas by my husband Ben since “Leticia’s Notebook” was rather uninspiring for me.  Here’s how our conversation went:

Leticia: “Journeys in Homemaking”?  Too boring huh?

Ben: Yes.

Leticia: How about “I should have taken Home Ec”?  Just kidding.

Ben: I like that one.

And he’s insisting that’s the best one I’ve come up with, so I’m going to stick with it.

Running a home is much more involved than I ever could have imagined as a kid.  I thought laundry was magically cleaned and folded; that budgets balanced themselves; and that food was as easy as one, two three.  Managing a home for me consisted of making my bed and keeping my room clean, setting the table, dusting, helping clean up dinner, and taking out the trash once in a while.

I’m not an expert at all in home ec, and I have a lot to learn, but I think it’s fascinating learning about how to make a home run more smoothly.  So that’s why I have this blog, to force myself to think about it a little more, to collect ideas, share what I’ve learned, vent about how my house is a work in progress, and just be real about home management. 

I’ve committed to write more regularly because I think it will help me personally as I try to stay more organized.  And I’m not going to let lack of pictures get in my way.

My New Favorite Toy: Snipping Tool

Ben just showed me this the other day.  In Microsoft Windows 7, there’s a program called Snipping Tool.

Snipping Tool allows you to copy images from your screen and paste them into whatever program you’re using.  Its uses are endless.  I found it helpful to use while I was shopping for clothes online, trying to coordinate outfits, and doing a lot of dreaming and playing dress-up.

I just copied the pieces I thought would work in an outfit from the website and put them into OneNote.

For anyone looking to get me a Christmas present, these pieces from Shabby Apple and Eddie Bauer made it to my wish list

As did these dresses:

Sigh.  Back to reality.