Quick Hint Tuesday

Thinning the Garden--we are up to the point where most of the garden has emerged and now we need to thin it. The best way to do that is with a pair of scissors, just snip off the stem of the unneeded plants. That way you don't disturb the soil of the plants that you want to grow big and strong.

Yahoo Notes--I use My Yahoo as my homepage. It's handy because it has a calendar, a calculator, the weather report, in addition to the mail and news. But now I've added Note to Self for a long running list of things that I want to do. I titled it Making Life Better and I have sections for projects, garden, and blog ideas.

Spinach--spinach goes in practical everything we eat now. Quiche! Chicken in puff pastry! Pizza! BLT? No BST! Guests for dinner--spinach/strawberry salad! We keep buying those big boxes of organic spinach, use it up and then have to buy another one.

The Return of Quick Hint Tuesday

Thrilled me greatly to find these glass coasters at a thrift store for $3. Took me less than three minutes to cut out photos that I had laying around here and slip them into a pocket on the back. I can change them anytime I want. Go to a thrift store and find a treasure.

Artichoke dressing~In a blender, mix some marinated artichoke hearts with 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1/8 cup of vinegar, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a little pinch of salt. By the way, one of my best finds lately is White Balsamic Vinegar from Trader Joe's~it goes very well in this dressing, on cucumbers, or beets.

Minor's Chicken Base from Costco~This is a little tub of chicken bullion that you can use in place of chicken stock. You mix one teaspoon to a cup of water. I like it because there are not 16 cans of chicken stock filling up my pantry. Watch out though, it's pretty salty.

idrive.com~this company offers an external off-site encrypted back-up of all your personal files on your computer. I did all my pictures, music files, and Word documents. You get up to 2G for free. Or $4.95 a month for unlimited personal use (business use is more). It backs up every night! Absolute peace of mind if anything happens to my laptop.

Tuesday Quick Hints

Paper Towel in a Bottle—if you have a narrow necked bottle that you need to dry out, roll up a paper towel like a funnel and tuck it into the top. It will wick the moisture out. This works incredibly well in our arid climate.

Wine Corks for Corn Holders—poke 2 corn holders into a cork, this keeps them from stabbing you every time you search for something in your gadget drawer.

Anti Spam--I’m going to ask a favor. Please stop forwarding every cute, touching, funny or important thing that comes across your e-mail. Every time you send out a group e-mail with everyone’s name and address across the top, it is stored in the computers of all of those people. Searching spy robots gather any reference to xxx@xxxx.com. And we are all overwhelmed with junk mail. It was great back in the early days when we could laugh and cry at the wonderful things people put out there, but those innocent times are over now.

Tuesday Quick Hints

Honey and Pizza--I know it sounds too weird, but our favorite little pizza place serves a dish of honey with every pizza. The idea is that when you get to the crust, you dip it in the honey, as a sort of dessert-it's a real treat.

Arnold Palmer--I hate soda. I like iced tea, but it's rather plain on its own. I like lemonade too, but it's usually too sweet. The combination of iced tea and lemonade is perfect--less calories than lemonade, more interesting that plain iced tea. When I order it in a restaurant, the server always knows what I'm talking about, although my dining companions are sometimes surprised.

Making my photos your computer background--if you like a picture on the blog, you can easily make it your desktop background. This works best if you left click on any photo to enlarge it, then right click it and choose "Set as desktop background..." That's it, you're done.

Tuesday Quick Hints

Fonts 500: At last, this site has 500 free great fonts. This is heaven for a scrapbooker. At the bottom of the first page, there are instructions for downloading the fonts. I went ahead and did all of them. Today, I want to print out the pages, so I can have a reference to consult when I’m trying to find the right look.

Crisper basket: In the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, I have a mesh basket. This is the place to keep all of those little lost pieces from escaping to the back of the drawer. You can keep track of the unused half of an onion or lemon, the knob of ginger, the leftover scallions.

Bloglines.com: Not only do I spend almost every morning writing this blog, I also read about 20 blogs a day. I know, I need to get a life. But I have figured out a way to make it quicker at least. At Bloglines.com, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of all your favorite blogs. Then it shows you when they post anything new. It eliminates checking all of them every time. Don’t worry; it’s incredibly easy to register, it’s free, and all you do is drag and drop the addresses into a box and you’re done.

Tuesday Quick Hints

Appliance Sliders: usually used for the feet of chairs so they don’t scratch the wood floor, these little plastic discs are a miracle for putting on my Kitchen-Aid mixer. Before, it was too heavy to move, I had to literally lift it up to use it or clean under it. Now it slides across the kitchen counter without any effort at all.

Use up old lemons: sprinkle wooden cutting boards with a generous helping of kosher salt, cut lemon in half, rub over salt all over the cutting board to eliminate odors.

Slide show screen saver: If you use a digital camera and save your pictures on your computer, you can set it up to view the pics on a random revolving pattern. Just right click anywhere there is blank spot on your desktop. Click Properties. Under the screen saver tab, choose “my pictures slide show.” And then click “settings” to the right of it. You can change the speed and size of the photos. You can also choose a specific folder (I use the music folder to show only photos of shows we’ve been to). Make the settings so that the screen saver comes on after 5-10 minutes of non-use, but then stays on for two or three hours before going to sleep. That way you’ll get maximum view time. I’m always delighted when I see something that reminds me of a good time.