My Thoughts, Ideas and Ramblings

With all of our kids heading back to school (some are in already!  Mine are!), it’s time to do a back to school giveaway!  Nestle Toll House understands the transition from summer to school signals the start of a much busier schedule.  These busier schedules can make it challenging for families to stay connected.  Here are a few sweet (pun intended!) ideas for how Nestle Toll House can help keep your family connected during the back-to-school season:

1.  Brighten your child’s day by packing a homemade chocolate chip cookie in his/her lunch along with a note telling them you’re thinking about them while they are at school.

2.  What better way to greet your children when they come home from school than with the smell of fresh baked cookies?  Reconnect over cookies and a glass of milk.

3.  Keep the family together around the dinner table longer by baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

4.  For fun after school activities, use Refrigerated Cookie Dough to create cookie puzzles and other fun cookie games the whole family can enjoy.

5.  Make math fun by baking cookies and letting your  kids help with the measurements.

6.  Create special weekend moments and enjoy family breakfast time together.  Try adding Mini Morsel Toppers to chocolate chip pancakes.

7.  Help your children Bake Some Love for their whole class by baking cookies for classroom parties.

8.  Support your child’s sports team or after school club with a bake sale.  No bake sale is complete without chocolate chip cookies!

9.  Create new, lasting memories together by baking with your children.

10.  Sweeten someone’s day by helping your children bake cookies to give to their favorite teacher, secretary, school nurse, or bus driver as a special treat.

Nestle was kind enough to send my family and I a Back-to-School kits that included one adult apron, one child apron, exclusive TOLL HOUSE recipe cards, NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE morsels and other NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE products. We loved ours, so I’ve arranged for one lucky reader to get their own Back to School Nestle kit! Here’s what you need to do:

In a comment, tell me how you stay connected with your kids as they head back to school? Do you do any of the suggestions above or do you have a few of your own tricks?

Each of these gives you one additional entry:

1. Twitter about this contest. I’ve made it super easy by adding a tweet button up by the title of this post!  You can do this daily — just leave  me a comment letting me know.

2. Stumble this post and add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

3. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.

4. Comment on another post on this blog. Let me know which one, so I can give you credit.  The more posts you comment on, the more entries you get.

5.  Add this contest of contest linkies (and let me know which ones please).  Each Contest Linky gets you another entry.

Each of these gives you 5 additional entries:

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.

2. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed

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This contest will end on September 17th at 11:59 pm CST! Good Luck!

Can I just say that I am happy this crazy week is over?  I seriously can’t take much more of this insanity!  Between the incident at Jewel (which I haven’t blogged about but if you follow me and Twitter and Facebook you’ll know) and the car yesterday, it has been a crazy week.  Will started preschool and loved it (which is great sign!).  I went to the eye doctor last night about the sty on my eye that’s still there!  Now, we are at the point where I’m being sent to a surgeon.  Sigh.

Tonight, we have a wedding to go to.  We are using a brand new babysitter, so I’m slightly worried about that.  She’s a friend of a friend of a friend.  I know she’ll do fine with the kids — I’m just worried about what we’ll do if she doesn’t show up!  Do they sell some of the best wedding insurance for that?   I know, I know — I’m worrying about nothing.

Overall, I’m hoping that this will be a good weekend for us.  We have a few parties, a few things we want to get done, but overall, I’m hoping to get some overdue relaxation in!

I’m all about using products that both clean my house and also are green.  With little kids and a puppy, it is very important for me (at least) to use products that I know will not make them sick.  I’m also allergic to life itself (I test positive for everything they test me for when allergy tested, so I’m literally allergic to everything).  I have found that “green” products actually don’t make me break out.  I’m not sure why that is (or if it just in my case), but green products are awesome in my book.  Soooo here’s my top ten list/tips of things you can do for your house to make cleaner and/or greener:

1.  If you have pets, I recommend clean+green.  You’ll actually see a review of it in the coming days on Lisa Reviews.  It’s an odor neutralizer.  We have Daisy, our puppy, and it’s what we use to get rid of the smell when she uses my floor for her bathroom.  :)  It’s awesome, and they make it for carpet and wood floors.  I even think they have it for upholstery.  It is environmentally responsible formulated, non toxic, non flammable, non corrosive, non carcinogenic, and 100% biodegradable.

2.  This next one if more for the yard, but we use BioBags for Daisy’s bathroom trips outside.  They are fully certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute to be 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable.  The bag itself with decompose in 10 – 40 days in a municipal composting environment.  That’s one less plastic bag headed to the landfill!

3.  Look for products that say “green” on the label.  The EPA is going after companies that are just greenwashing their products, so most of the time, if you see “green”, it is.  The best thing is that they are usually pretty comparable in price to your non green products, so there is no reason NOT to use them!

4.   You can even “green” your wardrobe.  Shop at vintage stores!  If you have clothes you don’t wear anymore, donate them to Goodwill or other charitable organizations.  You can even organize a swap with your friends.

5.  Install a clothes line.  This is an easy tip that almost all of us can do.  You just wash your clothes with cold water and hang them on the line to dry!  This also limits the energy impact of your wardrobe.

6.  Start a button jar.  You know the buttons you get when you buy clothes, instead of throwing them away, put them in a jar instead.  Then, instead of replacing a shirt or pants because you lost a button, you can sew a new one on!

7.  We also buy bamboo clothes.  They wick away moisture, are thermal regulating, and are super soft.  I also love that I’m helping the environment when wearing them.

8.  We look for furniture that isn’t made with HDF or MDF.  These kinds of fiberboards can offgas and we don’t want that in my house!  Instead, we look for solid wood or bamboo.

9.  We’ve also replace all of our light bulbs to CFL.  That has helped our electric bill out some.  It is also a quick easy fix.

10.  Buy only energy efficient products.  When we have had to replace our appliances, that is a sticker we look for.  (And we have had to replace everything since we’ve moved here except the fridge!)  You save money and you help the environment.  What more can you ask for?

These are just ten tips of mine and/or what we do in my house.  Small steps are better than no steps at all.  You can slowly and easily green your home one step at a time or even one room at a time.  It’ll keep your costs down, and hopefully, everyone healthier (since you won’t have chemical after chemical being sprayed around!).   How do you keep your house both clean and green?

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Mrs. Meyer’s blogging program, making me eligible to get a $30 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

On a much happier note, today was Will’s first day of school.  I was a little worried, but he did great.  He loved it and wants to go back tomorrow!  What more could I want?  :)

Nothing is worse than when you come out to your van realized that somebody broke in. That was our morning this morning.

My glove box was all over my car, so I called the hubby to see if he did it.  (He didn’t).  Ask Madison.  She said no.  Well, that left that we got robbed, since all the change in my console was missing.  Normally, we lock the van doors, but Bill has run out to get some stray groceries that I didn’t bring in in the morning.  The van didn’t get locked back up.  I feel lucky though –

1.  Nobody got hurt.

2.  They didn’t take anything besides the change from what I can tell.

3.  They didn’t break a window.

4.  They left my passenger door open though.  It didn’t rain inside (which is a miracle in itself) and my van started.

This could have been a lot worse.  A police report was filed in between me dropping Madison off for school and Will going to preschool for his first day.