Shortcuts

Today's post brought to you by.....the need to save seconds.

So I spend a medium amount of time on devices.  Confession: more than I wish I did, but I recently discovered a keyboard shortcut you can put into your own cell phone. Was I born yesterday?  No, 1983 which is partly why I don't know all of the shortcuts on my devices and also why I feel conflicted between the world of analog and digital.  Trolling Facebook, I was introduced to this tool where you can customize your keyboard shortcuts for things you write on your phone frequently.  Your phone comes with pre-populated autofills, but there's the option to CUSTOMIZE.  I am part of a FB group where people in your neighborhood give away free stuff (it's called The Buynothing Project - check it out in your neighborhood) and there are several canned phrases that I need to use when posting such as "Porch pick up"  "Flash Give" "Please private message for pickup".

I spent the better part of 9 months continuously typing these things out on my phone along with my address.  Until one day some kind soul suggested to another kind soul on social media that she should use her shortcuts - I of course was eavesdropping on the social media conversation and my MIND....WAS.....BLOWN.  This could open up so much freedom in my life...seconds...turned into minutes...turned into half hours....turned into hours.  Not only that but the frustration of having to type the same thing into my phone over and over.

Here is how it works on an iphone
1. Settings app
2. General
3. Keyboard
4. Text Replacement
5. Select the plus sign in the upper right hand corner
6.........GO WILD!

I tend to create them as I find myself using them - so that way I don't forget about those handy shortcuts.

Shortcuts I have
My street address
My email address
Two hashtags I use for Jack on Instagram
My library card number :) (lots of digital books for me)
Several phrases for my Buy Nothing group
and...the pre-populated apple put them there phrases.


Do you have life saving shortcuts on your phone?  Add them in the comments below, please!!!

Top Ten Baby Gadgets You Totally Need

Top 10 baby gadgets you TOTALLY need

Clouds part...Angels sing...light rays cast down...First time parent delusion.  I read many a-articles on minimalist parenting and my ideals lasted about three days until the non-stop 28 hour a day screaming (that's not a typo...time actually stands still 4 hours a day as a new parent) got me digging through every gift bag registry perk trying to find something to soothe him.  Enter plastic non-silicone pacifiers - yes I tried them and they worked for about a day.  Fast forward five months and I am a much wiser, much more humble mother.  Enter the top 10 gadgets I thank the Lord for every day.  I should give you one more piece of background - I am a thrifty mom and we are a thrifty family.  I shop at second hand stores, we borrow items most people own and I'm not afraid to wear a dress with the tags still on .... in case I decide to return it later.  So, some of the items below were purchased and some were gifted or made for us.

In no particular order.

The ten items that have changed my life as a parent and I SWEAR they are necessary for every new mom.

1.  Keyfit Caddy.  Your child spends months in a car seat when you're traveling about and infant car seats don't really fit in grocery carts the way you think they will- especially if you actually wanted to go shopping while you're at the store - so we purchased an under 7 lb click in bare bones stroller for our car seat and I couldn't be happier. I can pull this thing out of the trunk with one hand on baby and I can load groceries in the bottom.  We bought it with gift cards and a coupon from Babies 'r us "Great Trade-In Event" for dirt cheap.



2.  Burp rags:  Borrow, steal, cut up a receiving blanket.  You will use these

things NON-STOP and depending on the level of spit up (a euphemism for baby puke - rotten milk) of your little angel you may get 1-2 uses out of each or less.  My favorites are actually the kidney shaped ones my mom made for us with one side made of terry cloth...love those things and they work well as a prop up object (just roll em up tight).

3.  Silicone freezer trays.  As part of my genuinely living oath I try to limit harmful toxins we are exposed to as a family.  I recognize living in this world I can't actually eliminate every harmful toxin in our environment - but I can NOT expose my family unnecessarily.  So, any food products that are going to be frozen or heated are generally done so in glass...but freezing in glass becomes tricky so I have opted for silicone.  What I love about this product is you don't have to do the partial thaw to get the frozen breast milk or food out of the container.  Baby Bullet comes with a mold, but it's one of those that you have to thaw first in order to get the food out - ugh.....I hate that.

4. O.N.E. Diapers:  If I only had $100 for new baby stuff I'm pretty sure half of that would be reserved for these GROVIA diapers.  I give them credit for my 4 month old sleeping 10+ hours a night and now he averages 11.5 hours.  These diapers with the extra soaker pads allow him to wake up not cranky or fully wet or in a blow out.  Also, in the past 5 months we have had no diaper rash.....I repeat: NO DIAPER RASH.  I assumed diaper rash was a when, not an if situation - turns out I was wrong, in a good way.  Plus use your cloth diaper for 30 days and it pays for itself - if you figure each diaper is .25 which they are when you're using Pampers Swaddlers - love me the blue line

5.  Portable changing pad...I think technically it's called a changing station and I had NO idea how much I would use this thing, nor how deft I would become at one had changing pad opening movements.  Anyways, my friend bought me this adorable skip hop version, but when I left the $30 changing pad at a friend's house 60 minutes of driving away, I bought a generic version on Amazon and love it just as much.  Bonus now husband and I will both have our own .  There are a variety of changing pads out there but here are my requirements - clip closure, clutch-clip handle (to snap onto stroller/diaper bag/or backpack), zippered pouch for diapers.  I have used this thing in parking lots on the pavement, in skeevy stadium bathrooms, on a starbucks chair, and EVERY changing station I've come into contact with. 

5. 1/2.  Buy an UBER portable wipe container - not necessary but $6 of cuteness in a world where you're covered in puke or poop or spit.

6.  Baby Bjorn bouncer....I never would've guessed how much this kid loves this bouncer thing - and it may only be true for really active children (I've asked the doctor several times now if he's having mini-seizures and she assures me "no, he's just a very active baby") in any case...he could care less about this thing from 0-3 months, but after that - the kid drinks his bottle in this seat and entertains himself for hours.  The price tag is high, but the cotton is flammable polyester free and it's a very minimalist design.  Bought ours as we were completing our Target registry (20% off) and with gift cards...so it was FREE.

P.S.  I haven't yet bought the toy attachment $60 for a flippin' wire with wooden circles.  BUT, the amount of times I pick up his dropped toys may lead me to a weakness driven purchase. - stay tuned


7.  Monitor, monitor, monitor.  SO many choices - we opted for a $100 or less video monitor and yes I zoom in at night before  I go to bed to make sure

he is breathing - apparently a new parent thing.  In the long run I felt like too many bells and whistles was too much, but we are living in the 2000's well approaching the 2020's and if you don't purchase a video monitor in this day and age - you're just being silly.  This one has excellent night vision - and a VOX setting (the amount of noise it takes to turn the screen on is variable) & a crazy rotation capability. Love it and may buy a second camera for the chicken coop just for kicks.

8.  Secure Beginnings Mattress.  I'll admit, at first, I felt like this was simply a guilty first time parent purchase.  After all, I was raised on a cheap non-breathable mattress and survived to tell the tale. Truth be told Jack probably would've been fine with a regular old mattress but 2 days of no sleep after he started rolling over and I had the conversation with my husband around this $500 mattress purchase combo - I have been relieved of neurotic baby flipping habits.  I mean I purchased this mattress so that he could sleep face down all he wanted and never stop breathing. Here I sit blogging not watching the monitor with barely contained nervousness.  So thankful for this thing...and it's kind of streamline looking and eliminates the need for sheets.  So there's a $6 save :)

9.  Lille Baby Air Flow Carrier.  I was gifted a Moby, an Ergo and a Tula.  Jack

only wanted to look out - so the inward facing carriers showed no hope.  He hated the Moby unless I bounced around for 40 minutes or more to get him to sleep.  Having a baby in close proximity to your face and screaming bloody murder was not my idea of fun.  Aside from the front facing capabilities, the airflow is also made of mesh so it's less hot.  If you have a warm running baby which we do then the mesh is a necessity.  Jack loves the carrier now - I use it for a lot of shopping trips or if I'm doing stand up work at the school.

10.  Give it up for the gimmick of all gimmicks.  Try drying 5 glass bottles in a dish rack along with matching nipples and tops.  It's so much baby product with so little space.  I love my Boon and honestly I have no idea where I would dry my bottles without it. Not to mention I don't have to worry about the nipples coming into contact with anything unsightly or questionable.  It is made in 3 different sizes cutely named: grass, lawn and yard.  Whatever you do DO NOT purchase the long skinny one - unless you enjoy Jenga stacking.









Honorable Mentions

- Dr. Brown's Formula Dispenser (the newer version with the longer spout)
- Halo Sleep Sack Swaddle (for first few months)
- Zipadee Zip (for next few months...see sew tutorial)

Constructive....

As I've a had a truly terrible or at least consistently bad day I've been trying to find something to distract me.  I've come round to a lot of self loathing based on the fact that every day my newsfeed and inbox and radio are full of sadness and senselessness at biblical proportions.  I feel guilt whenever I'm sad about something in my life that is not so epically terrible.  In any case, my sadness is best reserved for a glass of Prosecco and a diary.  However, I still need to write - it is cathartic.

So what am I writing about today?  Constructing something that is truly "fluff"  Who loves to dust?  Well not me either.  I honestly feel like it's something that died with the 1920s and house servants - I mean doesn't that dust just magically disappear on its own...in any case I still have a 'need' for a duster.  This need was brought about because I have to justify my purchase of yards and yards of flannel fabric from Joann's annual sale.  I mean, "come on! it's 75 cents a yard - who can refuse that?" So there I was scouring Pinterest for a flannel fabric pattern that wasn't a baby blanket or pajamas - voila enter the reusable swiffer.  It meets 3 of my basic crafting needs - Green, House Worthy & Adorable.

The process if fairly simple and I've included a link to the original poster.

Why mess with perfection?  Well to be honest I did tweak step 4.  Instead of just creating a straight line from one end of the pattern to the other, I traced the swiffer including an indent at the top of the sewn fabrics where the swiffer ends - I did this for two purposes

1. It shows you exactly which end the swiffer is inserted into.

2.  it stops the swiffer from sliding up and pulling out the stitches at the insertion point.

I will post pictures of my design when my phone is charged and my baby is not sleeping in the only room in the house with a working phone charger :/ #poorplanning

APPtastic I

So who isn't glued to their phone lately?  I try to make my time productive especially with all of the time that is sucked up by sacrificed to Facebook and Pinterest.  There are pages of apps on my phone but today I just want to talk about those that keep chemicals, free radicals and other unknown nastiness out of my home and out of my life.

Think Dirty:  Iphone & Android

This is one of my if not fast becoming my only GO TO app to check skin care, health & beauty products I'm thinking about buying.  While this company is seriously lacking in the cosmetic department they make up [pun intended] for it in the rest of the bathroom sink department.

What the app does:  it allows you to scan a barcode or enter the text of a product in order to receive a Think Dirty proprietary rating from 0-10.  0 being you could eat this stuff and it won't harm you to 10 being why don't you just paint nail polish on your eyeballs.  Initially I had problems with their ratings because the Environmental Working Group's rating could often be vastly different from TD.  However, I've come to love and trust TD ratings more because of the plethora of information to back up their decisions.

Features:

• Along with the number, their scores are color coded because green is good, yellow is questionable and red is best not to indulge. 
• Every harmful and not harmful chemical found within the product is categorized and explained in detail.
• They update their info more frequently than EWG's Skin Deep & they include "potential contaminations" if a certain product was in the news (the news being the science geek daily they receive somewhere secret) outlandish eg:  lavender from a factory in England which this particular body wash has sourced in the past was recently shown to have traces of arsenic. 
• Bathroom Shelf:  A fun roulette where you round up all the products in  your bathroom, scan them into the system and TD tells you just how dirty your life is.
• Our Picks - The option available on most products where the advisory board recommends alternatives to your chosen product in case you love your eyeliner but no longer want to subject yourself to hormone disruptors - they will give you a handful of healthy alternatives.  I'm fairly certain since the list is so random in terms of brand that they haven't yet received kick backs in order to promote certain brands.

Cost:  Free!

Post....Reality

First serious blog topic. Check

Postpartum Depression - apparently an affliction of not just the crazy, lonely, maladjusted, single, tragic story women in the world.  Before giving birth...literally the day of labor before I was so excited and confident and optimistic about this entire birth/motherhood vortex I was entering.  (Ok so maybe not ENTIRELY excited about the act of giving birth, but I was pretty confident - that part was honest)

There was literally a switch the minute that baby came rocketing out of me - and I do mean literally - stitches to prove it....although I guess they're not stitches anymore.  Anyways, digression aside - I was all of a sudden not so thrilled or excited or confident - I felt kind of blase and very tired and very disconnected from this dark skinned, hairy troll that was simultaneously screaming and chomping on me. Fast forward 6 weeks to now and I'm just starting to feel tinglings of positivity again.  Granted most days are an 80% cocktail of fear, anxiety, hopelessness and nausea, but it's that other 20% that is downright thrilling.

For the first 2 months of my baby's life I dreaded when people would want to talk to me about him or the birth or comment on how sweet he is.  How sweet is getting woken up every 45 minutes for two weeks straight?  How sweet is it when you can't sit on a chair for a month because he literally destroyed me?  How sweet is it when you can't shower or eat or go to the bathroom for 3 days straight because you're trying to meet his needs?  And how SWEET is it when you do all of this and he screams - like a velociraptor in your face for 4-5 hours straight every night?  Oh yes....he/it's all very sweet.  Then, people tell you "this too shall pass..." and I mutter something under my breath about I hope you pass....I mean not really...mostly not really.

Fast forward to now and again I reassure you I'm feeling much better - not myself - but better.  I really don't think you ever get yourself back after a traumatic event, but rather I think you have a puzzle pieced version of yourself with colorful duct tape and antiqued modge podge holding you together.  [I love that Modge Podge has marketed & created an empire based solely on various shades of opaqueness in their glue and the public eats that stuff up (glitter, antique, really antique, matte, shiny, etc.)]

Recipe for survival & finding oneself:
- Showering (no joke it's important and will shockingly become difficult to squeeze in)

- Amazon Video or Netflix account for binge watching and making new friends who are available with the click of a button.
        In order of preference: Catastrophe (LOL'd about these new parents experiencing life),  Bachelor or Bachelorette (makes you happy you're not out there dating/sleeping around), The Office (no explanation needed), Mr. Selfridge (Jeremy Piven is fancy?!?! I've got to see this)

- Real friends to drag you out of the house even when you SWEAR to them and yourself you don't want to.

- Prosecco - it's bubbly and makes me happy and for the 40 minutes I enjoy the glass at night once Jack's in bed I catch glimpses of my old life

- Coffee.....Lots of it - I'll confess I make half decaf that way I can drink more and not feel guilty (by MORE: I mean an Iced Cold Brew in the afternoon)

- Your partner - whomever they may be and giving them just 2% of yourself even though it will feel like 90 at the end of the day.  They need to see that you're still in there and willing to come out.

- 3 months....wait for it....your baby will finally give back (don't get too excited, it's just a smile but it's weird how gratifying that smile can be)

Christmas Toffee

Jet Lag has faded...did I mention it turned out I was experiencing my extreme Jet Lag from a honeymoon pregnancy and not just flying across the globe - more on that later though.

Holiday treats for those I hold dear...and those I don't hold quite so dear but still feel it is my social duty and responsibility to bless them with a little holiday cheer (the school office administrators, the mail man, my neighbors that may or may not find my chickens annoying).  Usually I pull the great baking fantastic and provide adorable boxes complete with 4-5 fancy cookie/candy offerings.  Well, needless to say at 25 weeks pregnant this year I didn't really feel much like baking or gifting, but my Christmas conscience won out and I started scouring Pinterest for something that would look and taste like I had spent  hours in the kitchen, but in reality only require minimal committment and expense from me.

The clouds parted, the angels sang, there may have been slow motion cameras involved as well - I FOUND IT.  Of course, I've added my own tweaks, but after years of trying to make toffee and almond roca (ok to be completely honestly I've probably only tried twice...maybe three times) I finally did it.  Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I repeated this recipe 4 times this season with varying degrees of humidity and they all turned out fantastic.  My own tweak on the recipe comes after these various samples and with a desire to make it easier than it already was.

Side Story:  During the first night of this toffee making experience (Thursday before winter break - which means LAST day to make treats for the office staff and to keep them on my good side.... AHHH I  just realized I forgot to give the janitor something - cardinal rule of holiday gifting in a school :/) I discovered some special tweaks and secrets to this recipe that cost me dearly, in the form of 1st and 2nd degree burns, which are healing nicely but I could've done without.

Apparently I was too busy taking pictures of my burns to capture a good picture of the cooking process

Ingredients

• 2 cups of "Ready for Almond Butter Almonds" (you can find these in the bulk food aisle - already roasted, salted and chopped)
• 1 cup SALTED butter cubed (husband and I agreed it's better with salty butter)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I buy all my spices online now through PENZEYS)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips OR dark chocolate chips

Ready - Set - Go

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line baking sheet with silicone baking mat 
• (buy them if you don't have them) OR parchment paper - but I can't vouch for this method as I didn't try it
• sprinkle 1 to 1 1/2 cup almonds (depending on how nutty oyu like it) in an even layer on the baking sheet but kind of in the middle because the toffee won't spread all the way to the edges

• In a medium saucepan, combine butter, sugar, vanilla and salt over medium heat.  Cook, whisking constantly, until butter has melted and mixture is almond brown in color, about 10-15 minutes 
• (it may take longer, but TRUST me you will see a color difference.  It doesn't need to be dark brown - just watch for an amber color - like the glass with the mosquito from Jurassic Park - the original.
• Immediately pour toffee mixture over nuts
• sprinkle chocolate chips liberally - let set 2-3 minutes
• Using a spatula artistically or not spread the chocolate chips out over the toffeee
• Quickly sprinkle remaining nuts and let harden (2 hours or so)
• You can use a knife or just break at will into giftable pieces