Penne Pasta

This recipe comes from one of my favorite sites, Cheap Eats.

The author provides a great deal of information on choosing the correct ingredients and preparing the most cost effective recipes that your family will love.  Stop by her site and take a look around.

We all know it.  We just don’t want to admit it.  Once you have kids, you change.  There’s something that happens to you (perhaps physiologially) that just alters your chemistry.  You become the person you never thought you’d be.  You become someone you never thought you could be.  You become your mother.

How do you know when this happens?  Here’s a few signs to be on the lookout for.

1. Your feet stick to the kitchen floor, and you don’t care.
2. When the kids are fighting, you threaten to lock them in a room together and not let them out until someone’s bleeding.
3. You can’t find your cordless phone, so you ask a friend to call you, and you run around the house madly, following the sound until you locate the phone downstairs in the laundry basket.
4. You spend an entire week wearing sweats.
5. Your idea of a good day is making it through without a child leaking bodily fluids on you.
6. Popsicles become a food staple.
7. Your favorite television show is a cartoon.
8. Peanut butter and jelly is eaten at least in one meal a day.
9. You’re willing to kiss your child’s boo-boo, regardless of where it is.
10. Your kids make jokes about bodily functions, and you think it’s funny.
11. You’re so desperate for adult conversation that you spill your guts to the telemarketer that calls…and HE hangs up on YOU!
12. Spit is your number one cleaning agent.
13. You buy cereal with marshmallows in it.
14. The closest you get to gourmet cooking is making Rice Krispie treats.
15. You’re up each night until 10:00 P.M. vacuuming, dusting, wiping, washing, drying, loading, unloading, shopping, cooking, driving, flushing, ironing, sweeping, picking up, changing sheets, changing diapers, bathing, helping with homework, paying bills, budgeting, clipping coupons, folding clothes, putting to bed, dragging out of bed, brushing, chasing, buckling, feeding (them, not you), PLUS swinging, playing baseball, bike riding, pushing trucks, cuddling dolls, roller blading, basketball, football, catch, bubbles, sprinklers, slides, nature walks, coloring, crafts, jumping rope, PLUS raking, trimming, planting, edging, mowing, gardening, painting, and walking the dog. You get up at 5:30 AM and you have no time to eat, sleep, drink, or go to the bathroom, and yet…you still managed to gain 10 pounds.

You probably have most of the ingredients to make this yourself at home.  Enjoy!

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I’ve just recently started using these bags when I go shopping.  I was sort of forced into it, as my most local grocery store converted to requiring you to purchase the plastic bags.  Part of me decided this wasn’t a good idea because who wants to spend the extra money, and the other part of me thinks it’s a great idea to just use the canvas bags anyway…to save the wasted use of plastic.

I’ve purchased bags from 4 different stores, and I’ve found my favorite.

Bottom Dollar (the old Food Lion) has nice bags, but they’re entirely too small.  Strategic design I guess…you have to purchase more of them to haul your groceries.

Harris Teeter has wonderful bags.  Very large, extremely sturdy, and they come with a nice plastic bottom to hold them flat when you’re filling up.  Nice feature.

But my favorite has to come from Target.  They’re a bit larger than Harris Teeter’s bags, but that’s not why I love them.  I love them because they fold up and fit in my purse.  And to boot, they only cost $.99 each.

Next time you’re in Target, stop and pick up a few…maybe 5 or 10.  You’re not only paying a tiny amount for the convenience, you’re also doing a little for the environment at the same time.

I have 3 children.  Keeping lights and unecessary power sources turned off is a constant struggle. I read an article on The Simple Dollar recently on exactly how much you can save by simply making a run through the house and turning things off or unplugging them.  Here’s a small excerpt…

First of all, it takes two minutes to walk through the house and ensure all the lights are shut off. From the upstairs bedrooms to the laundry room on the far side of the basement, this is about right for our house.

Second, electricity costs $0.10 per kilowatt hour. This is roughly what the nationwide average is, and roughly what we use.

Third, the average bulb in our home eats 20 watts. We use mostly CFLs, so this is a rough estimate. At my parents, where they’re still using almost all incandescent bulbs despite my admonitions, it’s more like 50-60 watts on average per bulb.

Fourth, doing that walk-through causes me to turn off four light bulbs. This is just on average, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Taking those assumptions, let’s say we’re going to leave on a two hour trip. I turn off four 20 watt bulbs that would have run for two hours, so that’s a total of 160 watt hours of energy, or 0.32 kilowatt hours. The effort in that walkthrough, which takes two minutes, is 1.6 cents.

Read the rest of the article here.

General

• Earth911 - local listings of where you can recycle anything under the sun.
• You don’t need to remove labels from cans and bottles, but you do need to remove plastic caps (and throw them away).
• Your recyclables don’t need to be spotless - just not moldy or full of food. Save water - don’t rinse ’til clean.

Glass

• Unbroken bottles are easier for workers to sort than broken ones.

Metal

• Most containers, such as tins and cans, and aluminum foil.

Paper

• Newspapers, magazines, photocopies, shoe boxes, envelopes (including ones with glassine windows).

Plastic

• Plastics #1-#2 – recyclable in most areas. Usually found in 2-liter and detergent bottles, milk jugs and food containers.
• Plastics #3-#7 – more difficult to recycle, they are found in Styrofoam, pipes, shrink wrap, padded envelopes, trash liners and more. Check with your local facility to see if it recycles these plastics.
• Yogurt Cups - recyclable in most areas, especially the #2 plastic kind.
• Grocery Bags - reuse them first! You usually can’t recycle them curbside, but some supermarkets have recycling bins in-store. Try to avoid them altogether by bringing your own Biter bag to the store.

Find tips like these and more at