Thursday Tip day

In my wise old age I have learned many lessons, usually the hard way. Because I care, I thought I would share with you some tips that may or may not make your life easier.

Lesson #1-

No matter how pretty they look and how tempting it is, don't mess with your template. At least not without saving it and double checking that you saved it. The other day in a moment of weakness I attempted to improve upon my already beautiful blog. I experimented with a couple of different templates, mostly out of curiosity. When I went to put things back the way they were, I couldn't do it. The template that I had supposedly saved was not there. I lost everything. All my side bar linkage and awards are gone. My blog will be looking a little bare while I try to get it all back.

Lesson #2-

Don't cry over chocolate stained clothing. There is a way to get chocolate out of fabric. Several months ago our family was invited to a wedding. The wedding was for a newly baptized gal in our ward and the 'ward family' helped plan and pull off the wedding at the church. Someone, I'm not naming names (it wasn't me!), had the brilliant idea of using a chocolate fountain as part of the refreshments. This normally would probably not be a problem except for the large number of small children in our 'ward family'. The kids were mesmerized and spent all evening hovering around the fountain, dipping fruit and dripping chocolate all over. Megan was wearing a beautiful dress that my mother had bought and by the time we left she had several large chocolate stains on her dress. I was devastated. I'd had chocolate stains ruin clothes before, but this dress was special.

This is the dress that Megan was wearing

It was fancy and pretty and still had lots of wearability left. I tried treating the stains and soaking the dress, but nothing was working. The dress sat for days in my laundry room waiting for me to find the magic solution to remove the offending chocolate stains. I did a little searching on line and found the magic solution. I pulled out the shampoo from the shower and dabbed shampoo all over the stains and rubbed it in. Then I washed the dress. It worked!!! If you think about it, it makes sense. Shampoo is made to clean hair, hair is oily. Chocolate is oily. I have used this trick a few times since and it always works. :)

Lesson #3-

Never, unless you know what you are doing - which I don't, cut your own hair. My hair dresser once threatened to confiscate all my scissors if I ever tried to cut my hair again. Really it was only my bangs, but I guess I did a real bang up job (pun intended) and she didn't like having to clean up after my mess. You would think that I had learned my lesson after cutting my bangs once as a teenager and crying my eyes out for days waiting for them to grow back. No one told me that your hair was longer when it was wet and shrunk after it was dry and therefore cutting them while wet meant that you shouldn't cut them as short. I recently cut my bangs again. I've had long bangs for a few years now and decided one day that I wanted short bangs again. Bad idea. Luckily I did remember my experience as a teenager and didn't cut too much off.

Lesson #4-

Teach your children to work while they are young. A little over a year ago we implemented zone cleaning in our house. I blogged about it then. The zone cleaning is still working and working well. I love it! No more do I hear from my kids, "I always have to sweep the floor!" or "I dusted last time!". Each child knows what is expected of them and I have a much easier time keeping track of who is doing what jobs. It has also helped to ease my burden of keeping the house clean. I am not saying that my children are perfect, but I do feel that they are learning important lessons about working and responsibility that I did not learn as a child.

Denver update -

Today after school I'll be heading to Denver. It looks like I will probably not be going to TOFW. I am too chicken to go by myself. I will for sure be going to the temple on Saturday and will take advantage of my Dad's babysitting offer for that. I will be gone until Sunday so I won't be around the blogging neighborhood for a few days.

Now I'm off to pack and clean. See ya next week! :)