Simple GAB

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I have taken the plunge and worked on my Desktop Decluttering, Cleaning & Organizing project!

I am loosely following this week’s missions from Kelly and FlyLady.  Her first step was clean the left of the desk, but the rebel in me started with the right.  Really I did this because I felt this is the side I look to more often, with the mouse, my pens and my coaster for my coffee over there.  Plus it is closer to the doorway so that is where I tend to set things as I come and go.

Here is the unsightly Before shot:

And the spiffy After shot:

Did you realize all those nice little baskets were in there?

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These  few simple steps will get you on the right track:

1. Remove the items that belong elsewhere and set in a box (or bag) and return them to their proper home later.
2. Go through paper clutter and toss what you can.
3. Sort remaining papers into piles:  important papers which may need action a.s.a.p.,  papers to file, items to read later (maybe things  like magazine clippings).
4. Decide what you really need in front of you,  pare down and organize in a way that will work for you.
5. Go through and dust or clean your desktop, storage containers, keyboard and screen, then admire your new clean space!

Now don’t forget about that box or bag of items to get put back in their proper place!

Once you tackle just a small spot, and admire how good it looks,  it is such motivation to go finish the rest!

Tomorrow I will jump back over to the left side of the computer, then next it will be the shelf above.

Here are a few sites that may appeal to your own sense of Decluttering and Organizing:

Unclutter: Workspace of the Week, you may find inspiration in these organized office spaces

Organized Home:  Cut Clutter or Get Organized

Organizing your way: Home Office or Principles of Organizing, the site is chock full of other great tips as well.

Complete Organizing Solutions: Organizing or Office Solutions

The Inspired Room: Organization , not a how-to but a wonderful showcase of spaces that may inspire you.

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If you are following along and tackling your own space let me know how it is going, and post a comment or a link if you are blogging about it.

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To leave a reply when on the main page,  and the “Leave a reply” box below is hidden,  just click the green post # count button at the top left of the post.

YIKES!

My desk is a mess!

Obviously there is work to be done here.

Sometimes I wonder where all this stuff came from…IKEA 2006 catalog, 2 bottles of hand sanitzer, spa hand & nail kit, rechargeable battery plug, those pesky Coke rewards codes,  random photos and artwork, spool of thread, a coffee mug and a Megaman toy figure for eBay, ink cartridge for the printer I no longer have, an obviously unread copy of “Easy Household Tips”, paper, paper and more paper.

Thankfully this week FlyLady is tackling the home office as one of the Zones for cleaning and decluttering!

If you don’t know who FlyLady is, well you may want to go check out her site.

So I am tackling this mess one mission at a time.

After I get it cleaned up, I am working on a new system for organizing all the paper and other stuff that finds its way into my office area.

Stay tuned for more photos, updates and ideas.

Feel free to join me in a little desk cleanup.  The great thing about following FlyLady’s plan is you only have to do a little bit at a time, so as not to get overwhelmed or burnt out. That makes the process a little bit easier to tackle.

With this project you never know what you may find.  I used to have a large wooden desk with one of those big center drawers, and at  the bottom of  that drawer I left this quote  ”Cleaning one’s desk leads to exciting discoveries”.   Gee sometimes just getting to the bottom and seeing that would make me smile because I made some progress.

If you join in and have a blog,  be sure to do a little post on your blog with some before & after photos. Everyone who joins in please  come back to leave a comment, and  mention some wacky or random thing that was your “exciting discovery”.

Ready, set, go!

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We have a winner!

Congrats to Amy, post #5, who has a good idea on how to start the day with a smile!

She wins  the Chocolate Cheerios® Gift Pack.

Yesterday was the 100th day of school.  Big whoop you say? Well it is pretty exciting to a Kindergartener.  They even received certificates proclaiming they are now 100 days smarter!

The homework assignment was to bring in 100 pieces of a small snack item to share.

Guess what Bubba brought in to share…

He was thoughtful enough to tell all his friends that we got these for FREE, and said they had to help his mom out by doing a review on them! So he kindly came home and reported back on the opinions of his class. Maybe we have a future blogger on our hands.

If you care to know, the Cheerios were a hit.  Oh and he also told a few children that he was pretty sure you can get coupons for them, too.  Chip off the old block.

(check out yesterday’s post for a link to coupons, recipes and a giveaway!)

My boys get very excited when they see either the mail carrier, the UPS guy or the FedEx guy come down our road…and since there are only three houses down our road the odds are pretty good that the truck will be  stopping here! This time it was indeed for us and we received another fun package from MyBlogSpark!

Inside was a box of the new Chocolate Cheerios®!

The boys were pretty excited because

A) they love Cheerios®

B) they love chocolate

C) they knew they could eat some right away

D) they knew  something else fun was sure to happen

So yes I let them hurry up and grab their favorite cereal bowls and dig right in. (I had to join them of course)   The Cheerios® were a big hit!  All of us thought that the chocolate flavor in these was better than some other chocolate cereals we have tried. Although I love chocolate, I have never found a chocolate flavored cereal that I like. These Cheerios®  seem to fill the bill.  Also I was happy to see that they only have 9g of sugar. (remember my recent post on Children’s cereals? )

A little more about the cereal from General Mills:

Chocolate Cheerios is low in fat, heart healthy*, has 100 calories per serving, contains at least 8 grams of whole grain per serving (at least 48 grams recommended daily), and is a good source of calcium and vitamin D. Made with real cocoa, Chocolate Cheerios can help your family start the day off right with a delicious and nutritious breakfast that is sure to make you smile!

*Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease. Chocolate Cheerios cereal is low in fat, saturated fat free and naturally cholesterol free.

Along with this box of new Chocolate Cheerios we were given some recipes that use the new Cheerios®.  They are all fun things you can make for Valentine’s Day!

Chocolate Cheerios® Marshmallow Hearts

Chocolate Hazelnut Marshmallow Balls

Strawberry-Chocolate Cheerios® Parfaits

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cereal Bars

They all sound good, but we chose to try the Chocolate Cheerios® Marshmallow Hearts first.  Oh how I wish I had thought of buying those Strawberry flavored Marshmallows that Bubba has been begging me for!

image courtesy of Cheerios®

Next we will definitely try the Strawberry-Chocolate Cheerios® Parfait!

image courtesy of Cheerios®

If you want to see even  more recipes using  Chocolate Cheerios® click here for the Chocolate Cheerios® site, and also you can find a coupon to save on your purchase!

Now all this cereal talk and making goodies was great fun for the boys, but MyBlogSpark also included some fun Chocolate themed goodies for Mom, too.  Check this out, there are some Chocolate themed bath products and a decorative chocolate brown bowl to store them in!  So Mom needs to head off to relax with some Chocolate bath salts and body wash.

Do you love Chocolate, too?

Does  a fun new cereal make you smile?

Need some relaxation?

You can win a Chocolate Cheerios Gift Pack courtesy of MyBlogSpark and General Mills.

Just post a comment below telling us about what you  and your families do to start your day off with a SMILE!

Deadline to enter is midnight EST on Monday, February 15, 2010.

Winner will be selected by a random drawing on Tuesday February 16, 2010

**Truth in Blogging Disclaimer:  We received a FREE box of Chocolate Cheerios® and the Gift Pack pictured above courtesy of MyBlogSpark and Cheerios®. As always we will provide you with our honest opinions of any product we review, no matter how we obtained the product.  See our About tab above to read more about Truth in Blogging.

To leave a reply when on the main page,  and the “Leave a reply” box below is hidden,  just click the green post # count button at the top left of the post.

I have been told if you make meatloaf in a muffin tin it looks more appealing to kids, so I thought I would give it a try.  Bubba is not too fond of meatloaf at all so I searched high and low for a recipe I thought he would enjoy.  The one I found has both broccoli and cheddar cheese in it,  two of his favorite things. Besides adding cheese to meatloaf makes it a little more like a cheeseburger, don’t you agree?

We had just gotten a great deal on ground turkey so I decided to sub in the turkey for ground beef in this recipe from the website of my local grocery store, Hannaford.   Bubba was very excited to help make Muffins (a favorite food).  He measured and mixed, but when reading the nutrition info said ” there is not very much sugar in this, that is healthy, and there is a lot of protein”. Of course later when he tasted them he said “these are not like regular muffins!  I thought they were very tasty eating just plain, but the boys chose to try dipping in various condiments like Ranch dressing, A-1 steak sauce, and Barbeque sauce.  Hey as long as they eat them they can dip away!

The best thing about having any leftovers is they make a great grab & go breakfast!  Mr B&W took a few to work on a hurried morning and said they definitely hit the spot.   We are going to make a double batch and freeze them.

Cheddar and Broccoli Meat Loaf Muffins

Directions:

What Kids Can Do to Help
* Crack and beat eggs.
* Measure ingredients and mix together.
* Scoop mixture into muffin cups.

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with vegetable cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl, use a fork or whisk to beat eggs until yolk and white are completely mixed. Add all remaining
ingredients and use a wooden spoon or fork to mix until well combined.
3. Divide mixture among muffin cups, about ½ cup mixture in each cup. Press mixture into cups.
4. Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes, until cooked through and browned on top. Let muffins rest in pan for 5 minutes. To serve,
run a knife around edge of each muffin. Use a fork to lift muffins out of pan and transfer to a plate. Serve warm.

May be refrigerated for up to 2 days, or frozen. Reheat in 350°F oven, 5 minutes for refrigerated, 12 minutes for frozen muffins.  (or you can reheat in microwave for 30-50 seconds depending on the power of your microwave)

Recipe courtesy of Hannaford fresh magazine March/April 09.

Click here for  a printable copy that includes nutrition information (when made with ground beef)

Let me know if you try these.

Have you made meatloaf in muffin tins? What recipe do you use?

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What’s a busy mom to do? Some days getting the kids ready and out the door to school can be a whirlwind of activity.  I am so not a morning person,  therefore getting up at the crack of dawn on a school day to cook a full course meal is not happening!  My boys love the quick, and the easy, so cereal very often fills the bill.  If you saw my pantry you may be shocked to see no less than 25 boxes of cereal in it at any given time!

Now many of us probably struggle with that fine line between healthy breakfast and convenience.  Some studies have shown that kids do benefit from eating breakfast, performing better in school, so we know they need to eat something!  Cereals can be a quick way to get them to eat something before heading out the door.  Add some fruit on top or on the side and that is even better!  Here is a Cereal & Health guide provided by General Mills.

General Mills has recently committed to lower the amount of sugar in cereal advertised to children under 12  to single digit grams per serving.  In addition they are increasing key nutrients like Vitamin D and calcium, along with providing whole grains.

Some other cereal benefits:

• Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children´s diets.
• These cereals are often the #1 source of whole grains in a child’s diet.

• More frequent cereal eaters tend to have a healthier body weight and lower BMI measurements.

Recently I went on a quest to find some of the new lower sugar cereals to have my boys and I do a taste test.  We were provided some free coupons* from General Mills and MyBlogSpark in order to try some products.  In my area we did not find too many with the single digit grams of sugar, so I think either my store is still selling out of current inventory or the products have not rolled out everywhere yet.

One product we did try that has only 8g of sugar per serving was Berry Berry Kix, part of the Big G family of cereals.  Now my boys have never eaten Kix cereals before,  so they could not compare before and after taste, but I do recall having Kix myself long, long ago.  For me the taste was less sweet than I expected, but was satisfying. Actually I preferred it to the taste of some of the other children’ s cereals I have tried.  Of course I am not the target audience, but I suppose if Mom thinks it is not too sweet then it may pass muster and make it to the shopping list.  Bubba was the first to try it, and he really enjoyed it, no mention of it not being sweet enough! Score!  AJ is not a fan of corn cereal, so he did not really have strong opinion, it was just okay, no mention of not being sweet enough, but he probably will not eat it again.  He likes some of the other cereals better.

The other cereals we tried were still in the double digit grams of sugar range…Lucky Charms Swirled (11g), Cinnamon Toast Crunch( 10g) and the new Wheaties Fuel(14g).  All of them were big hits for Bubba, he especially likes Lucky Charms and the new Wheaties Fuel. AJ’s top pick was Cinnamon Toast crunch…although he loved the cool new packaging on the Wheaties Fuel boxes.  I thought the Wheaties Fuel tasted great, with a nice solid cinnamon flavor that was not overshadowed at all by a sugary taste.  Cinnamon Toast Crunch was less satisfying for me, both in taste and texture. I would choose the new Wheaties Fuel if I were looking for a cinnamon flavor. Younger children  are probably not the target audience for this cereal, though.

I did noticed on the shelves that Honey Nut Cheerios had 9g sugar, so even though they are not as heavily marketed to children, they may be another alternative. We will be looking to see if the lower sugar versions  of some more General Mills children’s cereals arrive soon in our stores.

If you want to try some of the General Mills cereals here you will find a  coupon for $1 off one of four children’s cereals: Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast crunch.

So is cereal a hit in your house? What kinds do you like?

Do you struggle with the sugar issue?  Have you noticed any of the new General Mills cereals in store near you?

*Disclaimer:  General Mills via MyBlogSpark provided us with coupons  good for free products in order to test some of their Children’s  Cereals, and asked if we would pass along our thoughts on the products.

Congrats to entry # 6, Heather-Hopelessly Flawed, winner of the “Tackle the Taste” Football themed gift pack.