Tips and Tidbits

A Very Sweet Video ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rooyt3ptNco  ~ Thanks to Karen Coughlin in Florida for this one!

Stevia Is a Healthy Solution to artificial sweeteners and sugar.  Health food stores and grocery stores with health food sections carry stevia in liquid or powdered form.  I like to sweeten unsweetened applesauce with stevia to satisfy my sweet tooth.  I buy the jars of Kroger Natural Applesauce and stir in a little stevia.  Kids love it too!  I do the same with plain Dannon yogurt.  Because of stevia (and the Lord's help), I've been able to go without any sugar or artificial sweeteners for the past seven months.  It truly does satisfy a sweet tooth, contrary to an article I read in the newspaper this week, which disputed this fact.  One has to use it to know.
(Photo can be found in sidebar of this blog).

10 Diseases Linked To Soda
You won’t need any more reasons to throw out the soda after reading these sobering facts about America’s favorite beverage.  Learn to love pure water, made so by distilling or reverse osmosis.

Solution for Damp or Wet Electronics ~  You may be able to save a camera, cell phone, or other electronic gadget that has gotten damp or even wet.  First of all, do not turn them on.  Immediately remove the battery and the SIM card from your cell phone. Place all the pieces in a bowl of dry rice for 48 to 72 hours. Keep white rice on hand for things like this.  There is very little nutrition in it, but the rice will absorb the moisture and your phone just might not need to be replaced.  It's worth a try.

Rice Box for Kids ~ Use an under-the-bed storage box as an indoor "sand box" for your children, using inexpensive white rice.  Add a funnel, colorful lids from laundry detergent bottles and a few toys for a new fun activity on a rainy or snowy day.

Homemade Suet for the Birds ~ In a large mixer bowl, mix shortening, peanut butter, and flour.  If you have buggy flour, this is a good use for it.  You may add other ingredients such as corn meal, chopped nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, rolled oats or other grains, but they certainly aren't necessary.  The most inexpensive shortening, peanut butter and flour will do.  This attracts nuthatches, chickadees, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, catbirds, mocking birds, and downy woodpeckers.  My husband made me a feeder that is surrounded by wire about five inches from the suet, so only the smaller birds can get in to feast.  This prevents squirrels from cleaning it out in one day, or raccoons from cleaning it out overnight, which used to happen.

Solution to a Very Stubborn Stain on Stove ~ After making beef vegetable soup recently, using some tomato paste, I noticed two very stubborn tomato stains on our new stove - the one that finally replaced our thirty-five year old avocado green stove that was installed when our home was built!  That's what happens when your husband fixes everything!  Anyway, even wiping with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser or Clorox wouldn't budge these tomato stains.  So I tore a tissue in half, folded up each half, stretched a piece of masking tape across the tissue, and douched it with Clorox.  After taping the "Clorox bandages" to the stains, and leaving them on for about half an hour, the stains were gone!

Olive Oil in Spray Bottle ~ Jalisa Wenger in Pennsylvania says that instead of buying olive oil spray containing propellant, she bought a small empty spray bottle with a trigger from Walmart (in the "travel size" aisle) and put it through the dishwasher to "super clean" it.  Then she put olive oil in it, labeled it, and now when she's ready to work with bread dough or put some oil in her skillet, it's just a squirt away!

Wrap and Roll Party ~ Get together with some girlfriends and make Homemade Egg Rolls for each to take home!
 http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/2009/01/homemade-egg-rolls-recipe.html

Homeschooled Teen Publishes Her Historical Novel  ~ 1/25/09 ~ Thanks to Debbie Klinect in Florida for sending this!
http://www.washingtontimes.com:80/news/2009/jan/25/home-schooling-teen-pens-book-on-patriotic-girl/
When young Stephanie Scheffler had to write a story for a Girl Scout project, she penned the tale of a young girl whose family fought in the Revolutionary War. What was to have been a short story, however, kept growing. "It's about an 11-year-old girl in Williamsburg, Virginia," Stephanie explained in a recent interview. "Her brothers and dad are fighting in the war, and when she hears they've been captured, she makes a plan to go to prison camp and save them." The fledgling author is the second of the Schefflers' 10 children who are being taught at home on a 40-acre homestead in Peyton, Colorado. The Washington Times