Browsing all posts in January, 2009.

Instant Party Anytime with a Home Helium Tank

When I was a kid, a helium balloon was a precious thing. Balloons weren’t given away casually as they are now; in fact, you often had to pay for them, which meant wearing down parents with incessant begging over the course of a shopping excursion. Occasionally a clown might give away a [...]

Paint Colors So Easy, Even a Colorblind Bachelor Could Coordinate Them

Observe the paint counter at a home improvement or paint store on any Saturday morning and it is clear that the average person finds it difficult, sometimes agonizing, to pick the “right” paint color. This difficulty is compounded by the sample paint strips illustrating manufacturer-recommended coordinating color choices. Women stare with glazed eyes across hundreds [...]

Uses for Ever-Multiplying Plastic Cups

It’s remarkable that I am sharing ways to extend the life of plastic cups given the fact that I spent the first years of married life slowly getting rid of my husband’s collection of stadium cups. Of course I once had cups left over from college, but somehow I was not [...]

Find: Removable Labels Restore Order and Sanity

Unless you purchase supplies for your own business or for the office, you may never have noticed these removable labels from Avery at the office supply store. Even if you had, you would probably have assumed they were only useful for file folders or routing [...]

Household Help from the Kids

I once came across a magazine article about a Mom who never called her kids’ household tasks ”chores” but instead referred to them as “skills”. This seemed a very politically correct and positive way to spin the business of acquiring these “skills,” which I myself had honed for many weary years. In [...]