All posts by Nichole

Social Media

At least it's a well-organized addiction

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I spend far too much time on the Internet. It’s a problem, but it does have a bright side: I’ve found a lot of cool surfing “tools” over the past few years. Here are three of my favorites.

  • Google Reader is an essential if you read a lot of blogs. Reader gathers up every RSS feed that you subscribe to and puts them all on one page. You can organize the feeds by category; a few of my categories are “food,” “craft” and “shopping,” for example. When a new item is posted, Reader updates the page. It’s a far more efficient way of skimming through your daily reads than clicking over to each blog. Which is what I did before I found my precious Reader. Google Reader also offers sites it thinks you might enjoy, based on your other subscriptions. It’s a neat feature, but Google? I didn’t need anything else to fuel my Internet addiction. Thanks.
  • Delicious is a spectacular tool for organizing your bookmarks. I occasionally still use my browser to bookmark sites. Because Delicious is web-based, though, it can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. That makes it handy, but it’s the site’s tagging functions that make it delightful. You add tags to each bookmark you enter, and it creates sort of an index of your bookmarks. My most-used tags are “to_try” and “recipes.” The “to_try” category does contain quite a few recipes, but it also holds crafts and art projects and other such things.
  • Wists is where I keep my online wish list (in the sidebar), but it’s also how I keep track of gift ideas. When I see an item I’d like to add to my Wists page, I click a little button on my browser. It whisks me over to Wists, where I tag the item and choose the image I’d like to represent it. Wists also offers a “do not share” option, which is essential if you’re using it as a gifting list.

    What are your favorite online tools?

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    • menu plan Monday

    Turns out, you can spell "cooking" without "f-u-n"

    Menu Plan Monday logoI usually enjoy cooking, but I lost my kitchen mojo last week. It suddenly started to feel like a chore. I’m not sure what I need to do to make cooking enjoyable again, but I’m hoping I figure it out this week.

    What do you do when the thrill is gone?

    Monday: We have a meeting to go to right after Rockford gets out of work today, so we’ll probably be hitting a drive-through.

    Tuesday: Parisienne Chicken from “Don’t Panic: Dinner’s in the Freezer.” (Although this particular dinner isn’t actually in the freezer.)

    Wednesday: Chimichangas. This is the third week this has been on the menu. Maybe I’ll actually make it this week!

    Thursday: Taco chicken soup

    Friday: Pizza. I made my own pizza crust for the first time last week, and it came out really well! I’ll be trying it again this week.

    I just noticed that this week’s Menu Plan Monday has a theme! I was supposed to share some of my family’s favorite recipes. The grown-ups around here love Rachael Ray’s Sloppy Joes, but the children would give you a different answer. There’s only one food that Pete doesn’t love (the avocado). And Poppy? She would eat peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches at every meal if she had the option.