Family, Food, For the Love of Family

My Quick, Easy, Healthy Breakfast Ideas

Breakfast is important. It is important for overall health, brain power and focus. Beyond nourishing, including breakfast in your family’s morning routine offers many secondary benefits including: Beginning your day together as family Conversing with your family We do life together, encouraging each other for our day’s activities Study after study reveals the benefits of breakfast. Make breakfast work for you and your family. If you have a picture of an ideal setting – erase it. It may be messy, it may be somewhat chaotic, yet the benefits can and will outweigh your less than perfect.  In our family, we […]

Family, For the Love of Family

9 School Success Tips

It’s the second New Year of 2022; the beginning of the 2022-23 School Year. These tips will help you get off to a great start: Create a routine. After the a summer of less than routine days,  set up a new routine. Routines offer children security and expectations for their day, week and month. With your children, decide the following: what needs to be accomplished every morning before school? and after school? what does that look like? and how will make sure it gets done? Set expectations. If you have an expectation, state it. What is expected for grades? for […]

Finances

How Sinking Funds Help Control Your Money

A sinking fund is a strategic way to save money for a specific purchase by setting aside a little bit each month. I love sinking funds. Sinking funds give me a sense of security over and beyond my emergency fund. A sinking fund is a barrier to protect your emergency fund from known, yet sometimes unexpected (due to timing) expenses. For example, we know appliances and tires need to be replaced, yet need to be replaced at the most inconvenient time. Why inconvenient? Because we had not prepared and had other priorities. After you have created a steady habit of monthly […]

Food, For the Love of Family, Recipes

Peach Butter

            Originally printed in the Denver Post, I have been making peach butter for 20+ years. A favorite gift for family and friends, it has become an annual tradition when the Colorado peaches are the ripest, usually mid-August to mid-September. Many times, I was going to begin a peach butter business, but the logistics were more than I wanted to take on. Besides, I want to keep the tradition of spending a late summer Saturday making peach butter without the headaches of marketing! As many have requested, here is the original recipe: PEACH BUTTER 8 […]

Finances, Food, For the Love of Family

No Check-Out Required

Today, in Seattle, the Amazon Go store will open its doors. This newest endeavor in shopping experiences is highly technical, easy and convenient. You enter the store, pick up what you need, and exit, without interacting with the cash register or entering the checkout line. It sounds intriguing. It sounds different. It sounds impossible. Yet, like many other things in our lives today, technology makes almost anything possible and is changing how we live, and especially how we shop. There are many opinions, discussions, debates about Amazon Go. Yet, regardless whether we agree or disagree with the concept of Amazon […]