Works-For-Me-Wednesday - Rice Bag

My friend Dar stopped by my house Saturday and dropped off a sweet gift. Dar is one of my Friday Morning Cheap Therapy Friend Breakfast Girls. (FMCTFBG). She battled and won the fight against breast cancer two years ago. She is the only woman I know who can pull off a baldhead and still look hot. She is brave, strong, full of Faith and a little bit crazy just like me. She is always surprising me with thoughtful little things. “Little Happies” she calls these gifts. When she stopped by on Saturday, she brought me a rice bag. This is not to be confused with a bag of rice. I had heard of rice bags but had never experienced their soothing comfort. Dar was given a stunning pink warrior scarf during her breast cancer battle. She cut this scarf into large squares, sewed it up, filled it with loose, dry rice, and secured the end. (Pictures Below) This can be used as either a cold pack or hot pack. You place it in the refrigerator to keep it cold and use it for aches and pains, bruises and bumps, sprains and breaks, etc. On the other hand and what I like best, you can pop it into the microwave, heat it for about three minutes, and use it as a warm pack. It stays warm for a long time. The loose rice in the bag forms to your body and surrounds it with warmth or cold. My feet are always cold in the evening despite my wearing two pair of socks and slippers. I have been heating my bag before bedtime and placing it at the foot of my bed. Cozy! This makes an easy, practical and thoughtful gift for someone, and it means so much to me that Dar made mine using her warrior scarf. She said the warrior material represented her friends being prayer warriors for her during her battle. How sweet is that? It will remind me to do my self-breast exam every month. I think I am going to make my mom and my sister-in-love one in bright pink as a reminder too. It is great and it works for me. Now head on over to Rocks In My Dryer for more Works-For-Me-Wednesday ideas.

While you are here you might want to check out what I have for sale at this time. It will be on the right side bar or you can click here for more details.


Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Works For Me Wednesday - Easy Window Treatment

Last summer I decided to redecorated our master bedroom. I stumbled across a gorgeous jacquard comforter set on clearance which I immediately purchased. I wanted window toppers to match but had no luck finding something that worked. Then I had a brain storm! The pillow shams that came with the set were the perfect width. I hung my rods and simply laid the sham over the rod. Easy window treatment. When they get dusty, I simple yank them off the rod, take them outside and give them a good shaking. It worked for me! Find more great Works-For-Me Wednesday ideas at Rocks In My Dryer.

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Works For Me Wednesday - Homeschool Helper

I like "ye ole English" and I love Shakespeare. As a homeschooling parent it is my job to make sure Big I encounters good books. His reading level is high, but Shakespeare, even for adults, can be daunting. Then I heard about the Shakespeare Can Be Fun! series by Lois Burdett and righteth awayeth you better knoweth I put in a quicketh requesteth (say that three times fasteth) at the library where I work to order a few of these jewels! Beautifully written and beautifully illustrated (art work by children), these books are a delight to the eyes and ears. This is a great way to introduce younger children to Shakespeare so that when they are older Sir William will not seem as intimidating. I read them aloud to Big I and we talk about the plot as we go along. Shakespeare would be so proud!

Then there is this treasure! The Dangerous Book For Boys. I saw this and had to purchase a copy for our bookshelf. Beautifully bound, gorgeous illustrations and perfect for boys ages 5 to 105. If you want your son to read, here is the answer. I catch Big I reading our copy under his covers with a penlight. From knot typing, to rabbit hunting and many "how to" chapters between, my boy can not seem to put this book down. The Daring Book For Girls is also available, but not having a daughter, I have not glanced through it.

These have worked-for-me! You can find more "Works-For-Me Wednesday" ideas at Rocks In My Dryer. Give Shannon a visit. You'll be glad you did!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Works For Me Wednesday

I do a little something every year after the Holidays that might help others. As soon as the flurry of activity is over and schedules get back to "normal" at our house, I sit down and write myself a note regarding the things that stressed me over the holidays. Then I take the note, fold it into a square, write "do not open until October" on the front, and tape it to my calendar for the next year. By this time, I will have forgotten the stresses of Christmas past and need the thought-out reminder to not over set my goals for the fast approaching Holiday Season. It also gently reminds me to keep my family's focus on Christ's Birth and not get caught up in the material part of Christmas.

This year I wrote, "Dear Rosie, Remember last Christmas when you stressed over not having baked all the goodies you intended? Remember how you felt your children were being deprived of family traditions because you could not find the time this year to make fourteen different kinds of candy? Remember that your boys never complained one bit, hugged and kissed you anyway and said this was the best Christmas ever and never once mentioned missing homemade chocolate fudge? Relax this year, do not worry about all of that. Play games, laugh, do not do laundry for one week. Enjoy celebrating my son's Birthday! I love you. My Son loves you. I've blessed you with a wonderful family and they love you. Don't be so hard on yourself. Love, Your Heavenly Father. Thanks Dad for the reminder!

This has worked for me several years and might work for other harried homemakes too. For more Works for Me Wednesday Ideas, visit Rocks In My Dryer.

PS: I'm holding an apron giveaway (see right side bar). If you would like to enter, please leave me a comment or e-mail me at RosieReads@gmail.com to let me know you are interested. I'll enter your name and randomly draw a winner next Tuesday.

Thanks for reading, Rosie

Recycling Old Christmas Cards

What should I do with old Christmas cards? That question has kept me awake at night. I can not just toss them into the trash and I do not always make it to the stores that recycle them on time. Yet, I could not live with the guilt I felt throwing them away considering the time and amount of money that is involved in sending them.

Then one day, many years ago, I received a gift from a sweet little lady at our church. It had the cutest gift tag attached and I asked her where she found the tag. Come to find out, they were made from old Christmas cards. She is in heaven now, but would be pleased to know her idea is being passed along.

But first things first. With the cards I receive I place them into a basket and set the basket near our kitchen table. When we bless our food, we also pull out a card and pray a blessing upon the sender of the card. We might go through the stack two or three times before I decide to do the next step.

Sometime in January or February when the kids are bored with their Christmas gifts and begin to whine, "I'm bored," I place the Christmas cards before them with scissors and say, "Have a ball!" If you have decorative edge scissors or pinking shears, it makes it even more fun. I then instruct them to cut out pictures from the front of the cards. When they are through cutting, you will have a stack that looks similar to this.

After they are cut, the rest becomes trash and I can sleep at night knowing I threw out trash.

You can use them at this point for tags but if they are embossed it makes the back rough. I use scraps of card stock paper (construction paper is fine too) to fix the problem. Just lay the cut out on top of the paper and then cut around the edges leaving a border. You can stick the card onto the paper by using double sided tape or a glue stick.

Next, spend 30 mintues searching for your hole punchers that end up being in the bottom of your child's underwear drawer. Stand and wonder why for a couple of minutes until it troubles your mind, then get back on task.

Punch a hole in the top, corner, or side of the tag. Take some string, ribbon, twine, or even colored trash bag twists and use them as your attachment thingy. Simply write on the back the "To" and "From" and you have a cute gift tag.

Also, if you are lacking decorations for your tree and want to save money, these also make cute ornaments. The little lady who taught me this also made extras, placed about 25 in a ziplock bag and sold them in crafts shows, yard sales, etc. for .50 cents per bag, or just gave a bag as a gift when company stopped by for a visit.

Hint: This idea can also apply to old birthday, valentine, get well, etc. cards. You would then have gift tags for different occasion gifts.

This is a very kid friendly project and can not be made wrong. It teaches children several lessons, including but not limited to, thinking of others, recycling, creativity, over-coming boredom, and working with their hands in delight.

It works for me! Find more Works for Me Wednesday ideas at Rock In My Dryer.

Thanks for reading, Rosie

PS: If you are looking for the apron giveaway winner you can go here.

Day # 17 - Simple and Personal Christmas Gift Idea

I am trying to cut back on Christmas gift expenses this year simply because overspending for gifts seems ridiculous to me. Simple and personal are my gift goals this year.

One of the best gifts my Mom ever gave me was a recipe book with her family recipes written in her handwriting. I love that book! I cherish that book! My daughter's-in-love will not receive that book! They can fight over it after I am dead! Sorry, I am getting off topic. Anyway, this is what I am doing this year for several women in my family.

First I went on a search through Hobby Lobby and found this little photo album. It holds 4" x 6" photos or in this case 4" x 6" recipe cards. It was on the markdown aisle for $1.99 and they had it in a variety of colors. I bought a few.

Next I bought a pack of card-stock paper for $3.99. It has 50 sheets in pastel colors. You can get brights colors, neutral colors, etc. The most important thing here is to put your blinders on when walking down the paper aisle. You can easily get sucked into the scrapbooking vortex with all the beautiful scrapbook accessories and spend more money. The purpose is to save money, so determine beforehand not to look!

Next, pick out several of your best recipes. Although the album will hold twenty-four, I only picked twelve of my recipes. Some are holiday favorites, some are everyday recipes. Type them up, add personal comments, add some clip-art, print them onto the card-stock paper, cut them and slip into the album. Be sure to save them and you will have them available for later if you need a quick gift idea.

This alone would make a cute gift to a friend, niece, teacher, co-worker or your local librarian :) But if you want to add a bit more, you can pick up a spatula, whisk, or other kitchen gadget (really cute ones at Target), or maybe a kitchen towel, etc. and you have a simple personal gift for less than $15.00, maybe $10.00 if you catch a bargain. Because I am an obsessive compulsive over achiever, I did make an apron to go with the gift, but I still have less than $20.00 involved.

There, I've prepared a nice gift that involved my personal effort and also personalized it to the individual. It worked for me!

Check our more "Works for Me Wednesday" ideas at "Rocks In My Dryer." Thank you Shannon for making this link available. It is a nice resource in the blogosphere!

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Day #10 - Warts And All

My topic today is somewhat gross but in case this happens to you, you need to know this information. Three years ago my oldest son got warts on the cuticle area of his fingernails. We could not get rid of them. We made several visits to the dermatologist to no avail. The doctors froze the warts, they poisoned the warts, they caused an allergic reaction to the warts and the warts simply would not go away. In fact, the warts spread until his fingers were covered in warts. It was ugly and embarrassing. I began asking folks for home remedies that might help the problem and someone told us to use clear nail polish. Simply coat the warts everyday with clear nail polish. This puts an airtight seal on them and they cannot breath. Apparently, the wart virus needs oxygen to regenerate and when oxygen is cut off, the virus dies. Within a few days, we could visibly see some shrinkage and within a month, the warts were nearly gone. Amazing! Recently I notice my Dad had a few warts on his elbow and I told him about this miracle cure. My Mom started coating his elbow with clear nail polish every night and sure enough, with in a few weeks they disappeared. Before you take your warts to the dermatologist, spend a small fortune and endure modern-day torture tactics, coat them with clear nail polish. It worked for us! For more helpful “Works For Me Wednesday” ideas, visit Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.

Thanks for reading, Rosie!

Day #3 - WFMW Toys Worth Buying

As my 3rd day in the “30 Days, 30 Posts” of National Blog Posting Month, I am doing double duty and posting my “Works-For-Me-Wednesday Toys Worth Buying Edition" for Rocks In My Dryer also. Yes, it is thoroughly confusing, but fun! Hang with me!

It is that time of year. Christmas shopping time. For those of you who live for this time of year, congratulations “Tis the Season”. For the rest of us, sorry, “Tis the Season”. If you have children, then you know that Christmas shopping involves toy purchases. If you have purchased any toys at all in your lifetime, then you are aware that not all toys are created equal. I have personally wasted a lot of money over the years on toys for my kids. I may as well have been throwing money out the car window while driving down Main Street and screaming, “I am a fool!” If I had the money back that I wasted on toys, I would be an independently wealthy woman. I want back my $5.00 for every Beanie Baby I purchased. That alone would make a house payment. Can I please have my money back on all the toy guns and swords that boys seem to NEED? You know the ones that break within an hour after purchasing them because boys play rough and tend to think that plastic swords and guns can actually puncture the walls and furniture. Also, please give me my money back on all the plastic bath toys I purchased to entertain my children in the bathtub. I question my reasoning over those purchases. Why did I want my children entertained in the bathtub? Then there are the toys I purchased in the name of education for my children. Those pricey talking books and electronic games that guaranteed my child would be reading by the New Year. The ones I guilted myself into buying because the TV commercials promised me they would bring hours of educational fun into my home. Those electronic nuances the kids got bored playing before I could get the Christmas tree down. Oh and let us not forget Tickle Me Elmo. Honestly, I wanted to throw hysterically laughing Elmo out the back door and run over his little red body with a bulldozer about the third day after that purchase. We also had a light sensor Big Bird that would randomly scream “Peak-A-Boo!” when a light switched was turned on. After the whiz was scared out of us no less than a dozen times, the evil Big Bird mysteriously disappeared; I want my money back for him too. I have made a lot of bad toy purchases in my lifetime for my kids and gladly/sadly, toy-purchasing days are dwindling in our home as my guys outgrow the “toy” stage.

Except for one toy. One toy stands out. One toy brings hours of imagination, teamwork, direction following, challenging entertainment in bulk on our family room floor any day of the week. One toy that Oscar, our dog, finds, eats and poops (I am just being honest here). One toy that the vacuum cleaner sweeps away and the one toy that gets sorted into color groups while trying to be organized. In addition, the one good toy that is not made in China by slave laborers and that I can justify purchasing.

THE TOY? LEGO!

While I realize that Lego kits are expensive, their purchase has been worth every penny spent from my thin wallet. I have watched my boys play and work for hours on projects. Big C is very literal and always put his models together by the directions only. “Don’t mess up the model afterwards” is his motto! On the other hand, Big I will create his models by the directions and then modify it by using his imagination. Actually, Big C does not “play” with Legos anymore. No sir! He is eighteen years old and far, far past the Lego stage. He will occasionally have mercy on his little brother who will beg him to help build something and Big C, being the sweet big brother he is, will lock himself along with Big I away and spend the afternoon playing with, oops I mean building a design that demonstrates Quantum Mechanics.

Here are a few other toys that have worked well for my guys and helped keep them occupied on rainy/snowy/hot and tidal wave days. Hope they work for you too.

· Little Green Army Men and Marbles
· GI Joe
· Match Box Cars
· Star Wars and Lord of the Rings Action Figures
· Walter Wick’s “I Spy” Books (one of my personal favs)
· Playing cards or Uno cards
· Board games such as Monopoly, Battleship, Sorry, Castle Risk and Chess
· Basketballs (all 25 that we own) and Footballs (at least 10 of those)
· Air Soft BB/Pellet Guns
· 10” Stainless Steal Throwing Knives (I am totally not kidding here)

Thanks for reading, Rosie.

Works For Me Wednesday - Simple Skin Care

How many of you have a box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda in your fridge? Your baking supply area? Your laundry area? Your bathroom? I'll bet you could never guess where I use this product the most! As my "Works For Me Wednesday" post I am going to share my secret with you. I have really sensitive, oily, acne prone skin. I am 43 years old today (Yes, it's my Birthday) and I have not outgrown puberty! Monthly facial breakouts still plague me. Because of this, I have found I can only use a few products on my skin. Believe me when I tell you that I have bought and used every product advertised to help acne prone skin and they might work for a month or two but eventually my skin refuses to cooperate with the product and rebels. Most of the products I have found that do not cause breakouts are too expensive and honestly my frugality stops me from paying the ridiculous price. Again, let me reiterate that I am not in any way associated with the makers of these products and will not receive a dime by advertising them. They simply work for me. Anyway, to keep my facial oil at a minimum, I use Arm & Hammer Pure Baking Soda to cleanse my face daily. It is a gentle, natural exfoliate that leaves my skin feeling soft and smooth, does not dry out my skin (even oil heads need a little moisturizer) and keeps my breakouts to a minimum. I splash warm water on my face to open up my pores, mix a paste with the soda and apply it in a circular motion to all areas of my face, then rinse with warm water, followed by cool water (this closes the pores), and pat my face dry with a towel. While MDH husband would gladly scrub my back in the shower (wink, wink) with the baking soda, I find plain old, been around since creation, Ivory Soap works well for my skin type also. I love these simple products because they work well for me, are not pricey and are family member friendly. They work for everyone - babies, children, teens, adults, and pets and pesky neighbors. They also work well on every skin type, but if you have dry skin, be sure

to follow with a light moisturizer. This really works for me and I hope it works for you too.

For more great "Works For Me Wednesday" ideas, please visit:

"Rocks In My Dryer"

Thanks for reading, Rosie.