Happy Friday! I have a few things to share with you today for Show and Tell.

Costco Seriously DOES Have the Best Plastic Wrap

People have been telling me for years to get the Kirkland plastic wrap at Costco. There is no good reason why I haven’t, I just never did. Well, this week there was a guy on the end of the aisle at Costco sampling plastic wrap. The kids were not super excited about those samples but I was! It meant I finally remembered to buy the darn stuff. And, good news, you don’t have to buy it in a truck-sized box anymore, it comes in two smaller boxes that actually fit in your kitchen drawer or cabinet. So, why do I love it? It sticks to itself and glass beautifully. AND that little slider cutter things is the best thing ever in the history of the world.

Finally Acandescent Lightbulbs

This week I tried out a new kind of lightbulb, which I was pretty excited about. (I think you know you’re old when lightbulbs become exciting.) Here’s the deal: I really don’t like LED and fluorescent (CFL) lightbulbs. I will admit that both kinds of lights have improved significantly over the years, with more size and shape options as well as LEDs that come in different light temperatures, from warm to cool. But I have yet to find a non-incandescent bulb that I really love and find that my LED and CFL lights both offer a more “harsh” light, even when the temperature is warmer. Finally Light Bulb Company contacted me to see if I would like to try out their acandescent bulbs. I was totally game because of my mixed feelings about LED and CFL lights.

Finally uses what they call acandescent technology, based on a decades-old induction technology. The result is a lightbulb that is the same shape and size as a traditional bulb that offers a warm, soft white light. The best part for me is that the light is omnidirectional, meaning you don’t get those same harsh shadows that often come with LEDs and CFLs. And the level of warmth with these lightbulbs is perfect. Warm but not yellow, they give off a great soft white light.

So, do we like the bulbs? Yes we do! We put them in one of the bedrooms and in all our lamps in the living room and have been very happy with them. Knowing that incandescent lights will be gone in a few years, it’s nice to have another lighting option to choose from. A few notes:

• Finally’s acandescent lightbulbs are significantly more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, about the same as CFLs. LEDs are still the most efficient, but Finally comes pretty close.
• Finally bulbs do contain mercury (you will see this on the label), but it’s the same amount as you find in a can of tuna, so very minimal. The bulbs are landfill safe and do not need to be disposed of the same way you would have to dispose of a CFL, which has more mercury levels.
• The “omnidirectionality” (i.e. not as harsh or shadowy) and soft white color of the light from these bulbs is great.

If you are interested, you can buy Finally Light Bulbs on their website, on Amazon or at Staples stores.

If You Haven’t Watched Stranger Things Yet, Let’s Use Halloween As Your Excuse To Do So NOW

Have you watched Stranger Things on Netflix? If the answer to that question is “No” then let’s just use Halloween as an excuse for you to remedy that situation RIGHT NOW. And while I’m glad I’ve already watched it, I’m a little jealous of you Stranger Things virgins out there. Because it is SO MUCH FUN the first time you watch it. It’s the best thing every in the history of the world (besides the Costco plastic wrap slider cutter thing, of course).

As usual, Show and Tell is for the whole class! If you have something you would like to share, please do so in the comments!

Happy Friday, everyone! Today I want to talk about some house stuff, namely choosing paint colors, a process that stresses me to no end!

You may remember last summer we had to repipe our entire house thanks to old plumbing that had seen one too many leaks. The repipe company fixes the drywall after putting approximately 3 billion holes in your walls, but they don’t paint. Which means we have had giant white splotches all over our house for well over six months (case in point). I FINALLY decided to get my act together and have started choosing paint colors for the house.

As I choose colors and start painting I will share the colors with you. If I’m going to put all this legwork into finding good colors, I may as well have other people benefit, too! But before we get to actual colors, I wanted to share my best tips for picking out colors!

• Get a color swatch book. Just going to the paint store and looking at the paint chips in the pretty display on the wall is not helpful. Get the whole darn swatch book and bring it home. It was so much more helpful than bringing just a few little color cards home and then not having them be what I was looking for. Plus, with the full swatch book, you get EVERY shade of every color family, which the little paint color cards can’t offer.

Photo credit: Frette

• Look for color inspiration in other places. I recently discovered a luxury bedding company online called Frette. They have gorgeous linens and the site makes me just want to climb in bed and read a book all day! I found that looking at their different sheet sets was actually very helpful in getting a feel for the kind of color schemes I liked or was looking for. Plus many of their linens are quite neutral, which is perfect for paint colors. (Also, now I think I need new bedding. I didn’t know I needed it, but now I do. ;)) Whether it’s a linen company like Frette, a plant in your yard, or just constantly analyzing paint colors when you’re watching TV shows (yes, that’s what I do!), always be looking for colors you like even when there isn’t a paint swatch to be seen!
• Talk to friends. Anyone who paints goes through the agony of finding paint colors, so talk to your friends, look at their walls, see what they used, find out what they sampled. This has been incredibly helpful to me through this process!
• Talk to an interior designer. I am lucky enough to have an awesome friend named Emily who has an interior design business. She has been helping me with colors and her input has been invaluable. Interior designers are perfect for helping with this process – they have an eye for it and they work with paint colors ALL THE TIME, making them very familiar with the paint options that are out there. I highly recommend talking with an interior designer (Emily is awesome, hire her!), even if it’s to simply pull together paint options.

• Do lots of sample colors on your wall. Emily pointed out that people tend to only get 2 paint samples, but she said that’s simply not enough! The paint samples are only $3-4 a pop, so get 4 or 5 colors. Be sure to paint the swatches in lots of places in the room and in every room you plan to paint, to account for different lighting. You can’t sample too much!

I personally think picking colors is a huge stressor, but Emily keeps reminding me it can be fun! So, I’m trying to remember that! 😉

Okay, so color #1 that I want to share with you! This first color is for our hallway, which has very little light, and the master bathroom. I wanted to find a fairly light color, but one dark enough to contrast with the white baseboards. For our house we needed something with a warm tone. That said, I love grey and think that has a more modern feel. Emily found a Sherwin Williams color, SW 7011 Natural Choice. I tried a few whites and this one was just what we were looking for! It very subtly contrasts with the white baseboards and is the warm, slightly gray color I was looking for – not too brown, but definitely not cool like most grays tend to be. Anyway, it’s a great, light neutral color that I am loving! I painted the bathroom yesterday and will be tackling the hallway later this week! (Note: I used Behr Marquee paint – Home Depot has the formulations for the Sherwin Williams colors.)

Photo credit: Julie Blanner

I actually don’t have anything published on other sites this week, but I DID see this awesome no-sew teepee tutorial from fellow blogger Julie Blanner that I had to share with you. How ridiculously cute is THAT?! We are going to have to do this for our kids one day!

Show and tell! Please share!!!

Today’s post was partially sponsored by Frette.

Happy Friday! I’m getting Show and Tell up a little late today because I’ve been busy as a bee finishing up our living room decor. I can’t wait to share the final product with you, but until it’s totally done and picture worthy, here’s a little sneak peak of one of the gems I found for the wall: stump prints from Light & Ink. I ordered the Spring Hollow Gold print yesterday and can’t WAIT for it to arrive.

I have some fun news today, too! In addition to regularly contributing to Babble, I am also now going to be writing for Parade’s food website Community Table as well as the blog for Solly Baby. My first posts for both sites went up this week!

At Community Table: 10 Romantic Cocktails for Valentine’s Day Fun!

And for Solly Baby: 12 Fantastic Freezer Meals, Before The Baby!

Show and Tell is for the whole class – be sure to share your own stuff and finds!

Happy Friday! I’m brimming over with things to share with you today!

First, I finally read Wonder by R.J. Palacio. This book should be required reading for ALL HUMANS. And once all the humans have read it, it should be required reading in every 4th grade class every year from here on out until the end of time. Plus, it’s really just so beautifully written and touching and uplifting and WONDERFUL. Please read it. Please.

I have a fun announcement today about some added functionality to This Week for Dinner. You may have noticed there’s a new button called “Recipe Box” on my navigation. If you roll over “Recipe Box” you’ll see that you can click on two options: “Recipe Box” and “Shopping List.” When you click either of those you will be automatically connected to ZipList, a company I am now partnering with! Some of you may already be using ZipList, in which case you know what’s up and how cool it is! All of the recipes on my site are now set up to be saved to your recipe boxes and shopping lists. If you don’t know what ZipList is, it’s basically a shopping list that makes life easier! You can save recipes to your ZipList recipe box, add ingredients from recipes to your shopping list, save shopping lists, and access all of this on the web or through a mobile app. Bottom line, it’s super handy and cool and perfect for meal planners. If you have questions, let me know!

As you know, I’m slowly working on furnishing and designing our living room. Well, I just bought a chair to add to the space and I am SO EXCITED about it. It’s the Wimsey Club Arm Chair from Dot & Bo. I kind of just want to show it off (isn’t it purrrrty?), but also I had such a fabulous shopping experience with Dot & Bo I felt like I should shout it out from the rooftops. So, I had my eye on this chair for a while, but was scared to pull the trigger. After two interior designers said that I should buy the chair THIS INSTANT, I finally went to do so but it was sold out. Well, when something is sold out on their site, there’s an “I want it” button, which brings you to a page which says something like “Let us know you want this chair via these various social media channels and we’ll see what we can do” so of course I immediately tweeted out my anguish over not getting this chair. Within hours I had an email from someone named Jessica, who was checking with their distributors to see if there were any more chairs available. When there were not, she was able to find out they would be getting it back in stock in about 2 months. THEN, as soon as it was available, I had an email from her letting me know. She was so nice and so helpful. Even after I bought the chair (and a lamp and some cute Swedish stuff), I received another email from another customer service person just checking in and letting me know she’d be tracking my order for me. AMAZING customer service, SUPER cute stuff. I am basically in love with Dot & Bo.

Last but not least, here are my fun Cosmo food posts for the week!

• 15 Majorly Delicious Mocha Recipes
• 15 Crazy Creative Ways to Make Chips
• 20 Quick, Delectable Desserts in Under 30 Minutes

I think I’ve shared enough, now it’s your turn!

Today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with food. Wait, I can bring it back to food. I know I can. Give me a second…okay, I’ve got it! Today’s “Kitchen” Tip is just what you need to get your kitchen window shiny clean so you can be a happy cook and make amazing FOOD.

When Nate and I were first married we were washing our trusty old pick-up truck at his grandparents’ house. It was time to clean the windows when Grammy (of Grammy’s Orange Chicken fame) handed me a stack of newspaper when I asked for paper towels. I was like “Wha? Wha?” and she was like “Yup! Yup!” Okay, those may not be direct quotes, but you get the drift.

So, yeah, it’s true! For streak-free window cleaning use newspaper (a.k.a. newsprint) instead of paper towels or cloth towels. It works soooo much better. It sounds crazy until you give it a try. I have a ton of plain newsprint from when we moved so I’ve been using that, but you can use regular old newspaper with the print on it. It doesn’t matter. Your hands might be dirty by the end, but your windows will be sparkly clean!

Let’s do a comparison, shall we? Here is my front room window after cleaning it with paper towels but before the newspaper treatment.

Seriously, that’s a “clean” window. Well, I thought it was clean until the morning light came shining through the next day. I immediately grabbed some newsprint and glass cleaner and got to work. Here is the “after” shot:

There is no way I could have gotten it that clear with paper towels. I tried!

Here’s the view through my super clean window – crisp and clear!

I’ve used newsprint to clean mirrors and windows – I especially like using it for the inside of the windshield in my car. (I’m sort of a clean windshield nut.)

So, next time you need to clean some windows, grab the glass cleaner and a bunch of newspaper. And send happy thank you vibes to Grammy McCarthy!