a peek inside the fishbowl

As you can see:

I hate peeling garlic. All those sticky little papery bits!

Do you want to hear my special way of peeling garlic? Whether I need one clove or six (like the beef stew I’m making for dinner tonight) I always:

1) Separate the clove from the head of garlic.

2) Slice off a bit of the end where it was attached to the head. (Not the pointy end.)

3) Pop in the microwave for about 15 seconds.

The peels slide right off! Pretty neat eh? And not nearly as messy (Ok, maybe a little. But it’s MUCH BETTER. Trust me on this.)

What is a comment worth?

Comments are gold for a blogger. It means someone is paying attention and that we are not shouting in the wind. I don’t measure the worth of a blog post by the number of comments it receives anymore, although I used to. I write primarily for myself, and the truth is that if my bit of writing satisfies something within me that’s all that matters. And I recognize that people are busy. Something else to think about … now more than ever there are an infinite number of places to leave comments. The digital landscape was different twelve years ago. There was no YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, there were few interactive newspaper or magazine sites, and blogs were few and far between. Oh sure, there were forums and bulletin boards, but the use of them wasn’t mainstream.

Blog comments were more plentiful a few years ago. With the increased number of places to interact with, the number of blog comments have dropped. After all, some people don’t even get past Facebook. Time is limited. This I get. It is limited for me too, more than ever.

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I don’t always tap out a blog post on Sundays. Sometimes I do, but not always. As I was scrolling though my Twitter feed this morning it occurred to me that instead of writing a blog post on Sundays it might be a better idea to get in the habit of grabbing a coffee and using that time to read other blogs and comment on them instead.

I would love to be able to do this everyday, but with a recently increased workload (among other things), it hasn’t always worked out. I do read blogs during the work week, but leaving a pithy comment beyond “great post!” is sometimes more effort than I care to think about.

That’s why I declare Sundays to be Check Out Five Blogs And Leave A Comment Day. You with me?

I’m starting with five of my favourites today:

Cheaper Than Therapy
Larawellman.com
A Little Bit of Momsense
Coffee With Julie
Turtlehead

You may copy my five or choose your own. Choose big blogs, small blogs, old blogs, new blogs, family blogs! Next week I’ll quietly go and pick another five. It’s a great way to build community, and I think we should all be doing more of it. :)

What do you think? Join me, and let me know where you’re going to leave your golden comments today. :)

This week’s kid-friendly activity (admittedly I am stretching the definition of “craft” here) over at Canadian Family Magazine is a wee DIY for Rainbow Icicles. You can read it here.

Behold!

In case you’re wondering, these are not designed to be edible, although I suppose you can make them out of juice or Jello. (But then you run the risk of your icicles being licked by squirrels when you’re not looking. And that’s simply not an option for me.)

Don’t be deceived by this craft’s simplicity. I will say this… the girls really got involved and enjoyed the process. AND, as an added bonus, this is one of those activities that (a) don’t take very long and (b) makes minimal mess and (c) uses stuff you probably already have lying around the house, and (d) is ideal for people who want to make things with their kids and don’t have a crafty bone in their body.

Note: I couldn’t convince the kids not to use yellow food colouring. Our one yellow icicle looks like a brick of frozen pee… as if the doctor left all the urine samples outside during a deep freeze and tied them to nearby trees in a fit of insanity.

Oh well. ;)

p.s. Speaking of frozen ice, we are going ICE FISHING in February! Neat eh? Strike another one off the bucket list! More about that later. Woot!