Do you realize that Christmas Eve is one week from today?  I’m making a list of gifts that have been given to ME in the past year, gifts that were a success and that you might want to consider buying for someone on your list.

My brother and sister-in-law gave me several pairs of earrings from the Etsy shop Kneehighs-n-Pigtails, and I LOVE them.  They’re so classy and dressy if you’re looking classy and dressy, but they look chic and awesome with t-shirt and jeans, too.
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I am not saying that good things don’t come in small packages, because of COURSE they do.  But sometimes a $20 CD can look, well, smaller than $20.  And sometimes a $20 throw blanket can look bigger than $20.

If you’re cutting down on gift spending this year, you might want to get more bang for your buck, as it were, by saving yourself money—and also giving the recipient a way to save some money themselves.  Or you might be trying to snow your in-laws into thinking you spent more than you did.  I’m not going to look too closely at your motivations, I’m just going to give you some big-looking, small-costing ideas that happen to go along with all the things people say they’re doing to save money these days.
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So. November. About seven weeks left until the winter holidays. TIME TO PANIC.

Or for those of us who lovvvvve gift-buying, time to YAY! Time to start spending time every day prowling around looking for deals. Time to start placing orders and squirreling them away, and forgetting what’s already there, and ending up with too much for some people and not enough for others! Yay!

And this means I only have about seven Tuesdays left to share gift ideas and great finds with you, and
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I’m the spit-up covered, booger-wiping mother to both a toddler and a baby, which means that the majority of the surfaces in my house are coated with . . . well, actually, it’s probably best you don’t know the details. Especially if you’re planning to visit. Have a seat! Never mind that sticky — wait, where are you going?

We all know parenthood is messy (and smelly, and gooey, and smeared with various bodily substances), so without getting too Martha-y about cleanup — can anyone without a full-time housekeeper and nanny really expect that their home will remain sparkling clean in the wake of small children? — what are your tried-and-true methods of dealing with the inevitable catastrophes? Here are a few of my favorites:
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I love my handheld vacuum cleaner. My regular vacuum cleaner is almost completely unemployed, while my handheld vac is called into service half a dozen times a day. The regular vacuum has to be hauled out, plugged in, set up; the handheld just has to be grabbed out of its perch. The regular vacuum has choked on a coin, a piece of dental floss, a small flat metal star; the handheld can eat all those things AND an entire crayon and not even flinch.

I have the Black & Decker 15.6V Dust Buster. (Me to my mother, when a sale on the 15.6V brought it to almost the same price as the 14.4V: “What’s the difference?” My mother to me: “Larger number = noisier”) I like it a lot; it’s been a great vacuum. But we broke the piece that keeps stuff from falling back out of the hole it gets sucked into, and so I’m in the market for a new one and looking for input.
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On the days when my husband and I both work, dinners are always a challenge. I usually need to throw something together on the fly, while simultaneously feeding the toddler, entertaining the baby, and emptying the dishwasher from the night before. My goal: make something tasty and healthy, hopefully without creating a giant mess in the kitchen that I’ll just have to clean up afterwards.

Some handy tools that help me out in this endeavor:
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My daughter has her third birthday coming up. She likes dinosaurs, so I spent an evening on Amazon.com looking for dinosaur stuff—ideally stuff I could get shipped for free. The evening went by so FAST. I thought, “You know, this was supposed to save me time over going to the store.” But look! I found some great stuff! And if YOU need dinosaur gifts for a child, perhaps this WILL save YOU time!

The first thing I found was
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For those of you who like tangible organization tools (as opposed to software), and you’re tired of the same old Day Runners, Day-Timers, Franklin Coveys, etc, this post’s for you. I’ve been looking at day planners recently, both because of a request to cover them here and the growing realization that the combination of two small children, a part-time office job, ongoing freelance assignments, and a swirling maelstrom of doctor’s appointments/errands/grocery lists/home and garden projects/ET-BLEEPING-CETERA is resulting in what you might call a need for improved personal productivity on my end.

Ahem. So, planners! Preferably interesting and/or unique ones! Let’s check them out:
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After my first son was born I remember reading a parenting book that was supposed to be a collection of tips and tricks from Real Parents Just Like You, except the advice it contained had a real pod-person feel to it and I questioned the legitimacy of contributors like “Anne, mother of 7″ who suggested that dry oatmeal was a fun sensory stimulator for young children. “Just fill a box or plastic tub, and let the good times roll!” Sure, maybe a mother of seven has nothing better to do than vacuum a metric crapload of oatmeal out of every crevice in her house, but somehow I doubt it.

I’d rather read a collection of suggestions that address real-world issues, and “My children do not have nearly enough Quaker products crammed in their bodily cavities” isn’t really a concern I’ve experienced. I still consider myself a mouth-breathing amateur at this motherhood business, but here are a few of the tips I’ve learned over the last couple years, should anyone be in the market for creating a new oatmeal-free book:

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The other day I was giving the kids a bath and I realized I’d forgotten their kid-specific gentle no-tears infant-and-toddler-safe liquid soap in the other bathroom. So I washed them both with my Philosophy “Cinnamon Roll” bubble bath, and while I don’t recommend this course of action (it surely isn’t meant for 8-week-old babies), they smelled SO GOOD afterwards. Such a nice change from the Sour Milk/Hint O’ Poo combo they had going on beforehand.

I don’t normally share my own spendy bath items with the children (I mean, for one, they totally don’t appreciate the fine sensation of a quality bodywash), but I definitely tend to bogart their own hygiene-related products for household use. It’s nice to know all that money you’re dumping into the bottomless Kid Stuff Bucket can go to more than one purpose, you know?

Here’s a brief list of some products and their various uses, feel free to add your own in the comments section:

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