I use my KitchenAide immersion blender 3-6x a day and it is still going strong. Every other cheaper one I had before this stopped working within about 3-6 months. Granted I probably use it more than intended but I have to say I am very happy we finally sprung for the better one =)

If you sew, the frixion pens are fabulous for marking fabric. All you have to do is iron and the marks dissapear. They will come back if the item gets really cold and you haven't washed it, but the ink does wash out completely, so once you wash it you don't need to worry about that either. Actually, we were playing with the Frixion pens as secret code writers - erase then place the paper in the freezer and the writing "magicially" reappears.

olive oil, shea butter, coconut butter, calendula and oatmeal, all highly recommended to help eczema, were/are all potent triggers here too. Rosemary is another odd trigger my son has that shows up in many natural creams as a preservative. Charlie's Soap caused chemical burns....... The advice is generally to only change one thing at a time so you can keep track of what is causing which change. Sometimes you have multiple things going on though and it can just get to be a mess. It can get so frustrating. As you can see from the above posts, each kid is individual and no knowing which thing will work for you. Hopefully you can find something that works without too much trial and error. The best thing we did was to go to a good allergist. It wasn't a 100% solution and we still had a long ways to go afterwards, but we atleast got a ballpark to work in and that really helped us narrow down what we were dealing with.

I really wanted to like them too. I can never keep my pencils sharp enough and really dislike mechanical pencils. We had the same skipping issues. It was not too bad for me, kind of like a cheap pen, but my son could hardly write legibly with them. The liquid pencil does become more permanent over time. I've found the longer it sits, the harder it is to erase.

Yes, we cook almost exclusively from scratch too and the program does allow for that. We found that it sometimes calculated point differently if we entered the info from the pakage rather than using default info the quick search brought up for ingredients. It was a little more work to set up our favorite recipes in the first place, but once they were entered and saved it was easy to pull them up for adding to your days points etc.

You know, I think that is what gets repetitive to my children. I don't really have the skills to teach them so they end up doing many similar projects witht the same materials. More instruction would probably help differentiate the lessons more.

I do with one of my children, but it is more because he has expressed a strong desire to go on to an engineering type career so I feel we need to do lots of math/science to help prepare him.

I like that it is open and go and I don't have to be able to demonstrate the tecniques. Most lessons include a piece of art that the student looks at to see the tecnique being discussed. Not enough that I would consider it art appreciation, but definitely good exposure. My children do not like that some of the lessons can feel repetitive. IME, repetition is part of developing any skill and somewhat inevitable. We've mixed it up with more crafty stuff over the years just for variety. Overall we have been very happy with the program and plan to continue. They do occasionally do buy 2 get one sales and I've been fortunate in finding several books used.

I have one with all sorts of attachements to get at all the odd angles. I like it, it works really well, it is easy to use, and somehow I do not use it as much as I thought I would.

We took off the week before Christmas,so mine have been back to work since last Wed. They get tommorow off though.

uh oh, I gave some embroidered with names on them towels as gifts this year. I thought they were well recieved? I had one request for a few more.....

I was given a laminator and a comb binder for Christmas =) I got almost enough for a new pair of running shoes so I think that is what I will get.

How do you find the time for longer runs? I've thought about training for a marathon but just don't know how to fit in the longer runs.

We were not happy with Girl scouts for similar reasons to the OP. We recently found https://diy.org/ and have been happily working though their badges.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1562703.The_Pilates_Promise It is a deceptively easy workout, doesn't take much space but man do you feel it and it makes a big difference ime.

We put lights on timers in all the bedrooms. Full spectrum bulbs. Having simulated daylight early in the am really does help us all get up easier. After a few days we all started naturally going to bed earlier and were able to shift our day.

and some of us have relatives that send scads of gifts or money in lieu of spending time with us. I would far rather we had family that wanted to make memories with us, but their priorities are different.

There are a bunch of free ebooks about home based businesses linked on this blog today. Scroll down a bit to get to them. http://adventuresofathriftymama.blogspot.com/2012/12/free-ebooks-122312-edition.html

Our allergists have always said that the RAST predicts the likelihood of a reaction, not the severity. We have actually been encouraged by the allergiest to trial my son's class II allergens and in some cases class III allergens if there is no history of signifigant reaction. The first step is skin prick and in office challenge. Not being a medical professional, I don't know if this would be advisable in your case or not but it sounds like you have been inadvertently ingesting soy protien with no adverse effects so it definitely seems worth discussing with your Dr.

I got big square containers at the restaurant supply that hold about 10lbs. of flour. I store everything else in glass, but have not found a glass container big enough to be practical for flour and sugar. I wish I could find huge glass jars like in the link above!

not a gift, but we wrapped everything in formula boxes one year. Looked like everyone got boxes of elemental formula! Kids thought it was a riot =)

ITA, not worrying too much. It is not just the nuts in the air, it is the nut residue settling on everything and other people's hands etc. My son has had an ana reaction to playing with a ball with his friends after they ate cheese. He was never in direct contact with the cheese, did not put his fingers in his mouth etc. The residue on the ball was enough to set off the reaction. As far as we know, his nut allergy is not as severe, but not something I would want to take that kind of chance with!

oooh, I was wondering about those. Now I will have to try them =)

At their current rate, my son is going to finish 3 MUS books, this year, my daughter 2. We use other materials to supplement where I think they need more review. It is not my favorite curric, but both my children asked for it and they are doing really well with it; much better than they were with Math Mammoth or Singapore. I've also gotten all our teacher books, DVDs and manipulatives used as well as a couple of the student books. I've gotten some student books from their clearance section which helps with the cost. I think it might be a learning style thing too. My two really like sticking with one topic and doing it thoroughly. They do not do well with spiral type programs at all and even other mastery type programs they felt moved on just when they were getting it figured out.

If you happen to have an embroidery machine, Embroidery Library is giving away a FSL snowflake design for individuals to stitch out and send to them, More info here: http://www.emblibrary.com/EL/Free.aspx