I was thinking about kitchen clean up while I was cleaning up. It is a strange thing. I heard Rachel Ray make a comment about "cleaning the stove at the end of the night," and for some reason, it struck me that I don't think it ever occurred to me to clean up the stove at the end of every night. Now, I would wipe down the top, etc., but I never touched the burners until they were, like, sick. Perhaps I shouldn't admit this. If I am on top of my game, usually doing FlyLady, my stove burners would get cleaned once a month. Do you know how much yuck builds up on stove burners in a month? Not nearly as much as when I'm not on top of my game and go longer than that for cleaning....Anyway, the other night, I had a paper towel in my hand--and I don't use paper towels often, just for cleaning gross stuff. There was plenty of clean paper towel left from whatever I had originally used it for, so I thought I'd reach down around the burner and give it a wipe. The burner pan was just barely warm, and there was a lot of gross stuff in there. It wiped right out. So, Duh!, it occurred to me that if I just wiped the burners out every time I used them, I'd never have to spend hours scrubbing the darn things out again. Stupid, I know. Maybe I knew that once, but somewhere along the line, I forgot. I think all the years of cooking on rental stoves, it didn't occur to me, but you would think sometime in the past six on my own stove I would have figured it out.
I remember Mom telling me once that when you do dishes, you should then wipe down the stove and the counters. I don't remember hearing about burners. Of course, when we were kids, we had an electric stove....
We lit the Advent wreath tonight. I usually fumble around the first week of Advent and don't manage to get us going for a few days, so I'm proud of getting it done. I have especially failed here when Advent starts, as it does this year before December. We also drew an activity from a bag (I wrote them all down last year, and, somehow, we never did more than a few, if any). Liam drew one. I think he put the first one back, but then he drew, "Make snowy candle holders." So, he and Molly made "snowy" candleholders by putting stickers on some recycle bin jars, painting them with glue, and sprinkling salt on them. Killian wasn't interested.
Molly also went outside for probably close to an hour wandering about the yard in the heavily falling snow. We looked out back at her to see her snowboarding down the hill on one of the boys' snowboards! Once Liam saw that, he had to join her.
Other activities in our Advent "to do" bag:
Paint or draw a Christmas picture and send it to someone special
Watch a Christmas movie in bed
pop kettle corn and share some with the neighbors
bake cookies and share some with the neighbors
make hot chocolate
shovel the sidewalks
bundle up and go for a walk around the block
listen to Christmas music
do something nice for your parents (heh, heh)
do something nice for your brother(s) or sister(s)
write a letter to someone telling them why they are special to you
sing Christmas carols with your family
Play a board game with your family
watch a Christmas movie
Go for a drive to see Christmas lights
camp out around the Christmas Tree
There are more, but I'm not remembering them right now...Anyone have other ideas?!
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