My Little Chef

I hate cooking.  While I love crafting and eating, I do not like crafting with food of any kind.  I'm a disaster in the kitchen.  I CAN cook, and it comes out rather tasty.  I just don't enjoy it.

My husband, on the other hand, LOVES to cook.  He makes all kinds of delicious food, and he really enjoys learning the science behind cooking.  One of our favorite chefs is Alton Brown b/c he always explains the science behind what he does.  Unfortunately, we don't get cable, and we rarely get to watch him.  As an additional shout out for Alton, he is a Christian, and he is also from our hometown of Atlanta.  If you have never seen his show Good Eats, you need to check it out.  He's moving on to his next project, so you can check it out in syndication.

Mat also enjoys learning from Cooks Illustrated magazines, and he likes America's Test Kitchen.  I've enjoyed a lot of yummy food prepared by my chef.  That's what started Holy Smokes all those years ago...but I digress.

I may not enjoy cooking, but I do enjoy watching cooking shows.  Right now I am sitting back and relaxing with ice on my back, and Missy begged me to watch Martha Stewart.  I think Missy must have got her Dad's cooking gene, and I'm sure she is going to make am amazing chef.  She watches and repeats all the details.  I can't wait until she is old enough to cook on her own.  Until then, she can continue cooking with her father, and I'll happily watch cooking shows with her.

Summer Blues - Not Here

Last November, Little Man had a pretty rough attitude.  We could not figure out how to reverse that.  It seemed that no consequence was enough to get him to snap out of it....until my wonderful husband got it figured out.  Little Man had decided that he would play with his toys in his room instead of doing just about anything.  The toys were too much of a distraction for him.  His legos, his cars, the games, the kinex...all of it had to go.  So one evening, Hubby went Target, bought a bunch of bins, and he walked in the door making a beeline to Little Man's room where he started packing up every single little thing in Little Man's room.  He took 8 tubs filled with games, toys, stuffed animals and books into the attic until Little Man's room was bare.

Little Man was crushed, but his attitude shaped up.  By Christmas (and his birthday), we started letting him keep his new gifts in his room, and the little bit of stuff proved only to be a little distraction...so we let him keep the new toys out.

His attitude has been wonderful.  I think I'm on to him anyway.  He is a highly overwhelmed when presented with too much stuff whether it's too many toys, too many math problems on a page, or too many pages in a book.  That's just how he he is.  He gets overwhelmed and can't do anything.

So...figuring that since it's summer (and I use the summer as a time to do a full deep cleaning and decluttering), I decided to let Little Man get all the toys out of the attic and NEATLY put them in his room.  We worked together to throw out some stuff, and we put things on the shelves in an orderly fashion.  He is thrilled to have all his toys back in his room, and I have yet to hear the words "I'm bored" come out of either child's mouth. 

I was hesitant when Hubby took all Little Man's toys into the attic, but his plan was genius.  I may do that for the next school year too!  A special Thank You to my wonderful husband who got this figured out!  It made our school year a success and our summer dreamy!