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Holiday finds at Restaurant Supply

When you need something for your kitchen or for entertaining in your home, where do you go?  Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel?  If you would like an affordable alternative place to shop, I recommend your local restaurant supply company.  Most of these stores are open to the public and they have a lot of great items that can make your life easier during the holidays or when you are entertaining.

If you need extra wine glasses, silverware or serving pieces, the restaurant supply store has a variety to choose from at reasonable prices.  Also, if  you are feeding a large number of people, they have big restaurant sized pans, cookie sheets and platters. In addition to having these items on hand for the holidays, in the case of the wine glasses, they usually come in boxes that can be used to store the glasses when you don’t need them.  Two things that I have purchased there that help me during the holidays are stainless steel tongs which are about $2.75 and are the best tongs that I own.  I also have a large stainess steel sheet pan that I use to pour my homemade caramels in to cool.  I think that sheet pan ran me about $9.00, but to me it is priceless.

In addition to having regular kitchen items, these stores carry items that you don’t find in regular kitchen stores but you may find helpful.  One of these items is a sign holder.  You find these at buffet dinners and they have a small sign telling you what food it is you are about to enjoy.  Using sign holders to identify which food has nuts or which punch has alcohol can really make your party go smoothly when entertaining a lot of people.  They also have professional grade stainless steel tables, storage racks and bag sealers.  Some of the items could be used in your kitchen or in other parts of your home such as your garage or craft room. 

The next time that you need an item for your kitchen, think about venturing into your local restaurant supply company.  Spend some time looking around at what they have available, you never know what you might find that will make your next holiday party a lot easier on you!

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TIVO – Your new best friend for saving time

If you watch television at all you probably know that all those commercials add up to a lot of wasted time.  The average half-hour television show is actually only twenty-two minutes long and the average hour show is forty-four minutes long.  That means that for every hour of television you watch, sixteen minutes of it is time watching commercials.  We all have our favorite shows that we watch and if you would like to maximize your television watching experience, I recommend TIVO or a digital video recorder. 

Here are the benefits of using a TIVO:

*When you record your show, you can fast forward through the commercials saving a lot of time.

*You can still watch your shows when they originally air.  You can start recording your favorite show with your TIVO and wait ten to fifteen minutes.  You can then start watching it from the beginning and then skip all the commercials.

*You can records two shows at the same time.

*You can record one show while watching another show.

*You can watch your favorite shows when you it is convenient for you.

*You can pause anything you are watching at any time.  This is espcially nice if you have children.

*You can rewind anything you are watching if you miss something.  This is espcially nice if you have children.

*You don’t miss your favorite shows when you have something else to do because your TIVO records it for you.

*The TIVO is easy to set-up to record and you can get a season’s pass that will record every episode of your favorite show.

*If you are surfing and find a show that is in progress that you want to see in its entirety, TIVO can search to see if there are other showings of that exact show so you could record it from the beginning.

What TIVO tips do you have that help you to maximize your TV time?

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Double it up Double it up

A great time saving tip that I recommend for busy people is to double up recipes.  Why, you ask?  Well, for one thing it really doesn’t take much extra effort to just make more of something.   You already have the ingredients out, the measuring cups or pans are already dirty and you are already in the kitchen cooking.  The reason it will make your life easier is that when you don’t have the time to cook, pulling a homemade ready made meal out of the freezer is easy.  Instead of stopping to get pizza, you can have a healthy meal that you prepared in advance. 

The other great thing about making extra is having left overs.  You can take them to work so you don’t have to buy lunch or you have them for dinner in a couple of nights.  It saves time and money when you cook in larger quantities.

It is also nice if you are having company over that may be unexpected or last minute.  You can pull out one of your delicious dishes from the freezer and still have time to tidy up before they get there.  They will be amazed and you will be less stressed if you have a back-up plan.  With a busy family comes uncertainty and a back-up plan is always a good thing to have.

One of my favorite recipes to double up on is cookies.  I never make one batch of cookies.  I always double it and freeze most of the dough.  I separate it into smaller containers and whenever my family wants fresh cookies, I just pull the dough out of the freezer and in 20 minutes we have freshly baked homemade cookies.  It does not take long when you pull the dough out of the freezer for it to soften enough to drop it onto a cookie sheet.  Make sure that you lable and date anything you put in your freezer so you can rotate and use the oldest first.

I hope that the next time you go to make chili or chocolate chip cookies that you will double the recipe and then pack some away in your freezer for the next rainy day or cooking craving!

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Dust off your slow cooker and save time

When you are looking for ways to make your life easier, sometimes you need to look towards the tools in your home that you already have that you are under utilized.  I love my slow cooker.  I use it on a regular basis to cook delicious and hearty meals.  With a little planning, it can help make meal time easier after a long day at work.  

You can make one dish that you can stretch to make two or three dinners in a week saving you time and energy.  For example, you could roast a chicken in the slow cooker and enjoy that on the first night.  The next night, you could take the left over chicken, shred it and add some taco seasoning to have chicken tacos.  If you have more chicken left over, you could stretch it a third night and add it to salad with egg, bacon, avocado, tomatoes and some cheese for Cobb salads. 

The other nice thing to do with your slow cooker is to make a large batch of your favorite dish of chili, stew or soup and have it for dinner one night and freeze the rest to have in the future.  That way when you are at a loss for what to have for dinner, you can just pull out a serving of your homemade slow cooker masterpiece and just add a salad or some rolls for a complete meal.

Another great use for the slow cooker is for parties.  I often cook pulled pork in my slow cooker when having people over for a party.  I serve it with buns and coleslaw and people love it.  It cuts down on the amount I have to prepare before the party as I just put it all in the slow cooker and forget it.

A great website for slow cooker recipes is The Taste of Home Slow Cooker Recipes:   http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Cooking-Style/Slow-Cooker-Recipes.  I like these recipes because they have reviews and include nutritional information for each recipe.

I hope that you will take a moment to plan a meal to cook in your slow cooker.  You will be glad you did when you come home from work and smell the delicious dinner that is hot and ready to eat.

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Get your Groupon Coupon!

My favorite fairly new discount website is groupon.com.  This website offers discounts of usually a minumim of 50% off of the value of the daily offer.  How it works is that there is a daily coupon for a local business such as a local restaurant, wine bar, tour, museum, experience or merchandise in Seattle.  The offer will be for $40 worth of food or merchandise at the discounted price of $20.  Then, if enough people buy the groupon, then the deal goes through and you get your discount.  You then get your certificate e-mailed to you and you just print it to take with you and enjoy your discount.  You do have to check to make sure that follow any restrictions.  You may need reservations or there may be a restriction that you can’t use it on Valentine’s Day.  However, in my experience, I have not seen a lot of restrictions for the groupons.

Groupon offers daily coupons in many major cities.  You can look up any city you like such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. or San Francisco and they will have a deal of the day as well.  If you are travelling, it is nice to watch the groupon offers for that city for a few weeks so you can see if they offer anything that you might want to do while you are visiting.  I recently did this on a trip to New York City.  I got $60 worth of food for $30 in a restaurant I probably would have never found and it was the best meal of our entire trip.  Groupon also offers tourist type activities such as discounts on local attractions.  You might be able to get a tour or museum ticket that you were going to buy anyway but you can get for half-price.  You can also become a tourist in your own city by taking a tour that maybe you have been meaning to do but haven’t gotten around to it.  If you can do it at half-price, it would make it all the easier to go.

You can sign up on the groupon website to get a daily e-mail of the deal of the day.  It just takes a few seconds to glance at the e-mail and see if it is something your interested in or not.  The groupon usually expires at the end of the day unless there is limited availability and it sells out.  I have only seen that a few times.  So by all means, get your groupon!

 

 

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Being organized = less stress

Do you find yourself stressed and rushed as you leave for work? A little evening planning can alleviate the stress and get you to work early instead of late. The more that you do the night before to prepare for your day, the easier the morning can be for you. For example if you go to the gym after work, pack your gym bag the night before. That way, you won’t be running around trying to find your favorite gym shoes before you have had your morning cup of coffee. Another great tip is to make your lunch and your snacks for the day and have them ready to grab on your way out the door in the morning. You can save money by not eating out and it will probably be healthier too.

If deciding what to wear is always a challenge or takes up too much time, you can decide on your outfit and lay out your clothes the night before. This is also a great tip for children that struggle with getting out of the door on time. Another tip for kids is making sure that their backpacks with their home work, permission slips and gym clothes are packed and ready to go. Leaving those things to gather in the morning can lead to forgotten items or documents. Being organized helps make responsibility easy for children and hopefully their day will go better too.

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The Battle against being over-scheduled

Being a personal assistant, I love helping busy people organize their lives and make things easier by taking tasks off of their plate. That being said, I believe that it is always good to re-evaluate what you have in your daily, weekly and monthly schedule. We can become slaves to our schedule and it is good to ask yourself occasionally, “Is this really how I wanted to be spending my time?” If you are involved in a community organization and find that it has started taking up much more time than you originally committed to, it could be time to re-assess and set some new boundaries. It is important to keep your activities in check so that you are not exhausted which could lead to you neglecting your mental and/or physical health. If you are giving more of yourself than you are comfortable with, it could also result in feelings of being taken advantage of and being under appreciated. It is good to re-set your boundaries with whatever activity it is that has started to take over your day. If you do that, you will find you enjoy the activity more and you will have more time for yourself which gives you a more balanced and healthy you!!

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Limiting your to-do list to get it done

I recently took a look at my to-do list and found that it was always too long. My solution was to break my list down into smaller portions and do a little bit each day. I limit my to-do list for each day to five things. This was a workable solution to the never ending list and found that I had a sense of accomplishment each day when the list was done. The beauty of a personal assistant is being able to finish your to-do list by having your personal assistant do the things that you would otherwise spend a lot of your free time getting done. There are some things that you will have to ultimately do yourself like renew your driver’s license. However, wouldn’t it be nice to have your personal assistant tell you what day of the week and when the Department of Motor Vehicles lines are the shortest so you can get it done fast. In addition, a personal assistant can help you prioritize and manage your to-do list so you don’t have to.