brown sugar, cinnamon & apple cookies

Posted on May 9, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

Last week I posted about my new Brown Sugar Bear and how it rejuvenated my previously hard-packed brown sugar. {yay!}

Today I used my newly softened brown sugar to make cookies based on a recipe that came on the packaging of the Brown Sugar Bear. Here is the original recipe:

– 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
– 1 cup brown sugar, packed
– 2 cups flour
– 1 egg
– 1 tsp vanilla
– 1 tsp baking soda
– 1/8 tsp salt
– nuts to taste {I used slivered almonds}

I made a couple modifications:
– I added 1 tsp cinnamon
– I substituted 1/3 cup applesauce for the egg

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream butter through sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. {I used no sugar added granny smith applesauce instead of the egg}

3. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to the sugar mixture. Mix well.

4. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet.

5. Bake for 6-8 minutes until golden-brown.

They turned out delicious! Smelled divine while they were baking and tasted even better, especially warm from the oven. And they could not have been easier to make.

Have a Wonderful Wednesday!
-Dallas

marvelous monday: the midnight stroll around the neighborhood

Posted on May 8, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

Ever since I’ve been focused on making my Mondays {and every day} marvelous, I’ve been able to appreciate them much more and find moments to cherish and be grateful for even in the midst of busy days. Still, sometimes life feels even more chaotic than normal. Sometimes when I hear the alarm blaring on Monday morning, truly signaling the end of a fun & relaxing weekend, it’s hard for me to wake up and seize the day. Sometimes we all have those tired/headachey/blah days that feel like a series of one spilled-glass-of-milk after another.

Today was an especially busy Monday for me. My “to do” list included: finish up my grading, pack to head home to California for my brother’s college graduation {woo hoo Greg! Fight on!} and get ready for my Fifth Annual Youth Writing Camp coming up in a couple weeks, not to mention regular end-of-semester stuff like meeting with students, saying goodbye to friends who I’ll miss for the summer, and squeezing in loads of laundry and dishes so as not to leave my apartment a gross mess while I’m away for a month in California…

So tonight, I stepped away from my overheated laptop and went for a walk around the neighborhood.

There’s something really peaceful about walking through quiet, darkened streets in the summer air. The streetlights hum, the crickets chirp, and the air is fresh and cool against my skin. I’ve always loved staying awake late — it feels like a magic time, when the rest of the world is asleep but I am still awake. It is my favorite time to daydream.

It was the perfect marvelous ending to an otherwise crazy-busy day!

flour & sugar storage

Posted on May 4, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

I am so excited to share my new flour and sugar containers with you today! {the ones I gave you a peek at on Wednesday}

I love to bake, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking through my disorganized kitchen cabinet of baking supplies!

I decided that this week was time for a change. Not just for aesthetic reasons, but also practical ones: it was cumbersome to open the plastic baggies I kept my flour and sugar in to try to keep them fresh. Flour and sugar would inevitably spill onto the counter, making a mess.

Thanks to some inspiration from some other organization bloggers, I decided to invest in pretty containers to keep my flour and sugar fresh and neat. I found these online at The Container Store. I chose the glass canisters because I loved the timeless look — my pantry shelves are not very tall so I planned to display the canisters on my countertop, and I wanted something pretty and classic looking.

I got an 80 oz canister for the flour and two 32 oz canisters for the sugar and brown sugar. I also like these canisters because they have wide enough openings to reach in with measuring cups and take scoops out.

Then today, after washing the jars with soap and water and letting them dry overnight, all I had to do was pour my flour and sugar {including my newly softened brown sugar!} into each jar and press down on the sealed-tight lids.

Now I’m more eager than ever to get baking! Stay tuned next week when I try out the new recipe I got for brown sugar/ cinnamon/ apple cookies!

Happy weekend,
Dallas
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Time: 15 mins
Cost: $22.00 ($9.99 for the 80 oz, $5.99 for each 32 oz one)

brown sugar bear <3

Posted on May 2, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

I like cooking in general, but I think my ultimate culinary love is baking. I simply love to bake. Banana bread, pumpkin pies, berry muffins, brownies, cookies, cakes — to me, baked goods are filled with care and sweetness and love.

I was going to bake banana bread the other night, but when I went to scoop out some brown sugar I had a problem: it was hard as a rock!

Ack! Would I have to toss it out and get a whole new package? It seemed like such a waste, and I hate to be wasteful.

After some online sleuthing, I found a solution: the Brown Sugar Bear!

The Brown Sugar Bear is a small terra cotta figure that promises to keep brown sugar moist {or bring rock-hard brown sugar back to life} if you soak it in water and then place it in your brown sugar container. You can also use it to keep salt, spices or crackers/chips dry if you dry the bear out in the oven first.

So my first step was the soak the Brown Sugar Bear in water for 20 minutes:

Next, I placed it in my package of unusable brown sugar and sealed it up overnight.

The next morning, it was like magic — my brown sugar was wonderfully soft again! So I poured it out of the bag and into my new container, and made sure to put my new magic Brown Sugar Bear on top before I sealed the lid on.

Isn’t the little guy adorable?? I could not be happier with this purchase!

Next week, stay tuned for a new recipe: brown sugar cookies! {It came with the Brown Sugar Bear and I can’t wait to try it out}

Meanwhile, on Friday I’ll give you the full tour of my new flour and sugar containers that you got a peek at today.

-Dallas
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Time: 5 mins
Cost: $3.50

marvelous monday: guest post

Posted on April 30, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

Today I’m including below an excerpt from an email I received from my friend Rajiv in response to my original post on my idea for celebrating “Marvelous Mondays” every week:

Dallas, regarding your essay on Marvelous Mondays, here’s a thought : how about regarding each Monday as the start of a New Week?

Starting with that premise, we have :

Oh, if it’s a New Week coming up, perhaps I should make some resolutions for the New Week on Sunday (or earlier).

These resolutions will concretize the slice of my long-term goals that I want to accomplish that week.

This renewed commitment to my long-term goals will give me that extra carpe diem zest come Monday morning.

I will make my Monday Marvelous by taking a big bite out of my resolutions for that New Week, and by reminding myself repeatedly that I must actualize all my resolutions before the week runs out.

Happy New Week! Carpe diem!

Thank you, Rajiv, for these truly inspiring insights! I love your phrase “carpe diem zest” — that is something I want to aspire to every day!

Have a great week, everyone!
-Dallas

hoping to never again lose my keys…

Posted on April 27, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

A quick Friday organizational tip for you today!

If you’re like me, you sometimes misplace {ahem, lose} your keys. I used to put them in a little ceramic bowl, but sometimes I would forget, or the bowl would get lost on my table under papers and mail. Then, when I added a gym key and office key and car keys to the mix, the bowl seemed suddenly too small. What to do??

When I was putting on a necklace the other day, looking at my new necklace organization, I got an idea: why not use hooks for keys, too?

I chose a little bigger size hooks than the ones I used for my necklaces. I like these small yet strong metal hooks and how they can hold multiple sets of keys if need be.

I hung up the hooks on this narrow strip of wall right beside my front door, so it’s the first thing I see when I walk in and the last thing I see before I leave the apartment on the way to my car. It’s simple, quick, and easy to integrate into my everyday routine.

Now I’m off to Chicago. {woo hoo} Have a terrific weekend, everyone!

Dallas
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Time spent: 5 minutes
Cost: $4.00

pots & pans & cutting boards … oh my!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

When I moved across the country from California to Indiana, I was fortunate to have some generous relatives who donated their gently used pots and pans and cooking supplies for my new life on my own. Then some friends moved away and gave me a bunch of their pots and pans, too. The result was a disorganized, delicately balanced heap that threatened to avalanche every time I opened the cabinet to get something out:

Yikes. Something needed to be done.

Then, I came across this neat organizer when I was browsing through some of my favorite organization blogs.

I love this product because it’s sturdy enough to hold heavy pans, and the slots are wide enough to hold multiple cookie sheets or cutting boards.

My first step was to take everything out of our pots & pans cabinet and sort through which ones I really like and use a lot. Items like the salad spinner, cake pan and large casserole dish I don’t use very often but still want to keep went into the storage closet. Other pots and pans I don’t use were put in a box to donate to Goodwill this weekend.

Next, I wiped down the cabinet and put the organizer into place. Then all I had to do was group cutting boards and pans together in the slots of the organizer and neatly place the remaining pots, strainers, pans, etc. around it. Here is the final result:

I am SO pleased! It is amazingly easy to find exactly what I need, and makes me a whole lot more inspired to cook at home rather than go for take-out. All it took was a little time and one $7.89 investment to make this cabinet go from stressful mess to happy space.

What are some of your favorite inexpensive organizing products?

Till soon,
Dallas
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Cost: less than $8.00
Time: 15-20 mins

This post is linked up with the Organize It! Monthly Organizing Link Party!

marvelous monday: the giveaway p.b.&j sandwich

Posted on April 23, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Mine was a whirlwind of grading, writing, helping out a friend by acting a bit part in her student film, going to an art museum in Indianapolis, and {oh yeah} a little bit of organizing! I have a couple small but fun projects I’m excited to share with you later this week.

For today, I was thinking of something I could do to make this Monday marvelous, and I remembered last Monday when I walked past a homeless man on my way to class. Back in my undergrad days at the University of Southern California I volunteered every week packing lunches to distribute to the homeless. That was my inspiration for today.

This morning, while packing my own lunch, I set aside an extra of each item: granola bar, apple, crackers. Then I made an extra p.b.&j sandwich:

I wrote a note that said, Hope you enjoy this p.b.&j sandwich for lunch! Have a great day! Then I slipped everything inside a plastic bag and took it with me on my way to class.

When I reached the homeless man standing on the same corner I’d seen him on last week, he asked, “Got a quarter?”

“I made this for you,” I replied. He seemed very surprised when I handed him the homemade lunch. It was a cold and windy day in West Lafayette today, but I felt warm from the inside-out with happiness.

I must say, it was the best Monday morning I’ve had in quite a while!

Have a lovely and loving week, everyone —
Dallas
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Time spent: 5 minutes
Cost: Nothing I didn’t already have on hand

toiletry organization

Posted on April 20, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

My bathroom is a space that gets cluttered quickly. I have tried storing toiletries in the cabinet under the counter — lotions, soaps, hair products, band-aids, cough syrup — but it inevitably becomes jumbled, things get knocked over, and it’s cumbersome to stoop down on my knees below my bathroom sink, looking for my hair mousse. So gradually products will migrate to my bathroom countertop, which makes it cluttered and hard to keep clean. Not to mention I’ll end up buying new bottles and boxes of products that I already have because they get lost in the back of the cabinet and I forget I have them. {Hello, three half-empty bottles of Pepto Bismol} Not good for my mental space OR for my wallet.

But recently I was over at my friend Katie’s for girls night and, while using her bathroom, I discovered she had hung a shoe organizer over the back of the door. However, instead of shoes, she used it to store toiletries. Brilliant! As soon as I got home, I decided to shamelessly copy her idea.

On Amazon I found an inexpensive shoe organizer with clear pockets, making it easy to see what is inside.

It arrived earlier this week, and last night I unpacked it from its packaging, slipped the included hooks into place, and hung it over the back of the door. Then all I had to do was take out my toiletries from their various storage places around the bathroom and slide them into their own respective pockets.

Hooray! Everything is neatly organized, and I even have some extra pockets to spare for any new toiletries I find/buy!

Do you have any special organizing tricks for bathroom supplies/toiletries?

Happy Friday!
-Dallas

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Cost: $12.00
Time spent: 15 minutes

the linen closet

Posted on April 18, 2012 by dallaswoodburn

The linen closet isn’t the most glamorous of spaces, but it’s an important one. Mine has become even more important since my introduction to freezing cold Indiana winters, because it’s where all my blankets live! {And I have a LOT of blankets!}

But my linen closet had become a jumbled mess.

As a result, many of my blankets and towels have stopped living in my closet and are more likely to be flung haphazardly across this poor chair:

Every time I passed this chair it made me feel bad. I knew it was time to do something about it!

My first step was clearing out the closet and deciding how to organize each shelf. I chose to put extra sheets, pillowcases, and not-much-used blankets on the very top shelf. I folded them all neatly and stacked them up on the shelf.

Next, I designated the middle shelf for towels. I have always just folded and stacked my towels, but I’ve read on some other organization blogs that rolling your towels can keep them more accessible, better organized, and also save space! So that’s what I did. I made one section for my big bath towels, another section for hand towels and kitchen towels.

On the third shelf, I folded and stacked the blankets I use more often — the ones that are in hiding now that the weather is getting warmer, but that I will definitely want to pull out again next November when the snow returns!

Here is what my newly organized closet looks like: