Sanity saver in the kitchen: prep before baking (or cooking)

I love to bake. And I tend to get excited and easily distracted while doing so, and thus I found this tip from Complete Organizing Solutions to be right on target. Prepping everything ahead of time can really help, especially if you get interrupted by kids, the doorbell, the phone, cats... It prevents you from getting 2/3 of the way through and finding out you don't have enough of something. Or even worse, forgetting where you are in the recipe and forgetting a key ingredient (or adding something twice, not that I've ever done that...).

Yes it gets a few more bowls and such dirty, but the sanity you save far outweighs the extra work. Plus, I find that measuring everything out ahead of time makes me feel like I'm on my own baking TV show. A dash of this, a cup of that, and ta-da! Awesome.

Happy baking,
-amy

Corralling loose tea

My husband and I have recently developed a love of loose tea. We've always been tea drinkers to some extent, but we've really enjoyed thinking"outside the tea bag" and exploring the different varieties available. Switching to loose tea over bagged tea has cut down on tea-related trash at our house too (the bags and their wrappers can add up!) but presented us with a new challenge. How do we store this beautiful and delicious tea so we can easily use it?

Well, we've stumbled across a great solution that's working so far. We purchased clear-lidded, magnetic containers at IKEA usually meant for spices and such. You can purchase metal strips to put on your walls and then stick these containers to the strips (they also make larger magnetic bins you can put utensils and other items in). This is a great way to store things within sight and reach without taking up valuable counter space!

Instead of using the magnetic strips, you can use other metal objects such as a range hood or refrigerator, which is what we're doing. Now we have our 6 favorite teas within quick and easy reach right above the stove. I even used our label maker to indicate which is which. Check it out!

And now to enjoy a hot cuppa...
-amy