I have to share a new great find from Target….the Sonia Kashuk line.  This line has everything from lip glosses (in wonderful shades…just about any color you would want on your lips), eyelash curlers, and numerous applicator brushes that are – surprisingly – fine quality.

Their packaging is simple, which I like, I think too often more effort is put into the packaging of a cosmetic instead of making sure what’s inside is of good quality.

Who is the actual person – Sonia Kashuk? I’d heard about her in other magazines before, but never realized that she brought 25 years of industry experience with her when she decided to bring her line to Target.  That is pretty impressive and makes me like Target even more than I already did.

I can’t find any drawbacks to this product line, my favorite product in this line is “how to create a smokey eye” …my friend prefers the other one which is called “how to look organically natural”…either way, you can’t lose!

Overall? Try it out!

The children are running around the kitchen. The dog is barking it at the door and dinner should have been on the table thirty minutes ago. It’s a common scenario in many households come dinner time.

The reason that most meal times don’t always go smoothly may because dinner the last thing on your mind and when it’s time to get food on the table, everything else goes haywire in your house.

We have all been there, but with a little bit of meal-planning, you can be serving up delicious meals the family will be glad to gather around the table for.

Meal planning can make it easy to get dinner on the table in no time on a busy night. Not only do you save time, but it’s economical too. You buy only what you need, avoid the drive-through line up and you can concentrate on using fresh ingredients – instead of prepackages items from the grocery store. Every mother should have a set way to plan all of their meals in advance for the week…it’s a true life-saver.

The first step to successful meal planning is to sit down before you head out to the grocery store for the week (or sign up for the affordable Dine Without Whine Menu Planning Service & they’ll make that plan for you) .

It is best to plan what food you will need to have on had before you head to the grocery store when planning the week’s meals. Meal planning will make good use of a well stocked pantry and will only need a regular amount of grocery shopping. By having your meals for the week planned out, you will be able to write a grocery list that you can stick to (Dine Without Whine actually puts your grocery list together for you too). This will help you to save money by keeping you from not buying extra food that you will not use.

As you plan your week’s meals, make sure that you think about ways you can cook once and make two meals out of it. It’s easy to do a lot of cooking on the weekends so that you can do minimum cooking on busy week days. You can grill up chicken breasts on Sunday and use them in pasta on one night and then in fajitas another night. There are many ways that you can reuse the cooking from one night to make the next meal that much easier.

Meal planning can also help to cut down on your prep time in the kitchen when you are cooking. By knowing the meals that you are going to cook in advance, you can wash and cut vegetables when you bring them home from the grocery store. The simple act of pre-measuring the vegetables that you would need for a meal will cut out a lot of additional cooking time.

To be successful with your meal planning, you will want to take into account a lot of factors when you plan your meals for the week. One of the most important things to keep in mind is your weekly schedule of evening activities. The nights when your family has many activities planned are not the evenings to make meals that take along time to prepare. It will be those nights that you will want to use the meals that use the food that you already prepared on the weekends.

Meal planning is a skill that will take some getting used to. The first couple of times that you attempt to plan out your meals for the week, you will have some missteps along the way. After awhile it will become second nature to plan all of your meals in advance and you will wonder why you did not start to do it sooner.

To make your meal planning a whole lot easier, sign up for you 1 ¢ no-risk trial at Dine Without Whine. You and your hungry family will be glad you did.

Don’t you love this time of year? With the new arrangement of t.v. seasons and odd things like summer break and winter break…it’s more confusing than when a college switches from terms to semesters.  At least with t.v. shows there are tons of commercials telling you of their return.  LOST will gear up for the second half of last season, not even sure what it’s called anymore, but at any rate – it’s back.

Now, if I could just remember where we even left off? That is the other trouble with dropping shows off and then picking them up again.  You want me to remember the little details of the island while I’ve been living over in the land of HEROES these past few months? I am going to have to totally switch gears.

One good thing about a January restart of LOST is that I will be able to have a weekly escape to sun, wind, surf, shine, etc.  I am really hoping this season of LOST gives us some answers and moves at a little quicker pace than last season.  Several times during last season, I contemplated not watching it at all anymore.  Being that both LOST and HEROES has the same creator, I am forever hooked to both shows and yo-yo between the two trying to keep up on all the story lines.

Every time I am on the brink of dropping one show, something happens to keep me tuning in.  When will the madness end.  It might, at this point, be easier and even fun if they were to merge HEROES and LOST into one show.  I know that sounds a bit crazy, but with Hiro’s powers, I think he could transport us all to the island.  It sure would save me some time.

If you get a chance to try (on your male spouse) Tim McGraw’s new cologne “McGraw” (how original) – go ahead and skip that.

A coworker brought in a bottle that she had purchased for her husband, they both hated the scent (reminds me of a barn stall in need of cleaning – perhaps with a hint of potpourri mixed in).  She passed the cologne around and one by one we all emphatically stated “I don’t want my husband to smell like that!”

The COTY company (makers of frangrance “hits” like Exclamation!, Wild Musk, and Stetson) is responsible for this McGraw creation.

I think they missed the mark on this one.  If you’d like to find out for yourself, it is available for purchase at Walgreens, online, and various thrift stores.

What better way to tell your sweetie “I Love You” than with some fresh baked cookies? Give these sweet treats a try this Valentine’s Day. Cupid himself would be impressed by these yummy creations. They are sure to be a hit with your Sweetheart, Children, Neighbors or anyone else special to you as well.  Don’t forget to get the kids involved!  I still have memories of making Valentine’s Day Cookies as a child.

Heart Shaped Cookies
Make you favorite roll-out sugar cookie recipe. Use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut them. Bake, frost and decorate to your heart’s content. You can sprinkle them with red or pink crystallized sugar before you bake them, or frost and sprinkle with some tiny candied hearts or pink sprinkles after they are baked. Use icing in a tube to write a message or draw a picture on the cookie.

Cookie Lollipop
Heart Shaped cookie lollipops are always a big hit. Start with basic sugar cookie dough. Roll it out to about 1/8th inch thickness (place the dough between two sheets of wax paper to keep the dough from sticking). Use a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut an equal amount of hearts. Place half a bamboo skewer, a lollipop stick (found at craft stores) or a Popsicle stick on the bottom half of the hearts. Place the remaining hearts on top and press them firmly together. Bake according to your recipe instructions and decorate as desired.

Tip – soak the skewers or Popsicle sticks in water before placing them on the cookies to keep them from getting burnt.

Valentine’s Rice Krispies Treats
Make Rice Krispies Treats and while the mixture is still warm use a large heart shaped cookie cutter to cut them out. If you can’t find a cookie cutter of the right size, draw a heart on cardboard and use it as a template. Just lay it on the sheet of Rice Krispies Treats and trace around it with a knife. For even more Valentine fun add a few drops of red food coloring to the marshmallow mixture for a pink version of the sticky treat.

Cookie Dough Jar
Place the dry ingredients of your favorite cookie recipe in a pretty jar. Write the recipe for the cookie on a heart shaped piece of paper or a valentine’s note card. Tie it with a pretty bow around the jar. Make the glass jar even more special by drawing little red hearts on it with a permanent marker.  These are so cute and easy!

Bouquet of Cookies
Bake up some of your favorite cookies. Get a pretty basket and line it with a red or pink cloth napkin. Arrange the homemade cookies in the basket. If you’d like, you can also add some heart shaped cookie cutters, Valentine’s Day themed sprinkles, or some hot chocolate mix.   Another option would be to use a piece of floral foam and arrange some decorated Cookie Lollipops within the basket and fill the bottom with Hershey’s Kisses or other Valentine Candy.

All of these cookie ideas for Valentine’s Day make wonderful gifts for a special someone that has a personal touch. They are sure to be appreciated, after all, who doesn’t like cookies?

Christine Steendahl Is The Founder Of Dine Without Whine – The Number One Online Source For Affordable And Family Friendly Weekly Meal Planning.  Eliminate Your Dinner Hour Stress And Re-Discover The Pleasure Of The Dinner Hour!  For A Free Sample Menu And Grocery List Visit http://www.dinewithoutwhine.com/info

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Now collectively known as “The Pratts” – yup, it’s been reported everywhere that Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag (of “The Hills” fame) have eloped.  Of course they did.  Against Heidi’s mother’s wishes.  Of course it was.  The wedding was apparently haphazardly thrown together at the resort the couple were staying at.  It was a last-minute decision to get married, the entire thing costing less than $5,000.

Apparently the brunt of the planning was done by the resort’s wedding planner.  What I find most interesting is that all the details made it into several magazines, complete with photos.  Makes a person wonder how impromptu the event really was.  I mean as self-popular as Spencer & Heidi have made themselves, I doubt the papparazi is following them around like they’re the latest Brangelina.

I’d say give them a few months and then they will have their own newlywed reality show and then maybe pop out a kid for more ratings.  On the kid topic, when Heidi was recently asked about having children, she joked that she was having “quadruplets! No, quintuplets!” and then went on to state that “you’ve got to keep your youth, your body, for as long as you can”.

Ahh silly girl, probably would be pointless to tell her that one, she isn’t made of the stuff to handle quads or quints.  Two, it isn’t until you lose yourself in your children that you truly gain the fountain of youth.  Three, our bodies all suck by the time we die anyway, regardless of whether we’ve had kids or not.  At least the world will be temporarily spared of a Spencer-Heidi clone while she still has this view on life.

Ingredients:

* 2 1/2 cups boiling water
* 2 large pkgs. any red flavor gelatin
* 1 cup cold milk (2%)
* 1 small pkg. vanilla flavor instant pudding mix

Directions:

Stir boiling water into gelatin in large bowl at least 3 minutes until completely dissolved. Cool 30 minutes at room temperature.

Pour milk into medium bowl. Add pudding mix. Beat with wire whisk 1 minute. Quickly pour into gelatin. Stir with wire whisk until well blended. Pour into 13X9 pan. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm.

Dip bottom of pan in warm water about 15 seconds. Cut into decorative shapes with heart-shaped cookie cutters all the way through gelatin. Lift from pan.

Now HEROES is on break! Fearing that HEROES was turning into another “LOST” for me with their never ending turns, tricks, surprises, and “gotcha!” moments, I was kind of glad to see them take a season break.  Or whatever it’s called now.

I am still a huge HEROES fan but I feel that I understand less, not more, of what’s going on.  I find the additional online episodes, online voting, and voting to create a new character kind of reminiscent of what some shows do when they are struggling in ratings.

This kind of sideline “extras” feel out of place for a show that has pretty much everything going for it, it’s also a distraction for us base fans who are already committed and don’t want the sideshow gimmicks.  Oh well, hopefully the break won’t be so long that I forget where we were in the storyline.

Who doesn’t love fudge? Here’s a recipe with a little tangy raspberry added.

Ingredients:

* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
* 1/2 cup milk
* 2 tablespoons butter, melted
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 cup brown sugar, packed
* 3/4 cup boiling water
* 1/2 cup raspberries
* 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 medium ramekins or 4 by 4-inch baking dishes, and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and 1/4 cup cocoa. Whisk in the milk, butter, and vanilla, just until smooth. Divide the batter between the 2 baking dishes.

In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar and remaining 1/4 cup cocoa, and sprinkle evenly over the batter. Carefully pour 3/4 cup boiling water over each dish and add about 8 raspberries to each dish. Bake 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving. Top with a dollop of whipped cream and a few fresh raspberries.