Recently I have made some great discoveries. I feel like a scientist discovering a new plant species every time I try something new, but it’s just typical stuff that most people in the generation ahead of mine take for granted.

Prepare to be astonished:

1.  Tea kettles are awesome! My mom and dad gave me a tea kettle for Christmas, and it is one of the greatest inventions ever. At our daughter’s first birthday party, I heated up the tea kettle and everyone had a choice of various delicious green teas, hot chocolate, or… coffee! What?! But coffee must be made in a french press or a percolator or a coffee maker! No longer true, folks. You can buy coffee in individual tea bags! Genius!

Yum! And it's much healthier than microwave popcorn!

2.  Popcorn doesn’t always have to come out of the microwave. So I always knew that movie theatres had those big popcorn machines, and my mom had an air popper when we were growing up, but most of the time when I made popcorn, it came out of the microwave. No longer true! I made the recent amazing discovery that you can pop popcorn in a pan with a little oil on the stovetop. Genius! Here is the “recipe” I used… yes, I did have to look up instructions on how to do it. :/

3.  Flat cloth diapers are the most useful baby item I’ve had to date. Flat cloth diapers can be used as, well diapers, of course. I have a few that are reserved just for burp rags and snot rags, which is very useful this time of year. They are good as light blankets and nursing covers too. When I do use them as diapers, they wash up beautifully and are 100% cotton so they don’t retain any lingering stinks (a big plus because I’ve got the nose of a bloodhound). I’ve also heard that they are extremely useful for cleaning because they are lint-free. Whoever invented flat cloth diapers is a genius!

4.  Clothes come out looking cleaner if you separate lights from darks. Wow, my mom is smacking herself on the head right now, thinking, “Who raised this child?!” She always told me I should do this, but knowing and actually doing it are two different things. Anyway, when Peach was first born, she wore pink literally all the time, and all of a sudden her tiny pink baby clothes were looking dingy. I started separating, and voila, pretty pink jammies again!
5.  I can french braid my own hair… sort of. I spent a lot of my childhood french braiding doll hair, but I never tried it on myself until just a couple weeks ago. It doesn’t look great; it actually reminds me of the shake-out braid of the early 90’s (remember those?), but it gets a little better after each attempt.

Photo courtesy of allrecipes.com

6.  If you can read, you can cook. My wonderfully intelligent grandma always used to tell me this, and it is true. Sometimes you have to read and re-read (again and again sometimes in my case) to get the picture, but most of the time, my cooking turns out somewhere between okay to pretty darn good. Last week I made pulled pork cooked in the Crock Pot with root beer and it was a big hit with everyone in our little family. Click here for the recipe I found on Pinterest.