It's cloudy, damp, rainy, icky out this morning.

I'm dying to snap a few pictures of the fabric I just got from Spoonflower, designed by my son for a customer. Pretty dang cool, but this dark weather just isn't conducive. The sun'll come out tomorrow ...

In the meantime, three of my favorite things right now, in no particular order. I have no affiliations here, just love.


Electric Floor Sweeper

I bought this this summer and within 10 minutes of opening the package I was madly in love and continue to be.

The Bissell 3-in-1 Vacuum. I'm not sure what the "3" stands for, but I use it on wood floors, rugs, carpet, and furniture. Pretty much, now that our downstairs floors are wood, this has replaced the vacuum cleaner entirely. LOVE it. It weighs next to nothing, takes up no space, and lacks an overabundance of breakable plastic parts (it's plastic, but less of it).

I used a broom yesterday to pick up some big paper scraps, that was the first time I've brought out the broom since July.

I linked to Amazon, but it was recently on sale in pink and blue at our local WalMart for $19.xx. I'm not sure why I didn't pick up a spare.


Pink Pens 



For years I've checked schoolwork with a red pen. And for years I'd dig and search for my red pen because the kids would snag it.

Solution: Pink pens. The boys want nothing to do with this nonsense and pink pens check work just as easily as red. I haven't lost a pen yet this schoolyear. The brand of pink pen is not the important part, just that it's a nice bright pink pen with nice bright pink ink.


Chocolate Covered Katie

I've visited the cooking blog Chocolate Covered Katie over the years but had kind of forgotten about it until a late night of Pinterest browsing reminded me of it.

Family faves include:

Chocolate Bar Pie Keep it a secret, but the main ingredient is Tofu. I don't like Tofu at all, but I like this pie, especially after it has a few hours to cool and set (much better, in our opinions, than "just made")

Black Bean Brownies Again, fail to mention the main ingredient until after the taste tests. I didn't have regular chocolate chips so I used white chocolate chips, it was decadent. The second time around I accidentally forgot the chips altogether, don't do that - the brownies where nowhere near as decadent and good (though they were still eaten).


Back to schoolwork on a dreary morning .... What are a few of your favorite things?