Hurricane season light hack

i know when the power goes out, i still have that instinct to reach for the light switch. 

just got an idea that will work with that instinct. 

for summer storms and hurricane season i always keep some little LED keychain lights around in drawers and on shelves, in most rooms. 

because fumbling around in a dark room on a shelf is such a good idea, that they've been there for months now, just hanging out.

Hello hooks!

hi, my name is catastrophegirl, and i have a flat surface problem

as in, if it's flat, i'll pile things on it. and leave them there. so a few years ago when i bought a house, i started trying to move things onto the OTHER flat surface - the vertical one. specifically, i bought a house for the purpose of being able to make holes in my walls and hang things from them

which all comes down to hooks.

the ginger cookie recipe

i had lost this for a while, what with moving bunches and never unboxing all my books.
but i recently found the cookbook i wrote it in, in the margins next to the recipe i modified it from and a couple of people had been asking

so here's the ginger cookie recipe that people still ask about 2 decades later, that i used to have to make by the quadruple batch [20 dozen] when i took them to school because everyone wanted a handful

box cutting in my dreams

i had a dream. no, really. my dog, ash, has a milk bone for breakfast every day. i bought a new box and kept forgetting to take it out of my car. yesterday morning i still hadn't gotten it out of the car, and was running late for work. so when i reached in the box and it was completely empty i just gave him a handful of dog chow instead and thought "i'll bring that in tonight when i get home" except, i didn't. and when i was drifting off to sleep last night i remembered and thought "damnit, got to get the milk bones out of the car...zzzzzzzz"

great minds think alike?

better that than getting huffy and thinking 3M ripped me off right? i'm sure stuff like this is exactly why they refused to discuss my request for them to make dry erase label tape on a roll all those years ago.
and yes, i totally put dry erase label tape on a roll in the public domain over a year ago, so let it go. you could probably patent it but it wouldn't hold up to a challenge in a court of law with documentation.
i don't care actually, i just want it to exist.
like these post it pockets from 3M





















is this the point where you are saying "WTF is she talking about?"
oh, right you might not be a regular reader to recognize that i totally did this last september only i don't have access to 3M's reusable sticky.
http://whitehothammer.blogspot.com/2010/09/argh-look-at-all-those-little-packets.html

if i DID have access to it, there'd be no stopping me. muahahahahaha!

repeated blows to the head

of the hammer that is, that old white hot hammer of inspiration. you may have previously read about the time i found out about mason jars working with your blender base
i still use that all the time. and the jars for my instant coffee [before they switched the jar, grr!]

and i have no idea why this didn't occur to me earlier but i finally realized another aspect to that little hack tonight. 

the best thing: sliced bread

magic thrift store shopping powers activate!
wandering through my favorite thrift store a few weeks ago i found a zojirushi bbcc-n15 1.5lb loaf bread machine for $7.










i thought at first it had all its bits because it came with the manual and spare washers and repair instructions... a friend told me i was missing the paddle. ok, how bad can it be, right? i got the machine for $7 and as long as a paddle was less than the complete set up on ebay [it's a discontinued model] then i'd be ahead of the game.