Free flowers....seeds and volunteers

Am I the only one that gets free seed packets in the mail? I get a packet from a heating company every year with a Christmas card. I get another packet from a national publishing company and still more from friends and neighbors when they get those 'party favor' seed papers. Normally I just don't use them since I have my gardens planned out way in advance. This year though I decided to try them out. 

I planted each packet in a separate pot (planning on thinning later)  and sat back and waited. The results were a little unexpected. Well, I expected the seed papers to not work at all and that was exactly what happened! 

Just from looking at them I could only see maybe 3 seeds on each.....the odds were against that one to start with. Plus I know they're made with wet paper mush type product. Any time you get seeds wet they run the risk of starting to germinate, so for them to be pressed into paper and dry up would be the end of that sprout.

MYO party drink station

My daughters Graduation party was this week and I was stressing out about so many things! Teenagers don't RSVP as you probably know, so getting a close number on how many were coming was proving impossible. Food was one thing....if I bought too much I could freeze it or just send it home with the party-goers. That left me with drinks to figure out and I didn't want to end up with cases of soda left over. If it was sitting here after the party the kids would want to drink it and I wouldn't want to waste it and we just didn't need that! 

I had bought a few cases of different sodas but really didn't want to buy more, especially since last year at oldest sons graduation party there had been so many 1/2 empty cans left everywhere. What a waste! The one thing we would drink if it was left over is water. I don't buy bottled water for home drinking, but we take it with us everywhere so it would get used (plus it doesn't go flat!) 

Now, how can I convince the part guests all to drink water??? I was puzzling it over when I remembered that I had lots of Crystal Light and Kool-Aid mixes then recalled a pin about decorating water bottles that I had pinned to Pinterest and this is what I came up with.

Cherry Pie Cookies

All American mini cherry pie cookies!

This idea was an odd development, that's for sure. I ended up making mini Cherry Pie cookies, but I started out with 2 things:
1) something that was ready to expire and 
2) something that never tasted as good as it looked.
Weird right? 

Number 1 was a package of ready to bake pie crust that had been on sale super-cheap. I bought 2, used 1 right away and the other one sat for awhile till I noticed it was getting close to the expiration date. 

DIY Foaming hand soap refill

I understand big business, really I do. Maybe that's why I think the whole 'foaming hand soap' thing is utterly brilliant. Have you bought one of those soaps? Shake the bottle a little. It's almost all water in there. The foaming mechanism is in the bottle top....there's not some special ingredient in the soap!

It's just really watered down, regular hand soap. Plus kids love using this stuff! It shoots out like the 'whipped cream of hand soap'. Pure awesomeness, right?

This stuff can be expensive though. Add that to the fact that a moms most uttered phrase is probably "wash your hands" and you can spend a good deal of money on something that gets rinsed right down the drain.