Here's The Scoop

Summer is finally here! I am excited to share this little teacher appreciation gift I whipped up for the kids' teachers. (BTW when did they grow so tall?)

We have a great local ice cream shop so I picked up some gift certificates and created this pithy little note for the girls to sign. 

You can even download them and use them for your personal use. Since my gift certificates where long, I printed them as 8x4 cards. (My store charges a few cents more for cards than standard photo prints, so if you are using gift cards you could save some money and down load the standard 6x4 size.)

 Click here to download the 8x4

Click here to download the 6x4

You can print them on your own. I like the feel of the heavier photo printing so I send them to the grocery store and pick them up a few minutes later.

(If you are looking for ways to keep your kids busy this summer, check out my favorite local events site www.calendarprinceton.com. I have the icon on my home screen I use it so much!)

Energy Star

What better day to think about energy consumption?  With today's projected high -3 (-35 wind chill) my furnace is working overtime to keep us comfortable.

We made it through Christmas without a huge jump in energy use and still came in 3rd place with our exterior lights. 

We've also made many energy improvements in the recent years,  but or utility bill still shows us as less efficient than our neighbors. Grrrr

One thing we haven't been willing to do is change from incandescent to CFL light bulbs.  There are many reasons we don't like CFL bulbs. Now there are LED and they are much more similar to incandescent. They operate outside in our extreme cold, instant brightness when the switch is flipped, more traditional appearance, no mercury, and the deal breaker available in soft white. Yes those warm amber tones trump the blue and green tones in our house. 

Sam's Club was running a special and the utility company was offering 50% rebate so I decided to switch out our most used fixtures. 

2 farthest are LED. You can see that they are brighter,
but the color is the same.

I was surprised by how big of a difference those few lights made! They are brighter, cheaper, supposedly last 20 years, and look the same, I am sold.  Going forward I will be replacing any broken bulb with a new LED. I even picked up 16 strings LED Christmas lights on sale. I got such great deals on those after Christmas that I got 100% rebate from the utility company on most of them! I have already gotten rid of most of the old strings, and will hopefully replace the remaining next year.

Dust Bunnies

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner for Smiley360 . All opinions are 100% mine.
**You can get a $3 off coupon here to try it too!

Now that the carpet is finally gone, I'm constantly dusting my floor. After 2 months I'm getting closer to finding that sweet spot for keeping it clean. 

As the flooring guys were finishing up I got an email from Smiley360 asking if I wanted to try a free sample of Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. Not wanting to do anything that would damage my newly refurbished floor I consulted my flooring guy.  He recommended against several brands that I knew and thought would be good, so I didn't want to take a chance on this brand I hadn't heard of.

He had high praise for Bona. It's the only brand he recommends and uses at his home. So I logged in and accepted the mission. Within a week I had a package of wet floor cleaning pads.

Daily dust  (That's what kids, a dog and fireplace cause daily)

For now my method is to dry Microfiber Cleaning Pad most days for general dust. I use the wet Bona cloths every week or so to keep the shine and remove any lingering shoe residue. When the Bona disposable cloths are gone, I will purchase Bona cleaner and use it with washable covers going forward. I like to avoid creating extra trash.

Sparkly and Clean

The product is good. It cleans without leaving a residue and doesn't make the floors dangerously slippery. Overall I am just so glad to have the carpet gone. My allergies and asthma are so much better!