Honey is just one of those kitchen staples that I seldom use by always have on hand. When I was a child, my mom would heat up honey to soothe my sore throat but thats about the only time I remember eating honey. I bought some for a recipe, used it once, and now it just sits on my shelf since I’m not sure what to do with it.

That is until this weekend when I was at a friend’s home. She was talking about how her soon-to-be husband it borderline diabetic, so they have changed their eating habits drastically. One change they made was to get rid of the sugar and replace it with honey. But not with just any honey but honey made locally.

I was intrigued since I always like to support local farmers but what she said next had me sold on it. She said that since they’ve been adding local honey to their tea, etc. that their allergies have improved greatly! Hearing her explain why really makes sense. Local bees visit local flowers and then make the honey. You eat the honey, giving your body exposure to those allergens while giving it time to build up an immunity. That makes sense because flu vaccines contain a small amount of the flu.

Here are some <a href=”http://www.honeyassociation.com/recepies2.htm”>honey recipes</b> from the Honey Association.  You can replace sugar with honey in any recipe but remember the honey is much sweeter than sugar, so use less.

So, now I’m on the hunt for local honey. Of course, Wal-Mart didn’t have any but some of the local grocers might. If that fails, then I’ll try the local fruit stand or a local farm that we toured last October.

Here are a few foods that I have found:

Carrots
Soybeans
Blueberries
Watermelon
Chillies
Apples

Also, apparently dairy is once again good for your diet since it help to breakdown fat.

I’m going to play Menu Planning Monday this week, so I’ll have to keep these foods in mind and plan accordingly.

I took it back a few weeks later after I did some math and realized that soon I would have spent enough money that I could have bought one. I guess that has always been my mental block when it comes to renting household items is that over time I could have bought it for that price.

However, I do see how it could be beneficial to rent. I met a single mom with three kids and she rented furniture. After a few years you own it with most lease options, so this was a great way for her to get the items she needed and be within her budget.

Another reason to rent is items you don’t need but for a special occasion. We could use a second laptop on our trip Labor Day weekend, so we might check into a laptop rental instead of trying to scamper to buy one.

So, renting household items might not be such a bad option under the right circumstances.

To clean an LCD monitor like a viewsonic monitor is a different process that I’ll explain later.

What you will need to clean any CRT monitor:

Polishing cloth like you might find in an eyeglass cleaning kit or a Nintendo DS, Sony PSP cleaning screen cleaning cloth.
Eyeglass cleaning solution or any cleaning solution meant for CDs or computer screens. Or use rubbing alcohol.

First unplug the monitor for safety. Then try to clean the monitor with just the cloth. If smudges won’t budge, dab the cloth with the cleaning solution and clean in circles (think wax on, wax off! sorry couldn’t resist). The solution will dry really fast, so you may have to reapply to your cloth to finish cleaning the monitor.

Here is my CRT monitor before:

And here it is after:

It might be hard to tell from the pictures, but the monitor does look a lot better.

LCD monitors are a different beast altogether. It is not recommended to clean them with rubbing alcohol although some people use a 50/50(water, rubbing alcohol) solution and report good results. I would stick with gently using a polishing cloth dampened with a little water. Avoid touching the LCD monitor and never pour liquid directly onto it. When in doubt, check your owner’s manual to see how the manufacture recommends cleaning an LCD monitor.

One major one I have is to clean up all of our stuff in storage. We have a lot of stuff on the back porch of my mom’s shop that needs to be either donated or brought into the house. I need to start working on this soon because it is almost getting too hot right now to spend a lot of time outside. Ah, the joys of living in the south.

Another goal I have for the summer is to make more money online. I would really like a passive income, one that really takes little effort on my part. I’m not sure if this will be feasible but would like to give it a try.

Since we are saving for a Labor Day weekend trip and trying to pay off all of our debt, I’ve been looking to pick up some more writing work online. It takes time to find leads and then even more time to write the assignments. It is enjoyable but just takes time. It seems everything takes twice as long to do as I think it should.

Also I really need to do some major housework. I still have a lot of spring cleaning to do. There’s a part of me that says if I have a clean, worry free house, then I will be able to work in peace and get more done in less time. I do work better away from home, so maybe I should clear all of the clutter to see what happens.

So, it will be another weekend of catching up on blog posts, reading blogs, and housework.  Oh to actually be caught up going into a weekend would be such a welcome change.

TasteSpotting is a website that has pages and pages upon food pictures. Some are recipes, and some might be other information. Each food picture is submitted. You can search for food pictures since it seems that food photos are listed as they are added.

I found a delicious looking brownie recipe featuring Reese’s peanut butter chips. You can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter.

If I get better with my photo-taking skills, I might even submit a food picture with a recipe.

I like the ideas being the Best Life Diet but love the food better on the Biggest Loser. I might combine both plans by taking the points that I like from Best Life and work them in to the eating plan of the Biggest Loser. The Best Life helps to ease you into better eating habits instead of just jumping into dieting all at once. The Biggest Loser cookbook includes much more foods that I eat.

To choose which guidelines to follow from each program will take me sitting down with each book to see what I think will work best for us.

I don’t know how many times I’ve done a search to find the hex numbers for colors. If you do any website work from designing to tweaking, then you have probably had to look up a hex number once or twice. Visibone sells this hex mousepad as well as a square one for $15. While mousepads are usually something I get for free, I can definitely see how this one would be super handy to have around. They also have some pretty cool free tools like color lab.

It’s a pretty cool resource for when you need the hex number of a color.

Lisa is battling cancer a third time and had really wanted to take her kids to Disneyworld. A blogging friend of hers rose to the challenge and started a raffle to raise money that bloomed into something amazing. They raised enough money to send her to Disneyworld and some spending money. Here is my original post that goes into more detail.

Have a great time at Disney, Lisa!

I remember when I was a kid it seemed the only pool treatments used chlorine. If we do get a pool, I would be against using chlorine since it was so rough on the pool, our skin, and clothing.

Having a salt water pool sounds like a good idea until you start reading more about it. First of all, imagine getting a mouth-full of salt water. That’d be just as bad as chlorine water. Ecosmarte says that a pool treated with their product is like swimming in bottled water. That would be way better to get a mouth-full of that instead of chlorine or salt!

Another problem with both chlorine and salt is that they can cause damage to the vinyl siding of the pool. The backwash discharge of a salt treatment is not good for your lawn or garden. Also, some make think that because it’s a salt pool that they are free of chlorine when in fact salt pools create chlorine.

By using a natural alternative, there would be many benefits to us and the environment. Not only is Ecosmarte an effective way to keep pool water clear, they also donate 5% to environmental charities. You get to choose where the money goes from your purchase.

Ecosmarte is firmly against using salt chlorinators and chlorine generators since both options are not good for your skin, pool, or your lawn. They offer plenty of information about both of these systems and why their pool filter system is better for you and the environment.

Here is how the Ecosmarte system works. It creates two sanitizing agents: copper ionization and liquid oxidation. Water from your pool travels into the Ecosmarte system and receives the ionization or oxidation, depending on the setting on the controller. Both methods sanitizes the water, killing bacteria, algae, and viruses. The copper level is perfectly fine and is okay if accidentally consumed. In fact, you could drink up to two gallons of pool water and only consume the amount of copper found in a multi-vitamin.

There is a lot to think about when purchasing a pool from size to pool filters. A pool would be something the whole family would enjoy, and I want to make sure that it’s as enjoyable as possible. I’m not interested in having my little girl swim in a chlorine-filled pool but know that I will need some pool treatment system. It’s good to know about Ecosmarte’s products that not only offer a safe alternative to chlorine but give something back to environmental charities.