Stacy, Author at Humorous Homemaking

Stacy’s Top Ten Kitchen Gadgets

For those of you who don’t follow along with my videos on Facebook, this post was actually a part of a recent Facebook Live series about my top 10 lists. My Top 10 Favorite Online Stores was a big hit – as was my Top 10 Kitchen Gadgets – so I wanted to share this with y’all too! One thing you should know about me…

Hi. My name is Stacy, and I am a kitchen gadget and appliance hoarder.

Even when I Konmari-ed my house and got rid of ALL the things, I kept most of my kitchen gadgets because you know what…I love kitchen appliances. I’m not ashamed; I’m not embarrassed. And you know what? I plan to keep on adding.

But I do not keep my kitchen gadget and appliance collection on my counter.

That drives me crazy! Counter clutter makes me nervous. I keep them all down in the basement on a special shelf that Barry built me. Before I get going on the key top ten kitchen gadgets list, I am going to shock you by mentioning what DIDN’T make the list this time…my crock pot! You know I use my slow cooker ALL.THE.TIME. However, this list is a little less obvious than that. 😉

In no particular order, here’s my top ten kitchen gadgets and appliances:

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How to Make Friends

For a long time, I told myself I didn’t need friends – I’m a loner. Women are just annoying and catty, and all they do is talk about each other behind their backs. Who needs or wants that?! But in the past few years, I have made some of the best friendships. And when I started sharing about my new friendships, it was amazing how many of y’all reached out to me asking how to find real, genuine relationships with women that won’t bring you down! So today, I’m sharing some of my thoughts and tips with y’all on how to make friends. [Read more…]

A Walk Through Our Home: Our Essential Oil Lifestyle

I know a lot of times I talk to you guys about how we try to live our lives free of harsh chemicals. And I also share all about how we try to use products that are safer on the toxicity scale. It’s been about a lengthy process, slowly ridding our home of things that were unsafe and replacing them with better – which is a natural fit with our essential oil lifestyle. But it has taken so long because we did it slowly on purpose.

We used a method called transfer buying.

When I found out that most of the stuff we were using was NOT safe according to the EWG skin deep database, I was shocked! But I didn’t go out all at once and replace my entire medicine cabinet or all of my cleaning products in one giant shopping trip. No way – that’d be both expensive and also wasteful, because of all the products I already had on hand. But the way that I could make this a lasting change that could stick long term was by replacing the products we use bit by bit. I would replace things whenever I ran out with a better, less toxic alternative. Slowly but surely, we have adapted to a house that is almost entirely lined up with our essential oil lifestyle. [Read more…]

Is there Such a Thing as Healthy Fried Food?

Let me start by saying I love fried food. You can go anywhere and find fried food. Fried oreos, onion rings, french fries, etc. I’m sure if someone could figure out a way to fry Coke they would! But healthy fried food? I’m sure the wheels are already turning in your heads…

Is there such a thing as healthy fried food?

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Stitch Fix versus Thred Up: An Honest Review

I have been buying thrift shop clothes for several years. I started with Thred Up and I really, really liked it. Then they made some changes and I didn’t like it as much.

I am not saying they don’t have some nice clothes; I have some I really like! In the case of Thred Up, their customer service was no longer good. Their correspondence was really bad and when I did get a hold of them, they were not very nice. So I switched from Thred Up to Swap.com. Both are used clothing outlets, but Swap is my favorite place to buy thrifted styles. But in the last few months, I started to go to more events where I needed to dress business casual. That’s when I tried Stitch Fix. [Read more…]

Living Debt Free Q&A

We’ve made a kind of a name for ourselves as far as living debt free goes – and teaching other people how to make it a real thing in their own lives. Barry does a lot of work with people on the side trying to help them live debt free as well. Our whole debt free story is available both on the Humorous Homemaking and on Facebook under videos. But recently we asked if y’all had any specific questions related to living debt free and decided to answer them today in kind of a speed Q&A round. [Read more…]

Kitchen Day: Prepping Meats in Advance

I have spent some time chatting all things Kitchen Day over on my Facebook page using live videos. I am really enjoying sharing what’s happening in my kitchen on these days with y’all! And apparently, y’all love it too, because I have gotten so many comments and emails about how helpful it is. And can I just tell you – nothing makes me happier! This past week, I talked about prepping meats in advance and y’all had a lot to say! But before we dive into that…

When is Kitchen Day?

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Life Lessons: Kids Sharing a Bedroom

I know this is a topic everyone has feelings about… but since I’ve been asked multiple times about the subject of kids sharing a bedroom, I figured it’s a topic I should address! Y’all asked, “Have you ever had an issue with your children sharing a room?” The answer is super simple…

No!

When we moved in this house, we only had Annie – and this is what we could afford, since we wanted to pay cash for our home. Since we live in a smaller home, there are only three (and they’re small) bedrooms. To be completely honest, the kids sharing a room hardly even seems like a sacrifice to us! It was never an issue or was never really something that we thought much about.

The boys are in one bedroom, and the girls are in another.

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Tips for Keeping Your Cool

When we were doing the Watch Your Mouth Challenge, I got asked questions about for tips for keeping your cool. I want to be completely honest – I have a hot head, a short fuse, and a quick temper. The Lord is always working on me, y’all! I’m not in any way trying to act like I am an expert that knows what I’m doing here. But I am going to share what I know and have learned about myself. In my own personal life, there are two things that set me off… or should I say the LACK of two things sets me off! [Read more…]

Kitchen Day: Why I Started Making Broth Again

If you’ve followed me for long at all you know that I don’t like making broth at all. Bone broth – nope, not for me! In fact, because of a pregnancy issue that I had with Andy, I didn’t make for a LONG time – like over 6 years! I had awful morning sickness (the all-day kind) and the smell of cooking broth made me so sick that it took me YEARS to overcome it.

But something happened that changed my mind… I got mad.

I can get pretty hot over a lot of things, but broth is probably a new one. Why did I get mad about broth? Well, I wanted to incorporate more bone broth into our diet, but when I looked around the shelves, there was sugar in every single bone broth my store carried! Bone broth doesn’t need sugar! What in the world? I had been making broth for years and NEVER added sugar – or even thought about adding sugar. I should add that I’m not anti-sugar… I eat chocolate and dessert on Sundays. So it’s not like I’m totally against sugar.

I just try to stay clear of products that have sugar added for no good reason.

We get enough sugar from our Sunday desserts thank you very much… we don’t need it in our beef broth too. Why couldn’t I find a brand of bone broth that did not have added sugar? This whole “sugar in the broth” experience spurred me to make homemade broth again. And I have to admit, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. [Read more…]