Prairie Scraps

Summer piano (or any instrument) lessons are important.  I have a pretty strong opinion on this and spend the month of May urging my piano student parents that they should try to continue their child's lessons over the summer.  Here are my reasons: Summer is 1/4th of the year!  That's a lot of the year to miss. Lessons are a huge investment, why lose the momentum? Students digress, a lot!  Most students will take at least 3 months to return to where they left off in the spring - so now, you've really lost 6 months or 1/2 of the year! Because of number 3, you don't save money by taking the lessons off.  You will pay for 9 months and only get 6 months of progress. Often, children that take the summer off, lose their enthusiasm in the fall, and struggle to stay with it.  In my experience, these students don't come back, or they try and get frustrated with their backward movement, and end up quitting in the middle of the semeste...

  I had the pleasure of reading this third book in "The Quilted Heart" series by Mona Hodgson.  Generally, I don't care for reading books in a series without first reading the books before (what can I say, I like things in order!), but this book captivated me right from the start!  I definitely want to catch up and read the first two, but I was hooked right from the first few paragraphs!   "Ripples Along the Shore" was a finely knit fictional novel about not only the sorrow and recovery of just one Civil War widow, Caroline  Milburn, but of a whole community of Americans, set on rebuilding their lives following the divide of a country in war.  Destined to return to Saint Charles, Missouri after her spinster aunt passes away, to stay with her sister and bitter brother-in-law and family, Caroline struggles with the grief she feels with the loss of her husband to the war.   Will she find peace and purpose in what she should do now t...

Most days seem like there's little to no progress, but hey, at least there's progress, right?  I promise you that I am making some progress on the 31 Days of Green Deep Cleaning.  I thought I'd be able to get it done in one month, but posting every day has proven to be more difficult than I thought possible.  Thanks so much for hanging with me!  What are you making slow progress on right now?  Keep chugging along!

I'm curious - did you get piano lessons as a child?  Do you have your kids take lessons?  This statistic should incite every parent of every child to seek out piano lessons. 

Today, we are going to clean the carpets in the living room.  If you own your own carpet cleaner, you can just focus on the living room today.  If you have to rent a carpet cleaner and you are anything like me, this will create a frenzy of 24 hours of cleaning all the carpets in the entire house!  Either way, you may want to save this job for when you can work on this for an entire day.   What you will need: Vacuum cleaner Carpet Cleaner - after getting a new puppy at Christmas, this is the one I ordered online and LOVE!!!  It is worth every penny!!  I've cleaned a lot of carpets, in my own home and commercially, and this is by far the best machine I have used! Ultra Power Plus Laundry Detergent Carpet Stain Buster Envirocloth What to do: Remove as much of the furniture from the room as you can. Vacuum the entire room, taking special care to get the edges around the room. Spray the Carpet Stain Buster on all visable stains ...

  If you haven't noticed, in each room, we've been trying to move from top to bottom with our cleaning.  So in the living room, we've cleaned the Chairs & Couches , the Woodwork , the Walls , and Organized the shelves and Drawers .  Be sure to check out those articles if you haven't already. Today, we are going to do a clean-up of all the electronics in the living room. You will need: Optic Cloth Dust Mitt Container to coral all of those chords - I like this one: Double Duty Caddy Zip ties What to clean today: Start off by cleaning all of the screens in the living room with the Optic Cloth .  Using a cloth that is not approved for this job can scratch you screens!  The Optic Cloth is approved and works great at not only cleaning, but repelling future dust. Here's a list that I came up with: Computers Television IPads & Tablets Smart Phones Small Gaming devices Once the screen is cleaned, you'll want to go all the way around yo...

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a happy mail that I sent out to the customer on my Facebook VIP page that won a drawing for the Superbowl.  The winner happened to be my mom, so it made it extra fun to send some Happy Mail.   I bought a Valentine's Candy Heart box and put my message on the front with an address sticker, and then put an address label on the back with the addresses.  I took the whole thing down to the post office to mail.  It cost around $3 to ship!  Not bad!    It's so fun to get odd items in the mail!  You could do this for a college student (which I also did) or for a past hostess to tell them how much you love them or their business.   Here's my message: "Mom - I LOVE that you played along for my Superbowl party!  Customers are the HEART of my business!  Thanks!"     Even though today is Valentine's Day, you could still do this for past hostesses or special customers!  G...