Yep, back to school time feels like the new year to me in so many ways. There are new outfits, new haircuts, new schools and let's not forget - new crayons! So let's take time to make some resolutions...

This is a really, really good time to get your meal planning organized. Check out Once a Month Mom or $5 Dinners for help.

If you need some help getting your home organization in hand then I suggest hoping over to Totally Together Journal and subscribing to the daily email. I guarantee you won't be made to feel guilty but you will get a daily reminder that it's time to do the dusting/ change the sheets/ send cards to friends/ or just take a day for yourself.

And how about taking better care of our personal computers. Personally, I've experienced four hard drive crashes and it took the last, and most catastrophic, for me to really learn my lesson. After that tumultuous even I did some research and found that Mozy online backup was what I needed. It pulls my files up into the ether at some point during the day when my I take a break and my computer goes idle.  There are several packages but I use the free version. It works for me. It might work for you, it might not, but I guarantee you that if you are a heavy computer user you need some kind of automatic backup system. Even if you use a thumb drive to backup some of your files you need something else because thumb drives are not indestructible - I can attest to this as well. So, pick something that works with your work style and budget so you won't get stuck empty handed in a horrible crash.

Do you have any new resolutions for the end of the calendar year?

I've been baking up a storm and bulking back up the freezer in anticipation of school starting soon.

Here are a couple of our go-to breakfast favorites:
Very Best Banana Muffins
Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cake from Once a Month Mom [actually called Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Coffee Cake]

And here's a new dinner favorite from $5 Dinners that I am almost certain you could do as a once a month cooking mostly in the crockpot so you could stock up the freezer - and let me tell you it is just that good!!

Cheesy Green Chicken Enchiladas - I will say that I didn't have any green enchilada sauce and the diced tomatoes I had were 'chili ready' so this is what I did.... I made the recipe as written but I only used half the cumin and since I didn't have sauce for the tortillas I used the shredded cheese that I always have in the fridge.

Here's what I would do next time... I'd add more heat to it. I loved the creaminess and if your kids are going to eat with you then you might not want to kick this up, but ours ate quesadillas instead. Next time I might toss in a small can of chopped green chilis with the chicken. Oh, and I'd add more cheese to the top. I love cheese and we always have it!!

Sending the kidlets to school each day with a healthy lunch that they will actually eat has been a daily adventure. I tried sending cut fruit but it got too mushy. Then I tried to send fruit snack cups but there was too much juice in them and the package was too hard for my 4 and 3 year olds to open by themselves. This was clearly evident on the laundry.

Then I decided to take a fresh approach. What if I made my own fruit cups? The snag was finding a container that would stay sealed properly in transit yet was easy enough for the girls to open by themselves.

One day while I was walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store I saw these Rubbermaid containers and decided to give them a try. They, themselves, are not an inexpensive option necessarily but I will tell you that they work like a charm! They don't leak and they work exactly how I hoped they would.

Now, when canned fruit goes on sale and I stock up I make my own fruit cups for Comfort and Joy's lunch. I get to make sure they eat something good for them and it's a frugal options all the way around. Definitely a Cool Idea!

I don't know how you guys do this but I'm still having trouble merging real life with our school life. I think I had more time to get things done before Comfort and Joy were in school. Or maybe I'm just trying to get so much more packed into so little time that my frustration is bubbling over.

Perhaps, the key is to manage my expectations and not presume that I can keep the house picked up, do the grocery shopping, find a well paying job, write the great American novel, and solve world peace when I only have 2 uninterupted hours a day in which to work. But, I say to myself - I have 5 days a week x 2 hours - shouldn't that account for something?

A ten hour a week job is barely even part-time, I remind myself. I'm trying to jam a LOT of stuf into a very small timeframe. Probably I should be glad that it's working at all but mostly I'm still trying to keep my head above water.

The only saving grace is that because the girls are dead dog tired they don't fight going to bed at 7:30pm and then I have the evenings to get back to work without guilt. Of course, I'm missing television and stuff like that but that's what Netflix and retirement are for. Right now I need to keep pushing on and see what I can create, produce, and make for dinner and hopefully at some point I can acknowledge that some of it will have been a Cool Idea!

Along with new resolutions I'm reminded that it's time for our family to pick new insurance. If you are lucky enough to have great, and affordable, insurance through your employer - count yourself very fortunate. Remember, too, that no one wants to take that away from you. I've had great insurance through previous employers and I'd love to have it back.

But currently, while I'm home with the girls, dh is working for a small, private school that doesn't have very many full-time employees. The insurance that they offer for our family of 4 would cost us half of dh's take-home salary per month. This is almost as much as our mortgage! Seriously!

So, last year we went out on our own and got insurance but we hit an unexpected snag. The girls and I are covered together but dh had to get his own plan because we didn't realize, until after we'd accepted our plan, that because it was the same company as we'd had before they wouldn't bid against themself in insuring dh. So he wasn't covered for several months until we figured this out - while standing at the pharmacy trying to fill a very costly prescription.

Still, we have insurance that covers the basics and the high-end stuff but nothing in between. I don't get dental or vision or even my prescriptions covered. Luckily we've only needed to go to the doctor for 'routine maintenance' and that is all covered. I've had to make do with less frequent trips to the dentist for myself but I have excellent dental health and it hasn't made an impact yet. However, now that Comfort, and soon Joy, will need biannual check ups I'll need to budget those trips in, too.

All this to say that think what you will about things that politicians say to one another from stump speeches and the floor of Congress, but this is the second time in my life that I've had little or no health insurance and I'm not even 40 years old.

The first time was when I was just out of college and not yet employeed full-time. Dh was in grad-school and he had insurance through the school for $25/ year. To add me to his policy would have cost us more than we paid in rent each month. Why? Because I was considered fertile and an insurance risk. Women of childbearing age are expensive to insure. As women, and many of us 'Moms', I think it's important to remember that everyone deserves access to adequate health care. Don't let this issue fly over your head or ping around you like a tennis match. We've all seen the what the economy has done this past year and know 'that for the grace of God...' - so make sure that you put your two cents in when you can and help out everyone. Even those who don't have a voice.

I didn't get the official school supply list for Comfort or Joy's classes until Saturday so I've spent a good part of the weekend checking through my stockpile for things I knew I had: hand sanitizer, baby wipes, paper towels, etc. , and then running out to Kroger for the things I knew were on sale this week: liquid soap, composition notebooks, glue sticks, etc.

But that still left a few items on our list that I'll need to find in the next week. I could keep driving around from store to store but by the time I figure in gas and my time I decided I'd let my fingers do the shopping and go online to Amazon.

There, in a matter of minutes, I finished the shopping that I needed and even bought myself a little treat. Check out the deal on MP3 below! I so rarely buy music for myself that I can't even tell you the last album I bought. Mostly I mooch of dh's tunelist - or even Comfort and Joy's. [I do love the Philadelphia Chickens!] But I decided to get some grown up music for myself and this was a great deal.




Check it out. There are some great albums/ deals out there and for this price you can try something totally new. Give a new artist a try. Give yourself a new experience. That's definitely a Cool Idea!

Gevalia is still doing their Gevalia Monday special but here's another great deal

3 Boxes of Coffee + a Mug for $3

How's that for a great deal to help kick off the beginning of the school year for all the Moms out there! Definitely a Cool Idea!!

Along with registering for new preschools and getting our supply lists I've been thinking about how I might be able to make sure Comfort and Joy come home with the stuff that they take to preschool each day. Backpacks are big and hard to forget but what about reusable lunch bags, the reusable juice bottles that I use, etc. Then there are the requirements to label their spare set of clothes. I don't know about you but I can't get my little one's name legibly on an item of clothing.

Thankfully the people at Loveable Labels have figured this out and make wide range of labels to take care of the needs of kids and parents alike. There are sticker labels, fun stickers, shoe labels, iron-on labels, press and stick clothing dots, allergy labels, bag tags, and mini-metal tags. You can put text and icons on the stickers and you can choose a color for your set.

And as back to school time approaches, I was given the opportunity to test the Back to School Mega Pack which includes the following:

· 15 sticker labels

· 60 slimline labels

· 48 Press N’ Stick clothing dots

· 16 shoe labels

· 2 Mini-Metal tags

· 5 Book/Binder stickers

These personalized, durable and colorful labels stick with your kids and their stuff. You can label everything from water bottles, lunch containers, shoes to jackets and backpacks. They are dishwasher, microwave, washer and dryer safe.

I've already labeled their backpacks and BYO lunchbags, reusable water and juice bottles, as well as, their spare pair of shoes which will stay at school for 'accidents'. I usually ignore this 'please label' advice because short of using a Sharpie and writing their name on the sole I could never figure out just how I was supposed to label a shoe. Here is how it is done:

The Back to School Mega Pack retails for $44.95 CND/USD but with discount code 'itscool' you will receive a 10% discount that will be available until September 10, 2009 . Hop on over to Lovable Labels and choose the country in which you reside (there is no price difference per country). Click on the Back to School Mega Pack (which is on the home page) and during the purchasing process you can enter your custom discount code 'itscool' to receive the discount.

The variety of sizes and uses of the labels is great. I love that Joy hasn't been able to pick them off - as this is her special skill! But mostly I love that someone has thought ahead to what the needs of moms and kids and families are and put everything for Back to School labeling in one place, made the ordering nice and easy and even included great colors and some adorable icons to decorate the labels. This is definitely a Cool Idea!