For those of you who wonder what it's like...

...when your husband deploys.

Month One: You turn on all the lights downstairs before going to bed at night. Every little noise makes you think there is a rapist/murderer/child snatcher outside your bedroom window. Even though you are on the second floor. Even though you live in the world's most secure gated community complete with assault rifle-toting guards. You are afraid to shower, to check the mail at the end of the driveway, to put something in the garage because you just know that as soon as you're out of ear shot, something will happen and the babies will need you. Like they'll find a fossilized pretzel under their beds and choke on it. Or they'll fall out the (locked) window. Even waiting until they're asleep doesn't make this fear go away. You realize with surprise that you only have about 1/3 as many dishes to do, half as much garbage, and only a fraction of the laundry you had before. You also notice that the house is much easier to keep clean. You marvel at how the loss of one person can make housekeeping so much easier, and then feel slightly guilty for being happy about it. Like 95% of the wives, you vow that you will lose weight while he's gone and shock him with the new-and-improved you. Atkins begins.

Month Two: Time to get busy. Hoping to make the time go by faster, you throw yourself and the kids into whatever activities you can find. Church groups, book clubs, recipe swaps, play groups....anything at all. You go on at least one outing a day, even if it's something boring like filling up the car with gas and buying a pack of butter-rum Lifesavers. You no longer sleep with all the downstairs lights on--it's down to just the kitchen light. If you're feeling really brave, you turn that off too (but still leave the light over the stove on). This is also the month that your honey starts sending you fun packages in the mail. Yay for Shari's Berries, Amazon, and Sephora! Also, you get to send letters back to him, which is tons of fun because you get to break out the stamps, stickers, perfume, confetti, and girly-girl paper. You are keenly aware that deployed husbands view the quality of each other's wives by not only how much mail they get, but also the cuteness of said mail. Although they'd never admit it out loud.

Month Three: This is the hardest month of all. He's already been gone forever but won't be back for forever. Month three is also when something goes wrong at home that you can't fix. The computer will crash, the lawn mower will break, your car won't start, or your fridge will stop working. You'll tell your husband, and he'll call someone in his office to come fix it. The afternoon before this co-worker comes over, you will spend an hour scrubbing clean the house, putting on makeup, spraying air freshener and lighting candles. Maybe even bake something, and make sure that the children are clean and especially adoreable. The house must be perfect, and you must look hot. All the civilian wives just gasped in horror. All the military ones just nodded. Here's why. Because when your husband's co-worker comes over, he isn't looking at you, he's looking at your husband through you. And you'd rather die than have some silly man go back to your husband's office and say "Wow, he sure has a frumpy wife! She can't even keep her kitchen clean and the whole place smells like old towels." You want him to say "Wow, he is so lucky! Not only is his wife a hottie, but dude, she bakes and stuff!" Sometimes men are judged by what kind of woman they can "get," and in the military this is more common than you'd think!

Month Four: Boredom sets in. You are bored bored bored. You put the kids to bed and there's no one to talk to. You launch yourself like a blood-thirsty vampire on any adult who comes to the door. Newspaper salesman? Please come in and have a cup of Crystal Light and tell me all about your different delivery options! Cable guy? Have some cookies and tell my why going digital will change my life! A friend passing on the sidewalk? Oh beware, beware! This is also the month that you start fishing for houseguests, inviting whoever you think will stay at least a weekend. Or, it is equally acceptable to begin travelling--visiting whoever has asked you to come.

Month Five: If you've played your cards right, you are either out of town or you have an awesome houseguest. This means free babysitting, so you get to have your hair and nails done or go shopping.

Month Six: He's almost home, but not quite! You get so frustrated because every. single. day. he calls with a new return date. Sometimes it's later than you thought and you want to pull your hair out with frustration. Sometimes it's earlier and you can't believe your luck. Each time the date changes you write it on the calendar, along with a handy countdown in the top right-hand corner of each square. But you do it in pencil. Always in eraseable pencil because you're no fool. Finally, the day comes when you get to see him again. He is thinner and tanned. You are not. It takes a good month for the family to find it's "groove," but after you do it's almost like he never left.

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider Crawled Up the Kitchen Wall

I have always adored autumn. The crisp days and the frosty nights, the brisk walks in the equally brisk air....

And after being outside, enjoying the crunchy leaves and the cool breeze, isn't it nice to walk into a toasty-warm house and know you are warm and safe for when winter arrives?

Guess what? Bugs like it too!

Around here at Casa de Bumblebee, when the chilly weather arrives, so do the indoor pests. Ants come inside looking for warmth, water and food. Spiders try to take up residence in the heating vents or the blinds, and many more random bugs I can't even name show up around the house.

I can't think of any homemaker who's willing to share her house with all sorts of creepy crawlies, and with that, I'd like to share a few ways you can minimize the yearly autumnal invasion.

The most important thing is to make sure that there is no food whatsoever on you floor. A good way to avoid having to clean incessantly is to keep all food in the kitchen of dining room. If you must have your nightly hot, salty, buttery popcorn while you watch reruns of Gilmore Girls (ummm...hypothetically, that is!) make sure that you don't drop anything on the floor, and if you do, pick it up right away. This is also the perfect time to deploy your vacuum hose. Really get into all the nooks and crannies, especially where the floor meets the wall. Also give a good cleaning to your window sills and the tracks that your windows and patio door slide along. After a good vacuuming, bring out your mop or Hoover Floormate (I love mine) and get everything nice and shiny.

Unfortunately, this isn't something that only needs to be done once at the beginning of the season; it's something you'll have to maintain by integrating it into your daily cleaning once or twice a week.

Next, make sure your house is tidy. Nothing looks more cozy to a scary spider than a pile of towels sitting on the ground and nothing is quite as tempting as a full-but-forgotten garbage can. Take away their hiding places, and your home will become less attractive to them.

Finally, a word about ants--the bugs that I find myself fighting against constantly in this old house. If you see half a dozen or so "scout" ants spread out over a small area, assess where they are. Sometimes they'll look for food in places where there isn't any, like a bathroom or laundry room. If you can possibly bear it, let the ants look around for a while. When they discover there's no food to be found, they'll return to their nest, but leave a chemical residue that informs other ants that the area isn't worth searching. Then, chances are you won't see ants in that location for quite some time.

That's it--that's all my tips on keeping the bugs at bay. As you can see, it's nothing complicated with lime-soaked rosemary stems or soap flakes and borax. It's nothing more than keeping your home clean, which robs bugs of their food source, and tidy, which robs them of hiding places.

May your home be cozy, and devoid of creepy-crawlies!

Here I go again....

Well, I thought that since school was over I'd have lots and lots of time to give you all lovely blog posts, but I'm afraid I already have to take another break!

My sweetie will be headed over to spend six months in Iraq--and he leaves in a little under two weeks.

We will be trying to spend as much time as we can being together as a family, so I won't have much time for posting at all.

Thanks everyone for sticking with me--I'll be back in no time at all!

Home Improve-mint

Quick! Name something minty!

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What did you come up with?

Toothpaste?

Candy?

Gum?

Mouthwash?

Breath mints (of course!)?

The above are all things that everyone considers minty, but have you ever wondered why? Why is it that so many personal hygiene products smell minty—especially ones we’re supposed to put in our mouths?

It’s because mint is clean. Mint is fresh. Mint lifts the spirits. Oh, and did I mention mind is clean? :)

It is for this reason that if someone asked me to name something minty, I would probably answer “my house.”

I discovered a few years ago, that although unconventional, the scent of mint is a wonderful addition to any home. As I described above, it just makes everything seem cleaner. Think of it as giving a breath mint to your house!

When using mint, I tend to rely most heavily on regular old McCormick mint flavoring, found right next to the vanilla in the spice section of the grocery store. I also like to use spearmint essential oil that I buy from www.sweetcakes.com. Because mint is a fairly easy oil to extract, you can buy a huge bottle of it inexpensively. I’m sure places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats also carry it, but I’m not sure about their pricing. When buying the oil, I like to get spearmint rather than peppermint, but that’s purely a personal preference. Try both—you might find you like peppermint more.

Anyway, below are some of my favorite ways to incorporate a minty freshness into my house:

--Pour about a tablespoon of flavoring into my bottle of homemade vinegar cleaner.

--Place a couple of drops of oil on my vacuum filter before vacuuming the house.

--Make my own scented scouring powder by adding a little oil to equal parts of kosher salt and baking soda (your tub has never been so fresh!).

--Buy a Yankee “Fresh Mint” candle. The way they have scented this is uncanny. It smells exactly like a mint patch growing out in the yard. They have perfectly captured not only the mint, but also the subtle earthiness and bitter-sweetness of real, fresh mint. Have a look at www.yankeecandle.com. It is well worth the $23—I promise!

--If you’ll be leaving home for a few days, pour a few drops of the flavoring down each drain and in the bowl of your commode. It will eliminate that stale smell that develops when stagnant water has been in the pipes for too long.

--Dab a few drops of oil on the cardboard tube inside your rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. You’ll have freshness with each spin!

--And don’t forget about using mint for personal care products as well: a lid-full of essential oil poured into a full bottle of vanilla body wash is incredibly delicious (my favorite is St. Ives Swiss Vanilla—about $3 at the drugstore or Wal-Mart).

Once your house—and you—are sweet and minty, you’ll wonder why you never thought to use it before!

Happy Little Hint

A few days ago I made a fun little discovery. As it turns out, My Little Ponies have magnetic feet! I have a couple on the fridge right now holding up a "to do" list! I think I'll be headed out to Wal-Mart sometime this week to pick up a few more. So much more fun than standard fridge magnets!

Just a little tip for those of you who occasionally find yourselves craving something girlish and kitschy!

A Family Motif

Once before my husband and I were married, we were having a popcorn and movie night at my place. As the newly-engaged often do, things became rather playful and flirtatious when we all of a sudden found ourselves in a tickle fight! Now, I am ticklish and he is not, so this was not a very fair fight! Gasping for air, I decided I'd surrender, but because I was laughing so hard the only thing that came out of my mouth was a shrill cry of "BEEEEEE!" Now I don't even remember what I was trying to say. "Be nice?" "Behave?" Anyway, it was shrill and grating, but it got my honey to stop. He stopped, until he started teasing me about my "beeee" scream! Because of this incident, we jokingly started saying "bee" whenever things didn't go our way. Work wanted us in when it was supposed to be our day off? Bee. About to run out of gas? Bee. The people at Burger King forgot to put cheese on the burger? Bee.

As is common in the military, my husband (or fiance, I suppose) almost immediately got orders to spend a year in Korea. So instead of planning our wedding, we ended up planning to spend a year apart. Now, the one good thing about being separated from your loved one is all the letters and packages you get to send each other. As the years go by, you will treasure your "mail order courtship" and many of the letters will come to mean a great deal to you, even after you are reunited. For my letters to him I purchased a little sheet of bumblebee stickers, because saying "bee" was our fun little thing.

....And we were off! Anything with a bee or bee-related we collected and sent to each other. He (finally) came back and we again began to plan our wedding. Unfortunately, our plans were thwarted again by September 11th. It was an extremely busy time for anyone in the military then, and as such our requests to take leave and get married were denied.

Another year later we were finally able to be married! I had such fun setting up our first little house on base, and such fun organizing all the bees we had collected since our courtship began.

Since then, we have continued to collect bees. They are in my kitchen mostly, but there are a few around the rest of the house. They have really become our family motif and it is fun to pick them up when I see something cute. Sometimes with his work schedule I don't see my husband very much, and I still sign the little notes I leave for him on the counter with a little hand-drawn bee.

The bee has represented fun and laughter for us, because that is how the whole bee thing began. But the bee has come to represent so much more. What do you think of when you think of bees? Sweetness? Definitely. Bees make honey and there are few things sweeter than that. Bees are hard-working. That is a value I wish to have and wish to instill in my children. Bees are a family, with all of them working together to build a hive, raise the bee babies, and gather honey for everyone.

For these reasons and more, bees have become our family motif.

Do you have a family motif? What is it, and did you choose it because it meant something to you, or simply because you found it cute or fun?

"Bee" well, everyone!

The Well-Stocked Freezer

A huge part of home keeping consists of keeping a well-stocked and efficiently-run kitchen. I have seen so many articles discussing the pantry and what you should have on hand, meals made exclusively from it's contents and how to organize it, so I thought it would be fun to focus on another area of storage; the freezer.

The following list chronicles the contents of mine when it is well-stocked, and affords me many wonderful things to eat no matter what the situation.

1. A stash of breakfast foods.

When making pancakes, I normally take the leftovers, spread them out on a cooling rack, and when frozen solid I put them all into a gallon-sized freezer bag. Remember, they must be frozen individually or they'll turn into one giant pancake slab! To reheat, I put a couple into my toaster oven and "toast" until thawed and warm. If I'm short on time, about 20 seconds in the microwave brings them back to life. **This works wonderfully with the banana pancake recipe I posted previously **

I also like to make & store French toast this way. I'll normally make an entire loaf's worth, again freezing the slices individually on a cooling rack. Then, I stack the pieces together and put them back into the original bread bag. Essentially I am left with a "loaf" of French toast. Again, a couple of minutes in the toaster oven is all it takes to thaw and warm any number of slices my hungry family needs.

Smoothie ingredients are also nice to have on hand. You can buy bags of frozen berries in the store to have them available always. Those, coupled with some frozen sliced bananas (the ones that got too over-ripe in your fruit bowl) and some yogurt in ice cube trays (the stuff you bought on sale absolutely sure that you would eat a dozen cartons before they went bad) make a delicious breakfast beverage. Simply toss some fruit, the banana slices, and a couple of yogurt cubes into a blender with a splash of milk, and you have a smoothie!

Muffins also freeze extremely well. Just pop a few in a baggie and put them in. Another quick defrost in the microwave and a hot, homemade breakfast is on the table in 30 seconds.

2. Low Maintenance Lunches

I have so many recipes for soup that I absolutely adore! Creamy potato-cheese and cream of tomato are my favorites and I always make an entire stock pot full each time I cook them. I put what I think I'll eat in the fridge, and the rest I freeze for easy lunches throughout the week. Simply make your soup, then pour into quart-sized baggies, stack, and freeze.

What goes with soup? Bread, of course!

Bread freezes beautifully. I almost always have a giant loaf, or "miche" of French bread on hand. I also normally keep a loaf of our regular sandwich loaf, some hamburger buns, and dinner rolls ready to reheat at a moment's notice.

3. Dinner in a hurry

I love to keep a few of my favorite casseroles on hand for nights when I don't have a lot of time to make dinner. To do this, first take your Pyrex dish, or whatever you're using, and line it well with plastic wrap. you may need to use a couple of pieces depending on the size of your dish. Assemble your casserole inside, but don't wrap it up--just leave the plastic hanging over the sides. Pop it in the freezer, and when it's solid wrap it in the plastic. Then pull the casserole out of the dish so you essentially have a "casserole cube" Wrap it in another layer of plastic, then in foil, then take a permanent marker and write the contents on it. Stack several of them neatly on a shelf. When it's time to eat, simply unwrap your casserole cube, put back in it's original dish, and cook until piping hot. You'll never have an casserole dish "out of commission" because it's in the freezer.

4. Miscellaneous things that are nice to have

Cookie dough rolls; take a drop cookie recipe and lay all the dough in a line on a piece of parchment paper. (For the longest time I had no idea where to get parchment--I buy mine at Wal-Mart, right by all the other foils and baggies). Roll the dough up in the parchment forming a nice solid log. Twist the ends like a candy wrapper. When you're ready to bake, let the dough sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes, slice with a serrated knife, and bake as normal.

Frozen juice in cans; great to use in a pinch

Fresh herbs in a baggie

Mashed potatoes; they're such a pain to make from scratch, so when you do, make a ton and then freeze the rest. They are kind of watery when defrosted, so after you thaw them, heat them up in a sauce pan right before you serve.

And of course, ICE CREAM! My favorite flavor ever is Coldstone's "Sweet Cream." It tastes uncannily like ummm....sweetened cream (ha ha!). It's perfect for eating on its own, or for topping with just about anything from crumbled cookies to fruit syrup.

I'd love to hear what you keep on hand--what are your "musts?"