Happy #thinkingoutloud Thursday! No idea what I’m going on about? Click here!
1. It has come to my attention that I might possibly have a slight overabundance of washi tape rolls. Just a small surplus. And the crazy thing is that I don’t even know how I got to this point. It started out with just a couple. Then a couple more because “I don’t have the right colours.” Then a few more because “ooooh these are pretty!” And now I’m here… with no idea how to get through all these rolls. I mean, I use them in my planners and journals all the time, but still… that’s a lot of washi to use up! Hereby banning myself from buying more until at least half of these are gone.
2. So I just Googled “what to do with washi tape” and… these 100 ideas and these 56 ideas are absolutely brilliant. I might just get through these faster than I thought. Washi ALL the things! Except the stairs… I think I’ll pass on washi-ing the stairs
3. I need a new electric toothbrush. The body of mine is almost 5 years old now (thank you blogging for letting me look this up), and I guess the battery bit the dust because it won’t even let me finish a full brush cycle without dying… despite sitting on the charger all day/night. And there’s no way I’d go back to a manual toothbrush. No way. I tried that for a while a few months back and it definitely didn’t leave my teeth feeling even close to as clean. Electric or bust.
4. So you guys are gonna start thinking I have some sort of hoarding tendencies or something, because in addition to my exuberant washi tape collection, I’ve also managed to stockpile a decent amount of face products… And the thing is that I go back and forth on these all.the.time. I have super sensitive skin and sometimes I feel like it likes me better when I do as little to it as possible. But then there are other times (usually having to do with the weather or time of the month) where I feel like it needs a little extra help. So I buy/get face things and don’t go through them very fast, and they kind of add up over time. Is that a typical hoarder thing to say?
5. And are seedless raspberries a thing? Because I bought some seedless raspberry jam, and I always thought they make it by just straining the seeds out… but the ingredients list literally says “organic seedless raspberries.” I guess it could be a thing, right? I mean, they have seedless watermelon. And seedless oranges. And probably other seedless things that I can’t think of right now. Either way, the seeds are my least favourite part of raspberries, so I’m 100% on board with this seedless variety.
6. I overthink things way too much. Case in point -> I spend a little bit of time at the beginning of each month coming up with a plan for what recipes I want to post that month and when I want to post them… and then I change everything. Mostly because I’m constantly trying to figure out which recipe would be the best to post and what I think is gonna do the best at a certain time. And then I end up being wrong most of the time anyways. Or maybe not wrong, but it doesn’t seem to matter as much as I like to think it does. Like… a lot of recipe that I think are gonna be AMAZING, end up doing alright, and then some recipes I’m just kind of whatever about, end up doing amazing. I can’t figure you guys out 😛
7. That’s it for me today! Hope you guys are having an awesome Thursday, and I’ll see you soon with more FOOD 😀
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Thank you for that information you article
slope game
I visited your blog for the first time yesterday (and I wrote the long comment just above),
but I only got to see one of your recipes yesterday (which I baked, and loved – the flourless Hobnob-esque cookies)
((I came to your blog in the first place from a search engine search I did for “flourless oatmeal cookies”, so that recipe was the first spot I landed on)).
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Tonight I wanted to come back to your blog again and take a look at your Recipes area, so I typed in your blog address in the browser’s address bar (your blog’s name is easy to remember!), and even though it looked like I typed it correctly, up popped a certificate warning that the site’s certificates were not aligned somehow (or whatever the term is) and that I should not proceed to the site, so I wondered if maybe you weren’t a .com but rather a .net or .org or something, so I typed the blog’s name into a search engine and clicked on the first link, which took me directly to your main page, and no certificate mis-match warning appeared. As it’s a .com, it appears to be the same address that I had initially typed into my address bar — so that is odd.
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Anyway, to try to get myself back to this post, where I left off my visit to your site last night, I clicked on your “Thinking Out Loud” tab in your header, and it took me to a general explanation of why you have a “Thinking Out Loud” area/tradition, but it doesn’t seem to actually list the TOL posts… as far as I can see, at least on my browser, that main page of the “Thinking Out Loud” section has no links at all, just an explanation of the concept.
I would recommend that you put links to the TOL posts there, to make them easier for people to find.
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So I went to your “Home” tab, thinking it would take me to a chronological list of your posts, with dates and topics listed, but it showed links to 7 recipes, showed no TOL posts, and the recipes shown had no dates on them (except for the top recipe).
Because I remembered that this specific TOL post, the one that I actually read last night and had commented on, had been very recent in your blogging history (that’s the only way I noticed it in the first place, because it was on the top line of some site-overview page that I had stumbled upon after I made the Hobnob recipe),
and I didn’t think it had been more than 7 recipes ago in your chronological output,
the way your “Home” tab was arranged confused me a bit,
so then I clicked at the bottom of the “Home” page the “see more posts” link, and this took me to the “Blog” section, which confusingly does not have its own tab in the header.
There, I saw that this TOL 270 was indeed in the first line, and is the second-newest post that you have published, which I had remembered from my visit last night.
And on that “Blog” page, I see that there are 181 pages of posts – phew! that’s a lot.
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And now, that I look further down that page, I see in the right-hand sidebar that you have both “Most Recent Rambles” and “Archived Posts”, either of which I could have used to find this TOL 270.
But these are quite far down the page, and I had expected to see a prominent link to the “Blog” section at the top of the page.
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I didn’t actually need to search out this TOL 270 again specifically, but I wanted to let you know about the site certificate warning I had gotten when I had typed your website’s address into my browser address bar a little bit earlier tonight, and I thought the most logical place to tell you about this would be below my prior comment from last night.
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I have described my roundabout route to your “Blog” section because I would recommend that you add it either to your tabs in the header area as its own tab, or that you put it as a named/linked sub-category under one of your main 7 tabs. (As “Travels” is a sub-category under your “About” tab, the “Blog” might be a sub-category that fits under “Home”? Or under “About”?)
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Anyway, those are just some suggestions which might help new visitors to quickly find their way around.
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Also, I wanted to let you know that when I did the search engine search for your blog’s name, about 5 entries down the page, there was a link to an article on Medical News Today site which was just published last week, and it included your blog in a top 10 list for blogs about eating disorders.
It is here: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320662.php
I expect you are receiving some new visitors this week on the basis of that article. (As I said, I came via a search for “flourless oatmeal cookies”.)
However, I didn’t actually notice on your blog yesterday during my first visit much of a focus on eating disorders – there was a link on the “About”/”About Me” page to the “About”/”My Story” page which described your story with anorexia, although it was an unfinished story (the process of healing is still to be posted) — I would look forward to reading about your process of healing!
But before I saw the search engine link to the Medical News article tonight, I had not had the impression that your blog is a resource about eating disorders – I had gotten the impression that it was a general recipe blog of a Canadian woman in her late 20s or early 30s who is a health coach [and who seems to go on vacation in Hawaii quite often! 🙂 ] — so for the new readers who will be finding you via the Medical News Top 10 list, you might want to have something about this at the top of your page which can welcome those visitors, and maybe even point them to the areas/posts of your site that are about that topic.
You might or might not want to acknowledge somewhere obvious on your main page that your blog was listed in that top 10 list – I don’t know what your “brand” or main focus is – but it’s a nice mention for you from a health website that gets quite a bit of traffic.
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Okay, now I’m gonna finally go check out some of your other recipes!
I’ll be making the flourless oatmeal cookie one again tomorrow. They were just as tasty coming out of the freezer today as they were coming out of the oven yesterday, and they are now all gone. 🙂
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By the way, in my post under that recipe, where I described my alterations to it, when I wrote that I’d bumped up the oatmeal to almond flour ratio in the original recipe because I just love oatmeal, I had no idea at that point that you were also a big fan of oatmeal! I later saw a different page of your site where you mentioned that you love oatmeal.
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I just realized that I forgot to look up what washi tape is – that is another reason I wanted to come back to this TOL post, to see how it was spelled, so I can look it up.
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Good luck, take care! 🙂
I have never even heard of washi tape.
Maybe that’s ‘cos I don’t do social media (no facebook, pinterest, etc.) and don’t have a tv?
Is it mainly a Canadian thing? (though I wouldn’t expect so… sounds Japanese?)
It’s maybe a younger generation thing (for people in their 20s)?
I feel so out of the loop. 😉
I will look it up a little later.
You do have a lot of it, and it’s very arranged by color! 🙂
Do you also organize your clothes like that?
I do, pretty much.
(At least, when I have enough closet and drawer space in order to do that – now I’m living in a temporary situation and I don’t even have a closet as such, so I’m much less organized with my clothes than I’d like to be.)
I don’t really hoard beauty products. About 8 years ago, I developed (for no obvious reason) perioral dermatitis as well as constant cheilitis on my lips, and generally my facial skin and hair started acting up and being really sensitive, so I had to pare down and get really simple with my skincare routine. Most facial products and cosmetics would give me a bad reaction, even the hypoallergenic, organic, “sensitive”, etc. I spent years and so much money and time trying to find a face wash, a face lotion, a shampoo that was gentle enough but also effective. A couple of years ago, I finally found the essentials that I can do okay with, and I haven’t really branched out since, because it’s pretty likely that anything new that I try is going to set me back. I keep a 6 to 12 month supply on hand, in case they stop making them!
My skin has been going through changes for the last few years because of several different hormonal/endocrine system issues that I have (required surgeries and medication), plus vitamin/mineral deficiencies and oversupply, plus I have developed more and more allergies/sensitivities to substances like pine, tea tree, eucalyptus, chamomile, calendula, retinol, etc. etc., so I keep things very simple.
I did try a new shampoo last month, after reading the labels of 3 dozen different ones at the store, just to see how it would do, and it was not good at all for my hair – made it look oily and limp, but feel too dry, and gave it so much static cling. So I went back to the old standby shampoo and conditioner (but noticed this week that their price has doubled at the store where I normally buy them).
I found out recently that the company that makes the only body wash that doesn’t give me any trouble has stopped making it. I usually buy a year’s supply at the beginning of the calendar year, but it’s not for sale anymore! (Except on Amazon, some third party sellers have a lone bottle for $120 or something, that kind of thing, since it’s not being made anymore.)
Three years ago, this happened with my then-“go to” body wash (a different brand), and I even got into a correspondence with the woman who ran that company, asking her to reconsider not retiring it! She was very nice, but the decision had been made. She said I could buy a gallon size of it, because they still had some of that in stock, but it was quite expensive and it had been manufactured some time earlier, so the expiration date wasn’t too far out, and I decided not to do that. I moved on and tried out a number of other brands/formulas, and found the one that I’ve been using for the past 3 years.
I am not looking forward to having to do that again, but at least I have 1 full bottle left of the kind I’ve been using for the last 3 years, so there is no rush.
Last month I also got a new electric toothbrush, coincidentally. My old Sonicare one I’d had for probably 10 years, and it really had worked well, but the battery was draining more quickly (not as bad as yours, though) and I wanted to have a backup for when it bit the dust. In early Dec. there was a good deal on Sonicare ones ($20 manufacturer’s coupon off, plus a sale price, at Amazon) so I got a decent one that is normally $50 (in the US) for $25 with free shipping. I don’t like it as much as the Sonicare I got 10 years ago, but that one had been a $150 one that I got on sale for $90, so it was made to higher specifications and with nicer materials to begin with.
About overthinking — I’m someone to whom (some) other people like to say, “you are overthinking that” or “you think too much” —
but you know what, if I didn’t think like I do, if I didn’t spend time to be thorough and catch those few mistakes and make something just 5% better than most other people have the motivation or attention-to-detail to do, I wouldn’t have had many of the experiences and opportunities that I’ve had in this life, I wouldn’t have gotten the good grades that I did, wouldn’t have done my university degrees and wouldn’t have been able to live in foreign countries for many years and do some interesting jobs, meeting a wide range of people and seeing beautiful places.
There are different personality types and cognitive types (etc.) and there is no shame in being one sort of person rather than another sort. (I am not saying that you indicated that you feel any “shame” about overthinking! I am just talking in general terms here.) It’s hard if most of your family and acquaintances are of different types to yourself. But you have to embrace your natural inclinations (if they are not entirely unhealthy of course) and use them for the best, while smoothing out your rough edges and somewhat becoming more versatile, yet not denying your natural strengths. Many times when someone has said to me, “You are overthinking this”, it could have been said that actually they were underthinking it, although they thought at the time that their approach was more sensible, efficient, less nerdy than mine. 😉 But au contraire….
Sometimes, not very often anymore, I will find myself in “analysis paralysis”, and have to shake myself out of that. I was in that horrible zone actually last week, about something quite inconsequential!, but it was the first time in a long time.
Generally, I trust my instincts and processes now – Maybe that is a benefit of being moderately middle-aged. 🙂 I might put a little more thought or planning into some things that some other people would be more casual or slap-dash about, but it often saves me time, money, mistakes, regrets later. In other things, though, I’m able to be much quicker and more decisive than some other people — it balances out.
Such a great innovative section. I actually found it interesting to read your thoughts, and I am also a hoarder of face products/ When I read your reasoning, I was like yesss girl! I get you! I have sensitive skin too and I go back and forth on products cause my skin has mood swings!
1 – This makes me miss blogging.
2 – I just came here to check out a muffin recipe, and of course I got sucked into Thinking Out Loud…
3 – What is this washi tape you speak of??? haha
It’s hard to get away from the blogging thing! I need breaks sometimes, but it always sucks me back in.
I’m salivating over all that pretty washi tape. Also, I love how you have it color coded.
Just like my closet 😆
Definitely an overthinker too! I mean what else is TOL for??
That washi tape collection is pretty impressive! Can’t wait to see what creative uses you have for them.
Just throwing this out there, but I’ve been craving a healthy cranberry orange muffin. I know you have one with chocolate, but I’m thinking one without chocolate this time. Whatdoya think? 🙂
You know, now that I look in your book, I’m seeing that recipe on page 36! Ask and you shall receive- LOL!
Oh snap! Lol I -thought- it was in there but couldn’t remember for sure. I hope you like them if you make them!
That actually sounds like a delicious combination. Will definitely add that to the list for February!
I need some of that tape for my bullet journal, but I’m holding off on it because I know I won’t be able to control myself. I wanted to start simple with some cute polka dots, but then I look at all the ones you have and now there’s like 10 more that I think I NEED for my bujo. Thanks for that 😉
And AGREED about the seeds! That’s honestly why raspberries are not in my top 3 berries…
100% me too on the seeds. I won’t put them into my smoothies and I have to avoid mixed berries just because I hate the seeds getting stuck in my teeth!
I’m thinking that if it’s seedless then it can’t be organic because doesn’t organic also mean original (heirloom) variety. But I don’t know. Looks yummy though.
I might have a similar problem with washi tape… and the journals to put them in.
Yeah I was thinking that since it can’t be modified in any way. I dunno. I’m just happy to not have them in there. Means I don’t have to try getting them out of my teeth.
I actually don’t own ANY washi tape. I always think it’s pretty but never know what to do with it. I guess I could check out those links you shared, or I should avoid them so I don’t end up with my own over abundance of washi tape to use up. 😛
I mostly got into it because of my Erin Condren planner 😆 And then always needing more and more so I can create the themes I want.
I love me some washi tape… and now that you supplied the links to even more ‘things to do with washi tape’, I am going down the rabbit hole. Wanna come? 🙂
I may or may not have already covered some of my things in washi tape 🙊
true story from my friend…her electric toothbrush died halfway thru her toothbrushing and she thought, “great…NOW how do I finish brushing my teeth?”….we are SO dependent!
Oh that seriously made me laugh out loud! That happened to me before as well, and brushing with that little circular head just feels so inadequate.
I like all your recipes (although i’m plant-based) there are soooo many people on different diet restrictions you can’t please everyone! Also, its really easy to sub ingredients to conform to their diet. I never heard of seedless berries I wonder if they actually sell the berries to consumers?
I appreciate that, Arlene 🙂 Thank you! I actually prefer plant-based recipes since dairy tends to trigger my eczema, but I try to include something for everyone and just offer substitutions when I can.
Whoa. I’m having trouble thinking of how there would be a seedless raspberry. Aren’t the seeds like, half the berry? That being said, I do hatttteeee when they get stuck in my molars…
I have a similar problem with washi tape – it’s just so hard to resist!
I’m glad I’m not alone on this one 😀
If organic seedless raspberries are a thing I need them in my life, I can’t stand eating raspberries and blackberries because the seeds always get stuck in my teeth.
I know! It’s 100% why I can’t add raspberries or any type of mixed berries to my smoothies… The seeds just get stuck in my teeth.