Finding Love In All the Right Places

Whenever you decide to buy something online don’t forget to go to Ebates where you can earn from 3%  to 20% cash back on your purchase! If you’re not a member yet click here to sign up and you’ll get a $5 cash bonus just for signing up. When you click on one of their hundreds of stores to go shopping or buying, you’ll see a tracking ticket appear briefly before taking you to your shopping site. Shop as normal and you'll receive a credit if you buy something. But be sure to enter any online stores through the Ebates site. A few days later the cash will be credited to your Ebates account. Ebates pays out quarterly by mailed check or Paypal. I’m expecting a $50 check in February due to my online shopping this Christmas.

You might be surprised at some of the stores that will give you cash back and/or coupons through Ebates:

Aeropostale, Weight Watchers, AT&T, Ann Taylor

Babies R Us, Banana Republic, Bath & Body Works, Budget Rent-A-Car

Bebe, Bobbi Brown, Bloomingdales, Body Shop, BooksAMillion, Brooks Brothers, Brookstone

Circuit City, Best Buy, Clinique, Coldwater Creek, Cost Plus World Market, Crate & Barrel

Dillards, Fossils, Frontgate, FTD (20% back!!), Grandin Road, JC Penney, joann's

Nike, Nordstrom, Overstock, Starbucks, Target, T-Mobile, Ulta

all kinds of golf stores; even hotels, car rental places, and airlines

OK, my eyes are starting to glaze over... Seriously, hundreds of online stores. I just picked out some to show you the variety.

What's not to love?

Color Confidence

I have been embracing my inner decor diva lately, so bear with me. One of the hardest decisions to make seems to be color selection, especially paint. If so, I have two tips for you.

#1.  Know how to classify your neutrals. Beiges can be a yellowish beige, greenish beige or pinkish beige. If you're picking items to go with a countertop or tile for example, define what kind of beige you already have and you'll be able to rule out many of the colors you may be drawn to. If the tile is a pinkish beige then you will not be happy with a rug or paint that has undertones of green or yellow.   

#2.  If color selection and coordinating colors is confounding you there is a very cool site that can help you pull it all together. At MyColortopia you can upload a photo of something you like and  find colors that both match and coordinate with it. You can upload a picture of your sofa or fabric, or a piece of fruit, or maybe a beach scene or flower. Some examples:

Look at the colors it comes up with. Clicking on any of these colors will bring up a coordinating palette.

Smoky Charcoal

Teal Lake

Pebble Grey

I love the blues and greens of this mountain scape and the choices provided by the color tool:

Pebble Grey

Onyx Black

Grey Heather

Mossy Green

The colors are all Glidden paint colors, but of course they can be matched to any other brand of paint. If you're unsure of what color direction to go in, this decorating safety net can give you the confidence to make those color decisions.

We Discovered A New Fruit!

OK, not really. We’ve had star fruit before, maybe alongside a salad or in a fruit tarte. And we had some in Maui where they grow bigger than grapefruit. But here, they have huge trees with gazillions of star fruit on them. So what do you do with them?

A google search does not bring up many star fruit recipes, let me just tell ya. I found one for dried star fruit chips, and since I had a bushel of these things I thought I would try it.  (Normally at this time of year we were eating chili and trying to stay warm, now we’re out picking fruit in shorts and flip flops).

The recipe says to mix 2 cups water and 2 cups sugar and bring to a boil. Then take off the heat and put the fruit in for 15 minutes. Then drain for 15 minutes. Then pop into the oven at 200 degrees for 1 hour.

So here they are in all their glory. 

I was so proud of my little star fish looking concoction. Then Mr. Lane declared that they taste just like raisins. And now that he said that, they do.

I’m wondering if this can be done with other fruit. Like quince. Isn’t quince a fruit? But I think with any fruit they would shrink a lot. And they would still taste like raisins.