I remember visiting “haunted houses” as a child, and I don’t know if it was just where I lived or what, but it seemed like almost all of them had a mad scientist’s lab, and sometimes, said scientist passed around bowls of “body parts”, which we were told to touch and taste. Dipping my hand into a bowl of Spagettios in a dark room (while someone in a lab coat and Einstein wig...

My new, red Senseo single-serve coffeemaker is the sexiest small appliance I now own. I’m sorry, little Shop-Vac; I thought you were sexy before. I still love you, but now you’re just… cute. (Handy, and cute.) But the Senseo is seriously hot! It makes something I love - coffee - almost faster than you can say it, and much more efficiently (and fun) than the old drip-drip-dripper. Are my...

I may have mentioned here before how much a fan I am of “the” IKEA… I may have mentioned it a lot.An IKEA-related site I stumbled upon recently has really become a favorite of mine. Jules runs the fantabulous IKEA hacker site - a blog featuring cleverly “hacked” items from IKEA. We exchanged emails recently, and I told her that I have a few hacks planned - because I do - but...

Having had two pregnancies almost back-to-back (my kids are just less than a year apart), I read a lot of books on the subject. My favorite pregnancy book was The Mother of All Pregnancy Books by Ann Douglas. It’s written in a conversational style and is probably the most thorough of all the pregnancy books I read (or started to read and then put down because they just didn’t measure up to this...

in earlier articles, i’ve rambled on about what types of products to exclude when you’re expecting, but this is a list of consumables, activities and such that you should exclude while expecting - for your health, and for your baby’s. if you’re pregnant, you’re probably absorbing a lot of information from books and the internet right now, so chances are you’ve seen some, if...

wow, an entire post devoted exclusively to poop! if you’re expecting your first baby, you probably have no idea just how important poop is about to become in your household. never before has poop had such priority, such meaning. sudden, drastic changes in baby poop can be concerning though, especially for new moms. fear not! the official baby poop decoder has you covered. well, hopefully NOT “covered”,...