Show the hardest-working room in your home how much you love it by joining the Kitchen Love challenge.
28 days to a cleaner, better kitchen
In celebration of Valentine’s I thought it would be fun to organize a daily kitchen challenge that shows the hardest-working room in your house how much you love it. Join me!
Each day, I will put out a different kitchen challenge here. By the end of the month, you will have a clean kitchen that you can be proud of. I don’t know about you, but a clean kitchen gets me pretty excited because it motivates me to cook more and dine in versus going out.
The challenges are easy and most of them should be completed in 15 to 30 minutes (and maybe even less!).
Breaking up tasks day by day makes things more manageable for busy households.
Special thanks to the folks at The Kitchn for inspiring me with this challenge. I bought its Kitchn Cookbook a few years ago, and I thought their monthly kitchen clean-up plan was brilliant.
An indispensable resource for recipes, kitchen tips and hacks.
So I wanted to share it with others in the form of a challenge in case it can help get your kitchen in better order. Please check out its site for more helpful resources for those of us foodies who live, work and breathe in this hallowed space of our homes.
Many years ago, I learned a great tip from home organization expert Janna Lufkin. It has made organizing Christmas ornaments for our girls so much easier. As I was putting away the last of the decorations this weekend, I recalled this tip that is just too good not to share. It can help you get better organized for next Christmas.
I know many families have a tradition of gifting a different ornament to their children each year. Across multiple children, the collection of ornaments can grow faster than you can say “baby bunnies.”
To help organize them from year to year, Janna suggests storing them in your child’s stocking. I thought it was a brilliant idea (thank you, Janna!) and have been using this method for years.
When we decorate the tree, I give each girl their stocking full of ornaments. They love unwrapping them one by one and hanging them on the tree. Once they’re finished, I hang the empty stocking on the mantle, leaving the tissue paper inside to reuse later.
Here’s my simple process for getting them organized. Use these tips as a basic guide to get you started as you develop your own process:
1) First, organize ornaments by child. Working on my dining room table – so I have room to spread out – I separate the ornaments by each of my three daughters.
2) Next, I gather the heavier, more durable ornaments and place them in the stocking first so it’s bottom heavy.
3) For more delicate, breakable ornaments, I wrap them in tissue like below.
Wrapping the more delicate ornaments in tissue keeps them better protected. You can also try bubble wrap but that tends to get bulky so you may not be able to fit as many ornaments in each stocking.This stocking holds about 8-10 ornaments. If you have additional ornaments, simply store them in a box labeled with your child’s name.
Storing your children’s ornaments in their stockings is a simple yet smart way to organize. And during the Christmas hustle, simple can go a loooong way.
Christmas is 345 days away, but by organizing your ornaments now, it can make decorating the tree much easier (and faster) later. Let me know if you have any other tips for organizing your children’s ornaments or their decorations at Christmas.
A breakfast treat for your family that is simple, gooey and delicious!
While catching up with some dear friends over Skype during the holidays, I learned about this recipe. Our friends have made them every Christmas morning for the last 35 years! That was a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one so I had to try them.
The recipe is super easy and is perfect for the holidays. Since the holidays are now past, I would look for any excuse to make them. Saturday morning treat. ✅ Slumber party breakfast treat. ✅ Birthday treat. ✅ Back to school treat. ✅ You get the point. Here’s the recipe …
The night before: Grease a bundt pan with nonstick spray or butter. Assemble 18 frozen bread rolls (I used the Rhodes brand) into the bundt pan and put the pan on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle the rolls with butterscotch pudding (the cooking kind – not instant). Make sure to give the rolls a good toss in the pudding. In a small sauce pan, melt 1 stick of butter and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Give the mixture a good stir with a whisk. Pour the brown sugar mixture over the butterscotch rolls. If you’re adding nuts (pecans would be a nice addition), sprinkle a 1/4 to 1/2 cup now.
Leave them uncovered and stick them in your oven (turned off of course) to let them rise overnight.
With minimal prep the night before, you can have delicious, sticky buns for breakfast!
In the morning, remove them from the oven. Your rolls should have risen and look like this.
Sometimes the rolls rise up over the pan. Simply push them back into the pan. That’s why it’s helpful to put a cookie sheet underneath the pan to catch any dough spilling over the edge.
Now you’re ready to bake them. 325F for 25-30 minutes.
Oven temperatures vary so watch your buns. I think mine were done in 25 minutes. And remember that dark pans heat faster.
Now comes the fun part. Take them out and invert them onto a large plate or platter.
Let the bundt pan rest for a minute on the plate as the warm butterscotch-caramely goodness drips down.
Time to dig in and enjoy! There are SO many variations of this recipe. But I had never seen one that used butterscotch pudding before so I used this recipe as a reference. Does your family have a favorite sticky buns recipe?
You may be wondering why Scott Ink? I love to write and always have a notebook or pad near me, along with my favorite writing instrument (I love a good pen or a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil). While I have come to embrace digital publishing, I will always be a print girl at heart. Like so many of my generation, I prefer tactile over technology any day. From time to time, my husband will be contributing to this blog. Among his many creative pursuits, he is a calligrapher and painter.
So we thought Scott Ink would be a perfect marriage of our loves and interests.
Welcome! I am so glad you are here. My name is Leona Scott, and I started this blog, Scott Ink, as a way to slow down the fast-paced life of families today and concentrate on savoring the everyday moments. Like enjoying a meal around the dinner table. Doing a simple craft that allows us to tinker with our hands. Studying a Bible verse for daily inspiration and application. Or just watching a favorite movie or playing a game. I believe that time is the most precious of resources that God gave us and it is finite.
Starting this blog is a way to keep me accountable, too. You see, I’m a classic type A, action-oriented person who is most happy getting things accomplished and checking off an endless list of “To Dos.” Scott Ink is a way for me to stop and savor those special moments with family.
Sloooow down time
If your family is like ours, we cannot believe how quickly each day is passing. I started this blog as a way to make family time count. Scott Ink began during a season in my life when our oldest daughter was embarking on her middle school years. I wanted greater flexibility with my schedule and time so that I could be more accessible to her and our other two daughters. So I left my full-time job to become an independent contractor and start my company. Alongside my career goals, I had always wanted to start a blog to have a creative outlet and share the special journeys that so many of us share as mothers and women.
Goal of Scott Ink
Scott Ink is a way to share ideas and be a source of inspiration for other families to join us in savoring the everyday moments as we build our families and homes. One day, we can hopefully look back with no regrets and be content that we did make the most of the time we had.
Follow along!
Our family invites you to join us as we make family time count. We look forward to sharing some of our favorite recipes, activities and everyday moments with you so that we can grow and share in this great journey of family life together. From time to time, my husband, Robert, will be joining us here on the blog, along with our daughters, to share hobbies, crafts and other ideas. We want Scott Ink to be as much about our family as yours. So please share your journeys and comments with us. Thanks for visiting, and we hope you come back soon.
