Printing is expensive!!!

Here is a great suggestion for saving printer ink. I have an HP laser printer, but this would apply if you are using ANY printer brand or whether it's inkjet or laser.

First, anytime I print something that comes out of the printer wrong or that well-known last page that just has a page# and url at the bottom with nothing else worth keeping - I save it. It goes in a bin next to the printer. I load that paper in the printer
upside-down for random things I want to print because the backside doesn't really matter. Saving me $ on paper and lots of trees. Love that!

I also keep a three things near my desk.

1. Trash can
   
2. Shredder
   
3. Carton/box top or the cardboard box that is underneath a case of water you bought.
   
   

The first 2 are self-explanatory. The box top is for your paper trash. You know when you get a bill and it has envelopes and inserts stuffed in there with the statement? How about old magazines? And flyers from the mailbox that you have no interest in. Anything paper that you can recycle goes in it. I have one by my kitchen desk and my husband has one by his desk too. We empty them when they're full - into a bin in the garage - and that gets taken to our local recycling center!


Now about those ink cartridges...

Ask yourself each time you print... Does this really need to be in color?

Most of the time, it doesn't. So why are you wasting your color inks when they are so expensive? Especially for laser printers - there is one black cartridge and three color ones!

Here's what I do. I will explain with my printer in the example, but most printers give you options before you print.

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After you click the printer icon and the window opens, follow these instructions...

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There you have it! Save your $ and be conscious of what you choose to do. I hope that you start making this a habit. We can stop wasting resources and consuming more than we need to... and save our $ for our own pockets and not someone else's!

Toodles,
Joanne

Cheesy Baked Chicken

OK, this is so random. But, I gotta tell ya!

I got this recipe off of my 2008 Flagstar Bank Calendar for the month of October. Kera and her boyfriend came over in October (before I noticed the recipe under the huge picture on the calendar) and told me that they had entertained some friends at his house the night before. Jared made this very easy chicken recipe telling me the ingredients and how he made it, and everyone raved about it. So, they left and the very next day I notice this recipe on the calendar hanging in my kitchen and "I'll be darned!" if it wasn't almost exactly the same!

So, I go out and get the ingredients on my next jaunt to the grocery store. So, simple, quick, easy, and YES, it is "deelish"! We are having it for the second time tonight and I just thought "this is just too good not to share". In my house, I have to double it.

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CHEESY BAKED CHICKEN

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place 4 boneless, skinless, chicken breast halves in a baking dish. Top each breast with a slice of Swiss cheese. Mix 1 can of cream of chicken soup, 1/2 cup of fat-free milk, and 1/2 cup of nonfat sour cream and pour over chicken and cheese. Top with 1-1/2 cups of herb stuffing crumbs; cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 30 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy!

(Keeping it short, but at least I posted something!)

Gotta run...dinner's ready!

It's Not Fair!!!

(And, yes, I do like cheese with my whine!)  Okay, it's time to vent. You can totally disregard my previous post about having a good day!

My 21-year-old son is home from college for the weekend.  He comes in my office to ask me a question.
 
"Do you know any websites, where I can get information about citing sources", he asked.
Thinking back to when I was in college I say, "I had this wonderful book, which I consulted for almost every paper, but it will take me some time to figure out where it is".

On second thought, I am sitting at my computer and figure there's got to be sources online to help answer this question.  So, I pull up my browser and type "MLA bibliography" in the search box.  I click on the first source that shows up on the page, and it takes me to EasyBib.  (I already don't like the sound of this.)  When the page opens up, what do I see?  A video tutorial, of course!  I am such a visual learner, I could spend a whole week watching how-to videos on YouTube! 

"Well, how cool is this", I say sarcastically, as I hit the play button.  "Pull up a stool and we'll watch this five minute video".

As we watch the video.  My memory flashes back to the days of stacks of index cards, receiving graded reports back only to find points deducted in my bibliography section of the paper for a semi-colon where a colon should have been or because something was underlined where it should have been italicized.  Not to mention having to take my stack of cards and spread them out just to make sure they were in alphabetical order as I transcribed them into my computer. Then there was the forgotten one.  The one sentence that I got from a source and forgot to get the citations from it!  That perfect transitional sentence! UGH!

All he has to do is choose the type of source he wants to cite from a list.  Then a window pops up where he enters the prompted data into fields.  Push a button and PRESTO!  It translates all of them, puts them in alphabetical order and even spits them out into a MS Word document.

So, off he goes in total bliss.  I can hear him throughout the afternoon exclaiming from the other room to himself, "OMG, this is so awesome"!  And all of his woes about term papers on Facebook now turned to "Chris is acing these term papers!" Yada, yada, yada.  (Gee, thanks mom.)

Perhaps his generation takes it for granted how easy life is with all this technology. But then again, perhaps mine did, and we didn't know how hard our parents had it either.  At any rate, we choose to work hard for our goals.  My college career took me as long to attain as my twelve years in grade school.  Yes, twelve long years to get my degree.  Looking back, it was worth it.

Joanne