My mind is admittedly a little bit all over the place this morning so I’m just going to roll with it and share a rather random post with you today. Think of this as more or less a “thinking out loud” post filled with a bunch of random musings. Heeere we go!
Five Random Things on a Wednesday
-
Mom Hack Snack Bag
Hooray for random mom hacks that make life easier! I recently began putting an assortment of (mostly) healthy snacks into a baggie that I can easily transfer from one bag or backpack to the next and it’s the best! (Truth talk: This idea began when I put a ton of snacks in a freezer-size bag for a day at the pool and never took them out.)
I love this random mom hack for a myriad of reasons — one being the fact that I now no longer have a random granola bar or box of raisins floating around in my bag — but I also love it because Chase (our notoriously finicky eater) seems to enjoy picking out a snack for himself and is way more excited about eating a healthy snack when he has some say in his snack choice. But the BEST part is that I love whatever snack he chooses because I’ve pre-selected healthy options so it feels like a mom win all around.
-
Get Out of My Brain Gloria Estefan
The other morning, I was driving Chase to preschool and the song “1, 2, 3” by Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine came on the radio. I found myself singing every single word to this song — “1, 2, 3, 4, come on baby say you love me… 5, 6, 7 times!” — and I had one of those moments when I realized just how ridiculous it is that my brain chooses to commit lyrics to music from the late 1980s to memory but cannot remember where I put my grocery list or my phone or my water bottle. I’d like to free up some of this random song lyric brain space for some day-to-day brain space that seems to have gone missing since I became a mother.
-
Go-To Impulse Buy
Is it just me or do you guys have a go-to impulse buy at the grocery store checkout counter, too? I’d love to say I’m completely immune and never tempted by the candy or chips at the checkout but that would be a blatant lie. Sometimes they simply call to me and on those days, nine times out of ten I find myself reaching for a trio of Ferrero Rocher chocolate hazelnut truffles. It’s definitely my go-to impulse buy if I’m going to snag some kind of candy at checkout. (Honorable mentions go to peanut putter M&Ms and white cheddar popcorn.)
-
Marriage Pet Peeves
Please tell me I am not the only person who is married to someone who will move right along to a new jar of peanut butter before the old jar is completely used up? It drives me bananas. File this under one of my biggest marriage pet peeves. Oh and if you happen to be the person who does this in a relationship, stop the madness!!!
For what it’s worth, I’ve been bothered by this type of behavior my whole life. I remember eating cereal at a friend’s house growing up and they’d often have two to three boxes of the same cereal open in their pantry and it just blew my mind and made me want to consolidate everything into one box on the spot. As I typed out that last sentence, I’m beginning to think maybe I’m actually the one with issues here…
-
Softened Edges of Ice Cream
I’m probably letting my ice cream obsession shine through on a new level by sharing this but there’s no way I’m the only one who practically melts (pun intended) for the softened edges of ice cream around the edges of the container. You know when you leave ice cream out on the counter and the edges begin to slightly melt? Or when you bring ice cream home from the grocery store and it softened a bit in the car? Ughhh it’s just the best. When I know I’m the only one who will be eating a particular pint of ice cream, I have no shame in grabbing a spoon and eating all those beautifully softened edges straight out of the carton. It’s ice cream heaven, I’m tellin’ ya.
Questions of the Day
What song do you know ALL of the lyrics to that you’d happily remove from your memory to free up some brain space?
What is your go-to impulse buy if you’re going to snag a treat for yourself at the grocery store checkout counter?
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-1e3-7hOJ_U8Bg.gif\")
Love your random post today! 🙂 I identify with it on so many levels but mostly with the peanut butter and ice cream situations. My husband had to throw out a cereal box this morning as it had gone stale, because he had already started a new box!! I hate wasting food so I was having to restrain myself from nagging him about it (again).
And the icecream…I would definitely open the icecream as soon as I got home from the grocery store for this very reason, even if it is like 10am, gotta take advantage of the melty edges! I could accidentally eat half a pint like this, just eating away those parts :D. If I can’t wait for them to melt I serve it into a bowl and then mix it up a bit to make some parts softer…everyone always says something must be wrong with me for preferring it like this!
YES I have accidentally finished half a pint of ice cream just because I wanted a “bite” but then the melty edges were so easy to polish off!
My impulse buy at checkout is the “whatever holiday” Reese’s has out. Love the pumpkin, the Christmas reds and especially the Easter egg. Cannot resist!
Oooooh good call! Yes! The Reese’s eggs, pumpkins and Christmas trees definitely find their way into my cart from time to time, too!
My husband is like that with eggs!! Sometimes I’ll peek in the fridge while I’m making my grocery list and see we have two cartons of eggs. So, a sane person would assume one is full and the other is partiall full. NOPE. There will be one or two eggs in each carton.
Any chance you could do a post on some of the healthy snacks that are Chase approved? I also have a very picky 2 year old and would love to know some of your tried and true on the go pre packed snacks.
Thanks!
Loved this random post! It’s fun to get a glimpse of what other people notice and appreciate in life.
LOVE these kind of posts- it’s how my brain works all the time.
Song- currently Bad Wolves- Zombie. Great song, but my 7 yo loves it so much she is constantly singing and playing it all the time-and then I can’t get it out of “head…. it’s in my hey-ad…zom-bey”… Oh no!
Snack- peanut M&Ms. Or almost any chocolate. Trying to do more hot cocoa instead, which is great now that it’s chilly out.
You can have all my softened ice cream, Julie. Uck!!!!! I like it cold, cold, cold!
Happy Wednesday!
hahaa I always say that…I can remember literally every word to song lyrics from my middle school/highschool days or old cheerleading routines but I can’t remember why I walked into a room or what I did yesterday 😉
I’m also with you on the icecream, I will purposely let it sit on the counter for a bit to soften before I eat it, the melty edges are the best!
My dad loves the edges of ice cream so much that whenever we find a pint of ice cream in his freezer, it’s just a cylinder of ice cream right in the middle with hollow edges ?
Your dad sounds like my new best friend. 🙂
Yes to the peanut butter nagging! My husband does that with so many things and it drives me bonkers. I also have a thing for moving food in the fridge to smaller tupperware and I find weird satisfaction in combining the random boxes we have to fit into one so maybe I’m crazy too.
My impulse purchase in the checkout line is usually Rollos or Airheads. I blame the Airheads on pregnancy.
Yes yes yes to all of this! I love moving food into smaller containers and consolidating boxes in our garage. You comment made me feel less crazy! 🙂 Haha!
I feel you with the peanut butter! I also get weirdly bothered when someone eats hummus, peanut butter etc and leaves it very uneven. I of course then “have to” even it out hahaha.
It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. 😉
I’m totally the person with multiple jars of peanut butter open in my pantry. Off the top of my head, I think there are currently 5 different opened jars. To be fair, two are almond butter and three are peanut butter, but still hah! It’s so much work once you get to the bottom of the jar 😛
Say it isn’t SOOOOOO! Ha!!! For what it’s worth, we have a bunch of jars open right now, too… but one is a natural peanut butter, one is a basic peanut butter (the kind w/sugar), one is almond butter and one is coconut butter… Clearly we are nut butter lovin’ people around here.
I”m right there with you on soft ice cream!! I love when the ice cream flips over in the pint container! The underside is so soft!
THE UNDERSIDE!!! YES. You are speaking my language.
Looove your random posts – I was nodding to basically everything on the list lol!
Hmm for songs, I somehow have every Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and every other 90s/early 2000s pop singer/group’s lyrics permanently ingrained in my mind (but I’m actually not that mad about it bc they’re the best).
Ferrero Rocher is a solid choice…I’d say peanut M&M’s, Reese’s cups, Whatchamacallits, or if I’m craving a salty snack I’m a sucker for any flavor of kettle cooked chips.
Love me some Gloria Estefan! You should definitely try to see On Your Feet!, the musical about her life. It is AMAZING and has her music in it!
How have I never heard of this musical!?! I am sure I’d love it!!!
Love this post Julie! I have some marriage pet peeves, but I can’t say opening a new jar of peanut butter or box of cereal when there is one already opened is one of them….however, my husband leaves cabinets and drawers wide open even when he is done with them, he leaves trails of crumbs everywhere, and he leaves the lights on all the times. Haha! I love him anyways so I have to just look past these and get over my annoyance of it. Lol!! 😉 I hope you are having a great week! Xoxo
Usually anything on sale!! That may end up being a fruity gum, mentos (colors) or tic tacs!
the fruity mentos are so good!!
My impulse buy is almost always a nice cold Dr Pepper! Every single time. I just can’t resist!!
I am not a huge soda person but there is definitely something AMAZING about an ice cold Dr. Pepper — but I love one from the fountain. Mmmmm!
The eating the soft/slightly melted ice cream edges made me laugh out loud, because I literally did this yesterday after getting home from the grocery store. I would like to blame it on pregnancy, but it’s something I almost always do. It’s just the most perfect melted, but not too melted texture :)!
I love to get the Trader Joe’s pb&j chocolate bars at checkout! They are sooo good!
My husband and I have an unspoken agreement with peanut butter jars; when the jar gets to the point where it is a little more “work” to get the last bits out, he leaves it for me and moves on to a new jar because he knows i’ll go in with a spoon and scrape every last bit out!
It’s oddly satisfying to practically lick a jar clean. 🙂
I”m right there with you on the partial containers! I go even further that it can be a different flavor of the same type of food, and I’m still annoyed (multiple flavors of nut butters, ice cream, hummus, etc.) I just don’t like too many options at a time, and if an item isn’t opened yet, then my brain doesn’t see it as an option. I just see the one flavor of whatever it is and decide whether I want that thing right now, and if not, then I move on to something completely different…which is more likely a healthier option 😉
And all the yesses to the soft edges of the ice cream pint. I recently went a little wild on a Ben & Jerry’s pint because the edges just kept softer and I kept eating until I finally hit the hard middle. Oops!
SO been there with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Irresistible, I’m tellin’ ya!!
I basically have the equivalent of your mom snack bag in my desk drawer at work and it is a lifesaver!!! also YES to the soft edges in a pint of ice cream…although they’re dangerous because once it really starts to melt, I want to eat all of it. quickly. haha
My impulse buy is the bag of dark chocolate covered almonds in the TJ’s checkout line. They’re the perfect portion!
I was obsessed with the Lion King and Beauty and the Beast soundtracks as a kid. I’m pretty sure I still know every single word.
hahahahahaha! yes, we had to have a discussion about the peanut butter. all good now, the lambs have stopped screaming ⊙﹏⊙
OK, I’m not a mom, but — my boyfriend and I did a gallon ziplock “snack bag” for our most recent road trip across the country and it was SO clutch. It kept the car clean, kept us organized, and everything was in one place to reach into the backseat – genius and love it.
The soft edges of the ice cream are the BEST! My containers always end up looking so weird because they end up just a rounded lump in the middle not touching the sides. So good!
I also find it absurd that anyone would have multiple boxes of the same cereal open at the same time. That would not have flown at my house growing up. I’m the only peanut butter eater in my house, so that’s never been a problem. I almost wish I did have someone to open a new jar before the old jar was open. I hate the first time I open a jar and have to do the initial stirring of the oil.
I’ve started dumping out all the oil and peanut butter fro my the new container, and i use my hand blender to really get it all mixed properly. Then I use a scraper to put it all back into the jar. When it’s in the fridge it stays perfect!
Here, here! Totally love the softened edges, in particular with Ben and Jerry’s! They taste better and the bites are creamier.
My mom ALWAYS did that to ice cream when she brought it home from the store. We joked that we never knew ice cream came in full containers, but they always looked like that when we opened them. She would say that she had to test it before her kids ate it, in case it was no good and she didn’t want to feed it to us.
Totally agree that containers have to be finished before a new one can be opened! We have this issue with cereal in our house! I happen to love finishing containers and throwing out empty boxes, etc. Gretchen Rubin says some people are finishers and other people love to start or open new things. Pretty interesting to see that in real life!
Loved this post! My go-to impulse buys are usually a kit kat or take5.
I am all about the softened edges of ice cream. They are the jam! When I was younger I actually used to put my ice cream in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it up.
I want you to pack my snacks too – I love everything in your snack bag! Lol
In relation to the soft edges of icecream – OMG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE!
I also love nothing more than opening a new tub of icecream and eating what icecream had transferred onto the lid. Odd, but so satisfying!
The snack bag! I started doing this recently too. I’d always pack one when I knew we were going somewhere because my 23 month old gets hangry very quickly. Eventually I started just keeping it packed and ready to go all the time so I didn’t have to add packing it to my already long “before we leave the house” list. I do the same with a few diapers and a pack of wipes in a gallon sized bag so I don’t have to bring a whole diaper bag along with me everywhere.
A big HECK YES to softened ice cream edges! Anytime I buy ice cream, I have to take a least one bite of it as soon as I get home, regardless of the time of day. I must. I recently bought Ben & Jerry’s S’mores, and while I don’t taste anything remotely related to marshmallow, it’s incredibly delicious! Check-out impulse buys almost always include some sort of protein bar (I seem to collect them and I seriously don’t understand it or myself) and peanut M&Ms for sure. – Kaitlyn | http://www.poweredbysass.com | @poweredbysass
Totally agree on the soft edges of ice cream! I usually microwave a pint for 10 seconds or so just so I can get those soft edges quicker 🙂
Impulse purchase: white cheddar popcorn (lol-Target?) and sparkling water.
I cannot stand when there are 2 of the same container/snack open. Minimalism people!
I refuse to eat hard ice cream. Melty goodness all the way.
Oh my gosh I am so the same way! My husband is notorious for opening up a new jar/box of food before the other is gone! Yogurt, pasta sauce, salsa, and especially peanut butter! Why does this bother me so much?!
I also love the melty edges of ice cream and that gets me into trouble when I just want “one bite.” 🙂
I find myself singing toddler songs in the shower, at work, etc. and wish I would stop singing them when I hear them already 100x a day! (i.e. Moana- You’re Welcome).
My impulse buy is definitely the dark chocolate squares they have at Whole Foods. It is slightly embarrassing when they ask “Would you like to keep this out?” while bagging. Yes, I am going to eat it as I walk to the car…
girl! first of all, tons of hugs and love and congrats to your sis and bro-in-law!! so exciting!!!
ugh, the PB, cereal, etc …i am SO with you. finish the product completely before opening a new one. you are not alone. and soft edges of ice cream? THE BEST. of course, those calories don’t count and thats certainly not part of the serving 😉
I love the soft edges! When I was little and got ice cream at home I would stir it up til it was like a soft serve consistency! And having multiple jars of the same thing open would drive me nuts! I’m also weird in that I like everything to be level!
My go to is usually Twix or Reese’s, however if I’m at Michael’s I always get a white chocolate or peanut butter Lindt truffle!
OMG I was screaming at the screen reading about the peanut butter / cereal pet peeve!!! YEEEEEES! My husband also does this with bags of chips. Drives me up the wall!
It drives me absolutely nuts too!! The family I nanny for, do it too! They have several loafs (of the same bread open) at the same time, same with the cereal and butter in the fridge. It drives me crazy and makes me a little on edge haha!! Just finish one thing before opening the next one, I’m in agreement with you 🙂