CPRMom

Daylight savings time ends early tomorrow morning. On November 1st at 2am Daylight Savings Time it will become 1am Standard Time. One great benefit is that we all gain an extra hours sleep tonight! But before you decide whether to set your clocks back Saturday night or Sunday morning, take a few minutes to pick up some new batteries for your battery operated smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. Battery operated detectors need to have good working batteries in order to operate correctly. A good way to remember this is to change the batteries every time we change our clocks. So tonight when you're thinking about when to change your clocks take a minute or two to figure out what type of batteries your detectors take and pick some up. And then either tonight before you go to bed, or tomorrow morning when you get up, as you reset your clocks replace your detector batteries. In less than 5 minutes you can ensure that your detectors will be able to alert you in the event ...

Halloween is only a few days away. Different towns have Trick or Treat on different nights. Irregardless if you have children out that night or not, we all need to exercise extra caution during Trick or Treat. If you're driving at dusk or later watch carefully for kids darting out between parked cars or crossing the road. While many costumes can be bright and colorful, some are dark and may not be reflective. It can be easy to get distracted looking at bright Halloween displays, but keep your eyes open for costumed kids near the roadway. Like most parents I’m finishing up my kids' costumes. When you look at your child's costume think about how it will look at night. If it is a dark color does it have any reflective striping on it to help them appear more visible at night? You can make your child's costume more visible by adding reflectivity - reflective tape is sold at most fabric, craft and pet supply stores. They can also wear glow sticks and carry a flashligh...

I'm trying out ping.fm

I used to have an "unofficial" routine. It worked well and I was getting things accomplished so I didn't really think about it. However over the summer the routine slowly disappeared. I think I never really noticed it until recently when some days I've found it has been a struggle to get several things accomplished in a single day. Sometimes we don't understand the importance of routines until we realize we've lost them. Monday I tried to return to a routine. I blocked out times for different projects and activities. It worked really well until my youngest decided not to take a nap. I was counting on her nap time to get caught up on some computer work. Since the kids had watched some TV earlier in the day while I did some quality housework I really didn't want to rely on the 'electronic babysitter' for a second time. So the really ambitious routine fell apart. So today on Day 2 of the new routine we're tweaking it a bit. Yes I still h...

One of the taglines I miss this time of year is "Change your clocks, change your batteries". Now that the change from daylight savings time has moved it doesn't coincide with Fire Prevention Week . This year we will return to Standard Time on November 1st. Fire Prevention week has just ended, but have you checked your smoke detector batteries? Have you tested your smoke detector? This is a good time to do so. In many parts of the U.S. and Canada the weather is really getting colder, we are turning on our heat or using our fireplace or wood fired stoves. A working smoke detector and working carbon monoxide detector are important to have. Unfortunately I know this first hand, we almost had a fire last winter. Fortunately I smelled the smoke, but discovered that we had malfunctioning smoke detectors in our basement. In my brief smoke detector research this morning I found this neat website will all sorts of Fire Facts, in fact it is www.firefacts.org . The site h...

A friend posted this on their facebook page the other day. When municipalities cut budgets and cut municipal positions our safety is what is put at risk when there are fewer and fewer firefighters and police officers on duty. You can create your own neat posters at http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php.

October 4-10, 2009 is Fire Prevention Week. This year’s theme is “Stay Fire Smart, Don’t Get Burned”. The focus is on fire safety and burn prevention. Burns are painful and easily avoided if we all follow some basic safety guidelines. Burn prevention is simple, but yet we all probably don’t think of these simple safety guidelines: Keep hot things away from the edge of the table or counter. It is tempting for young children to try to grab things just on the edge of their reach. It is also easier for us grown ups to bump or knock over things that are too close to the edge. Keep young children away from hot appliances; this includes stoves and ovens, but also curling irons, hair dryers, irons and heaters. Don’t use or leave hot heating pads in a child’s reach. Keep your hot water heater thermostat set no higher than 120 degrees. Extremely hot water can scald young children and older adults very easily. Don’t rely on thermometers to check water temperature when bathing yo...

Anyone who knows me knows that I love coffee. I truly do. It's pretty rare to see me teaching or at work without coffee in my nearby vicinity. So it is probably no shock to anyone that I was at my local Starbucks this morning to taste test the new Starbucks Via, their instant coffee. Well I was able to tell which coffee was the instant and which was the fresh brewed, which is probably not a surprise either. However this was no ordinary instant coffee. Now don't get me wrong here - I do enjoy a mug of instant coffee from time to time. Usually later at night when I'm wanting another cup and don't feel like brewing it. Starbucks Via is very much Starbucks. Strong, rich flavor - and it did take me about half of the cup sipping back and forth with the regular blend to figure out which cup was the Via and which was the regular brew. So if you love Starbucks coffee, but want the convenience of instant; you'll love it! If you're not a fan of Starbucks and/or don...