Chrunchy new year

**Achoo!**
We are a house of colds. Pappa Starbucks came home last week not feeling well and the cold has brewed since then. Now he's better and Little Berry and I have it. She sounds miserable and acts fine, so I suppose all is well. Just sneezes and sniffles, thankfully, no coughs.
Unfortunately I've been taking care of him and then I caught it, and then she caught it from me so now I'm taking care of her. No one lets Mamma recover. I'll get over it soon....I must!
I've got some things to share though that aren't germs, so you'll be grateful for that!
Okay, this is something I saw before Christmas and never made- homemade cough drops!
Hello!?! I want to make these so badly (even though we don't have coughs!) but alas: we don't own a kitchen thermometer. I know, there isn't an excuse for us.
Someday I will buy one. Seriously, if these as wonderful as they look, they might be worth getting sick for.

What is your new years resolution?
I don't traditionally make one. But this year there is something I have decided I want to accomplish: removing processed foods from our diet. I would love to aim for a raw foods diet but I think a good first step in a house of different dietary needs is to remove pre-packaged and over-processed foods. I know this makes me sound like a crunchy granola Mamma, but I have good reason- Pappa Starbucks is vegetarian, Little Berry is on whatever we eat+ breast milk, and I eat everyone's scraps
(Just kidding~ I only snack on them).
But I have a serious sweet tooth, and I feel like its at a point that I'm putting more bad stuff into my body because I'm not being "conscious" of what I eat.
So more conscious eating is my goal.
First up will be stopping buying cookies/ice cream/cookie dough/candy.. you get the idea. We buy a lot of sweets. And secondly, I want to stop buying refined white sugar. It's cheap, unhealthy, and easy to use a lot of because it's so inexpensive. Switching to organic cane sugar will make me watch what I use it for and use less when I use it because it's pricey.
Living a healthier lifestyle is all about making little decisions. We can all change one *small* thing in our lives. Last night I sat down and cut up an old towel we'd had for years into squares. half went to be cloth baby wipes (because I HATE those disposables with cloth diapers! It makes no sense to fish them out of a dirty diaper and then throw them away when I can just wash the whole thing).
The other half goes into our kitchen for cleaning counters and wiping up spills. Pappa Starbucks is addicted to Bounty paper towels and buys them by the huge packs. we go through about 12 rolls a month. I hate them, but when there is a roll of them on the counter, it's so easy to just grab them. so I made my own dish cloths because I never have enough and I want to change that.
Next up is hanging my clothesline because it's just sitting on top of the dryer with a pack of clothespins. I keep asking *someone* to hang it and getting: "sure, I can do that. later."
So I will do it myself. If I can dry my diapers and dishcloths on it twice a week, it's worth the $2 I spent on it and the clothespins.
Re-usable shopping bags: I love these. They hold so much. They're easier to carry. They're convenient. But I always seem to forget them. What do you guys do? Do you use these? Are you good at remembering to put them in your car before you go to the store? Pappa Starbucks doesn't like to keep them in his car (he's embarrassed) so I have to remember to grab them or else they get left behind. Maybe if I started writing a list and putting a note to myself on top of the list I could remember better. We used to keep a note on the door that said:
Keys, Wallet,Cell Phone, Diapers! So when we went out the door we remembered those things. Perhaps if I reinstated this with an additional *grocery bags!* that would work.