Tuesday Tips: Sweet & Sticky

Sweet Ideas: 

• 10 Ways to Soften Brown Sugar
• Or, if you don't have any, you can make your own light brown sugar by mixing one tablespoon of molasses into one cup of granulated sugar. For dark brown sugar, use two tablespoons of molasses. Joy the Baker shows that this actually works! 
• How does a Brown Sugar Body Scrub sound? Here's how to make your own. 
• Add three tablespoons of sugar to each quart of water in your vase to make your cut flowers last longer! 

 Sticky Situations:

• To remove sticky stuff from your iron's soleplate, try ironing over a used dryer sheet using your lowest setting. This works great for residue from accidentally ironing plastic bags, fusible web or interfacing used in sewing, or plastic buttons (not that I would ever do any of those things). I imagine it would work on almost any melty thing you might get into! 
• 25 Ways to Remove Sticky Adhesive. Our family favorite is #22, Goo Gone. We prefer the gel formula. I have even used it to remove adhesive stickers from vintage paper cook-booklets with minimal damage. Just be patient and let the chemical do it's job before trying to peel the sticker off!

Sweet & Sticky:

If your honey has turned into a solid, unspoonable chunk in its container, you can safely decrystallize it using this method. Now, I know people (I'm not saying who...) who heat it in the microwave on medium power for maybe 15-30 seconds at a time, watching very carefully that's it's not getting too hot, but the experts seem to think the hot water method is best.

Photo credit: WPClipArt.com