I was thinking of some ways to slow down the progress of cabin fever over the next two months and here is what I have come up with:

Tackle The Boring Household Chores
If you are bored enough being stuck in the house, now may be the ideal time to do some spring cleaning and accomplish some of the tasks you ordinarily consider boring. Wash down the walls, vacuum the cobwebs in the corner, get down on your hands and knees to clean the kitchen floor. This physical activity can pick up your spirits. Throw on your favorite tunes and get the whole family cleaning and dancing on a boring, stormy weekend then celebrate your hard work with popcorn and a family-friendly movie you haven’t seen in a while. Turn out the lights and get cozy warm together.

Get Ready For A Spring Sale
As soon as the weather turns for the better, everyone and their mama will want to be outside. It is the perfect time to host a yard/garage sale and there is no better time to prepare than now. After the holidays, kids may be more likely to part with the old to make room for all the new. Give everyone an empty box and have them gather their goods. Let kids who are able to help, get in the act of sorting and pricing the goods for sale. Once you have organized and priced everything on the floor, pack up your stuff and it is ready to go when the weather turns warm again. With a few well-placed advertising fliers, you can rack up a nice chunk of change in one afternoon. Plus, you are getting a jump on the spring cleaning and you have a whole day to look forward to of lounging around outside, helping customers take away your stuff.

Get Organized
If you are not up for moving around or get bored in the evening hours, settle in with a calendar and a notebook and start getting mentally organized. No one wants to sit home on the nice days making plans, so get a jump on things in the dead of winter. Coordinate your kids calendars, family budgets, necessary paperwork, and all the other things that tend to get out of control when you have no time. You can also divide up the things you want to get done in the upcoming weeks before spring hit the air. Divide lists into simple projects that take only a a few minutes to accomplish to the larger tasks that can take a whole weekend. The next time boredom strikes you can reference your list and find something constructive to do. Make sure you create age-appropriate categories for the rest of the family to help you out with instead of lounging all day in front of the television.

Find Your Inner Kid
Nothing can break up boredom faster than an impromptu pillow fight. It can be so easy to get grumpy and stressed out being snowed in your home with the kids. Break down your stress levels and jump down on the floor for some good old fashion play with your kids. Host a day of anti-bored games that involve as much physical activity as you can manage safely at home then play some actual board games to wind down later in the evening. The kids will love the playfulness and probably be much less stressful to you if you are all releasing the pent-up energy together.

Get In the Kitchen
Bring the family together for a day of baking or cooking for the freezer. The heat from the oven will help conserve your oil bills and everyone will reap the rewards of great foods for dinner and desert. Research kid-friendly recipes on the internet and let the little ones do a safe project on their own to keep them busy while the older kids get to cooking. Nothing like a great smelling kitchen to beat the winter blues. Comfort food is also a great solution for feeling out of sorts.

Beating Down Cabin Fever was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

Thanksgiving is easily in the top two or three holidays for most Americans. Who doesn’t love spending time with family and gorging themselves all sorts of delicious tryptophan laced foods? Thanksgiving day is usually extremely relaxing and fun, unless you have to cook. It takes a lot of work to make a dinner like that happen, but by following these tips you can cook your thanksgiving in a fraction of what it would take otherwise.The first thing you need to do is get organized ahead of time. Have recipes for everything you want to cook and make a shopping lit for the items that you need. Go into your favorite grocery store several days ahead of time to make sure that you have all the ingredients needed. Also make sure that you have all the dishes that you will need to present the meal, such as glassware, silverware and serving containers.

Most people end up buying a large turkey and having turkey left-overs for the following two weeks. A good rule of thumb is to get a pound of turkey for each person sitting at the table, so if you only have 5 or 6 people, a smaller 8 pound turkey will do you fine. If you have a small family, you might even consider not getting a fully turkey. You could just get a turkey breast instead if your family doesn’t like dark meat.

A lot of people get themselves into trouble when cooking Thanksgiving dinner because they simply have too many sides. Some people put out multiple types of potatoes and multiple dressings. Keep your side-dishes manageable, no more than four. After that things just become to complicated unless you have multiple cooks and are feeding a large group.

Ask for help. If you have guests coming over, ask them if they would be willing to bring the dessert or a side-dish to help cut back on the work that you have to do. If there’s another cook among you feel free to ask for some help in the kitchen. Chances are there’s something someone else could do to make your day a little bit easier.

Another good suggestion is to prepare any food you can the day before. You could easily make a pie on the day before and be just fine. The same could be true for a number of the other sides.

Keep your decorations simple. Remember, people are there for the food, not the fancy center piece. There’s no reason to put a lot of time and effort into a gorgeous centerpiece when a simple flower arrangement will suffice!

Thanksgiving dinner can take a substantial amount of effort to make happen, but by following these tips you can have a much more successful thanksgiving dinner.

How to Make an Amazing Thanksgiving Dinner in Half the Time was created by and is property of American Consumer News.