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The Best Brunch Spot is Your Flats Apartment
By: Raven Halle Over the past few years, the brunch meal has become increasingly popular: it is not just a meal movement, but a social and cultural experience. Yes, we miss 2019, when we met our friends every weekend for bottomless mimosas and avocado toast. When we eat at home at 11 a.m., that’s breakfast; when we eat out with our friends, that’s brunch. The good news? You can still enjoy the cultural phenomenon that is brunch, all from the safety and comfort of your Flats apartment. Here’s how to do it. 1. Reach out to Your Friends It is truly the act of eating with loved ones that turns a breakfast into brunch, so start a group chat, whether it be through Facebook, email, or text message, with the friends with whom you’d usually brunch with, because “brunch” is a verb. Together, pick a Sunday morning when you’re all free and plan to meet virtually, through Skype, Facetime, Zoom, or another app. 2. Make a Playlist Make, or find, the perfect playlist to compliment your brunch. A perk of doing it from home is that the music is in your control. Share the playlist with your brunch buddies and have either one person or everyone play it in the background during
your meal. Spotify has a great feature that allows you to sync your music with others, so everyone can listen to the same song at the same time. 3. Prepare a Menu To make the experience feel more real, have everyone pick their favorite brunch meal and create a menu with everyone’s suggestions. If it suits you, you can all discuss virtually and pretend like you’re ordering from a server at a restaurant. 4. Get Your Food To continue making this brunch-luncheon feel real, order your food of choice from your favorite brunch spot and pick it up before getting online. Picking up
from a local restaurant is a great way to support a business you love during the times you can’t physically be there. Of course, you can always cook for yourself— it’s your brunch, anyway. 5. Drinks On your way back from picking up your food, stop at the store and pick up your drink of choice, from a Bloody Mary to a bottomless mimosa. The best part is that you can have as much as you’d like—no worries about driving, you’re already at home! 6. Meet Your Friends After coordinating the above steps with your designated brunch-bunch, and after everyone returns home with their food and
drinks, get on Zoom with your friends! Start the music, make your drinks, talk, laugh, eat, drink some more, and enjoy yourself: it’s all part of the social experience. 7. Repeat Make this a special occasion weekly, every-other week, or once a month. It’s something to look forward to.
For more information on The Flats Apartment Living in Downtown Avalon Park, call 407-273-4337 or email Info@TheFlatsAtAvalonPark.com.
Easy-To-Do Water-Saving Tips As Daylight Saving Time is under way, lawn watering schedules for residents of 16 Florida counties, including Orange, change, too, going from one to two days per week. Irrigation accounts for more than half of Central Florida’s total water consumption, but OUC wants to help you minimize its impact on your utility bill and a precious natural resource. Water your lawn wisely. Follow the St. Johns River Water Management District’s Water Restrictions – residential property owners with even numbered addresses can water on Thursdays and Sundays, while those with odd-numbered or no addresses can water on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Nonresidential property owners can water on Tuesdays and Fridays. Watering between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. is prohibited. Also: o Water for no more than one hour per irrigation zone. o Avoid watering on windy days. o Adjust sprinklers so they water the lawn, not the pavement. o Avoid sprinklers that spray a fine mist. o Make sure plants aren’t blocking sprinklers. o Turn off sprinklers when it’s raining. Check your automatic sprinkler system. Examine your
system at least once every two months for leaks and broken sprinkler heads, and promptly make repairs. Check for signs of broken or leaky sprinkler system pipes by looking for muddy or overgrown areas of turf. Make sure your sprinkler system’s timer/controller is operating as programmed, so it operates on the right days, at the right times, for the right durations Curtail personal uses. Clean driveways and sidewalks with a broom instead of a hose, and use a spray nozzle when washing your car to stop water flow between rinses. Also: o Take shorter showers o Turn the water off while brushing your teeth or shaving o Wash only full loads in the dishwasher and clothes washer o Fill the sink with water and turn off the faucet to wash dishes by hand o Use the garbage disposal sparingly.
o If you’d like to take it even further, you can install lowflow shower heads and flush valves in toilets. Identify and repair leaks in your home. In a typical house, old toilets and leaky faucets can waste hundreds of gallons of water each day. To find hidden leaks in your home, make sure no water is running in the house and observe your water meter. If the meter’s dial is moving, you may have a leak. Check for leaky faucets in and out of your home – a worn washer could easily be the issue. If you hear a toilet’s tank refilling unnecessarily, a wornout flapper or poorly working float may be the cause. Replace old toilets and get a rebate. Replacing toilets made in 1993 or earlier with EPA WaterSense-certified models that consume 1.28 gallons or less per flush can save 13,000 gallons of water a year and more than
$140 annually on your water bill. OUC offers customers a rebate for 100% of the cost, up to $100, to replace an old toilet with a new ultra-low flow toilet. Visit ouc.com/conservation-forms/ultra-low-flow-toilet/ to get started. Perhaps the most convenient thing you can do to conserve water is take advantage of OUC’s Efficiency Delivered® program, which offers customers a free conservation audit and, depending on household income, includes repairs to irrigation and minor indoor leaks, as well as help with other improvements. Call 407-4239018 or go to www.ouc.com/ audit-inquiry for more information.
