 |
| http://www.overthebigmoon.com/pre-k-chore-charts-free-printable/ |
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| http://www.literallyinspired.com/2012/01/diy-headband-display.html |
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| http://ramblingasusual.blogspot.com |
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Organizing free and/or cheap- the best way!
Well, a new year is upon us! Always a good time to organize things and get the year started fresh and clean! Here's a couple of items that I've recently made to help us around here. Sorry, if this is a repeat for you and you saw these on my personal blog!;)
Here is Isabella's new routine and chore chart. I made it just as a word document and added clip art of each item to try and help her know what she was checking off. Some of the items on these chore chart lists weren't applicable to us so I made my own. I also wanted to get some routine of doing the some of the same things everyday. These charts are cute, but offer a different thing to do each day. They were a great jumping off point for me though!
What do you get when you have some pretty paper, glue, mod podge and a oatmeal container? A head band holder, of course! This was a pretty easy project. Wish that
one part shown in the picture wasn't as bumpy, but what are you gonna
do? Headbands will soon be covering most of it anyways, right?!
Monday, January 14, 2013
Some recipes we've tried in the past week..
Here's some of the things I've been up to recipe wise. Most of them turned out great!
Pepperoni rolls from the breadmaker
The recipe called for 6 pieces of pepperoni for 16 roll each. Well of course I was just trying to finish out the bag from a pizza we made earlier, so I just put 3 or 4 in each. I think we ended up with 10 rolls and 4 regular rolls with no pepperoni inside. My husband made up a great sauce to spread over it before baking. He put some parmesan cheese, garlic, italin seasoning and olive oil mixed it up and put it on. Yum! The dough itself was a nice recipe. We actually used just the dough for a pizza tonight for dinner. Once you get all the pepperoni in the center of the dough, pinch together. The seam side goes down! This is something I read after Jacob had put all that olive oil on the so called top- now bottom. Oh, well! Then let rise for 30 min. and in to the oven for 15 min or so. They really rose, as you can tell!! They were a great addition to soup night and also just a nice little snack for anytime!
Oatmeal Cinnamon Waffles
Ok, so the recipe name sounded good.. Nice and healthy breakfast, right?! Well I thought they were a little dry! It was a very thick batter. It didn't taste very cinnamon-y either. That's one of the things that made me want to try this recipe actually. I made the whole batch and froze a bunch for later. Strawberries and syrup definitely made it better, but still I don't think I would make this one again.
Cornbread Casserole
Forgot to take any pictures! But I have to say, this was delicious. It looked pretty much the same as the picture here! Yay! I made it last night for some friends that came over for dinner. Our friend commented that it was similar to a cornbread casserole that they use to have at the restaurant Don Pablo's. I would make this again. My friend actually asked for the recipe too, so I think that's a good sign:)
Pumpkin cream cheese bread
This was pretty good. I made 2 loaves. The only tricky part was pouring it in evenly, then the cream cheese filling in the middle and then more bread topping. I thought it was going to turn out worse with how little batter I ended up having for the top layer, but as you can see it was enough! I used fresh pumpkin that I had froze in the fall. If you were to look at my recipe boards, you will see that I have a bit of a pumpkin addiction- especially in the fall. It was a nice tasting, low fat bread.
Homemade Laundry Detergent
So, you don't eat this one. But I'm hoping if it saves us some money then we can maybe go out to eat more!;) or at least I won't feel bad when I go over in my grocery budget! This recipe called for bar soap ( I used Dove) grated, 1 c borax, 1 c washing soda. Mix it all up and only use a Tablespoon a load (with warm or hot water)! I read that this detergent costs about 5 cents a load! I have seen many different recipes, all similar... Here's the one I used and some of the info in the blog post is helpful too. http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/10/homemade-laundry-powder-3-ingredients-10-minutes.html
I've done one load of laundry so far with it. I'll have to let you know with the next few loads how clean it is. Last, but not least was refilling our foaming soap pump. A inch of baby wash and water- that's it! So, again- I'll have to let you know how well it works in a week or so. But all in all pretty happy with all the things I've been able to try lately. It's fun to find good recipes and even better to find ways to save on things that you have to buy anyway. I'm planning on trying a few more recipes later on in the week- diy brownie mix and a stain lifter that apparently gets things out of anything. I have some spots in every room on the carpet that I would love to try that out on!
Pepperoni rolls from the breadmaker
The recipe called for 6 pieces of pepperoni for 16 roll each. Well of course I was just trying to finish out the bag from a pizza we made earlier, so I just put 3 or 4 in each. I think we ended up with 10 rolls and 4 regular rolls with no pepperoni inside. My husband made up a great sauce to spread over it before baking. He put some parmesan cheese, garlic, italin seasoning and olive oil mixed it up and put it on. Yum! The dough itself was a nice recipe. We actually used just the dough for a pizza tonight for dinner. Once you get all the pepperoni in the center of the dough, pinch together. The seam side goes down! This is something I read after Jacob had put all that olive oil on the so called top- now bottom. Oh, well! Then let rise for 30 min. and in to the oven for 15 min or so. They really rose, as you can tell!! They were a great addition to soup night and also just a nice little snack for anytime!
 |
| Click here to find the wonderful recipe: http://www.breadmachinediva.com/2012/01/pepperoni-rolls/ |
Oatmeal Cinnamon Waffles
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| http://www.fitsugar.com/Recipe-Cinnamon-Oatmeal-Waffles-7567442 |
Ok, so the recipe name sounded good.. Nice and healthy breakfast, right?! Well I thought they were a little dry! It was a very thick batter. It didn't taste very cinnamon-y either. That's one of the things that made me want to try this recipe actually. I made the whole batch and froze a bunch for later. Strawberries and syrup definitely made it better, but still I don't think I would make this one again.
 |
called for plain greek yogurt- hmm.. does regular, strawberry work?! |
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| Very thick batter! |
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| Ready for breakfast! |
Cornbread Casserole
 |
| http://penniesonaplatter.com/2010/11/24/corn-casserole/ or Paula Deen via The Food Network |
Forgot to take any pictures! But I have to say, this was delicious. It looked pretty much the same as the picture here! Yay! I made it last night for some friends that came over for dinner. Our friend commented that it was similar to a cornbread casserole that they use to have at the restaurant Don Pablo's. I would make this again. My friend actually asked for the recipe too, so I think that's a good sign:)
Pumpkin cream cheese bread
This was pretty good. I made 2 loaves. The only tricky part was pouring it in evenly, then the cream cheese filling in the middle and then more bread topping. I thought it was going to turn out worse with how little batter I ended up having for the top layer, but as you can see it was enough! I used fresh pumpkin that I had froze in the fall. If you were to look at my recipe boards, you will see that I have a bit of a pumpkin addiction- especially in the fall. It was a nice tasting, low fat bread.
 |
| http://www.sundaybaker.net/2011/09/pumpkin-cream-bread-low-calorie.html |
Homemade Laundry Detergent
So, you don't eat this one. But I'm hoping if it saves us some money then we can maybe go out to eat more!;) or at least I won't feel bad when I go over in my grocery budget! This recipe called for bar soap ( I used Dove) grated, 1 c borax, 1 c washing soda. Mix it all up and only use a Tablespoon a load (with warm or hot water)! I read that this detergent costs about 5 cents a load! I have seen many different recipes, all similar... Here's the one I used and some of the info in the blog post is helpful too. http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/10/homemade-laundry-powder-3-ingredients-10-minutes.html
 | ||
| Isabella mixing it all up! |
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| http://thefrugalgirls.com/2011/03/homemade-foaming-baby-wash.html |
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Our coat nook
Merry Christmas, all! Well, I don't know what happened to these last 2 months but it has been a whirlwind of events around here, therefore no blogging- but I have been pinteresting still! So here's a round up of the last few things that I have done. I received a wonderful little hand held camera/ camcorder for Christmas that has revived my need to blog again!
This is our first project. We finished this about 2 or 3 weeks ago. I love it! It makes it so nice and easy for people to know where to put coats and shoes out of the way. It has been very helpful with all the large gatherings we've had lately:)
This is the BEFORE:
Very dated looking, I tried to make it as useful as I could think of with putting the chalk board contact paper on it...
Here it is: doors off, painted and we put in this coat hook. I made it from a drawer front I found at Habitat for Humanity Restore ($5!) and added the coat hooks from Lowe's,( $1 a piece or something like that)
To add a little more "custom" feel and make it not look so closet-y, we added this piece of molding over the cheap-o shelf.
Added some baskets...
Here's the fabric I chose to cover the little toybox bench seat. I found it at Hobby Lobby. I also bought 2 square foam pads there to cover with this lovely fabric.
So cute! The best part about this bench, is we already had it! Just had to screw the back on to make it like a bench and added the foam cushion seat.
Here it is all done! the AFTER, so nice and open now...
This is what I was kind of going for:
thehouseofsmiths.com ana-white.com cultivate.com
For a low budget version, I'm pretty happy with it...
This is our first project. We finished this about 2 or 3 weeks ago. I love it! It makes it so nice and easy for people to know where to put coats and shoes out of the way. It has been very helpful with all the large gatherings we've had lately:)
This is the BEFORE:
Very dated looking, I tried to make it as useful as I could think of with putting the chalk board contact paper on it...
Here it is: doors off, painted and we put in this coat hook. I made it from a drawer front I found at Habitat for Humanity Restore ($5!) and added the coat hooks from Lowe's,( $1 a piece or something like that)
To add a little more "custom" feel and make it not look so closet-y, we added this piece of molding over the cheap-o shelf.
Here's the fabric I chose to cover the little toybox bench seat. I found it at Hobby Lobby. I also bought 2 square foam pads there to cover with this lovely fabric.
Here it is all done! the AFTER, so nice and open now...
thehouseofsmiths.com ana-white.com cultivate.com
For a low budget version, I'm pretty happy with it...
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Be Thankful!
Hi All,
We'll it's been a busy few weeks with wrapping up Thanksgiving and my birthday. Now on to Christmas! Here's a pretty picture of my appetizers I made for thanksgiving. I was pretty impressed with how nice they turned out. That's why I'm showing you- not to brag, because usually I think of things like this but they neer look like this in real life! Here's the recipe I used for the cheese ball.: http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/party-cheese-ball-54440.aspx,
and the carmel dip :http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1815,157184-226196,00.html
We had a relaxing time visiting family, and of course eating all our fair share of turkey, my grandma's special recipe stuffing ( hint: it's nothing like stove top out of a box!) and 2 kinds of pie.
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| theidearoom.net |
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
beginning of the mud room, and yummy cinnamon bun waffles
Well no posts for a while, because I'm in the middle of a bigger project. For one my birthday presents, we are turning our front hall/ coat closet into a mud "room". I know this doesn't sound like much of a present. But I'm excited to get to work on this, it will give us more space when we have many guests over to the house. The best part of this whole thing is, no more ugly glass doors! I hated those from the moment we moved in. I have tried many things to disguise them, but in the end they were still dated and ugly looking. I cleaned the closet out last night and painted today. My husband thinks I'm crazy, I get on these "fixes" and I just want to go around making everything that bugs me pretty. Enter my obsession: Pinterest to aide me in the crazy dept.!
Here's some of my (p)inspiration:
Today we tried these for a quick treat when we came home from the store.
Pretty good! Just spray your waffle maker and pop them in for a few minutes. Yum! Needless to say, we ate them all!
Off to my parents tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Be back next week and I'll be anxious to show off some before and afters!
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| LOL! Yep, that's us... |
Here's some of my (p)inspiration:
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| cultivate.com |
|
| ana-white.com |
| |||||
| thehouseofsmiths.com |
 | ||
| ahensnest.com |
Off to my parents tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Be back next week and I'll be anxious to show off some before and afters!
Thursday, November 15, 2012
PB Pudding cookies
Last night I made these: Peanut Butter Pudding Cookies
It's weird, my cookies actually look like these too! The pudding in the mix makes them fluffy and soft. I used peanut butter M&Ms instead of Reece Pieces. Pretty much the same thing in my mind. I got them on Halloween clearance:) Bella helped me make them and even rolled them in little balls to bake. Livi "helped" by dumping in the bags of M&Ms in the measuring cup then when I got a quick call, ate a handful of them. I walked back in and she had a mouth full and chocolate running out of her mouth. I asked her "Did you eat these?!" She shakes her head no!;) Priceless!..I was really thinking ahead this time and saved half the dough
(already in balls) in the freezer for an event in 2 weeks!
 |
| http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2012/09/peanut-butter-pudding-cookies/ |
It's weird, my cookies actually look like these too! The pudding in the mix makes them fluffy and soft. I used peanut butter M&Ms instead of Reece Pieces. Pretty much the same thing in my mind. I got them on Halloween clearance:) Bella helped me make them and even rolled them in little balls to bake. Livi "helped" by dumping in the bags of M&Ms in the measuring cup then when I got a quick call, ate a handful of them. I walked back in and she had a mouth full and chocolate running out of her mouth. I asked her "Did you eat these?!" She shakes her head no!;) Priceless!..I was really thinking ahead this time and saved half the dough
(already in balls) in the freezer for an event in 2 weeks!
Turkey kid crafts
On Monday I was in a crafty mood with my girls on Monday. We had some painting fun making some turkeys for one of my favorite holidays - thanksgiving! Here's their cute creations:
I thought this shirt was just so cute, but I couldn't commit to making a shirt that only gets one good day of wear. So we made these pictures instead. The girls made the "turkey" part with their hand of course. Can't go a Thanksgiving ( at least for a few more cute little years) without one!
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| http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/?p=821 |
I thought this shirt was just so cute, but I couldn't commit to making a shirt that only gets one good day of wear. So we made these pictures instead. The girls made the "turkey" part with their hand of course. Can't go a Thanksgiving ( at least for a few more cute little years) without one!
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| http://www.lovefromtexas.com/2011/07/phone-pics.html |
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