Want a Scrapbook Without Having to Actually Scrapbook?

One of my husband’s friends from high school just started her own business. She’s always loved scrapbooking and has been doing digital scrapbooking for the past few years. Now, she’s decided to start doing it for other people, too. All you have to do is send her the pics you want ’scrapped’ and she’ll do all the hard work for you.

Check out her new blog - she does great work!!
ScrappyMom Creations

Easy-to-Follow Picture-Instruction Recipes

I’m not really a great cook. In fact, when Shawn and I got married a dozen years ago, one of our agreements was that he didn’t mind cooking if I didn’t mind cleaning it all up. Of course, over the years, that’s changed. Since he’s still working a full-time job AND running a business “on the side”, and I’m just a stay-at-home mom, I’ve wound up taking over most of the cooking in the house.

The good news is that I’m enjoying it more. But, I still wouldn’t say that I’m great at it or anything. And I’m definitely NOT any kind of gourmet chef.

So, when my sister sent me a link to this website with cool, easy recipes, I had to give it a gander. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see that not only were the recipes pretty straight-forward and easy to fix, but there are step-by-step directions with pictures for each step. So, even the harder recipes feel easy and attainable. Oh, and the author has a GREAT sense of humor, too!!!

Check out The Pioneer Woman Cooks and see what you think. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be trying out her recipes tonight for dinner!!

Weaning Off of a Pacifier

All three of my kiddos have been very attached to their pacifiers (Karis still IS). So, when it came time to wean them, I was definitely looking for tips on how to do it! Here’s a couple of ideas that I’ve come across… Continue reading…

Growth Spurt at 9 Months

My baby girl, Karis, just turned into an eating machine! She was doing great nursing and eating a few solids (mostly cereal) during the day until a couple of weeks ago. Then all of a sudden she couldn’t get enough! My normally laid back, sweet-tempered baby started wailing within only an hour or two of the last meal.

At first I blamed it on teething.

Then I blamed it on not getting enough sleep.

Then it hit me.

She’s nine months old.

Time for a growth spurt.
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Per-Diaper Pricing

My sis sent me this link from BabyCheapskate.com on how to know if you’re paying a good price per diaper. Love this lady!

Mundane topic alert! I’ll bet some of you have an image of me sitting around obsessively crunching diaper prices. I swear it’s (mostly) not true! But a reader asked me how much she should be paying per diaper for size 4 premiums. I figured I’d go ahead and create this list for everyone. Make a note of this, it will help you evaluate the deals you find.

These are the per-diaper prices to beat for Cruisers (or Swaddlers) & Huggies Supreme. In other words, this is the most I ever want you to pay per diaper. I arrived at these figures by assuming a $7.99 per jumbo sale and a $1.50 coupon:

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Moo-ving to Cow’s Milk

Q: Did you have a problem with any of your kids taking to cow’s milk? I have been trying for more than 2 weeks and he just hates it! He won’t even hardly take 3 sips before he’s throwing it down on the floor. I told my doctor about it (this was when i just started trying it) and he didn’t seem overly concerned. He just said to try an ounce at a time every day until he drank it and then go up to 2 oz, then 3 etc. Well, what do you do when they won’t even drink an ounce?
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Target’s Coupon Generator

My beautiful sister is a bargain-hunter extraordinaire and sent me this info on Target’s online coupon generator. Since we both shop there all the time (probably too much), this was a great tip!

Since it’s on the web you can print a coupon out as many times as you like and the store will take multiple print-outs of the same coupon as long as you follow the normal directions on the face of the coupon. I tried it out today on Gerber foods (buy 2 Gerber products and get $1.00 off). I bought 12 Gerber items so used 6 $1.00 off coupons….so I ultimately spent $2.28 instead of $8.28!!!!!!!! This particular coupon is only good until the 15th of August but you could totally go and stock up now for later. What’s also great is it doesn’t stipulate what Gerber food product, so it can be any stage, cereal, crackers or whatever. I don’t know how often you shop at Target, but I think it would definitely be worth at least one visit!!
http://coupons.50webs.org/

Groceries at Amazon, Part 2

I know that I’ve written about this before, but I just found out about another aspect of this that makes it even more worthwhile. Not only can you buy your non-perishables online from Amazon and have them shipped straight to your door (Ah, can you imagine not having to load up the kids in a cart and push them around the grocery store all the time?? Talk about heavenly!), BUT you can also sign up for their “Subscribe and Save” service that will automatically send you items on a routine basis.

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Great Household Tips

Here’s some great tips I just got from Tiffany. Be sure to read the last tip about cleaning the lint filter on your clothes dryer! Enjoy!!

1. Reheat Pizza - Heat up leftover pizza in a non stick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy.
   No soggy micro pizza. Saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
2. Easy Deviled Eggs - Put cooked egg yolks in a ziploc bag. Seal ziploc, then mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly. Cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg whites. Just throw the bag away when you’re done for easy clean up.
3. Expanding Frosting - When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. This will double it in
   size/amount. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also
   eat less sugar and calories per serving.
4. Reheating Refrigerated Bread - To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place a cup of water in the microwave with them. The
   increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
5. Newspaper Weeds Away - Start putting wet newspaper in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Put layers around the plants, overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic, but they will not get through wet newspapers.
6. Broken Glass - Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can’t see easily.
7. No More Mosquitoes - Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.
8. Squirrel Away! - To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and
   the squirrels won’t come near it.
9. Flexible Vacuum - To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge, add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to the end of your vacuum hose. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
10. Reducing Static Cling - Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks
    that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and — ta da! — static is gone.
11. Measuring Cups - Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next,
    add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
12. Foggy Windshield? - Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!
13. Reopening Sealed Envelope - If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the
    freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.
14. Conditioner - Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a
    great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair…
15. Goodbye Fruit Flies - To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2″ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!
16. Get Rid of Ants - Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it “home”, can’t digest it, so it kills them. It may take a week or
    so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
17. Clothes Dryers - When the heating unit in our dryer went out, the gentleman that fixes things around our house told us that he wanted to show us the lint filter in our dryer. It was clean. But, when he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over the mesh material, the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn’t go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film to build up on the filter and that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film , but it’s there. It comes from the dryer sheets that make your clothes soft and static free. You know how dryer sheets can feel waxy when you take them out of the box? Well, that’s the stuff that builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire and potentially burn your house down with it!He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long!

Note: I went to MY dryer and tested my lint filter by running water over it. The
water ran through only slightly and mostly collected in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and my dish scrubbing brush and was done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it, the water ran straight through the filter. No puddling at all! Apparently, that repairman knew what he was talking about!

Kids are Smarter than Us…

The other day we were driving somewhere and someone cut me off on a major road near my house. After mumbling something smart-assed under my breath about them HAVING to pick MY lane, even though the other 2 lanes were COMPLETELY clear, Kate asked me, “Mommy, who are you talking to?” I knew I’d been caught and said sheepishly, “I’m talking to the cars.” She said in a very matter-of-fact, aren’t-you-a-silly-woman?, kind of way. , “Uh… Mommy… cars don’t talk.” So after, I laughed out loud, I said, “You’re right, honey. I must have been talking to the drivers IN the cars, huh?”

At least she got me out of my bad mood and made me smile….