Blog Post Roundup 3/31/12

Here are some posts I thought y'all might be interested in.









How to Get Your Toddler to Eat Anything @ Five in Tow

Tea Time Discipleship @ The Better Mom

10 Ways to Renew Your Spirit @ Encouraging Words

Building a Legacy of Faithfulness @ Pastor Paul Chappell

My Reputation @ Learning God's Lessons (a new-to-me blog that is well worth following!)

I Can't Wait (Part 1)
I Can't Wait (Part 2) @ Learning God's Lessons

How Many Stamps?

One thing that I consider to be somewhat of a time-waster is taking letters to the post office to see if they need more than one stamp, especially at my post office which is not very efficient.

It came to me one day that the perfect solution is to use my digital kitchen scale to weigh the letter!  Anything less than 1 ounce takes one first class/forever stamp.

Another tip I read somewhere is to keep the kitchen scale in a drawer.  When you need it, open the drawer and there it is, ready to use!  Before I'd been keeping it in an upper cabinet and taking it out as needed.  I don't have to move the scale at all.  I bought this scale at Target, I believe, and I really like it.  We've even used it for the Pine Derby Race at church.

Blog Post Roundup 3/17/12

Here are some articles I thought were worth sharing with you.









The Most Powerful Parenting Practice @ Encouraging Words

What Children Crave @ The Humble Homemaker

A Parenting Moment: Are you Raising Me to DO Good? Not Just Be Good? @ Toddler Approved

Corndog Muffins

I've seen a couple of different pins on Pinterest for these Corndog Muffins.  I could only find one of them quickly when I was ready to make them, so I used the one that's shown at the bottom of this post.

Before cooking

Ingredients:
Jiffy cornbread mix (plus whatever it takes to make the batter)
hotdogs (Hebrew National is our favorite brand)
cheese
shortening to grease muffin tins
chili (optional but recommended)

Directions:
1.  Mix up the Jiffy cornbread batter.
2.  Cut up the hotdogs.  I cut them into "coins" rather than chunks for my daughter.
3.  Grease the muffin tins.
4.  Put about a spoonful or so of batter in the muffin wells.  Put in some hotdogs (I put 5 "coins."), add some cheese (I did not add enough), and top with more batter.
5.  Bake according to Jiffy directions.

I only had one box of Jiffy so I was only able to make 8 muffins.  We also had some hotdogs left over in the package.  I put them in a baking dish and baked them along with the muffins.  They came out perfectly cooked.

I wasn't sure if the cornbread muffins would be rather dry, so I heated up some Hormel chili with beans to eat on the muffins and/or hot dogs.  They definitely added to the meal.

Gracie ate one of the muffins at supper and enjoyed it.  When I gave her the two leftover muffins for lunch, she had her Grandma help her pick out the hotdogs and she ate those, leaving the cornbread.

Ready to eat!

This was an ok recipe.  I would not have wanted them plain, so I'm glad I added the chili.  I couldn't really detect the cheese, so I did not put enough.  Since Gracie picked out the hot dogs, I'm guessing she's not a big fan of the cornbread, either.  Maybe when she is older, she will like them better.  They would make a great make-a-bunch-ahead-and-freeze lunch for her.





Original Source:

Source: makingmemorieswithyourkids.blogspot.com via Ava on Pinterest

Cooking Bacon in the Oven

I found this idea on Pinterest. I liked the idea of cooking so much bacon at once with less cleanup. I also thought it would be great to cook up a bunch of bacon at once in the evening to have ready for breakfast over the next few days.

I cooked up two baking sheets' worth of bacon (16 slices). The first batch I cooked for 20 minutes at 350. They didn't look done enough, so, for the second batch, I cooked them for 22 minutes at 350. I put them in a container and put them in the fridge.

Just about every day this week, I've microwaved the bacon for breakfast. I put two or three (usually three) slices inside a folded-up paper towel on a microwave plate and set the microwave for 1 minute. It comes out perfectly and is oh-so-good!

Original source:

Source: marthastewart.com via Ava on Pinterest

Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge Review

I know I'm really late on posting about the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge that I did last month.  The Challenge was hosted by Barbara at Stray Thoughts blog.

I did get to read two of Laura's books, Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie.  I really enjoyed reading them.  These books are like "comfort food" to me.  They remind me of a very happy time in my childhood and make me think of the olden days like what my grandparents lived in.  My grandma had just gone to Heaven before I started reading and it was a good time to read these books.

Little House in the Big Woods takes place when Laura is four and five years old.  It covers one year from fall to fall.  In LHitBW, we learn about many things that the Ingalls have to do just to survive:  butchering, hunting, gardening, churning butter, smoking meat, and I'm sure there's more that I can't think of right now.  We also read about the fun things that Laura and her sister Mary do: play ball with the pig's bladder, play among the harvested vegetables in the attic, attend a dance at their Grandma's, play with cousins, make snow angels, eat snow ice cream, visit town for the first time in their lives, and play with their dolls.  We learn about Ma who is very industrious and quiet and Pa who is loud and playful.  We read wonderful stories told by Pa and if we listen hard enough, we can hear Pa's fiddle as he plays at bedtime.

Little House on the Prairie takes place the next year after LHitBW.  Pa has decided to move west to find a better place to live, one that has better hunting and room to breathe.  Ma probably didn't like the idea too much as she is always one for being near civilization, school, and church, but she supports her husband and is an excellent example of a helpmeet to him.  Laura thinks it's all one grand adventure.  You can really sense the excitement and wonder throughout the book.  I love how Laura describes how they made a home on the prairie.  They were such hard workers, thrifty and creative in making do.

As a mother, I really liked how both books stressed obedience.  I really can't wait to be able to read these with my daughter!

I forgot to mention that I did find a few of the picture books to read with Gracie.  I'm sorry to say that she wasn't very impressed.  When she gets older, I think she will like them, though.

I didn't get to try any recipes.  I really wanted to make the heart-shaped cakes, but I didn't get to.  Maybe next year!

Rainbow Drops

 Gracie, like me, takes a little while to wake up in the mornings.  Most of the time, after she wakes up and I get her out of bed, I take her into the living room and we'll sit on the couch and watch TV until she's wide awake and raring to go.  This morning, we watched the Sprout channel.  The hostess was doing a fun art activity with Chica where they were dropping colored water into a pan of colored water, making neat designs.  I asked Gracie if she wanted to do that and she said, somewhat hesitantly, "please."

I could tell that either the liquid in the baking dish they used or the colored water was oil-based since the two liquids were not really mixing all that much.  This is what we wound up doing:  I poured vegetable oil into the baking dish, just enough for a thin layer.  I then poured water into eight condiment cups (which I bought to use to feed Gracie baby food when she was very small) and dropped food coloring into each, roughly the colors of the rainbow.  I put the cups onto a tray along with some plastic spoons, mostly to make it easier to carry all of them to the table, but it also helped to give them a "home" so that Gracie wouldn't put them all over the place risking spills.

Gracie really enjoyed this activity!  I'm glad I took the time to be spontaneous and do an activity that was fun for both of us to do together!

Starting out, she's intrigued by the setup!

ROY G BIV

 

This is supposed to be a video.  Hope it shows up!

She was having fun!

So intent!

Busy at it!

After a while, the colors did run together.

It's fun to dump the whole thing in, too!