Busy Bags!

I had been wanting to try some of these for awhile.  Moneysavingmom.com is a great blog (I don't follow many blogs outside of friends and family) for ideas to save money, things to do with kids, and great easy freezer-friendly meals.  On there, she has always talked about her busy bags.  I finally sat down and looked at them one day and realized that I had the material to do some of them.  She even has a plan to do a busy bag swap.  It's where you get as many friends involved as you can, and you each make a busy bag as many friends there are.  I posted something on FB about it but only had 4 people respond.  I don't know if that's worth the trouble of buying supplies.  I might ask again later for interest since it's summer right now.  We spend most of our time outside these days. 

 Anyway, my 1st busy bag idea was the pom-pom pusher since I had the supplies on hand.  Basically, cut a hole in the top of a container and let the child push pom-poms through the hole.  Allison played with it for 45 minutes the 1st time!  Since then, she won't play with it that long but long enough to keep her busy so that I can get some things done.

  My 2nd one was completely free to make.  A friend gave us some eggs, so free egg carton.  The Easter eggs came from a free egg hunt, and I got the markers to color the carton free at Walgreens with a coupon. 

   Again super easy to make.  I didn't have enough eggs to fill up the whole carton, so I cut it in half (I guess I paid for the scissors 10 yrs ago).  You then color the bottom of the egg holder with different colors.  The child then puts the egg in the corrsponding color.  This entertained Allison for 10 minutes the 1st time.  She also played with it the other day when I was trying to get dinner ready. 
  I'll have to buy supplies to make the other busy bag ideas but so far so good in keeping Allison busy.  There is a cute clothesline idea that I'll probably do soon because Allison likes to help with the clothesline outside but gets frustrated that she can't reach the 6-foot high line. :)

Cereal Bars! Kinda

  My girls love cereal bars.  Many mornings the 1st thing out of Allison's mouth is, "E bar."  Sometimes I give in and other days I don't.  Have you ever looked at the ingredients?  They are aweful, so I definitely wanted to try a healthier version.  I found a recipe online for cereal bar cookies.  I thought this would be good b/c they would be smaller and hopefully not as messy.  Wrong, but they are so good.  They are about the size of muffin.

Some did leak everywhere.

But most of them stayed intact.

  These are definitely healthier b/c A. I can read the ingredients and B. They are made out of oatmeal and whole wheat flour.  Next time I'm going to add some flax meal to them.  There is brown sugar and butter also, but at least my body knows how to digest that stuff properly.  It's basically a muffin made out of struesel topping and has jelly in the middle.  I think I will keep  making these b/c they are easy, but definitely not as neat and car friendly as I was hoping.  Oh well, good thing I'm trying to get in the habit of vacuuming the van once a week.

Comparing Apples to Apples

I thought I would show the difference in size between my two girls with a t-shirt that they both wore.  Allison wore it once when she was 7 months old, and now Mary-Kate wore it for the 1st time today at 13 months.  It was very tight on Allison and now loose on Mary-Kate.  The shirt is size 12 mo. 

 Can't even go past the belly. :)

I had to post 2 pictures of Allison b/c she was so cute.  This isn't even her peak chubbiness.

  They are both 19/20 lbs in the pictures, but Mary-Kate is a few inches longer than Allison was when she wore the shirt.  Oh, the title is due to the apple shirt in case anyone couldn't read the shirt.

Busy in the Kitchen

I'm on another "homemade" kick in the kitchen. In a way, it's out of pure laziness oddly enough. I hate shopping of any kind. Unfortunately that includes grocery shopping, and I like to cook and Brandon likes to eats. Therefore I have to go quite often. I make a monthly food menu (its different every month bc again we like food), so I make huge shopping trips 2 or 3 times a month and then supplement trips during the week. Anyway, I kept forgetting to get Goldfish crackers and animal crackers, staples in toddler world. Therefore I made my own out if the desperate cries for crackers and cookies.
Both were super easy to make. The crackers only required 4 ingredients and animal crackers required 8. Both done in the food processor. The cheese crackers are good, but I'm not a cheese fan. Allison and Brandon love them even though they are not as crisp. The animal crackers are pretty darn good and close to the store bought ones.
A few other things I've made are larabars, kefir, and banana pops. The larabars are great a cheap alternative to the store bought one and refined sugar free. Dates are used as a sweetener. I used unsweetened chocolate in mine, and you cannot tell the difference.
Kefir is easy but time consuming but the health benefits are worth it. And I banana pops bc I had many ripe bananas to deal with. I used Wilton candy melts, and the chocolate hardened immediately.
Here is also a picture of the wedding cake for the few people who view this and not on FB. See, I've been busy.

Finding an Old Friend

  Recently I started doing something that I tried to do a few years ago, running.  I was training for a half marathon when I got pregnant with Allison. Between morning sickness and the winter, I became lazy and stopped running.  After Allison was born, I just couldn't find the time for the longest time.  When I finally found the time, I got back to running 4 miles while pushing a stroller, and then I got pregnant again!  I was determined to not be so lazy, but we moved to another state.  I was without my running gear for a month, and by the time I got my stuff unpacked, I decided I rather sleep than run.
  After Mary-Kate was born, I was just too busy to do anything.  Now she is a year, and I'm finally finding time to run/exercise.  I'm actually surprised how easily running is coming back to me.  I can already run 3 miles.  Now, when I "run," I actually  mean I run 1 minute and walk 30 seconds.  It's the Jeff Galloway method, and it works great for me.  I can go so much further doing it this way. 
  My goal is to eventually not need to walk and can just run a certain distance.  Right now, I'm slowly bumping up my mileage.  I run 3 days a week:  2 days, the same mileage and 1 day, a long run.  Like this week, I'll run 3 miles on Monday and Wednesday and then 4 miles on Saturday.  My long term goal is to be able to run 5 miles easily on Mondays and Wednesday and then on Saturdays run anywhere from 5-8 miles.  I also plan on running a half marathon someday, but I don't want to commit to one right now.  With my busy life with a moving coming in 5.5 months, I don't need the stress of a huge race. 
  Brandon is starting to run too.  In fact, we ran a race together over the weekend, just a 5K (3.1 miles).  I should say we ran in the same race.  His mph is 4 minutes faster than mine.  Brandon finished a little over 23 minutes and placed 13th.  I ran it in 30:36 and placed 61 out of 130 people, so I was happy with that since I had only been running for 2 weeks.  We're hoping to run a race together every month.  On our 5th anniversary, we're going to run a 5 miler and then in July hopefully a 10K.
  One thing I like about running, that it's great for this competitive non-athletic girl.  Running is something I know I will never win at, so that takes a lot of pressure away and lets me just enjoy it.  I'm seriously competing against myself.  Every morning that I run, I run the 3 miles a little faster.  Anyway, I can't think of a good way to end this post b/c I've been up since 4:30 and am completely brain-dead.  It's time to go play outside in the sprinkler with the girls and wake up.

Her 1st Chore

  I'm big on giving kids responsibility, but every once in awhile they show you what they like to do.  Mary-Kate loves the cloth diapers!  I try to hang them on the clothesline before she wakes up in the morning or wait until her nap, but sometime she's with me helping along the way.  She hands me clothespins and whatever else she can find on the ground. 
  One morning I couldn't take enough pictures or stop watching her.  I was running late on washing the diapers, so they didn't finish until she was already up and ready for the day.  She decided to help me. :)

  This was a Monday, so there were a lot of diapers, around 38.  She pulled all 38 liners, 38 inserts, and however many rags out of the washer.  She then proceeded to put all of them in the basket and unfortuately pulled them all out of the basket.  She decided she was done and moved on.  I think I finally got them outside by 1 in the afternoon.

Pop! Goes the Popcorn

No breaking news here, but I made popcorn over the stove today. I found a 2 pound bag of popcorn kernels at the Commissary today for $1.49 and thought, "Why not! If nothing else, I can make noise makers out of them.". Well, it worked great. A 1/3 cup popped about 5 cups of popcorn. There were no burnt kernels or anything. I guess I have good shaking skills. This will save us lots of money bc Allison wants to eat popcorn everyday, and now this is a cheaper and healthier way. Next time I'll have some melted butter on hand for my bowl.