Colored Rice

My little girl has been feeling under the weather for the past few days so I thought I would cheer her up by making some fun, brightly colored rice. It's a perfect sensory activity for toddlers and you can change it up daily to keep them interested.

You will need:

Uncooked White Rice

Rubbing Alcohol

Food Coloring -- I used the gel kind

Plastic baggies

Cookie Sheets

Sensory Bin

 Put 2 cups rice in a plastic Ziplock bag

 Add 2-3 large drops of gel food coloring & 1.5 tbsp. rubbing alcohol

 Shake bags until mixed well

  Pour onto a cookie sheet to dry. Laying it in the sun 

will make it dry faster but it isn't necessary.

  Put into a bin, mix together, add some fun toys

and go to town.

 Have fun!!

 This project was really quick & easy and held Aislyn's interest for an extended period of time. You can easily double or triple the recipe and do many more colors if you wanted a large quantity of rice. It could be a great preschool activity too!

Homemade Fabric Softener

I just made a batch of homemade fabric softener. It takes about 5 minutes to complete and it's so easy to put together. I used a combination of a couple of different hair conditioners because I didn't have enough of one to make up a whole cup, but stick with one if you want a consistent scent. The scent is not overwhelming, and the smell of vinegar completely disappears altogether.

Ingredients:

1 c. conditioner (I used Suave and VO5 because that's what I had on hand)

3 c. warm water

1 1/2 c. white vinegar

Put all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and whisk until incorporated. The warm water will help dissolve the conditioner into one homogenous mixture. Pour into a container to store it (I used a recycled Juice bottle) and use what you normally would in your washing machine's softener slot. If you want a stronger scent play around with adding essential oils. 

Happy Washing!

Kaitlin

Day 3 of no facebook & its a lot easier than I thought! I completely disabled my account, and I deleted the button on my toolbar and the app off my phone so I'm not able to access it easily. 

I'm in the process of refinishing a dresser to go with my dining room set. I'm planning on using it as a sideboard/linen chest. It will take awhile to do it properly, since the paint takes a few days to cure and there's a leg that needs to be fixed, but I'll post pics as soon as it is done. I'm hoping it will turn out great!

Our washer has been out of service for about two weeks now, which completely stinks. Luckily we have an extended warranty on it and Sears is going to cover the parts and labor for free... but it has taken awhile to get the parts sent out (they were back ordered) and then we received twice the amount of parts ordered. So now we have four HUGE boxes sitting in our dining room. We'll be making an awesome playhouse out of the boxes for Aislyn soon! Anyway the whole point to this is that I haven't been using my homemade laundry detergent which means I haven't needed to make another batch... which means I won't be sharing it with you all quite yet. But it's coming!!

We are looking at more houses tomorrow to make sure the one we placed an offer on is truly the home we want to spend the next several years in. Wish us luck!

Until next time,

Kaitlin

Eliminating Facebook

I hate to admit it, but I'm addicted to Facebook. It's bad. I check it every morning, multiple times a day on my phone, and right before I go to bed. It's horrible. It's shameful. It's not rewarding. I'm quitting.

We had a conversation in my Child Anthropology course yesterday about the damaging affects the internet has on our us and our children. It literally acts as an addiction. We get excited about a notification, new friend requests and messages. We start to crave it and so we sit behind our computers everyday and have virtual conversations about whatever instead of initiating face-to-face in our actual lives with actual people. Human beings are social creatures, yet social media is driving us away from fulfilling satisfying, normal social needs and instead allowing us to believe that a computer screen is going to provide that for us. It isn't.

So, for lent I'm giving up Facebook. I've deactivated my account until after Easter (maybe even longer, who knows?). I know that without it, I won't know exactly whats going on in my 600+ "friends" list. And I'm completely okay with that. I don't need to know about the relationship status of a kid I met once at a college party. I do know I will be much more productive, and much more engaged in the lives of my close, true friends. I also know that it will be a challenge... that I'm up to.

So see ya later, FB. I'll try not to miss ya,
Kaitlin

Homemade Yogurt

Before I researched how to make yogurt I was intimidated. I knew nothing about it and thought it was going to be a HUGE challenge to make. Boy, was I wrong. It's so simple! It does take about 12-14 hours to complete, but 99% of the time the yogurt it's resting, which means you can go about your day. The best part? TWO INGREDIENTS!

You will need:

• Whole Milk
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• Candy thermometer

What ya do:

 I have made several batches of yogurt with varying amounts of whole milk, but usually I do about a half gallon at a time. It depends on how much yogurt you want hanging around your house in the end. It makes slightly less than the original amount of milk you use due to evaporation but it's not by much... Let's get to it:

1. Pour your milk into a pot and heat it over medium heat until it reaches 185° F. Make sure your thermometer is not touching the bottom of the pan but is at least one inch into the milk. The milk will become a little frothy when it gets close to the right temperature. DO NOT LET IT BOIL. The milk doesn't like that.

2. After it reaches 185° turn off the heat and let the milk cool to 115°. Take about 1/4 cup of the warm milk and mix it into your plain yogurt (tempering). Then put the starter back into the pot of milk.

3. Cover your pot and put it in a warm place (I usually put it in a slightly warm oven) and walk away. It usually takes all day, or overnight if you start it late in the day. 

4. After the time is up, eat it up! Add some fresh fruit or honey, granola, whatever else you want and chow down...

...Or make Greek yogurt. You do this by lining a mesh sieve with cheesecloth, placing it over a container to catch the whey and pouring the yogurt into the cheesecloth. This step also takes some time (an hour or two), but it is the best, simplest, all-natural Greek yogurt you'll ever have. 

 This is my set up. See the whey at the bottom?

 Final Product: Creamy, delicious Greek Yogurt

There you have it, cheap and easy!

-Kaitlin 

Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Ham Rolls

We tried a new recipe tonight for Broccoli Cheddar Soup and it came out soup-er good :) I'm not gonna lie, I found the website through pinterest and you can find it here. I used her exact recipe with one change: I didn't use all half and half, I only used one cup and the other 3 cups were 2% milk. To go with it I made Ham Rolls that my momma has been making for years. It's a Flatley classic. But lets not get too ahead of ourselves. Here's DL on the soup:

You'll Need:

• 2 T. Butter, melted
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 c. butter, melted
• 1/2 c. all purpose flour
• 1 c. half and half
• 3 c. milk (or all half and half if you want it extra-creamy)
• 4 c. chicken broth
• 1 lb. fresh broccoli
• 2 cups, grated carrots
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1/2 t. nutmeg
• 16 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Saute onions in 2 T butter and set aside. Next, add 1/2 c butter and 1/2 c 

flour and whisk occasionally until your concoction is blonde in color:

 

Add milk and half and half (or all half and half) to butter and flour slowly. 

It will be really thick at first (that's good! Flour is a thickening agent) 

and then it'll look like you just put milk in a pot. Let it simmer

--not boil-- for 20-25 minutes.

 When the time is up, add your chopped broccoli, carrots and onions. 

Simmer an additional 20-25 minutes, or until the veggies are tender and 

the soup has thickened.

 

 Puree with an immersion blender (or carefully transfer to a blender) 

until desired consistency is reached. Add cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg &

 whisk until incorporated, and BAM! You're done.

Now on to the Ham Rollz, ya'll:

This is a super secret family recipe.... so I'm a gonna post it on this here blog. It's  outrageously simple and to-die-for good. Here we go.

Ingredients:

• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• 3 tbsp mustard
• 3 tbsp poppy seeds
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• ham
• Swiss cheese
• dinner rollz

What you do:

         Mix the first four ingredients up in a bowl. Cut dinner rolls in half, spread all of mixture on bottom half of rolls. Put a layer of cheese, then a layer of ham, then a layer of cheese. Top with upper half of dinner rolls. Bake in oven at 375 for 20 minutes or until warm in the middle and the cheese is all melty-delish. Eat. Love. Eat some more.

You don't see any poppy seeds in the picture 'cause I ran out and didn't realize it until I was searching through the cabinets calling out for them in vain. But they were still really yummy.

That's all for today! Have a great Saturday & come back tomorrow to learn how to make super simple homemade yogurt.

-Kaitlin

Apple Pancakes

We had a rough start to our day due to a certain toddler having a tantrum over what to wear (She's two. Isn't it early for her to be demanding what she wants to wear??) and then being denied entrance to Early Intervention play group because we were one minute late. You heard me right, one minute. So after a not so pleasant exchange we went home and changed our day around. We made apple pancakes.

Apple pancakes are super easy to make, all you need is your regular pancake batter and an apple. First, slice your apples and cut out the core.

 Make sure none of your slices get swiped by a certain someone in the process...

 Coat the slices of apple with the pancake batter

 Put them in a skillet over medium-low heat. I cooked them for a longer time on a lower heat setting than regular pancakes to get the apple more tender in the middle.

 Flip 'em when they're golden

 Finished product:

 Feed them to a girl who refused to take off her snowsuit for a good 2 hours...

Eat them while they're hot with some nice maple syrup or caramel sauce. You can also add a little cinnamon or nutmeg in the batter to make them extra yummy. 

 Let me know how they turned out if you made them! I'd love some feedback on my blog :)

-Kaitlin