Bug Repellant

We used to use Muskol for bug repellant. It is 23.5% Deet and has lots of warnings on the label about only applying it every 8 hours and to use it sparingly and not to spray it in enclosed spaces. The one that really made us not be able to use it anymore were the instructions: "Do not use on children under 12 years of age."

So my husband put together this spray for me to use with the kids with tea tree oil. He got a spray bottle from the dollar store and put 15 drops of tea tree oil with 32 oz of water. We used it some, but were still getting bit.

We added more tea tree oil, but even if it might have helped some, it wasn't enough to keep away the misquitos while blueberry picking. They were too much so I went back to the Muskol.

And here I was picking all natural, organically grown wild blueberries and spraying myself with pesticides! How ironic!

I welcome any suggestions for a less toxic bug repellant. What do you use, how do you make it and how well do you find it works?

Freezing Uncooked Donuts for Fresh Later

Growing up, our family made donuts from time to time. When I was in high school, I made donuts on the weekends to sell. I'll have to post our family recipe and instructions another time so check back later. For now, I'm going to show you how I discovered that I could have fresh donuts every day without having to make the dough every time.

Wild Blueberry Country

We live in an area that is known for its wild blueberries and I had been planning to get out to pick some on my friend's property. So when I discovered that the bush just beyond my backyard is full of wild blueberries I was very excited! 

 Now that I know what a blueberry bush looks like, I'm seeing them everywhere here.

Washing Cloth Diapers

I've changed the way I prepare poopy diapers for the wash quite a bit. When I first started, I was really scrubbing out the dipaers with a scrub brush even when it was just the runny, mustardy breastmilk poo. And I think those first cloth diapers did take a toll for all my scrubbing and are wearing out faster.

When my older child started eating solids and the poo became clumpy, that was a really easy clean as the clumps came out into the toilet and left little on the diaper. No scrubbing necessary.

However, that changed and now it is not so clumpy and more like peanut butter, and my second child now has the breastmilk poo. This would mean a lot of scrubbing and I don't particularly like cleaning this with my hands. So you might say I've become lazy in this area, but I found that it works!

 I do absolutely nothing with the breastmilk poo. I put it directly into my diaper pail and wash it when it comes time. There is sometimes a bit of staining on the diaper, but that will happen whether you scrub or not. If I hang them out in the sun, that breastmilk poo staining comes right out. Mind you, with doing elimination communication with him, he doesn't often have poopy diapers.

With the solid foods poo, I take a wipe and scrape what I can into the toilet. I don't worry about getting it super well though. At times there is still quite a bit left on the diaper depending on how badly soiled it is. And I put the diaper directly into the diaper pail to sit until I wash them. The first time I tried this I was a bit concerned that I would find poo all along the inside of my washing machine, but actually I didn't. Sometimes if my child ate corn or grapes, I might find some skins on the side of a diaper, but they shake right off and were also adequately cleaned. And otherwise, they've come out really well through the wash. 

I got my diaper pails at the Superstore.

Whole Wheat Honey Sweetened Chocolate Chip Cookies

 I was really wanting to make some cookies, but all my recipes take sugar. (I'm completely out of sugar and am not eager to stock up again.) Sometimes I straight out substitute the sugar for honey, but it doesn't always turn out so perfectly. So I searched on the internet for some honey sweetened cookies and found these. They turned out amazing! You can find the original recipe here.

Drinking Water

Recommendations say you should drink 8 glasses of water each day, but I have never been a person to drink much water. I would rather have milk or juice than try to drink a glass of water. I have a cup or two of coffee everyday and usually a glass of milk and a smoothie and maybe some juice or tea, but I probably only drink a half glass of water in a day. And that totals my liquid intake. That's pretty sad especially considering I'm breastfeeding. 

Freezing Bagels

I really like bagels, but I don't have them too often. I've tried making them before, but they are really a lot of work- maybe even more than making doughnuts. Not only do you have to make/knead the dough, let it rise, shape them and let them rise again, but then you have to boil them and bake them- cooking them twice. So every once in a while, I will buy a bag of bagels which cost 3-4 dollars for only 6. That's even more than bread, and I can get a lot more slices in a bag of bread. But when I saw them selling for only 75 cents a bag, I stocked up. How do I keep so many bagels fresh to use later? I freeze them.

Rockiness

I love to go on walks and am always interested in all the strange things that are growing or some wierd insect or cool frog. We moved about a year ago and when we first were moving here, I thought all the rockiness was really ugly. But I've really changed my mind about that and have just found that it's a different kind of beauty. 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Since I use cloth diapers, I actually go through quite a bit of laundry detergent to keep them clean. I had known others who made their own laundry detergent, but never tried it until today. It's actually really easy to make and doesn't take very many ingredients. My sister sent me her recipe on how she makes it and I also did my own research online to see what other people recommended. There are lots of different ways to do it.

Learning the Alphabet with Playdough

 I've been getting excited thinking about homeschooling. Obviously with my oldest being only 20 months, I may be getting a bit ahead of myself. But I decided that if he is capable of recognizing that a word that I say is associated with a physical item like "blanket" or "cookie" (which he is), then he would probably be able to begin associating a shape with a sound, such as the letter "a" with the sound it makes. I don't expect him to make leaps and bounds in reading, but I figure I can go ahead and be teaching him in play and whatever he happens to pick up is great.

Yesterday we did the letter "a" with play dough.

Making a Polyester Maxi Skirt

 I really enjoyed the outcome of this project and found it to be fairly quick to put together. I made the length a little long for me, but thought it might be nice if I left it long for pregnancy too, to wear above my belly.

Frozen Sliced Bread

 I know I've done a few posts now about freezing things, but it really does make my life easier if I can make things ahead of time and have it ready. 

I used to try not to buy or make bread too often because it would sometimes start growing mold before we ate it all. But since I started freezing presliced bread, I don't have that problem anymore.

Homemade Cloth Diaper Inserts

I recently acquired a serger and have been enjoying trying it out for the first time by sewing together some cloth diaper inserts.

Spring is in the Air

It's amazing how one day can make such a difference on a plant in the spring.

Schleich

We love to buy Schleich toys for our son. They are made by a German company and are hand crafted and hand painted. The detail and likeness to real life animals is incredible.

When we were first looking into these toys we weren't too sure about them because many toys are made with plastics that have toxic softeners in them. We wrote to the company to ask them what they use to make their toys out of.

Flash Freezing Fruit

 We buy frozen fruit sometimes for making smoothies. I like to buy a bunch of bananas and I usually end up freezing some of them before they go bad to make smoothies out of. I wanted to do the same with some other fruit, but I didn't know how to do that without having them all come out in one frozen lump. I then discovered the technique of flash freezing. By all the fruit not sticking together you can just take out however much you need at the time.

Sushi

A couple years ago, a Korean friend of mine taught me how to make sushi and I have been making it ever since. I make probably the simplest version of it but we enjoy it a lot.

Getting Organized: Pantry

My pantry is one of many areas that I find hard to keep organized. Recently, I finally took the time to put my dry goods into containers and label everything. Things go much more smoothly in the kitchen when we can find what we're looking for.

Frozen Soup

Probably every other day, we have soup for lunch. Soups are great because they are very nutritious with lots of vegetables, everything is well cooked and edible for my toddler, they are nice and warm in the winter, and they can be a quick and easy meal when taken from frozen. 

(Fudged) Seeded Popovers

I can be the worst when it comes to fudging a little on following recipes. I change the ingredients and skip steps and wherever I think it might be okay, I just make little changes to suit me at the time. So when I tried these Seeded Popovers that I found here, my fudging got me some funky results.

Russian Borscht

I asked a Russian friend of mine for his recipe for his amazing Borscht. My husband and son love it! Thank you so much for the recipe!

Growing Sprouts: What Seeds Can I Use?

My friend was showing me this site where they sell seeds for sprouting. They also have information about the health benefits for the different types of sprouted seeds and specific directions for sprouting. I was surprised to learn that you can sprout almost any kind of seed it seems and even more surprised when I realized that I already had a variety of seeds in my pantry ready for sprouting.

 My husband got in on the fun and tried out a few too. The one above is a 9 Bean Soup Mix bought at Cosco.  I didn't think it would work, but surprisingly most of them are sprouting. I had read that split peas won't sprout and sure enough it doesn't look like they are sprouting in this mix.

Growing Sprouts: First Attempt

I'm so excited to share with you my first attempt at growing sprouts! I can't believe how easy it is! 

Homemade "Ranch" Dressing

When I lived with my family overseas growing up, salad dressing was expensive and hard to find. So we began making this as a substitute for ranch dressing. Now that I've returned to North America, I really don't like the ranch dressing you can buy from the store and by far prefer the homemade salad dressing we made from scratch. We eat this salad dressing on everything especially on a green lettuce salad and on pizza. Guests in our home often ask for the recipe. So here it is!

Crisp Garlic Potatoes

Here is the side dish I served with Nonna's Lemon Garlic Salmon yesterday. I like these potatoes because they're fairly simple with just a few ingredients, but still taste great!

Nonna's Lemon Garlic Salmon

This salmon is delicious! My husband's grandmother is a wonderful cook. I've enjoyed many, many meals at her house. But she never follows a recipe so it's hard to get an exact recipe when asking her for directions. So I watched her make this salmon one time and tried my best to follow her steps. I'm sure Nonna can still make it much better than I can, but this is still excellent.

Quinoa with Pine Nuts and Broccoli

This is a new one to me that I tried for the first time today. I got it here. My husband, my 18 month old and I really enjoyed it. The quinoa is really moist and crumbly with a garlic and pine nut flavour.

Red Wheat Berry Salad

I made the Red Wheat Berry Salad for supper tonight that you can find here. It was very good! My husband looked at it skeptically, but when he tasted it, he said, "Wow! This tastes way better than it looks!" And true enough, the mix of lemon, mustard and honey is a very nice combination of flavours. For an added dish, we had scrambled eggs with cucumber and tomatoes in it.

Mushroom and Yellow Pepper Wheat Kernels

I'm really venturing out here today not using any recipe. I had picked up these hard wheat kernels at the Bulk Barn and just added whatever I had on hand to it. There's no measurements for the spices because I just added what I thought looked good. It was really tasty so here it is:

Flip Cloth Diaper Review

Flip diapers are my favourite. I get the one-size cover with velcro closures. The ones below are the colours I have. The left 3 are brand new and the right 3 are a year and a half old. I did replace the velcro on them after a year, and otherwise they still work great.

GroVia Cloth Diaper Review

GroVia diapers are pretty good. I've used the one-size hybrid GroVia diaper with velcro closures for a year and a half now and I really like them. They come in a variety of adorable colours and designs, are one size so they fit a wide range of sizes from newborn until the child is potty trained, and they are very easy to use. They are however, much more expensive than some of the alternatives. I bought my first ones brand new, and after that only added to my collection because I found some barely used at a good price through Kijiji.

Chocolate Blueberry Overnight Oats

I found the original recipe here and thought I'd give it a try.
I thought it tasted like a Wendy's frosty and my one year old liked it too. My husband didn't like it at all and thought it tasted chalky.... oh well. It's one way to get some chia seeds into your diet as well as a healthy and fast breakfast food.

A note about the recipe... the original was for Chocolate Cherry Overnight Oats but I used blueberries since I didn't have any cherries and so naturally had to change the name. Also, the oats and chia seed layer was a bit liquidy after soaking overnight so next time, I would probably add less milk or more oats- or both. Here's how I made it.

Playdough

I found a neat recipe for playdough online. Safe to eat, though not very tasty. Click here for the original recipe.

Berry Coffee Twist

I love this recipe because it looks so fancy to take to a brunch or dessert event and I got lots of comments on it because it also tastes so good. I'm not sure why its name has "coffee" in it since it has no coffee in it. I guess the same reason Coffee Cake has no coffee in it. In any case, it's fairly easy, if you've made bread before. It just takes a little more time in preparing it. I made it over the Christmas holidays and took some pictures for you to see. I probably cooked this one a little longer than I would have liked, but it still looks amazing. I wish I had taken some pictures of it sliced up because it looks even better in slices on a tray.

Italian Sausage and Peppers

I love this recipe because it is so easy and so good. I used to make this for my family when I was in high school a lot. There really is no seasonings because the italian sausage is what puts all the flavour in the dish.

Ruching a Maternity Shirt

I've been looking for some ideas for maternity shirts and found this site online for ruching a shirt to make it maternity: Ruch A Shirt

I was surprised at how much better it looked from before to after and so decided to try it on one of my plainer maternity shirts. These pictures are from when I was 9 months pregnant with my second- a couple months ago.

Baby Hat

There's a really great pattern for baby hats on zaaberry.blogspot.com that is really easy. I made the hat with the knot on top.