Recipes

Here I will share some recipes my family has come to love and I would love to see some comment posts with recipe suggestions in them!!  Also I will include Recipes for Fun!

Bubble Prints
What you will need:

• Medium size bowl
• White Paper
• Dish Soap
• Food Coloring (darker colors like blue or green work best)
• Straws
• 1/4 cup of water

I recommend doing this project in play clothes outside or with lots of newspaper covering your table and chairs.  We didn't make a mess, but I was right there the whole time supervising (and playing along :) Put several tablespoons of dish soap in the bowl and then add the water, you don't want too much water or it won't work as well.  Then add three or four drops of food coloring.  Mix it up a little bit with your straw.  **Make sure you explain to your child to blow through the straw not to suck through it**  Then have them blow into the soap to make bubbles.  You want the bubbles to come up out of the bowl, so let them keep going.  Then set a piece of paper over the bowl and let it go down with the bubbles.  It worked best for us if we used the same paper twice and just set it over the bowl a different way.  The result was really neat. 
This was a fun activity for my 3 year old, and we did it inside since it is so hot!  And best of all it was cheap because this is all stuff we already had laying around the house!

Lasagna

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Beef

1 Large Can Hunt's Traditional or Hunt's Meat Sauce (or whatever kind you like)

1 Small Tub Small Curd Cottage Cheese

1 Bag Mozzarella Cheese

6 Lasagna Noodles

1 Tbsp Parsley (optional)

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Start water to boil noodles.  (Helpful Hint:  Pasta has no real flavor and the best time to add flavor is while it is cooking, so put a little salt in your water.  Also, the best way to cook noodles is to wait until the water is boiling to put them in.)  Add noodles and cook until done. 

3.  Brown and drain ground beef.  In skillet, combine meat and spaghetti sauce.  Set aside.

4.  In medium size bowl, combine cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese and parsley.  Reserve about a 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese for topping.   

5.  Spread a small amount of meat sauce mixture on bottom of casserole dish to help keep noodles from sticking.  Then spread three noodles lengthwise the pan.  Spread half of the cheese mixture across noodles, then half of the meat sauce mixture on top of that.  Repeat with remaining ingredients.  Top with remaining mozzarella cheese and some grated Parmesan if you like. 

6.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly. 

Money Saving Tip- Make your own wipes    Original Post Date 7/1/2011

I recently found out that I have several skin allergies. There are several ingredients in personal care products that I am allergic to and I have had to do a lot of research to find products that don't have those ingredients. One of the things that I could not find an alternative for is baby wipes. Every package on the shelf had one of the ingredients. So I did a little research and found out making my own wipes is a piece of cake and MUCH cheaper.

What you will need:

• A container with a resealable lid big enough to hold napkins or half a roll of paper towels.
• Napkins or Paper Towels, must be thick enough to hold up when wet, I use Bounty Napkins
• 2 cups of water, boiled and allowed to cool to room temperature
• 2 tbsp Baby Wash or shampoo
• 1 tbsp Baby oil

Instructions:

1. Boil 2 cups and let cool to room temperature
2. Pour water into resealable bowl. Mix in 2 tablespoons of baby wash or shampoo. Mix in 1 tablespoon of baby oil.
3. If using papertowels, lay paper towels on their side and cut roll in half, remove inner tube. Place cut side down in resealable container. If using napkins place a good size handful into resealable container. Place lid on container and let sit for approximately 10 min or until liquid has soaked in.
4. Turn container upside down and let sit for another 10 min. Your wipes are now ready to use.

The instructions I read said that you could add a teapsoon of rubbing alcohol if you wanted for an older baby. But I don't do this because I honestly don't see the need. These work just fine like they are. And they smell so awesome! Wish I had done my research on this when my son was born, think of the money I would have saved!
On another note, there were coupons for bounty napkins and papertowels in this weeks paper.