Save Money and Cool Kitchen Products! Oh and a great Playdough Recipe!!
I’m about to head out for a morning show tour to talk about making your first place a home. Some of the ideas I came across putting this tour together are fantastic Parent Products as well, so I wanted to share them here. The First involves saving $$$. I’m not a guy who will sort through the paper or piles of junk mail for the 5 coupons I always wish I had when checking out the staple products I use religiously as a parent. Thanks to Proctor & Gamble, the products themselves are now starting to come with piles of coupons in the products. Open up a box of Tide and score – anywhere from $2 -$55 worth of coupons for the stuff you’re gonna buy again anyway…. Boom Done – Now I can afford college for Garrison….ok maybe a stretch but that’s the idea anyway.
If you love to cook for your family like I do then it’s worth checking out some of these SmartGadgets from Copco. I just got the Scraping Wisk (works better than any other wisk I’ve had and we made playdough yesterday with it – recipe at bottom) and Bag Caps which will keep my mini marshmallows nice and mellow instead of hardening into mini weapons.
Lastly, as a new parent, I have hung my tool belt on a hook a little higher these days, and being a perfectionist I have to say I’m always a little hesitant to hire out for projects I used to do myself. I have started using the Superpages search engine because its local, but mainly because its the only one that offers the Supergarantee program which basically guarantees that if the job isn’t done right, Superpages will make it right. I’m thinking that to qualify for their program most contractors have to pass some fairly stringent standards since I’ve always been pleased the first go round, but since it’s a 100% free program, it just makes me feel a little better….
Mom’s PlayDough Recipe:
1 Cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tblsp. oil
1 cup water
1 small package kool-aid (for great color and smell)
Mix all ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over med Heat, stirring constantly until you can no longer stir (this is where I swithed from the scraper wisk to a spoon) It will look like a clumpy mess! Turn out on counter top and let cool enough to handle. Knead into a smooth ball and store in an airtight container.
Enjoy!
~Evan Farmer
Ps – Sorry I wasn’t able to load pics or hyperlinks – On the road with my ipad….
3 comments September 1, 2010
A Healthy, Natural and Organic Snack Your Kids will Love!
As a mom of four, I am a stickler about health food and healthy snacks for my kids. To this day, my 13-year-old still gets annoyed with me when I ask him if something he reaches for has high fructose corn syrup in it (not in our house, mind you :o) I feel I do a good job substituting a lot of the traditional kid food with healthier 
alternatives, but I still pay attention to even the healthy version of things, because sugar is still sugar.
This summer, I settled on a healthy snack for my daughter that pairs fruit, yogurt and even a little whipped cream sweetness for her after lunch treat. Every couple of weeks I make a trip to Trader Joe’s where we have fallen in love with their fantastic tubs of organic yogurt. They have a variety of flavors like strawberry, banilla (banana- vanilla), vanilla and plain. Her favorite flavor is strawberry, so to make it a little more exciting and add in an extra serving of fruit, I cut up some fresh organic strawberries (our local Target has been selling them for $2.49 a container, which is better than the price of regular strawberries) and add them to her yogurt. Now that is definitely a perfect afternoon (or after school) treat and complete in and of itself.
To give it a little extra pizazz, I add some whipped cream to make it a healthy, fun dessert. Not just any whipped cream will do (like I said, I am still a stickler for healthy alternatives). Our favorite whipped cream is Vermont’s own Cabot premium whipped cream. Free of all chemicals, artificial anything, and preservatives, Cabot is the best natural whipped cream there is.
What better way to get your kids to eat a fun, healthy, and fruit filled snack that is also natural and organic too!
Have thoughts?
We would love to hear from you! Send us your healthy snack ideas, and we may feature you in our upcoming healthy kids section, featuring Australian cookbook author and speaker- Annette Sym.
**Part of our goal with this site is to educate parents about things we have learned, experienced or been educated about with regards to our children, our families and our health. I reference high fructose corn syrup and how I don’t allow it in our home. Aside from the affect it has on the development of our children’s brain function, I recently read this article, and want to share it with you.
~In health,
Tara
1 comment August 24, 2010
Toilet Seat Locks
This Child-Safety MUST could very well fall into one of those categories of “Man I never thought of that!” – especially for new parents like me. Until I spent 20 minutes at 3am trying to unlock the toilet cover at my sister’s house (the mother of three toddlers) it never occurred to me that a child could drown in a toilet. Luckily I was unable to drown that night…. and being male and shameless – I gratefully had the option of going outside in the cool Arizona air for relief. The next morning, It was explained to me that the other great reason to lock these “floor holes” up was to prevent plumbing repair bills since there seems to be an unparalleled magnetic pull between the toilet, and small toys (also parents toys ~ this I found out first hand….bye bye iPhone….).
Alas, not all products are equal in this department. I’ll start with the one I do recommend, which happens to be the second one I tried. This “Lid-Lok” by Mommy’s Helper is very simple to install, and works very well. It requires no tools so that with a couple of adjustments and clicks, you can both: install it, and you can just as easily remove it completely to take it with you when you travel, a feature I love. It does require educating your adult friends a bit so you don’t leave them stranded at 3 am, blurry eyed, considering the sink or tub as an alternate option, but once you see how it works, it could not be simpler or easier to use. Lift up on the latch (on both sides – this is key) and down with the lock, done. You do need to remember to re-fasten it once you’re done though! Click here: Lid Lock, to purchase from Amazon.com (I do not receive kickbacks – just where I get my baby swag)
Now for the product I 100% do not recommend. It happens to be made by the company Safety First who does offer some other great products, just not this one. I bought this product since it promised to be versatile with traveling, and so dummy proof – even I could operate it at 3 am. It also looks cool – like a flying buttress off a Cathedral in Rome…Hey – any thing that makes a toilet sexy or spiritual seems like a good idea right? Wrong! First of all – It’s design has two major flaws: 1) The suction cups don’t work for very long when they work at all. It requires regular cleaning with rubbing alcohol to just to get them to stick, and even then, you’re battling toilet bowl condensation. What happens ultimately, is that it falls off at random, rendering it not only useless, but dangerous since the parent assumes the seat is locked but is not. There’s only one thing more dangerous than not baby proofing something, and that’s using a product you THINK is working when it’s not!
2) The second major problem lies in the very thing that attracted me to it initially: it looks cool. With in minutes of seeing it for the first time – my son also decided it was very cool and he began trying to rip it off, probably with the intent of storing it alongside the remote control which we still can’t find. In the name of science, and the hope that this may lead to the remote control, I let him go at it, while I carefully supervised. The first few tugs he didn’t succeed in removing it but he did slip in the tugging process and nearly cracked his head on the sink plumbing (hence the supervision). After only a few tries more, he had it dislodged completely and had tossed it into the tub. Even he disapproved and didn’t find it worth hiding….darn! This, in my humble opinion, is not safe AT ALL, and to some degree is fairly dangerous if it manages to give you a false sense of security, which it managed to do for me for a few days… Now it’s been recycled to plastic heaven.
Analysis – stick with the Mommy’s Helper Lid-Lok and rest a little easier…. After all, no loving parent truly rests!
~Evan
1 comment August 1, 2010
