Bath Time Light Show

My kids usually love the bath. Recently, our son only wants to take showers (our daughter does NOT like showers at all). While this is normally okay (my husband takes care of him and I take care of her), sometimes it is easier to just give them both a bath.

In light of our son's recent disdain for baths, I began looking for ideas to make bath time fun again. So, I pinned this:



Glow sticks in the bath, what an amazing idea! I found a package of 10 skinny glow sticks in the Target Dollar Spot. You can also find them at Michaels. I was a little
worried that once we turned off the lights the bathroom would be too dark, but it illuminated the tub and the surrounding space really well. In an odd way, it was really kind of peaceful.

Instead of not being able to get my son in the tub, I had a terrible time getting him out. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers! At the end of the day, my sanity for $1? Yes, please!

Good luck and happy pinning!

BBQ Crock Pot Recipe

I love, love, love my crock pot! I use it at least twice a week (if not more). Being busy with the kids, and working part-time means that there is not a lot of time for dinner prep.

I feel like I am always looking for yummy, easy recipes. I pinned this:


And it was delicious! I followed the recipe exactly (I am sure you can use different BBQ sauce and make different variations). Since I am not a chef, and I don't even typically love BBQ, I decided to follow the ingredients exactly so if it did not turn out correctly, it would not be because of a flavor mistake that I made :)

The chicken was so yummy! It was spicy and sweet, which is exactly what I love. I also made the potato fries and they turned out okay. The seasoning was delicious, but for some reason I always seem to have a problem properly cooking cut-up potatoes. Mine were a little soggy. I think if I had flipped them over it would have helped, however, mine stuck to my pan because I should have sprayed the pan with light cooking spray. I may need to pin something to figure out what I am doing wrong! As I said, I am definitely NOT a chef! I even burnt waffles during breakfast for dinner last night!

Anyway, I highly recommend this recipe for all of you crock pot lovers out there!

Good luck and happy pinning!

Hair Therapy!

I visited my parents' house this past week and my Mom and I went through a ton of boxes that I had stored in their basement. Most of the boxes contained childhood "treasures". The kids were with me and they enjoyed seeing some of my old toys. My daughter really liked my old My Little Ponies. The bodies of the ponies were not in bad shape for being about 25 years old, however, their manes were a totally different story!

I had pinned this a while ago, knowing that it would come in handy in the future.


It was a snowy day and I did not feel like going to the store to buy liquid fabric softener but I did have some spray leave-in conditioner and thought that it would work out just as well. I combined about a teaspoon of leave-in conditioner with about a cup of water and put it into a spray bottle.

Here is the before picture (I had more pictures and accidentally deleted them...ooops!):


I sprayed the magic formula directly onto the pony's mane and brushed the mane with my roughly 20-year old American Girl hairbrush (which is the same thing as a wig brush). As I said, it was a snowy day and I was trying to avoid going to the store unless I absolutely had to! Out of curiosity I tried to use a regular hair brush to see if it would work as well, however, the magic really is in the wig brush! Once the tangles were out, I used my hair dryer to speed up the drying process and to further smooth out the hair.

And here is the after:


I am truly amazed at how well the ponies turned out! They look practically brand new! I also scrubbed their little bodies with baby wipes. I had read that you can soak toys in soapy water but I was worried about water getting into the bodies of the ponies and getting moldy.

I would highly recommend trying this on any doll with crazy hair. The only downside that I could possibly see is that if a doll has curly hair, this process would probably turn it into straight hair. I figure, straight and untangled hair would be better than curly hair that is a mess. They also have little doll hair curlers, so maybe those would help bring back some curls.

Good luck and happy pinning!

Putting a Wooden Spoon Over a Pot

I pinned this:



If you place a wooden spoon over a boiling pot, it will prevent it from boiling over.

Dinner time in our household is also known as the witching hour. Typically something gets burnt, boils over, spills, etc. I thought that I would try this out to see if it would help with one of the three things mentioned above. Well, it doesn't really work. Yes, it will prevent a massive boil over, however, your pot can and will still splash some out here and there, which will still create a mess. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

I will say, the blog (linked above) contains a lot of awesome ideas. I have yet to try them but hope to someday soon. Whichever ones I try, I will let you know!

Good luck and happy pinning!

Cleaning Microfiber Furniture

We have a microfiber sofa in our basement and it is a MESS (I will not even take a picture of it for this post because it is just that gross and I refuse to replace it until the kids are older because we are only going to keep on getting it messy)! There are little water spots due to small leaks from juice boxes, greasy spots from food being set down, etc. The sad part is that we paid extra for some sort of stain protection (this was way before we had kids) for the couch and well, we got ripped off.

Our couch has two regular cushions and one long chaise-like side. To clean the cushions, I typically just take the cushion covers off and throw them in the washer. The only problem is that the chaise's cover is impossible to take off and of course, which section do you think tends to look the worst? The arms also get water spots on them from time to time and they are tough to get off.

When I saw this pin, I thought, I HAVE to try this! Here is the pin and description:

How to clean microfiber furniture (please click on the picture to go to the blog).

So I followed the instructions and was hoping for a miracle! First, you really need a well ventilated area because the alcohol is very pungent. I scrubbed and scrubbed at my toughest water spots. While I will say that surface dirt comes off using this method, I did not have any luck with regard to my water spots. My husband and I rented a steam cleaner last year to clean our carpets and he used the attachments on the chaise and arm rests and so far, that has been the only thing to rid our couch of the unsightly water spots. But of course, how often do you rent one of those machines?

Would I try to clean my couches with alcohol again? For me, no. I think putting the cushion covers in the washing machine is still the best option for me. I think if you own a couch where the covers do not come off, this is a great way to get rid of a lot of surface dirt and filth. I don't think it works if you want to rid your couch of water spots.

Good luck and happy pinning!

Autographed Disney Picture

Here is a description of what I "pinned":



If you write a letter to a character at Disney (Walt Disney World Communications PO Box 10040 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040), they will send you an autographed photo back.

.................

I had both kids write a letter to their favorite character. My son wrote to Mickey and my daughter wrote to Belle. I read on the website (linked above by clicking the Cinderella picture) that the pictures would take about a month to receive.

Well about a month later, this is what we received in the mail (please excuse the flash on the princess card, I am not the world's greatest photographer):

At first, I thought, what the heck is this? I guess based on the autographed pictures I saw online I figured that they would each receive an 8 x 10 autographed picture (not postcard) of each character (pictured individually). So when I saw the postcard, I was a little bummed. My skepticism quickly dissipated after I showed both kids their postcards. They were SO excited! My 3 1/2 year old son was so happy that Mickey sent him a postcard and my daughter, who is 21 months old, kept looking at her card saying "princess".

So would I recommend it? For the cost of a postage stamp, absolutely. I am not sure how many postcards exist (i.e. is there a postcard of the Toy Story cast?), but if your kids love Disney, this is a fun, virtually free, thing to do.

Good luck and happy pinning!