Wednesday, January 25, 2012

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!



Tuesday, January 24, 2012

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!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

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!