Easy Thanksgiving Turkey Kid Craft

You gots to respect the TURKEY people.  I can't believe how early we saw Christmas stuff in the stores, I think it was after Labor Day.  I love the Christmas season but that is just effing ridiculous.  In all honestly, Thanksgiving is far from my favorite holiday.  I'm not a fan of most of the food, and the day itself doesn't contain memories of anything fun and exciting for me as a kid.  But nevertheless it *is* the holiday between Halloween and Christmas and it deserves respect as such. 
Since Z has been in the mood to do crafty things on his full days home with me I knew I was going to have to come up with something for him to do.  He's VERY interested in all the holidays and things coming on the calendar lately.  And he says he "LOVES turkey", so I went with a turkey craft. This one is all mine, inspired from a variety of posts on Pinterest, but I came up with this one on my own.
This, as usual, is super easy, and kid friendly.  I used 2 toilet paper rolls, one whole one, for the body, and one I cut in half for the head.  I had him paint them brown completely, mostly to keep him busy.  

Then I took some rectangles of craft foam, I got these at the dollar store, you could use construction paper instead, whatever you have around the house.  I traced Z's hands on the rectangles, we used orange, red, yellow, and green.  We both cut out the hands (Z wanted to do it all himself and then after one hand declared it "too much work" and asked for help).  By the time we got the hands cut out, I used 8 rectangles because Z's hands are kind of big, the paint was dry.

Z glued the hands on the back of the "body", kind of spread out to look like the turkey feathers.  Then we used our jar of googly eye balls and glued a couple of those and a beak I cut out of yellow card stock to the "head".  I saved a small strip of red craft foam to be the waddle of the turkey. And Z insisted that the turkey also have feet, so I used the yellow card stock and free hand cut out some feet.

 As soon as the glue was dry on those pieces we glued them together to complete the turkey.  Super cute Thanksgiving decoration!  Z is very proud of himself, and I am too, he did a great job!

5 little pumpkins... Halloween craft for the kiddos

I apologize in advance if you have an aversion to scissors, glue, and cuteness.  You're just going to have to look away for a bit.  Zach has been insistent on making stuff for Halloween lately.  So I've been pressed to come up with things for him to do.  This time I was *not* inspired by Pinterest, but by the Halloween book we've been reading at bedtime lately.  It's the five little pumpkins rhyme:

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first one said "oh my it's getting late"

The second one said "there are witches in the air"

The third one said "but we don't care!"

The fourth one said let's run and run and run"

The fifth one said "We're ready for some fun!"

ooooooo when the wind! And OUT went the light!

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight

All caught up now?  I decided what more festive thing to do than to have him make the five little pumpkins sitting on a gate?  I have a bag of popsicle sticks, I cut 5 of them in half and used that to make the gate.  Zach glued it on some blue background paper.

And then I cut out five little pumpkins for him to decorate and glue on the gate.  Easy peasy.  He LOVED it, and embellished with a "spooky spider" and other scary(?) drawings.

Cutting out eyes and mouths for the pumpkins

Using excessive amounts of glue to secure the pumpkin faces

TA-DA! The finished product

Monster Mash! Another easy Halloween craft for the kiddos

We have been cutting and gluing and baking and MORE over here.  Did I mention I love fall? Here is another EASY Halloween craft for the kiddos, with a small amount of prep from you. I took inspiration from one I saw on Pinterest via No time for Flash Cards, but she used easter grass (holy MESS batman!) and did suggest using tissue paper.

Cut out a large oval in green construction paper.  Draw and cut out some hands/legs for the monster in green.  Use some white paper and cut out an oval eye, and some horns while you're at it.  Give your kiddo the glue and let them slap that down on some background purple paper.

While they're doing that, tear up some tissue paper, I used green and blue, into smallish pieces, maybe 2x2inches?, show your kiddo how to crumple them up, and then glue down the crumpled up paper to be the monster's fur. Go for good coverage on the fur, it'll look cute AND it will keep them very busy, double bonus!

When they are done with the fur have them glue on the horns.  And now the eye, Zach is enamored with googly eyes right now, in case you couldn't tell, so he used a bunch of those on the white oval to make the monster eye. 

Let the glue dry.  Hang the beautiful and festive creation in a proper frame to adorn your home with DIY Halloween decorations.

BOO! Another easy Halloween decoration craft

We have been busy making Halloween decorations over here.  I have no idea what has come over me but we have the cutest, cheapest, and easiest decorations now :). 
This one I actually did see a variation of on Pinterest.  But with most things Pinterest, I took inspiration from the picture and didn't actually read the instructions.  If you haven't guessed by now, I'm a very visual person with somewhat of a photographic memory.  So I see it, remember it, do it. The point of all that explanation is, I have no idea what pin I got this idea from, so if it's yours let me know so I can give credit where it's due.
Anywho, I wanted some more inside decorations for Halloween to make us feel all festive and since the crafty bug already bit me I decided to go with it. I got 3 paper mache letters, B-O-O, from Jo-Ann's, they were on sale for $2 a piece.  I also bought some black acrylic paint, I have a few things in mind I want to do with that besides this project, so it was a good buy, and use a coupon when you can!  I happened to notice in Target they had packs of themed scrapbook paper for $1 each, so I snagged a couple of Halloween ones, at the time having no idea what I would do with them, but I knew I would do *something* with them :).
Paint your letters with the black paint, completely, even in the insides, and tops/bottoms.  Let the paint dry.
Trace the outline of the letters on the scrapbook paper like so:

  

I did both sides of the letters with scrapbook paper, because you can see both sides of the letters where I display them, your craft, your call.  Cut out the letters from the scrapbook paper, glue them on with Mod Podge.  Let the glue dry.  

Now Mod Podge (yes I'm verbing that bad boy) over the paper and coat the whole letter (do this in parts so the glue doesn't stick to whatever you put it on to dry).  Repeat said coating, so you have 2 coats.  

Marvel at your crafty-ness.  Display with some stuff you find in your box of Halloween decorations like so:

I'm turning into a crafty witch

Fall is my FAVORITE time of the year.  Not only does it (in theory) cool down, we were UNDER 100 today people! But all the holidays and festivities come.  Pumpkin Spice Lattes are at Starbucks, everybody's house smells like cinnamon and apples, and people are mostly in a good mood.  
This year, since I'm now home with the boys I'm even more excited about it.  I will have time to do crafty things with Zach for decorating the house, you know while balancing Gavin on my leg while he lunges for everything in sight to shove in his mouth, nice, relaxing, crafts.  So obviously with this baby/preschooler chaos I'm keeping the crafts simple.  This week we worked on a Halloween wreath for the front door, and some decorations for inside the house.  Both of which, could have been done in one afternoon if I was not juggling manic children.  

First up the wreath, you will laugh at how easy this is, and for once I did NOT get this from Pinterest, I thought it up in my own head mostly because I had a ton of googly eyeballs laying around.  Get yourself a 12 inch foam wreath from Jo-Ann's, do NOT forget your 50% off coupon from their app!. Pick up a spool of 1.5inch black ribbon while you're at it and a bag of googly eyeballs, don't waste money on those self-stick ones though, you have glue at home. That was the hard part, no joke.  

Now, wrap the wreath in the black ribbon, covering the foam and giving yourself a nice black base, like so:

Don't forget to give yourself some ribbon to hang it up with when you're done.  I had some orange ribbon from Gavin's crib bumper project, so I used that, attach that now, before you do the eyeballs.  

Now find your nearest 4 year old, they are qualified to handle this part.  Give them a bottle of glue and a bowl of googly eye balls.  Let them randomly place the googly eyeballs all over the wreath.  Trust me, a 4 year old will guarantee randomness.  When they are done, check it over for any glaring gaps, and fill those in yourself.  

Let the glue dry. Hang it on your door.  Enjoy your spoooooooky wreath :). Happy Halloween!!

Coming soon, a post on the inside decorations we made this week. What's your favorite part about this time of year?

Superheroes like to save money too!

Last weekend we hosted Zach's 4th birthday party at our house.  He has been requesting a superhero party for about 6 months, and as per usual, mommy took the theme and ran with it :).  I did a lot of stuff DIY, both to save money, and because that's my "thing".  I prefer to do their bday parties as DIY as possible so it's unique and not like the party store exploded in our house with all the matching decorations and plates and what not.  I'm not knocking that if that's what you want to do for kiddo, it's cute, easy, and straightforward.  Not everyone has a sickness like I do :p.

The decorations were a mixture of store-bought, crafted-up, and printed-up. I used the Marvel Kids website to make some signs to welcome guests and for the games.  Their comic builder tool lets you download the pdf after you create it, so I added some heroes and some text and printed those up poster-style.  Did you know that you can change some settings in your printer setup to print out a poster of any doc?  I learned that last year before Z's party, and I swear it changed my life lol.  

Last minute (the night before) we were working on the nightscape buildings to "set the mood" in the entryway.  This is just black construction paper cut out like building silhouettes with yellow rectangles glued on them to make like lighted windows.

Right off the bat I knew I wanted to make superhero capes for the kids, sooo easy, unique, and what kid doesn't want a cape?  This was a lot cheaper and easier than it sounds.  I went to Jo-Ann's and got 6 yards of red broadcloth.  I used my handy-dandy Jo-Ann app and saved 50% on this, so that cost all of $12 for 8 kids.  There are patterns you can buy for the capes, but I am way too stubborn and cheap to BUY something I can do myself.  So I took a big piece of Zach's easel paper and sketched out a pattern for the cape that I used to trace out on the fabric.  I toyed with finishing the edges of the capes but decided it was too much work for too little gain, so I just cut them out, slapped on some sticky velcro dots for fasteners and called them done.  Then of course I couldn't just leave them at that, I like to make something personal for the kids to take home, so I decided to add their initials, superhero style, to the capes.  I was very picky as to how I wanted them to look, so I decided to just draw out the letters, thankfully there were FOUR kids with "C" as their initial so it was relatively easy :).  I picked up some yellow sticky-back felt and used my created stencil to trace and cut out the initial, and stuck them to the back of the capes

Everybody knows superheroes need masks to hide their identities!  I had some leftover blue felt from my car organizer project, so I decided to use that, and pick up some black elastic, with another coupon, for $2. And make some masks for them.  I used pinterest again, shocking, to find a template for the masks, traced them on the felt, top-stitched only to give them weight, and attach the elastic, and those were done.  

For months beforehand I knew I wanted to do superhero cuffs too, so we'd been saving toilet paper rolls for that.  I like to have something crafty the kids can do as they arrive so they warm up.  I mod-podged some yellow construction paper to those, cut them in half and then got some stickers for the kids to use to decorate them.  SUPER easy, FREE, and the kids loved them.

I decided to keep the games and activities relatively simple.  At 4 years old, they want to play games for sure, but they also want to run around the house screaming as much as possible too.  There were pretty much only 2 games, and they only really did one of them.  I used Zach's sandbox and the villain Sandman.  I found these tiny superhero toys called "squinkies", they came 12 to a pack for $10.  I hid the superheroes in the sand and told the kids that Sandman had captured all of their favorite superheroes and they had to rescue them!  They were allowed to rescue one each and take it home.  The kids were pretty into it, although they did barter for their favorite superhero after they found them.  I admire their trading skills :).  

The other game was admittedly kind of lame, I took some peanut m&m's and put them in a jar.  I counted out 12 orange ones only (because Z's bday is the 12th) and put them in the jar.  They were the Green Goblin's pumpkin bombs, and the kids had to guess how many orange ones were in the jar.  The idea was the closest to the right number (I gave them a range 1-20) would win a small prize.  Only a couple kids were interested, probably too soon for this kind of game.

This year I decided to do cupcakes for the kids.  In previous years we have ordered a cake from a local bakery, and it has been delicious, but truth-be-told, I don't think Z likes cake, he never eats much of it, and that local bakery is expensive.  I just picked up some vanilla cake mix from Trader Joe's (YUM) and baked up some cupcakes, I used betty crocker chocolate frosting and called those bad boys done.  I wanted to decorate them somehow but I am no baker/cake decorator.  So, I went the paper/crafty route.  I found some cupcake topper patterns online with superman, batman, and spiderman.  I used a 1.5 inch circle punch to punch them out and then glued them to some cardstock I used a 2 inch circle punch on, then glued that combo to some lollipop sticks and voila! superhero cupcakes!  I was surprised how much the kids liked the toppers, one of them wanted to make sure he could take his home.

We went the easy/lazy route for lunch and ordered pizzas.  The party was a lot of fun, cheap, and easy.  I'm already trying to think of what the theme will be for G's 1st bday party in 4 months :).

If you want a tutorial for any of the DIY projects let me know!

Get your crafty on: Bulletin Board

The hubs and I are BIG wine fans.  Before the kiddos came into our lives we were wine club members at a few wineries. We took trips to Napa, and Temecula and had a huge wine fridge.  So obviously we enjoyed a few bottles of wine at home ;).  And as a result we had a bunch of corks that we saved, they're interesting and I figured we could do something with them, I just didn't know what at the time.  I'm probably a borderline hoarder because I'm always saving things that I think I can do something with, BUT 90% of the time there IS something I do with that stuff!  Since I've been staying home with the kiddos I've been trying to get the house more organized.  As a result of the organization I determined we needed a bulletin board to pin all the papers that keep cluttering up my counters.  Enter: wine corks!

I'm sure you will all be shocked to learn, I did *not* get this idea from Pinterest :).   (It's ok, take a moment to pick yourself up off the ground).

It could not be simpler to make a bulletin board though.  Find a cheapy frame, This is one I found on clearance for $2, and keep an open mind, you could paint it or add embellishments if it's not what exactly what you'd like.  Remove the glass and paper, so you just have the backing and put it back in the frame.  Use your handy-dandy hot glue gun to glue the corks on to the frame backing.  

bag of corks, and the frame/backing

The pattern is up to you, I tried to mix it up a bit but only did vertical and horizontal.  Keep the corks pretty close together so you can't see the backing, it's kind of like a puzzle.

starting to arrange the corks

At the end I had to trim the tips of a few corks to get them to fit in the frame, I just did that with scissors.

the finished product!

 TA DA!!  Super easy project that looks interesting and nice as opposed to those store-bought dorm room cork boards.  You are recycling used corks, very green, and what better excuse to drink more wine?!

  

Baking Mixes on the cheap

I've said before, I am a *terrible* baker, I really can't handle exact measurements and specific mixing instructions and everything that enables one to make edible food when baking.  That said, like most, I love me some fresh baked brownies and chocolate chip cookies.  So, I usually just use a store bought mix, add water, eggs, maybe some oil and I'm good to go, I *rarely* eff that up.  


The store bought mixes are relatively cheap, but it adds up!  And they have an assortment of "extra" ingredients that we are really trying to avoid.  So, of course, I turned to Pinterest!  (Everyone close their mouths from the shock, I'm a well-known addict).  I found this site that has an assortment of "fake-it" Betty Crocker mixes, PERFECT for me!  The standard ingredients, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder are CHEAP.  Add in some chocolate chips, butter, vanilla, and you're still at less than half price of the store-bought mixes!


So far I have tried the chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies.  They were delicious!  Although I will say softened butter != melted butter (that's does not equal for those that are not uber-nerds like myself).  That is how much of a non-baker I am, I used melted butter and got greasy, enormous, flat cookies the first time.  Baking FAIL.  


I highly recommend putting both the recipe for the mix (so you can refill when you use it up), AND the instructions to make the recipe on the jar, like so:

           

    

We use either mason jars, or glass canisters from IKEA to store the mixes.  I prefer glass storage to plastic bags because I try to avoid plastic whenever possible.


It's my favorite kind of money saver, one that saves you $$ AND keeps yucky ingredients out of your house.  Not to mention, BROWNIES, YUM!

No poo update

As promised I have an update on my no-pooing adventures. I did get my hair cut and highlighted in late June. My hair stylist was very receptive to the no-pooing, she said my hair felt softer and thicker, she even said she might try it too!
So that was the good news. The bad news, I'm only half way doing it right now. There are 2 reasons, one we went out of town and because i couldn't think of a good way to travel with my no-poo accessories I just took along some trial size shampoo, big mistake, huge (bonus points if you get my pop culture reference there). See, I liked shampooing, I liked the way my hair felt and smelled afterwards. And then I felt dirty, not my hair, that was fresh and clean, but I felt dirty for cheating on my no-pooing promise to myself.


Well turns out that was just the taste I needed to get hooked again. Monsoon season has hit in AZ and for us that means it is super humid. I have still been blow drying my hair because its super thick and takes forever to dry so I do get sone damage from that. So with all the humidity, my frizzies were showing, and guys? It was really bugging me. So I looked longingly at my pantene moisture balance sitting in the bathroom cabinet and thought "just one time. I'll just use it one time to see if it makes a difference, I bet I won't even like it. But I did like it, actually, I loved it. My hair had no frizzies, and was far more cooperative. And so, I became hooked again, I am shampooing with actual shampoo. BUT I am still "conditioning" with the vinegar rinse and still love the results doing that. My hair is soft and managable without frizzies because of the shampoo, but not weighed down because I use the rinse. So there you have it, i have fallen off the wagon with my foot caught on the wheel. My name is Christine, and I am a shampoo addict.

Car toy/book organizer tutorial

finished product

Lately I've been feeling very... crafty, I blame Pinterest.  And my cheapness.  There are so many good ideas on Pinterest and I always think "*I* could do that".  So, today I have a quasi-tutorial on how to make an organizer for toys, books, random junk, whatever, for the car.  You could use this for lots of things, even if you don't have kiddos, maps, notes, tissues, wipes, snacks, books, things that are currently strewn about your car that you might like to have in some sort of order. I based it off of this pin.  And of course, I mixed it up a little to suit my needs.  

First thing, that organizer wouldn't fit in my car as she described it.  The middle seat has a cup holder thing that comes down making the available height pretty short, and Zach DEFINITELY uses the cup holder, so I made it to attach to the back of the seat instead.  Added bonus, Z can get to it easier and the boys can each have their own, which I suspect will be better as they get older.  As always do what works for you, this is what I did... (also I should mention, I am *at best* a novice seamstress)

I used cotton superhero fabric, and thick felt, both from JoAnn's, use your coupons! And if you didn't know, they have an app for your phone that gives you coupons too, so no need to always remember to cut them out and put them in your wallet!  I would say you could get by easily on a 1/2 yard of each, also check the remnant bin, that's where I found the felt :).
  
For the back panel cut the cotton and felt to 11 inches x 24.5 inches.  For the 3 pockets, cut the cotton and felt to about 10 inches x 11 inches.  Pin the felt and cotton together for each piece, with the "right" sides facing each other, like so.

All 4 pieces cut out

Pinned square, perpendicular pins at the top, leftish in this picture

Sew the pieces together leaving yourself a little unsewn segment to turn the piece around.  See where the pins are facing differently than the rest?  That's your cue to not sew that hole shut.  *IMPORTANT!* For the pockets, leave the hole on what you want to be the "top" of the pocket, you'll see why in a minute.  I sewed at about 1/4 inch in from the edge around.  BEFORE you turn your little square inside out, trim the corners so that there is not excess fabric there.

back stitched

trimmed corner

NOW turn the square inside out using your handy dandy hole.  I read somewhere that chopsticks are great to push the corners out, and we always have those lying around because I love take-out Kona grill (don't judge me!).  I highly recommend doing all the back-stitching at once and then pressing (ironing) the cotton side of the fabric down, including ironing the folds in the open hole.  This will make your life easier, I promise, and I *hate* ironing so I wouldn't do this if it didn't.

Now is the top-stitching, this part is a little tricky the way I did it, but I think it's a good method so listen carefully :).  First the easiest one, top-stitch all around the large back panel, making sure you pin the hole so it gets closed with the top-stitch. That one should be easy peasy.  Now the pockets, the easy part first.  Hopefully you were following directions and left the hole on the top of the pocket?  If not, go ahead and do an expletive rant now, it's ok, we'll wait.  Good now?  Ok, for the pockets, just top-stitch the top edge for now, so it should look like this.

only the top edge is top stitched right now

Once all of those are top-stitched comes the interesting part.  Arrange the pockets on top of the back piece how you think you want them, play with them, get them right, because you're about to make it permanent.  I put the first pocket about 2.5 inches down from the top of the back panel, and then had the next pocket overlap it on the bottom by about the same amount, repeat for the 3rd pocket, with the bottom of the 3rd pocket lining up with the bottom of the back panel.  

pockets arranged (this pic is pre top stitching so use your imagination)

Now, leave the top pocket laying on the back panel where you want it, and take the other 2 off, pin the top pocket in place. Sew the sides and bottom of it onto the back panel, essentially top-stitching it to the back panel.  This is 4 layers of fabric for your machine to go through, so you may have to coax it a little bit, but just wait, later you're going to have to buy it a drink and rub its shoulders.

Once the top pocket is sewn on then pin the middle pocket in place, the top of it should overlap the bottom of the top pocket by about 2.5 inches.  Now you see what I'm talking about, in that spot there are 6 layers of fabric to sew through.  Be nice to your machine, go slow, don't rush things, let it do what it needs to do, trust me.  I managed to break a needle on this step because I tried to jackhammer it through, not wise.  Anyways, sew the sides and bottom of this pocket on.  

Now the last pocket, the bottom of it should line up with the bottom of the back panel.  Again there are 6 layers, you will have to rub your machine's feet and buy it chocolate when you are done, don't just use and abuse it.

When you are done with that you almost there, now you just need to attach straps.  You could do this step before the attaching of the pockets, up to you, I thought if I did that the straps would get in the way and irritate me, but perhaps you are far more patient than me :).   

The construction of the straps are up to you, I did it with leftover scraps of the cotton and felt, and it was easy to sew, kind of a pain to turn inside out, I used about 2 inches wide by probably 15 inch long fabric, measure your "attachment point" to see how long you need the straps to be.  Same procedure as before, back stitch, trim, turn inside out, although I did go ahead and fully top stitch these before attaching, then I attached to just the back panel, sewing in two places, about 1 inch in and again at the edge for extra strength.  You could use velcro or snaps or just tie it to your car if you want to.  I used snaps because I didn't want to figure out how to sew velcro, and I didn't think tying it would stand up to use from my 3.5yo.

Straps sewn in 2 places, in about an inch, and at the edge

snaps, I did two for stability

When you are done just attach to the back of the seat in front of the car seat, TA DA!!

in the car

Any questions?  I'm sure I missed something, feel free to ask! Go forth and craft!

Making Baby Food

Babies are cute, cuddly, hilarious, and EXPENSIVE!  I have posted before about ways to save money using cloth diapers and wipes.  Obviously breastfeeding saves TONS of money, (if you don't count all the food mama has to eat because she's perpetually starving, just me? ok then).  I know these things provide huge savings first hand, as I said before, my older son, Zach, was disposable diapered and formula fed, he was CRAY-ZEE expensive.  My baby, Gavin, is cloth diapered and breastfed, he's a steal!  Eventually though, the babies will start eating solids.  As with everything kid-related there is much debate and shenanigans about how to introduce solids to your kiddos.  This post is NOT to debate how to introduce solids to your baby.  This is about my experience with MY kids introducing solids to them as babies. Ok, now that we have that out of the way..

As I said, Zach was formula fed, he was also a huge kid, and a very hungry huge kid at that.  So around 4 months when he was nearing 50oz of formula a day, we decided solids might be in order, that or a second mortgage.  We started him with rice cereal and then progressed to pureed veggies and fruits.  Gavin just turned 5 months and we decided to skip the cereal and just go straight to veggies.  Gavin is also huge, and he keeps trying to snatch food out of our hands/mouths/plates, wherever and whenever he can.  Those were our reasons for starting when we did, you make the call for yourself and your baby what is best for you.  




Zach, my now 3.5yo, as a baby enjoying his first taste of homemade carrot puree

 

Any-who, after some research, and talking to friends and family that have also done this, we opted for making our own purees.  Several reasons why, first, obviously, cost.  Those little jars of food are close to $1 each! I can get carrots for $1.50/lb at the farmer's market and make the equivalent of LOTS of jars of food.  Second, ingredients, if you make it yourself you know exactly what is in there, in our case, veggies and water, that's it.  I have heard (through the rumor mill) that some companies add sugar to the baby food to make it more appealing.  I have no idea if this is true or not, but the fact is, there's no way to know, and that's not cool with me.  Third, convenience, every couple of weeks we take an hour or two on a weekend and make a big batch of food.  There are baby food cubes in our freezer ready to go.  And the last one I can think of right now, flexibility.  We can make our own blends on the fly, a cube of this, a cube of that, stir and see if the baby likes it.


Making the food is SUPER easy, basically, you steam, boil, or bake depending on the food.  There are excellent references all over the interwebs, my favorite is wholesomebabyfood.com, it lists each veggie, how to cook it to maintain the most nutrients, they suggest when to introduce foods, how to store them, basically it answers all your questions :).


This past weekend we made sweet potatoes and carrots for Gavin.  We got the veggies from the farmer's market, so they are organic, local, and fresh, BONUS :).  Four big sweet potatoes made SIX trays of baby food! About 8 carrots made 2 trays of food!  

Mr G thang enjoying his first taste of sweet potatoes

The sweet potatoes were the easiest, I washed them, poked some holes in the skin, wrapped them in foil and baked at 400 degrees for about an hour.  Then, while they were still warm, but not hot, I peeled off the skin with my hands, the skins came right off.  I roughly chopped into cubes and put it in the food processor, we used water until the puree was a thin consistency for a first food, then we put it in ice cube trays and into the freezer.  Each cube is roughly an ounce, so for now, we are just using one cube at a time as he gets used to solids.  He's a big fan so far, he grabs the spoon and giggles while shoving it in his mouth, screams when I take the spoon away.  I said the kid was huge, so he's an eater!

The carrots were a little more work, wash, peel, and chop, then put them in a steamer basket and steam until tender.  Then into the food processor they go, use fresh water (not the steamer water) for pureeing because the steam water is full of nitrates, not good for baby. Puree until they are the consistency you want and then into ice cube trays and the freezer.  Once frozen, I put them in ziploc freezer bags and label them with the veggie and date.

In the morning or the night before I take out a few cubes for the meals, let them defrost in the fridge and then warm in a glass container in the microwave.

It really can't get much easier, save a TON of money, know what your kiddos are eating, and always have food on hand for them!

Any questions?  The one thing we haven't mastered is making pureed meat for baby, any tips?