A new recipe

Dylan is still not feeling himself, I was up all night getting sick to my stomach, and Kate woke up with croup. A relaxing Saturday it is.




Plus it snowed.



We made a new recipe for dinner. Chicken quesadillas. We're loving our Food On The Table app, saving a ton of money and discovering new dinners.

So we really liked this recipe but when we make it again we're going to add some rice for extra filling. But these were so good.

Ours sort of turned into burritos rather than quesadillas. Here are some photos of our cooking adventures.









And everybody--even Dylan--liked it.

The best sale for sprucing up your yard!

Go to Big Lots. Tomorrow. Or as soon as you can. They are selling almost all of their outdoor decor (I'm a poet!) for 75% off!!! I can't tell you how awesome this is. I've been meaning to decorate our yard but I really couldn't justify spending $10+ on one yard decoration which will probably get rusty by next season. But this sale is amazing. I spent $2.50 per birdhouse/wind chime/decoration. I might have gone to two different Big Lots to search for more variety. Definitely go ASAP. 75% off is totally bodacious.

5 Tips to Make Your Life Easier

I'm always looking for ways to make life easier. These are some of my favorite tips.

1. Buy a trimmer tool.

So I cut Dylan's (and Sean's) hair. I use the buzz trimmer, cut the top with a comb and scissors, and then I use my secret weapon.

Source

We've had a few different brands of these trimmer things--this one is called a Microtouch Max--and they are only $10 but ours break down after about a hundred uses. The thing about this hair trimmer is that it is painless so I don't have to worry about cutting Dylan as I tidy up the back of his neck or straighten his little sideburns. And this thing works wonders for keeping Sean cleanly shaven on his neck and above his ears and the like.

I'd recommend this tool to anyone, seriously. Sure, it's flimsy, but it seriously works wonders on keeping your family looking as if they just left the barber shop. And they also make them for women for bikini lines and such. Absolutely worth the ten bucks. We buy ours at CVS.

2. Let your kids eat out of cups.

My secret to lazy lunches when I am plumb exhausted: I cook Dylan's lunch--say macaroni and broccoli or cheddar baked potatoes--and then instead of having him sit at the table as I pray very hard that lunchtime will soon be over, I put his meal in a mug or a cup and give him a spoon. He can cuddle up on the couch and watch a movie or something while I'm tending to Kate and the like and he is usually really careful not to spill anything.

3. Dry off your razors.

Sean loves to listen to the Clark Howard radio podcast. Clark Howard is all about giving advice which helps you manage money. One of my favorite simple tips he gives is to dry your disposable razors. The reason consumers go through so many razors is because they rust, and the reason they rust is because they are often left wet after use. So take a towel to your razor after every use and the same disposable razor you would've replaced ten times will last for more than a year before needing replacing. To keep it sterile dip it in rubbing alcohol once in a while. I was shocked when I started drying off my razor and noticing that I almost never have to buy replacements.

4. Use cinnamon instead of pesticides.

Put cinnamon in your sandbox to keep the bugs at bay. Actually, put cinnamon everywhere. I simmer it on the stove often, I put it in our mudroom and vacuum it up, in the bottom of our garbage can, etc etc. But bugs, spiders, and ants don't like cinnamon, so use that instead of harmful chemicals.

5. Take a sip first before swallowing pills.

And my last tip pretty much saved me when I was pregnant. I had a terrible time trying not to gag on my prenatal vitamin. When I had complications with my thyroidectomy and the doctors had me swallowing eight pills in a sitting to raise my critically low calcium levels, I just could not get them down. So in the middle of the night, two nurses came into my room and taught me a little secret. Before swallowing a pill, take a sip of liquid and hold it in your mouth. Then put the pill in your mouth and swallow with another sip. Before they taught me that I always put the pill in my mouth first and then took a sip and it would be so hard to swallow the pill once it stuck to my tongue. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. Take a sip first basically. I went from not being able to swallow one pill at a time to being able to take all five of my nightly pills in one sip.

Product review: Goody Hair Ouchless Ribbon Elastics

I signed up with Influenster.com last month and have been having a blast taking surveys and writing product reviews. Shortly after I signed up I qualified to receive my first Voxbox and had been checking our mailbox daily.



My Sunkissed Voxbox arrived on Monday morning, the day I was fitted with a heart monitor. As a stay-at-home-mom, purchasing beauty products is not top on my list of priorities--getting in a daily shower is as fancy as I get most days--so this Sunkissed Voxbox showing up in my mailbox was beyond exciting.

When the kids were napping I threw on a sweatshirt to hide the electrodes from my heart monitor and spent the next few hours trying out my new goodies in front of the camera.  If you'd like to see a video of what was in Influenster's Sunkissed Voxbox, check it out here or stay tuned here on the blog for more reviews.



And speaking of goodies, these are Goody's Ouchless Ribbon Elastics and they are my new favorite hair elastic. These elastics are soft and stretchy and come in a variety of great colors. I was skeptical that they wouldn't stay in my hair because it is so fine, but these awesome new ribbon elastics work just as great as thin elastics.



I love the Goody brand and have used their thin elastics for years. The problem I have with the thin elastics is when I take my hair down--especially before bed--I wear them around my wrist and I wake up with sore elastic marks. I often take off my hair elastic at night and put it on my nightstand and when I brush my teeth in the morning I simply reach for a new elastic. Picture a pile of hair elastics by my bed. My hair elastics end up everywhere around our house and since I buy so many of them, most end up in the trash or in my car or in a bin under the bathroom sink. I rarely wear one hair elastic for more than a day or two. Until now.

On Monday afternoon I removed one purple hair elastic from the package and I have been wearing it since! Eureka! A perfect hair elastic and an empty nightstand.



Aren't these neat?



My 1980's Cyndi Lauper hairdo:



I might've had a little too much fun playing with my new elastics.



One major pet peeve of mine is having to Photoshop hair elastics out of photos. This happens more than you'd think. I make a mental note to check my wrists whenever I'm in front of a camera and to check my subjects for hair elastics when I am behind the lens.

There are no more hair elastic photo bombs with Goody's Ouchless Ribbon Elastics! They double as fashionable bracelets!

Before:



And after, using a Goody Hair Ouchless Ribbon Elastic:

These ribbon elastics cost $3.99 - $4.99. I'd definitely recommend them.

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Does the Thundershirt work?

This is our girl Jasmine:



We adopted all three of our dogs from American Lab Rescue, a fantastic organization which finds southern dogs in need of homes and ships them all over the country to be adopted. Jasmine was rescued from a high kill shelter in Louisiana. We fell in love with her from her adoption photo because she had this giant tongue sticking out and looked as if she was smiling. We soon discovered that the reason she looked like she was smiling in her picture was because she was most likely panicking when the photo was being taken.

Jasmine is the sweetest and most anxious dog I have ever met. She is afraid of fire alarms and being left home alone. She is afraid of car rides and loud noises and snow plows. She panics when Sean and Dylan go upstairs to dance around in our bedroom because the sounds of their footsteps sound like thunder.

She is petrified of storms. Petrified.



Whenever it rains Jasmine immediately jumps into my lap and trembles uncontrollably until the storm clears. We tried several methods to try to calm her: anxiety medication prescribed by the vet, keeping her in a covered crate when it rains, DAP diffusers which give a calming dog pheromone scent, sensitivity training. Nothing worked until I bought her a Thundershirt.



Friends ask me all of the time, "Does the Thundershirt really work?". I've heard that it works on certain dogs but not on others but for our Jazzy girl it is a life changer. She still gets nervous and shakes during storms even when wearing her Thundershirt, but her anxiety level transforms from severe terror down to a gentle worry. When she's wearing her Thundershirt she becomes calm enough after a while that she climbs off of my lap and falls asleep on the floor. There were nights that I spent the entire night hugging her close before we bought her a Thundershirt and she trembled for eight straight hours.



We're having a rainy Friday and Jasmine is adorned in her shirt. So far there has been no thunder so she isn't too afraid, but she still enjoys wearing her shirt. She seems to feel safe.



I cannot recommend the Thundershirt enough. This simple $40 velcro garment has improved the quality of life for our dog and has given us a more peaceful household. If your dog suffers from anxiety this shirt may or may not work, but Jasmine and I give high praise for this product. Buy it.



I was not paid for this blog entry and it is no way endorsed by Thundershirt or any of its affiliates. I love this product and thought you should know about it. You can purchase a shirt for your dog at Thundershirt.com or Amazon.com.  Your dog will thank you. 

How to use a moby wrap in newborn hold

I don't vlog often but maybe I should start. I was given a moby wrap when Dylan was born and I was so confused by this long piece of material that was somehow supposed to support my baby with a series of twists and knots that it stayed in my closet for two years until my best friend Sarah came over and showed me how to use the thing.

I used a Bjorn with Dylan and Sean still uses it with Kate because he feels weird wearing a moby wrap, and that Bjorn worked fine for us but I prefer the moby because it doesn't hurt my back and it feels like wearing a favorite tee shirt. Katie loves to be worn and she usually falls right to sleep.

Moby wraps can be as confusing as trying to read a book in a foreign language but once you learn how to baby wear with a Moby it comes very natural. I definitely am a moby wrap advocate. Feel free to contact me if you'd like more information on my baby wearing experiences.