Homemade Gak!

I lent my camera to my mom so you will just have to take my word for it, but this morning the girls and I made Gak in our kitchen.  For your viewing pleasure I added the original Gak commercial above...your welcome.

Anyways, it's super easy and only takes a few minutes to mix up some gak.   Here is the site that I got the idea from.  They made theirs glow in the dark.  We made ours orange because that was the color of my Gak when I was as a child.

Here is the video of instructions.  It's a video a kid made for his science class and the steps are easy to follow.
You will need
1 cup Borax
1 cup water
mix that up until the borax is disolved
1/4 cup elmers glue
1/4 cup water
food coloring (optional but you know you want to use it)
Mix that up

Then add small amounts of the borax solution (the video says some drops, I used a 1/4 teaspoon) and stir.  keep adding and stirring until you get a tough slimy consistency.  Then rinse your slime off and dry it (I would recommend either a paper towel or a towel you don't care to use again, I'm still not sure if I can save my towel or not).

The kids love it and if they drop it on the carpet it doesn't get ground in right away like play dough (I'm certain that given enough unsupervised time a determined child could grind it into your carpet, so please don't come crying to me when your carpet is ruined)

Now, Violet is at school and Claire is watching a cartoon, so I'm going to go play with my Gak.

Mini workout

ok you probably can read that.  But it's a cute little pink workout list that I found on Pinterest.  This Mini Workout, may look simple at first but it will give you a nice little sweat.  For those that can't read it the workout is as follows
10, jumping jacks, push ups, squats, and crunches
9, jumping jacks, pushups, squats and crunches
8 jumping jacks, pushups, squats and crunches
and so on and so forth until you get to
1 jumping jack, push up, squat and crunch.

I'll save you the math, that's 55 of each.  But don't just do 55 of each!  The best part of the workout is the up and down between each exercise!  You see you are standing for the jacks, on the ground for the pushups, standing for the squats and back on the ground for the crunches.  That Up an Down is half the workout.

overall, I like this workout.  It's not going to replace your Ab attacks, super slimdowns, or your Burn and firms (all of which are on netflix play instantly and are awesome!) but this workout will be a good workout for those mornings you slept in and the kids are already climbing all over you and you need a workout you can do with them running circles around you.  (ok I hope I'm not the only one who needs that kind of workout).

Spring rolls

I Love Spring rolls! I have a favorite restaurant downtown that makes the best spring rolls, they are perfectly sticky on the outside and crunchy on the inside (also they put dried pork and shrimp in them and that never hurts).  So when I found this recipe for Spring rolls.  I was super excited to try it.

The hardest part of this recipe is tracking down the rice paper sheets ( I found them in Top Foods, they typically carry some nicer things and you can often find unusual things there, so if you can't find them at your favorite store, go to the nicest store in town and I bet you will find them there).

I sliced up some Nappa Cabbage, I bought shredded carrots, and I used green onions, and cilantro and Avacado.  I was too lazy to cook up any meat so we had veggie spring rolls.  I also made the spicy peanut sauce included in the recipe and it was a little bland for me so I added some garlic chili sauce, which was great but when the sauce began to cool it got a little firm, so if you want to add some spice use the chili sauce but add more water and soy sauce.

Yummy and dare I say...healthy?  I love it when that happens :)

Asian Slaw with ginger peanut dressing

Asian Slaw with Ginger Peanut dressing.  It's delicious.  I added some grilled chicken so that this could be our whole dinner and it was fantastic.  It is great for a whole meal but also a great asian salad option (as much as I love my old standby of cabbage and ramen noodles, it is nice to have an alternative).
I didn't use the regular coleslaw mix I used a broccoli slaw mix and it was really yummy.  Give it a try.

Leanne Barlow Giveaway

Leanne Barlow Giveaway!  Leanne over at Elle Apparel  is giving away one of her super cute lavender striped boyfriend cardigans.    Check out her website on how to enter!  or don't...cause I want to WIN!!1

Cajun Chicken Pasta

I don't have my own picture so I borrowed this one from the original Pioneer Woman post.

I love this recipe, it is like cajun fettucini.  I love all the peppers and the cajun spice.  It's super easy, and your kids might actually eat it!  My kids won't eat anything that doesn't end in "'n cheese" so I had no such luck but I wasn't expecting any.  Peter and I loved it though.

Dishwasher soap

 Ok I had very low expectations for this homemade dishwasher soap.  I live in an apartment that was built in the 80's and I'm pretty sure I have the original dishwasher.  I cannot use cheap or generic dishwasher soap in this machine and get anything back but food covered nasty dishes.  So I have been shelling out for the cascade/ dawn dishwasher packs, which is fine, they work great, I love them and I mean come on who isn't going to pay to have clean dishes?  But if you can get the same results for cheaper FANTASTIC!  I am always looking for ways to slash small expenses from our budget.

The recipe calls for 24 packets of unsweetened lemonaide Kool aid...umm that is like 12 bucks worth of Lemonade this time of year.  So I just bought the 3 dollar can of Country time and called it good.

You need to use a rinse aid called Lemi Shine with each load to make this work, but it is only a few dollars and you can buy it at Safeway.  Use a Table spoon of Lemi Shine and a Table spoon of the dishwasher soap in each load.   Making this stuff is super easy, just get two big bowls and divide your ingredients between them and mix them up ( you could use one GIANT bowl if you have one but I don't)The recipe makes 5 quarts and according to a calculator I found online that equals 320 tablespoons!  Given the cost of the ingredients and the lemi shine making one batch of this dishwasher detergent costs the same as one 60 load package of cascade packs.  So that is more than 5 times as cost efficient!! Oh Please work!  Please!

I really tested this stuff.  I didn't pre rinse my dishes and I had been making cranberry salsa and I had emptied out my fridge of leftovers so I had some nasty tupperwares and sticky food processor parts, plus our regular dishes and sippy cups......

It totally works!  I was so shocked! So this one is getting filed under AWESOME!

Bonus I can now cut out 15 dollars worth of dishwasher soap from my grocery budget!

Christmas book Countdown!

 Ok I am super excited for December to get here because of this Christmas countdown that our family is doing this year.  I did find this on pinterest but it looks like in all my excitement over the idea I forgot to pin it, but you don't really need the pin because it's an obvious concept :)  24 days of counting down to Christmas, and 24 books to open....one each night to read with the girls.

I am so excited about this!  I LOVE reading!  I read all the time and I have usually have a stack of 3 or 4 books by my bedside because I like to work on multiple books at once, I just can't focus on one.  my average library checkout total is 17...so yeah I like books.  I am always looking for ways to share my love of books with my kids.  We go to the library story time, and we check out a ton of books, we have story time, and I make sure that they see me reading too.

 I had hoped to buy some nice new books for our countdown supply but like everyone else in the world, our family budget is a little tighter this year than it has been before.  So I checked into the penny books on Amazon, and there were a ton under "Children's Christmas books" but shipping was 3.99 and considering I needed 15 more books to complete the 24 that was still too much money for us this year, so we will be collecting nice books a little at a time.

   I had 9 books already and so we hit the good will for the other 15.  For 20 dollars we got 15 Children's Christmas books ( they were mostly generic It's Christmas time stories, but the kids will like them) an Aladdin book and  mini Carebear for our little helpers :)  Also...sorry if you are at the Olympia Goodwill and cannot find any children's Christmas books....we bought them out.

 If you are on a really tight budget you could check Christmas books out from the library and just keep renewing them...at my library you can check the same book out 3 times in a row online and each checkout period is 3 weeks, so that is plenty of time to collect books from the library and do the countdown.  Also I'm sure everyone has family and friends that would be willing to lend some Christmas books to your cute little kids :)

This year we will be collecting The polar express for our nice book.  I am so excited, I love that book and I actually can't believe that we don't already own it because Peter loves it too.

Here is a list of books that I found on Amazon that I thought looked cute:

1. Who is Coming to our house

2. Olivia Helps with Christmas

3. Merry Christmas Curios George

4. I spy Christmas: A book fo Picture Riddles

5. Froggy's Best Christmas

6 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

7.Thomas's Christmas Delivery

8. The Night before the Night before Christmas

9. Duck and Goose: It's time for Christmas

10.  Merry Christmas Mom and Dad (Mercer Mayer)

11. How the Grinch stole Christmas  (of course)

12. A wish to be a Christmas Tree

13. Bear Stays up for Christmas

14. Merry Christmas Stinky Face

15. A charlie Brown Christmas (is it Christmas without ole CB?)

16.  Elf on the Shelf ( Holy Cow even used he is 30 bucks!)

17. Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

18.  The tale of the Three trees

19. The Polar Express

20. The gift of the Magi

21. The animals Christmas Carol

Busy Bags for busy babes

busy bags, busy bags

BUSY BAGS!!!

There are tons of busy bag ideas on pinterest for your kids.  I come across a new set just about every day.  above is a picture of the busy bags I put together for my girls for Christmas.  I am looking forward to it as a way to get through that first hour of church where we are all supposed to be sitting quietly...HA!  I got the bags from Oriental trading company.  They have a ton of cheap and cute options, and the Hello Kitty pouches came from DH Gate ( I know cheap Chinese crap, but I'm hand making a majority of the presents this Christmas, so I feel justified)

Each bag for the girls contains 5 pouches

1. Brown bear heads and tails game, super easy to make just print, cut, and laminate

2. a button snake

3. a pouch with some of their toy animals ( they have so many, they haven't even noticed that I've "borrowed" a few on behalf of Santa)

4. A pouch of cars (same situation as the toy animals)

5. A pouch of Flash cards from Target ( Do you ever shop Targets dollar section? It's great for kid stuff)

Ok so I only made 2 things in this pouch but, it is going to be a great present and I know the girls will love it.  

Cranberry Salsa

I tried a new recipe for Thanksgiving this weekend.  You MUST TRY THIS!!!

Cranberry Salsa....Make it, taste it...Love it!

But.... we made soap yesterday!

ok so I got a new keyboard! hurray! I was so excited to find out that I didn't need to buy a new mac keyboard for my computer I could just get a regular keyboard with a usb plug-in.  Even better if your in-laws have an extra one laying around their office :)

here is the link for my last post on that Thanksgiving frame printable.  It's free and all I did was print it on plain paper and cut it down to fit an 8x10 frame that I had and then I painted it with some paint I had on hand.  done.  my kind of Thanksgiving decorating and I might just keep it up because I love the quote.

ok so on to the soap...
On Thursday I whipped up a new batch of my laundry detergent, because I finally used it all up (2 months worth of laundry for about 4 dollars worth of ingredients...and I do a TON of laundry).

  I am still really loving this laundry soap, if it has one problem it is that it doesn't have perfumes in it (which is actually why I am using it because of my sensitive skin) but since it doesn't have any perfume in it is not very forgiving if you forget your clothes in the washer all day...or weekend.  So if you depend on the over perfumed power of tide to keep your clothes smelling fresh this might not be the detergent for you.

On Friday my husband asked me what my plans were that night and I said I was going out with the girls for dinner and then coming home and making soap, and he said..."But we made soap last night!"  Have those words ever been said by anyone else?  I don't know but I thought it was funny that we have become the type of people who make soap more than once in a week.  So we decided I would make soap and he would watch a movie I wasn't interested in.  Marriage is all about compromises right? :)

I had been wanting to try making my own body wash for the same reasons that I was interested in homemade laundry soap.  Hives suck.

 So while Peter watched Tron: Legacy I grated two bars of soap into a big pot.  I chose Yardley oatmeal and almond because I know it doesn't bug my skin, it smells great and i can get it at the Dollar tree :)  (this is something I really like about this recipe, you can pick whatever soap you want, so if you have a favorite bar soap that doesn't come in body wash you are all set)

  The recipe calls for 2 cups of grated soap and I found that each bar was a little more than 1 cup so I just stopped grating as the bar of soap got small enough that I feared for my fingers.

 Just a warning...this bottle is $17.50 BUT...I will probably be able to make 20 batches of body wash with it and each batch makes a little over a gallon so you really are only using less than a dollars worth of Glycerin per gallon of body wash. Glycerin is a skin protecterant so I wouldn't recommend skipping it, it's what makes it so body wash won't dry your skin out as much as bar soap will.

 So the original recipe is to only use 1/2 gallon of water and I was able to fill these 4 bottles with that much, HOWEVER when the soap cooled it was almost as solid as the original bar of soap so I scooped that soap out and melted it down and added another 1/2 gallon of water and that made a much more liquid like body wash.  It ended up being the consistency of a creamy body wash, and I bet the type of bar soap you choose will affect the consistency of the end product so I would start with a 1/2 gallon and see how your soap reacts but for the soap I used I needed a whole gallon....which resulted in these 4 bottles being totally full plus another 1/2 gallon storage container. (2 dollars worth of soap and maybe a dollars worth of glycerin and a gallon of water= more than a gallon of body wash...cha ching!)

Oh and I love this body wash!  It smells great, it feels great, and it rinses nicely without a film left on your skin, so I'm calling it a success!  I'm definitely keeping this recipe.

My kind of Decor@ting

First off sorry for the @ inste@d of the first letter of the @lph@bet, my kids h@d @ little fun with some h@ir stuff & ruined th@t letter.

This w@s  @ free print from @ pg th@t I c@n't post the link too bec@use @nother button is broken.....KIDS!  So it's just pictures for the rest of the post.....

H@ppy Turkey D@y....I'll get my keys fixed or repl@ced soon & then I'll post more @bout Christm@s :)

a chili bomb exploded in there!

Cute little blue microwave

It's been with me since I graduated High school.

A bowl of Chili blew up in there!  It's been on my eat the toad list for a few days.  Do you have an "eat the toad" list? Mine is long and is mostly household chores since I HATE to clean!!!

 I found this recipe on Pinterest but didn't pin it at the time and now I can't find it so I just googled it and found the above recipe.

Ta Da!  All clean!  Some light scrubbing is required but not much.  Now little blue is all clean and ready to cook again. :)

get ready to laugh

Ok I'm willing to try just about anything, and I'll even post pictures so we can all have a good laugh.

I tried this sock bun curls tutorial about a month ago and it didn't work because my hair was not long enough to get all into one pony tail on top of my head. 

That girls hair turns out so pretty!  I'm so jealous! I want curly hair, but my hair is just too short.  

so I got to thinking (this is where I usually get into trouble...I get a BRILLIANT idea!) what if I did multiple buns and used some small children's socks?  (I was folding socks at the time and was trying to figure out where the matches to all these little socks had gone)

Ok so I tried it last night....

 Peter thought this was an awesome look, although he was laughing so he might have been being disingenuous.

 Here is the back (that lower bun would prove to be a literal pain in the neck and was ripped out by some crazy woman trying to sleep, obviously she doesn't subscribe to the "pain is beauty" philosophy)

 and side.  It kind of reminds me of when I was in middle school and I used to wear my hair in 2 buns on top of my head.  I was a weird kid.

 and this is what I looked like this morning after removing the buns.  Do I look a little tired?  Yeah Claire came and slept with me last night and she is not an easy sleep partner.

 My hair looks like it's been through some sort of horrible ordeal, and I don't think it wants to talk about it.  I tried brushing it out to get those "Hollywood waves" talked about in the video.

 Here is my version of "Hollywood waves"

Now this will work with longer hair, I know this because I've seen it in multiple Youtube videos and a semi pretty curl did come out of the bun on the very top of my head.  So maybe if I grow my hair another foot it will work.

If you see me today don't be surprised to find me with my hair up!

Love it but throwing away the recipe

Make your own Peanut butter egg.  Some things start out as a brilliant idea.  Making your own peanut butter eggs!  I was super excited because I LOVE peanut butter eggs.  Now before you think this is a bad recipe let me just say that this is a super easy, delicious substitute for peanut butter eggs....and that is exactly my problem with it.

I have a theory on desert.

 #1 It should take as long to make as you will spend in the gym to work it off.  So deserts that that take less than an hour to make are just plain dangerous.

#2 you should not be able to make desert from things you ALWAYS have on hand.  Desert should require pre planning and the search for things in the grocery store that you generally won't find in your pantry

#3 you should not be able to buy the ingredients in BULK....well at least all of them.

So sorry that is 3 strikes against this delicious recipe
1. It is quick and super easy
2.  I always have Peanut butter, and butter on hand and powdered sugar and chocolate chips are in my cupboard often enough to consider them "on hand" ingredients
3. All of the necessary ingredients can be bought at Costco in "year supply" quantities.

So it is a great treat, but I generally run screaming from recipes that say quick and easy deserts!   I don't want desert to be quick and easy! I want it to be a conscious choice that I have to go out of my way to make.  It should take preplanning, not just wandering into my kitchen opening the cupboards and ten minutes later I have an elastic waistband inducing confection.

ok I'm done...I'll go eat my halloween candy now :)  hey...I carried a toddler around the neighborhood to earn these Reese's peanut butter cups :)