Working House Mom, Wife: 2011

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Turtle Pretzel Bites

See my Chocolate Pretzel Bites Post for how to pics. This is basically the same thing just a couple different ingredients.

Ingredients
Mini Pretzels
Rolos (I used Caramel Hershey's Kisses because I couldn't find Rolos. They were a bit messy as the caramel oozed out but they were delish!)
Pecans

To Prepare
1. Line a cookie sheet with pretzels. (I do not suggest using wax paper for these. I did and I spent a long time peeling the pretzel bites off the wax paper because of the oozing caramel.)

2. Place a Rolo (Or Caramel Hershey's Kiss) on top of each pretzels.

3. Place in oven, preheated to 350°F, for 3 minutes. (You may want to try shortening the time and maybe you won't have oozing caramel.)

4. Immediately after you remove the cookie sheet from the oven, place a pecan on top on each pretzel bite, pushing down slightly.

5. Let bites cool.

6. Place cookie sheet in the frig to allow the chocolate and caramel to harden.

7. Enjoy the deliciousness!

Friday, December 30, 2011

Cheddar and Horseradish Spread

This is some great stuff! I used to buy it at the grocery store. It was a bit pricey but oh so good. Neighbor Michelle suggested making it. She looked at the first 3 ingredients on the package and mixed up her own concoction. I have made it twice since then and it is just fabulous.

Ingredients
5 oz. White Cheddar Cheese, grated
2 T Prepared Horseradish
3/4 c Miracle Whip (or Mayo, for this recipe I prefer the miracle whip)
Note: Vary amounts to your liking.

To Prepare/Serve
1. Mix all ingredients in a mixing bowl.
2. Enjoy with Ritz style crackers.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Saving Homework and School Projects

We have so much homework, school work and projects that come home daily. I have been just putting them in a basket and it has been accumulating. I feel bad throwing all Steel's hard work in the trash. I think he would be crushed if I did. So I have decided that we cannot save everything so I am scanning it. For the items that are too big to scan, I will take pictures of.

Perfect! I don't have to keep everything and I'm still keeping everything! Think of the possibilities...you can have a small book printed of your favorites, create collages, attach to emails and send out, etc.

Here's a sample of what I scanned:

I need to do some adjustments to make the scans look better but you get the idea!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Personalized Sterling Silver Stamped Disc

Sterling Silver Disc stamped with children's names. This disc is meant to float on the chain.

Maybe one day I can take a better picture. It took quite some time to get this...lol

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Personalized Sterling Silver Stamped Heart

Sterling Silver Heart stamped with baby's name. I made this for a co-worker for the special event.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Refilling a Foam Hand Soap Bottle on the Cheap!

Got an empty foam hand soap bottle? Don't pitch it just yet! I had this idea of refilling it with cheap-y hand soap since the pump was still in good working order. Mind you, the foam pumps don't have the thick soap in them (I don't think it would work too well...). Anyhow, how about adding water to dilute the thicker soap? Hmmm... I thought I was on to something... Well, it worked!

You may think well, hand soap (the 99 centers) are so cheap why bother wasting your time? Well, I'm a bit partial to the foam hand pump below, both because of the nice shape and I just plain like the foam-y soap.

The How To

1. Grab an empty foam hand soap bottle.

2. Grab a cheap-y bottle of hand soap, you know the 99 centers...

3. Pump some cheap-y hand soap into the desired foam pump bottle. I added 25 pumps of soap to mine. As you can see it wasn't a whole heck of a lot of soap...

4. Slowly fill with water. This is going to create bubbles so when you fill slowly, you let the bubbles overflow keeping the water level higher.

5. Replace pump (over the sink). This is going to cause the water to overflow because the level is so high to rid the bottle of all the bubbles.

6. Shake 'er up!

Works like a charm!

Reducing and Reusing hand soap bottles. I wasn't sure if I could say that but... If you think about it by doing this, you are using much less plastic. One bottle of the cheap-y hand soap can probably be used 5 times refilling the first foaming hand soap bottle. So that's saving 5 bottles. =) (I'm going with it.)

I just got a Hand Free Soap Dispenser for Christmas that I am going to fill with diluted hand soap.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas to all!

Steel was the first one ready. He's too cute, he got his jammies on by himself last night.

Cole finally joined Steel downstairs.

Then Jacklyn finally showed up after oversleeping and needing a wake up call!

Can you tell who's the happy one??!! LOL!

Hope all have (or had) a very Merry Christmas!

More Gift Tags

I made gift tags with my newly acquired Silhouette cutting machine. (I got a killer deal on the older SD version from someone that was upgrading to the newer Cameo but it works just fine for me!) I made tags using just the first letter of the recipients name, these were to be from Santa and it just so happens that the recipients don't share the first letters of their names. Here are a few examples followed by my letters...

(I was in a hurry to get Santa's packages out and get to bed so I didn't get a lot of pictures.)

(Bet you will never guess what's inside these...lol)

Next year, I plan to coordinate better and put them on as I wrap, this was a last minute finishing touch and the presents were already tucked into their hiding spot and I put the tags on just before setting them out.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

We have been Elf'ed - Elf on a Shelf Mischievous Ideas

We started getting Elf'ed the day after Thanksgiving. (Whose idea was this anyway?!) This is a recap of our last 30 days with our crazy Elf. Our Elf puts treats in our Santa Pillow daily when the kiddo is deserving.

We set out our Santa Pillow the night of Thanksgiving and our Elf arrived the next day with a gift in tow...