Making baby food

My next adventure is to start making baby food for my daughter who is almost 10 months old. We have been feeding her Gerber 1st stage foods since she was 6 months old and at 9 months we started the 2nd stage foods. The problem we have run into is that many of the 2nd stage foods have rice flour or oat flour in them as filler. The reason this is a problem is our daughter does not do well with rice or oats. We have not been able to use the baby "cereals" because of this. We are hoping she will grow out of this in the not too distant future, but for now we have to have some kind of food to feed her. I am still nursing, so most of her nutrition comes from that for now but once we wean her after she turns 1 year we have to feed her something. We decided to still use the Gerber 2nd foods for the fruits and veggies and just make our own foods with meat in them or whatever foods we can't buy because they have the rice or oat in them.  Now the adventure begins to find good, healthy recipes to use that will give her the expanded food variety without causing the tummy issues. Hopefully this will not be too difficult and our daughter will be able to try new foods.

Car Seat Covers project

My latest project was to make covers for car seats. My daughter is now at the maximum length for the infant carseat and we will be installing the new car seats this weekend to transition her. It is still cold out and I don't want her to freeze, but I have not found covers for the larger models (though I have not searched the internet), so I decided to make covers. It can't be that hard, right?
Well, I got materials from Hobby Lobby and decided to venture out and give it a try. I wanted to add zippers but do not have much experience with sewing (other than from a class in 7th grade) and have never attempted zippers. So I scrapped that idea for now and just went really simple.  I had to make two since we have a car seat for my car as well as one for my husband's. I had enough material left over to make a couple blankets. I could have made both from the same material but I wanted to make a ladybug blanket for my daughter because she is our "little ladybug" so I got different material to make the second cover and then made a second blanket as well. Here is what I came up with:

I guess technically these could be considered reversible. I am pleased with how they turned out. Maybe when I figure out zippers I will make new ones (for the next baby). Project for another day...

Valentine's Day 2013

I will be spending Valentine's Day driving this year. My husband is still out of state for work and won't get home till almost midnight. It is starting to snow at my parents' house and I have to drive back home soon. Thankfully it is only about a 2 1/2 hour drive and I am in my husband's 4Runner so I have 4 wheel drive, unlike my car which is only 2 wheel drive. (While visiting my parents I went and looked at a new vehicle and am hoping I can get it in the very near future - like the next couple weeks. I want the Toyota Hybrid Highlander and they have one in my parents' home town that has all the features I want and is the color I wanted. I have been wanting this vehicle for over 2 years now and with the baby my husband wants me to be driving a safer car in the winter than what I have now. Maybe it will all work out.)
I spent part of the morning working on a scarf I am knitting for my brother, which seems like a perfect project with the snow falling outside. Now to pack the car up, get ready to feed my daughter lunch, then eat lunch with my dad on the way out of town.  I wish my mom could eat with us but elementary teachers have such a short lunch break it would not work. Maybe I will be back here in a week or so to get a new car and then get to see her again at that time. If not, I will see her when we have my parents watch our two little dogs while we go on a short weekend trip in two weeks. (My husband has another out of town work trip but this time we - myself and our daughter - get to go along and spend the weekend with him and then hang out while he works on Monday before heading back home.)

Monster Truck cake

This is my most recent cake. This was for a young boy who wanted a monster truck cake because he was going to the monster truck show the day of his party. He was telling everyone his cake was going to be orange, so this is what I came up with. The frosting between the layers was orange as well.

I have two cakes coming up in a couple weeks that are going to be "Minecraft" themed. Stay tuned for those pictures.

Coupon apps

I have learned about a few coupon apps that I think are wonderful! I used one of the apps last weekend to make a purchase at Bed Bath and Beyond and saved $15.  One app I learned about through Facebook or Pintrest and the other I just learned about this morning on the Today show.

Snip Snap is an app where you can scan in your coupons and organize them so they are always with you. You can get updates on when they are about to expire, or what else might be available. You can share coupons with friends and see what others have found and scanned in. It even gives you an idea of how successful people have been with the coupons. For example, it will say something like "90% success rate" for a coupon. So when you use it, if it works, you tell the app it worked and it goes to help others know how successful the coupon was. Right now this app is unable to do grocery coupons but they are working on this, trying to get this option as well.

Retail Me Not is a similar app, though I just learned about it this morning and have not really been able to play around with it.  It looks like it will be another good one.

Both of these let you save coupons you find and like as well as browse other available coupons. Being a work-from-home mother and wife, I love finds like these to help save money for my family. I am not a "couponer" who clips coupons and goes crazy, and I do not wish to be like those on the tv show "Extreme Couponers". I do however enjoy saving money where I can. These apps seem like they will be a wonderful way to organize coupons and have them with me without having to pack around an extra folder or bag and dig through a bunch of slips of paper. Having been in the military, I learned to "work smarter, not harder" and this seems to be in line with that thought.

Crazy times

Last week I decided I wanted to try a truffle recipe. I found it on Pintrest and thought it looked good, so I decided to make it for Saturday night when my mother-in-law came over for a movie night with us. They turned out and were delicious. I rolled some in powdered sugar, some in cocoa and some in graham cracker crumbs and all were tasty! Here is where I found the recipe. I think I will use this recipe again, especially if it is for an occasion when I don't have time to make cake bites or cupcakes/cake.

This week is crazy, followed by a week without my husband. Well, not quite a week, but long enough. This week is full of grocery shopping, hair appointment, eye appointment for myself and the little one, decorating a cake, working with a birth mother, and working on Posh and Lifebushido as well as trying to figure out if I want to go forward with the Baby Signs Inc program (now that it has been almost 4 months since iI signed up and I have forgotten some of the information I need in order to continue with the process). Then next week my husband has to be out of state for work and won't get back till almost midnight on Valentine's Day.
Since my husband will be gone most of the week, I plan to visit my parents for a little while. I am hoping to get a good turn out at my open house for Posh while there. I would love to get a big order and hopefully get a few parties booked and even a recruit out of it. That would be ideal.