Cloth Diapering and Solid Foods

Back when The Fish was still EBF (exclusively breastfed), I mentioned that the rules for formula fed and solid fed babies are different than the rules of diapering an EBF baby.

Now that we've been feeding solids for nearly 4 months, I can weigh in on how our diaper routine has changed.

I have a little 1 gallon bucket that I keep beside his changing table. If he poops, the diaper along with all of the poopy cloth wipes go into the bucket until I get a minute to spray them out. Once they are rinsed, I dump them into his main pail. This system has worked fine for us. I will say that the sooner you get around to spraying the diaper, the less work it is. That probably goes without saying, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

We have the Flo diaper sprayer. I haven't tried any of the other brands, but it does the job. I think it was about $50. There are cheaper brands out there and there are ways to make your own with a kitchen sprayer, but this one's spray power is pretty adjustable and it's easy enough to use.

The first time my husband installed it, the instructions that came with it left out some details that caused the sprayer to leak a little. We did a little googling and found what the problem was and haven't had any problems since. It comes with everything you need to install it (including the flexible line that connects the toilet to the water source), so you don't need to purchase anything else with this brand (aside from maybe a wrench of some sort). One "con" is that you have to shake the water out of the spray head before you put it away after each use or it will drip a nice little puddle on the bathroom floor. The second time my husband installed it (we just moved), he had it all put together in a jiffy, so it seems pretty easy once you overcome the questionable instructions. Totally worth the $50.

We are no longer on a septic system, but I still haven't tried the flushable diaper liners. I'm used to spraying his diapers anyway, so I just don't see the need. Plus, I think often enough he would...how can I put this...exceed the limits of the liner with the masterpieces he makes for me, and I would end up needing to spray parts of his diaper anyway. They are probably a great idea for people who travel with cloth diapers or people with babies who are less ambitious poopers.

Fun bonus! I don't know how this happened, but somehow blogger sees some of my pics as .gifs. Isn't this Harry Potter-esque?

Pinterest Picks 4

S'mores Bars!
I love it when I see something on Pinterest that looks delicious and I can go straight to the pantry and make it. It's like destiny! These are messy, gooey, yummy deliciousness!

Sour Cream Chicken Bake
This only has a few ingredients, takes almost no prep time, and you could make enough to feed a crowd easily. The taste is similar to poppy seed chicken, but with less prep time. I've made it twice now and I will say that using the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix as a topping really is better than using regular bread crumbs.

Honey Lime Chicken Skewers The pin doesn't take you to where the recipe originated, so if anyone knows who owns this recipe, please let me know so I can update the pin. We have made this twice and the second time I made extra just so we could have leftovers. It's that good! I marinate the chicken all day so that it really soaks up the flavors.

As an aside, was I the last to know about these nifty herbs that come in a tube? They last a long time in the fridge as opposed to buying the little packet of fresh herbs. I used the cilantro kind for the chicken skewers. It did not have a strong flavor, but I can't keep an herb plant alive to save my life and when I buy the little packets of fresh herbs they always go bad before I use them all.

Pinterest Picks 3

Here are our newest experiments:

Crockpot Lemon Chicken
What's not to love about a recipe with a total of 4 ingredients that's cooked in a crockpot? This is one of those pins that drives me crazy...if you click it, it doesn't take you where you're expecting to go. However, it's kind of hard to mess up and the description gives you enough info to make the recipe without having an actual recipe. I wish I had made extra so we could have had leftovers!

Creamy Cheesy Potatoes
There are so many good things in this recipe! Cheese! Cream Cheese! Sour Cream! I mean how can you go wrong? The recipe says to use 6 potatoes. I only had 5, but they were on the large side and I think it was maybe one too many potatoes (my preference is to have more sauce). It turned out well, but I think in the future I would skip using real garlic and use garlic powder instead. I don't like the weird crunch that garlic has when the rest of the dish is kind of smushy. What made this dish even better was adding a little ranch dressing to it. Yum!

I also decided to use the homemade cream of chicken soup recipe from the same source as the Creamy Cheesy Potatoes recipe. I went ahead and pinned it here:

Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup
This was so easy and the final product looked and smelled just like I would expect of the condensed version you buy in a can, but without the weird mystery ingredients. I don't always have chicken broth on hand, so that's the only thing that would keep me from just making my own from now on.

Crescent Roll Casserole
It really sounded like a good idea, but we didn't like the texture of the finished product. It's a good idea in theory, but the rolls stayed gooey from cooking in the soup.

One Pot Mac & Cheese
I have made this several times and it's so easy and only dirties up one pot! I usually add a little browned hamburger meat to it and it's like Hamburger Helper, but way better! This time, my helper accidentally added a TABLESPOON of salt instead of a TEASPOON. Whoops! :) I wouldn't suggest doing that.

These (and all of my previous pinterest trials) are saved here: Tried and True Recipes

Linking up here:

Homemaking Party at Hope in Every Season

Shabby Shadowbox

I've really been wanting to do a little project with a bird nest to tie in the decor of the second master bath to the bedroom.

I already shared some artwork that's in the bedroom, so I thought a nest would work well without being too matchy-matchy.

It started with this shadow box. I really wanted a white one, but the only ones that Hobby Lobby had that would be deep enough for this project were black.



Luckily, I just happened to have some white acrylic paint. :)

I did a quick little paint job on it. I didn't want it to look too perfect, so I left it at the point where some of the background was still showing through. It would look nice with a solid white too or a complementary color, but it's all about personal preference.

To complete the project, I gathered the cast of characters below, plus a hot glue gun. (What would we do without hot glue guns?!)



The shadowbox was 8X10, but when I cut the paper down to that size, it was a little too snug, so I trimmed it down a little. I actually trimmed it a little too much, but thank goodness I wasn't trying to make it look perfect.

After I trimmed the paper down, I hot glued it to the backing of the shadowbox. Here are my helpful hot glue gun hints for this project:

1. Have extra glue sticks within reach
2. Don't try to glue the whole surface at once. Line up your paper like you want it and start in one corner, pressing it down as you glue it.

In other words, learn from my mistakes.

Here's the final product:



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Make Bake Create

Artwork Redo

We've been working on staging our house to sell it (don't you just love moving?!), so we've been buying artwork and decorations.

We're decorating the second master in kind of a shabby chic style, so I've been looking for something to hang on the wall in there. I found a few things online, but I just wasn't ready to commit to any of them.

Then we went to Hobby Lobby and wandered and wandered...

And my husband found this (on clearance!):



He has a good eye. The color wouldn't work, but we looked it over and decided we could take it apart and paint it.

We painted the birdcage "Catalina Mist" and the wooden part is a cream colored crackle paint. As an aside, we should really learn to READ the paint cans because the crackle paint was supposed to be step 2 of a 2 step process. Whoops! It didn't crackle all that much, but we were ok with the results.






Before and After:



If only the walls weren't white, but I'm not painting them just to move! :)

Linking here: Homemaking Linkup
Make, Bake, Create
Two Girls and a Party

Pinterest Picks 2

Here are a couple of Pinterest things we've tried recently.

Cream Cheese Filled Chicken

I was a little skeptical of the dredging on this one because it says to dip it in flour, then egg, then corn flake crumbs. I thought the egg would wash off the flour, but actually I think it made the rolled up chicken hold together better. I didn't have a lot of problem with the cream cheese mixture oozing out of the chicken, so I would call that a victory.

It was pretty good. The prep time is minimal, and that always makes me happy! I used pressed garlic instead of garlic salt, and I think maybe I didn't add enough salt to make up for it, but you live and you learn.

Soft and Chewy Springtime Blondies
Do you know of my Cadbury Mini Egg addiction? Well when I saw a dessert that incorporated those little pieces of heaven, I knew right away it would be a winner. I even let a bag of Mini Eggs languish on my kitchen counter for a week or so because I wanted to try this. Well, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I ate the eggs, folks. I still wanted to try the recipe though, so we made it with chocolate chips instead. I'm always skeptical of brownie/blondie recipes because I don't like for them to be cake-like. If it's not chewy, it's not a brownie/blondie. The texture of these are just right and the possibilities are endless as far as what you can mix into them. I have a feeling that we will make lots of variations of these!

What have you tried lately?

Linking here: Hope in Every Season
Make, Bake, Create

This Week's Pinterest Picks

I have a slight addiction to Pinterest. I use it mostly to find recipes to help me get out of the recipe rut, but sometimes I find other things of interest. Mostly I just pin them and never look at them again, but I try to find a couple of things per week to actually try.

Here are some things I've tried recently.

Borax Ant Trap Recipe

It's suddenly like I'm living in a bad 80's movie starring a legion of nasty old ants. My favorite ant killer is Terro Liquid Ant Bait, but it's not always easy to find. The active ingredient in it is Borax. I like it because it's a natural substance and though you wouldn't want to drink the stuff, it's not a pesticide, so it's not as harmful as regular ant killers. Plus, it works REALLY well.

Anyway, my sweet husband searched the world over for it on his way home from work and couldn't find it, so I told him to just grab some Borax so I could make my own.

I put it out last night and when I checked the first trap, I thought it was a flop. My mistake may have been labeling it as ant bait. Maybe ants can read?




Anyway, then I checked the other one and BINGO!



The website says it works overnight. I think that's a bit of a stretch. Even the Terro kind takes a few days to get rid of all of the ants. When I refill it, I will put less liquid in the trap. I want them to drink it and take it home with them, not drown in it. The website says to soak it up on cotton balls, but I didn't have any.

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Sticky Slow Cooker Chicken Teriyaki

This smelled so good cooking! It's always a bonus when I run across a recipe that I have all of the ingredients for. It's also a bonus when I can throw it in a slow cooker and forget about it! I didn't have the ginger this called for, but it was fine without it, and I served it over quinoa instead of rice.

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Melt in Your Mouth Chicken

This was so easy that I was able to prepare it while the cranky teething baby was still awake. Granted, I had to put some gangsta rap on Pandora and sing along while changing the words to make the words baby appropriate. And I had to randomly hide behind the island and jump out to make him laugh, but it worked! My oven has a fancy "cook time" feature that will turn off the oven when the timer goes off, so it worked perfectly for me to pop in the oven just before beginning the marathon that is trying to convince The Baby Fish it is his bedtime. It was a little salty, but I think it was just because I cooked half the amount of chicken the recipe calls for and didn't half the coating. If you're concerned about salt, maybe use a little less of the seasoning salt. You can always add more when it's done if you need to.

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I move all of the recipes I try to my Tried and True Recipe board so I can keep up with what I've tried.

If you've tried any Pinterest experiments this week, share them with me. It's always interesting to see real reviews.

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