Today I learned that I only have to say one word to my child to get her on board with whatever I want to do. And that word, my friends, is chocolate. Especially when it comes to making lip balm. I kind of figured that after our home run with crayon lip gloss that any lip gloss or lip balm that I wanted to make would be an easy yes. Turns out it was only a yes because it was tinted. As in, like lip stick. So when I suggested we make a plain old lip balm (sans tint), it…
Make sure to bookmark this banana bread recipe because it’s an absolute winner. The bread is moist, sweet but not overly so and just plain delicious. It also uses up 4 ripe bananas (yay!) and is dairy-free without even trying (double yay!). For some reason, we’ve had a ridiculous amount of bananas on the verge of going bad in our house this week. When I asked Anna what we should do with them, I expected her to say something along the lines of chocolate banana muffins or frozen banana bites. But she surprised me and requested banana bread. The surprise…
Ever since I purchased a big bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Castille Soap*, I’ve been looking for things to make with it. So far, it’s been a lot of foaming hand soap and not much else. That is, until I realized that I was running dangerously low on eye make-up remover. Enter in the quest to find a DIY version that would be gentle on my skin and still effective in taking off my eye make-up. The first few (dozen) recipes that I found online all contained witch hazel. Not knowing if I had any on hand, I kept scouring. I…
We were ALL ABOUT popsicles a few years ago, making every flavor combination we could think of (except strawberry mango). They were super easy to make, I could control what went in them, AND Anna loved having a sweet treat she could grab and devour. When winter came, our insatiable appetite for popsicles disappeared and we put away the popsicle molds into some out of the way spot in our basement. Meaning, they got buried under a crap ton of other toddler stuff and we completely forgot about them untiiiil a few days ago when we were going through baby…
Anna has been begging to make things in the kitchen lately. First it was all things spa-related. Then it turned into all things chocolate related. Her most recent obsessions? Sheet pan pancakes. I’m not sure why she was so into these since I’ve only made them once (a full year ago, no less), but she’s been asking about them for almost a week. She even requested that we have blueberries and bananas with them. I had originally planned to make them for dinner on Friday since they are so easy, but the husband had randomly ordered himself pancakes that morning…
Anna turned 5 in April while we were visiting my parents, so we pushed the big birthday party to May when we were back in town and she was back at school. Being a total sucker for a theme, I was elated when I realized her FIFTH birthday party would fall on the FIFTH of May, AKA Cinco de Mayo. I had two major goals for her party: 1.) to be respectful of the significance of Cinco de Mayo for Mexican-Americans and of Mexican culture in general and 2.) to make it as fun as possible for 3-6 year old…
We’re another day closer to Anna’s birthday party, which means we are testing out yet another Cinco de Mayo themed craft. And this one is a definite winner (thank god). This project involves minimal supplies and (hopefully) ones that you have in your house already. We had a stockpile of plastic eggs in our house from Potty Training prizes, so that was a definite bonus. It’s also a really great project to have in your back pocket post-Easter since plastic eggs are seriously on sale (saw them for 70% off in Target last week). Speaking of sales, I found colorful…