Baby Sling

I have been enjoying this baby sling. It was super easy to make, folds up small to fit in the diaper bag and makes walks in the park easier! I have a regular baby carrier but never liked it. I just felt hugely pregnant with a bad back when I wore it - though Ed really liked using the carrier. I think it just didn't fit me right but this sling is perfect. I doubt I'll use it long. I can't imagine carrying a toddler in this sling though there are many different ways to wear the sling. I don't think my back could handle much more weight! But for now I am enjoying it!

I used the pattern found here, and also found some good information at this site.

Hooded Towels

This week I thought I'd share some of my latest sewing projects. (By "latest", don't get the any false ideas! These are not all from the past week but from the past months!!!) Most of these projects are under an hour! So if you are looking for some simple sewing projects, try one of these!

For a baby gift for our first child, a friend gave us a hooded towel made with a bath towel. It was, by far, my favorite towel! Unlike most hooded baby towel, this one was actually large, thick, and thirsty enough to easily dry a wiggly youngster! We continued to use that towel for five years as it worked just as well for toddlers and pre-schoolers.

I've seen several patterns for these hooded towels. Some even had ideas on making the heads resemble animals. I decided to keep it simple and used the pattern found here. I did add a little ribbon for accent. I used a large bath towel and hand towel. One hand towel gets cut in half so if you decide to do this project, buy two bath towels and one hand towel to make two projects. Use one and save the other for a gift!

My children are loving their new towels! Guess I need to make a fourth one now! (By the way, one of the best things we did in our bathroom was add low towel hooks for the children. I love that they all know where their towel goes!)

Gardening With Children - Planting Seeds

Many of us have, somewhere back in our brains, the memory of planting marigold seeds in a paper cup. It seems to be the classic project for elementary school teachers in the spring! And for good reasons! Children love to see things grow and marigold seeds grow quickly and easily!

I planted marigold seeds with our children earlier this month. We planted them in egg cartons filled with potting soil. I have no photos of the event, and if you've ever tried planting seeds with three youngsters, you'll understand why! We covered the seeds with a piece of plastic wrap and set it on the refrigerator as a warm place to germinate. Once they popped through the ground, I took of the plastic and placed them on the window sill. The marigolds were growing well, until our baby was born and I forgot all about them. Once I remembered, they were quite a sorry sight! Only about one fourth of the seedlings survived the neglect!

By now, you probably know that I love sharing nature related projects with my children. The marigolds are only the first of my plans for the summer! Even if you are not a gardener, if you have children in your life, hopefully I can encourage you to get a few seeds for them to watch grow!

Here is a few ideas! All these seeds are super simple to grow! Marigolds can be started indoors and all the others should be planted directly into the garden in May.

Marigolds - Perfect for starting indoors in a paper cup
Nasturtium - Very large seeds great for small hands. The flowers can even be eaten! Add some color to your salad!
Sunflower - Everyone loves sunflowers! They come in many different sizes. Plant a tall variety and take a photo each week of your child with their sunflower!
Cosmos - A tall flower with satiny soft petals.
Zinnias - I don't think a garden is complete without a row of zinnias! A great cutting flower!

Flowers are not the only option! Many vegetables are fun to plant as well! If your child is helping to plant, make sure the seeds have not been treated with poisons.

Pumpkins - Fun to plant, fun to watch, fun to pick!
Zucchini - Let one zucchini grow to baseball bat size just for fun!
Vines - Pole beans, pole lima, or flowering vines such as moon vine, or hyacinth bean vine are fun to grow if you have a fence, pole or trellis for them to climb up! Our children spent hours last summer, picking and shelling the beans on our hyacinth bean vine just for fun!

You can find a seed rack at about any grocery store this time of year! Next time you walk by, think of the fun your children could have this summer watching "their" plants grow!

Solar Cooking - guest post

Thanks to my husband for sharing his latest alternative energy experiment!

For some time now I have been interested in solar cooking and alternative energy of all sorts. I knew it was probably very simple and inexpensive but I just never got around to trying it for myself. On Tuesday, I got the idea that it would be very fun to try solar cooking on Earth Day and looked at the calendar and discovered that Earth Day was the next day! After downloading and printing out a free book here, (58 page PDF), I got a piece of cardboard from work and headed home.

Of course Gina is always game to try something new and she said " If you make a solar oven for earth day, you need to write a guest post on my blog about it!" I went ahead with my experiment and now am paying the price for it! If you want to stop reading now, I really don't blame you!

After putting the children to bed, (Note this important step!) I laid out the cardboard and marked out the measurements from the manual that I downloaded. I know several people that have made the box cooker type, but wanting to be different and able to easily transport mine, I made the "Cookit" style which is basically just an angled reflector.

We cut out the cardboard and glued tin foil to the one side and left to dry overnight. The next day (Earth Day) was forecasted to be rainy all day. Not a good cooking day with this method! But Thursday looked promising, so I had an extra day to pull it all together. I took two foil 9 x 13 pans and spray painted them a flat black and also picked up some turkey sized oven bags.Thursday morning, Gina mixed up a batch of brownies and put it in the one foil pan. The other pan we turned upside down on top and fastened them together with paper binder clips. We put our oven thermometer into the pan as well and all this all went into the oven bag and was sealed up.

Since I normally have to work during daylight hours, I took it with me, knowing that even if it was a totally flop, I would have plenty of help to eat raw brownie batter!
I set up the cooker toward the morning sun and set the thermometer where I could watch it out the window. The day turned out to be partly cloudy, at least for the first few hours. Finally around 11:00 it was pretty much full sun and the pans had heated up to around 200 degrees.

At 11:30 my lovely family stopped in to see me and I was anxious to see how the brownies were doing anyway, so we opened them up. They were just starting to set up around the edge. Of course the children wanted to stay until they were done, but I had figured out by this time that it would be several more hours. We set the pan back in the cooker and it took nearly 45 minutes to come back up to 200. Solar cooking takes patience! Already co-workers were wondering if we couldn't finish them in the microwave! Americans!
Finally around 2:30 we took them out of the cooker and the pan was empty soon afterwards!
I learned several things from this experiment:
- This style of cooker probably needs more direct sunlight then we had that day. As soon as the sun would go behind a cloud the temperature would drop in the pan 10-20 degrees.
- Not much cooking happens below 200 degrees. At least it is a slow process!
- Solar cooking doesn't need much looking after. One of my other many hobbies is cooking in a cast iron dutch oven. These need almost constant attention as coals need started then arranged on the pot, then the pot need turned so that there are not burnt places. Dutch oven cooking is very fast compared to solar, but requires more work.
-11:00-3:00 is probably prime cooking time which makes it hard to have brownies for lunch especially since I like to eat at 11:00!

I'd love to hear if any of you have experimented with solar cooking!

Freezer Meal Ideas

Another Reader contribution! Thanks, Jean!

I've been thinking of sending you a bit about what a friend and I did for our freezer meal exchange. It was really informal, but that time I made the chicken things (and she did the beef because we didn't have any in the freezer at that time.) We figured out how much onion, etc. we need chopped and did it all at once.

We made mini-meatballs and baked them 15 min. on trays, let them cool, then packaged them into ziplock bags to use in many different recipes.

I cooked the chicken the day before so it was ready to work with.

We made:

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas - 24 servings

2c. chopped onion

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/4c. oil

- Saute' - then add:

8c. chopped cooked chicken

2 (8oz.) cans chopped green chilies

1c. chicken broth

2 T. chili powder

1 T. ground cumin

-Cook until thoroughly heated; then stir in:

2 (8oz.) pkg. cream cheese

Spoon 1/3 c. of mixture onto medium size tortilla.

Makes 24 servings. Put into foil pans and freeze. Pour cheese sauce and salsa over top before heating.Bake 300 for 30 min.

Turkey Croquets - yeilds 40

8c. turkey or chicken cooked and finely chopped

5c. cooked rice

1c. chopped celery

1c. chopped onion

7 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. poultry seasoning

1 tsp. chili powder

2 1/2 tsp.

1/2 tsp. pepper

2c. shredded cheddar cheese

Mix all together. CHILL BEFORE SHAPING! Shape into balls with 1/3 cup measure.

Dip each ball into melted butter, then roll in cornflake crumbs. Takes about

2 sticks butter

1 box cornflakes

Freeze on trays then bag. Bake 350 for nearly 1 hour. Serve with gravy or:

Special Mustard Sauce:

1c. oil

3/4c. sugar

1/3c. prepared mustard

1tsp. salt

1/4c. vinegar

Stir together or shake in jar until sugar dissolves. Store in fridge.

It was lots of fun and we loved our handy meals.

I'd love to hear what other people like to make for the freezer.

Spring Recipes

Before our baby was born, I asked my newsletter readers if they'd share some of their hints and recipes. Here is a few of their responses! Thanks, ladies!

Italian Salad - Linette

6 heads Romaine lettuce

1/2 c. purple onion rings

1 can black olives, drained

1 can salad peppers, drained

1 bag Caesar salad croûtons

1 bag Italian cheese, shredded

4 medium tomatoes, chopped

Marinated in:

1 bottle Zesty Italian salad dressing

1 dry pack Zesty Italian dressing mix

Mix all ingredients together. Enjoy!

Spinach Balls - Martha Ann

10 cups chopped spinach, cooked and drained

2 cups herb stuffing mix

4 eggs, beaten

1 onion, chopped

1/2 lb. melted butter

1/2 cup cheese

1/2 teas. salt

1/4 teas. pepper

1 cup cream of chicken soup

Combine. Chill. Shape into balls. Bake at 350, 20 minutes. May be frozen.

Golden Parmesan Potatoes - Martha Ann

6 large potatoes

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

3/4 teas. salt

1/8 teas. pepper

1 teas. chives (optional)

Melt 1/2 stick butter in 9x13 baking dish. Cut potatoes into wedges. Mix remaining ingredients in bag or covered container. Shake potatoes in mixture and place in single layer in butter in baking dish. Bake at 375, 30 min. Turn potatoes and bake 30 min. more.

French Rhubarb Pie - Kendra

1 egg
1c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla 
3c. diced Rhubarb 
2 Tbsp. flour
	
Mix together, dump in unbaked pie shell.

Top with: 
3/4 c. flour 
1/2 c. brown sugar 
1/3 c. butter 

Bake at 400  for 10 minutes.
Continue baking at 325 for 30 minutes.

Hoop House Update

We are really enjoying our hoop house. Even with a cold spring (we even had a thin layer of snow on Easter week) the veggies are growing well. For a while I had a thermometer in it. Usually it was about ten degrees warmer then the outside temperature in the morning unless it really dropped down cold. On warm days, the sunlight quickly warmed it, but unlike a glass cold frame, the Mikroclima cloth allowed air flow so it did not overheat. The Mikroclima also allows rain to penetrate but I did need to water it occasionally, especially during our dry March.
We used some of the methods found in Square Foot Gardening book, including tacking in grids to help with plant spacing. In a one foot square, we planted one broccoli plant, four lettuce or kale plants, nine spinach plants or about twelve onions. Loose leaf lettuce seed was just sprinkled in. I'm amazed at how much a box this size produces. This method would be perfect for someone with minimal space who wanted maximum yield.
I'm not sure how much the water jugs are helping. The idea is that they will absorb heat during the day and release it at night. They are certainly warm in the evening. Before fall, I want to paint the bottles black to help in heat absorption.
With the box located right outside our garage door, it is easy to care for. Tonight after a heavy rain shower, I ran outside for some fresh greens for an evening salad. I would have hated to wallow through the mud into the garden just to pick lettuce!
And when the result is a luscious salad like this, no wonder we like our hoop house! I'm always amazed at how tender and sweet home grown spring greens are compared to what we've been buying at the store all winter!