Guest Post on MoneySavingMom.com

Crystal, at MoneySavingMom.com has provided me with the opportunity to be a guest blogger and post how to make homemade baby wipes. 

MoneySavingMom.com is an amazing resource and tool for tips, couponing, frugality, and home management.  Check out my guest post, here.

Happy Thursday!!

Candice S.

Happy Tummies: Bite Size Smore's

Making Smore's is what sets the perfect tone for summer!  We've had plans to make smores for some time now so we went out and purchased your typical smore ingredients:  marshmallow's, honey grahams, and instead of Hershey chocolate bars we bought the new Hershey Smore's Chocolate Icing thinking that it was for smores.  When we went to use it, we found that it's nothing more than icing for baking goods like cupcakes and brownies.  Bummer!  ..I really wanted smores and I wanted them bad so Harmony and I came up with our Bite Size Smore's! 

Kid crafted, super easy, messy, oooey gooey.. and FUN!  I bet these would be awesome with gummy bears, M & M's, and oreo's.. How do you make your smores?

Happy Wednesday!

Candice S.

The Perfect Playdough Recipe

I found this playdough recipe a few months ago and have been dying to try it!

Ingredients are as follows:

1 tbsp cream of tartar
1 cup of flour
1 cup of water
1/2 cup of salt
1 tbsp cooking oil  (I used olive oil)

Here's what you need to do..

You mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the water. 

Cook the mix in a pot on low to medium until mixture starts pulling from the sides of the pot and forms into a ball.

Knead the mixture and add your food coloring and scents after the playdough cools.

Waaaaa laaaaaa!!  After you've add your color, you have beautifully formed playdough!!  Prep and cooking time was about 30 minutes to an hour- kneaded the color in is the most time consuming part but well worth the efforts.  The colors we used were green and red- to make brown, pink, and green food color to go along with our flower thematic unit this month.

Enjoy!

Candice S.

Healthy Additions and Happy Tummies: Alphabet Soup (Chicken and Veggies)

OOoOOOlaa who doesn't love yummy chicken, broccoli, carrots, and alphabet soup!!  It came out beautifully.  All I did was use the chicken stock from boiling one chicken breast (we stretch chicken around here!) and added a ton of spices and herbs.  Then I added the vegetables, as they take a little while to cook thorougly.  Finally, finished up by taking my soup off of the burner and added in the alphabet pasta. 

Total time was about forty-five minutes to one hour.
My children LOVED this!!  Mark Jr. who is 13 months old gobbled it right up and Harmony who is almost five ate it with EASE..  It is definitely beyond kid friendly and extremely fun!

Enjoy!

Candice

Healthy Additions and Happy Tummies: Chicken and Veggie Egg Rolls

Goodmorning!!  I do quite a bit of cooking.  One of my personal goals this year has been to develop and explore healthier ways of eating that allow your kids to enjoy the benefits, as well.  It's hard to eat healthy and to keep your kids geared towards fruits and veggies than it is to just feed them chicken nuggets and mac n cheese- nothing wrong with that though.  I'm pretty sure that I thank the creators of chicken nuggets and easy mac at least once a week!  We experiment at our house with new foods frequently so I've decided to start sharing some of these recipes with you once a week.  You would be surprised at the substitutions and minor changes that you can do for your daily meal intake.  You will see benefits around your waste line, you'll have more energy, and you will find that those yucky veggies you thought you didn't like before, are actually very good! 

Sooooo, here we go!  I made these AWESOME chicken spring rolls last night.  They were amazing.  I used my own portions of veggies and chicken and rolled them up into fresh egg rolls (which were on sale at Sweetbay for $1.00!!!)..

Started off by cooking the veggies:

1 cup of spinach (frozen)

1 whole zucchini

Handful of carrots

2 Tbsp of Ginger

2 Tbsp of Teriyaki sauce

Half of Green Bell Pepper

Half of Yellow Bell Pepper

Grilled Chicken on George Foreman- and then shredded

Take your egg roll and lay it flat.  Add about two tablespoons (or what you see fit) in a diagonal line from one point of the egg roll to the other.  Roll from one corner and tuck in sides.  Lay open end down on greased baking sheet or baking dish.

 Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes- flip over to brown other side.

Waaaaalaaaaa!! 

Now, on to the sauce- You can basically make a sweet n sour sauce out of any type of jelly or jam you have in your house.  Take about 2 tablespoons of jam, I used guava, and then 1 tbsp of Olive Oil, and 2 tbsp of vinegar.  There you have it, you're ready to eatttt!  :)

 This dish was a hit!  Harmony LOVED it and it was beyond filling.  We will definitely start added this to our menu.  Only downfall- prep time is a little on the longer side, with baking time probably about an hour to make this dish.  The plus side, egg rolls and sauce are under 100 calories and they are filled with nothing more than what YOU put in them.



Happy Wednesday!

Candice

Christmas Food

For some folks, Christmas is over and they are well into taking down their decorations and festive Christmas gear.  At our house, however, we are still jamming with the Christmas groove.

Here's something fun that I attempted to do for Harmony.. (to be good at, mind you.. which some thing's I just CAN'T do all or most of the time..)

She LOVED it!  Harmony hugged and kissed me.. thanking me for such an awesome lunch!  The extra five minutes I spent sprucing up her peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a winter tree scene.. was well worth it!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Candice S.

Holiday Traditions, Gifts, and Family Fun.

I love Christmas.

I love the season, the cold, family, eating, and fun festive activities that we all love to do with our family.  I'm going to miss it, dearly.   So, to keep the Spirit of Christmas alive I want to share some of Rattles and Redheads, and your's truly, family traditions that are old and the fresh new one's that were welcomed into our family this holiday season.  Some of them I posted about, other's I didn't get a chance so it'll be your first time seeing them!  :o)

• Having Pinkie Pie watch over us during the month of December until he/she flies back to the North Pole to report on our behavior.

• Opening PJ's on Christmas Eve and other presents with our extended family member's.

• Setting out Reindeer Food (made of oat's and glitter) and Homemade Cookies for Santa.

• Our Christmas Activity Box is so fun that I might make one themed for each month!

• Buying Christmas Santa Claus Storybook

• Watching a Christmas Movie

• Receiving Santa's Bell (Polar Express Idea)  We bought the bell from The Dollar Tree and put a pretty ribbon on it.. Only those who believe can hear it.  :)  What fun!  

• Homemade Ornaments and Gifts

• Family Handprint Christmas Tree.  This is my all time favorite present that we could have made this year!  I love, love, love it!

Merry Belated Christmas and to a Happy, Happy New Year!  I hope that your holiday was as special as our's!

Candice S.

Cinnamon Ornaments

I have seen wonderful recipes for making cinnamon ornaments that use applesauce, glue, and a boat load of cinnamon!  ...Lets just say.. after about 4 hours of kneading my heart out, I dumped the sticky gunk in the trash and called it a day.  

..Because I had a very eager and wanting little girl who needed to make ornaments for our tree, I decided the next best thing would be to make our salt dough recipe that we used for our fall leaves.  I added two extra ingredients to the mix: 2-4 tablespoons to applesauce and a ton of cinnamon.

Baby Brother doing his part, having fun with the plastic cookie cutters.

I added red food coloring to a portion of the dough that I sectioned off.  You flatten the dough, add a few drops of food coloring, and then quickly start folding in the dough.  Keep folding in the dough and kneading the dough until you see even color.  Add more color for more bold colored dough.

Place in oven at 150 and bake for about an hour or until desired dryness is reached.  Whalllaaaaa!  :)

Happy Holiday's!

Candice S.

Check out Rattles and Redhead's holiday section:

I've linked this project to:

Homemade Paint

Store bought paint for kids can become expensive, especially when you are using it as often as we are in this house!  When Harmony turned two years old I started looking for alternatives to store bought paint that was inexpensive, easy to clean off of furniture (and everything else), and was not harmful if consumed...

I found one!   :)

Ingredients: 

1 Tablespoon of Flour
1 Tablespoon of Water
1-2 Drops of Fooding Coloring

I take about a tablespoon of flour and equally parts of water, mix together.  After that I add or mix our colors.  I use food coloring to do this because it's safe.  I'll do this in different containers and then whatever we don't use up I just dump in the sink.  If you want thicker consistency add more flour.  I tend to try to get it where it is not too runny, but just right!

Love it!

Candice S.

Birthday's, More Ghostly Activities, and Homemade Banana Bread

My husband's birthday was on Saturday and Harmony and I decided that we would make him homemade banana bread in lue of a cake, for he doesn't like cake (that strange man).  :)  

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 325

Prep and Mix:

1/2 cup butter/margerine/oil (your choice)

Pinch of salt

3 ripe banana's

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon of baking soda

2 eggs

Additional:

1 tablespoon guava

1 teaspoon vanilla

In the process, I recycled this really cool bottle to use as a tree trunk and then took a branch from my grandparents yard to use to hang our Elmer's Glue Ghosts.  We took some string and hung each one up.

  I had actually originally come up with this idea to for our clay leaves, but for now.. this is adorable and  satisfies the need for halloween decorations just fine.

Enjoy!

Candice S.

Super Fun Lunch Idea's At Family Fun

These lunch idea's are priceless, creative, and are sooo much fun!  I think the snail is my favorite!  Enjoy the recipes at Family Fun... I know we are!  =)

Snack-o-lantern

Lady Bugs

Two-Toned Sandwich using Cookie Cutters

Sail Boat with Toothpick Sails

Carrot Patches

Snail Sandwich

Candice S.