Cooking, Baking and Cooking Some More

Since I'm trying to spend as little as possible on groceries this month, I decided to do lots of cooking.

Yesterday I made a crock pot full of chili.  I make chili different every time depending on what I have on hand.  We had Chili last night and again for dinner tonight.  Plus I have enough for another dinner and probably a couple lunches left in the freezer.  I figured out that each 1 cup serving of Chili cost 50 cents and had 5 weight watchers points plus.

Tomorrow I am going to make Chicken Sandwich Filling in the crock pot.



I tried to make this recipe for home made flour tortillas from Pennies & Pancakes.  I liked this recipe, but it was a lot of work.  I made 17 tortillas and still had almost half the dough ball left.  I decided to freeze it for later. I'm not sure if the savings is worth all the work when I get a 10 pack of tortillas from Aldi.  I haven't tried these yet, I'll let Mr. Ripples have the honor when he gets home from work.




I also made some Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I revised this recipe from sparkpeople.  I tried to lighten them up a bit using egg whites and substituting half the butter with applesauce.  They are still good, but the weight watchers points are still too high to be a good treat for me.  The girls and hubby'll have to eat these themselves.

And finally, I made these blueberry muffins.  I used oats for half of the flour and substituted applesauce for the oil.  These came out pretty good and were only 3 WW Points Plus.

Now I'm exhausted.  Little Ripples and Baby Ripples helped me mix up the cookies and the muffins.  I had to clean the kitchen twice, sweep, vacuum and mop the floor.

Dollar Store Discoveries

I ran to the dollar store today at lunch.  I love the Dermasil lotion they have.  It's thick and isn't oily.  So I bought 3 bottles as I am addicted to putting lotion on my hands and I was running out of all the bottles stashed around my house and desk at work.

I also found some cute notebooks, colorful pens and colorful tape.  Little Ripples loves new notebooks.  She's always trying to make books out of them.  Her birthday is Sunday, and even though we already bought her 2 gifts, I really felt like she needed 3 gifts to open.  I don't know why.  3 just seems like a good amount of gifts to me.  So I'm going to make a gift bag of the stationary stuff I found.

I'm really excited because I found wet pads for the Swiffer.  12 for only 1 dollar.  I'm assuming they'll be cheaply made without the scrubbing strip that the name brand ones offer.  But for a dollar they are worth a try! 

Spring Cleaning is saving me more and more money!

I don't think I have ever done this much spring cleaning before.  But with Baby Ripples being sick last week and Little Ripples sick this week, I've had a lot of time at home.  I went through the girls' spring and summer clothes today.   And its a good thing I did.  I knew I had tons of clothes for Baby Ripples since she gets all the hand-me-downs.  But I thought I was going to have to buy all new clothes for Little Ripples.  As I was cleaning out there closet, I found 2 drawers in an organizer that I thought were the next size up clothes for Baby Ripples, but they weren't.  They were all the spring and summer clothes in Little Ripples size from the end of summer last year! I totally forgot about these.

Both my girls' birthdays are towards the end of summer and they always get tons of summer clothes for their birthdays that they barely get to wear.  Little Ripples is so skinny she can still where 5T shorts and some shirts so she can wear a lot of what was leftover from last year.

Both girls are totally set on clothes for now.  If I see some inexpensive tshirts I might grab a couple but I can wait until I find a good deal.  Maybe I'll go to half price day at the thrift store some week and see what I can find.

Spring Cleaning: Shoes, Shoes and More Shoes...

Little Ripples is now sick with the Fever that Baby Ripples had last week.  Don't you love when kids share?!

So since I'm home from work today, I decided to do some more spring cleaning.  In the coat closet, I found 7 vacuum cleaner bags, 3 air filters and 2 belts for the vacuum.  I think we'll be good on those for a long time!

Note to Self:  Do Not Buy Any More Shoes for the Girls!

Baby Ripples' Shoes

(she has another pair of tennis shoes that she's wearing at daycare now)

How many pink pairs of sandals does one girl need?
 

Little Ripples' Shoes

The bright pink pair of shoes were brand new

only worn once... to the park... in the mud. 

Anyone know how to get mud out of cloth shoes?

Another Spring Cleaning Update

I decided to try to clean my stove top naturally.  This is what it looked like before:

I mixed some baking soda, salt and water to make a paste and spread it on the stove top.  I let it sit for a few hours and then used a damp wash cloth to wipe it off.  When it dried it left a white residue so I sprayed it with my vinegar/water/dish soap mixture and wiped it down one more time.  It came out nice and shiny.  Here's the after photo.

More Spring Cleaning

Linen Closet - This is almost embarrasing but here's a photo of my unorganized linen closet.  I cleaned it out and found lots of curtains, some that came with the house.  Not sure why I've hung onto them this long.  So I'm setting those aside for a garage sale that I am planning for May.  Organized the towels and my bargain shelf.  The top shelf is where I put my stock pile of extra products when I've found deals too good to pass up.




Before: Eeeek!

After:  Much Better

 

Oven - Ok...As if that wasn't embarrassing enough, I have a confession to make:  I've never cleaned my oven.  It never really occurred to me until I cleaned out under the kitchen sink and found some Easy Off.  I didn't get a before and after picture of this, but lets just say when I actually looked inside, it was pretty gunky.  The Easy Off worked ok, but when I turned the oven on to cook dinner smoke came out of my stove and I could smell the cleaner.  I'll have to look into natural ways to clean the oven.



Spring Cleaning Problems and Solutions

Baby Ripples still had a slight fever today so I decided to take a personal day to stay home with her.  While she was resting on the couch with a cup of juice watching Barney on tv, I decided I should make the most of the day and get some spring cleaning done.  Every Sunday, I do a thorough house cleaning.  It takes me about an hour and a half but I never get down to the nitty gritty.  And there's been some definite nitty gritty stuff that's been bothering me lately.

Problem #1:  For a really long time now, I've been looking for a solution to get rid of the dust that builds up on the tiny top ledge of baseboards.  I've tried a dry wash cloth, a damp wash cloth, a toothpick, vacuum and using a magic erase sponge.  Nothing would get the dust off.  The magic erase would just seem to shred and I'd get little white pieces all over the floor. 

Solution:  Finally, I figured it out.  I mixed some water with a splash of apple cider vinegar and a couple drops of dish soap.  Then I used one of the children's toothbrushes that we got for free when we were on a cruise and I went around the room scrubbing with the toothbrush and then wiping it off with a dry wash cloth and it worked wonderfully!

Problem #2:  Mold along the caulking by the sink in the bathroom.  I've been noticing this for a while but I tend to have a "ignore it and hopefully it will go away" type of attitude when it comes to cleaning when I have no idea what to do. 


Before

Solution: I mixed some baking soda and apple cider vinegar together to make a paste and used a little spoon to scoop it out and put it along the caulking. I let it sit for about half and hour and then used the same toothbrush from above to scrub at it a litte. Used a paper towel to wipe it off. It worked great. I still see a little darkness but its a great improvement. I'll have to maybe try using some bleach but I have a feeling I ignored it for too long and it is down in the caulking which means we'll have to have the caulking taken out and replaced.

After
(picture taken with my phone so it didn't come out so great)

Problem #3: Built up gunk on the wall in the bathroom.  This gunk is a result the use of cursly scrunching spray gel everyday on three curly haired ladies.
Solution: Magic Erase worked great here.

Problem#4:  The mess under the kitchen sink:

Solution: Cleaned out and organized.

 

 

I'll be doing some more cleaning this afternoon so hopefully I'll have more Spring Cleaning Solutions for you.  Just stopped for a quick soup break and a post.