Another freezer idea

As I've mentioned before, I love freezer meals! I have talked about dinners before, but now let's talk breakfast!
My kids don't love cold cereal, to my dismay( its so easy and quick!), so to please the troops I have to plan ahead and do a variety of things.
When I make pancakes, I try to make anywhere between 50-100. We eat them fresh on baking day, then freeze the rest. To reheat, we've put them in the toaster(gives them a slightly tough"skin") or our preferred method; just pop them in the microwave! They turn out great and the kids love them!
I also make breakfast sandwiches. My kids only like sausage with egg(it took forever to convince them to eat with egg!) and only on biscuits!
So, after several attempts, I have it down to a science! AND... I have a new method of cooking the eggs. I know that pinterest lovers can find different methods of cooking eggs, this is a twist on one of them. I had tried cooking the eggs in a muffin tin, but wasn't thrilled with how thick they turned out. So, I tried baking them in a cookie sheet! Awesome! They came out perfectly as you can see in the pictures. As for the price, you can't best it! Sausage patties were $4.96, eggs- free(our own chickens!), biscuits$1.50/pkg(I used 2), cheese slices $2.98. Total cost was approx $11.00! Less than $1.00/sandwich!

Lastly, I also freeze breakfast burritos; more for my husbands sake. I cook hash browns, sausage, sauté peppers and onions and mix them in a large bowl with beaten eggs. I pour the mix into a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 30 min. I cut it into rectangles and place each rectangle into a tortilla, roll, wrap, and freeze!

Redbox Rocks!

As we prepared to make our annual trek to California this summer, I thought about how I was going to keep the kiddos entertained for the 14 hour drive. Last year, we completed the trek without the help of a DVD player, can you believe it? It was a lot of work and required a lot of patience on my part! We drove out again in April with an assortment of items (DVD player included) and found that the kids didn't like what they had brought for movies and entertainment. This time I just wanted it to be simple and fun. I didn't want the car to be full of trash and unwanted items just taking up space. So we packed the Nintendo DS and the DVD player and that was it! We stopped at a red box in our town and got two movies which they watched during the first 8 hours of the trip. At one of our pitstops the boys asked if they could have some crayons and notebooks to color so I eagerly said yes. Between the movies and coloring, the first eight hours sailed by. Right around our halfway point we stopped at another Redbox and got two more movies. This entertained them for the second half of the trip. It was wonderful! Redbox kiosks can be found practically anywhere! They have an app you can download to search for nearby kiosks. I returned the last two movies when I reached my destination. I know that some of you may think that it was movie overload, but they still managed to play the license plate game, slug bug, and the alphabet ( find the letters in signs) game too! They colored for hours and the Nintendo DS never came out of their cases! Keep in mind also that kids movies are usually shorter; i think the longest one we watched was 80 min! It was wonderful! Another perk was that the total cost of the rentals totaled about $8.50, which is a lot cheaper than buying any new movie, which only gets viewed once and than put away never to be watched again. Now that we are at our destination, tv time will be very limited due to our other activities.
Redbox has new releases every week, so when we are ready to head home, I think we will hit the Redbox tour again!

As a side note, for those of you like myself who don't have a 3G electronic device, I just pulled into a McDonald's parking lot to access their wi-fi when I needed to find a Redbox or look up my directions to our destination. Very convenient and I figure I patronize their eatery way more than I should anyway, so I don't feel guilty about using it without a purchase!

Nail update

So here's an update on my DIY gel manicure. I love, love, love it! Definitely works for me! I have had it on 13 days and it looked near perfect up until about day 11. You might say that it isn't worth it if it can't last two weeks, but for me, it was amazing! Any other time, with regular polish, it would have been chipped within 24-48 hours! I'm not exaggerating!
I have been hard on my nails too; swimming 4 days, washing dishes at a ward party, popping soda cans open, farm chores- including hauling hay this week, pulling apart Legos, and many other things I can't list them all!
You can see in the picture some of the tips have just kind of peeled off and others I have broken. You can also see the growth, which shows you I am ready for a new manicure!

Next time I'm going to try a mix of gel and regular polish. I've read some instructions on the Internet which seem easy enough. If I do that, it gives me a lot more color options. I will try it out and let you know how it goes!

Lego birthday

Hard to believe my baby turned 6 this week! He was so excited to have a Lego themed party, so I had set out scouring the internet for ideas. Having said that, there were a ton of fun things out there! It became a little overwhelming, but I knew two things; one was that I wanted a general Lego theme, not one of their themes like ninjago or star wars. The other was that I wanted it to be cheap! I have usually spent $100 on parties for my boys, so it was actually a fun challenge to try and plan one for under that.

Here's what I came up with:
Free Lego themed printables at www.peoniesandpoppyseeds.com. She has a great FREE Lego printable kit that includes water bottle labels, straw tags, banner, cupcake wrappers and
more! A side note- the cupcake wrappers needed to be a little longer to wrap all the way around. I didn't end up using them.

Thank heavens for the Dollar Tree! Cheap paper products. Picked up table clothes and napkins there. I got the idea for the faces on the yellow napkins off of a pinterest post. They actually used paper plates, but we were serving cupcakes, so I didn't see a need for them.

The favors were a hit- a surprise mini Lego figure with some candy- easy ! The boys thought they were cool!

I really don't enjoy playing games so I opted to throw in a craft. We made bottle cap necklaces with the Lego head in the center. I had beads that they could add on either side of them on the cord. They also loved that and it was one more thing they could put in their favor bags.

The games were the hardest because a) I don't really like games and b) I wasn't sure what this age group would really enjoy.
We played Lego bingo, which I had printed for free off the Internet. The boys didn't really care for that- it was a little slow paced for them. We only played one round, them moved on to the next game. We played a couple of relay games that were a hit! I had beach balls to use; the first one they had to put the ball between their knees and race. The second one they had to pair up, put the ball between them at their stomach and without using their hands, walk together keeping the ball between them to the finish line. They absolutely loved them! We also had a Lego tower building contest that was just ok- not great. I also gave them some time to create and play with our Lego supply which was also a hit. The winners of the games got to pick silly bands. I made sure that everyone left with at least one !

Refreshments were cupcakes with printable cupcake picks, and easy to serve cups of ice cream. Water was the drink of choice with the printable water labels.

The party was a success! The boys had a blast! My older boy said he wants a Lego party too! We will just come up with new games for his! I will reprint a few things and come up with some new ideas- saw a Lego photo op as part of the party that I want to try. Pinterest has a ton of great ideas!

Zumba fitness, baby!

After a long, tiring, but fun day, I received my Zumba license! I had been wanting to do it for a while, but wasn't sure if it would be worth it for me. I knew I didn't have the time to teach a lot, but having concocted a few ideas about creating a limited teaching schedule, I figured it would be good to do.

If you haven't ever tried a Zumba class, you need to! It is a party plus a great workout all in one! Go to www.zumba.com to search for a class near you. Many gyms and studios will let you try out a class for free!

Zumba has helped me lose 20+ lbs and renewed my energy. I love it!

Now I can share my love of Zumba with others by teaching! I will have to take some time to create some playlists and choreography, sand I have to look into some teaching opportunities that I've been thinking about, but hopefully I will be teaching a few classes soon!

Great nails!

Ok- so being a busy mom, it's hard to keep nails looking good. I swear I take the time to do base coat, color, top coat and even occasionally a nail strengthener, but within 24 hours, I have chips on both hands! Frustrating!

I guess I should expect it, seeing as how I have to do farm chores, wash dishes, wash kids, pull Legos apart (definitely a test for nails!) and occasionally play the piano.

Well, I think I have found an answer to chipped nails! My colleague had gotten a shellac manicure and had proven results with no chipping after two weeks. I don't want to pay for manicures and I have tried acrylics before, which damaged my nails. So, after researching on the Internet, I found out about gel nails! If you don't know about gel nails, they are similar to shellac, and involves a gel polish which requires curing under an LED light. It dries completely and provides a harder protective coating for your nails.

Here's what I found and thought I'd give it a try:

Sensational!
It is a complete kit that provides you with all you need for a DIY gel manicure

The pics are actually day 2 of my manicure and no chips! The whole process took about 20 minutes; including filing, cuticle pushing, and painting.

Let me briefly outline the process: after filing, shaping, and treating cuticles, you are now ready to begin.
First you apply a primer coat and let dry. Next, apply the base coat and cure under light for 30 secs. Then apply the gel color and cure 60 secs. A second coat of color goes on and another 60 sec cure is required. After that, you apply the top coat and cure 30 sec. When you are finished, use a gel cleaner (or alcohol) to wipe off nails and voila!- you have beautiful nails!

So, the real test is will it hold up for two weeks. I will update with pictures and let you know!