Recently we took a ski trip with the twins (and brought a nanny – more on that later). Our return trip was a long travel day filled with delays. The girls did great thanks to a creative mom (see picture below – patting myself on the back here) and lots of snacks!
Photo Credit: parentingmultiples.net
JJ Cole Bundle Me: These car seat liners are awesome! I live in Minnesota, so I know all about that cold weather garbage – dragging yourself and your kids out all bundled up . In a word it can suck, big time. What is so great about the JJ Cole Bundle Me you don’t need a bunch of blankets or to get you child bundled up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The Bundle Me transfers easily between car seat and stroller. Most important, they are machine washable!
Beaba Babycook Baby Food Maker: Now this may sound depressing to you, but this was my Christmas present when I was pregnant. I actually asked for this and I must say I loved it! I made all the girls baby food. It was super easy and convenient to use – steam and puree all in one container. I know – one could just as easily used a steamer basket on the stove and process the food in a mini food processor – but that’s more than one item to clean – get my drift here. I would make up a bunch of pureed food and freeze it in individual sizes in a ice cube tray. Once frozen I could put the cubes in baggies, thaw cubes when needed, open wide my dears!
I really don’t dread this question – well not yet anyway. Since the girls turned one we have always had a neighborhood party. It’s fun to see everyone before school starts and the cold sets in, a sorta last hurrah. Also I ask that guests do not bring gifts. One because my girls do not need more toys. Two because I do not want to torture anyone with having to buy two birthday gifts. Three because who needs the junk or the birthday gift overload. And four because I want to use their birthday as an opportunity to show them how to give back to their community.
Ok, yes, this does smell a little of Joan Crawford. Please do not tell me you are too young to remember the movie Mommie Dearest when she makes her daughter Christina pick one birthday gift to keep and must give the rest away to the orphanage. I don’t do that, but I do ask guests to bring a donation of school supplies for the local public schools in lieu of a gift. Then the three of us deliver the booty and I answer the same question over and over again “why can’t we keep the paper mommy?”
I do know that someday I am going to have to throw a strictly kids birthday party – some sorta themed gig. I will still hold to the no gift rule (seriously if one more stuffed animal walks into my house the established ones had better be prepared for some weeding out from mom). So, when I see a really cool idea I write it down somewhere (not sure where that list is). I ran across this incredibly unique idea from Dinner: A love story. A Japanese themed party complete with Candy Sushi!
Photo credit - Dinner: A love story
Candy Sushi! Is that not the coolest idea you have seen since they put marshmallows in a jar? I cannot wait for the girls to be old enough to do this! The post title Sayonara Seven has a bunch more ideas for this type of party – plus the blog has other great party ideas.
Some other ideas:
Obstacle Course Birthday Party from Martha Stewart - this might be fun to work into our annual neighborhood birthday party this year.
pbs.org has some great advice about planning a kids birthday party (namely “It’s your childs birthday party, not yours” – found under Five Party Principles)
Send me your creative and unique ideas!
Cooking for seven is no easy task. I do love to cook, I love good food, and I love trying new recipes. But, when it comes to recipes for more than four persons, the quality seems to decline – mainly because you cannot double or triple a recipe and expect good results. Compounding this task are the age ranges of children in our house 17 – 3 years old. My husband and I are open to anything (to this day I swear if someone showed up at my house with McDonald’s for us all at dinner time, I would take it and not complain one bit). One older child will eat just about anything and not complain, another is “fairly open” – often heard from her in earlier times “it’s not my favorite”, the three year old twins – fussy – what is good one day is not the next – we are currently on a bacon kick with one of them (to the point of having bacon ice cream – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). And the eldest is fussy in a high maintenance sort of way (the thought of meatloaf grosses her out because there are multiple meats mixed together). Plus, everyone has a different schedule. A couple of us are home at 5pm, then more join at 6pm, and later more at 7pm. Call me the evil stepmother (no worries I have been called worse), but I am unable to plan around that and why should I.
Obviously, I aim to please no one – how could I? My only goal when cooking for all seven of us is making mealtime prep as easy as possible. Thus I use a crock pot about 80% of the time when I cook for all seven of us. Using a crock pot also solves the issue of staggered dinner times. I have everything ready at 5pm and we eat in shifts. I find that trying to get twins to bed by 7:30pm and planning for everyone else to sit down together and eat dinner at 8pm is in a word CRAZY!
One thing I do that is extremely helpful is to plan my meals out one week at a time (or more if I am able to). I found that having meals planned in advance helps keep the grocery bill down because I am only buying what I need for the week. All I use is a regular old calendar. You don’t need to buy anything fancy. I put anything on the calendar that might affect meal time – like when all seven of us are home, vacations (yeah no meals to plan!), when my husband might be out of town (one less mouth to feed) – etc. Then as you can see below from my messy calendar I just fill in with the meals (I got ahead of myself in January and started writing in the second week – oops!).
I “googled” “cooking for large families” and all I found were sites that talked about cooking for large families on a budget – not much in the way of recipes. A lot of good recommendations similar to what I do (cooking extra rice and pasta then freezing it in smaller serving sizes to save time). But, I am not looking for budget ideas and there seems to be plenty of advice out there on that subject. I did find one site I liked Large Families On Purpose – she has some great cooking tips. What I want are recipes for 6 or more and call me crazy I’d like the recipe to state exactly how many people it serves. You’d be shocked at how this major detail is left out on many recipes.
Here are some of my favorite and easy recipes for my large group:
Pork Shoulder Ragu from Dinner: A Love Story this recipe is KILLER! It’s easy and taste so flipping outstanding! I always make this on the larger side (see the suggestion in the recipe) as I like having the leftovers and it freezes well (the pork not the pasta). This is a fun blog!
Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings from Food Network – serves 8. I made this last night. Thumbs up from all except the twins who instead had Double Noodle Campbell’s soup.
Slow Cooker Beef and Black Bean Chili from Everyday Food- Original recipe only serves 4, but I have one and halved the recipe and had good results (just watch the chili powder).
Provençal Beef Stew from Cooking Light- serves 6. Yummy, but a little fussy for a slow cooker recipe.
Beef Daube Provençal from Cooking Light - serves 6. Hmmm I am sensing a theme in my choices here – good fall/winter eats. Again a tad fussy, but really yummy.
Slow-Cooker Short Rib Ragù from Everyday Food- serves 6. Only seven ingredients in this recipe – say no more!
Roasted Chicken and Scallions from Martha Stewart Living – serves 4 (ok, ok, I know not enough, I just buy more cut up chicken, it calls for one whole chicken – but really Martha I do not have the time to cut up a whole chicken!). This is one of my favorite roasted chicken recipes. With or without the sauce it is wonderful and a crowd pleaser – so simple!
Roman Style Baked Semolina Gnocchi from The New York Times – serves 6. First off do not be afraid of the word “gnocchi” – if you want to pronounce it correctly go HERE. Second do not let The New York Times intimidate you. I’ll admit it is slightly time consuming, but it is really good and you can say “oh sure I’ve made gnocchi” – so put that in your pipe and smoke it my foodie snooty friends!
Black Pepper and Molasses Pulled Chicken Sandwiches from Cooking Light - serves 4. This one I have doubled without any problems. The recipe mentions nothing about a crock pot. I put the chicken thighs in the crock pot, make the sauce (I just mix it up in a bowl) and add that to the crock pot, cook on high for – oh until it is done or low until it is done. Sorry I am useless here on times. If I double it and put it on high, then my best guess would be 4-5 hours. Oh and a helpful hint, instead of shredding the chicken with a fork, I use a potato masher and just kinda work it around in the chicken - sorta mashing. Works like a charm!
Slow- Cooker Brisket and Onions from Everyday Food - serves 6. This is a winner! Easy, easy, easy! And only six ingredients!
Slow- Cooked Carnitas Tacos from epicurious - HA! case in point! This recipe does not state how many it serves! Regardless, it is soooooo good! I made it for a Cinco de Mayo party last year – awesome and easy!
We recently flew to Texas to visit family and my husband was blown away by these little water bottle topper contraption. They fit on store bought bottled water and are spill proof. Plus one of our girls still has a difficult time with pressure in her ears when we fly – can’t really give a 3 year old a bottle of suck on – well may be you can, but I’ll keep my comments to myself on that subject. As soon as she started to complain about her ears I gave her the water bottle with the Gerber cap on it – ears cleared right up (there is a God!). I’ve had these since before they turned a year old and they are still in great working order.
More favorite item – click HERE
Confession time – are you ready? I have a hang up about children realizing how fortunate they are. Not to the point where I want them to feel guilty that they have food on the table and a roof over their head, but just to realize that there are children out there who are less fortunate than they are. I am sure this all stems from my upbringing – lets just say I am a poster child for what is good about public assistance – my childhood of receiving wrapped gifts from the church at Christmas is almost surreal to me now.
So I am a huge proponent of doing what one can with the talents one has and if you have no time or talents, then open thy wallet. You may ask what talent does a 3 year old have? Have you ever seen a 3 year old ring a bell and sing Jingle Bells? Talk about talent! Not a single person could walk past us without making a donation into our Kettle! We had a blast – for about an hour, then the system broke down – no embarrassing moments, but the girls became board. My husband showed up with 20 minutes left in our time slot and rescued me by taking the girls to lunch. I finished the last 20 minutes of our “Bell Ringing Extravaganza” alone. But I must tell you, bell ringing is not an easy task. It’s a lot of work to stand there ringing that bell – especially when you are alone and you don’t have 3 year olds to entertain or to entertain you. So give what you can when you see those wonderful people ringing bells.
Use your Bell ringing talent and ring some bells for your local Salvation Army.
Today’s Amazon Gold Box Deal is 50% off Melissa and Doug Toys! Go HERE to check out the smoking hot deals!
So there are peeps in my fam that are not easy to buy for and I have to do something. Sooooo, I just put together a FREE photo calendar on Vistaprint and had it shipped to them! Easy, easy, easy! You can upload photos from your home computer, Facebook, Flicker etc. Shipping starts at $5.67. Ok first gift shipped, how many more to go?
