I’ll admit it, as a family of four I am now getting my butt kicked with the laundry.

It is not so much the cloth diaper laundry that is killer but just the shear volume of stuff to wash in a week. Sure the spit up outfits and bedding is a temporary contributing factor as is my inability to focus more than say five minutes on any one task before I am needed elsewhere… but I am honestly floundering in the piles of clothes guys.

Thankfully, piles of dirty clothes aren’t hanging around but I have a serious problem getting the clean ones put away. You see, right now there is this giant pile of stuff in the bedroom chair that I fold and mess with on occasion but basically we just rifle through the giant pile to get the wrinkled, clean but cat hair covered clothing item that we want to wear.

Dressers and folding clothes is kind of overrated when you have newborn in the house!

Luckily, this weekend my husband and I were able to knock out the laundry together because we stayed home. Actually, he knocked it all out as a treat to me.

Some ways we’ve found laundry success:

Be strategic about the laundry.
In our house, the key is folding the laundry and putting it away during Everly’s (our toddler) nap time. Folding and putting things away while she is awake means things immediately get unfolded and thrown about the house.

I wash, dry and pile the clothes in a room where Everly jumps in the clean pile and throws clothes around but when she passes out for nap time, if I have the energy and determination, I bust out folding and putting things away.

Also, USE THE BUZZER on your washer and dryer! It is a great way to remind you of when laundry cycles end and prevent the dreaded mildew smelling laundry that sat in the washer, all wet for several hours or days.

I also tend to wash clothes by laundry basket instead of mixing them all together and then separating colors out. In doing this I can avoid the sorting and carting of laundry all around the house.

On my motivated days Everly’s laundry basket down stairs gets divided by light & dark, then washed and dried separately. Then her dry clothes go right in to her room where they are folded and put away immediately, or jumped on and thrown around. Nothing wrong with letting the kid have fun right?

Our upstairs clothes get laundered together and then I know I can just cart them all back up stairs for folding and putting away.

Also, if you wash clothes predominately in warm/ cold water (like we do) and don’t have any brand new, potentially bleeding fabric colors in your load you don’t even need to divide colors. I only divide loads when I am washing new stuff, have major stains to treat or are laundering something new.

You don’t need all the fancy laundry products to get clean clothes!
We don’t use bleach in our house and I make my own laundry detergent for washing clothes, bedding, etc. I do buy special cloth diapering laundry detergent though.

Adding borax to a load of dingy whites will brighten them right up. Also, stains can be bleached out with the sun if you just hang them to dry outside. All my cloth diapers with poop stains get sun bleached as well as my cloth menstrual pads.

Any blood on clothes can be stain treated with some peroxide and then laundered in cold. Cold water rinses the stains out then you can launder with hot water to disinfect if you’d like. Don’t launder your stained stuff in hot water without doing a cold rinse first. The hot water sets the stains in.

Want soft clothes without the perfume and additives of fabric softener? We do! We use distilled white vinegar to soften and also freshen the laundry. Vinegar is great for removing stink from clothes too, like when our cat pees on a bath mat or when our cloth diapers start smelling like ammonia.

Doing laundry doesn’t have to be a huge ordeal and it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. If you just plan your strategy and arm yourself with simple laundry helping products you an dominate the piles easily and cheaply.

For more laundry tips and posts visit: http://www.blogher.com/fluff-and-fold-family or enter the $250 Sweepstakes at http://www.blogher.com/life-well-lived-moments-sweepstakes-3-share-moment-and-enter-win-250

Our well appreciated thornless blackberry bush is producing ripe fruit now. This is it’s 2nd year since we stole it from an alley way where it was forgotten and buried under weeds behind our crappy rental house.

This time last year (the first year it fruited) Miss Everly enjoyed gobbling up every single ripe berry she could get her hands on. She loves her raw fruits!

This year, after picking several unripe ones against our advice she’s not chomping at the bit to eat freshly picked ones. Big surprise huh?

She does still love the responsibility of finding and plucking off the ripe ones, even if she’s not going to eat them. She is really taking an interest in deciphering which are ready and which are not, this also applies to other garden goodies like the grapes, squash and tomatoes.

Last week when we came in with an entire bucket of fresh blackberries I knew it was time to find a recipe for them, rather than letting them spoil in the fridge.

In light of our recent heatwave I was thinking some homemade sorbet really sounded good so I did some hunting and found a recipe that looked great and also worked great for us and it is even works without an ice cream maker if you don’t have one. It was actually easier without one, and we have one.

Ingredients:

1 cup of water
1 1/4 cup white sugar
1 pound fresh blackberries
2 tablespoons lemon juice

The recipe calls for “simple syrup” or basically a sugar and water mixture of 1 cup water and 1 1/4 cups of white sugar. Then you take about 1 pound of berries and puree them up good, combine them with the sugar syrup and remove the seeds by straining them well. Then you add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the syrup and berry mixture, taste test and freeze.

The Joy of Baking says you can add more sugar or water to the mixture before freezing to obtain the preferred taste and sweetness if you find the above measurements leave your sorbet too sweet or too tart. I thought ours was just right though.

We froze our mixture in a plastic yogurt container and would check on it each day to give it a quick stir and to keep it mixed well as it froze. It does take about a day to freeze and isn’t a super hard freeze (at least for us) but we like our sorbet soft and keep it near the opening of the freezer door and not in the coldest part of the freezer.

Oh, I must confess I didn’t have the heart to toss out all the perfectly good blackberry seeds that we strained off so… I am drying them now and they can be planted I guess according to the internet. Not like blackberry bushes need to be sprouted from seed but I hate to waste anything.

Now that we have a second round of berries harvested I’ll make more sorbet I think. It really is the perfect yummy and healthy treat for a heatwave, summer day.

P.S. Like the well placed bucket in the photo of her picking berries? She loves running around naked these days. Ha, ha!

I figured this would be a timely post to help parents and children color their Easter Eggs naturally this weekend. Initially we weren’t planning to dye eggs with Everly this year for a number of reasons.

1. I hate the smell, taste and concept of hard boiled eggs. It makes me want to puke and with a pregnant, heightened sense of smell it will be even more yucky to me now.
2. I don’t want to buy white grocery store eggs just to dye them and then not eat them.
3. Everly isn’t quite at the age where she’ll care about not being given the chance to decorate eggs.
4. Is she even old enough to enjoy the egg dying process? I am not too sure.

Instead we got a handful of plastic eggs to fill with trinkets. Now that Nathan has discovered that brown eggs can be dyed and that they look vivid and amazing we are going to give dying them a try after all. He is going to be the one eating them after this is all said and done though.

I began my natural dye research after it was clear Everly’s 2nd birthday (in just 2 months) will be Elmo themed. She’s 100% Elmo all the time now so an Elmo cake is in order. However, the idea of red dye drenched frosting, with all it’s chemical nastiness wasn’t an exciting prospect for me so I began my research to find out ways to make natural dye easily.

I found a ton of info and not surprisingly, all sorts regular stuff can be easily used to make dye. You just need to know some basics about the dying process first.

Dye Recipe Instructions for eggs:

Image source: Flickr

Select a dyeing agent (outlined below) and place it in the pot. Add 1 quart water and 2 tablespoons white vinegar to pot; if more water is necessary to cover ingredients, proportionally increase the amount of vinegar. Bring to a boil, then lower heat. Allow the ingredients to simmer for 30 minutes. Strain dye into a bowl.

Note: If you are using the dyes to make colored icing or dry items like play dough, omit the vinegar (I’ll post more details about coloring icing and other dry items later).

Seems simple enough right? You are just heating the dye ingredients to extract the colors and juices used for dye. These are a handful of dye ingredients you can round up for your dying:

For Green Dye:
Dried powdered spinach will make a yellowish green. Add 1 teaspoon vinegar to 2 tablespoons powdered spinach and 1 cup boiling water| Add 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and the dye will turn green, and if you allow it to stand for several hours to overnight, it will turn a dark yellow or orange

For Red Dye:
Use 4 cups chopped cabbage to get a red dye. Also, dark red beets will make a red or pink shade (depending on how many you use.) You can use them in the wet form, if you smash them, and strain the juice through cheese cloth. You can also use dried red beets to make a great pink or red icing (perfect for valentines day). Red onion skins can also be used with very little water, boil and then strain through cheese cloth.

For Yellow Dye:
3 tablespoons turmeric works well for a yellow dye. About 4 cups of onion skins will make a deep yellowish gold color.

For Brown Dye:
Try 1 quart strong black coffee with the cold-dipping method for a nice brown color. Also, 1 tablespoon instant coffee (or loose tea) can be used. Tea and coffee produce different shades of brown, so you might to experiment with this one. For an even different color (darker) brown try cocoa powder instead of coffee.

For Blue Dye:
Red cabbage juice used with the cold-dipping method can get a blue dye color. Also, blackberry juice or fruit gives a reddish blue result or blueberry juice or fruit can be used for a blue gray result.

For Purple Dye:
Try 1/2 cup violet blossoms for a nice purple dye. You can also use lavender with 1/8 cup lemon juice, it will causes a chemical reaction and makes a pretty lavender color.

For Pink Dye:
Red cabbage makes a pink color well. Also, dried dark red beets will make a red or pink shade (depending on how much you use.) You can use them in the wet form, if you smash them, and strain the juice through cheese cloth. You can also use dried red beets.

Dye dipping methods do vary depending on the color you want to achieve and the process you wish to take. Cold-dipping produces subtle, translucent shades, but can result in uneven coloring unless the eggs are rotated vigilantly while in the dye. The plus is cold dipping is often a better choice for children who are doing the dying and decorating. The boiling method gets a richer, more even color but makes multi-colored eggs difficult and can be too scary for some parents to allow their children to do. The basic instructions for both methods of dipping are below.

Cold-Dipping Method:
With this method, the eggs and the ingredients for the dye are boiled separately. Using a metal spoon, lower cooled hard-boiled eggs into a bowl of cooled dye, and let them soak for as little as 5 seconds or as long as overnight, depending on the depth of color you desire. Remove eggs with spoon, pat dry with paper towels, and let dry on a wire rack.

Boiled Method:
This method involves boiling the eggs with the dye; the heat allows the dye to saturate the shells, resulting in intense, more uniform color. Set raw eggs in a pot of strained dye; bring to a boil. Remove and dry eggs as with the cold-dipping method.

Coloring your Easter eggs in natural ways is a great activity for children to partake in. It teaches the usefulness of plants and other ingredients in nature, it spurs creativity and urges resourcefulness too; all while having fun and celebrating the Easter holiday!

It can also be a great adventure when children are given some leaway to forage around and find the ingredients for the dyes, they can even combine several ingredients, make some predictions about what color will be produced and have a fun surprise when they actually see the results of their colored their eggs.

With earth day just around the corner, why not try a new approach to Easter Egg coloring? It is fun, creative, educational and eco-friendly!

If you enjoyed this and would like more craft project inspiration you should check out some of my past projects here.

Had the urge to whip up a homemade pot pie this week using this pie crust recipe. We are on the last week of our monthly meat share which is lots like laundry day. You know, making due with whacha got. We get our next month’s share this weekend and have just been making due with what is on hand this week.

We have been eating off this one whole chicken this week, since we can get several meals off a single 5 lb chicken. First, we cooked it in the rotisserie and had a yummy meal. With meat still on the chicken we saved it and opted for a pot pie meal later in the week. For our 3rd meal off this one chicken I’ll make a soup or something but that wont be for awhile. Just tossed the carcass in the freezer for the future.

Of course we take breaks from chicken in between, you can’t eat chicken all week right? Last night we had pasta and sausage to break up the chicken meals. Otherwise we would sprout feathers and start clucking or something…

Right now we are really focusing on making due with what we have food wise and also on preserving and letting very little go to waste. This is why we also thought it wise to turn all our tomatoes (and the cheap tomatoes from a local farm stand) in to pasta sauce. We now have 8 quart jars of pasta sauce to add to the pantry.

So far this summer we have preserved:
4 jars of cinnamon apple slices
4 jars of pickles
12 jars of strawberry jam
4 jars of halved tomatoes
8 jars of apple sauce
3 jars of apple butter
8 jars of tomato sauce
3 jars of whole tomatoes
5 jars of chicken stock

All in all we only spent $50 buying 10 lbs of tomato, 20 lbs of apples and 10 lbs of strawberries from local growers, the rest all came from our own garden. We are proud of all the preserved food we have to show for our efforts and it is nice to know we’ll have this stuff to carry us through the year.

We also scored several old storm windows from a fellow freecycler. We will use the storm windows to build ourselves cold frames for the garden space, that way our growing will sustain through the winter. This means we’ll be able to have more harvests and less grocery expenses, yay!

In between Everly’s naps and feedings I have begun the day long process that is from scratch cinnamon roll baking. I’ve been craving them for weeks and also want to give some away as a thank you to our neighbors. N might be having a work luncheon or something this week, so he can take a few pans of them to work also. Remember, the recipe I use (from: The Pioneer Woman Cooks) makes like 7 dozen rolls! <- That is way too many for one family to consume!

Last week we experimented with another possible first birthday cake recipe for Everly. N discovered and made this one up. Here it is:

Molasses Spice Cake with Lemon Frosting
from Mother Earth News Oct/ Nov 2009 edition

The reason we decided to try this one is because it has no white sugar and it’s made with applesauce (which we have an abundance of thanks to our apple picking and canning).

You’ll need:

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cardamom (we substituted with allspice)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses (ours didn’t indicate it was “blackstrap”)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease yourself a 9 inch cake pan. We used our 9 inch round springform pan. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and spices (all the dry ingredients) and put aside.

Next, whisk together the molasses, honey, vinegar, applesauce and milk (all the liquid ingredients). Then slowly fold in the premixed, dry ingredients until completely combined.

Pour entire mixture into your greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Our cake wasn’t fully cooked in 30 minutes.

Allow to cool before frosting it.

To make the frosting you’ll need:
1/4 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Cream the butter then add the powdered sugar a bit at a time alternating with the lemon juice. Beat until creamy and spreadable, you can add more lemon juice to thin it if you find it is too thick to spread. Then frost your cooled cake and enjoy!

This cake, unlike the last one we tried out, tastes very good. Not to dry or flavorless. I’ll probably experiment with a cream cheese frosting or a whipped cream frosting since I am not crazy about the lemon flavor and the huge amounts of sugar in the powdered sugar.

As for it being a baby’s first birthday cake it’s a very good option for those who have not had egg added to their diet yet. The only concern is the honey in the recipe. That is something each parent needs to weigh and decide about on their own. For us it is not a huge concern. For others it might be.

The other major baking endeavor I am undertaking is some puff pastries filled with bavarian cream for N’s birthday. Tomorrow I’ll share those recipes with ya!
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You’ve heard about S.A.D right? It is a type of “winter mood disorder”…

I’ve seen commercials about S.A.D and the prescription pills that “I should ask my doctor about if I am experiencing similar symptoms”. I have always rolled my eyes about the idea of the winter season making people depressed enough to need a special prescription.

Well, N and I were chatting about how strangely productive we’re feeling as a result of the oddly warm and nice weather we are having and have been having all weekend. We might be coming out of our own winter depression or something! (by the way that is why I didn’t post all weekend, we were busy doing stuff outside…)

We got all our storm debris cut up and ready to be hauled away and we finished the 100% homemade rabbit hutch for Boner! We went grocery shopping, made yummy meals together for dinner, cleaned stuff, looked at rental home possibilities, toyed with the idea of trying to get approved for a mortgage, tried to have the brakes replaced and were outside in the fresh air. It was so nice.

I am super proud of N’s rabbit hutch project (I hope he’ll blog about it and share the plans). We are just waiting for the sealant to dry then it is ready for Boner to move in! Look how it turned out:

Oh, and we stopped in our local Circuit City just for fun to see what deals were to be had (N still wants a 42in flat screen LCD tv…). Have you been to their going out of business sale? We were just amazed at how many people were still looking for and actually buying those high ticket electronic items.

Actually all this weekend we saw people everywhere buying all this high priced non necessity stuff like big screen TV’s and other electronics despite the claimed economic hard times so many are experiencing. N and I just scratch our heads when we see it. We DIDN’T buy a tv by the way…

I mean these aren’t wealthy people, they appear to be mid to lower class and they are just lining up for a $2000 big screen tv or a new video game system. Um, hello! Save your money and think ahead about your economic future guys!

Oh and don’t even get me started on Nadya Suleman, the now mother of 14 who just had octuplets…

I made a turkey pot pie from scratch yesterday and was pretty pleased with the pie crust recipe so I wanted to share it here on the blog.

I searched high and low for a good from scratch pot pie recipe and kept coming across the call for “crescent rolls” as the “pie crust”. To me from scratch is not buying premade crap and throwing it together guys. I mean what are people going to do if the store runs out of crescent rolls for any extended amount of time?

Anyway, I finally found a recipe I thought sounded good and boy was I right, it was great! I did modify it a bit because it was way to sticky and wet when made as directed. If you are interested here is the recipe.

Pie Crust Recipe

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/4 cup lard
• 1/3 cup water

Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Add the butter or margarine and lard; mix with hands until crumb like texture is achieved. Mix in the water. Here, I came to the consensus that the dough was way to wet so I fixed it by adding in one tablespoon at a time of flour until it balled up in the mixer and looked like dough again. Then you pat it into a ball, and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

Yesterday while the pie was a cooking we busted out the old school Nintendo that I got as a birthday present a few years back. I know it is ancient but I love it some much, common you know you do too! Oh, but I still do suck at it…

Other than Nintendo and pie crusts we are also worried about our first ice storm! Word is we are supposed to get a pretty bad one this whole week and we could be without power for a few days…Now what are you supposed to do to prepare for an ice storm? I have no freaking clue!

Earlier in the week N wanted to make up a batch of ladyfingers. The goal was to make homemade Tiramisu, one of his favorite desserts but you need ladyfingers to make it. We searched high and low for ladyfingers in the stores last weekend, nobody sells them.

Being the baker that I am I suggest that we just make them, “they can’t be THAT hard” I said. So N gave them a whirl and ran in to some major egg white consistency issues. The whole beat until soft peaks form part was just not happening for him so he added more sugar, then more flour and also a touch of baking soda…

Well the mixture did not seem to look like what was described and we knew it was super messed up but just for fun we saw it through. Instead of piping lady fingers he just spread the mixture on to a baking sheet and popped it in to see how it would turn out.

The consensus was that the concoction didn’t taste like ladyfingers, though the spongy texture was close… Recipe failed, okay we knew that.

After looking over his recipe (from an old antique cook book) I was amazed at how vague and nondescript the directions were. Plus there wasn’t a real “stabilizer” ingredient in the recipe so how would the eggs do what they were supposed to?

After doing some research I offered to make his lady fingers for him on Friday. He promised not to be butt hurt about it and said it would help so I did it using this recipe and I think they turned out good (N will have to be the true judge to this though).

Here is what I learned:

1. Egg temperature is important! In the recipe N used and also in this one and this one there is no mention of egg temperature unlike the recipe I used. Apparently egg temperature is important and using eggs straight from the refrigerator is not helpful in achieving the desired consistency. I think this was one of the reasons why his egg whites never got stiff.
2. Egg temperature can be achieved quickly. Just soak your eggs in some warm water for several minutes and they’ll warm up. You don’t have to leave them on the counter to come to temperature all day, yay and duh.
3. Warm eggs are harder to separate. When I make lady fingers again I’ll be separating the yolk from the whites before allowing them to get to room temperature. Separating them warm is way harder and messier!
4. Don’t over mix when it says fold in. The foamy egg whites are fluffy and full of air. When you combine them with the yolk/ flour mixture it says fold in for a reason. Keeping the airy texture is important to keeping the ladyfingers spongy. Don’t over mix it.
5. When thorough detailed instructions are provided it is best to follow them exactly. I know duh right? Seriously though, just because you are combining ingredients doesn’t mean you can use your mixer etc. I (and many others) have the tendency to get ahead with recipes and overlook key bits of information. With lady fingers this is not good.

Here is how the process unfolded in my kitchen in photos:

My top search terms right now are homemade gift ideas. There is no doubt that the economy is impacting the way people are thinking about holiday shopping. People would rather make things to give as gifts because it saves money.

I personally like creative homemade, do-it-yourself gifts because they are more from the heart than store bought ones. Plus I have a blast making gifts for people cause I am crafty like that.

Now since so many are flocking here in search of homemade holiday gift ideas and craft projects I wanted to take a second to suggest some easy gift ideas for you to try this holiday season. If you want to check out the instructions just click on the linked text! you have a project you have written about on your blog use mister linky below to share the link with us.

1. Turn scrap fabric in to braided usefulness by making your very own braided rag rug. These are super easy, have tons of character and can be used almost anywhere in the house.
2. Make a sentimental gift and clear out some closet space by taking all those stored clothing items you can’t bear to throw away and turning them in to a functional throw or quilt. Anyone can make their own t-shirt quilt quickly and easily just in time for holiday gift giving. Use baby clothes, shirts or just about any special piece of fabric and turn those memories in to a great gift for someone special.
3. Have an environmental lover on your gift list? You can make several fun earth friendly gift items (like a biodegradable bird feeder or a shoe scraper) that they will enjoy and they’ll love that you took and interest in being earth friendly too.
4. Have some small trinkets to give? Why not make your own paper gift box using origami? It is super easy, it is fun for kids and you can decorate them exactly the way you want them. You can even make them hang from the Christmas tree.
5. Got a cell phone fanatic on your gift list? You can make them a cute cellphone cozy out of fabric or yarn to keep their phone protected and also in style this holiday season. Theses are also insanely easy to make and can be oh, so unique and personalized.
6. Know someone who is in need of some new bedding this holiday season? Put your sewing skills to work and make them a homemade duvet cover or comforter. Don’t worry even a beginning sewer (me) can do this and it is pretty fun too!

Now I know you have a project you are just dieing to share with us. If you have written about on your blog use mister linky below to share the link with us. If you don’t have a link to share but want to just tell us about your project just use the comment field below to do so.

On Sunday (when I found out I was pregnant and won my wedding dress on ebay) N and I also went to the Englebrecht Apple Orchard where we collected 2 10lb bags of apples and had some quality time.

In October we love to pick our own apples and make all kinds of yummy stuff, we even have preserved our apple creations for future enjoyment in past years. This year we thought it would be yummy and fun to get a ton of apples and have some fun in the kitchen.

We paid $8.00 for the 20lbs of apples, that is not a bad price at all. Plus we got to pick all the apples ourselves which was fun. I was woozy and overheated but that didn’t stop me from climbing a tree to pluck some apples.

Tonight I made a batch of pumpkin apple soup that was so yummy. I also washed the remainder of the 20lbs of apples in preparation for this weekends preserving madness and now we are seeking out fun apple recipes.

So, what do you do to get in the fall spirit? Do you have any fun apples recipes you could share?

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* Updated to include pumpkin apple recipe

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan, add 1 chopped onion and 2 cored and peeled green apples. Saute onions, apples and butter over medium heat until soft.

Next add 1 tablespoon of flour to the sauce pan, stir and cook for 2-3 minuites.

After cooking flour and sauteed items gradually whisk in 4 cups of chicken broth.

Then stir in 3 cups of canned pumpkin, 2 tablespoons of packed brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 teaspoon of ginger to the mixture. Bring to  boil, reduce heat cover and simmer for 25 minuite.

Next transfer to a blender, food processor or take a blending wand to the mixture. The goal is to puree it until smooth.

When all is pureed return to pan, add 1 cup of apple cider (or apple juice), 1/2 cup of half and half, and 2 tablespoons of garlic salt. Mix and warm on stove, taste test and add salt and pepper as needed.

This made us about a 12 servings of soup that we transferred to jars and froze for later enjoyment. Yum!