Laundry Love

I know what you're thinking.  "Did she really just say laundry and love in the same heading???"  Yes, dear reader, I did.  A couple days ago I read this post talking about a family's laundry system and immediately fell in love.  I presented it to the kids, wanting to get them on board, and they responded very positively as well.

And so, today we began.  Baskets in place, we sent a few loads through.  Because of space everyone is sharing a basket with someone else.  Melanie shares with Madeleine, and delightfully volunteered to fold her clothes as well.  (Yippee!)  Only time will tell how well this will really work, but I can think of few hiccups in this system.

While telling a friend about it, she mentioned something a friend of hers does to make sorting easier (that has been one of Adam's complaints with the girls' clothes - that he doesn't know whose is whose).  For instance, the oldest girl gets one dot on the tag of her clothes, the second two, third three...  You get the picture.  So for one, it's an easy tool to glance at the dot(s) and see who the item of clothing belongs to, but as said oldest girl grows out of something, another dot is added, continuing things down the line.  Easy as pie.  (Which isn't actually very easy, at least not easy to make it look lovely, but we can talk about that another day.)

Something else we've been trying to do, and with our new basket system will definitely push harder, is having everyone put their socks into a lingerie bag when they take them off instead of tossing them into the basket.  What does that spell?  No sorting socks!  Some are better at this than others, but it's time to make another push for that.

Bottom line - the coolest moms make jobs easy so there is more time to be the cool mom and less time being the slave driver.

Recipe for Hyperactivity

For everyone out there that wants super hyperactive children like mine, make things like this for dinner.


That's right, chocolate waffles with chocolate syrup. They wanted chocolate milk too, but I've got to draw the line SOMEWHERE, right?


Here's Sammy in a stupor from the sugar high. We only do this about 3 times a week year, so they've got to load up when we do.

But see, no one is complaining! It's even plate-lickin' good.


Why of course I'll share the recipe! I know you're dying to make some too.

________________________
CHOCOLATE WAFFLES

½ c. butter (melted)
6 Tbsp. cocoa
¾ c. sugar
2 eggs
1 c. flour
1 tsp. vanilla

Blend butter and cocoa together, add the rest of the ingredients and beat until smooth. Batter will be thick. Cook 1-3 minutes. Doesn’t make very many, so you’ll probably want to at least double this.
________________________

Another great dinner idea I got from my aunt (she has 8 wonderful children, so if she does it it's as good as gospel) is to make regular waffles and top them with ice cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. Great for hot summer days, and yummy!!! Wait a minute - we'll have to try that with the chocolate waffles too!

Banana Boats in a Pizza Box

In this episode of "coolest mom ever," we'll start with the pizza box oven. Google pizza box oven and you'll find lots of descriptions that are basically the same on how to make one.


Basically, cut out part of the lid to use as a reflector to direct sunlight into the box, cover that and the bottom of the box with aluminum foil, cover the hole you made in the lid with saran wrap to keep the heat inside while still allowing the sun to heat things up, and put a piece of black construction paper in the bottom to help absorb the heat. They also suggest using string or something else to angle the lid just right so it can direct the most sunlight in.

One of the sites I looked at mentioned that they can get up to 275 degrees. You can see our thermometer in the picture above because I was interested to know how hot it would get. Ours made it to 217, and it was a pretty throw-it-together kind of project. Maybe we'll attempt to make it better sometime, maybe not.

My main goal in doing this was to make banana boats. I remember doing it at girls camp ages ago and thought it would be fun. Cut your banana open down the side with the peel on, open it up a bit, and shove in marshmallows and chocolate chips. I guess you can also do this around a campfire, wrapping your banana up in aluminum foil and setting it in the coals.

Melanie isn't a banana fan, so she used graham crackers instead to make a s'more.


A recipe I saw online said the campfire method takes about 5 minutes. We left these on for something like 20, though maybe they could have been taken off sooner. I noticed the temperature dropped quickly when we lifted the lid to put everything inside, so I didn't do any checking to see if they were ready besides seeing the chocolate chips really melted.

It also helped when the sun went behind a bunch of clouds and our temperature started dropping again. "They're done!"

They all loved them! I had more pictures but they involved a lot more goo on the face and in the mouth, so I'll spare you the gory details. But here is Adam trying to duplicate the expression of a woman on the back of our latest box of Cheerios (she is very excited to be lowering her cholesterol). I mean, showing you how happy he is to have such a really really cool mom.

P.S. I didn't get one. I planned on tossing one in after theirs were all done since our "oven" was already pretty crowded, but that cloud cover was there to stay. Major setback in a solar powered pizza box oven. Oh well, that just means we get to do it again!

Potion Station Sensation

First of all, a huge thank you to Kathryn who stole the idea from someone else but passed it on so I could steal it (I even stole the name of this post from her). I am always looking for ways to keep my "coolest mom in the neighborhood" status, and this is super cool.

So the basics. The idea is to gather fun things for your kids to mix together and make "potions." For our first time, I went with 4 colors of jell-o (the cheapest I could find), baking soda, vinegar, and water.


Disclaimer here - my children are not usually slow and methodical. To illustrate, I heard someone say once that when it's time to eat you can tell someone that comes from a small family vs. someone that comes from a large family. Someone from a small family will stand back and slowly make their way to the food. Someone from a large family jumps on it, because they know if they don't, the food is leaving. So yah, that's our family in a nutshell in basically any situation.


In this case, I set out some fun potion making items, four of our five kids jumped in to participate, plus two of my nieces and two neighbors were over. Only so much to go around, right? Eight kids around a few potion making items = lots of scrambling, lots of chaos, and lots of fun.

Again, nothing too high tech was involved, but the kids' reactions were priceless. I didn't tell them what any of the items were, just told them to mix and see what they could come up with. Carolyn was the first to get the baking soda/vinegar mix.

Immediately everyone else wanted theirs to foam, and wanted me to add whatever it was they needed. I told them to keep trying things, but when some still didn't get it to work I helped them out.

One of our extras repeated about four times, "This is so MESSY!" Yessiree!

When the ingredients were used up and they were done mixing their own potions with each others' potions, I asked them what would happen if someone drank their potion. I should have taken video of that, because by the time things were cleaned up and back to normal I couldn't remember what everyone said. One was really green so it was decided that would make them really strong and turn them green like the hulk. One would turn you into a frog or an ogre. One would make people fly. I don't know about you, but I would have a hard time getting this one to my lips, let alone down the hatch.


Next time it would be fun to try red cabbage water, and for sure I've got to include glitter. When we were done with the "organized" activity (I use that term very loosely), the kids took off with the cups and mixed up mud, sticks, leaves, probably bugs, and who knows what else.

For more ideas, here are some other potion makers and magic stew makers. Oh, and probably the best tip Kathryn gave - do it somewhere that you can hose off when you're done. Love that easy cleanup.