What 3-year-old wouldn’t love sitting on top of the kitchen table pouring water all over things? Mine had a blast. Dear Leah helped me pour a Tablespoon of water on two dozen different cloth diapers, all reviewed individually for performance in the cloth diaper review. I taped the results close up for you to view. […]
We made a grand old mess! To satiate my curiosity about how much these cloth diapers really do hold, I laid out all 25 of those cloth diapers from the cloth diaper review, and I did two tests (on different days): Leah helped me do some closeup videos of how quickly each diaper and/or insert
Cloth Diaper Absorbency Tests: How Much Will It Hold? Read More »
There are a lot of bells and whistles nowadays in the cloth diapering world. No longer do you choose between signing up for a diaper service or washing your own, and then your decision-making is over. You have to juggle cloth diaper styles and brands, insert materials, washing styles and detergents, line dry or machine,
Needs & Wants of Cloth Diapering: Yes, I Need Wet Bags Read More »
There’s not really a baby step process to having a baby – it’s an all or nothing deal to be sure. You just have to jump in with both feet and get all wet, sometimes quite literally. I still remember my husband and I, in the very first few days of parenting, trying to figure
Cloth Diaper Reviews: What’s the Best Cloth Diaper For You? Read More »
I spent $469/month on food last year. Yes, I do keep track that closely. If you had asked me a few years back whether that was a decent figure, I would have caught my breath a bit. I used to try to stay under $300 a month on food…those days are no longer, for many
Eat Well, Spend Less: Has Our Real Food Budget Grown? Read More »
Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to find a naturally minded doctor, or at least start thinking about it, especially if you have a health issue that warrants care. I’m actually in the midst of this process and fumbling my way through, so today I’ll share the methods I used to search, the
Monday Mission: Do You Have a Naturally Minded Doctor? Read More »
“I don’t even want to go to a barbecue at my boss’s house this summer, because it might not be any fun with all our food restrictions,” my husband admitted to me last week. “What if they offer the kids a juice pouch, or the dreaded freezer pops with artificial colors? And then there’s the
Does Being Too Strict on Food Take the Joy out of Family Life? Read More »
What smell will fill your house on Easter morning? Between hunting for eggs (we hide…ahem, I mean, the Easter Bunny hides…the real hard-boiled eggs), getting dressed up pretty, and going to Mass and making sure we get there an hour early to get a seat, breakfast needs to be simple. Healthy Breakfast Idea: Apple Baked
Healthy Breakfast Idea: Apple Baked Oatmeal Recipe Read More »
Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to give a gift of whole foods to a food pantry or collection the next opportunity you get. There are people in need everywhere, and food pantries don’t always have healthy food! This mission was inspired by a conversation on Facebook a few weeks back when I
I have a renewed, deep distaste for the food processing industry. I’ve been getting many, many comments from readers on previous posts about food dyes, and the more I learn, the more I get sick about what our country, big business, and the assenting families who purchase junk and don’t know any better are allowing
I’ve decided to have “fruit for dessert” at least once a week around here. Last night was “fruit night.” When I was cutting the cantaloupe and pineapple, Leah had a few pieces, and then I told her not to ask for any more until it was served at the table. Ever observant, she asked with
You know that meme about how parents’ treatment of pacifiers changes as they have more kids, from sterilizing the thing every time it touches anything but baby lips to grabbing it from under a church pew and poking it back into baby’s mouth? That’s totally me, minus the pacifier. With my first child, I read
Eat Well, Spend Less: What Goes on this Real Food Baby’s High Chair Tray? Read More »
“Looks like food coloring isn’t the cause of the fits,” I told Jen of The Unprocessed Kitchen just a few days into our experiment to cut food dyes out of our kids’ diets. “She’s just a 3-year-old girl…I had hoped we’d find a magic solution, but oh, well.” I learned a lot reading Jen’s wonderful
Just cornmeal! That’s all you need for perfectly moist gluten-free cornbread – no additional flours to juggle! It is so easy my kids can make it. Don’t forget to top it with lots of real fat, like butter (read more about the margarine vs butter debate here). Trying an elimination diet meal planner can be
Recipe Connection: Gluten-Free Cornbread (with no fancy flours) Read More »
Part of weaning ourselves down on sugar and training our sweet tooth to expect (and enjoy!) less sweetness includes appreciating the natural sweetness of things like fruit. Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to serve a dessert without a sweetener this week. So offer a bowl of sliced pineapple as a dessert, or
See? Procrastination has its upsides: I’ve stretched the Sweet, Sweet Summer series it hit another season that allows for alliteration. Now I sound cute again. Lots of people have asked about the merits and flexibility of coconut sugar and palm sugar, and although I’m still figuring them out myself, I’ll shed some light on the issue
A Sweet, Sweet…Spring? Coconut Sugar and Palm Sugar Step up to the Plate Read More »
If you use natural soap nuts for washing your laundry, you’ll quickly find that there’s a bit of a learning curve. Compared to pouring in a measured amount of liquid, dried fruit in a bag is a different system entirely! Already lost? Check out my soap nut reviews to learn more about my experiences with
How to Tell if Laundry Soap Nuts Still Have Cleaning Power Read More »
In the back of my mind, I hoped that perhaps laying Jonathan down on an organic mattress with organic sheets that wouldn’t be offgassing in his face might…you know…get him to…(*whisper*) sleep through the night. It would have made for a great product review post. Too bad it didn’t work out that way. On the
How often do we hear that kids don’t eat their vegetables? It’s been a classic American icon since the advent of television, I’m guessing: the child sitting at the table, staring down the pile of spinach mush or Brussels sprouts on their plate, refusing to eat their vegetables and yet not allowed to leave the
Food coloring is a fun way to color homemade frosting on cakes and decorate cookies, but it’s not healthy. That doesn’t mean your food can’t be fun! I’ve got some simple ways to create natural food coloring. Let’s Talk About Food Coloring Artificial colors are one topic I have just never gotten into deeply, although
