Thursday, December 19, 2013

Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

I was looking for something creative yet simple to do as a happy for friends and coworkers this Christmas season and I stumbled upon this post on Pinterest. It was good hot chocolate, but it needed more. So I played with the recipe a bit and looked at a homemade Nesquik recipe here. We don't do just any chocolate milk, it's always "Ovaltine and Nilk pwease" around here. All that being said, I came up with this recipe which makes a little more than 1 quart of dry mix.

Homemade Hot Cocoa/Chocolate Mix

2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup non-dairy coffee creamer
2 cup dry milk
1/2 cup powdered sugar
pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl with a fork or whisk until larger clumps are mixed in well. Store in glass airtight container.

To make a mug, add 3-5 heaping tablespoons of mixture to hot water. Add marshmallows or marshmallow bits if you like. Enjoy. It's smooth and chocolatey and way better tasting than store bought brands.




Monday, August 5, 2013

Rachel and the Treeschoolers

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Traceable Letters For On The Go Learning

Supplies needed:
heat laminator
printer with ink and paper
scissors
binder ring
name badge laminate sleeves
dry erase crayons 
font found here
** you can substitute badge holders with pockets if you don't have a laminator**
I have a Duck brand heat laminator I bought at Walmart years ago. Not sure if they're still available. It's pictured above. I also helped myself to a glass of red wine to ease the pain of cutting paper. I ordered my sleeves on amazon.com.

First I googled for a kids traceable font with lines. Then I typed each letter on a single line, centered.
I cut them free hand so they're crooked and uneven so my kids know mommy made them herself just for them. I printed each page twice to make double sided cards. I thought about gluing the pages together but after running that through the laminator and seeing the glue through the letters decided it wasn't the way to go.
Some of the letters I had to cut out for the ring hole. Naturally, they were G, P, Q, and Y.
 In the end it looks like this.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

How to Clean your Pillows

So I was surfing Pinterest and came across a blog about how to clean pillows. I can't find it now and that disappoints me but basically the author had a magic recipe for getting yellow pillows clean and white. It involved laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, and borax. The comments section had questions about front loaders and whether or not the dishwasher detergent was necessary. I've seen it recommended that you wash your pillows three times a year although I prefer to do it more often. Since I did this just this week by chance with awesome success I figured I'd blog about it. I washed my 9 (yes all on my bed) standard size pillows 3 at a time in my Samsung HE top-loader with Planet detergent on the gentle cycle. There is no agitator in this machine. I then laid them outside on my front lawn for 12 or so hours, flipping every couple of hours. This not only dried them in the 80 degree heat but also sun bleached the yellow sweat and drool stains.They looked almost new except the frayed stitching. I wish I had taken pictures but I didn't know it would work so well or that it was interesting enough that other people have blogged about it. Oh well. Maybe next time. Before you look toward chlorine bleach, give the sun a chance. Lay it out on some green grass and watch the stains disappear.