Storing Toddler Puzzles

I don't usually do any of those "Works For Me Wednesday" posts or anything like that because usually I don't have anything to creative to report. I mainly steal ideas from others who post helpful tips, LOL. But when I was thinking about the problem of storing board games, which I alluded to in my board games post , I realized that I have come up with a way to store those annoying toddler puzzles. They come in the same flimsy boxes that board games do, and when you have a bunch of little hands getting them down and putting them back up over many years, the boxes do not hold up.
The first step is to cut out the picture on the front of the box. I try to include how many pieces are supposed to be in the puzzle as well. Then you put the puzzle together and turn all the pieces over. Write the same letter or number on the back of each piece, and write that same character on the back of the big picture. This particular Winnie-the-Pooh puzzle shown here has the letter "W" on the back of all the pieces. This stands for "waking up", which reminds me of what puzzle it is (Tigger and Piglet have apparently awoken Pooh by standing outside his window and calling him--some friends!). You can use numbers too, which is what our church does. This simple trick prevents you from having to work each and every 24 piece puzzle you own when your 2-year old decides it would be fun to dump out every puzzle onto the floor and throw all the pieces around, thoroughly mixing them up. Theoretically, of course. My children are under the utmost supervision at all points of the day, so this sort of thing never occurs here. Never.

Once you have your puzzle pictures cut out and all your pieces labeled, then you put each puzzle in its own Ziploc bag.

Then you find a handy-sized box conveniently located in your garage (or if you can't find anything, feel free to come search my garage, LOL), and you put all your bags in there.

Then you simply put your box of puzzles on a shelf, in our case, on top of coloring books because even though we have 3 sets of double bookshelves on our study, we have run out of space. No more scrunched up boxes with pieces spilling out everywhere getting lost! Now your puzzles can last for 12 years, through 7 kids as well!

New Mixer

This is our new mixer! It's a Electrolux Magic Mill DLX Assistent. It has a huge capacity, which I have not even begun to test! I made a small recipe of 2 loaves of bread, and I've made a few big batches of cookie dough. Tonight I made mashed potatoes. I really, really like this mixer. It is different from a typical mixer, like my old KitchenAid. The motor is on the bottom, and the bowl itself is what spins. There is an arm that comes down into the bowl, with a round beater-thing on the end. Then there is a plastic scraper-thing that continually scrapes everything off the sides. I also have a dough hook that attaches in the same hole as the scraper, and also connects to the arm. Most expert DLX users seem to agree that you really don't need the dough hook. The other paddle-beater-thing is supposed to mimic hand-kneading and mixing, and it makes a really good quality bread. This mixer is made in Sweden, but apparently American bakers feel that bread can't be made without a dough hook, so they include one. There is also a smaller plastic bowl and a set of wire wisks for beating eggs.

You can see the scraper on the left and the beater thing on the right. I fix the beater thing however far away from the side I want it, usually pretty close, and then I can manually move it into the middle if I think there is something there that needs to be better incorporated into the dough, and the arm swings back to wherever I locked it.

On the first picture you can see that there are 2 knobs. The one on the left turns it on. I can either click it to just "on", or I can click it farther to the left and choose a time. I can set it to mix my bread dough for 8 minutes, for example, and then it shuts off. The knob on the right is a power knob, so I can just crank up the power if it seems like it is struggling. I guess this is what you use when you are making 12 loaves of whole wheat bread, or some other huge thing. I certainly haven't needed any extra power for the little things I have done--things which totally strained the motor on my KitchenAid!

You can buy a ton of attachments for this thing--grain flaker, sausage-extruder, meat grinder, grain mill, pasta maker, blender, grater, cookie press, etc. Here is a youtube link for a demonstration video. This first part is 9 minutes long and shows most of the attachments. It's really cool how a lot of them hook into the machine--you turn the machine on its side! Here is the link for the second part of the demo video, which is only 5 minutes long.

So hopefully this appliance will last us a very long time!

Wonder Fix?

Grace has started what has become a big annoyance. We have a small CD player in the kitchen, and a few weeks ago she figured out what button was the "play" button, and she started pushing it when she wanted to hear music. That didn't really bother me, so I didn't say anything. Next she moved on to changing out the CD in the player. Soon enough I noticed that, strangely enough, all the CDs in the kitchen were developing terrible skipping problems! They were getting filthy dirty, and several of them developed permanent scratches. Now the CDs we are talking about are mainly kids' ones, and at first they were ones I didn't really care about--a Little People animal one that is a favorite of hers, but which drives the boys bananas, a free Disney one with 7 songs (sung by "Goofy" and "Mickey") that came in a diapers box . . . etc. But then, as I would move over other CDs, like some kids hymns ones, she would work her magic on those as well. I told her not to move the CDs around anymore, but she would be "helpful" in other ways, like by making sure to put away any CDs that anyone had left out for just a minute! It was getting to the point that any time we turned on a CD, we were all ready to leap out of our chairs around the kitchen and family room to run in and skip to the next song when it would get stuck, which would happen about 5-6 times a CD! I was getting very frustrated, plus I was worried about something happening to an actual disk I cared about, like a Latin one or something.

A few weekends ago, Bob and the kids were working outside on the deck, and they brought the CD player outside. I noticed that Grace had switched a CD while out there, and the next day I discovered that one of the kids hymns ones was actually missing. It didn't take a genius to figure out that she must have dropped in outside somewhere, probably through the slats of the deck. Grrrrr. I was very annoyed at that.

Today it all came to a head. CDs were skipping everywhere. The boys were working outside. Lo and behold, they came in to tell me that they had found the missing CD! It had fallen through the deck (I should be a detective), landing in the roof of the shed under there. I didn't think it was rescuable, but Bob managed to reach it. It was, if you can imgine, pretty scratched up though. I wasn't willing to just give up without a fair try, so I googled "repair CD scratches". A number of sites recommended rubbing with Brasso, which we don't have, but several sites also suggested trying toothpaste. Well, that is something we have a good deal of, so I got a tube of toothpaste and several Q-tips, and I started rubbing (out from the center only, of course; never around!). I rubbed all the problem CDs, and I have been trying them out the whole evening. To my amazement, the toothpaste really helped tremendously! The animal CD was the worst, and it still skipped 3 times, but that is a HUGE improvement over its previous performance! A few of the other CDs still had a few trouble spots, but most of the time they were able to correct themselves! No more leaping up to skip the player to the next song! Now Grace is under strict orders to never touch CDs under any circumstance (at least until she gets better about keeping her hands clean, LOL). I'm sure tons of people already knew about this little hint, but I wanted to pass it on for those who were in the dark, like me. Don't just toss your skipping CDs! Try toothpaste first! It can't hurt!

Commissary Trip and Future Meals

Yesterday was one of our big commissary trips, so that meant that Tuesday night I had to prepare. I always go through my recipe box and write down menu ideas for the next 6 weeks. I try to get a variety of dishes in there: different meats, some crock-pot, some 30-minute quick ones, some soups, etc. I don't designate which day gets which meal, so I have a lot of flexibility, but I can know at a glance what meals I have all the ingredients for. Then I make my list to ensure that I have all the ingredients needed for all these meals (except maybe fresh vegetables, which I get in the other weeks at Sams or a local grocery store).

A few weeks ago, a friend of Michele's inspired me to put my commissary list on the computer. Before, I would always spend forever organizing my list into the order (as best I could remember) of the aisles in the commissary. It was a real pain, but it was certainly better than wandering back and forth trying to get all the items on my list. This time, I had already made a list of 3 columns of most of the things I might normally get there, plus blank spaces for me to write in meats, cereals, etc. I printed one off, circled what I needed, and voila! I was good to go! How nice is that! I should have done this a long time ago!

After we got home from the commissary and unloaded everything (notice I did not also say "and put everything away", LOL), I started on the second part of my big shopping day. This involves meal prep for future meals. I start browning ground beef and putting it in quart-size ziploc bags to freeze. I browned a little more than 9 pounds, putting 2 pounds per bag plus one smaller bag that we'll use for tacos. We never seem to eat 2 pounds of taco meat, LOL. So that's 5 future meals right there. While I was browning, I also cooked up a bunch of boneless chicken breasts (4 packages, I think--they're pretty cheap at the commissary). I just put all the breasts on a big 10x15 pan, sprinkled them with Mrs. Dash, and cooked them at 350 for about 35 minutes or so. Then I chopped those up and put them into 4 bags to freeze as well. Usually this is also when I thinly slice beef for stir-frying and put it in a ziploc bag for marinading in the freezer, but there were no beef stir fries on the menu plan for the next 6 weeks. (Although that sounds good right now, LOL) I also try to put some chicken breasts in Italian dressing or some other marinade to freeze before grilling at some point down the road. This is all tiring, and it does take a bit of time, but it really does save so much time later on, like when I'm deciding what to have for dinner at 4:00 in the afternoon! I haven't been very successful at "once-a-month cooking plans" or things like that, but this is a good compromise for me.

So now you know my secrets for meal planning. I'm sure they aren't anything new and original, but maybe someone will benefit from some little nugget!