Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Make washable baby wipes-- an easy tutorial

I was recently shopping in a cloth diaper store and came accross some washable baby wipes. They were made from various materials and said you could use them with wipe solution or just spritz with a spray bottle.

They seemed easy enough to make myself so I set out to sew a few to try at home. (I believe retail was around $15 for four?)

Here are the instructions for making the ones above.

What you will need:
A sewing machine
Material (I used old burp cloths. It needs to be soft but absorbant.)
Scissors

I found a small square box and traced around it as my pattern. Then, after trying a few techniques, I stitched two squares together in a zig zag setting on the sewing machine. (May I mention that this was done on probably the coolest antique sewing machine I've ever seen? Our neighbor invited us over to use it-- they're in their 80's-- and found it in Germany. They travelled with it all over Europe by train and brought it back to the states many years ago.)

We tried two ways to stitch the pieces together, one was starting inside out and then finishing it with the seams on the inside, like a pillow. This made it not lay flat though so we simply stitched along the top of the two pieces paired up.

After the first washing, my initial wipes began to fray so we solved this by cutting along the edge of the next set of wipes with pinking shears. It left the edges finished enough that they no longer frayed.

I've tried them on my not-yet-potty-trained two-year old and on my newborn. I like them on my older son for less messy diapers, but I LOVE using them on the newborn. He goes through a lot of diapers during the day and the washable wipes seem less irritating to his skin. They also aren't cold so don't make him cry during changings. We just toss them in a washable bag that hangs by the changing table and put them in with a load of washable diapers.

What do you do with rhubarb? Make one fantastic cake!

A woman in my mom's Bible study class gave us a bag of rhubarb from her garden. We were planning to make a blueberry/rhubarb crisp but ended up buying Concord grapes instead of blueberries by accident.

Well our mistake turned out for the best because I went searching and found a recipe for Country Rhubarb Cake that was amazzzzzing!

If you look at the reviews, there are some great tips for making this doughy dessert. I would definitely add extra rhubarb and probably reduce the sugar. We didn't bother making the Whiskey Cream topping but served it with ice cream. One reviewer added shavings of fresh ginger to the rhubarb which is something I'd like to try next time.

In a house of "non-dessert eaters" (so they claim), this dish lasted less than 24 hours.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Hello big world

I decided to take a few minutes this weekend for an impromptu photo shoot. Trevor is getting bigger and stronger every day and has a hardy appetite. He's a momma's boy, but that's just fine with me.







Friday, October 21, 2011

And then there were 4...

Trevor
7 lbs 10 oz
Born on Tuesday, October 18th at 4:06pm

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach." Elizabeth Barrett Browning




Sunday, October 2, 2011

Off to pick a pumpkin!

Thanks to the Mom's Group for sharing a link to the pumpkin farm! The original plan was to join everyone for a day of hay rides and picking out a pumpkin with the little ones, but with my due date just days away, we decided to go on our own this weekend just in case we couldn't make it to their outing.

The day was filled with tractors, chickens, goats, tractors, hay rides, slides of all sizes, tractors, and... did I mention TRACTORS?? Maddox was more than thrilled.