Resist the drive thru! Homemade breakfast burritos

We all do it. Time runs short, we get up late, the kids are nuts/won't get dressed/are sleepy and we run out of time for a good home-cooked breakfast. You might scarf down a bowl of cereal. You might grab an apple or banana to eat on the go. Will you make it to lunch on that? What the heck? Just run through the drive thru at your local fast food joint or coffee hut. A good breakfast burrito costs $3-4 plus you're likely to get a beverage too. Those quick meals can add up fast. Here's a great alternative that will take less than an hour of time and save you some money too!

Here's what I use (you can change it up depending on what your preferences are):
1 dozen eggs
2/3 pound sausage
1 large green pepper
1 cup shredded cheese (I use fiesta blend)
8-10 large tortillas (more if you use medium size)

This is pretty easy, so I'm going to go fast. Ready? Brown sausage. Dice and cook pepper. Scramble all eggs. Mix in one big bowl. Boom. Done.

Put the egg/sausage mix in the middle of a tortilla, add cheese. Fold ends over center and roll up. Note: you might like salsa or hot sauce or sour cream on your breakfast burritos. Those ingredients don't freeze well. I recommend bringing them separately in a little reusable container.

I like to wrap each of my burritos in cling wrap. It helps protect them from freezer burn. You can also use aluminum foil (but don't use a microwave to reheat with foil!). I wrap each burrito and then place all the wrapped ones in a larger freezer zipper bag. Place in freezer. Tell your family these exist. No sense making them if your family doesn't know to grab them.

When it's a rushed morning, take one out of the freezer and pop in the microwave or toaster oven to warm. Easy peasy.

I took a little time to work out the cost of these things. Mostly because I'm a huge nerd and love figuring this out. Plus it helps me put a little pressure on the husband when he zips out of here and buys his breakfast. I use the big tortillas and fill them pretty full, so it makes 8 big burritos. I use farm fresh eggs and maple sausage which are a little more expensive, so your totals might be slightly less.

Tortillas               $1.16
Maple Sausage   $1.99
Eggs                   $3.00
Cheese               $1.01
Green Pepper     $0.50
TOTAL             $7.66 or $0.96 each

I-spy bottle

Nearly every year at Thanksgiving, we make a trip to see family in Idaho. It's a 9-11 hour drive depending on the roads. My kids are not the type of kids that are content sitting in a car, strapped into their car seat for a long day. I've already started thinking about this journey and trying to come up with some activities to keep them busy without watching movie after movie.

I've seen I-spy bottles in the stores and I've seen DIY versions too. Of course, I am going to try to DIY instead of paying $20 for a store-bought version. I started with empty coffee creamer bottles. They're a little larger in size, so I can hide more stuff in them. Plus, I save our creamer bottles to use for various things, so I had a couple ready to go. I searched my house for a bunch of little trinkets. I used everything from pennies to dice to buttons to binder clips to jolly rancher candies to legos. Pretty much anything that was small enough to fit in the bottle I gathered up to use. Here is my super mom trick: My kids are little. They can't read. Making a list of things that are in the bottle isn't very useful, especially because I'm trying to create a quiet game they can do in the car on their own. So, I took a photo of each of the items before putting it in the jar. Remember this. Then I put all the trinkets into the bottle alternating with a 1/2 cup rice and 4-5 trinkets at a time. I used a total of 30 trinkets per bottle. I hot glued the lid to the top of the bottle and also hot glued the lid closed. I wouldn't want the rice and junk being dumped in my house or my car.

Enter the photos again. I uploaded the images to my local Costco and had prints made for each of the items. I made 2 bottles and they contained almost exactly the same items. There were a few different things in each bottle but mostly the same. I ordered prints of the images so each bottle had a full set of pictures of each of the items in that bottle. I trimmed the images to a smaller size, punched a hole in the corner and threaded onto a binder ring. Now mom or dad doesn't have to be involved with the game! (I get car sick and turning and looking into the back seat makes me incredibly ill.)

The girls can play the game in a couple ways. They can take their book of pictures and find each of the items from the book. Or, since the jars are nearly identical, they can race by flipping to an image and both trying to find the trinket at the same time. The second way does contain a little more involvement from me, but doesn't necessarily need to.

Hope this mini tutorial helps you come up with a good quiet game for your kids. The pictures are a great addition for younger children too. Spy away!!

DIY Cleaning Supplies

Holy cow! Fall is here! OK, not technically until next week, but it's certainly headed that direction. With my oldest going back-to-school and activities starting again, it's been crazy for me. I'm sure your family is no different. I constantly have ideas in my head for new blog posts. It's just a matter of me sitting down and typing them out for you.

At our house, there's never a shortage of messes, laundry, dishes, or cleaning to do. Not only do these things pile up, but they're never ending. And the supplies needed to take care of them can really add up, especially for a family on a budget (like ours). Thanks to the good ol' world wide web and my personal favorite, Pinterest, it's much easier to discover thrifty ways to save on cleaning supplies. In today's blog, I'm going to share a couple of favorites and one that was more of a bust.

Laundry, laundry, laundry. Completely unavoidable. It's not really the DOING of the laundry I dislike as it is the folding and putting away of the laundry. If I can put away all the laundry I wash and dry in a day the same day as I wash and dry it, it's reason for celebration. We do a ton of laundry around here. I wish I had a dedicated laundry room, but our washer and dryer are confined to a closet. (The architect of my house was a complete moron, or a single dude who has no idea how a family actually functions.) I digress. Having 2 kids who aren't afraid of getting dirty creates a lot of laundry in and of itself. Add on my husband and myself and towels and bed linens....well you get the picture. I generally try to limit my laundry to 2 days a week, but they're pretty full days of washing.

What I'm trying to describe is a LARGE amount of laundry. To buy detergent to wash that much laundry was getting a bit ridiculous, especially because of our sensitive skin. I had to buy dye free, perfume free detergent to prevent my kids and me from scratching our skin bloody. You laugh. It's happened. I had read some tutorials about how to make laundry detergent, but it appeared to be a little labor intensive. After talking with a friend who actually made her own, I researched more and thought I'd give it a shot. This is the recipe I used from a blog called I Can Teach My Child. My first batch was pretty much according to her instructions. The batches after that I've made slightly more concentrated. She recommends to split the mixture into 10  1-gallon containers and I've found with the amount of soiled laundry I have that about 7 1-gallon containers makes it at the strength I need to clean my clothes. Regardless, it is less than a penny per load!

I keep my jugs (recycled milk jugs) in the garage, clearly labeled, and bring them into my laundry area as needed. Give the jugs a little shake before using (it separates and gets a little chunky). I use about 3/4 cup per load of laundry. It works like a charm! As good if not better than commercial detergent. It does not irritate our skin. I'm incredibly happy I found this solution!

Another amazing DIY cleaning supply is a tub and tile cleaner I learned from my friend Angie. Angie has her own cleaning business (in addition to being a mom and a wife and having a successful direct sales business). She hosted our crafter's club meeting one month this spring and taught us how to make several different cleaners. My favorite was a tub and tile cleaner. It's easy to make and it works better than any commercial cleaner I've used. We have very hard water where we live, so the mineral deposits are endless. Plus, as I've mentioned before, my kids aren't afraid of getting dirty and my husband owns a landscape oriented business (read: lots of mud). Our showers/tubs get gross. This cleaner takes it all off. It doesn't require a ton of elbow grease to work either! Bonus!

Here's Angie's recipe:
12 oz white vinegar
10 oz blue Dawn dish soap (must be this color and brand)

Heat vinegar for 2 minutes in the microwave, add to spray bottle. Pour Dawn soap
into bottle and shake gently to mix.

TO USE: Spray cleaner in tub or sink, let sit for 2 minutes (or longer, depending on how
dirty it is) and then wipe clean with a DRY cloth! No water, or you will have a
bigger mess than when you started.

Seriously, try it. Hands down best tub cleaner out there.

Now for the flop. I'd had so much success with DIY cleaners, I thought this was the way to go! I researched and found a homemade dishwasher detergent recipe I wanted to try. (ps, this is a great blog, and the recipe may work for others. I am not stating it is a bad recipe.) I wash dishes and run the dishwasher like it's going out of style. That's what happens when you cook for 3-4 kids several meals per day and then a family at night. I was anticipating this blog, so took a great picture of the ingredients needed and was trying to make it look nice for my readers.

I ran the first load and wasn't happy with the results. It didn't clean very well at all. Thought I'd try a little more detergent the second time. It left a nasty film on all the dishes and the dishes were still dirty. I tried adding more vinegar as a rinse agent. Nope. Then I remembered why I originally started buying the expensive detergent: with our hard water and contractor grade appliance, generic and less expensive detergents didn't work. I have to get the name brand detergent (and then it cleans great). Sigh. Can't win them all!

Bottom line is that there are lots of options to try DIY cleaning products. Some will work. Some may not. Most are so inexpensive that you can afford to make them and try them for yourself. Good luck! May your house be clean and your wallet be full!

Washable Dusting Cloths

Friday is my cleaning day. I really dislike spending a good chunk of my Saturday cleaning, so started doing a bunch on Fridays. I make it a game with the kids: chase with the vacuum, make a train with the kitchen chairs while I sweep and scrub. They even like to help me dust. Today, I went to get out my dusters and realized I had fogotten to add the dusting cloths to my list when we shopped this week. Then I remembered I had seen something on Pinterest about reusable dusting cloths. It was something I pinned early in my Pinterest days, so I didn't check out where the link went before pinning. Unfortunately, it linked to an etsy page. Never fear! I'm a creative and resourceful mama with an abundance of sewing supplies and skills. Here's my tutorial for you. This is really easy to do. Even with taking pictures and getting it ready for the tutorial, it took me 20 minutes. It is designed to use with the Swiffer duster handles.



Make a pattern out of paper or newspaper. You will want to make a rectangle that is 8.5"x4.5". As you can tell by my picture, I chose to make the top rounded. I just used a bowl to make the rounded part. Remember, these are for cleaning, so you don't have to be perfect. I wanted to make mine as crisp as possible to demonstrate for you.

Cut out your pattern using 3 layers of fleece. Fleece won't fray or ravel, so it works great for washing and reusing the duster. The colors don't have to match. You don't even need matching thread.

Next mark your sewing lines on one of the pieces of fleece. You will want to draw a line down the center of the fleece at a length of about 5.5" from the bottom edge (non curved edge if you made it rounded). Then make a line .75" on either side of the center line also at a length of 5.5". Draw a line at the top connecting the three long lengths. This creates the pockets for your duster handle.

Stack your three pieces of fleece on top of each other. Sew down the center line through all three layers of fleece. This will hold your duster together. Be sure to reinforce the bottom edge with some back stitches since it will have stress on that seam. Then, fold the bottom layer back and sew down one side pocket line and across the top to the center seam. Only sew through the top two layers of fleece. Repeat for the other side.



With your scissors, cut fringe on your duster. You can cut different fringe for each of the three layers or you can cut through all three at the same time. I cut the 2 top layers (that make the center pockets) together and the bottom layer separately. It's up to you, but I would recommend cutting the third/bottom layer separately since you have a little more fleece you can fringe since there is no pocket on that layer. Ultimately, it doesn't matter.

Test it out! Insert the handle of the duster into the pockets and clean away! When it gets dirty, just pop into the wash, dry and reuse. Simple right??