Thursday, December 31, 2015

Last Minute New Years Ideas for Kids

Kid Friendly New Years Eve Party Ideas


Confetti Egg Party Poppers
 Confetti Wands....My daughter would love these! Find the tutorial here:Confetti Wands
 Every New Years Eve Party needs a balloon drop. Balloon Drop Tutorial
 Cute and Easy Noise Makers
 These cute Pop-Up Homemade Firework Crafts were created by My little 3 and me. These are super cute!! Find the Tutorial here Pop Up Firework Craft
 My Kids love to make these Party Poppers and they are so Easy! Fill them with confetti, little pieces of candy or small trinkets. The directions can be found here: Party Poppers

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Gluten Free Chex Mix by Rolling out The Dough




gluten free chex mix


Ingredients:
3 Cups Rice Chex
4 Cups Corn Chex
1 cup peanuts 
1 cup gluten free pretzels
1 1/2 cup gluten free bagel chips (I used Glutino Bagel Chips – Original)
8 tablespoons salter butter melted
8 teaspoons Worcestershire Sauce (Lea and Perrins is labeled gluten free)
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1/4 teaspoon sugar 
1 teaspoon salt
* Always check your spices and all ingredients to ensure gluten free status.
 Instructions:
Mix Chex, peanuts, gluten free pretzels, and gluten free bagel chips together in large roasting pan or two big cake pans.
gluten free chex mix
Melt butter and stir in Worcestershire Sauce, garlic powder,onion powder,sugar and salt,stir until everything is blended together. I just melted my butter in a glass measuring cup so the mix was easy to pour in.Pour half the liquid mixture over the dry cereal mix and stir/fold to coat the cereal mix. Then pour the remaining mixture and hit any dry spots make sure you stir well and coat everything.

Add to a preheated 250° oven and bake for one hour and 15 minutes stirring mixture twice during baking. Spread onto absorbent paper to cool,I used wax paper. Store in airtight container and snack away.


Check her page out for more Gluten Free Recipes: Rolling out the Dough

Lets talk Gluten!

When we first decided to go gluten free I was a little overwhelmed. The labels of course don't say  "gluten" on the ingredients list. To keep it straight I would carry around a list of all words/ingredients that actually meant gluten. Thankfully now, years later, shopping is much easier and the packages actually say gluten free on the front or stores will mark the labels with GF to help. There's also really cool apps that allow you to scan the barcode and it will tell you if it has gluten in it. There's also an awesome article on going gluten free, this has some good tips if you're just getting started  Gluten Free Tips

Monday, December 28, 2015

The Crohn's Diagnosis

My plan is on Mondays to make it my nutrition/health day. I will post on recipes that we love which will be gluten-free, organic, & nutritional. Also, I will blog about my sons journey of being diagnosed with Crohn's and his road to getting healthy. 
      I want to start with my sons diagnosis. He was eight when I really knew something was going on. He had been having stomach problems for about 6 weeks and then severe cramps started. He began to fatigue easily ( this was a kid who was in very competitive sports and active). His muscles and joints began to hurt all the time.  I made an apt thinking he had a bad virus or something along those lines. After stool samples revealed white blood cells, blood work was ordered. They ruled out salmonella and giardia and we were referred to the Gastrointestinal Specialist at Children's Mercy. After meeting they ordered more blood work and a few days later they called to tell us his SED rate was incredibly high. This is a marker used to test the inflammation in the body. They then told me that he would need an upper and lower scope to figure out what was going on. This revealed ulcers both in the upper intestinal track,  esophagus, lower intestinal track, everywhere they scoped were ulcers and inflammation. They were able to narrow down his diagnosis between several diseases but had to then do a capsule study to give an exact diagnosis. This entailed him having to swallow a large pill that was a camera that would record his entire track so they could see every area. We were on vacation when I got the call that they hadn't received all the results from the test the biopsies etc. and determined that he did indeed have Crohn's disease. When we returned he went through one more test to determine the severity of damage to his intestinal wall this was done through an MRE. Although it seems as though things moved pretty quickly, this diagnosis was after several months, and many doctors appointments. Well before our final diagnosis we had completely taken him and the entire family off of gluten which did seem to provide relief to him. Later through blood work we did learn that he was also "allergic to gluten. " After his diagnosis I met with a dozen different people at children's Mercy to discuss his plan. There were doctors to discuss the medication, doctors for nutrition, people to discuss what to expect day today. It was a crash course. 
     It was recommended him start on several different medications but the research I declined some due to their side effects. We opted for Pentasa, and hyoscine for cramping. The next year and a half were a roller coaster of up-and-down with his health and trial and error for what his body needed. One thing I've learned is stress is a huge trigger! And he is an internalizer. He's big and strong on the outside but let things build inside. His start of his fourth grade year brought challenges with a new student dynamic. Without going into detail it was every day issues with this new student issues. By the time January hit he was not doing good with his health. Another scope was ordered and we were given a few options from the results. One option was to greatly increase his medication and add several other new medications. Second option was to hospitalize him, and put him on an IV until his intestinal track could heal. The third option was to completely take him off of food and do nothing but a liquid diet for six weeks to try to get his intestinal track to heal, this would be in addition to the medication. We left the hospital with telling them that I needed to think for a few days on what the best option was for him. After much prayer I felt led to decline all three options. I just truly believed that he could be healed in a natural way. I researched and read a ton and tried to find anything I could on people and using natural methods to heal IBD.  Now, telling this to his doctors and nurses was a whole other ballgame. They thought I had lost my mind. I got yelled at by doctors, told flat out I was crazy and making a horrible decision by nurses and called over and over again to tell me that I should not be making this decision for him. I will go into detail in a later blog about the steps we took and the things and supplements we put him on. But I'd like to fast forward to September when I took him in for a check up.
      It was awkward going back to the doctors. But we needed to make sure that inside things were ok. They did the usual blood work and his levels looked great. Our doctor said his blood work came back like a "normal" kid. She encouraged another scope and biopsy to be able to determine if he really was as good as he seemed. The doctor that did the scope came in to the waiting room and showed me the pictures and it was awesome. Everything internally looked great and she even said if she didn't know he had Crohn's she would never guess by looking at the pics. Of course we had to wait for the biopsy results. 5 days later his doctor called. She was in shock and said they had just had a staff meeting discussing my son. His biopsy results had come back and there was not one marker of Crohn's. She went short of saying he was healed but said everything but that. Our prayers were answered and we finally had a healthy son. 
      I will go into much more detail in the future but I want to give a quick rundown on things we did and still do on a daily basis. First was diet, gluten had to go. Next was adding more vitamins. Zinc, Curamin, Turmeric, CoQ10, L-Glutamine, B6, B12, & Vitamin C are some that he takes daily. Probiotic is a must and he also takes pre-biotic. He also has an infared mat to lay on in case of cramping. This is like a heating pad but that penetrates deeper. Lastly, I started diffusing essential oils. I do it while they sleep, during the day and even in the car. 
    I want to end by saying, I am not a doctor and in no way trained in medicine other than being a mother who has read extensively and researched all I can. I hope others can learn from our success and failures and pray that some of the methods that have worked for us will work for others too.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Ho ho ho from the Ding Dongs

Ho Ho Ho
from the
Ding Dongs!




This year we put together these cute little gift packages for the kids to deliver to their friends. We then drove to their friends house and each kid got to set these on the porch ring the bell and then run to the car. They had a blast and their friend (and parents) loved the little surprises left on their porches.
I gathered paper and stickers that I keep in a sticker box. We then made the cute little signs for the packages.
Then we just tied together a box of Ho Hos and a box of Ding Dongs together with Christmas Ribbon and slid in the handmade signs.


                        School Christmas Party Favors
With three boys in school this year I decided to do simpler party favors, but still cute of course! For my 3rd graders class I made snowman soup packs and attached them to cute glass milk bottles that were found at target. This was pretty easy to put together. 

I purchased pre-packaged hot chocolate mix to speed up the assembly and to cut down on the mess. I found boxes of mix for $1 each at target. I opted to get the snowman marshmallow peeps, $1.85 a pack and a large box of Candy canes was $2. 
 
 These are the milk bottles from Target's $1 section. Total spent for 16 favors came in a little under $25.
I used ziplock bags I had and folded them in half.
Attach the snowman soup labels to ziplock bag and tie on the candy canes.

Then just tie the ribbon and the neck of the bottle.


For Kindergarten I made Hershey Bar Snowman. These were so easy and took about 10-15 minutes to put together 16 favors.


Start out with the full size chocolate bars and printed snowman. I folded one size in and taped it to the bar to keep the wrapper from sliding and then folded the other side in and closed it with another pice of clear tape.


I actually forgot to buy fleece from the fabric store so I found some wide ribbon in my wrapping room and then grabbed thin red & white ribbon to tie the hats together.

Attach the ribbon or felt with a hot glue gun. Then tie the thinner ribbon around to give them the hat shape.
These ended up costing around $10 for 16 favors.
 
Lastly, for my 5th grader I made for of the snowman soup packs. I did these a little different with regular marshmallows and different printables. I was able to make 15 for $8 and it only took 10 minutes to throw these together!






Saturday, December 19, 2015

                         I LOVE CHRISTMAS TIME!









 

Sunday, December 13, 2015

                                  Christmas Parties Prep
This week is always my get it done week. It's the last week of school before Christmas break. Which means class parties, teacher's gifts, Christmas programs and my last week to get anything done around the house before it's filled with kids 24 hours a day. I currently have piles of my "to do" projects stacked everywhere. My hall, my wrapping room, my office, you get the idea.

This is part of my "organized" mess! This year I've opted out of the goodie bags for each of the kids to take to school and decided to make snowman Hershey bars.
I found the printables for those here: Snowman Wrapper
I'll be visiting each boys classroom this week to help them put together "snowman soup" to take home. There are tons of free printable tags that can be found on pintrest but I found mine here:
Snowman Soup
Another project is putting together our "Ho Ho Ho" from The "Ding Dong" packages. The kids will then drop them on the porches of their friends as a fun little gift. Pictures to come of that. But cute tags can be found at this blog if you are looking to do this as gifts to your neighbors:
ho-ho-ho-tags
I thought I had simplified this year and as a sit typing the projects for the week ahead I'm starting to think I've pretty much lost my mind as usual. However, stay tuned for tutorials and to see what I can pull off.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Christmas Bake Sale: Raising $ For Charity

In our home we love Christmas! It is my most favorite time of year. I've always loved Christmas lights. I remember as a little kid driving to the city close to where we lived to look at lights. Every year my dad would do a different theme of lights and normally put some design on our roof. A few years ago when we moved to our current  house I got the idea to really do it up. So, each year we add more lights, decorations and colors. As our lights grew so did the amount of people driving by to see our crazy house. Last year the boys came up with the idea to sell hot chocolate and cookies and use the money to buy Christmas presents for local kids in need. So, with the weather being so great for this time of year we decided to throw it together. The boys were each in charge of a sign and all helped make treats. We made Rudolph Rolo Pretzels. I love these because they are easy (my 6 year old put them together by himself) and super tasty. You can find the recipe here:
Rudolph Rolo Pretzel Bites
We made sugar cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered Oreos and Mickey mouse oreos. Find the tutorial here:
Mickey Oreos
We then bagged everything up, tied it with a cute ribbon and headed out. The evening was a success! The boys can't wait to go pick up presents with money they earned.












T