So, save up those cereal boxes & recycled ribbon. Ask your friends their nursery color scheme and you can paint it to match. Just roughly cut the letter of choice out of several layers of thin cardboard. Glue together, paint, then add a ribbon for hanging.

E’s letter “E” is hanging proudly on his closet door.

My mother-in-law introduced me to sun tea recently - a GREAT way to stay even cooler by not boiling water on the stove. Just throw your tea bags in a full pitcher of water….

…Then, cover the pitcher to keep the bugs out and sit out in the sun to steep. Add sugar, if desired, and Ahhhh! So refreshing!

Here’s how I sort mine so they’re easy to locate for gifts, scrapbooks and albums.

• I have a folder for each year (2008, 2009, 2010…)
• Once the photos are uploaded, I create albums to contain different events (i.e. Strawberry Picking, Italy, Baby’s First Month…you get the idea).

Another way to sort photos within albums is by month. This way you have a chronological account. I find that I can’t keep track of when certain events happen and end up looking through several months to find the photos I’m looking for, which is why I sort by event.

• Once I sort them, THEN I edit photos and delete those I don’t want. I find it easier to see which photos are worth keeping once I upload them.
• I’m still figuring out how often to print digital photos. For me, I know that over time I probably don’t need EVERY photo I’ve taken on a vacation to be in hard copy, but if I wait for too long they may never be printed. I’m leaning towards printing out photos annually to add to my own albums, with a handful of extras for our “travel” scrapbooks.
• Lastly, thanks to a great idea from a fave blog, Young House Love, I’m going to create CD’s of our photos annually to store in a fireproof safe. Plus, we have additional back-up by uploading many of our favorites to Flickr and our family blog.

Now, my next project is to sort through all my photo albums and get them down to a manageable number.

How do you store your photos digital and otherwise? Do you print out your digital photos? Do all of your photo albums match or is your collection more of an “acquired over time” look?

I’ve had many friends rave about making homemade baby food, and others who found it daunting. Now that I’ve begun, and since I’ve been making alot of our food from scratch, I can see that it does require time and that my being a stay-at-home mom allows me the freedom to try more homemade food.

Baby’s first food was avocado, and since then I’ve pretty much followed the mash-it-up and ice cube tray storage method. It has worked well for me and made it easy to pull a couple cubes out of the freezer each morning. Since baby is only learning to eat real food, I removed the cubes from the trays, cut in half and through the halved cubes in ziplocks. I find I’m wasting less this way.

The one food I’ve tried that hasn’t gone as smoothly is homemade brown rice cereal. I’m having a hard time making only 2-3 days worth and getting the consistency I want. Baby is NOT excited about brown rice cereal, so I’m going to wait on that a little longer until he can handle a chunkier consistency.

It feels good to know that, for the most part, he is learning to eat “mommy’s cooking” from the start, and we only need to rely on jars of food in a pinch or while traveling. For now, making his food from scratch is an option that is working for us.

Aren’t these tea towel cupcakes from Yoonie at Home adorable? I think they would make great wedding shower favors.

I’ve made yogurt several times, and hummus, one of our favorite snacks.

I’ve also successfully made whole wheat pizza dough and think next time I’ll make a few at the same time and freeze a couple. Super easy, and tasted so fresh!

I used a recipe from Simply in Season. The KitchenAid mixer with bread hook made the 8 minutes of kneading a breeze. Then only time was needed for the dough to rise, from this…

To this…

Then we just rolled it out and baked it briefly before adding our toppings. A delicious, healthful and easy dinner.

The Pillsbury crust I usually bought was $2.99. The store does carry “fresh” crust for about $1.99. My homemade crust cost less than a dollar. And I know every ingredient that went into my crust, so that’s worth something too.

Haven’t tried crackers or pie crusts, but have added a couple other items to my list:

• mayonnaise
• granola cereal
• mozzarella

I’ve been wondering about whether I could make something similar using some of the mesh bags that oranges or avocados in bulk come in - taking this project one step further by recycling. I’ve read that such bags are good for making a toy caddy for bath, too. So creative.

One random item my husband received as a gift a couple years ago as his cooking became more adventurous was a mandolin slicer. Very fun gift, but it sat on a shelf for well over a year. So the ultimatum came. Use the mandolin or say goodbye to it.

I did help him in the process of using it, coming up with an anniversary dinner menu that included homemade scalloped potatoes - the perfect dish to use our mandolin. And we did.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the easiest thing to use, although quicker to slice potatoes thinly. It was even harder to clean. I think we’ll try it a few more times - on some homemade potato chips or waffle fries, and a mini lasagna using zucchini noodles. But, I’m still not sure this contraption will survive in our kitchen for the long-term.

What appliances do you have stashed that you should use or lose?

We enjoyed eating fresh peaches all week and grilled some to top dinner salads a couple of nights, based on this Paula Deen recipe. I baked a double batch of peach muffins, which were delicious, and froze half to enjoy later.

To enjoy the rest of the peaches over the next few months, we froze two quarts of peaches sweetened with simple syrup and two quarts without sugar. Here’s how we prepped them:

• Drop whole, ripe, peaches in boiling water for 2 minutes. It’s important that the peaches are ripe.
• Remove to an ice bath to stop cooking process.
• The skin should slide off the peach fairly easily at this point.
• Slice peaches, removing pit.
• For those peaches that will be sweetened, cover with lemon juice to avoid browning, then add simple syrup until well coated.
• Ladle into quart-size ziplock freezer bags.
• For unsweetened peaches, mix with lemon juice to avoid browning and freeze flat on was paper in a cookie sheet so they do not stick together and then store in ziplock freezer bags.
• Don’t forget to label the bags with the contents and date!

So, on to my next project…

It’s been fun to try some other recipes from scratch, like this hummus from Food in Jars. I used dried garbanzo beans (about 2.5 cups) instead and only one lemon juiced and made about 16.5 ounces of hummus. This lasted us a good couple of weeks, making for a healthy snack whenever a hunger pang struck (often for me as a nursing mama).

The cost to me for 16.5 ounces was about $3 compared to about $6 at Costco for Garlic Hummus. A 50% savings from food-processing a bunch of ingredients is not too shabby. Again, because this is something we eat alot of, so it’s worth it to me to make this from scratch.

Stay tuned for more of my kitchen adventures, my newest way to Simply Live.