Growing up I was never a huge fan or dressing or stuffing. I ate some at Thanksgiving or holidays when it was served,but it wasn’t the number one thing I looked forward to. I then had Sarah’s cornbread dressing, and I just love the taste of it. I make it now occasionally since it tastes so good. It is also a very simple recipe to make, so that helps as well.
So we have been cloth diapering Reese since she was around two months old. We chose to use disposable diapers while she fit into newborn and size 1. The main reason behind that is I didn’t want to have to buy newborn size cloth diapers that we would need a ton of, and I would be washing all the time. If you have never had a baby or newborn, they pee a lot, and lots of times tiny amounts. However, you don’t want them in their own pee or poo otherwise they will get diaper rashes so we went through 12+ diapers a day, and they also have lots of dirty diapers at night as well. Also, at this stage in parenting, the last thing we wanted to worry about was running out of diapers. So, we waited until Reese was big enough size wise to really fit into her cloth diapers; we also plan to do this same approach with our second baby.
There are lots of different reasons for cloth diapering, and you really need to decide what they are to make sure it is worth it since there is some investment up front for cloth diapering. Cloth diapering is not for everyone! Also in some areas it is more expensive than others to cloth diaper. For instance, my friend lives in Cedar Park, TX, and they pay almost 2-3xs the amount per gallon of water than we do here in AL. If you plan to cloth diaper, make sure that your significant other is also on board especially before you buy a lot of stuff. Most of our diapers that we got used or brand new were from people who bought a ton of diapers, and then realized that their spouse was not on board. We also chose a diaper that could be air dried so we don’t have to pay to dry them in a dryer. Of course we can dry them in the dryer in a bind, but this also helps keep our diapers looking better since the heat of the dryer can wear out the fibers and materials faster. Are you in it to be green, save money, or use less chemicals on your child? There are so many reasons you can cloth diaper. For us it was money savings, but we started off very very small to see if cloth diapering was even a fit for our family before we really invested a lot of money.
Last year for Halloween, we knew that we(as in I) wanted to dress Reese as an Ewok. I already had part of the costume, and so that made me decide to do a whole family Star Wars Theme for our Costumes. I decided this before even knowing that there was another movie coming out. Below are links to the tutorials I followed to make our costumes, and some pictures of the process.
One of the couples in our young married’s group has an annual pumpkin carving contest. We attend to have fun and socialize, but never really try to win since my carving skills aren’t the best. Last year, I did a W pumpkin, and the year before that a Harry Potter Pumpkin.
There are so many baby products out there these day that are wonderful! Some are a little unnecessary in my opinion,but some make raising a baby a lot easier. My Mother-in-Law and Mother were both impressed and slightly jealous at some of the amazing products out there that we have at our disposal. Grant and I also tried to stay on the side of less stuff rather than all of the extras. We didn’t want to spend a ton of money on our kids, and we didn’t want to have to store all of the stuff between kids. So here is a list of some of our favorite products, and why I have added them.