Homemaker Archives - Page 33 of 42

Knight in Shining Armor 1st Birthday Party {CAKE}

February 8, 2012 by Jules Leave a Comment

Hosting a Knight in Shining Armor 1^st Birthday Party

My husband and I have decided that we won’t be doing huge parties every year for our children. But we will do bigger parties for milestone birthdays. For our oldest daughter’s 1^st birthday we did a “Princess Party over the 4^th of July holiday so all our parents could be in attendance. For our younger daughter we did a “Snow Princess Party” in the middle of January. Since I’m a bit on the OCD side of things when it comes to things like name, photo sessions within the 1^st year, and birthday party consistency among my children I thought it would be only appropriate to do a “Prince Party” for my son’s 1^st birthday. My hubs wasn’t a huge fan of the sissy options out there. We chatted for a while and landed on a “Knight Party”! Sticks with the royalty theme but a bit more masculine!

I’m going to do a series of post since walking you through all the DYI party details got pretty lengthy. Today I’ll tell you about the

CAKE

I love how this cake turned out! I discovered a new thing called ‘sugar sheets’ at Wal-Mart. Since I haven’t’ perfected my cake decorating skills to this kind of level it was a GREAT option! It was about $3-4 a sheet. It only took one sheet to make this cake. I made a simple box of devil’s food chocolate cake in a 11x14 rectangle pan. I had my husband sketch this castle {found on Google images line drawings} with a black edible marker, then I cut out the castle.

After the cake was baked but before frosting I laid this on top and cut the outer shape of the castle out. I also cut out the door. Then I placed plastic wrap under the edges of the cake as to not get frosting on the cake stand/carrier and frosted the sides and top of the cake with chocolate frosting. I let that try and then added a second coat. I took the backing off the sugar sheet and placed it on top of the moist frosting so it would adhere well. I found the dragon on picnic.com, made it red and printed {this same dragon was used several places throughout the party}. I cut triangles and taped them to tooth picks for the flags.

See how it became glossy and looks more like real frosting after adhering!

SMASH CAKE {My MOM MASTERPIECE}:

How I Made (& Use) My Preschooler’s Routine Chore Chart

January 7, 2012 by Jules 2 Comments

This year my goal is to get my house in order! You know what I mean, everyone running on a comfortable routine that keeps things moving, but with room to grow.

One of the things I made last summer was this chart, for lack of a better term, for my oldest daughter {3.5-years-old}. She is always asking, "What are we doing next?" "What are we doing today?" "Can I do _____ now?" She is also a huge help with some things if I have the time to train her how as well as reminder her to do them. I'm praying that, with a little consistency on my part, these tools can help our entire household stay in order this year.

Check out the step-by-step process to making and using this routine chore chart as well as FREE PRINTABLES so you can make one for your home simply and easily. I'm sharing all of this over at the homemaker's challenge. While you're over there, you should check out all the other GREAT new years posts! {Homemaker's Challenge F-R-E-E Recipe eBook coming soon!}

How is your new year going? Start the conversation below!

Filed Under: Organizing, Parenting, The Ones about Homemaker's Challenge, The ones about the Rothacher Home Tagged With: children's routine chore chart, chore chart, Classroom, family, FREE printables, home, homemade, house in order, how to, New Year, new years resolution, routine, schedule, step-by-step

Clean Home in 2012

December 29, 2011 by Jules Leave a Comment

We've had a massive amount of sickness floating through the Rothacher family the past few weeks.
Yep, stomach bug 2011 began Christmas Eve and is still showing it's presence in after effects.

I know all to well the importance of not only having a clean and sanitary home but also a tidy one so you can find all the necessities to break out the swat team when a family of 5 goes all "Carriers" on you {gross movie...weird- don't really advise}.

How do you optain a sanitary and well kept home you ask? I have a few ideas but a tool that helped me try and decide what was the most important was "31 days to clean". You can click around at the bottom of this post to see my journey through this book back in May. I plan to do some of this again in January but I'll also be focusing another series {I'll tell you about soon}.
What a better way to begin a new year than with a clean home. If you want to start this in January I do recommend purchasing it before Dec ends so you can flip through it quickly to make sure you have all necessary supplies ;o) You can use the button above to find and purchase the book or use the one on the side bar.

Did I mention it's SUPER CHEAP!!!! I'm a huge fan!

If you've gone through this book, what are some of you favorite days? If you haven't, what are some of your questions?

*Discloser: I do receive a portion of the sales on pdf versions of "31 days to clean" if you purchase it by using the button on my side bar. I do want you to know that I wouldn't recommend something I wouldn't/haven't used and I would LOVE you to refer people buy this book 'through' my blog or purchase it as a gift for someone.

Entire Cleaning Series
Starting a New Challenge Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10
Day 11 & 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15 & 16 Day 17 & 18 Days 19-21 Days 22-26 Days 27-31

Filed Under: Cleaning, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Advent {Day 24}: Hot Cocoa Recipe

December 24, 2011 by Jules 2 Comments

Today I want to focus on mail carriers. They have one of the hardest jobs this holiday season:
Amist the lousy cold weather that produces horrible driving conditions and makes you want to do nothing but snuggle on the couch with a good movie, They make sure we all get our:

Christmas cards to friends and family on time
packages with the must-have Christmas toy to your house before the big day
not to mention all those silly story fliers so we can find the best deals.

Today I'm sharing my last gift idea that fit perfectly into those adorably miniscule formula containers at minimal cost! Something WARM to help those carriers make it through their days a little cozier.

Wanna know How-To Decorating Cans? Click over HERE for step by step instructions.

Filling Cans

Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix:

Make homemade hot cocoa mix
Today I am sharing my mother-in-love's AWESOME homemade Cocoa Recipe over at the
homemaker's challenge dot com! Go grab it!
Add cocoa mix
Use the formula scoop as a cute touch for serving up the dry cocoa mix
Place bow on top of the lid or printable tag (click Cocoa Printables for free printable)

These people who serve us weekly can feel your appreciation through these simple gifts! Wouldn't you? Homemade adds that special touch as well.

I would like to challenge you to think of those who make your life you're thankful for this season and recognize them with a simple gift to warm their spirits!

Filed Under: Advent 2011 {Series}, Baking and Cooking, Gifts Ideas, Holidays, The Ones about Homemaker's Challenge Tagged With: Gift Idea, hot cocoa, recipe

Advent {Day 16}: Donner DooDoo (No Bake Cookies) Recipe

December 16, 2011 by Jules Leave a Comment

Here is a simple and inexpensive gift. This would be great for a large group of people where you would like to give gifts to everyone.

Donner DooDoo {non bake cookies}

2 cups of Sugar
1/2 cup Coco
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 cup Peanut Butter {I choose not to add this bc I want anyone to be able to eat them even if they have allergies}
1 tsp. Vanilla
3 cups Oatmeal
pinch of Salt

Mix sugar, coco, mil, and butter in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil, stirring often! Remove from heat and add peanut butter (optional), vanilla, and oatmeal. Stir well until all is blended and oatmeal is completely coated.

After you have your 'batter' ready, grab a mellon baller and about 2 feet of wax paper. Then measure out your cookies using the baller so they will be tiny balls/blobs using the larger end of the tool. If you have trouble getting the gooie cookies out, use a toothpick to poke them out through the itsy bitsy whole on the back side of the tool.

If they are too mooshy for your taste, pull your wax paper onto a cookie sheet and put them in the fridge until they are a little more set up.

Woops...have some left. Not enough room on your strategically too small wax paper??? Suggestion:

Yep! Eat it!!! ;o)

My suggestion for distributing these lil doo doos are baby food jars! Divy them up about 6 per jar. To decorate grab this FREE printable {Donner DooDoo Tag} to mod podge to the top of the jar and add a little curling ribbon. Yay!!! Easy enough, right?