Toddler 101: FREE Home Depot Kids' Workshops

Did you know that Home Depot offers a FREE Kids' Workshop on the first Saturday of every month?  I am so excited that C is old enough to participate in the Home Depot Kids' Workshops now!  In my opinion, 2.5 years old and up is age-appropriate for this activity (with a parent's help!)

The Kids' Workshops are generally held from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM on Saturday mornings, but check with your local Home Depot to verify the schedule.  At our Home Depot, they are held in the lumber section of the store, although when the weather is nice I have also seen them set up outside the front of the store, too.  Some Home Depots request that you register online for the Kids' Workshop, but at ours, you just show up.  

Check in at the table, where they'll give each child a (FREE) Home Depot orange apron and project kit. Home Depot sets up a super long, low table with upside-down 5-gallon buckets to use as stools.  Grab a spot and open the project kit, which contains the supplies needed to make each project - instructions, wood, nails, stickers, etc.  Hammers, paint, wood glue, and other shareable supplies are available on the table to use.  It is so cute seeing all the kids in their orange aprons hammering away (many with their dads)!  If you don't have time to do the project (or finish), you can take the project kit home - as long as you have some basic tools and supplies (hammer, paint, etc.), most of the other supplies are included.

One of my favorite parts is that each kid gets a lapel pin unique to each monthly project they create; they can put these pins on their orange apron for the following month to show their Kids' Workshop "street cred". :)  Some of the elementary school-aged kids had dozens and dozens of pins on their aprons from past months!  

Via

C has participated the past two months and loved it both times!  He made a birdhouse-shaped rain gauge in March and a bunny-shaped box in April.  The first Saturday of the month coincides with my moms' Bible study, so it is a great activity to occupy C and daddy while I'm out!

If you're interested in the schedule for the rest of 2017, here it is (and a terrible photocopy of the project pictures):

May 6, 2017 - Flower PlanterJune 3, 2017 - Tic Tac Toe GameJuly 1, 2017 - Bug HouseAugust 5, 2017 - PENSKE TruckSeptember 2, 2017 - Pencil HolderOctober 7, 2017 - Fire House BankNovember 4, 2017 - HumveeNovember 25, 2017 - Christmas Tree OrnamentDecember 2, 2017 - Gingerbread HouseJanuary 6, 2018 - Block Calendar

From the Kitchen: Easy Quiche

This easy quiche is one of my go-tos for an easy breakfast, lunch, or dinner; I frequently bring it to new moms when I'm delivering dinner as a bonus breakfast item (since I thought breakfast was the hardest meal to pull off after C was born).  It's nothing special since hardly any part of it is homemade - but it takes less than 10 minutes to assemble and pop in the oven, and less than an hour later, you have a finished quiche on your hands!

The recipe is super flexible in that you can use whatever cheese, meat, and/or vegetables you prefer (or, if you're like me, have on hand and need to get rid of).  It is a great way to use up leftovers, especially since eggs and milk are almost always on hand!  Except for the eggs and milk, the specifics and the quantity of the other ingredients (cheese, meat, vegetables) is flexible!  My go-to is to use frozen chopped spinach, which I microwave to thaw it and then squeeze out the extra water, along with turkey breakfast sausage.  When in a pinch, I use the Jimmy Dean precooked turkey sausage crumbles, which you can find with the packaged lunch meat and hot dogs at the grocery store.

I use frozen deep-dish pie crusts if I'm taking the quiche to someone else, just for the convenience of the disposable pie pan that they come in; if I'm making it for my own family, I usually use a refrigerated pie crust in a deep dish pie plate.  I find that regular-depth pie plates come too close to overflowing!

Easy Quiche

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 50-60 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pie crust (frozen deep-dish pie crust or refrigerated pie crust)
3/4 cup (more or less) grated cheese (my go-to is cheddar, but anything works!)
(optional) 1 cup (more or less) chopped meat (e.g., ham, bacon, breakfast sausage)
(optional) 1/2 cup (more or less) chopped vegetables (e.g., spinach, mushrooms, bell pepper, green onion; thaw and drain excess water if using frozen)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

If using a refrigerated pie crust, press into the bottom of a deep dish pie plate.  If using a frozen deep dish pie crust, no need to thaw.  Evenly spread the chopped meat and/or vegetables around the bottom of the pie crust.  Sprinkle the grated cheese on top of the meat and/or vegetables.  

In a medium bowl, whisk together the 4 eggs, milk, and salt and pepper until well blended; pour into the pie crust on top of the meat, vegetables, and cheese.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until no longer liquid in the center (it will still appear slightly jiggly but should be firm when pressed).  Let cool at least 5 minutes before cutting into 6-8 slices.

DIY (Affordable!) Backyard Mosquito Control

A Texas winter without a good freeze means two things: no snow days from work and terrible mosquitoes come summertime!  I don't know what it is, but our backyard is a mosquito haven.  I think it has something to do with the massive quantity of plants and trees relative to the size of our yard, but the mosquitoes get BAD!  Since it has been a fairly warm spring, they've already started to emerge.  

We routinely use bug spray when we're outside, but with me being pregnant (Zika!) and a toddler who spends tons of time outside (and reacts terribly to bug bites), we really need a way to eliminate the mosquitoes in our yard.  We've tried the tiki torches with citronella fuel in the past, and they didn't make a dent in our mosquito problem!  Last year we considered various options to control the mosquitoes - everything from paying a regular professional mosquito spraying service (which runs $150-200/month in our area) to having a mosquito misting system installed (starting around $1,500-2,000, plus $200-300/month in misting solution).  Given the sizeable price tags of these options, we decided to start with a cheaper DIY option to see how it worked - and luckily, it worked out great and we saved a bunch of money over the professional options.  

I've already stocked up on supplies for this year, and we did our first application last weekend.  Here's what we use:

1. Cutter Backyard Spray Concentrate
I think this spray makes the biggest overall difference in the number of mosquitoes in our yard - and luckily, it is easy to apply and super affordable.  The bottle of concentrated spray screws onto the end of a garden hose and you simply spray it around your yard - grass, plants, flower beds, even the patio surface.  We have a fairly small yard and one bottle is enough to do both our front and back yards.  Make sure to do it AFTER mowing the grass so maximize the effectiveness.  We do try to avoid spraying the plastic Little Tikes/Fisher Price toys in our yard (water table, picnic table, slide, etc.) to limit the direct contact our toddler has with the solution. 

It runs less than $9 per bottle and we re-apply every 2-3 weeks - every 3 weeks in spring/early fall; every 2 weeks in peak summer mosquito season.  We notice a HUGE difference once we pass the 3-week mark.  I just ordered 6 bottles on Amazon, which I expect should last us through most of this year's mosquito season.  $50-60 for the whole summer is much more affordable than the other options we considered!!

2.  Skeeter Screen Patio Egg Diffuser
We have 4 of these patio eggs around our back patio (where we spend the most time outside).  One of our favorite local restaurants has one of these on every single table on their outdoor patio!  Although these do not actually kill mosquitoes like the spray above, it does a good job of repelling them from the immediate surrounding area.  It comes with a ceramic egg-shaped diffuser, a hanging net, and a bottle of the diffuser oil.  You simply pour the designated amount of diffuser oil into the top of the egg (using the measuring cup provided) and it is slowly absorbed into the porous material of the egg.  The oil smells kind of like citronella - it doesn't bother us.  The bottom of the egg is coated with something to allow you to place it on furniture without the oil leaking through, but we use the (included) hanging net to hang the eggs from the eaves of our patio so they're out of reach of our toddler (both from a breaking-the-egg and a drinking-the-oil perspective).  When you stop smelling the oil, it's time to refill - in the heat of Texas summers, this is once every 2 weeks.  

We invested in the diffuser kits last summer, which run about $15-16 each, so this year we will just have to buy refill oil for our existing eggs.  The bottles of refill oil are 8 oz, which is twice the size of the bottle that comes in the kit, so they last a while (about 10 individual egg refills).  For some reason both the patio eggs and refill oil are hard to find locally (only a specialty garden store by my house sells it), so I tend to order on Amazon to save a special errand.  This was a $60-70 upfront investment for the 4 patio eggs last summer, and I expect that we'll spend $30-40 on refill oil this summer.

3.  Bug Spray
In addition to the preventative measures above, we also use bug spray when we're going to be outside.  I initially liked the OFF Family Care Smooth and Dry spray since it goes on dry and non-greasy (and smells good!), but then I had several bottles that clogged up after the first use and had to be thrown away - and bug spray isn't cheap!  It turns out the "dry" feature involves cornstarch, which frequently clogs up the whole container and renders it useless (I tried lots of methods to unclog it to no avail!)  Since then, I've switched to unscented OFF Family Care in the non-aerosol bottle, which goes on wet but is (mostly) unscented and the bottle doesn't clog!  It's only 7% DEET (compared to the 15% DEET in the Smooth and Dry format), so I use it when we're only going to be outside for an hour or so (drawing with chalk, playing with the water table, swinging).  I like the non-aerosol bottle for the diaper bag since it has a cap and won't accidentally spray the inside of your bag like the aerosol can will (speaking from experience!)

If we're going to be outside for an extended period of time (backyard dinner party, playing outside all afternoon), I use OFF Active (15% DEET), which goes on wet AND has the typical insect-repellent smell (which I'm not a fan of), but it is effective :)  We have tried lots of "natural"/essential-oil-based bug sprays and they are just not as effective as those with DEET (our pediatrician and the AAP agree).  Although DEET use is controversial, we make sure to always bathe and wash it off our skin before going to bed and avoid spraying it directly on hands that might end up in mouths!

For baby:
Since we're expecting a summer baby this year and bug sprays shouldn't be used on infants, we're relying on the preventative measures outlined above and mosquito netting to keep the baby bite-free.  We bought this stroller mosquito net a few years back and it has worked well on our BOB jogging stroller.