Let me start off by telling you, I am NOT BEING PAID FOR THIS POST. I just think we parents need to stick together and be honest about what’s workin’ for us and what’s not, and this bib has been working for me, better than any other bib I’ve ever tried, for eight years, with three children.

Truth be told, I haven’t used the exact same bib with all of them… the dishwasher has destroyed two of my most favorite froggy bibs, but a couple weeks ago I hurried out and purchased a brand new one, because I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT!

This bib washes off in the kitchen sink after a meal as quick and easy as a plastic bowl does. Unlike using cloth bibs, you are never wandering around searching for a clean and dry bib to use. This plastic one is always a quick rinse and paper towel swipe away from being ready to use again.

There are other bibs on the market that are plastic like this, and that turn up at the bottom to “catch” what misses baby’s mouth, but most of those don’t turn up this high. I’ve tried other wipe off plastic bibs with a turned up shelf at the bottom, but because the shelf was so shallow, goop would drip right out and all over the place if my baby leaned forward, or sideways.

I’ve even used this bib like a hands free snack tray while my babies have been in the bumbo and car seat, by placing cereal purposely in the catch all bottom, and letting them fish it out with their fingers and eat. I’ve found it works better than giving little hands a snack cup that is easily and often fumbled, and then becomes unreachable when they are strapped in somewhere.

And there’s more…

This best bib ever does not come alone. It is sold as part of the MATA 4-piece dinner ware set for baby at IKEA, which includes the bib, a bowl with a suction cup on the bottom for staying power on the high chair tray, sippy cup, and spoon, all for $2.99.

$2.99 !!!

Can you believe that?

I was at Ross today and couldn’t find a single bib for less than $3.99.  I sure didn’t see a whole set of bowl, cup, spoon, and bib for anywhere near that price. Seriously… what can you buy for baby these days for only $2.99? You can’t even buy a set of 3 pairs of socks for that price.

And guess what else…

It comes in pink.

PINK!!!

I may or may not currently own six of these sets.

I know I inferred that you only need one because they’re so easy to wash, but…

a. I’m a little obsessed… as you can tell.

b. I’ve been through the trauma of losing this bib twice in eight years, to a meltdown when flipped onto the dishwasher heating tube.

c. You can buy six sets for less than $20 and I use the bowl and sippy cups for all three of my kids, all the time.

I should totally be getting paid by IKEA for this post, but I’m not. IKEA doesn’t know I’m alive.

But YOU do! That’s why you’re here.

And that’s why I love you! And… I love this bib.

Ribbit!

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Thank you so much to everyone who visited my Amazon Store, and a double thank you to those of you who made purchases.

I need to make 20  more sales to be bumped up into the next commission bracket through the Amazon Associates program.

Take a peek today if you have some time. I’ve added several new items to most of the categories.

I’ve also been so inspired by the warmth of Spring, I can hardly wait for summer, so I’ve created a “Summer Fun” category full of great items for families to use as the days get warmer.

Okay… the part you’ve all been waiting for…

And the winner of the $50 Amazon Gift Card is….

MessyMommy: Submitted on 2010/03/09 at 7:42pm - “I would love the Bringing Up Girls book! I have Bringing Up Boys and love it!”

Congratulations Messy Mommy!!! Send an email to me at giveaways@mommytopics.com.

Happy Easter everyone!

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In two months of making my own homemade baby food instead of purchasing it ready made in jars - I have saved $228

Here’s how:

Llany is now one year old.  He has been eating more than one jar of baby food per meal.  Typically he can eat two, stage 2 jars per meal which was coming out to a consumption of six jars per day.

I had been buying Earth’s Best organic baby food which ranges in price from $.74 – $.99 per jar.  For the sake of this comparison I rounded up to $1 per jar because in my state there is also added sales tax to consider.

So at $1 per jar, consuming 6 jars per day – I was spending $6 per day on baby food.

To keep this up, in two months time, this would cost me:

$360 for a two month supply of jars of baby food.

Since making all my own baby food, and providing even more than the portion equivalent of two jars per meal, it has cost me:

$132 for a two month supply of homemade baby food ingredients.

The following is a shopping list of products I used to provide TWO MONTHS of meals for baby:

(Not all items were purchased in one shopping trip.  Some of the fresh produce was purchased separately each month.)

Fruits

2 Bunches Bananas             Costco             $4 ea.               $8

2 Flats Pears                          Costco             $6 ea.               $12

1 Frozen Strawberries       Costco             $10 ea.             $10

2 Flats Apples                       Costco             $10 ea.             $20

I also picked up a couple cans of organic pumpkin and sweet potatoes at Trader Joes.  I’m not sure the cost, but it was only a few dollars and 1 can lasted me for a whole week mixed amongst all these other options.

Veggies

1 Orgn Frzn Grn Beans       Costco             $6 ea.               $6

1 Organic Frozen Peas       Costco             $6 ea.               $6

1 Organic Frozen Corn      Costco             $6 ea.               $6

4 Bags Avocados                 Costco             $6 ea.               $16

Base Mixers

4 Cans H.B. Cereals – Albertsons       $4 ea.               $16

8/32 oz. Org Yogurts    Wal-Mart          $4 ea.                $32

You can also use scrambled eggs, pasta, and rice that you already have for bases to mix with purees.

From the above shopping list I’ve been able to mix and match ingredients to create meals like this:

Breakfast: Fruits and Yogurt or Cereal

Lunch: Fruits, Veggies, Yogurt and/or Cereal

Dinner: Veggies and Cereal and/or Meat from family dinner – pureed fish, turkey, chicken, or beef

Snacks: Finger food fruit pieces, crackers, dry cereal

To find out more about how I prepared and stored my homemade baby food, click here.

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Have you ever felt guilty about the food you feed to your babies?  I have.  All the time.  As I would sit there giving them scoop after scoop from a jar, some times forcing them to finish it I felt guilty because there was no way I would ever eat, or even taste much of the baby food I was making my little ones eat.

There was also no way I was ever going to make my own baby food.  At least, that’s what I thought.  I had two kids just fine who always ate their food from jars until they were old enough to eat with the rest of the family.  I had heard about people making baby food, but I thought that was reserved for Martha Stewart types with nothing else to do but twiddle their thumbs and make baby food.  Show offs! Huh. Not me.  Too much time and too much trouble.

Recently however I’ve been affected as so many of us have, by the economic downturn. I started paying attention to every penny spent because I was running out of pennies so frequently and needing to figure out where I could cut spending in order to spend elsewhere. I noticed that I was having a really hard time making my grocery budget each month and then I realized it was all due to baby food.  That’s right…. baby food!

All of a sudden I saw homemade baby food in a whole new light. I no longer considered it a ridiculous gourmet luxury created by well-to-do stay at home moms who wanted to show off. Instead I saw it as the only hope I had left to get my monthly grocery spending back in check. I had no idea if I could really save any money by making my own baby food, or how much I could save, but I knew I had to investigate it, because I couldn’t afford to keep buying the jars.

If I had kept buying those jars of wonderful organic baby food, I would have been spending $360.00 every two months just to feed my one year old.

No matter how great the savings, if I was going to make homemade baby food, it was going to have to be quick and easy to do.  I’ve already got way too much on my plate with home school, home making, church, three kids, a husband, and laundry.  Oh don’t get me started on the laundry!

Now that I’ve given it a try, I’ve learned that I can save a TON of money and I’ve learned that it is VERY easy to make your own baby food.  It has fit into my busy life VERY EASILY!  I am also starting to enjoy being in control of all the ingredients.  There are no chemicals or preservatives being snuck  into the food I’m making.  Everything I’m feeding my baby is stuff I would eat myself.

Bye bye guilty feeling.  Hello fresh affordable ingredients!

You don’t usually think of saving money and going organic as two things that work together. Usually you have to sacrifice one for the other.  AMAZINGLY… when it comes to baby food… I’m getting both.

Here’s is what one of the Costco bags of frozen veggies looks like.  I haven’t run out of one yet.  I know each will last for at least 2 months… maybe longer depending on how many different food options you are using each day.

Now the way I see it, depending on your personality type or the amount of time you have available, there are two ways you can prepare your baby food.

- You can take an afternoon and prepare all of it for the coming month.  For this option you will probably need about 4 hours, a large food processor, and several containers, ice trays, or muffin tins to freeze food in.

or

-  You can do like I’ve been doing, and each night when you are already in the kitchen preparing dinner, as you make green beans, peas, or corn to go with dinner, make the batch extra large. After dinner puree and freeze the left-overs, creating your baby food.  For this option any small food processor or blender will do, and you will only need one or two cupcake tins to freeze the food in and about fifteen extra minutes after dinner, twice a week.

(A lot of people use ice cube trays or Tupperware to freeze their baby food in.  This might be fine, however I have heard that there may be dangerous chemicals released from plastics into food and water when frozen, so I chose tin cupcake pans instead.  I also like the portion size of the tins better than ice cube size portions.)

Scoop the puree from the food processor into the cupcake tin to create your serving sizes.

Make sure to cover your tin or tray with plastic wrap to prevent freezer burn.

The next morning set your cupcake tin of baby food on the counter to thaw for about 5 minutes.  Then using the tip of a sharp pointed knife, slide the frozen food up and out of the tin.  This is very easy.  None of my food stuck to the trays at all, they just slid right out with no problems.

Next label and date a bag and fill it up with your servings sizes of frozen baby food.

I made my first batch of green beans on the same night when I made spaghetti for dinner.  So after dinner when I pureed and froze the green beans, I also pureed and froze some spaghetti.

By the next morning I already had enough Green Beans and Spaghetti frozen and ready to serve baby food dinners for two weeks.

All the meats and protein Llany has been getting have come from my regular dinners.  I’ve pureed chicken, turkey meat, ham, and spaghetti and given it to him at dinner time mixed with some of his frozen veggie purees.  I haven’t tried freezing any of the meats, but I’m sure at some point I will.

This is a website that I’ve found really helpful in giving tips about what kinds of things freeze and reheat well when making baby food, and what doesn’t.

The next night I made peas at dinner.

By the second morning after my first shopping trip for baby food ingredients I was well on my way to having plenty of healthy, organic baby food stored and ready to serve.

My favorite Rice Cereal to mix with fruits, proteins, and veggies is Happy Bellies.  You can learn more about that here.

One afternoon, Remy, my preschooler asked for some apples slices.  While I was cutting up her apple, I set the oven to 400 degrees and cut up 4 extra apples into slices, tossed them into a casserole dish, and popped them in the oven for 20 minutes.  I left the skin on them because that is where so much of the fiber is, and even with the skin, after they were baked they pureed just fine for a one year old. If you want to make pureed apples as a first foods for a 6 month old, you might opt. to leave the skins out of it for a smoother texture.  Also when making baby food for younger babies just add water to your purees to make them even smoother.

Apples were the only fruit I had to prepare ahead of time and make into a puree, freeze, and store.

For breakfast I usually give my baby fruit.  I take out two store-bought frozen strawberries, microwave them, mash them up, and add my favorite organic yogurt.

I also mash up fresh avocado, pear, and banana at meal times and add it to yogurt and/or rice cereal.

Another thing that has been easy to do is to take a few scoops of pumpkin or sweet potatoes out of a can and add it to yogurt, pasta, rice, or cereal.  I just store the leftovers in their can in the fridge with plastic wrap over it until the next time I need it; up to a week.

I would definitely consult your pediatrician before giving a vitamin to your child, but my kids have all been borderline anemic, so making sure that they get plenty of iron is a must.  In addition to giving lots of whole organic milk to drink and at least a serving of some type of green vegetable with dinner each day, I give Llany a dropper full of these baby vitamins with Iron.  This is available in the vitamin section at Wal-Mart.

Whenever I try to take on some kind of change in my lifestyle it seems far less daunting and intrusive to start out small.  All of this is just the beginning.  I’m hoping to add an even wider variety of ingredients to my baby food repertoire in the coming months.

And please don’t get me wrong!  I am in no way against jars of baby food.  I’ve still purchased a few from time to time to take with me on day trips or out to restaurants for a more convenient option.  I particularly like Earth’s Best organic baby food because it comes in glass jars instead of plastic, contains pure healthy ingredients, and comes in some great food combinations.

I just wasn’t able to afford jars of baby food as my only option anymore, and I’m so glad that I’ve discovered how inexpensive and easy it is to make homemade baby food.

I highly encourage you to GIVE IT A TRY!

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I like statistics.  They can be fascinating.  It’s always interesting to see how other people live and to see what, groups of people, think or feel.  I wish all statistics could be magically accurate.

I’m sure I must fall into all kinds of statistical categories.

- 1 of approximately 83 million Moms in America

- 1 of approximately 35 million Mom Bloggers in America

- 1 of approximately 1.5 million Home Schooling Moms in America

- 1 of approximately 83 million Moms in America who if they could choose to be any animal, would choose the octopus… we need more arms

(I made one of those up)

This year my hubby became a statistic too.

- 1 of approximately 2.5 million American’s to lose their job between January and September of 2009

Yep… my Einstein, bachelor of computer science, degree wielding, husband, is among the ranks of millions in this country now looking for a job.

This year I’ve had to revise, and watch our budget very closely.  I’ve been paying attention to how every dime is spent, and we’ve been doing ok, but all of a sudden in September I noticed I was really struggling to make my grocery budget.

When I sat down and analyzed it all, I found that I was taking extra trips to the grocery store in between my usual twice a month trips to Costco and Winco.  Each time I made those in-between trips I was spending money that I hadn’t budgeted for.

Finally this month I figured out what was happening.

It was all to blame on my one year old.

Yep. That’s right.  It’s all Llany’s fault.

That little growing sweetheart had started eating six jars of baby food a day, which of course I knew about, but hadn’t considered the extra cost.  Once I identified the culprit of my out-of-whack budget, I sat down and calculated how much I was actually spending on baby food.

Lany has been eating two, stage two, jars of baby food, per meal.  I stick with the Earth’s Best organic brand and those are usually between ¢.74 and ¢.99 each. With tax that’s about $6 per day x 30 days in a month… $180.00 to feed my one year old each month?!  What?!

Oh no no no no! This cannot continue. No! It most certainly can NOT!  Is this what I did with both my other kids??? Sheeeesh.  The things you miss, when not unemployed.

But then I thought…Seriously?  Am I seriously about to become one of those moms who makes her own baby food?

During my second pregnancy I saw a tiny little food processor on sale at the grocery store and bought it, thinking I might make some of my own baby food.  That happy little food processor has been in its happy little box, all this time, hidden waaaaaay back in my cupboard.  It’s not that the idea of making baby food had never crossed my mind. It was that now I was faced with really, actually, truly having to do it.

Yeah… I’ve been that mom.  The mom with good intentions and poor, poor delivery.

The mom who once in a while grabs a coupon, sticks it in her wallet, then completely forgets about it at the register.

The mom who thinks about hiding spinach in brownies to secretly shove vitamins and nutrients into her kids, but then makes the brownies late at night when the kids are in bed, skips the spinach, and eats the whole pan herself.

The mom who while pregnant sees books and talk shows where people make their own baby food and thinks, “My, how healthy. I’ll have to do that too.” But then the baby arrives and “instant” anything, dominates everything.

Yep that’s been me… but lately… I have been changin’ my ways.

I haven’t eaten a whole pan of brownies by myself in at least ten… okay six, months.

I’m going to start remembering to use coupons… I promise.

And yes… I have started making homemade baby food.

Thank you, thank you.  Oh you’re too kind.  No really I don’t deserve all the applause.  No really… Well ok. Go ahead then.  Yes…. Yes.  Thank you.  Thank you ever so much.

Later this month, I’ll share more about how I’ve been making my own baby food, how in the world I’ve found time to make my own baby food,  and how much money it has been saving me… if any.

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