Monday, July 18, 2011

Pizza Pinwheels, Cleaning Clothes and Mobile Muchkins

Pizza Pinwheels, Cleaning Clothes and Mobile Muchkins!

The three have absolutely NOTHING in common...unless your life is similar to mine!

My baby girl is TOTALLY mobile now. She's a pro at it. It's so much fun to play with her and let her discover things.  The new challenges that come up for us in our day to day routine are very welcomed, it's definitely an adventure. We live in a pretty small house, which worked for the hubby & I while it was just the two of us. Making it work as a space for our daughter is a big thing that we work on constantly. When we found out that we were expecting the big thing was to convert the 'man cave' into a baby's bedroom & getting rid of a lot of the things that we really didn't need but for some reason still had. When she was born the big thing was making sure there was enough room for all of the things that you don't think about before you have kids & getting through all of those sleepless nights when she would scream and scream for reasons which we couldn't figure out (we eventually did). Now it's just the regular evolution of creating a safe space for her to explore and have fun in while we're home. So far we've adapted really well I'd say. As I'm typing this she's emptying out her basket of toys that we have stationed in the living room, it fits perfectly under the entertainment station when she's not playing with it. Sometimes I wonder how much of us this house can take, but I guess we'll get that answer eventually too.

This weekend I was reorganizing all of her clothes and her room. Saturday night she was my big helper with the clothes. I was sorting it all out into the different sizes so I could put it into labeled space bags, and let me just say, there's not much that's more frustrating than folding all of those clothes perfectly, (and thanks to the generosity of a few amazing people there's A LOT of clothes. lol) getting it all neatly into the space bag, you go to vacuum the air out of the bag and you find out that there are holes in 3 of the 4 bags that you've pulled out.... oy. I still need to go dig out the rest of the space bags and hope for the best.


But anyways, baby girl decided to be my big helper with the sorting part. Mainly she helped by trying on her newborn clothes...she's 10 months old now, for obvious reasons it TOTALLY didn't work! She got so mad at it, it was pretty funny. She'd take whatever shirt or onsie she was mad at, crawl over to the gate that keeps her out of the kitchen, stand up and proceed to throw said article of clothing into the middle of the kitchen floor. Epicly funny if you ask me.


While I was going through all of those clothes I came across a trash bag full of her 0-3 month clothes that had just been tossed to the side and forgot about along the way. When I opened it I found a really mysterious stain on a majority of the clothes. It really hurt my feelings because so much of it was a gift from one person or another. And if you've been around me long enough you know that something like that is just as horrible as if they were to stop making coca-cola...it was TERRIBLE! I started freaking out. I called a few people to ask if they knew how to get tough stains out of clothes. A lot of the ideas that people gave me sounded really good, but I'd heard horror stories about some of the ingredients in these miracle solutions on clothes, so naturally I was still worried.

Then I called one of the few people that I hadn't thought of yet...my nana. What an amazing person that woman is. So she told me a simple fix to the problem, and I even had everything at the house to start fixing it right away. All I needed was laundry detergent and oxy clean...why didn't I think of this?! (She said to use tide but I just used the laundry soap that I make myself.). Fill a bucket halfway with really hot water, a scoop or two of powder oxy clean, and some laundry detergent. Make sure its all mixed together really well and soak your clothes in it for an hour or so, (I did it for two just for good measure.) After the time is up wring your clothes and take a look at them to see if the stain is gone, if it's not totally gone take a toothbrush, dip it in the water your clothes were soaking in & scrub. When I pulled the clothes out it was like magic I tell you! I only had to scrub 2 or 3 outfits, there was easily 25-30 outfits I was cleaning! I rinsed the clothes, wrung them out again and tossed them in the dryer. It was supposed to rain over night so hanging them out on the clothes line didn't make much sense to me.  Simple and effective...I LOVE IT!

And now it's on to the creations in my kitchen! (Oh don't be surprised, you totally knew I was going there.)

A few weeks ago I made Pizza Pinwheels. They're really easy to make & it doesn't take long either. So it was like a double bonus for me!

What you'll need:


1 Pillsbury pizza crust (Thin Crust is what I used)
1 (14 oz) jar pizza sauce (I stirred in more seasoning for added flavor. Onion powder, garlic powder, parsley & basil)
1 bag shredded mozzarella cheese
pepperonis, cut in half



What To Do:


The Pinwheels:


Preheat the oven to 400.


Get a cookie sheet, spray it with pam.

Lay out your pizza crust on the sheet



Bake for 5 minutes.

Remove it from the oven & cut it up into strips. About 1 1/4 inches give or take. (It's never an exact science in my kitchen, I know.) I used a pizza cutter to cut the strips, made it really easy.


Spoon on a thin layer of pizza sauce to the length of the strip.



Add a thin layer of cheese

Add the pepperoni, you can over lap the slices to get more on the strip if you'd like.

Then add another layer of cheese, this layer can have more cheese than the first, it's going to help hold the whole thing together.


Roll the strip & cut it in half.


Place the pinwheels flat on the cookie sheet (cut side down) & bake for 7-10 minutes. Or until the pinwheels start turning golden brown. (For a crispier crust cook 10-12 minutes.)


The Dipping Sauce:

Mix whatever you have left of the pizza sauce left and half a jar of marinara sauce. & BAM! Instant yum!

And that's it! Dinners done! =)

Enjoy!

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