Life as a Leach

Little Mozart has discovered the piano! This girl LOVES music.  She dances and claps to any kind of music, and really enjoys the piano.  Her favorite song is "Little Red Wagon" by Raffi.  She starts bumping up and down as soon as you start singing it! As a fun giveaway to celebrate 200,000 hits, I want to hear about your favorite songs!  Simply leave a comment here, on Facebook, or through email sharing your favorite song, the name of the writer/band, and a short little statement about why you love it!  You can enter up to 3 songs!  Just post each entry separately, because I'll be numbering all of the entries and having Caleb choose a number.  Multiple songs in one comment will only be counted as one entry. As a bonus, you get an extra entry if you link this giveaway to your own blog or Facebook page!  Just write in a comment that you did so.  (You can get an extra entry for each one if you put it on your blog and FB page!)...

Lock and Lock's $1 shop is back and there are definitely a couple of things worth checking out!!  They are already selling out of items, so go quickly!  The sale is going on until February 6th. One thing I noticed was this salad bowl , which is a nice lunch size (for a lot more than salad) or for storing leftovers. Another good deal is this water bottle .  I have gotten these before and they're really nice!  I used them as part of Caleb's teachers' gifts (paired with a lunch bag and some treats.) My mom uses this water bottle all of the time!  It has a cover and then a screw cap, so it's not going to leak on you. You may not be able to think of a use for this at first, but I love mine!  It is the perfect size to hold a cupcake, onion, tomato, green pepper, or other roundish vegetable!  I use it a lot, and $1 is a good price for it! I use these little round containers all of the time!!  I put salad dressing in them, pack some goldfish ...

I've got the shrimp sauteeing in my wok , pasta boiling in the pot , and chicken sauteeing in my ceramic pan.  (yes, I scorched it once because I had the heat up too high...but it still works great!) So what has become of all of my non-Lock & Lock cookware? They are Abby's drums.  :)

I have some great Lock and Lock products to give away, so I decided to do the first of several caption contests.  The rules:  Come up with a caption for this photo. Then submit it either on Facebook (underneath of the Networked Blogs post), by leaving a comment on the blog under this post, or by emailing me at juliebleach@yahoo.com .  You can enter as many captions as you like!  The winner will be chosen anonymously by a non-biased third party.  Translation:  I'll read all of the entries to Matt and he'll choose one without knowing who it is.  Since you know Matt has the final choice, remember that he loves stupid humor and when the caption is tied to other things that I've talked about in the past on the blog.  So be creative!  :) The winner will receive their choice of either a Hot Tank Vacuum Bottle  or a cosmetics holder .   Both are brand new! The winner will be chosen at 9:00 p.m. on ...

This is what my dishwaster looks like every night.  No joke...filled with Lock and Lock of various styles and sizes.  There are a few small plastic containers from Caleb's lunch, a few larger plastic containers that held snacks in the snack cabinet, and a couple of glass containers of various sizes for our reheatable leftovers.  This is pretty much how it looks every time I run it.  I'm a L&L girl!

This is technically called a salad bowl , but I use it for just about everything!  It holds a lot of cookies to take to a Christmas party!  Seriously, this container is hardly ever sitting in the storage cabinet.  It's almost always in use! I have had my eye on this guy for a while, so imagine my delight when I opened up my Support Package to find it in there!  Merry Christmas to me!!!!!!!!  I love how deep it is, and it cooks just like all of the other Cookplus Vitamin products--quickly, evenly, and with very little clean up.  LOVE it!  It's my new favorite pan. If you're looking for a new pan, get this wok.  It can be used for lots of things and the stuff doesn't slosh out of the sides as much because it is so deep.  L-O-V-E it!!!

It was a Lock and Lock Christmas at our house!!  My mom gave everyone in the family at least one piece. These pictures are a little on the silly side, but I will try to link the product so that you can see what each one is.  Matt actually got something we didn't have yet! I really like these square ones for leftovers. This one is good for pouring things (like coffee, if you drink it).  The one in the background is the perfect size for a cupcake, onion, or green pepper.  I actually use that one a lot. Sadly, I cannot find a link to these exact containers.  They were a special set, so I think they probably just discontinued it.  It's two large containers with a handle, with several smaller containers inside of each one.  These are the best kind of deal when they have a sale because you get a lot of different sizes.  The best part of this whole picture is the baby legs sticking out after a fresh diaper.  :) I did some reorgani...

Give the gift of Lock and Lock!! I sure am! We've given all of Abby's nurses and Caleb's teachers Lock and Lock in some form or another (and always with food inside!) and these treats are for his Sunday school teachers.  Water bottles, round containers, and these rectangular containers have all been given as gifts this year.  Our day nurse is well aware of my L&L obsession and asked if I wanted the container back after she finished the treats!  :)  I assured her that that was part of the gift. Germaphobe note:  I most definitely washed the containers thoroughly before putting the treats inside.  This was done at the risk of the recipient thinking I was giving them a used container (They were new!  I promise!), but I figured they'd appreciate their food being in a clean container. Stay tuned for the recipe for these delicious peppermint chocolate rice crispie treats!  :) PS:  Matt discovered my L&L stash today and mandat...

Caleb's laundry basket has been falling part for a while now...like, a couple of years.  I just haven't gotten around to replacing it.  Enter Lock and Lock!  I got this as a supporter gift! It's a lot bigger than it looks, and it holds quite a bit of little boy laundry! These are also stackable, if you have more than one.  I don't right now, but I might have to order some more!

In case you're wondering what kind of stuff I get for being a Lock and Lock supporter, this is just one of six or seven items that came in a huge box last week.  It is well worth the blogging time when you get such awesome products to use and review!  This is a Speed Cook pot. One of those most fun things about it is that it has holes in the top of the yellow handle on the lid for your chopsticks!!  (Lock and Lock is an Asian company, so many of their products support Asian customs and traditions!)  PLUS, you can flip the lid over and it is a bowl!!  After using this pot for rice, it does seem to boil the water faster.  I was surprised at how quickly the water boiled--and on my "slow" burner at that!  But it's also a really nice, lightweight sauce pan at a good price.  Plus, L&L is always having some kind of deal, so keep an eye out if you like this pot!   I am not ashamed to say that most of my pots and pan...

There is a huge sale from now until November 20th at http://www.lockandlockplace.com/ .  EVERYTHING is 50% off with the promo code PREBLK2011   I just got some gifts to stash away, as well as some containers to help me organize my hall closet.  Good deals, good deals!!  :)

We have been using a communication book with Abby where I printed small iPad icon-sized pictures of various toys she has and put them in little pockets.  If Abby wants to play with a toy, she has to tell us first by pointing to the picture.  She's doing a great job at this, although she sometimes gets frustrated when she can see the real toy and we make her point to the picture!  All of this is getting her ready to use an iPad communication app where she will touch a picture and the iPad will speak for her.  She's been working with one during speech sessions, and if she touches the picture of the blocks, it will say, "I want to play with blocks."  It's pretty cool! The only problem we've hit is that it's sometimes hard to find the toy that she points to once she's told us she wants it...her toys were pretty much just thrown into 6 or 7 different baskets.  There was no rhyme or reason to it, so I often would only give her picture choices of the toy...

The Lock and Lock obsession starts young!  I was filling out this little survey that we did for our Secret Santa at work, and it asked what we collect.  I thought for a while, and I don't really "collect" anything...except Lock and Lock!  So I wrote that!  Hey, anybody who bought me L&L would be the best Secret Santa ever!  :) I may or may not have a stash in my garage of brand new L&L containers that are waiting to be used to organize a cabinet or closet!  Hey, when the urge hits me, I have to be ready!!

In the past few months, I have really been trying to make the change to using glass in the microwave instead of plastic.  I'm almost there...I am to the point where I notice when I stick a plastic container in there!  To help with this, I've been trying to put our leftovers in glass containers whenever possible.  This makes it much easier to heat them up without having to pour them from the plastic container to a glass one.  (Plus, it cuts down on the amount of dishes in the dishwasher that we already run every day!) I got some more glass containers in my last L&L supporter shipment, which made me extremely happy!  I have been running out of glass containers if I have too many leftovers, so this should help. I do have some Pyrex containers that I will bake in, but honestly, I try to avoid putting leftovers in them.  I'm not just saying this...the Lock and Lock containers keep the food fresh for a whole lot longer!!  Since I'm the only one in my...

Lock and Lock is having a $1 sale right now and there are some really good buys in there!  My favorite is this half and half container .  I use this one all of the time in Caleb's lunches (broccoli and dip, chips and salsa, two different snack items, etc.)  $1 is a really good buy for this, so snatch it up now!  :)  There are a few other fun $1 buys too, like this big container  or this water bottle .  We have several of the water bottles in various sizes and really like them.  PLUS, right now if you spend $100 in one transaction, you get a $25 gift card for L&L!  Christmas shopping, perhaps?! Let me know if you score any good deals!

For Abby's party, I made some pumpkin playdough for the kids to play with.  It included pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon so that it really did smell like a yummy pie!  I am a lover of homemade playdough, but this is my first time making pumpkin.  Here's my tried and true recipe! Materials 2 cups flour 1 cup salt 4 teaspoons cream of tartar pumpkin pie spice (Caleb just shook a bunch in until it smelled "pumpkiny!" cinnamon (no measuring here either) 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 2 cups water Food coloring (we used 6 drops of red and 15 drops of yellow) Instructions 1.Combine the dry ingredients in a nonstick saucepan. 2. Add the oil to 1 cup of water and pour over mix.  3.  Add food coloring to the second cup of water and add to the mixture.  4.  Whisk until smooth. 5.  Stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, cook the mixture over medium heat until it forms a ball--about 3 to 4 minutes. 3. Turn the doug...

I tried out another meatless meal on my family recently. I am really liking this new Gardein brand.  The food is really good, the price isn't bad (for vegetarian food), and it has low/no soy.  ( Soy contains a lot of estrogen , which can cause all sorts of health problems.  Researchers generally agree that you're not at a big risk unless you eat a lot of soy--like vegetarians--so I try to avoid it when I can.) This is Mandarin Chik'n, and it was tasty!   It cooked up very quickly in my trusty  Lock & Lock frying pan.   Matt had at least 3 helpings, and Caleb declared it "good."  Matt even asked if we could have this again.  Score!! We put the chik'n over rice, which I boiled in my Lock & Lock sauce pan .  Water heats much faster in these, which cuts down on prep time during the week--always an added bonus! I have started putting all of our side dishes in L & L right off the bat.  It's not like we have to be fancy or ...

With Caleb, I pretty much made all of his baby food.  I found it to be a lot cheaper, but wasn't anti-store brands by any means.  It was just more cost-effective for us, and I liked doing it.  I would make a big batch at once and fill ice cube trays.  Once the food was frozen, I would pop them out and put them in a container with a label on it.  Well, that's just not going to work so well with Abby.  See, she only eats 1 teaspoon 4x a day.  That's 5 mls....not very much!!  One regular ice cube of frozen food would last her about 2 weeks. You can't thaw and refreeze food....which means we would be wasting a lot of food.  So, this time around it is more cost-effective for us to buy food.  When I open a can, I put it into this cute little ice cube tray I found that is actually for cocktail drinks.  I'm repurposing it. :)  Each little cube is just about 2 1/2 mls, so we give Abby 2 at a time. This makes 60 cubes, which is ...

My mom took a salad for lunch last week and brought her salad dressing in a tiny Tupperware container.  She's an avid L &L user, but figured that for this small amount of salad dressing, the Tupperware would be better than a bigger round L & L container. Welp, the salad dressing spilled allllll over her lunch bag and made a big ole mess.  My response? You shoulda used Lock & Lock! She agreed!

Right before school started, I made a batch of corn bread muffins and put cut-up pieces of turkey dogs in each one.  They're basically easier-to-eat corn dogs, and they are awesome for Caleb's lunches!  I buy the corn bread mix from Trader Joe's (delicious, I might add!!!...the corn bread, not the corn dogs) and froze the muffins after I made them so that I could just pull out one at a time.  This is the 3-divided container I talked about before.  It's my favorite for Caleb's lunch because it holds a lot and nothing gets mixed up with the other sections.  That way, you can have something like strawberries and not have to worry about the juice getting on the cheese.  For this particular lunch, Caleb has veggie straws, a couple of cheese slices, and dried pineapple.  It's a little more colorful than it looks here, because the veggie straws are spinach and tomato.  For some reason, they all show up yellowish...making for a very yellow meal.  :...