Kid Lovin' Healthy Foods

We've been working to make our household more healthy and while this has been a frustrating thing a lot of times, I've been excited to find some great alternatives for the kids. I'd love to hear what you've found for your own families too!

I do most of our grocery shopping at Walmart (you can't beat their prices!), and although they've started carrying more healthy choices, there are still some things I have to buy elsewhere.

Our kids have always loved yogurt. I never really payed much attention to what all was in there though. Yogurt just seemed to equal nutritious.

WRONG.
Read the labels! Not all yogurt is created equal!

I'm no expert, but here are some things I've found and that all or some of our kids like:

• Horizon's "Little Blends" is an organic yogurt that mixes a veggie with a fruit. It sounds gross but it's actually pretty good. It's made specifically for babies and toddlers.
• Stonyfield's "Yo Baby 3 in 1 Meals" is another organic yogurt that combines veggie and fruit. It's bigger and the flavors are different. They are sold individually for about $1 apiece. Joshua scarfed it down the first time I gave it to him!
  
• Stonyfield's "O'Soy" soy yogurt is surprisingly good if you're trying to do the vegan thing. It's just a fruit and isn't marketed to kids but my younger two like it. (The older two have had the sugary kinds too long and are taking longer to win over.)
• Stonyfield's "Yokids" organic fruit yogurt. The packaging is obviously trying to appeal to kids. It's good! (It still has a hard time competing with the stupid Trix Rabbit.)
  

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to find these next things!!!

• We use the twisted fruit (which is like a twizzler candy but is all fruit!) as a reward for eating dinner good without complaining. What a difference these have made in our home! You'll find them right with all the "fruit" snacks and granola bars.
• Fruit Roll-Ups now has "simply fruit" roll-ups that are 90% fruit. The big kids were opposed to these at first since they knew there were a healthy kind, but once they ate one they loved them! So far I've only found these at Target.
  

• Kashi cereal bars are like Nutri-grain bars but so much better for you. Nutrigrain bars was another thing that just seemed healthy and I didn't think much about. But then I read the label.....
• These Kashi "Dark Chocolate Coconut" bars are absolutely delicious! If you have a sweet tooth and you're fighting cravings you should check these out. Trust me - I should know!
  

• Another Stonyfield product we buy is "Yokids squeezers". These are just like the "'gogurts" (the tubes of yogurt with ScoobyDoo on them) but they are organic and don't have the corn syrups and other junk in them. Walmart doesn't carry them - not ours anyway. =(

• Cascadian Farm Organic "Dark Chocolate Almond Granola" is my favorite breakfast cereal now. I eat is everyday and it doesn't get old. At less than $3 a box I really like this one.
  

• Yea for Capri Sun who finally made 100% juice drinks! Again, my older two don't think these are near as good as normal Capri Suns, but I won't buy them those so they may as well learn to like the new kind!
  

• These all natural fruit strips by Stretch Island Fruit Co. are kind of like fruit roll-ups just a different shape. They come in several different flavors and they've been a bit hit too.

These are some of the new food that work for me! I'd love to hear what's working for you......

New Store Love

I have absolutely LOVED the resale store "Once Upon a Child" for years. I bought John David's first clothes there and have been a loyal shopper ever since. Buying (more specifically, paying for) brand new clothes all the time just seems ridiculous to me. Of course, there have been many times I've done just that for various reasons but those times are definitely the exception.

Well, be still my heart. Today I discovered the teen/adult version of this chain! It's owned by the same company and here where we live it's actually right next door to Once Upon a Child. The store is called Plato's Closet.

This resale place is packed with tons of clothes, shoes, bags, accessories, and coats for men and women both. They're picky about what they buy from people so it's good stuff! I was sad to only have about half an hour and two tired babies with me. You can bet I'll be figuring out how to get back there without kids very soon.

Check out their website to see if there's a location near you......

I'm linking up today because awesome clothes for a great price works for me!

Closet and Jewelry Help

One day I'll (hopefully) have my dream closet:

but in the meantime I have to be creative. I don't have a lot of room, there's not a lot of money, and there are a lot of little children around to get into things within their reach. Bottom line, I may not be in love with how it looks, but I have to do what works.

First off, although I don't have a huge jewelry collection, I do have one. There's no way the little I have would be safe if my little girls even thought they could reach it. (See here, here, here or here if you don't believe me. They're just stinkin' mischievous, I'm telling you.) So I put a bulletin board way up in my closet to hang my stuff on.

My necklaces and bracelets don't get tangled and I can actually see what I have so I don't forget about things. Some of my earrings go on the board, but I put a lot of them in that silver dish underneath the board.

I also put this shelf in my closet. We used it for books in our last house and I was about to sell it on Craigslist when I thought it might be great in my closet. I love it! The top shelf holds my underthings and the other shelves hold shoes and scarves and gloves. I frequently see these same type of shelves on Craigslist for much less than buying one new.

It's not the perfect closet design, but it was next to free and it works for me! Go to We Are THAT Family for other tips and tricks that work for other bloggers....

Here are my other Works For Me Wednesday posts....

Extra Space Solution

We have four kids and even though we're lucky, no blessed, enough to have a four bedroom house, it can still be hard to find a place for everything. Seriously, where does all this stuff come from???

Up until a few months ago, we lived with my in-laws (bless their precious patient hearts!) for 14 months. Our oldest three kids shared one bedroom and space was most certainly an issue.

All three of them had to share one closet and one three drawer chest. That really cramped my shopping style! (Not really. Not a lot of money was the culprit there!) Anyway, the closet in their room didn't even have a double rod so Mommy had to come up with something.


So I went to Walmart. Did you know they make rods that hang down from your existing rod so that you'll have two? I was so excited to find this contraption and it only cost $10. (It's sold in the section with laundry stuff, rubbermaid tubs, and closet organizing things.)I bought two of them and even though they had to overlap a little bit due to the width of the closet, it still worked great!

The second thing I had to figure out was drawer space. I remembered that I had some extra rubbermaid tubs in the attic and they were a perfect fit under their bed. We put pajamas, underwear, pants, and shorts in our custom "pull-out drawers".

When we moved into our current house we bought the girls a new set of bunk beds. The bottom bed is high enough that I'm able to stack the "drawers" two high! They are perfect for clothes and toys both! For the toys we put lids on and usually pull one or two out for the day. We leave lids off of the clothes boxes just for convenience.


All I'm saying is that if I could fit three kids in one room (quite neatly I might add!), you can find room for your stuff too!

To see what's working for other bloggers this week, go check out We Are THAT Family!

Helmets? Muzzles? Pinesol?

It's a backwards theme this week so I'm laying it all out there with some of my biggest problems right now. I thought about asking for help with my addiction to Dr Pepper, but who am I kidding? I don't want help with that problem. All joking aside, I hope that someone, somewhere, has some answers for me!

First, my one year old. He's a freakin' monkey! He won't walk and he will barely, barely talk, but he climbs. Everything. Anything. Here are the pictures to prove it. I have four kids so it's kind of hard to watch him every moment. It's getting scary! I can at least close doors to bedrooms and bathrooms, but the dining table and couches are fair game. And we have tile floor. I've contemplated an electric fence around the whole table, but that seems a tad drastic. Ideas???

Second would be my loud mouth five year old. For awhile I thought maybe she was going deaf because she talks so loud ALL THE TIME. But after I tested her hearing (myself, not professionally), I determined she just has a loud mouth. We've developed a signal to tell her she needs to lower the volume, but she's usually too wrapped up in what she's saying to notice. That leads to us calling her name to get her attention, and then almost yelling her name so she can hear us over he own voice! It's crazy. Would duct tape be grounds for child abuse here? Or maybe a muzzle? I'm just wondering.

Lastly, my 8 year old hates tooth paste and teeth brushing. We've tried all kinds of stuff, but the most luck we've had is using Tom's Natural toothpaste. I guess it cleans the teeth, but it just doesn't cut it when it comes to Golden Graham breath in the morning. Yuck! I usually smell his breath after he brushes and if it's still stinky I make him use a child's mouthwash. This never goes over well and I have to threaten to ground him before he uses the stuff. For his classmates' sake, PLEASE help us! Morning breath + Golden Grahams = Raunchy!!! It seems like swishing some Pinesol might help but there's surely a more economical way. Have you seen the price of cleaners lately?  

Somebody help a girl! Seriously, I need some advice!

After you solve all my problems, go over to We Are THAT Family and help some others too....

Pretty Shampoo Bottles

I really love pretty looking bottles and containers. It doesn't matter if it's going to be in a drawer or cabinet or closet or, in this case, the shower - I like pretty!

When I was given some nice (and expensive - youch!) shampoo and conditioner from Bath and Body Works I was a really happy girl. My shower looked classy. And even though I tried to ration it out and only allow my husband to wash his hair weekly, it didn't work. The bottles were soon empty. Boohooo!


I couldn't bear to throw them out. At the time, we were going to be moving into our newly remodeled "Piece", so I held on to them. As soon as we moved in, one of the first things I did was to pour much cheaper, yet perfectly acceptable shampoo and conditioner into those bottles. I was thrilled to place them in my shower! Now, whenever the bottles are empty, I just refill them again with whatever cheapo stuff I bought at Wally World. My wallet is happy and my eyes are happy too. And you can bet that I'll keep using these same old bottles until their sad little paper labels are falling off!

I have also been known to pour generic brand stuff out of it's ugly containers into my pretty name brand containers in my kitchen too. It's a sickness, really. (But as long as we're pointing fingers, my husband chooses his orange juice based on the pretty bottle - never mind that it costs almost twice as much! He'll deny it, but it's true.)

We heart pretty bottles. =)

If you've never been over to We Are THAT Family, you should totally go! On Wednesdays there's lots of good stuff that might just work for you! Check it out!