Baby Wipes Recipe

I mentioned to Cowboy this evening that we were running low on baby wipes, which usually never happens because I buy in bulk at Sam's Club. (Remember my love for Sam's Club?) However, I've been making a concerted effort to not overspend lately, which means I've been looking for bargains and using coupons.

When I told Cowboy about running low on wipes, he said, "Why don't you make some homemade baby wipes?" I thought briefly about this and decided, yes, I could make my own baby wipes. I haven't done this since Miss B and C-Man were babies. I knew I had the ingredients on hand, so I went for it.

If you're ever interested, here's the recipe:

Baby Wipes
1/2 roll Bounty paper towels
2 cups water
2 T baby bath
2 T baby oil

Cut roll of paper towels in half. (I use an electric knife for this). Remove cardboard roll from the center. Place the towels in a storage container (mine is a very old Rubbermaid 10 cup round container that they apparently no longer make). Mix water, baby bath, and baby oil together and pour over paper towels. Remove wipes from the center of the roll.

The beauty of homemade baby wipes is that you can use whatever baby products you would normally use on your little one. For example, if you're an Arbonne or Burt's Bees fan, you can now use these same gentle products to wipe your baby's chubby, dimpled tush at changing time.

I originally got this recipe almost 18 years ago when I worked at a daycare in the infant room the summer after my freshman year of college. One of the moms made these wipes for her sweet little Jacqueline, who is graduating from high school somewhere this year. I'm so OLD! The wipes smelled SO good and were so gentle. I fell in love with them and her mom typed the recipe onto a cute little recipe card. I've held onto that card all these years.

Happy wiping!!!

My Love Affair with Sam's Club

If you know me very well, you know I LOVE Sam's Club. It's 10 minutes from my house, easy to maneuver all my kids through their wide aisles, workers are friendly, they give us free food, we can all grab lunch at their cafe for cheap, ....

Several weeks back they had a little table set up when you entered and asked to scan your card to let you know how much you saved by shopping there over the past year. This made me excited because I LOVE saving money and I'd just been thinking about how much of our money goes there. The sweet lady even told me how the family before us had saved over $400 in the past year. WOW--how exciting! She scanned the card as our family waited patiently, while eating some of the candy from her candy bowl.

Then she told me the disappointed news, "You saved fifteen twenty-six." I was thinking, "Are you kidding me? We only saved $15.26 by shopping here for a year!" Then it hit me! YIKES--how much had we actually SPENT here to have saved $1,526 in one year?

Maybe I like Sam's a little too much. Or maybe, just maybe, it costs a fortune to buy diapers, pull-ups, baby food, Tide, Downy, dishwashing detergent, Coke Zero, Mountain Dew, and groceries in general...for 6 people for a year.

Helping the Homeless....Or are We?

Several years ago some of our good friends shared with us a very easy way that their family helps homeless people. Since then we've tried to do our part. A couple weeks ago while Miss B & I were gone skiing, Cowboy and the boys were out running errands. C-Man was disturbed by the fact that they drove by homeless people and were unprepared. So the boys made a run to Sam's and were ready to offer a bag of hope to homeless people on street corners.

The bags are easy to assemble, easy to keep under the driver's seat of a car, and are always greatly appreciated. In the above picture are the items they purchased to fill this batch of bags. We always include in a brown paper lunch sack (by the looks of this Sam's purchase we'll have paper bags in stock until all our children are grown) a fruit cup, something with some protein (this time it was peanut butter crackers), a bottle of water, a plastic spoon, and sometimes a peppermint. We usually decorate the brown paper sacks with markers and tell the people who receive them that God loves them.

In the last couple weeks we've given out several sacks. It makes our hearts smile to get the sincere thanks from the men and women who receive the sacks. However, I'm now afraid that we've given them the gift of salmonella! YIKES!!! I heard today about a potential recall of peanut butter crackers. I did a little research and discovered that the particular kind of crackers we bought are on the list of items potentially affected. I'm throwing away the remainder of the crackers we haven't given yet and praying we have not made some homeless person sick.