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Homemade Snow Ice Cream Recipe And Snow Cones

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Make a sweet treat on a snow day with our homemade snow ice cream recipe! Snow ice cream is a wonderful treat for the kids and mom and this recipe and video make it easy!

Make a sweet treat on a snow day with our homemade snow ice cream recipe! This is a wonderful treat for the kids and mom to enjoy together! This recipe and video make it easy!

With snow in most of the country I thought I would post these recipes and tips for a fun frugal snow day, including our homemade snow ice cream recipe!

There are lots of great ways to enjoy snow days or make them better for the kids. We have a family tradition of making snow ice cream every year with the kids and they look forward to the first snowfall with enough snow to make homemade snow ice cream. We have one child who doesn’t like milk or ice cream, so we make snow cones for him and I am including our easy snow cone recipe here, too!

Sometimes, people get a little weird about using snow on the ground, but never fear! We have been making snow ice cream for years and nobody has died. Of course, you want to use fresh snow that has recently fallen and not dirty snow or, even worse, yellow snow! haha!

After the recipes, I included some pictures of some of our snow adventures, including sledding, snow surfing when you don’t have hills and igloo building, which we did for quite a few years when the kids were younger!

I put some pictures of our place too! Enjoy!

Tawra

Watch our “How To Make Snow Ice Cream” videos below!

How To Make Snow Ice Cream video

Our kids love it when it snows because they love making and, more importantly, eating homemade snow ice cream!

Genuine Kansas weather gnome

Genuine Kansas Weather Gnome

The directions say, “If it’s covered in snow, it’s snowing!”

Here's an easy 2 ingredient snow cones recipe you can make with fresh snow or crushed ice! A prefect treat that the kids will love!
House winter wonderland
winter wonderland - snow covered playground
david with a snowball

First, a stay dry tip: Slip plastic sacks over the kids feet to keep them dry. Put them on over the socks and the put on their shoes. Tie the handles around their legs.

sledding behind a lawn tractor mower

If you don’t have a 4-wheeler get out the lawn mower!

Kids sledding in the snow

Baby Jack’s First Sledding!

snow surfing behind a lawn mower

Snow Surfing In Kansas. This is how you have fun in the snow with no hills!

From our snow storm 2 weeks ago

Mom and Jack in the snow

Jack’s first time in the snow (with mom not feeling so great 🙂

gathering snow for the snow fort

Elly and BJ collecting snow to make igloo bricks. They used a plastic tub to make the snow bricks.

building the igloo
bj building the igloo

BJ and David working on the igloo

the homemade igloo is taller than Elly
Elly sand dad in the ogloo

Elly and Mike posing with the final product.

[dining]

2 Recipes To Clean Burned Pots and Pans

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Do your pots and pans look like they’ve been to war? It can be a challenge to clean burned pots and pans, but these easy recipes and tips make it easier! [Read more…] about 2 Recipes To Clean Burned Pots and Pans

25 Practical Tips To Help You Get Organized

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It’s time to get organized! Here are 25 easy practical and specific tips to help you start getting organized and to make organizing as easy as possible!

Time to get organized! Here are 25 easy practical tips to help you start getting organized and to make organizing as easy as possible!

25 Practical Tips To Help You Get Organized

If you missed Get Organized Part 1, you can find it here.

One of the main excuses we use to avoid getting organized is that we don’t know where to start. We can become so overwhelmed that it can actually paralyze us mentally so that we can’t figure out what to do. I was at that point myself the day after Christmas this year. Boy did I have a mess, plus my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was really bad. I was caught in a vicious cycle. I was too sick to clean, but sitting in a mess was making me worse and I was desperate to get organized.

Finally, I decided I needed to practice what I preached and, using sheer grit, I made up my mind to start to get organized by just cleaning off just my fireplace mantle. While I was doing that, I noticed some other things in other areas that I didn’t want to forget to box up, so I started gathering those things together. Then I figured I might as well bring in the boxes for the things I had just gathered. One thing led to another and before I knew it I had cleared most of my living room.

Just find one small area to get organized and start working on it. You usually feel so good just getting that one area done that you become motivated to do a little more and then a little more. It doesn’t matter what area it is in life. Whether it is dealing with debt, losing weight, getting organized or something else, stop looking at the whole picture. I’m not saying that you should live in denial, but when it’s time to get the job done, you’ll just get overwhelmed if you keep looking at the whole picture. Pick one small area and work on it. Once you have mastered it, then you can move on to the next one.

Instead of saying I’m going to clean all the closets in the house, just decide to clean one closet or if it is really bad, decide to do just one shelf in that closet. The same goes for the kitchen or any room. Start with one shelf at a time.

It would be impossible to cover everything about how to get organized in just one article, but here are some tips to help you get started. These ideas aren’t in any particular order and some are short tips and others are longer. I hope they help you.

General Points to Get Organized:

  • If you are sick or are having trouble getting motivated to get organized, try my 5 minute trick. I make myself get up and clean during the 5 minute commercial on TV. For example, I try to bring in the laundry off of the line, wash my dishes or pick up a room. That way, when I’m not feeling good I don’t overdo it but, at the same time, I feel like I am accomplishing something.
  • Start organizing the easiest area to clean or the area that is bugging you the most.
  • Work quickly. Don’t pick up that cute snowman your child drew and ooh and ahh over it for 10 minutes trying to decide what to do with it. Either toss it or put it in the “memories” box.
  • Have boxes and trash bags ready to use. I designate boxes for “items to give away”, “things to pack”, “things that go in another room” and “trash”. Once you have filled a box or trash bag, set it outside of the room. This makes it easier to see what still needs to be sorted, gives you more space in the room to work and gives you the feeling that your are getting somewhere.
  • When you first start to get organized, do a quick once over in the room. Quickly go through and pick up all obvious trash and take out very large items that don’t belong there.
Time to get organized! Here are 25 easy practical tips to help you start getting organized and to make organizing as easy as possible!

Quick Ideas to Give Your Organizing a Jump Start:

  • Make your bed. (2 minutes) Don’t assume that this will take too long. Some people spend more time trying to decide what to eat at a restaurant than it takes to make a bed.
  • Wash dishes and clean counters (depending on the level of the mess, 15 minutes to an hour)
  • Designate a spot for keys, purse, backpacks, shoes and coats.
  • Clear off the dining room table. If it is really bad, clear off the easy stuff and put the rest in a box to sort later while you’re watching TV.
  • Quickly go through the house and pick up all items of clothing. Hang them up or put them in the hamper.
  • With a trash bag, go through the house and pick up obvious trash.

You’ll probably be surprised to see how much difference toward getting organized it makes just getting the trash and clothes picked up… You should be able to do all the above things easily in a couple of hours on the first day. Then make sure you keep doing them each day. If you did a good job the first day, it should only take you about 15-20 minutes each day after that to keep it picked up.

Deep Cleaning or Organizing

  • Start organizing one shelf or closet at a time. Don’t flit from one room or closet to the next.
  • The main idea here is to purge! Get rid of it. Toss it out. Call it whatever you like. Just stop holding on to this stuff.
  • If it is not adding to or making your life easier, get rid of it.
  • If it is ugly and doesn’t work, toss it. (No I’m not talking about your husbands… now ladies we must be good ;-).
  • If you don’t use it or if it was the wrong thing or the wrong color, throw it out, sell it or give it away. I don’t care how much you originally paid for it. Why are you keeping it — to punish yourself for making a mistake?
  • Don’t use the excuse that “It will take too long to get organized now, so I will do it later.” I was waiting for something to cook on the stove the other day and, once again, noticed that my spice shelf was a mess. I thought, “I really need to clean that,” but my very next thought was “No, it will take too long.” Then this little voice said, “You know, you can have it done before your sauce is finished cooking.” Don’t you just hate it when you hear those voices like that?! Sure enough, it only took me about 3 minutes to do it.

Find out where your “mess spots” are, think about why they are that way and find ways to change them. (I know with some of you, your whole house may be the trouble spot! 🙂

Here are some examples of how to get organized and stay that way:

  • I kept piling Kleenex, small bits of paper and other trash on the corner of my dresser. It drove me crazy. Why did I keep doing that? Because that was where I stood to empty out my pants pockets before I tossed them into the clothes hamper. The solution: I put a small trash can on the floor by that spot so I could easily drop everything into the trash can instead of the dresser.
  • Do you always have trash overflowing around the kitchen trash can? Start emptying it twice a day instead of once a day or buy a larger can.
  • Are you usually frustrated about stepping over mounds of clothes each time you walk into the bathroom? Make it a rule that no one can get dressed or undressed in the bathroom. Buy everyone robes. Get undressed in the bedroom, put on your robe, walk to the bathroom, shower, put on robe and go back to the bedroom to get dressed. This is also a great way to free up bathroom time in the morning if everyone has to share a bathroom.
  • Do you have a cabinet in your kitchen that starts an avalanche every time you open the door? Ask yourself these questions: Do I really need everything that is in this cabinet? Could I get by with 15 plastic cups instead of 35. Could part or all of what is in this cabinet be put someplace else? I keep all of my mugs on one shelf. In some homes, I haven’t had room to do that, so I would keep 8 mugs that I used virtually every day on that shelf and then put the extra mugs in a less accessible place. Then I didn’t have to fight 15 mugs falling all over each time I opened the cabinet.
  • Organize any cabinet this way. If your canned goods keep falling all over, try storing only 4 cans on the one shelf and putting the rest in another place, like a higher cabinet, another room or the garage.
  • This applies to organizing other rooms besides the kitchen. My bathroom doesn’t have much storage space, so I keep all my extra toiletries for the bathroom in a basket in my bedroom closet and keep only the item I am using now on my bathroom shelf.
  • Use the same method for organizing linens and clothes. If you don’t have a linen closet, store extra linens or guest linens in a guest room or spare bedroom. Also, store the sheets in the bedroom where they will be used.

Read Getting Organized Part 3
Clothes, Laundry and Toys

For more helpful tips to get organized and making cleaning and laundry easier, check out our organizing e-book set:

[organizing]