French Toast Sticks

Do you want some this? NO
Do you want to have a sandwich? NO
Do you want to try some banana? NO
....This was almost every meal time once Inga was around 18+ months. 
Once your child starts to eat real meals and doesn't live off of random shit thrown in front of them it can be a bit jarring. I know, for me, it was a bit of a transition between that time when I just let her "play" with her food and gave her lots of choices, to switching to giving her real food that really she needed to start eating. 
I don't think that Inga is all that picky in comparison to other kids, but I do think she has her quirks. She still is not a big meat eater, other than some chicken tenders and the classic summer sausage. She has recently started to venture in the realm of fish. Whoa now...settle down there miss foodie. 
Since we still make her meals for daycare, I needed to try and come with meal ideas for her so that the daycare still thought I was a good mom that didn't just give my child the same thing every time she went. I am sure they already find me to be an inconvenience since she is the only child in the toddler room that doesn't eat what the daycare serves. 
I saw a recipe for French Toasts sticks in Pinterest a while back and I thought I would try it. The hard part with Pinterest is that there are no reviews for these recipes and I wasn't really in the mood for a "nailed it" moment. I looked up recipes for french toast with good reviews and used that recipe instead. 
It isn't all that complicated and if you make french toast regularly then you pretty much got it covered. This post is moreso just to give an idea of a food item that you can make that you know what the hell is in it that you can feed your little nugget. 

I use about 7 slices of white bread - sue me - You could use the wheat bread, but the wheat bread we buy has seeds all over it and she was not having those. 
Milk 2/3 cup
Vanilla 1 teaspoon
2 Eggs
Cinnamon to taste
Powdered Sugar to taste

When I make the mixture, I just use the vanilla, eggs, and milk. Cinnamon does not mix with just liquids and what you will find is that the first slice you make would be like the Youtube Cinnamon challenge if you tried to mix the cinnamon. 
I dip the slices in the mixture and put them in the pan and then I sprinkle the powdered sugar and cinnamon on the slice. Works pretty slick that way. I use the powdered sugar as just a little bit more sweetness to entice the monster to feed. 


My monster isn't too keen on the crust and so after I make them and they are cooled, I get to enjoy a bit of the fruits of my labor by cutting and eating the crusts. Then I cut them into 3-4 strips and put them in a ziplock bag and freeze. Done and done. 

Child proofing doesn't have to be ugly

I am sure one of things that many parents dread is the absolute hideousness (yup making it a word) of  child proofing. Putting those weird covers on the door handles, giant air mattresses around your pointy furniture, and gates at every corner that just seek out stubbing your toes and laughing maniacally as you hobble away...or fall down the stairs. 
Every single one of your lovely decorative items has been hoarded away into a cupboard that of course you are unable to get into without a key fob, key pad number and retina scan to open. 
It doesn't have to be like that. Child proofing does not have to be ugly or make your home look like you are crazy. 
We were a bit slack on the whole child proofing thing. We just put some covers on a couple outlets, which now we can't seem to remove (thanks IKEA) without a screwdriver. I wonder what the swedish words for Adult proof are...maybe that is the name of these covers.  Otherwise our child proofing consists of moving the dog's water bowl and putting a couple blockers in the bottom drawers. I am sure when she starts walking around on her own that we will need to put the locks on some other cupboards but until then we will just keep an eye on her. 
One of the pieces of furniture that I was worried about from the get-go was our coffee table.
It is a sharp pointy death trap of corners. We tried putting some of those little corner covers on it, but I think I knocked it off almost every time I stood up so that was not going to work. It also has drawers on the side. That and it looked like our table had weird deformities on it. I thought there had to be a better way right? Off to Pinterest!

Searching....child proofing....really? Why not just get rid of the coffee table if this is the result. 

Hmmm what about buying an ottoman instead....$250?! Shut the front door...no!
For that price I can make my own ottoman....wait..what? I could totally make my own ottoman! I made my own tufted headboard. I could totally do that, right?
Searching....DIY coffee table ottoman....hmmm seems like lots of cutting and gluing and nailing...ain't nobody got time for that.
What if.....I just made a cover for the coffee table and then removed it when she wasn't a hazard to herself anymore? 
Searching....removable coffee table cover....really didn't find anything other than a slip cover, which really wasn't what I was looking for. I needed to add some cushion to the corners. Looks like I get to be a Pinterest Pioneer and be the first. 
I decided that I was going to make a box to lay over the top part of the coffee table and then cover it. 
Here are the steps I took:

First thing is that I measure the coffee table each side and the top so I knew how big I had to get the boards. I planned on getting peg board if I decided to be a masochist and do tufting. I knew that peg board was flimsy that I had to get wood to put in the corners to hold it a bit more stable so that was going to require that I add a few inches to each piece of the wood to compensate and have it still lay over the top of the coffee table. 
Went to Home Depot and found a big sheet of peg board and had the guy cut all the pieces for me there! It was 7 cuts and he didn't even charge me the $.25 per extra cut. So much easier that trying to it myself. Can't even imagine how much time that saved me. I am not a big power tool gal ironically.

My Project Manager in the back was making sure I got all the items on the list.....

Peg Board $13

Wood dowel $3 - cut that at home easily with a hand saw. 

Once I got home I found some screws and a screw driver and started putting it together. 

This really did not need to be perfect at all as the entire thing was going to be covered in foam anyways. And the peg board already had some nice holes for me to work with. I hadn't screwed the top piece on yet so it looks really wonky but once it was all screwed together it was pretty straight. 

I found some zip ties in the garage just to put along the edges to put them together since, like I said before, peg board is pretty flimsy and just needed some stability. 

The second part I did need a bit of help just to get it as smooth as possible. 4 hands were better than 2 for this part. 

I bought 2  Mattress toppers from Wal-mart for about $11 a piece. We stapled each other individually over the frame and took care to make sure the corners were extra squishy. 

Then I bought some quilt batting from Wal-mart as well for about $9 and wrapped that around to make it smooth. We stapled this as well and had to fold it a little bit in the corners. 

Then in typical Heisick fashion we only finished half the project and left it without a cover for about 3 weeks....Inga really loved pulling on the quilt batting. 

My mom is a sewing phenom, so she offered to help make the cover for it rather than just stapling the cover over it to make it more permanent. I don't like permanent....especially with an almost one year old and bulldog. 

She said we would make a slipcover with some elastic with a hem. 

Basically the day ended up being my mom making the whole slip cover and I just watching the babes cruise around. 

We followed the steps for this cover here

After we (mom) did that, I had to put the elastic all the way through the hem. We fitted it over the top and pulled as hard as we could and tied it tight. 

Here is the finished product!

The cover is super lightweight and can easily be pulled up and removed the take off the cover and it is super soft.  Inga won't stop cruising around it. 

The fabric we got was Sunbrella outdoor water repellent fabric so it will hold up nicely. 

All in all, the entire project cost me around $65 and maybe a total of 3 hours to do the entire thing (not including our 3 week procrastination).

Once she is able to walk around and not look like a little drunk human we can remove it if we want....although we both really like it and might not. 

Let me know what you think!

So you want to be a Pinterest Parent?...Nailed it!

You know what I am talking about. Those Pinterest posts regarding babies and nurseries that are just so effin' cute, you can hardly help but wish you could be their child. 
Pinterest can be an amazing place for those pregnant days when you can't stop thinking about babies and you have made the decision that you are going to be the "quirky crafty mom". It can also set a standard that nearly no mother can feasibly meet. I can't even tell you how many hours were used up scrolling through to get the most perfect inspiration picture of how I wanted Inga's bedroom to look. 

Like I said, Pinterest can be a blessing and a curse. It is entirely up to you how dedicated you want to be to become that Pinterest parent you so desperately desired to be in the early months. I took the leap to become that Pinterest Parent initially by purchasing my first chevron fabric. I think that is when you can safely say you are addicted to Pinterest. Do you have chevron in every room? 
But now that she is actually here I shake my head at some of the ideas Pinterest puts in the head of first time mothers. 

Sometimes you get your "Nailed it" moments where you just can't understand why your Christmas picture just won't look like the one you pinned. But then you get moments of sheer gloriousness when you swear that the photos you framed above her crib could be in Better Homes and Gardens. It's that damn awesome. You need to be willing to take the good with the bad and remember that it is ultimately going to be a bedroom for a CHILD. So don't be spending a buttload of money on something that is purely visual or something that will break if you look at it funny. 

For example, one of my projects was to make a mobile for above her bed. I hated the ones from the store because I just couldn't find one that worked for my "vision". I kept seeing these adorable bird mobiles on Etsy and Pinterest and I thought that $350 was a bit steep for some branches and fabric birds. I figured I could make one of those myself with some FREE sticks from outside. Who knew branches were free. I bought some birds from Crafts Direct for $10 and stole some really high test fishing line from my tackle box. It was cake to put together but then I felt like an idiot for about an hour shifting the fishing line a millimeter at a time until it was level. Looking back now 3 months, it is an adorable mobile for her room and it looks great on Pinterest but I still went to Target and got a $10 musical mobile that she actually looks at instead. That and the dog barks every time that "epic" mobile even moves. 

I didn't really have many other projects for her so much as I had designing left to do. The area that I really wanted to get right was the changing table. I knew I wanted the IKEA Hemnes dresser because I am over 6 feet tall and it is the perfect height. It is also the dresser that pretty much every Pinterest changing table picture uses. I also knew I wanted to repurpose a wood crate from our wedding for her room and I thought that using it as a shelf would work great. I found some pins of others using the same crate in bathrooms for towels so I thought it would look pretty cool. And it did! It is great to have out so we don't have to open a drawer to get out a diaper. That crate was definitely a successful Pinterest Nailed it moment!

When the entire room was finished, I was rather pleased with myself. It definitely felt Pinterest worthy at that point. When you have a "vision" of how you want something to look, there is always going to be a time where it doesn't turn out that way. That happens to me a lot. I guess I have delusions of grandeur a bit. Inga's room actually turned out exactly how I wanted it to look. Since the pictures I am posting, I have made a few additions. I have added a cube bookshelf next to her chair for all the baby books I had when I was in school for teaching. 

The door is like a hundred years old and came from the first house from my family when they moved to Minnesota so it has some sentimental value. I also thought it added to the "Shabby Chic" Pinterest requirement. I have noticed that almost every Nursery Pinterest pin has some item that really contributes nothing to the room other than making it look extravagant. But I suppose that is design, right? When she gets older I will probably put some hooks on it for coats. But more than likely it will just become in the way and will have to leave. 
You can also see how pretty, yet pointless that mobile is. 

I bought the ottoman at Wal-mart for $15 and painted it purple with fabric paint. This was a half-ass Pinterest fail as the fabric is now sticky and shiny. But it would require us to sit in that chair in order for me to be annoyed enough with it. 

So ultimately Pinterest can be used as a tool for good and evil. It is good for inspiration and something to help make the pregnancy go by a bit faster. It is also evil for all those times when you know you should be working and you keep saying to yourself, "When I get to the bottom of the page, I will get back to work."......but the bottom never comes. 

Comment on what are some of the Pinterest pins you tried and failed gloriously at and what are some that worked great for you.