When Zane was really tiny we had a problem with flies in our house. I didn’t want to use any products with poison in them and we couldn’t find fly strips. What did I do, what every Techie Mommy does I turned to Google. I found some interesting solutions but most of the reviews said they didn’t work. Some of the most interesting suggestions were attract them with a glass of wine, setting out a plastic garbage bag with water, and making your own fly paper with sugar and corn syrup.

What did work for me? Hair spray. I found an answer on Yahoo answer about how you can kill flies with hairspray. We went out and bought a bottle of hairspray. This from the girl who’s only probably bought one bottle of hairspray in my life before this point. We hairsprayed those little buggers till they dropped.

It could take a few sprays to get one fly but even if they were still flying they seemed to disappear. Sure I had little sticky dead flies. But they found their own little holes to die in and never to been seen again. And if not I just wiped them up.

So if you want to try something non-toxic to kill some annoying bugs, try hairspray. I’m sure it would work on mosquitoes and knats, also. I wonder if it would work on ants?

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What Worked for Me: Aussie Cleanse and Mend Shampoo!! I bought it to give the herbal essence it’s ussual break, but I found I made it through the whole bottle and my hair was not reverting to it’s crazy oily-nesses. I actually bought another bottle. I figured I would see how long this could last. And I will tell you this is the only shampoo I have used since and it’s going on three years. Gotta love this stuff.

Zane is a huge music baby. It’s the strangest thing since he didn’t get it from Tj or me. We don’t even have a cd player in our house. TJ uses his Zune mainly for podcasts. But when you turn on music Zane is instantly calmed and quiet. Especially in the car.

He loves music in the car so much that as soon as he could make noises, he would complain when we would have anything on the radio besides “his” music. And somehow he can distinguish between my Christian Music, TJ’s Oldies, and his music. Sometimes he even complains if you have the same CD going for too long.

What Works for Me? The cheap $1 Cd’s from the Dollar Store. We have picked up a few real good finds there. Here are our top two favorites (you can even here the songs on the site): Kid’s Family Rhyme Time & Kids’ Fun Rhymes. The trick is to look at the song list make sure there is a good long list of songs on the CD (15 is good) and if it lists the run time on the CD you can see if how much music time you get before it repeats.

I know I could search the internet and find mp3s to download to burn to CD but it takes awhile to find them and collect them and then burn them on a CD. It was a nice find to find these few gems in the dollar store. Every time we go to the dollar store now I search through the bins and even this week we found four new CDs.

1. Garfield Top 15 Silly Songs for Cool Cats
2. Clifford the Big Red Dog Top 15 Sing and Learn Songs
3. Top 15 Bible Songs for Kid
4. Little Farmer’s Tractor Songs

We only bought three just because we really shouldn’t be spending too much money right now. And there were tons of the Clifford ones. So far we like them, my favorite is the Bible songs. The songs are shorter, but once they go through once we toss in a new CD.

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I could share one recipe and to be fair it would probably be my husband’s recipe (one fact in our house is I don’t cook). But what I am going to share that Works for Me is the 4 Ingredient Recipe book that I love! I don’t even remember who gave me this book, but if I had to guess I would say my Mother-In-Law. She always hopes for me to become more domestic. And to prove how great this book is. I’m going to share with you a secret, I almost lost my job over this book.

One day I was taking the book to work so I could find some recipes for a shower I was hosting. I was working on a Sunday in a retail store inside a department store. I was the only one working. When I got to work and I realized I didn’t have the book. I went out to my car. It wasn’t there. I started to panic. I must have put the book on the top of the car.

I did something that was just down right crazy but I loved this book sooo much. I put a sign up in the store saying I’d be back in 45 minutes and I drove home. I slowly drove up and down the main roads in our neighborhood looking in the ditches for my book. I couldn’t find it and my time was up I had to go back to work.

No one who knows me would believe I would do this (for a cookbook of all things) but I did.

When I didn’t find it I cried. I’m not exagerating, I bawled. I was so upset while I talking to TJ on the phone that he promised we would go and buy a new one that day. And that is exactly what we did!

So I would highly recommend this book. I have used this book for showers, parties, and Christmas parties.

Here are four of my favorite recipes from this book:

1. Chunky Hawaiian Spread

1 package (3 ounces) light cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup fat free or light sour cream
1 can (8 ounces) DOLE Crushed Pineapple, well-drained
1/4 cup mango chutney*
Low fat crackers

Beat cream cheese, sour cream, pineapple and chutney in bowl until blended. Cover and chill 1 hour or overnight. Serve with crackers. Refridgerate any leftover spread in airtight container for up to one week.

* I don’t ussually put this in because it’s hard to find. I probably don’t know where to look.

2. Hot Artichoke Dip

1 cup Miracle Whip Salad Dressing or Kraft Real Mayonnaise
1 cup (4 ounces) Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese
1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained, chopped

Heat oven to 350F
Mix all ingredients, spoon into 9-inch pie plate or 2-cup casserole.
Bake 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Garnish as desired. Serve with tortilla chips, crackers or party rye bread slices.

3.  Cheesecake Creme Dip

1 package (8 ounces) Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
1 jar (7 ounces) marshmellow creme

Mix cream cheese and marshmellow creme with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Refridgerate.

Serve with assorted cut-up fresh fruit or pound cake cubes. Garnish as desired.

4. Ever-So-Good Peanut Butter Sauce

1/2 cup Karo Light or Dark Corn Syrup
1/2 cup Skippy Super Chunk or Creamy Peanut Butter
3 to 4 tablespoons milk

1. In small bowl stir corn syrup, peanut butter, and milk until blended
2. Serve over ice cream or cake. Store in refridgerator.

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