Review: Super Allergy Girl Cookbook

We recently found out that my son’s eczema was caused by food sensitivities. So I set out on a mission to find allergen-free recipes for his favorite foods, such as pizza and pastries. A big challenge for me was finding a recipe for bread that he liked. I’ve tried three gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free recipes for breads and had to throw all of them away, because DS didn’t like them (the squirrels are happy though).

Lisa Lundy, author of The Super Allergy Girl Cookbook; Gluten-free Casein-free Nut-free kindly gave me a copy of her book to review. In this post, I’m going to show you what results I got with the first three recipes I’ve tried so far.

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Cheap and Fun Easter Activities for the Whole Family

As the years pass, we all undergo change. Babies are born, children grow up and others move out. It?s not easy to find cheap and fun Easter activities for the whole family. You may want to use some of the ideas which follow to try with your own family.

You don?t have to wait until Easter Sunday to enjoy cheap and fun Easter activities for the whole family. In fact, some activities are better planned and enjoyed prior to that day. For instance, if your little ones need new Easter outfits, you can make a fun day out of shopping. Take periodic breaks to sit down and enjoy a bite to eat or find a play place for the children to blow off some steam.

One of the easiest activities for the whole family to be involved in is dyeing Easter eggs. Obviously parents will want to handle anything pertaining to the stove, but children will love decorating the eggs. They can use different colored dye, white crayons, stickers and other items to create one-of-a-kind eggs. If you?re not using real eggs, you can help your children embellish plastic eggs and have just as much fun.

After the eggs are decorated you?ll want to start thinking about where you can hide them. Go ahead and look around the house ? both inside and outside ? in case the weather isn?t good on Easter morning. Jot down some ideas and put the list somewhere the kids won?t find it. You?ll be a step ahead of the game when Easter morning arrives. (Don?t forget to write down where you?ve hidden the eggs, particularly the hard-boiled ones, so you can recover the ones your children might miss and avoid smelling up the area.)

Get into the kitchen and make some Easter treats. Children love to help their parents cook so why not take advantage of it? Look through cookbooks, magazines or the internet to find recipes everyone in the family will enjoy. Think about Easter brunch recipes or desserts which are family favorites.

You?ll want to be sure the recipes you choose will give the children something to do: measure and add the ingredients, knead or roll out dough, cut cookies out using cookie cutters and then decorate the cookies. Depending upon how many goodies you make, you may want to take some to a shut-in loved one or neighbor and spread a little bit of Easter joy.

Plan an Easter picnic. If the weather isn?t warm enough or is rainy, you can set up the picnic indoors. Push furniture against the wall and toss your blanket in the living room. One benefit of not having the picnic outdoors is you can avoid competing with ants.

These are only a few cheap and fun Easter activities for the whole family. You can make any activity one that you can all enjoy if you include the children in them. Ask them to help you clean the house if you?ll be having company over. Even that can be a fun activity if you play peppy music and make a game out of it.

How to Harvest Your Rainwater ?

Every time it rains you?re missing an opportunity. Hundreds of gallons are going into the soil. They?re saturating plants that don?t need any more hydration. The water is funneling down the community drains and sewers. It?s being wasted. However, if you harvest your rainwater, you can put it to great use. Harvested rainwater can be used to water your garden between rains, to wash cars and for other uses.
Harvesting your rain water does more than help the environment. It can save you money too. According to estimates, a typical garden consumes about forty percent of your household water bill. Harvesting your rainwater can save you thousands of gallons of water and hundreds of dollars. A simple rainwater harvesting system is easy and inexpensive to install. You?ll earn your money back in no time.
Tips and Ideas to Harvest Your Rainwater
Decide what type of system you want to utilize. A few simple rain barrels in your yard will capture rain. You can use this water to tend to a garden, water your lawn and other basics. If you want to get a bit more advanced you might create a system to collect the rain from your rooftop.
Again, this system can be quite basic. You might simply position rain barrels under your downspouts. Thus the water from your rooftop will go into the barrel rather than the ground.
You can simply place a rain barrel under each downspout. Or you might choose to reroute the water on your roof to one large collection barrel. You might choose to use an old barrel to collect the water. However, they do make rain barrels that have a number of features. Many barrels designed specifically for collecting rainwater have;
* A mesh top to reduce debris. Debris can wash off of your rooftop into the barrel. It can also fall from trees or be blown into the barrel. This debris can rot or block the faucet attachment.
* A faucet attachment. Some rain barrels have a faucet attachment or two. This makes filling a bucket quick and easy.
* A hose attachment. A hose attachment is helpful for two reasons. The first is that you can run a hose from your barrel to your garden for easy watering. No need to haul buckets of water. Secondly, you can attach a hose to the barrel to prevent overflow. Once the barrel is full, a hose attachment at the top of the barrel can prevent it from flowing over. This helps reduce erosion around the base of the water barrel and your home.
You can also get quite elaborate with your rainwater collection system. You can feed the rainwater you collect from your rooftop into an underground tank. This type of system requires a bit more expense and maintenance.
Collecting rainwater is simple, cheap and an effective way to save money and protect the environment. In a few hours you can have your rainwater collection system up and running. Check out your options today.

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