In recent years there has been a real push toward gift giving that is clutter-free. People are tired of just adding more *stuff* into their homes and lives. We’re so busy, in many cases we don’t even have the energy to deal with managing more things. Between having six children and all the *stuff* that accumulates from them, and the fact that I tend to attract clutter somehow, I am greatly in favor of the clutter-free concept.

This year I am very excited about giving the handmade soaps that I sell here at The Baby Boutique. I love to give a little token of my appreciation to special people in our lives. For many of us that list includes:

bus drivers
teachers
church teachers
speech therapists
hair dresser
neighbors
friends from church
sport team coaches
pastors
special friends
party hostess
coworkers
exchange gifts
family stocking stuffers
and more!

I’ve tried a lot of handmade and natural soaps over the years, but in many cases I have found them to be small, overpriced, and they seem to get used up really fast. (not because of extra use–just because whatever they were made of made them disintegrate quickly) I’m so thrilled with the soap in the Baby Boutique because it’s the best from every angle:

They smell great!
They work well.
They have no chemicals or junk in them. (did you know that triclosan, which is in most soaps now, is a dangerous chemical?)
They last as long as “regular” soap.
And the price is right!

Right now you can get four bars of your choice for just $20 which includes the shipping! OR you can get 9 bars for $45 (free shipping also). If you are in need of a larger quantity of soap for lots of special people, or just to stock up for your own needs, we can even send collections of 20 soaps for $90 or 30 soaps for $130.

There are tons of scents to choose from–and every scent is natural, NOT synthetic! My two favorite soaps are the peppermint and the cinnamon, oats, and honey. However, there are many I haven’t even had the chance to try yet! Check these out:

Lavender Sunshine Baby Soap:
Made with olive oil, sunflower oil, and lavender essential oil. This soothing scented soap is perfect for babies and others with sensitive skin.

Almond Honey Bee Baby Soap:
Made with olive oil and beeswax, and just a touch of essential oil. Mild and perfect for your baby!

Chamomile Dreams Baby Soap:
A pure Castile soap, 100% saponified olive oil with a touch of chamomile essential oil. Pure and natural. Castile soap is the mildest soap available, perfect for your baby or you.

Cinnamon, Oats and Honey Soap:
I just love this spicy scented soap. It’s like taking a bath with Big Red Gum! Real oatmeal adds a mild exfoliant that feels great. Made with rain water, lye, lard, olive oil. coconut oil, ground oats, shea butter, beeswax, honey and cinnamon oil. Bars about 3-4 oz each.

Classic Lavender-Lightly Scented Soap:
If you love lavender you’ll love this wonderful lathering soap made from olive, coconut, and palm oils. These oversized bars give you more soap but aren’t as smooth and uniform as the other varieties. 4-5 ounces each.

Coconut Almond Fudge Soap:
Made with coconut oil, cocoa butter, and bitter almond essential oil. It smells so good you’ll want to eat it! The creamy soap with fudgy swirls will put you in chocoholic heaven!

Grapefruit-Peppermint Soap:
This lathering soap combines the cool scent of peppermint with the fresh scent of a just- cut pink grapefruit. Made with Coconut, olive, palm kernel, soybean & essential oils with a touch of shea butter and cranberry fiber for color.

Herbal Lavender Soap:
An wonderful lavender with dried lavender flowers right in the soap. Made with coconut oil, olive oil, lard, & essential oil this is a sudsy hard soap with a lovely scent.

Lemongrass Soap:
Would you like a soap with a refreshing lemon scent? This one’s for you! Made with rain water, lye, olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil and essential oil. (Plus 2 yellow crayons added to the mix for color!) About 3+ oz each.

Ole Pioneer Soap:
An all white bar, pure and mild. This is classic lye soap with no colors or scents: just rain water, lard and lye. The perfect soap for those with sensitive skin or for use in removing laundry stains. Large 4-5 oz bars.

Peppermint Patty Soap:
This wonderful soap smells so good I look forward to using it in my shower. My littlest son rubs it all around his belly with a grin, “Mmmmmm…peppermint!” Made with rich cocoa butter, and other high grade vegetable oils & combined with essential peppermint extract and cocoa powder, this soap is amazing. 4 oz

Rosemary-Peppermint Soap:
This excellent scent combination is made with
mango butter, olive, coconut, canola, palm kernal and essential oils.

This is an interesting article about additional effects that smoking can have on unborn babies.

Christmas makes kids wide-eyed, with thoughts of a ton of presents under the Christmas tree. Some kids even like to count their presents under the tree. This holiday season, teach your kids the true meaning of Christmas — giving to others.

Give to Others - One simple way to teach your children the value of giving is to have them donate to a local shelter. Have your children go through their toys and clothes. Make sure they give away one really nice thing that they don’t really need or play with. Place an emphasis on the fact that there are many children who have no home or parents.

Another way your children can learn about the gift of giving is to donate canned goods to a local food drive service. These services provide food to families in need. The holidays are often a difficult time for those in need. Take your children to the grocery store and have them choose a nice variety of canned foods to donate. If they can spend some of their own money to make a purchase, the impact will be even more meaningful to them.

One more way your children can learn a lesson in giving is to buy gifts for others. Choose a needy family in your church or community. If you don’t know of anyone in need, ask around. Officials at your city’s municipal building, or local pastors will be able to make recommendations to you.

When I was growing up there was a family at our church that my parents had a soft spot for. They were pretty poor and had a lot of needs. Even though we never had an overabundance of money, my parents somehow managed to provide gifts for this family every year.

My parents never let them know that the gifts were from us. They wanted to bless these people without gaining any personal credit for it, and without making the relationship awkward. We often dropped off the gifts in a large bag in the dark on Christmas eve. It became a lot of family fun to park our car down the road from their house, and having my dad run through the snow with this big bag, and then run back to the car as fast as he could.

We learned how to give from what we had, even if that wasn’t very much, and to give without expecting to get anything (even admiration) in return. Good lessons that have lasted and helped make me a better person.

If you have one or more children involved in church or school, the holidays can get a little out of hand. Keep yourself (and your kids!) organized this year with these quick ideas:

School and Church Activities:

* Use a calendar. This is the most important thing you can do to keep yourself organized. Keep a large, wipe-off calendar in the kitchen. Write their parties or other holiday activities on the calendar. This way, everyone will be able to see who has an event scheduled. This will help to prevent over-scheduling or double-booking any day of the month.

* Keep a running list. Your kids will probably be asked to bring refreshments to contribute to their class party. Keep a running list on the refrigerator so that you can do your shopping all at once. Having this list will prevent you from making several trips to the grocery store.

Gift Giving:

* Create a budget for your kids. If you will be providing money for your kids to buy Christmas gifts with, then make a budget. If they will use their own money for shopping, you should still help them make a budget so they don’t overspend.

* Make a shopping list. Again, create a list with each child of who they need to shop for. If they know what kind of gift they will buy for their friends, then let them go ahead and make that list. Don’t take them shopping without a plan or it may end in disaster, with you spending a lot more than you’d intended to in the beginning or worst shopping for hours without finding the right gifts.

Christmas is a wonderful time to bring your family together. Many families establish certain rituals that are attached to specific holidays. This year, spice up your holidays with some fun family Christmas activities.

Christmas Caroling - Christmas carolers are almost a thing of the past. This year, gather your family, bundle up to keep warm, and go Christmas caroling through your local community. Be sure to visit your local nursing home, as they love these types of holiday celebrations. IN years past my husband and I have done this around our neighborhood with our children. The neighbors loved it, we had opportunities to get to know some people that we don’t normally visit with much, and we gave out cards and homemade fudge at each house. Good memories!

Make a Gingerbread House - A gingerbread house is a very fun way to involve your family in a long-loved Christmas tradition. Bake the pieces to your gingerbread house, then let the entire family construct and decorate the house.

An alternative to this is to use graham crackers and ready-made frosting to put together little houses. If you can get some small boxes to use as your house form it will work even better. Just use the frosting like glue, put your walls and roof together, then decorate! My children love to make their houses on trays, and we use coconut and/or popcorn for snow on the ground and rooftops, lots of little candies for decorations. Upside down sugar cones makes great Christmas trees, and pretzel sticks make great fences. This is one activity my children beg for every year.

Make Handmade Christmas Cards – Instead of buying your Christmas cards, make your own this year. You can purchase all the materials you’ll need at your local scrapbook shop or craft store. Buy blank note cards then decorate them. Insert your family’s Christmas photo inside each card before you mail them out to family and friends.

If you prefer to write a holiday letter, do that, but add a special touch to the paper such as each child’s hand print. This has been especially fun on the years when we’ve had new babies. (and, if the baby doesn’t want to open their hand, as many tend to do, a foot print is even cuter!)

Lighting of the Tree - A fun family Christmas activity is to make it a special occasion to erect and light your family’s Christmas tree. Plan a special day of family fun. At the end of the day, gather your family to decorate and light the Christmas tree. Then, sit around your beautifully decorated tree and read the Christmas story while you sip on eggnog or hot cocoa.

There’s a lot in the media about the importance of families eating their meals together. My family is unusual, I guess, in that we eat together for every meal except for the lunch times when the children are at school. However, with six children in the family, I have often wondered if we are really getting very much value out of these meals, because there is so much noise, complaining, getting up and down for drinks and things, and goofing off. It is hard to have a meaningful conversation most of the time! On the occasions when it isn’t chaos at our table, I usually have a hard time thinking of what we could talk about. Today I found out about a new tool from the Menu Mailer lady: downloadable Conversation starters!

So, if you’re like me and need a helping hand for ways to make your family meal times more meaningful, or if you’ve got company coming for Thanksgiving and need some good ways to get the group interacting in a positive way, check it out!

Still scrambling to figure out what you’ll be eating and doing on Thanksgiving? Check this out:

Some of you may know that in addition to The Baby Boutique at Womb’s Window, I also run Supermom’s No-Lice Advice, a business dedicated to preventing and eliminating head lice safely and effectively, without the use of harmful chemicals. Today I found out that Supermom’s was features on the Biz Moms blog! You can check it out here.

When I was a mom to a little newborn baby, most of my decisions were based on what seemed right to my head and heart. I hadn’t read many books about parenting or babies, just felt like I would know what to do when the time came. It doesn’t happen that way for everybody, but for me it did. We did things that were perhaps unconventional; we did things that people told us would cause problems, but in the end (14 years later) I can say that it all worked well for us. Mothering (and fathering!) instinct prevailed.

As I’ve had more children and as they’ve gotten older, in many ways that mothering instinct seems to get forgotten a lot. We’ve got our routines and lifestyle, I no longer spend time reading about parenting theories or debating the merits of various parenting approaches. We’re pretty well set with what we do, and the kids are all potty trained, sleeping through the night, buckling themselves into the car, etc.

But every now and then I get the opportunity to find out that my mothering instinct is still working just fine. Last night was one of those times.

My husband had tucked our two youngest boys into bed while I had tucked in the next three. Later when I passed the room where my youngest two were sleeping, I had a sneaking suspicion that my baby wasn’t feeling well.

His breathing was ok, but just seemed a little “off” to me. He was a little warm, but nothing that couldn’t be accounted for snuggling in his blanket. Still, I had that Mom Feeling that he was not ok.

Since I was heading to bed myself, I went to the family room to ask my EMT husband to look in on our little tyke to see if he thought he was alright. He went to check on him and came to me to report that he thought our kiddo was just fine: breathing normal, temp ok, etc.

Yeah, well, it wasn’t even an hour later that the poor kiddo started crying in his sleep. I went to him and sure enough, he was feverish and miserable. I carried him into my bed, gave him a drink and a Tylenol meltaway (those things are great!), and suffered through the night with him fussing, wriggling, whining, and suddenly telling stories from his day at school. (”Hey Mom….know what? At school today….we dressed up like chickens….” Nothing like a good story from preschool at 3am.)

It was a rough night, but it would have been rougher on me if he had been in the other room. I can never rest well if I’m not sure my children are ok. Today he has had his ups and downs, and it looks like tonite might be more of the same. His body is fighting off something….just the fever every here and there, some whining, and sometimes seeming perfectly fine.

I’m never glad when my kids are sick, but it is nice to be reminded that my mothering instinct is still in good working condition.

As I made breakfast this morning I decided to share my French Toast recipe with you, both as a recipe (since I wasn’t able to post one Wednesday!) and as a thrifty tip.

I went to the grocery store yesterday and there were loaves of bread from the bakery marked down to $1.25 each. It was a sliced sandwich bread, good for just about anything, so I got a couple loaves.

This morning I knew that one loaf was destined for breakfast, in the form of French Toast.

A Tip: If your bread is frozen, it makes the process a little easier. (only if the bread is pre-sliced!)

Basically, find a bowl with a fairly flat bottom. We have some bowls that are larger than cereal bowls, more like for serving vegetables, that are just perfect.

Into the bowl: 2 cups of milk and 2 eggs. Use your whisk and mix it up. Add a little cinnamon and/or nutmeg if you like. A teaspoon or so of vanilla is also nice. (if you have a large family like mine, double this)

Preheat your skillet. I prefer a large electric skillet (I can fit 9-16 pieces of french toast on mine at a time, depending on the type of bread) but you can use a pan on the stove as well. Spray it well with non-stick spray!

OK, just take each piece of bread and drop it into the milk and egg mixture. Use a fork to flip it over to get both sides covered. Don’t leave it to soak–this is a very quick process. Just dip and flip, then put onto your heated skillet and cook on each side until it’s nice and light brown, sort of like pancakes.

For toppings you can use pancake syrup, powdered sugar, jam or jelly, or chopped up sweetened strawberries. (You can get tubs of these in the ice cream section at your grocery store) You can also make this a very healthy meal if you use whole wheat bread and a sugarless topping such as natural applesauce.

It’s quick and easy and cheap! Try it!

Today begins a series of articles for you on preparing for the holidays. I already told you about Flylady, and later on I found out that she has a >wonderful FREE downloadable Holiday Control Journal. I went and checked it out and printed it off. It is just the thing I needed! I had been thinking that I needed to decide on our Thanksgiving Menu, and start figuring out what we would be giving for gifts, etc. This handy tool has lots of charts, reminders, etc. to help me think of everything and keep all the lists in one place. Check it out!

Are you stuck in CHAOS? (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) Overwhelmed by clutter and disorganization?Flylady can help! For free!!

If you haven’t heard about Flylady yet, it’s about time you did. Flylady Marla Cilley has a wildly popular system for keeping your home clean and organized using “baby steps” that normally will only take you 10-15 minutes at a time. Your home is divided up into cleaning zones and each week there are a few extra tasks that you do to declutter and improve that room, in addition to the regular basic household chores that need to be done daily. When you sign up for her email list, each day you will receive several emails to remind you of what you should be doing, and encourage you along the way.

The web site is a wonderful resource as well. There are clutter-free gift ideas for everyone on your gift giving list, recipes and tips for getting meals under control, and tools that will make getting and keeping your home under control easier. I love her calendar–it has really big squares so that you have plenty of room to write down all the activities and appointments that your family has to keep up on. Anyone that loves organization and new ideas will love Flylady’s site.

I’ve been in an off-and-on relationship with Flylady for many years. When I have time to do the tasks, I love getting the email reminders. My kids have even gotten into it, asking me, “What does the Flylady say we have to do now?”

I’m about the the point where I need to sign up for dear Flylady again….she has a great plan for not just surviving the holiday season, but by using baby steps and planning, actually thriving and enjoying the season and having time to spend with family and friends. Why not check it out and see how the Flylady system can help you?

I recently added some gorgeous new blankets to the boutique and wanted to tell you about them.

The owner of the business that creates these blankets kindly sent me a sample. I was astounded to have such a lovely experience! Inside the envelope she sent me was a lovely gift box. I opened it up and found a small sample of her work, inside of a gorgeous organza gift bag.

The blanket sample was very pretty and soft. My children took turns rubbing it on their faces, and my husband said he would love to have a big size blanket of it for his very own.

I am very impressed with both the workmanship, service, and presentation of these blankets. Not only does she send her samples so beautifully, but the full sized blankets are also gift boxed, inside an organza bag, and the box is wrapped with a ribbon! Gift cards on matching stationery are available at no extra cost.

I know that so many families will enjoy these fine blankets for many years! You can see the Italian Merino Wool blankets here and the Organic Merino Wool blankets here.

One of my family’s most favorite soups is also one of the easiest meals I make. Check it out!

Perfect Chicken Noodle Soup

In a large soup pot combine:

12 cups water
9 chicken boullion cubes or the powdered equivalent
a teaspoon of marjoram
a tablespoon of parsley
a bay leaf
half a bag (about a cup) of matchstick carrots
half an onion, chopped
a stalk of celery, thinly sliced
approx. 2 cups cooked, cubed chicken
half a bag of egg noodles (you can use any kind of pasta that you like)

Put on the lid and bring it all to a boil. Let cook at a boil for 10 minutes or until the pasta is done. Serve with crackers or a nice loaf of bread.

This soup is great for leftovers, and is easy enough for older kids to make on their own.

Enjoy!

(Do you have a great family recipe you’d like to share? Send it to me at erica@thebabyboutiqueatwombswindow.com)

The best thing I’ve found for getting blood out of fabric is hydrogen peroxide. Just pour enough hydrogen peroxide onto the blood to cover it. Let it sit and fizz away until the bubbles dissipate. For some fabrics you may need to turn it over and repeat the procedure. (this works great on furniture and carpeting as well)

After that I usually rinse with cold water, and then rub in some liquid soap or laundry detergent and let it sit until time to wash. Normally the blood stains are completely gone once I pull the item out of the wash. (always check, though–you don’t want to dry in a stain!)

Welcome to The Baby Boutique Blog! I’m Erica Johns, owner of The Baby Boutique at Womb’s Window. I’ve got a lot of great plans for making this blog one you won’t want to miss. I’ll be telling you more about that later, but for now I’d like to tell you a little bit about me.

I’m 35 years old and have been married to my husband Dave for 15 years, and we have six children, ages 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 14. The 10 year old is my only girl. (Yep–5 boys!)

I’ve had a pretty wide range of experiences in being a mom. I’ve had great pregnancies and a high-risk one, I’ve had babies at the hospital, at home, on land, in water, with doctors, with midwives, alone with my husband, and have had 2 life-saving c-sections. I’ve breastfed and bottle fed. I’ve had a baby 3 months early, and one 5 weeks “late.” It’s been a little bit of everything, based on the needs we were faced with.

I’ve been blessed to be able to stay at home with my kids, but have a strong entrepreneurial tendency, so have several business irons in the fire. My business Supermom’s No-Lice Advice educates and equips parents to prevent and eliminate head lice safely and effectively. The Baby Boutique is my newest business, officially opening yesterday! I am also working on a book about healthy eating, and will be opening a health and wellness business in early 2007. If all goes well, I have several other businesses, books, and products coming up after that.

I love to read and have a local book group that I participate in every month. I am also in the process of becoming a Certified Natural Health Professional. I also enjoy writing, so all the newsletters, blog posts, articles, and forums are good for me.

I look forward to getting to know you!

~Erica