A Glimpse Into My Life ...

I found a recipe the other day and thought that it sounded really, really good.  Here is the recipe for it, I'll post later how we liked it (we haven't tried it yet):

Rice & Bean Casserole

1 15oz can pinto beans (or any canned beans)
1 cup uncooked white rice
1 15oz can corn, undrained
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups salsa
1 cup shredded cheese

Mix all ingredients, except cheese, together.  Put into a 9"x13" casserole dish, cover and bake at 350˚F for 1 1/2 hours.  Make sure all liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.  Sprinkle with cheese and return to oven until cheese is melted.  Serve with tortilla chips (use them as your fork or spoon).

I'm actually going to fry up some hamburger and add it to this recipe - that's the only change I plan on making right now to this recipe, but if I change anything else with it I'll let you know, lol. 

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I don't know about you but I was getting really tired of the price fluctuations with fabric softener.  It ranges in price from about $5 - $8 a bottle, and you aren't always getting the name brand product for those prices!!!

We only found one brand of dryer sheets that we could use because Don reacts to a lot of them (Bounce is the worst) and we only found that one brand at a store about an hour away from us.  So, dryer sheets are out for us as well.

Last month while pondering the fabric softener dilemma I decided to see if there was any recipes online to make your own - I am pleased to report that there is indeed and yesterday I tried it out.  The reason that I waited so long was because I wanted to use up the store bought stuff that I had.  I can't remember where I found the recipe so I, unfortunately, can not give credit where credit is due.  Here is what I did:

Homemade Fabric Softener

3 cups cold water
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 cup hair conditioner

• mix all of the above ingredients in a bowl, stir and pour into an empty fabric softener bottle.  Use as you would regular fabric softener.

This recipe makes enough fabric softener to fill a 1.1 L bottle with about 1/2 cup (give or take) left over.  You can use any kind of hair conditioner that you want, the kind that I used for this batch was Natures Botanics Fruits Apple Fresh scent (it cost about $1).  When I was choosing a conditioner for the fabric softener I basically went through the aisle of hair care products and smelled the cheaper brands to find one I liked.

One thing I would recommend when making this recipe is that you save at least one bottle from your store bought fabric softener and then just reuse the bottle - I have three bottles, 2 of them are currently empty.  When I make this recipe again I will double it (or maybe triple it) and fill all my fabric softener bottles so I don't have to make it as often.  Oh, you could also mark the recipe on one of the bottles or print it out and tack it up in your laundry area so that you have it for future use.   If you are really organized you could put the recipe in your home-management binder ... I'm not there yet, lol. 

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Not really sure what has come over me, but I have been doing a lot of baking lately - I'm sure that my family is not going to question this, lol.

Have you ever made Cake Mix Cookies?  I don't usually have store bought cake mixes in my house, even before Josh went Gluten Free.  So, what I did was have a friend, that uses cake mixes, measure out how much there was in a box - then when I would make a cake mix from scratch, I would measure to see if it added up to that (if I remember correctly, most of the homemade cakes are pretty close to what the store bought ones are).  Anyway, today I decided that I would make some chocolate cookies with Skor chips in them.  First, I'll share the recipe for the cookies and then for the cake mix that I made them from (just a side note - these spread out a lot):

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