5 homemade baby food combinations that your baby will love, and how to store them.

It’s true what they say about each child being different. I have 3 young boys, and while they are similar in many ways, they are very different in others. This is especially true when it comes to their tastes in food. My 7 year old will eat just about anything, and my 4 year old is very picky!

We just had baby boy number 3 at the beginning of this year, and we are finally getting to see some of his personality. With my first two boys, they were perfectly content to eat any baby food that we gave them, but our most recent addition to the family loves homemade baby food made with different combinations of flavors.

We started him out with rice cereal and he enjoyed that for awhile. That was convenient for me of course, because all I had to do was add some water and stir until it was ready to go. Whenever I made rice cereal for him, I liked to use Gerber® Pure® Water. I use it to mix his rice cereal and to include in homemade baby foods, because it is specially purified for babies. Anything that I can do to help my baby grow up strong is good in my book! You can find out more information about Gerber® Pure® Water here and you can buy it at your local Walmart.

After a few weeks of rice cereal, it was clear that my baby was going to need something else. I gave him baby food from the store for his age, but I quickly found that it was easier to make my own homemade baby foods and he liked them even more! Today I am going to share 5 of the best homemade baby food combinations. My baby loves them and I am sure that yours will too.

1. Apple, Banana, Cinnamon, & Oatmeal

This one is made by adding half a cup of old fashioned oats with one cup of Gerber® Pure® Water and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon in a small saucepan. Then heat it over medium for 3-5 minutes. While that is cooking, peel the apple and cut it into small cubes. Finally, add the oatmeal, bananas and the apples to a blender and blend until smooth.

2. Spinach, Sweet Peas, and Flank Steak

To make this delicious combination, cook the flank steak in a pot with a couple of cups of boiling Gerber® Pure® Water. Once cooked, you can shred it or just cut it into small pieces so you can blend it easier. Open a can of sweet peas, drain out the liquid, and rinse. The last ingredient is half a bunch of spinach. Add the steak, the sweet peas, and the cleaned and disinfected spinach to a blender and blend until smooth.

3. Carrots and Squash

Take one bag of baby carrots and cook in one liter of boiling Gerber® Pure® Water until soft. Do the same with one squash. Add the carrots and squash with a pinch of ground turmeric to a blender and blend until smooth.

4. Mangoes, Kale, and Ginger

Take the meat from one fresh mango (or a can of mangoes in 100% juice) and a half bunch of kale and add it to a blender with a pinch of ground ginger. Add a couple of tablespoons of Gerber® Pure® Water and blend until smooth

5. Blueberry, Avocado, and Pears

Drain the juice from one can of pears, rinse and add to a blender. Do the same with a can of pears. Finally, add one mature peeled and cored avocado to the blender. Once everything is in the blender, blend until smooth.

Storage Tips

1. Mason Jars. You can find small glass mason jars with white plastic tops. This is where you can store the food that your little one is going to eat within 1-3 weeks if refrigerated. Just add the baby food and tighten the lid before storing in the refrigerator. If you need to store it for longer, you can *freeze in these jars or follow one of the other tips below. Don’t forget to label them!

1. Plastic Storage Containers with Lid. Another way to store these is to add the baby food to a small plastic storage container with lids. You can refrigerate these as well or *freeze them. You will want to label each of these as well.

1. Ice Cube Tray. One of my favorite ways to store homemade baby food is to put them into the individual spaces on an ice tray right after I make them. Then you cover them with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen, you can remove them just like you would an ice cube and store in individual, labeled bags in the *freezer. When you are ready to serve them to your baby, select 3 or 4 “baby food cubes” and heat in the microwave for around 1 minute, or until it returns to the original consistency.

*using each of these methods, you can store the baby food in the freezer for up to 3 months.

My baby has been a happy camper ever since I started making these homemade baby foods for him. The great thing is that you can make all of these in less than an hour, you can make a lot, and you will save money in the process.

What combinations of baby foods have you tried? Let me know in the comments below.

The post The 5 Best Homemade Baby Food Combinations appeared first on My Latina Table.

For some reason I always have a need to update the decor in my house. Some days it’s the living room, other days it’s my bedroom, and on days like today, it is my laundry room.

To be honest, it is more of a laundry area, as it isn’t an actual room, but that won’t stop me from decorating it and making it my own! Up until now, my laundry area has been pretty boring – just our washer and dryer, a trash can and whatever else we decide to throw on top when we are in a hurry. Today, however, I decided to spruce it up a little by making and hanging this wooden sign on the wall above my dryer. It is really easy to do and today I am going to share a tutorial on how I did it!
Pretty much anyone will be able to follow this tutorial and it doesn’t require any special equipment for adding the letters, because they are hand painted! Follow along and I will show you how you can make one just like this.

Step 1

To begin, you will need a 2 x 10 piece of wood. It doesn’t matter how long the one you purchase is, because you will be cutting it down to size anyway. I cut mine down to 25 inches and it fit perfectly on the wall in my laundry area.

Step 2

The next step is to sand the piece of wood so that it is pretty smooth and without rough corners.

Step 3

Once you have cut and sanded the wood, it is time to stain (or paint) it. I used dark walnut stain, and it turned out great. You can use paint as well if you want to do a different color. I chose stain, because many of the DIY home decor projects that I did throughout the rest of my home use the same color stain. After staining or painting, let it dry until no wet paint or stain remains.

Step 4

After you have chosen the quote or phrase that you want to use, you should type up all of the letters in a Word document and print each one off. Then tape each word or letter in the right order onto the stained wood exactly where  you want them to show up. Next, carefully trace the letters with a sharp pencil, so that you can see a slight indentation in the wood in the shape of the letters.

Step 5

After you have traced all of the letters onto the piece of stained wood and removed the paper, outline the letters with a paint pen. You may have to go over each letter a couple of times.

Step 6

With all of the letters outlined with the paint pen, it is time to fill the letters in with paint. I chose to use white because it makes a nice contrast with the dark walnut stain. You can use a paintbrush with acrylic paint for the bigger areas and the paint pen for the smaller areas. Repeat steps 4-6 with any images or shapes that you want to add as well.

Step 7

The final step is to add a picture hanger or something similar to the back and then hang it on your wall!

This was a really fun and inexpensive project to do, and is especially great if you don’t want to go out and buy an expensive vinyl machine! I love creating things that make my house more welcoming. This one was especially great, because I have been really wanting to make my laundry area more inviting ever since we moved in here over a year ago. Now that I have a start to some great decor, I can focus more on doing my laundry with the constant reminder that all of the hard work that I do is for my family. Luckily, the job has been a lot easier and more efficient since I started using Member’s Mark® Ultimate Clean Laundry Detergent which can be purchased at Sam’s Club. It does an awesome job and has a really convenient, no mess dispenser. It comes in two scents – Fresh Scent and Paradise Splash. The great part is that it works just as well or better as other laundry detergents, but it costs a fraction of the cost – and you know what that means – more money for more great DIY projects!

I would love to hear about your laundry room projects, and if you try this one, let me know how it turned out!

The post DIY Wooden Sign for Laundry Room (Tutorial) appeared first on My Latina Table.