rarcke's Profile

You can also do this in lip balm tubes that are cheap in bulk on e-bay and crafting sites.

Exersaucers. With twins I thought at least one of these things was going to be essential since we didn't have a lot of time to hold the kids upright to strengthen their legs and get them ready to walk but we put it off and off and our girls started pulling themselves up to standing on our furniture without any help. So we decided to get two "activity table" type toys that they could pull themselves up to and walk around instead. It's worked out perfectly and we will get many more months out of the tables than we would have out of the Exersaucer.

This is ridiculous! Colored bubbles made with a specially developed disappearing ink have been on the market for a while. http://zubbles.com/ They are darker in color and the ink fades naturally in 24 hours or instantly with rubbing and water.

They were developed by two very passionate individuals who had to formulate the ink from the chemistry up. When I first opened this story I was hoping Crayola had finally licensed the Zubbles formula but I'm sad to see that they decided to just release their own inferior product rather than encourage real innovation. A pity, Crayola.

My twins are 7 months now and here's what we found invaluable:

Basic clothing separates in bigger sizes (6 month at least)
While we got lots of nice "party clothes" and plenty of newborn outfits, we are still using the 5 pack of simple one-color onsises long after the party dresses have been sent to the consignment shop. Also, I can almost never find both of the cute matching outfits when it's time to get dressed so their adorable factor is sort of a waste.

Gift cards, gift cards, gift cards.
We just had no idea what we were going to need so we asked to gift cards and I couldn't be happier. Most of our needs were things I never thought I would buy (like two full size electric swings) and things I thought we would use all the time (like that fancy Pack-N-Play I just HAD to have) are gathering dust. Gift cards let us buy the things we need as we need them.

Bottle holders
We bought a pair of podee bottles but our girls didn't have the mouth dexterity to keep the nipple in their mouth for a few months so were had to keep handing them the nipple back. In the meantime we made some simple beanbags to chock the bottle where it needed to be so the girls could just maneuver around the bottle to get the nipple.

Twin Nursing pillow
Even if you are bottle feeding these extra-big pillows are great for feeding two at once. I wasn't going to buy it but my pediatrician talked me in to it and now even my husband uses it to keep the girls and comfy on the couch.

If you have an Android device the app BabyESP has a medication tracker built in and even an built in alarm to alert you when the next dose is due. It's very well put together and also inexpensive. We found invaluable when your twins were sick and we had to keep track of 3+ meds for two babies.

Congratulations! We had our twins in June and we did this exact thing. In fact we were up until 3AM bagging the last batch of cooked red beans the night before the girls were born.

Here's what we made:

Southern Red Beans and Sausage
Cream of Chicken and Rice Soup
Beef and Vegetable Stew
Precooked Taco Meat w/ Black Beans
Lasagna (undercooked)
Waffles (pop 'em in the toaster)
Chicken curry
Shredded Pork

Good luck with your incoming little ones. The last 6 months have been some of the hardest of our lives but, as so many other parents of twins have told me over the last year, it does get better.

I bought a Sniglar crib from IKEA and put it together as a toddler bed (one long side off and replaced with just a board to hold it steady). The hight of the mattress is determined by 4 relatively shallow holes drilled into the frame where the bolts sit so I drilled new ones at the right high so the top of the mattress was the same hight as the mattress in my bed. That way I could pull the girls (I have twins) into bed with me or move them into the crib without a hassle. I loved co-sleeping with the girls but there wasn't room in our queen for the hubby, me, and two babies without it getting really crowded.

At 3 months we wanted to ween them off night feeding so we just put the side back on, moved the mattress to the tallest setting and moved the crib across the room. (Don't be fooled, I still wind up with at least one girl in bed with me most nights but they do sleep the first part of the night and most naps in the crib.)

I waited until the very last minute to by the crib. for the first few weeks my twins slept in their car seats because they often feel asleep right after feeding and I wanted them to sleep reclined to reduce spit-up. It also made them easy to move with disturbing them.

You could try stripping the paint off with Soy-Gel

It's a non-caustic, low-odor, biodegradable paint remover. It's advertised as ideal for possible lead paint situations since there's no dust. I've used it on painted furniture before with great results, just glop it on, wait 10-30 minutes, and then scrape the paint-laden goo off with a plastic scraper.

They've got a quart size which would do that cabinet and many other things. $21 at Amazon.com

WARNING!!! This only works on SMOOTH surface appliances!

Don't try this on the "orange peel" or any other textured surface ones. The dry ease ink somehow gets stuck down there and won't come up even with alcohol.

I read something about this a few months ago elsewhere and I thought it was perfect but my husband was skeptical and researched it first and read reports of it staining. Finally we decided to test it out on a corner of the fridge first and thank goodness we did! The marks wiped away if you got to them quickly but if you left them for more than an hour or so they stained!

We used alcohol and even acetone and there's still a dark shadow on the enamel.

Here's a page devoted to other people trying to get dry erase ink off their fridges. http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf52948889.tip.html

Since then we just bought a big board and glued magnets to the back and mounted it on the front of the fridge instead. Works great.

I'd say don't let these people frighten you!

It's your to re-purpose, if you hadn't brought it it may well be in the trash right now so think of it as recycling. I buy old art books at my used bookstore and crop pictures I like to frame and hang around my house all the time. there's no shame in it at all.

The likelihood that this is some sort of forgotten masterpiece that you will destroy is so tiny it's hardly worth worrying about.

Also, IMHO you shouldn't be worried about "significantly changing what the artist intends" as the poster above me suggests. If you liked what the artist indented, you wouldn't want to crop it. YOU intend something a little different and since it's for YOUR house than that's great! Anyone who says otherwise shouldn't listen to music remixes or radio edits or watch movies edited for length either.

Your home is your art space so don't hold back.