Social Scatter #1!

Welcome to the Down Side Up Mommy Social Scatter! I'm your host! This is the first one for Down Side Up Mommy so I am VERY excited! Although I don't always have time to interact with you all i love seeing your posts on my news feed! If I read/enjoy anything I always at least give it a LIKE/FAVORITE so you know I was there! Make sure to link up to everything you can here for max blog SCATTER! Please don't forget to grab my button so others can join too! :]

Meet your Host!

I'm Bobbie Jo!

I'm a Southern raised girl that recently left the US Army to be a Mommy and [army] housewife. My son was born on St Patricks Day and he is my everything I am the owner of xBJSCC. I love to laugh! My hobbies are DIY, couponing, exercise, reading, animals, and life itself!

Meet your October Co-Hosts!

Melanie from MommyMentionables.com is a Wife and mommy to 2 little girls under the age of 2. She blogs about Mommyhood, DIY projects, recipes and anything else she finds inspiring. 

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Introducing Becca!

Becca from SouthernMessMoms.com is a 20 something mommy of 2 wonderful girls! She blogs about mom life, great products, food that rocks, things she learns along her journey, and she loves to add her personal flair to every post!

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Here's Shannon!

Shannon, from mamamusing.ca is a Canadian mother of four! She has three girls and just gave birth to a baby boy. She started writing her blog as a keepsake for the baby. She took pictures of her ever-expanding belly every week, and started writing about what was going on in my life, and what she thought others (mainly family and friends) may want to read about.

Grab My Button

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RULES

1. Follow your Host and Co-Host(s)
2. Follow back! That's why we do this, after all. 
  - The easiest way to do this: From your personal page, click your PAGE on the LEFT side of your home page (not from the top right of your home screen). That way, it let's you read your PAGE's messages without actually logging in as that PAGE. When you do this you can click the links that are in your PAGE inbox and it will like them from your personal page.
3. Check your SPAM periodically.
   -On your Facebook, Go to Edit Page> Activity Log > Spam (on the left sidebar). If you have scheduled posts it will be UNDER them. Facebook tends to mark comments or messages from others as spam if multiple comments or messages are sent in a short period of time.
4. Share your Hop in the comments!
   -I would love to join your hop and grab your button! Its a great way for me to advertise your hop and me to scatter my social-ness! If you don't have one, NO WORRIES!

Make sure you place your social media links under the correct corresponding group!

Sorry! This Social Scatter Link Up has expired! Click here to view the Social Scatter that is currently LIVE!

Copy Cat Zaxby's Sauce

Yup. We would live on Zaxby's if we could. Thing is, it costs $20 every time we eat there. Bummer. When I'm not eating there, I can't decide if I miss the chicken more or the sauce. Luckily, there's a copy-cat for that.

Mix all this stuff together, throw it in the fridge for a couple hours to "set", and try to eat, as opposed to inhale, this amazing sauce.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper

Fabric Softener the right way.

I am a big vinegar person. I put it on everything and use it in everything. Here is a huge money saving tip for fabric softener.

Buy some vinegar. Seriously, you can never go wrong with it. It has SO many uses and it's dirt cheap.

$3.58 for a 2 gallon pack at Sam's Club. 

Get some conditioner. Any kind will work, and you can get VO5 for cents during sales. I have a whole case upstairs that I will not use on my hair, so needless to say I have a lifetime supply of fabric softener.

Mix 2 Cups conditioner, 3 Cups vinegar, and 6 Cups warm water.

I mixed my ingredients in this old Coffee Creamer bottle. I like it because it has a hand pump (score!)

(see my post about recycling food containers here)

Most people use an old dryer sheet over and over again with this. I took an old shirt, cut it up, bleached letters into it, and I keep it in the dryer. I recommend making two of these handy dryer sheets because its a pain in the butt to have to search through a hot load of clothes fresh out the dryer to find your ONE fabric sheet in order to start a new load.

Here is my fancy pancy "Bleach Pen". Its actually a little jewel that's supposed to hold water. It has a roller at the end to rub on envelopes...Yeah it was definitely more useful to me this way.

Cream of Chicken from SCRATCH!

This is SOOOOOOO MUCH cheaper than buying cream of chicken! and one batch lasts SO MUCH LONGER!

This will make 2 Qts. I bought a 2 quart container from Dollar Tree for $1!  This can be cut in half or 1/4. I just use it very often so I made a lot.

Ingredients:

4 cups Instant nonfat Dry Milk (whole box pictured)

3 cups corn starch

1 cup bouillon (the whole jar pictured)

16 Tablespoons freeze dried minced onions

1 cup dried minced onions

4 tsp dried basil

4 tsp dried thyme

4 tsp pepper



mix 1/3 cup dry mix with 1 1/4 cup water in a sauce pan on high for 5 minutes to thicken BEFORE adding it to anything.

Storage containers you didn't know you had

My husband gives me such a hard time because I tend to be a hoarder when it comes to containers that food comes in. Parmesan cheese, peanut butter, mayonnaise, syrup, coffee creamer, you name it. I keep it all. I just see so much potential in those heavenly bits of plastic. Plastic ware is expensive. Like, WHOA NELLY expensive. It's redonkulous. I don't understand why it costs so much to store things. I forsee myself always being a hoarder of these things. Just see what I did with them:

This was a coffee creamer dispenser. (Click here for the Fabric Softener recipe)

At one time this held Parmesan cheese. We (usually?) keep Cheez-Its in it because it has a pop open half-lid thingy muh jigger.

This is a Peanut Butter jar. We keep almonds in it or round crackers.

This was a mayonnaise container. I use it to store Zaxby's sauce.

Did I hear you say recipe?

Syrup and/or Ketchup bottles. Use them to store Pancake/Waffle mix. They have the perfect spout for pouring. I use them for funnel cake. (Recipe coming soon)

Jars are great for freezing liquids. As long as you dont fill them to the top, the glass shouldnt break.

The jar pictured has cream of chicken in it that is frozen. I make my cream of chicken from scratch, and store it in a powder form. Here, I over made it and didn't want it to go to waste.

What containers do you reuse?

How to get kids to do their chores.

I wonder if there is a way to get a WiFi scrambler password! I'm going to chalk this up to another genius idea!

How To: Fried Rice

I love Fried Rice. I never could make it, but I have now mastered the art. This is fairly simple too!

Ingredients:
2 cups cooked rice
1 Cup peas/carrots (I used frozen)
1/4 c of soy sauce
3 eggs
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp of vegetable oil
4 tbsp of onion flakes
salt and pepper
Directions:

Cook Rice according to directions.
In a fry pan or pot (I like pots for less mess), add oil, peas, carrots and onion flakes.
 Cook on med-hi heat until warm (thawed?).
Add in your rice and mix.
 Pour soy sauce, salt and pepper.
Let cook for about 10 minutes, stirring often
Throw 3 eggs into another skillet and scramble up while rice is cooking
Add scrambled eggs and stir.
serve.
voila. you are now a BOSS.

Grounding your Children from electronics

If you do it this way, you wont have to physically remove everything from their room and find a hiding place for it! Maybe she can spend that time cleaning this room? Just saying!

GENIUS school lunch for kids

I saw this floating around on Facebook. So many times, I see so many recipes and great ideas and i so badly wish there is a link to Pinterest so I can pin it, bit theres not! Pinterest doesnt let you Pin from Facebook (for good reason) so i find myself reluctantly allowing myself to let go of that awesome recipe. Many of them say "repost this to save it to your wall for later". That sounds great...but later would never come. I blog. This means that at all times im going going going never looking back. I would never find that post again. Matter of fact, I would probably forget about it before I even go to sleep tonight. Anyway, I couldnt find the direct source, (If you are it let me know here) but I saw this and thought that it was SUCH a great idea, that I have to take the time to create a POST and PIN for it. Here is the information i could scrounge up.

Take these bins and fill them with assorted foods/food groups. They can pick whatever they want from each bin, as long as it's the minimum amount written on it to keep it balanced!
No more arguing and they get their wish - no more sandwiches!!!
Now, all I have to do is keep the bins stocked!

Bin 1 - popcorn or veggie straws (I'll mix it up with what they call "junk food")
Bin 2 - goldfish, rice and ritz crackers (again, I'll mix them up but they don't have to have the same thing everyday)
Bin 3 - fruit to go and fruit & veggie source bars
Bin 4 - fruit cups and apple sauces (will do fresh fruit most often, but good back up and with 3 kids liking all different fruit, this is my compromise)
Bin 5 - cheese strings, babybell cheese an yogurt tubes. Again will mix it up with yoplait drinks and diced regular cheeses I have)
Bin 6 - Meat & veggies. The hardest one as all three kids are not big meat eaters! Here I have turkey lunchmeat rolled up, turkey pepperettes (Costco) and carrots or cucs from our garden! I will do hard boiled eggs or leftover diced chicken breasts from supper too!
Bin 7 - will be granola bars, banana muffins or cookies!



How cool is this?

FREE coloring pages that can be personalized

How awesome is this? Put their name on it and have them color it...Kids love things with their name on it, it makes them feel special! THese would be great for restaurants!

NFL earrings as low as $0.64

NFL EARRINGS AS LOW AS $0.64 PER PAIR

NFL Earrings As Low As $0.64 Per Pair

Right now on Amazon you can purchase these fun NFL Earrings as low as $0.64 per pair! Prices vary by team and shipping is anywhere from FREE to $4.99 depending on the pair you select.

NFL Earrings 

• Hand Enameled
• Hypoallergenic
• Officially Licensed
• Choose from more than 40 different styles

Thanks, She Saved

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Balsamic Pot Roast (crock pot recipe)

     I have been so absent...but then again, I am a Down Side Up Mommy! I have been SO BUSY the last few weeks. All of my attention has been on my little business. Im up at 5am every morning, I try and get some cardio in at least every other day and I try and spend as much time as I can with Stewart Little who is now 5 months old. When hes asleep or playing, Im doing chores. Those never end. In the evening times when my husband is home and playing with Stewart Little, I try and use that time to get online orders and inquiries done. Lately I have been especially busy trying to get all my items listed on StorEnvy, Ebay, Etsy, Pinterest, and Facebook. Not only that, but I HAVE to set aside time everyday to get through the billion emails that come to my inbox. If you don't keep up with your couponing email, it will grow out of hand VERY fast!
     Thats another thing I have neglected...my couponing *sigh*. Once you take a break from that it takes a couple months to get back into it. Weeks of collecting circulars and "Dang what a great deal I don't have that coupon because I didn't get the circulars that weekend!". Luckily, I picked a fine time to FAIL in that area. My husband and I put aside a Saturday for freezer meals. We created 60 of those bad boys. Yes, 60! It was so worth it because I have not had to go grocery shopping for anything other than dairy and to be honest, we don't eat a crock pot meal EVERY DAY -- Zaxby's is just too good to pass up! Needless to say 6 out of 7 days a week we do eat at home...matter of fact we only eat out maybe twice a month, and sometimes If i'm not home during the day or the power goes out (happens here more than you think) I throw a DiGiorno Pizza in the oven. My husband also likes to grill on the weekends. That means that those 60 meals last more than 60 days. [ "Kobe!" swish! ]
     I also breastfeed. If you haven't been a breast feeder, It may be hard for you to understand how inconvenient it can be. When I get up at 5am first thing i have to do is pump these puppies. I'm forced to sit down for however long -- even if its only a few minutes, and pump. On the plus side it forces me to do things that I need to get done on the computer, but I really love being able to go sew on the mornings before Stewart Little wake up, and trying to sew with two huge bulky thingy-muh-jiggers on your chest is not ideal. I tried it. Milk.Goes.Everywhere.
      Although I have been pretty absent, I have actually been messing with my DownSideUpMommy page alot. In case you didn't notice, It looks different. Still the same mojo, but a little tweaking. I had to get OUT of wordpress. It was so awful. How can you run a website that doesnt allow Javascript? horrible. Things should be much better now. Actually, the whole reason I decided to finally make the transition is because I wanted to have a giveaway, and I couldn't host it. Go enter to win if you havent already.
     Also, did I mention its FOOTBALL SEASON? Yes, we are football people in this house. Im a Dallas fan, and have been since I was in pampers and even knew that they were the All AMerican Team. My husband likes the Ravens...It's not his fault, Im working on him. Be patient. As far as college football, LSU! and him...well he's a Gamecocks fan. This is acceptable. Considering we both spent quite a few years living in SC, I can support that decision.
     Anywho, Im going to try and put more DownSideUp time aside in my daily "routine". But for now, Here is a recipe for Balsamic Pot Roast in the Crock Pot. Easy Peasy!


Slow Cooker Balsamic Pot Roast
Here’s What You’ll Need
4 – 5 Lbs of Beef Chuck Roast
2 Cups of Beef Broth
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
1 Tbls of Soy Sauce
1 Tsp of Salt
1/4 Tsp of Red Pepper Flakes
3 Cloves of Fresh Garlic – Pressed
Zest of 1/2 an Orange
Red Potatoes – Washed
Place Meat and Potatoes into crock pot and turn on low heat. Whisk together all the other ingredients and pour over the top of the meat. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Free 20oz salted caramel shake!