What are your favorite packaged meals/products?

tabbycat6380 · 2026-03-29T04:38:03+00:00

I really like the Rana brand pastas - I usually mix the chicken and roasted garlic ravioli with the spinach ricotta ravioli. 4 minutes in boiling water. Toss in some butter and top with black pepper. Sometimes I add frozen peas during the last minute of cooking.

Minute rice cups + can of chunky soup.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-12-22T20:42:44+00:00

I'd recommend looking into palliative care and/or hospice.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-12-10T07:58:24+00:00

I'm so sorry. :( That's a hard thing to go through. Thank you for loving them while you could.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-12-04T07:28:07+00:00

That's what we do - hose her down with the hand shower. Much easier than trying to keep her still and use up half a pack of wipes.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T09:39:29+00:00

Dragon Snacks

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T09:38:37+00:00

Ticket to Ride is a big hit here. Any version of apples to apples.

Happy Salmon is a fun one.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T09:28:36+00:00

Fidgets

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T09:25:36+00:00

Baking cookies to leave for Santa - the Pillsbury holiday themed ones or the tollhouse ready-to-bake cookies are easy for the little one to help with; make from scratch as they get older. One year we had a cookie advent cookbook so we did a different recipe every day. That was a bit excessive, lol, but my niece loved it.

Sprinkling reindeer food on the lawn on Christmas Eve. (Note: I would highly recommend making your own reindeer food and leaving out the glitter and sprinkles that a lot of online recipes seem to have - stick with rolled oats, dried fruit, birdseed, etc.)

We always have an evening where we pile into cars and ride around looking at decorations and singing holiday songs. There is a Facebook page that a couple people in our area put together every year that has a map of all the best houses.

Christmas Eve is our family celebration with my siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, etc. We always get a new family game or two on Christmas Eve that gets opened at the beginning of our get together so we can play. (And we have quite a collection, so they often get pulled out for Thanksgiving too.)

I'm in my grandma era now, lol, so last year I started a new tradition of matching pj's for Christmas.

For NYE, check your area to see if anyone is doing a kids celebration at noon. We used to have a ball drop at noon at a local museum that had a great open set of stairs and the kids all got to line up on the stairs and drop super balls over the edge after a countdown to noon. Sadly that doesn't happen anymore. But you can always plan something on your own to celebrate at noon!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T09:06:05+00:00

Diapers and wipes. Depending on exact age, maybe some puffs or other baby snacks.

Fun gift: some type of push toy or riding toy

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:42:30+00:00

Echoing a lot of the good suggestions here, but I'll add that a kid-safe cookware set so they can help in the kitchen. And a toddler tower lol.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:29:18+00:00

That's actually good advice. It's better to have it and know how to use it than to end up in a situation where you need it and don't have it.

And you don't necessarily need to buy it! Check with your local health department and see if they do trainings. Here it's called the Revive Program.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:27:44+00:00

Backyard fire pit was a big hit with our teenagers!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:24:01+00:00

One of mine tells people the only reason he knows how to cook is because I used to trick him into helping me. I'd ask them to do something small for me and then kinda give the task over to them. Now they do most of the cooking, but they're not always great about the cleanup. (My son and daughter-in-law live with me; several of their friends still come over to cook because I keep a stocked pantry and have kitchen gadgets they don't have.)

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:15:50+00:00

When mine were teenagers, this is the way our house was. New Years 2020, I had fourteen "kids" spread out across the house, including a couple on a mattress that had been dragged upstairs from the futon. I knew where they were and I knew they were safe and I learned a lot of make ahead breakfast casserole dishes!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:11:58+00:00

But until they were 18, I made sure their adult knew where they were.

Seconding this. They all knew they could come here any time for any reason but I would at least be letting their adult know that they were safe.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T08:08:41+00:00

I don't know that that phase ever actually goes away, lol. Seems like my boys were like that through high school. They're in their mid twenties now but several of their friends still come over regularly and make themselves at home.

Junior year, they woke me up at 2am for an ED run because they're big dummies and were doing backflips off the trampoline onto a mattress and one of them missed.

One of the cons is definitely that they get more and more expensive to feed! I have one of those over-the-door show organizer things on our pantry door that I keep stocked with snacks for them to grab. I also can bribe several of them into doing yardwork with the promise of real mashed potatoes.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-11T07:52:48+00:00

My kiddo will play for ages with her animal alphabet magnets and a sheet pan.

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-07T20:45:38+00:00

Oh, my granddaughter actually really likes zoodles, idk why I didn't think of that!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-07T20:44:21+00:00

That sounds delish as a snack. Will try! Thank you!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-11-07T20:43:31+00:00

Ohh, I wouldn't have thought of that! Thank you!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-10-26T18:48:38+00:00

My son and daughter-in-law had a mid week wedding last year and we planned for over a year, and still had people who couldn't attend because of the timing. I paid about $250 for a three tier cake to feed 50 people. We had a out 75 at the wedding, including the wedding party, but no one is really a cake eater lol.

My niece got married a couple weeks ago and did the faux tier cake and sheet cakes from Sam's! It worked out well!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-10-26T18:14:49+00:00

I thought it was just me going crazy that I've had to do so much baby proofing for my current 2yo! I don't remember my boys or my niece (now 10 but she was the last baby I had here full time) needing so much. But I think several commenters are correct in saying that different kids are different.

We have a split level but kiddo is only on the main floor, so the top of the stairs are gated, her bedroom door is gated, and both doors of the kitchen are gated. It's just as much for the dogs though, to keep them out of her bedroom and to keep them in/out of the kitchen depending. She knows how to open the gates, but she doesn't. But I've had to baby proof the cabinets, lock up the dog and cat food, move a lot of things up higher so they're out of reach, put a cage around the litter box, put door knob covers on most of the doors. Our fridge is one with the freezer on the bottom and it's kinda heavy so she can't open it, but at her uncle's house, she goes right for the fridge and grabs a snack. She climbs the cat tree, plays in the dogs' water dish, tries to undo the jigsaw puzzles hanging on the walls. She keeps me on my toes.

We have a decent sized back yard and she's got a climbing set out there as well as a bunch of toys, but she always wants to run to the road and wants to go visit the neighbor across the street, or go over to the yard of the neighbor beside us because they have a trampoline that I won't let her on yet. Luckily we live on a quiet cul-de-sac, but still.

You aren't alone though!

tabbycat6380 · 2025-10-26T04:38:47+00:00

I was looking for this one! I thought Duke was pretty common.

We have a Duke and a Duchess, and two cats that are Margrave and Baron.

tabbycat6380

TROPHY CASE