Yet another use for plain ole' vinegar!

It seems as though vinegar is becoming my new best friend!

Most of us know of the common uses for vinegar - loads of cleaning recipes for the kitchen and bathrooms, it's a great fabric softener, great laundry stain remover and countless other uses that we use vinegar for.

BUT, did you know that vinegar is absolutely the go-to thing for a sting or bite (bee/wasp/ant, etc.)?

How do I know this you might ask?..... Well, I have a 2 year old and we have lots of wasps!

We have guniea wasps (a/k/a paper wasps). I usually don't worry too much about them - they have their hives in the cracks of our retaining wall in between each of the stones (because the stones aren't square it leaves a triangular space in between the stones) and paper wasps are the least aggressive kind. Pretty much, as long as you aren't bothering their hive, they don't sting. Michael has been so busy that he hasn't had time to 'take care of them' yet, but because they aren't typically aggressive, I usually don't worry about the kids getting stung. Until......

The boys were outside playing with their water table a few weeks ago and all of a sudden Eli was screaming. He ran over to me and said something about an owie on his finger and I asked him what happened and he said "lady bug bite me." (Lady bug is his description for all bugs right now!) I knew that the wasps like to hang out around the water table, but usually they fly off when the kids are playing there, so I kept asking him what happened and he kept saying the same thing.... He wasn't screaming that blood curdling, think he's dying kind of scream so I just held him for a few minutes and kept inspecting his finger and in a little while he calmed down and was ready to play again. I really didn't think he had been stung (maybe he pinched it somehow or something) because of how quickly he calmed down so I didn't think much else about it.

Fast forward about a week. I was sitting out on the patio while they were playing and Eli looked at me kind of strangely, then grabbed his thigh and started screaming. This time I KNEW he had been stung. He was playing out by the retaining wall and was swinging his plastic golf clubs around and just the way he looked at me and then grabbed the area where it hurt told me he'd been stung. He then ran over to me and I could see the sting mark, so we went inside and I immediately called my mom because I remembered being stung by a wasp when I was little and she put something on it that took the pain away. She said to soak a paper towel in plain vinegar and apply to the area. The next thing that happened shocked me...

Eli stopped crying in less than a minute - while I was still on the phone with her - and was ready to go back outside to play!!

I am so thankful for a mom that remembers home remedies that her parents and grandma used when she was growing up!

I know this isn't a true kitchen tip, but because this is a common kitchen ingredient I thought it would be good to post on Kitchen Tip Tuesday and maybe someone else will find it helpful.