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I so every excited, we just got back from a little weekend road trip and I found my family physician kit waiting for me on the front step. I had taken a wellness course a few weeks ago and the coach was the health director for a nearby holistic retreat/spa center. In our class we learned all about holistic living for ourselves & our families. We also had a chef instruct us on raw food preparations and I got a great overview of natural medicines and "clean living" One of the major insights for me was just how many uses for there are for essential oils. I've always used essential oils in my home diffuser to purify the air, but I just wasn't clued in on the fact that you can apply organic, therapeutic pure essential oils to food, water or even directly into your mouth to get the concentrated benefits. wow. I ordered up this super amazing kit for my family from this company that bundles essential oils for usage, for example they have a Family Physician Kit which is what I got or you can get kits based on weight management, daily living, clean living... Looking forward to making, posting and sharing my explorations into how to use the oils and finding fun ways to make my family healthier. They have a buying club you can join to get started plus receive member discounts of 25% off retail. www.mydoterra.com/doterrastyle
Tess has this great idea of making a mobile using her Usborne Animal stencil birds. I was so impressed because she conceived this craft and designed the mobile and orchestrated the color schemes all by herself. Somedays the kids just make things easy for Mom...and well somedays they don't. I love the Usborne stencils, they are super sturdy and thick compared to other stencils we have purchased. The kids spend hours with these and they are always great for packing in a bag and pulling out when you need quick calm down activities. Usborne has a whole range of them.http://w3503.myubam.com/search?q=stencils We used the same technique of sandwiching the drawings between contact paper to make holiday ornaments with their Christmas stencils and had a whole tree of hand drawn sweetness.
Everyone needs a little break from routine. Since the start of school this year it seems that every moment has been scheduled and accounted for. We all get a little burned out following the calendar and tracking our every class and playdate, no matter how fun they might be. Just so happens that this weekend was another of those over scheduled weeks where just getting to all the activities seems exhausting. We had several things on the calendar for downtown so I thought it might be interesting to stay downtown and walk to our venues and play tourist in our own hometown. Oh yes we were busy, two shows in the Theatre District, brunch with friends and a costume event at the zoo. We stayed at the Hotel Icon and amazingly avoided traffic and arrived on time for EVERYTHING. kinda rare around here. This is definitely something we would do again. It was pretty great not nagging the kids to hurry up, letting them get a sense of their own downtown and having someone else do all the cooking and cleaning up.
It has been so long since a post, I go back in forth with to post or not to post. Part of me thinks I should be better preserving these snapshots of our precious fleeting time and part of me thinks my time would be better spent making more memories. I'm torn but today I'm thinking just start again, make it quick so that maybe just maybe I can accomplish both goals. I have a lot a catching up to do so I'll start with posting a few images of our get away weekend in Bastrop Texas. The kids love when we have a "country" get away. They go gaga over the animals, the big sky and running & playing weekend cowboys & cowgirls. This was the first year that Theo jumped at the opportunity to ride the longhorns, he even hammed up the experience by posing with his drawn on mustache. It was probably the last weekend for lazy river rides and all day lounging in the pool. The weather has just started to hint of fall and temperatures in the day were around 73 and then dropped to 51 in the evenings. Just perfect for our sweet family escape.
I had to post about the most amazing new book find. We ordered a bunch of books from Usborne Books and everyone in the family is in love. We first came across Usborne Books when T was a baby and they quickly became her favorite books. When T2 came along he was just as enamored with them. He really loved all touchy feely books and the early words books and mom loved that they were not filled with licensed characters and inappropriate content. But since then I just haven't seen a lot of Usborne titles around. Come to find out Usborne is an international publisher and that's why I just didn't seem to come across them in our local bookstore. Anyway long story short once we found a source we ordered an entire library of these books. I will be posting on my favorites as we discover them. A real stand out are the Lift & Discover series. We have the Question and Answers book. The illustrations are just so precious and the quality is amazing, the best part is how much my kiddos love this book. You can order them from www.usbornekid.com
This year I wanted to do an Advent calendar to bring daily awareness to this special time of the year and talk about the meaning of Christmas with the kids. I wanted something that would fit into our existing holiday decor and be easy & inexpensive to make. I decided on using my favorite old standby the rubber stamp. All the stamps we used to make the calendar had previously been purchased for other projects and the brown bags we had in the pantry so...the price on this holiday project was almost nil. The entire project only took about 30 minutes from start to completion. I filled the bags with a mix of holiday projects, small sweet treats, stickers and words of giving. One of the bags had a gingerbread cookie cutter with a note that said, Lets make holiday cookies today. Another bag had a bag of decal gems and a styrofoam ball with a message that said, "Design an Ornament". The calendar has been such a hit, every morning the kids come down and can't wait to see whats in the baggies and count down the days until the 25th. This is most definitely a tradition we will keep up with. So far I have been able to recycle and save the bags so next year we are good to go and can use them again.
We booked a last minute family vacation to see the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM. It was an amazing trip. We stayed at The Tamaya resort outside of town, the hotel is located on the majestic lands of the Santa Ana Indians surrounded by mountains and several buttes. This festival is the only one that allows viewers to be right up next to the balloons as they prepare for ascent. Roughly 750 balloons cover the open field gearing up to go before the sun even rises. You get there while it is still dark, bundled up in warm gear, drinking hot chocolate and eating the most incredible green chili breakfast burritos while watching the preparations. At dawn they send up the initial patrol and the balloons are alight from within as they rise up and test the air. Once the sun come up the rest of the balloons all go as up they are inflated. The kids loved it. Beside the balloons Albuquerque offers so much to do as a family, we hiked and found a meteorite, went to local crafts shows and ate great New Mex food. We are already longing to get back to this very very special place.
Mr. T's birthday was right on the heels of our coming back from a family vacation and just a few days before Halloween. It was a crazy time around our house and so I just wanted to do something small, low key and just family to celebrate his turning the big 2. At almost the last minute we decided to call see if some family friends wanted to join in the fun and so that put the pressure on to do a cake. Now if you read this blog you will notice for one that theres not alot a posting going on but also in the few post I do have that we have kind of a family tradition of trying to do great cakes. I have to preface that by saying it's not that we are great bakers or cake makers but that we have cake envy and always want to try and do something new and challening. My husband and I collaborate and always make the cake thing happen and by some miracle we are always smiling and happy with the results, even if some times they are less than perfect. This year was a bit of a challenge in that since the last cake efforts we have discovered that we as a family have gluten issues. The kids and I were tested and things have not been the same around here when it comes to sweet baked treats. For this cake I used the chocolate gluten free mix from King Arthur, to my surprise is was very good. Moist, tender with good chocolate flavor and none of the grit you get in alot of store bought GF mixes. For the icing I used Martha Stewarts recipe chocolate ganache - it was the first time I had made a ganache. It is now my go to for quick chocolate icing. So easy and it looked so professional. I can't take full credit for the design, I was hard pressed to do a big bad wolf cake from scratch and I was inspired by a cake I spied online wolf cake inspiration.
Without a doubt Halloween is my favorite holiday. What's not to love there is obscene amounts of candy, spooky movies, creepy decor and the best part... dressing up. Well maybe not so much dressing up for me anymore. Luckily, I've discovered that I like making the costumes better than putting them on. This year I didn't have to put a lot of brain power into coming up with a concept - our littlest one is obsessed with the big bad wolf so that was pretty much a no brainer,which in turn made coming up with costume for big sister just as easy, she was going to be Little Red Riding Hood. I started working on the costumes early this year trying to avoid my typically last minute all night sew-a-ton and to my surprise I was actually done the a few days before. I have to say I am very proud of the costumes, the dress was a real struggle that I nearly abandoned. I had never made a dress from a store bought pattern before - I found the whole thing incredibly frustrating and must admit reading patterns takes the kind of smarts that I just don't have. At one point I even went up to T's closet in search of a red dress that I could just throw a home sewn apron on and call it day, but after letting the project sit for a day or two I pulled out my seam ripper and tried again. Not perfect but a huge milestone for me in my self taught sewing education. Little mans costume was much easier, no pattern just complete trial and error. I used an old pirate costume vest as the go by and the hat I just kind of eyeballed and figured out as I went along. Halloween was a blast, the kids spent it trick or treating with friends and even thought I would have loved to dress up I just couldn't bring myself to be the grandma to their red & wolf.
It was a crazy summer. Running after a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old left little time for any fun mom activities like sewing, blogging, reading or coming up with any new recipes. Now that school is back on I'm hoping to rediscover my old friends Singer and Breville. One project that I had to squeeze in was to make a cape for the little misses 4th birthday. I squeezed it in the night before we were to fly out at 7am for Florida, started pattern making and cutting after the T's went to bed at 9 and finished up just in time to pack out family bags and get a few hours of shut eye. I decided to do a super 4 cape for her instead of making another birthday crown. In hindsight I wish I did't wait until the last minute on this one, it was the first time I worked with satin...slippery - and the silver pleather was a big pain. FYI it sticks to the feeder foot and won't run through so I ended up using vellum paper to back it so I could slide through, worked. It was a rush job but she loved it all the same.
A few years ago after Tess was born Matt and I sort - kinda agreed that holidays were to be spent at home. We both recounted past childhood holidays spent with close family and mostly often than not centered around the family dining table and in my family the table and the dreaded TV. Not a lot of frills or fancy trappings just good food and being surrounded by our nearest and dearest. We both concluded that we would put our old ways of "yeah it's a holiday lets get outta this town" aside and retire our flight bags to the garage. What were we thinking.
This Easter was our third major holiday this year spend away from home and we spent it in the Texas Hill Country. We managed to skirt town for Thanksgiving (San Antonio) and Christmas (North Carolina) as well.
It's not that I mind cooking and decking out the house in holiday fare, I like doing all of that. It's just that I am sooooooo in love with family time. And as family oriented as holidays are it just seems like that's when folks end up spending the least amount of time together. So when the opportunity for 3 or 4 days off from work and school arrises I want to escape somewhere where I don't have to cook, clean, tell my children wait until mommies done or I can't now because I have this or that chore to accomplish. I want to spend every moment immersed in their world with them. I want to see out of their eyes, do what they do, give them and get from them undivided attention. It's just my bliss.
Every year we try and plant just a few things. Usually we don't end up with more than a few tomatoes, peppers and herbs - it's really more about letting the kids experience the wonder and excitement of planting and growing from seeds. Last year Texas had an unusually hot and dry summer, the state suffered some of the worst every wildfires. Crops and lawns everywhere dried up to nothing. There were water shortages and watering bans that made growing a garden in this harsh heat even more difficult than usual. Thankfully, this year we have gotten some much needed rain and I am determined to plant some crops that might even yield us a meal or two. I have been wanting a raised garden bed since we move into the house but we are planning a renovation so I have held off building anything permanent. Earlier this year I started researching semi - permanent planting solutions and found this cool mini greenhouse call the Grow Camp. It manages to solve not only my space issue but it also boasts a nice screen which helps to block out 40% of the sun so my plants won't scorch in this heat. The screen also acts as an insect barrier so that you can grow your vegetables completely organic and without the use of insecticides. Pretty cool. When I purchased the Grow Camp I also bought a small soaker hose and a timer so that I could make a watering system to use within the greenhouse - so far it seems to be working perfectly. Here are the pictures of the set up with the watering hoses. Summer is not the best
for vegetable gardening in Houston so I went with only the most heat
tolerant crops. We ended up planting eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes,
various peppers, leeks, celery, arugula, summer radish, lots of herbs,
and sowed some carrots directly into the ground. Most of the plants Tess
started from seed indoors in those jiffy grow peat pots and we moved
them outside now that they were big enough.
It's been a long time since our last post. We have been working around some big changes around here and free time for writing has been something that's been hard to find. A few months ago me and the both of the kiddos had Iga testing done for food sensitivity issues and the results came back showing that we were all highly allergic to gluten,soy, egg and dairy. Since both of my kids had severe colic as infants and nothing except me going on a very strict elimination diet worked these results were something that we had already suspected. But none the less it has shaken up our pantries and resulted in a complete food and mental overhaul for us. First steps was to clear out all the "bad" foods from our diets and we are slowing learning how to replace our favorite foods with options that we can tolerate. It's been a learning curve to try and find work around and meals take a bit longer to plan and cook but I am getting better. One of the first essential purchases was a bread maker - what can I say we are a carb loving house. Over the next few months I will be posting our "food" successes and failures, I have had a few of both. I will also try and post reviews of some of the GF and allergy cookbooks that are starting to pile up around here. Here is our first successful first attempt at allergy free eats. The cupcakes are from the amazing cookbook The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook by Cybele Pascal. I used her Vanilla Cupcake recipe and the Icing recipe was the Chocolate Buttercream recipe from Vegan Cupcakes take Over the World. The cupcake recipe can be found on Cybele Site
The mouse costume consisted of a tail and ears made from stretch velour and a grey tulle tutu. Theo's cheese head was a piece of latex foam that I cut with scissors and sprayed with yellow spray paint. We used an on hand onsie that I dyed and printed out an iron on decal that said aged one year (yes he just turned one the week before). We got to use the costume several times once for a party and then again at Halloween and my guess is that she will want to wear this a dozen or so times before we re purpose the parts for something else. Halloween was so magical this year. T had such a great time, we created a bunch of creepy crafts and she became completely obsessed with all things slightly spooky. Theo, well he wasn't so sure about it all and even though he looks miserable in the photo he warmed up to his costume and was our perfect stinky lil cheese. Oh and I went as a black cat...with a few grey whiskers.
After 3 years the terrarium that Tess and I constructed in our earlier post had to be put to rest. The plants had gotten leggy and it was no longer the small sweet green world on my dinner table it was more like the big green monster.
I transplanted all the plants outdoors into a bigger pot and since the container has just been sitting in the garage waiting for me to make another. I've been either too busy or lazy to clean it so I decided to use another vessel and make a smaller slightly less planty version of a terrarium. I had a some left over moss from an orchid repot and a great glass globe I had purchased at West Elm that had been calling out to be used. I went scouring my junk box for some cool things that might work together thinking I wanted to make something greeny and easy enough for Tess to help with. I chose some quartz crystals, miniature model figurines and a piece of pyrite that was collecting dust on Matt's shelf. The project took us about 15 minutes to put together but a good hour and a half to talk about all the items. Tess was completely fascinated by the figurines and played with them forever asking all kinds of bizzaro questions. She was also enamored by the pyrite and crystal shapes, we had a mini lesson in rock formations and even took a trip to the back yard to get additional rocks to examine. I love this age, even the smallest simplest little projects turn into opportunities for learning something new.
Ha so much for more frequent postings. I actually had such good intentions, Tess and I have been working on a lot of great projects and I've even managed to capture some of them with the camera but... I had some computer problems. I guess you could call it user error. My computer just stopped recognizing my camera and download images. Immediately I went online lurking around tech sites to see if I could figure out what the problem. I tried like every thing. Nothing worked. Finally after a week I had to admit defeat and call Matt in to fix my buggy camera but moments before I was about give up I noticed that the camera wasn't even connected to the port. It was only half way plugged in but looked like it was connected. I felt like such a dunce...arghh and the time wasted troubleshooting. So again I am committing to more frequent posts... wonder what shenanigans will come up this time.
In the mean time I wanted to post some images from a cookbook I've been using all week. It's called Vegetable Basics - 84 Recipes Illustrated by Jody Vassalo. The recipes indeed are pretty basic but what I love is the design and layout of the pages. This is by far the easiest to follow visual cookbook that I have ever used. You barely need read the instructions to be able to follow along...exact what I need since most of my cooking is done darting into the other room checking on a toddler or trying to juggle dinner with a baby in arms or clinging to my left leg. If you are in the need of a basic veg cookbook that will inspire you to make great simple tasty food this is a good one to check out.
Okay this is officially the first of my attempts at more frequent posts. I'm hoping to get at least a few posts a week up and capturing more of the everyday. Just quick little snippets of the simple things that keep me busy, thinking and constantly on the move. I've been working on clearing out most of the processed foods from our families pantry and getting rid of boxed anything. I recently purchased the cookbook Super Natural Everyday and love the recipes, they are high on flavor yet easy, healthy and uncomplicated. We have an almost impossibly small kitchen so keeping anything but the essentials for cooking on hand just isn't practical and Heidi Swanson's recipes make the most out of ingredients that I usually have on hand. Here is my go at her Millet Muffins the recipe can be found on her amazing site. Here is the link to the muffins and five others from her beautiful cookbook.
I switched it up a bit and used 1/2 unbleached flour and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour because that's what I had on hand. I ended up having to put the batter in the refrigerator and run and pick T up from school so they set up some before I spooned them into the muffin tins. They came out having a very scone like texture which look very different from the photos of Heidis in the book but the flavor was amazing. And I loved the denseness of the muffins. She compares the muffins to cornbread muffins but they are so much better.
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