Five Years Old

Today, my daughter turns five. Part of me is feeling all sappy and teary-eyed that my baby is so dang big. But mostly, I’m reflecting on the strong, smart, sassy little woman that she is clearly becoming. Ya’ll, this girl gives us a run for our money! She’s just as stubborn as me, which is terribly frightening and encouraging, all at the same time. I know that her strong will can take her far in life, we just have our work cut out for us in helping her to use her stubbornness for good and not evil.

This girl stormed into the world at her own pace (which was as fast as possible) and she continues to amaze us with her determination. She plays hard, loves hard, and we absolutely adore her.

Happy birthday, sweet girl!!

An ode to coffee

I love coffee. I started drinking it at around age 12, despite all of the assurances from those around me that it would stunt my growth. (I’m nearly six feet tall today, so clearly that wasn’t a problem for me.) My first coffee was from a church coffee urn, which hadn’t been cleaned in who knows how long. It was wretched. But when you add enough coffee creamer, any coffee is drinkable, at least to a 12 year old.

Around this time, coffee shops like we know them were in their infancy. There was a bagel shop close to my high school that had an espresso machine, and some mornings my mom and I would leave for school early and grab a bagel and coffee before she dropped me off. I even had one of their plastic branded travel mugs. I thought I was pretty cool and sophisticated.

My freshman year of college found me in Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks, and my first real job (not working for my parents) was slinging cappuccinos to patrons at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. One night, our manager rushed behind the bar and kicked my co-worker off of the machine to make a cappuccino. We found out later that this particular cup of joe was consumed by Bill Gates.

After the theatre job, I worked in the cafe at Barnes & Noble and finally at a small coffee chain in Boulder, Vic’s Coffee. I can say with confidence that my taste in coffee has matured quite a bit since that first cup in my childhood church’s fellowship hall. After Josh and I got married, we started making our own coffee creamer in a quest to eliminate processed foods from our diet. We also started ordering organic, shade-grown beans from a roaster in Washington State (for more info on why organic and shade grown is important, check this out). We used a coffee press back then, but have since moved to an electric coffee maker, mostly for conveniences since having kids.

In the last six months, our coffee has continued to evolve. We now add grass-fed butter, MCT oil, powdered coconut oil and liquid stevia to our joe. It was weird at first, not going to lie! But now, it’s our breakfast in a cup. And now that Fall is here, I’ve been adding a smidge of pumpkin purée and spices for my own pumpkin spice coffee, minus all of the junk you would get in the syrups. Every so often I look at the ingredients in coffee creamers at the stores, even from places like Sprouts and Vitamin Cottage. I still put the containers back on the shelf in disgust. Just… yuck.

Somewhere, over the rainbow…

Earlier this year, I started learning to play the ukulele. My husband kept dangling that carrot in front of me, and I finally bit. It is such a happy little instrument! I’ve been playing tenor ukulele in the praise band with him, and it’s been a lot of fun. However, praise music is relatively simple (musically speaking) and I’ve been wanting to push myself with the uke. It’s hard when you have two small children, but I’ve decided that this is an area where I want to reclaim ‘myself’, so I’m making it a priority.

Yesterday afternoon, a local ukulele teacher held a group lesson/jam session at a coffee shop. It was ridiculously intimidating for me, but I went and ended up enjoying it immensely! All of us there were at different levels in our playing, but I think we all ended up learning some new things. I learned a new strum pattern, and the very basics of fingerpicking, which I had been intimidated to try and learn but now I’m really excited to dive into it more.

And now after playing along with several soprano ukes, I want one. Haha! If anyone needs any Christmas gift ideas for me… There you go.

(Side note: This picture was taken back in March, a few weeks before we started eating Keto. More on that a little later.)

A time for everything

Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline; the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death… In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted… But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances – on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come.

Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Fall has always been an interesting season for me. Some of the biggest and most impactful events of my life have happened in September or October. The end of a relationship that I thought was forever. The beginning of a relationship that became my forever.

This year, it has been a season of recognizing some major things about myself that I need to work on. We have been seeing a therapist as well as diving into the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course by Peter Scazzero, and sometimes I feel like I am being ripped apart emotionally. Things from my past that I thought were long gone, had only been shoved down and left to fester. Definitely not an emotionally healthy practice, let me tell you.

As we have been talking about grief and loss in EHS, I’m recognizing that death isn’t just in the physical sense. For me, I have realized that I have experienced a death of part of myself in becoming a mother. I have given up so, so much for these little people. My knitting designs have been put on hold indefinitely, and I can’t even remember the last time I actually knitted something. Clearly, writing and blogging have been placed on the back burner. I’ve been able to keep a tenuous grasp on singing and music, thankfully, but even that can be stressful with the kids involved.

As I mourn this loss, I’m also learning that it is not a permanent one. As everyone points out to me, this is a season. My kids are only this little for so long. My son is two, and my daughter turns five next month. They are already growing up faster than I would like! While I still need to learn to take better care of myself, my situation is constantly changing. This ‘limit’ in my life is also a blessing. The things I learn about life and myself through my children’s eyes are invaluable. And the task put before me of raising productive, decent human beings is incredibly important. May I never lose sight of this truth.

In the meantime, I need to organize and put together the corner of our multi-purpose room that’s meant to be my crafty space. Anyone want to come babysit my kids while I work on that??

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:1-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬‬‬‬‬

‘Skinny’ eating

One of my favorite websites this past year for recipes has been Gina’s Skinny Recipes. She posts some amazing recipes, re-worked to be lower calorie while not losing any of the flavor. Oh my word, this woman knows what she’s doing! Some of our favorite recipes have come from Gina’s blog, and several of the dishes we’ve tried have been such a hit, we’ve made them multiple times. One of my favorites this winter has been her Baked Potato Soup, which uses cauliflower brilliantly to lighten up the soup while keeping the potato flavor.

Something that I can’t do, though, is use non-fat dairy products. After learning about the process of removing fat from dairy and the negative effects it can have on your health, I’ve gone back to using full-fat dairy. Plus, research has been showing that the fats in dairy are good fats, which we need in our diet anyway. I would much rather cut out processed sugars from my cooking to lower the fat, rather than cut out nutrient-rich dairy fats.

That being said, I still love Gina’s recipes. I just use full-fat dairy when she calls for non-fat. 😉 She is very creative with substitutions for sugars, which I definitely appreciate, and she has a full nutritional break-down for each recipe. (When I sub full-fat dairy, I use this recipe analyzer to re-calculate the nutritional information.) For a good selection of Skinnytaste recipes, check out her Top 20 Skinny Recipes for 2011, along with her Personal Top 12.

Better bread.

We’ve come down with the plague here in Shermanville (ok, it’s only a cold/flu, but it feels like the plague) and neither Josh nor I have had the energy to do any cooking whatsoever. The most effort we want to put into making food right now is toasting bread and putting on the kettle. Today, while we were in the store stocking up on Throat Coat, we passed by the bread section and I decided to do something that I haven’t done in several months: buy bread.

A while back, I was looking at ways to remove processed foods from our diet while cutting back on our grocery costs. A simple answer was staring me right in the face: I’ve had a bread maker sitting on a shelf in my kitchen for ages, and have barely used it. Why not bake our own bread at home? Not only would it be cheaper over the long run, I would also have complete control over what went into our bread. After a couple trial loaves, I realized that I preferred removing the dough from the machine before it baked; the resulting loaf from a bread machine is pretty dense, while loaves baked in a conventional oven are just so much, well, better.

Today, however, I didn’t even have the energy to throw in the ingredients for our favorite honey whole wheat loaf for toast. The very thought of pulling out my bread machine made me tired, so we just bought a loaf from the store. Later, as Josh and I were munching on our toast, he turned to me and said, “You’ve ruined me.” Yeah, dude, I’ve ruined myself, too. As soon as I have the energy, I’m putting the bread maker back to work!

Whole Foods giveaway!

I found this on Twitter tonight: Whole Foods has a great Pantry Stock Up List on their blog, and in celebration of the New Year they’re having a giveaway! All you have to do is shoot them an email telling them what healthy pantry items are a must in your kitchen. Easy, right? So go do it!

Thanks to knit1eat1 for the heads up. 🙂

Christmas in Shermanville

Tutorial here.

Real dairy, please.

Of all the things in our fridge that we use on a regular basis, coffee creamer is one of the most important in our house. Coffee is something we consume every day, and even though we love it with just a little half & half along with honey or agave nectar, we also dig it with a little flavor. Unfortunately, most of the ‘creamers’ on grocers’ shelves usually have nothing to do with any form of dairy. It’s really frightening to think that those containers can sit out, unrefrigerated, for long periods of time and still be consumable. Gross, right?

So when I saw these recipes for home-made flavored coffee creamers, I jumped on the chance to wean us off of the fake stuff. These creamers are so easy to make, the flavors are just right (I think) and they’re sweetened with maple syrup. The only thing I do differently with these is use all half & half, instead of half whole milk and half heavy cream. It’s just easier for me that way.

We used Pumpkin Spice creamer for quite some time this fall, then tried Pepperment Mocha right before Christmas. Josh thought it was too peppermint-y, but I thought it was just right. 😀 I think we’ll be trying the French Vanilla next, although I still have plenty of pumpkin and can eat or drink pumpkin anything all year long…

What do you like in your morning cup of joe?

My story.

I’ve always been a relatively healthy person. No real diseases or conditions to speak of, I thought I was doing pretty good all through college and the years following. I probably relied on junk food a little too much, but I figured I was so busy with my studies (and later, work) and it was perfectly normal to eat out most of the time and make a few meals at home.

Right after Josh and I got engaged, I discovered through my doctor that I had an underachieving thyroid.