i've kind of been a cooking machine lately

This might sound weird....but I just recently realized that you can bake a cake without buying a box of cake mix at the grocery store. Yes, I know. I just figured that out like a week ago. I've never been super savvy in the kitchen. Although most of my time is spent in the kitchen. The hubs and I run a daycare and I prepare breakfast, lunch, and snacks for 12 kids everyday. And dinner for my family of 5 every night. You would THINK that I would have realized that I can bake a cake without a box of cake mix. Go figure.

The big "ah ha" moment in baking my own cake came about a week before Jackson's 7th birthday. But let me back up a bit first. A few months ago we started the process of eliminating partially hydrogenated oils, artificial coloring/flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup from our home. We eat as much organic food as our budget allows. If you opened our cabinets and fridge, you'd find them stocked with healthy REAL food. Food made with natural or organic ingredients. We did our research and learned as much as we could about ingredients to avoid and how to actually read the ingredient label (not just the nutrition facts!) on packaged food. It was a big undertaking! Grocery shopping takes a little bit longer these days as I'm agonizing over ingredient labels and figuring out which foods are ok to purchase. Now that I am more informed I am realizing that grocery shopping is a fun challenge and I like finding new-to-me products at the store that are healthy (AND TASTE GOOD) for my family. So, when it came time to buy a box of cake mix, I was of course astonished at the amount of nastiness and fake ingredients found in a box of cheap cake mix. But a box of gluten free cake mix or cake mix with all natural ingredients were all at least a whopping $4/box. Not really within our budget. What to do? I stood in the baking aisle wondering just how in the world I was going to make a cake for Jack's birthday. And then all of a sudden it hit me.....I could just make my own. Seriously, I was not programmed to bake things from scratch. I used to be all about convenience and time saving cooking methods. But these past few months I have changed my ways and am discovering things on a daily basis that I can make on my own using REAL food ingredients. Much healthier. And, believe it or not, much less expensive too. Now I am having fun challenging myself at the grocery store AND challenging myself at home to figure out how to make things from scratch. So far, so good. The only problem? Math. I'm constantly doubling or halving recipes or substituting ingredients for what the recipe calls for. Fractions scare me. And now I'm surrounded by them....

Back to Jackson's birthday cake....my good ol' Better Homes and Gardens cook book came through--I was totally surprised to find an entire section on cakes!!--and I made a simple chocolate cake. Twice actually. One time for cupcakes and once for his actual birthday cake. And I substituted fruit puree for eggs and oil and cocoa + fruit puree for chocolate. And the frosting? Oh my....I made a peanut butter chocolate frosting with real food ingredients that tastes suspiciously like Nutella. Except way cheaper. I may or may not have made three batches of this already....

These bad boys were smothered with some delicious Nutella-like yumminess right after this photo was taken:

I've made a couple different varieties of granola bars and they have been a HUGE hit in my family.

I'm beginning to see that the possibilities are endless when it comes to food I can make in my own kitchen vs. processed and refined foods that I would purchase in a store. And, BONUS, now that food prices are pretty much going up each week, its nice to make less-expensive options. Next up on my list of things to try: Mac & Cheese (that tastes like instant Mac & Cheese, not the baked kind, and that would be cheaper than store-bought organic Mac & Cheese), whole wheat bread, peanut butter, jelly, and working on my waffle recipe (its never quite right).

I'm getting rather excited for the upcoming season so we can pick some fruit at nearby u-pick farms. I've never done u-pick before (except when I was a kid!) and am nervous/excited about learning how to freeze and can my own fruits and veggies! Yay for new adventures!

lists

I like lists. Like, I really REALLY like lists. I love making lists, checking things off my list, making things up to put on my list just so I can cross them off, creating cute little notebooks to keep my lists all nice and contained, and reading other people's lists. There is something very artistic about lists. They tell a big part of my story. Grocery lists, to-do lists, idea lists, scrapbook layout ideas, waiting list (for families that want to come to our daycare--yep, we're that awesome--wink) Lists are a big part of my life.

Lately I've had a bunch of ideas swimming around in my head. Big ideas. Life changing ideas. Fun ideas. And tonight I realized that I just need to WRITE THESE IDEAS down. And then I thought that I should apparently just blog about them too ;)

So, here's my "life to-do list" as of right now, in no particular order....not really a daily to-do list, but more of a list about things that I need to think through, change, or just figure out.

1. Adoption. Adoption. Adoption. I have a heavy heart for Ethiopia right now. If you don't know much about what is going on over in ET read this post by my friend Ashley. She explains it well. I am sad for all of those folks who are currently pursuing adoption in ET who are now just waiting to see what happens. Adoption can be such a waiting game and NOW it will be an even longer waiting game for those families just waiting to bring home their children. But I'm even MORE sad for the millions of orphaned children in ET who are affected by these adoption changes. The longer the ET government takes to process adoptions, the longer the waiting orphans will be in orphanages taking up space, therefore sooo many potential orphans will not even make it to an orphanage. Please pray for this situation to resolve quickly and for adoptions to continue as usual.
Now, what about our family? What is our current status in our adoption process? You can read about our new journey towards adoption here. We are pretty much still in the same place we were a few months ago when I wrote that post. Once we felt called to adopt, we let that resonate for a while and just prayed about the whole notion. Matt and I both feel called more towards domestic adoption of a non-infant. And we feel strongly that we don't want to disrupt our biological kids' birth order, which means that the child we adopt would be younger than Zoe. And Zoe is just now 18 months old, so if a domestic non-infant is what God desires for our family, it could be another year or longer before that becomes a reality for us. We have contacted a FABULOUS ministry called Loving Shepherd Ministries that works with adoptive families. They have given us tons of information and our next step is basically just getting started in the whole process!
Last night we attended a Q&A session with True Vine Ministries, which is an adoption ministry within our church. It was great to get some questions answered as well as connect with other adoptive families. We left the meeting ignited and excited to begin the process! Stay tuned!

2. The Hole in Our Gospel. We joined a new Life Group a couple of months ago within our church. We have sincerely enjoyed getting to know the other couples in our Life Group and are excited about "doing life" with these people. Our group just started reading The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. Oh my. I'm only a few chapters in and its quite good...yet I'm nervous to keep reading because of what I fear God will call me to do. This book is about figuring out what God expects from us. Its about going further and doing MORE than just living an ordinary life and going to church. Its about having a faith in God that literally moves us to action.

3. Finding new ways to live a greener lifestyle. This is something I'm really excited about right now! Our family has already made MANY changes to be healthier and leave a smaller carbon footprint on our planet. We now use all non-toxic (mostly homemade) cleaning solutions, which I LOVE. We have switched almost all of our personal care products to non-toxic (or at least less toxic), organic, all-natural, and/or sometimes homemade versions. (Read more about this process here...and if you have a few extra minutes, check out The Story of Stuff website.) We bring in less stuff and reuse/recycle more. I'm suuuuuper excited that our small town will be initiating a one-can recycling program at the end of March! We'll have one big trash bin where we can put ALL plastic #1-7 (currently we can only recycle #1 & 2 plastics) and all paper to be recycled. No sorting necessary. Yay!
After changing our cleaning products and personal care products, our next step was starting to re-think what we eat, how we eat, where we get our food from, and all that exciting stuff. We have eliminated all partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup from our home. (With the exception of one particular kind of peanut butter that my husband can't live without...) We have switched over to an all natural and mostly organic diet. Literally every week at the grocery store I am in awe that I am able to find organic versions of most of the food we eat! My kids haven't noticed any changes in the food we eat at all. And my husband and I feel much better about the food choices we are making! AND, eating this way is not breaking our budget either. Some of my favorite brands of organic or all-natural products are: Annie's, Kashi, Mom's Best, Cascadian Farms, and Meijer (Meijer has a FABULOUS and affordable All Natural and Organics line.)
So now I'm just in the process of becoming more and more informed. Making even better food choices! Possibly joining a CSA or at least purchasing as much food as possible from local farmers. Learning how to freeze and can food. Phasing out fast food (gasp!) and soda (double gasp!)...the list goes on and on! And FINALLY read Food Matters by Mark Bittman and watch "Food, Inc." I have the book. And "Food, Inc." is on Netflix.....so I have no excuse to not utilize these two informative resources!

4. Coming up with new recipes. This sort of goes along with #3, but I need to spend some quality time coming up with some good new recipes....we're getting bored with the same old meals....

5. Spring Cleaning. Totally dread it. I've already got a mile long list of things I want to deep-clean....

6. Project Life. Still in love with the Project Life concept. Still keeping up to date with it, but just barely. LOVE that so many of my friends are sticking with it! I need to post about how my PL album is coming along!

7. Getting crafty. Lately I am finding that my free time isn't coinciding with my creative energy. This is frustrating for me! I NEED some good crafty projects going in my life. Scrapbooking has been my main avenue of craftiness and I'm feeling the need for some looooong scrapbooking sessions soon.

8. Painting our kitchen. We painted our kitchen red when we moved to this house back in 2004. And I really REALLY like the red. But we also run a daycare and have many MANY dents, scratches, and areas where the paint is chipping. Its become slightly embarrassing and we just need to repaint! Now to decide what color...

9. Finances. Budget. Need I say more? We have a budget. But I'm not proud to admit that we don't really stick to our budget very well....I'm pretty sure this little area of our lives needs a little extra attention right now to make sure we're making wise decisions with the money God has blessed us with. Its not much, by the way, but its enough to get us through! We have eliminated a lot of extra "stuff" that costs extra money. Like a TV service. But I'm certain there are a few key areas in our budget that could be reduced...

So, there you go. A little glimpse into what I've been thinking about lately and a look into my world of lists. I'm sure there is more on my brain at the moment too, but these are the items really sticking out right now.

Happy Monday!

how I revolutionized doing laundry...

I recently changed every single thing about how I do laundry. And OH MY WORD my life is so much more streamlined now. Its been totally fabulous.

A while back we started going green in our home. This process has been going really well and we've made many changes in our home. One of our changes is that I now make our own homemade laundry detergent. This turned out to be super simple, very cheap, much healthier than store-bought detergent, and it works really well. My friend, Lisa, posted a tutorial on how to make homemade laundry detergent. I followed her recipe and am quite pleased! For my fabric softener, I add about 1/2 cup of baking soda right in the wash and about 1/2 cup white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser.

That was step one in revolutionizing my laundering process...

Step two is where it gets super amazing.

With five people in our family, we do have quite a bit of laundry in this house. We have nowhere close to the amount of laundry the Duggers have to do, but the sorting and putting away of laundry can still be quite tedious. I used to just collect everyone's laundry and wash it all mixed together (well, I did sort out the whites....) Five people and five different closets equal a lot of time sorting all the folded laundry into the right person's closet. Just typing that last sentence gave me a little headache. Anyway, a while back one of my friends shared her laundry method and I finally gave it a try. Her name is Erin. She's freakin' brilliant. The method? Drum roll please.....

Do each person's laundry all in the same load.

That's it. Simple. Yet brilliant.

I like to keep up on our laundry. I don't really ever let it pile up, so this method works amazing for me, because I don't have heaps and heaps of laundry that all needs done at the same time. On Mondays, I do all of Jack's laundry. On Tuesdays, I do all of Macy's laundry. On Wednesdays, I do all of Zoe's laundry. And I do all of mine and Matt's laundry on the weekends. I do one load of white laundry each week. And I throw in towels, dish rags, etc with any load throughout the week. I seriously LOVE putting laundry away now. I literally fold all of one person's laundry and just walk it ALL in to that same person's room and put it ALL into that same person's closet and drawers. And then I leave that person's room happy and not frustrated because I don't have to enter four other closets and figure out who's laundry needs to go where.

So, really? An entire blog post about laundry? Oh yes.

green living 101

Going “green” can mean different things to different people. For some, it may mean just starting to recycle. And then for others it means making many changes in your regular everyday routines, habits, purchases, thought-processes, life-style, etc…

For us? We’re the latter. We have recycled for years. I actually don’t remember a time when I did NOT recycle, even growing up. And then about a year or so ago we started making little changes here and there to reduce our use of disposable products. A little while later we realized all of the toxins that lived in our house, so we changed the way we clean. And then some time after that, we started contemplating the toxins we were putting in and on our bodies and started attacking those issues. Going green is a process. But you have to start somewhere!

And because I don’t really want to re-invent the wheel on how to start going green, I’ll just offer a few tips that have helped us and point you in the right direction for what you’re looking to change.

Let me just say that not everything we do is considered eco-friendly. For example, we still use disposable diapers. Gasp! And, although I try to reduce the amount of hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup that my family consumes, I’ll still buy M&Ms and the occasional bag of potato chips.

Like I said, going green is a process…

The Enviromom blog has been a wealth of knowledge for us. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did. They have tons of info on taking baby steps to go green. This was a good starting point for us.

Some changes we have made include:
*eliminating paper napkins and switching to cloth napkins
*majorly reducing our paper towel usage
*re-using plastic Ziploc baggies
*using only non-toxic (and mostly handmade) cleaners
*changing almost all of our personal care products to healthier less-toxic versions (we even make our own deodorant and face wash now…)
*bringing in LESS STUFF and repurposing what we already own (reduce, reuse, recycle!)

It may seem like an overwhelming task to change your cleaning products to handmade eco-friendlier versions. Its really not! Combining natural ingredients for all your cleaning needs will save you money, help save the planet, and keep your family healthier in the long run. Companies that make cleaning products are not required to disclose ingredients on their labels. This BLOWS MY MIND! What has happened is that our society has been brain washed to think that we need bleach to clean everything. In reality, bleach is killing us and making us even more sick. Bleach is NOT necessary for cleaning!

So what happens when you change your cleaning products to non-toxic (and handmade) versions? Well, first off, you’ll learn to love the smell of vinegar. Vinegar has become one of my best friends. I use it everyday, multiple times a day. I use it for general cleaning, deep cleaning, fabric softener, dish detergent…the list goes on and on. Seriously, vinegar is a work horse! My eco-friendly friend, Lisa, introduced me to the advantages of vinegar. Actually, Lisa introduced me to the entire green living world to begin with! When I saw how easy it was for her to implement so many green living ideas into her home, I knew I’d be able to do the same. And I haven’t turned back since!

All of my homemade cleaner recipes have come from various sources. Lisa has a few on her blog. There are some on the Enviromom blog. Simple Organic is a fantastic website with lots of cleaning info on it as well. I compiled a nice little list with all of the different types of cleaners I need and recipes that work best for me (general, disinfectant, toilet cleaner, smooth stove top degreaser, window, laundry detergent, dish detergent, fabric softener, etc) and refer to it whenever I need to make up a new batch!

When you are ready to tackle the toxins in your personal care products, you MUST check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database. This database is fantastically amazing. It rates every personal care product you can think of by how hazardous it is for your health. You’ll be overwhelmed with the nasty chemicals that are in your personal care products! Hopefully you’ll be willing to make some changes after doing a little research on Skin Deep.

Changes I hope to implement in the near future:
*composting our food scraps
*changing ALL of my personal care products to organic, healthier versions (I still haven’t found an organic shampoo I like for my ultra frizzy curly hair…)
*buying more organic and local produce, meat, and dairy
*growing some of our own produce (this one might be in the very far distant future….I can’t even grow a chia pet, so maintaining a garden seems totally impossible for me at this point in my life!)
*learning how to freeze and can my own food. Again, that might happen after I figure out how to grow a garden…..

Have fun making eco-friendly changes! Your health and your planet will thank you. And hopefully you’ll feel a little empowered in the process.

happy arm pits = happy planet

In our never-ending quest to live a greener lifestyle, one of the major changes we've recently made is switching many of our personal care products to more eco-friendly and healthier options. After watching this video about The Story of Cosmetics as well as just doing a heck of a lot of research on my own, mostly through the Environmental Working Group's website, my eyes have been open to the hazardous toxins we put on our bodies every day. Did you know that the personal care products industry has NO regulations as to what ingredients they put in their products? AND, even worse, these companies don't legally need to disclose the ingredients on the label. So, we literally have no idea what we're putting on our bodies. The problem with that is these prodcuts contain thousands of toxic chemicals. And those chemicals get absorbed into our bloodstream, mostly through our skin. But you can read all about that on the above mentioned websites.

Our family has already changed all our cleaning products. (But that's for another post.) And we've made many other eco-friendly changes as well. But the thought of changing our personal care products was downright overwhelming. What I have discovered is that making these changes wasn't as scary as I had originally thought. In fact, I love it. I am much more knowledgeable and totally empowered. I'm happy to make these changes for the health of our family AND the health of our planet.

My friend, Lisa, posted on her blog about the homemade deodorant recipe she used. So a few months ago I made the exact same recipe. It was freakishly easy (and kindof fun!). I will tell you right now that I have very VERY powerful arm pits. They can sweat on the coldest of days. Literally. All my life I've had sweaty pits (I'm blaming that gene on my dad's side of the family...) and I've never found a deodorant that I've been totally happy with (that was affordable). Even the eco-friendly brands of deodorant haven't worked. Well, they worked for about a month and then instead of masking any odors, my pits decided to constantly smell like a high school boys football locker room after a hot August afternoon practice. Yuk. I'm happy to report that this homemade deodorant recipe has been fantastic! It is by far the best deodorant I've EVER used and there has only been one day that I noticed any odor under my pits, and that was on a non-shower day.....I've been using it for a few months now and I think I'm kindof in love with it. My husband even uses it and likes it too. Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup baking soda

1/4 cup corn startch

6 Tablespoons coconut oil

Mix all together till it is solid-ish and then mash into your container. Matt wanted his in a deodorant container. So, we cleaned out the remains of an old deodorant container and mashed some homemade deodorant in it. But for me? That wasn't happening. The coconut oil starts to melt at around 76 degrees, which if you recall, your body is warmer than that. So, when you start applying it to your pits, it starts to melt. And then it runs down the side of the deodorant stick. Not ideal for me. For some reason, my husband doesn't seem to mind this. I decided to just put some in a small plastic container. And I just scoop out a VERY tiny amount with my fingers and apply.

So its better for my armpits because I'm not adding nasty toxic chemicals like aluminum into my bloodstream. And its better for the environment because I'm not throwing away old deodorant tubes. And its better for our budget as well. I figured out that it costs approximately $1.60 to make one batch of deodorant that will last both of us for months. MONTHS. Not too shabby, even for this coupon-clipping mama.

SUMMER = happiness

You would think that I would have MORE free time in the summer to update the blog, but there is something about the summer months that makes me get slightly lazy in the blogging department…which means that my last few (and probably next few) blog posts will just be quick updates on what has been going on in our lives!

I’ve been having trouble on Blogger with rearranging the order of photos and text, so I’m just going to talk about each photo in the order it was updated, I guess!

Jack’s t-ball season ended at the end of June. All in all, it was an excellent season and he really enjoyed playing t-ball. His coach gave him the “Mr. Personality award” at the end of the season. Jack was always doing SOMETHING to get the coach’s attention. It was quite comical to watch him out there, to be honest! The other parents would regularly comment to us that they had a blast watching Jack and just seeing what little antics he was putting on that evening. Great…we’re raising a class clown!
We took some photos during a recent trip to Jefferson Pointe. They have gorgeous landscaping around this outdoor mall and we took a bunch of photos of the kids among all the flowers. This was just one of my favorite shots of both of them in front of a brick wall.

Our 4th of July was, well, interesting! We stayed at home and lit off a bunch of fireworks on our driveway. Jack LOVES fireworks and sparklers. So does Matt. It’s a guy thing, I think! I like the big pretty ones, but I could really do without the little dinky ones that just make a lot of popping noises and shoot flames in the air. Because sometimes those stupid flames shoot at my yard and burn the grass. Anyway….Macy, on the other hand, was NOT a fan of fireworks. The first one went off and she just started shaking and was unable to move. She couldn’t even move to crawl into one of our laps! So, after just a couple minutes, she and I came back inside the house. And all was well again!

After all those weeks of watching Jack play t-ball, Macy has decided that she likes to play too! It is adorable, really. She hits the ball off the tee (with fairly decent form, I might add!) and then runs all the way to the patio and back. She even likes to take turns with Jack and she’ll stay out and field the balls that he hits off the tee. So cute!

The sandbox has been a huge hit this summer as well. I can’t believe how dirty the kids get after playing in the sand, but they love it, so we play in the sandbox often! Jack really REALLY likes playing in the sandbox by himself. That way, Macy doesn’t destroy all of the things he builds.

Ahhhh…..so……we’re making efforts to go green! I’ve always been drawn to an eco-friendly life-style, but have just recently started making some new changes around here. I’ve been inspired by a blog that one of my friends directed me to, called Enviromom. Its written by two moms who are trying to live more eco-friendly and they are learning how to do so everyday. They are big on taking “baby steps” to become more earth-friendly. We had already been doing many eco-friendly practices, such as recycling as much as possible and buying in bulk to save on container consumption. But...we have decided as a family that we would like to initiate a few more practices into our daily lifestyles. First on the list…using cloth napkins during meals instead of paper napkins. Saves us $$ because we don’t have to restock paper napkins and it obviously helps the earth. I looked and looked at garage sales and other places for cloth napkins, but never found any, so I finally resorted to buying new ones. I found a bunch of cloth napkins 50% off at Target (in the $1 spot!!!) after the 4th of July…so I bought about 25 of them. That should be plenty, I think. So far, I’ve found that I have not used ONE paper napkin since we’ve made this transition and I have also found that I have not noticed a difference in the amount of laundry that I do each week. I just throw the cloth napkins in the laundry with the rest o the clothes and it has not added any extra loads each week. The kids enjoy the cloth napkins as well! We keep them in a basket in the middle of the table, so they are easy to grab when we need them. I am, however, also keeping a small basket of paper napkins on the table in case guests feel more comfortable using paper napkins! The other big change we decided to make was that we are now going to wash and reuse our plastic baggies. Quite surprisingly, I LOVE doing this! It feels so much better to reuse plastic Ziploc bags rather than throw them all away all the time! One other little change we have begun is to make sure that when we pack lunch to eat somewhere other than home or if I’m taking snacks for the kids while we’re away, we package everything in reusable containers. No big deal. I have lots of ideas on things I want to implement, but for now, those are the big changes we’ve made.

Macy has found a new love…markers. She LOVES them. It is so sweet to watch her use them because she pulls and pulls and pulls to get the cap off. Her whole body shakes sometimes as she is pulling so hard. So sweet!

We’ve completed Macy’s new big girl room! All her furniture has been put together, we added some décor, hung new wood blinds, and I painted some circles around the room. I also sewed some ribbon on the curtains and made curtain tie backs with the ribbon. Her clothes and toys have all been moved to her new room and she LOVES it in there! The kids play in Macy’s new room every day and I think she’s getting used to the idea that it is HER room. In a few weeks, we will transition her to the big girl bed and see how she does! Then, baby #3’s room will be all ready for her to arrive.