Paleo Muffins

I always like to challenge myself for a month at a time. Whether it's getting more exercise or eating better, keeps me motivated. This month it's been a sugar free February. It's hard in the beginning but by the end of the month it gets easier. As a result I tend to go searching for healthier snack ideas. Some of the best websites for sugar free ideas are Paleo websites. If your not familiar with Paleo it's eating strictly meat, veggies, nuts and fruit. No flour or sugar. There's more to it, but that's it in a nut shell. I'm not going paleo, I don't think all that meat is real good for ya. But I do like their snack ideas. One of my favorite this month is Paleo Banana Nut Muffins. No flour or sugar, lots of good stuff can be added. Here is the recipe:

Paleo Banana Nut Muffins

1. 4 bananas, mashed with a fork (the more ripe, the better)
2. 4 eggs
3. 1/2 cup almond butter
4. 2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
5. 1 tsp vanilla
6. 1/2 cup coconut flour
7. 2 tsp cinnamon
8. 1/2 tsp nutmeg
9. 1 tsp baking powder
10. 1 tsp baking soda
11. 1/4 tsp salt

350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
I threw in some raisins, unsweetened coconut, a shredded carrot and topped with pecan pieces. These are awesome for breakfast or a quick snack. This made 16-18 muffins and can be stored in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator. 

The Octopus

The first 3D printed item went so smoothly that Sean decided to make something for Greta. So they went to thingiverse.com and let Greta pick something out. This website has free design files you can download for your 3D printer. She wanted an octopus so they went through several designs before finding the perfect octopus to print. Man, it was super cool watching this one print! The legs were mesmerizing. I had initially gotten video at the beginning when it was printing the legs and shared that one to facebook, but this second video of the body was almost more fascinating than the legs. Take a look:

An Indoor Weekend

We woke up to this lovely winter landscape this morning. It's around 18 degrees with some strong winds, definitely a day to stay indoors and work on projects. This week I was given an older dollhouse and, after a trip to Lowes, am ready to start the restoration. I loved my dollhouse when I was little and I hope Greta finds this one just as fun. It's blue exterior is getting a fresh coat of sage green paint to freshen it up. I'll show some before and after pictures once it's done. I'm having fun with it.

 Sean has been in the basement working on the calibration of the 3D printer. He was ready for the maiden print yesterday and found an appropriate first project. Wesley woke up to find a freshly printed Minecraft Creeper head. I put a short video at the bottom of the post. It was fascinating to watch it print the honeycomb design that made up the interior body of the cube. Very cool piece of machinery.

My New Fruity Pastime

What's in the box you ask? Well! I was watching a Friends rerun the other evening....it was the one with Chandler and the crazy roommate. The crazy roommate was really into dehydrating foods. I mentioned to Sean that I've always thought it'd be fun to dehydrate fruit. He told me how much he'd like to eat dehydrated fruit. So off to Amazon we went and bought a highly rated, not too expensive dehydrator.

Now the fun part begins! I do not know the first thing about dehydrating. This was bought on a whim. So I opened up the instruction manual and gave myself a quick lesson and then started chopping. Being unprepared means I didn't even have much fruit to dehydrate. But we generally always have apples and bananas on hand so that's what I chopped.

This particular model came with a fruit leather tray (think fruit roll-up). My kids (and myself) love fruit roll-ups so to be able to make my own was definitely a selling feature. One of the recipes for the fruit roll-ups was a pina colada leather that consists of a can of pineapple, a banana and some coconut that you put in a blender then pour out on the tray in the dehydrator. Sure sounded good to me and I had all the ingredients. Score!

The apples required a little prep work before they could go in. First you must chop them super thin. Luckily I bought a mandoline slicer at the same time we got the dehydrator. How have I lived this long without a mandoline?! Those things are awesome! One apple fills two trays. They must be soaked in orange juice or lemon juice for five minutes so they don't turn brown. I sprinkled them with cinnamon after their soaking.

After 8 hours everything was thoroughly dried out. The bananas didn't turn out like I imagined. For some reason I was thinking of those delicious banana chips you buy in the grocery store. Those are actually fried in coconut oil and sprayed with a sugar solution (I had to look it up). These banana chips are more like leather chips, not crispy. Still very good, just not what I had imagined. The apple chips were awesome. Nice and crisp. The pineapple fruit roll-up was good even if my kids didn't like it (have I mentioned how picky they are?).  I just bought a fresh pineapple to dehydrate tomorrow, can't wait! So much to dehydrate out there, I better get truckin'.

I Love....

I haven't done a Love post on Valentine's Day for a few years now.  I thought I'd attempt to do one today in honor of Valentine's Day.

I love....the sweet construction paper Valentine's my children made me.....going out with my hubby on a Friday night....listening to Wesley read so well......giving goat scratches......laying with my kids on the trampoline and soaking up the sun......Amazon boxes sitting on the porch......warm 70 degree days in February.....Greta's face when I pick her up from preschool......my awesome parents and their awesome babysitting skills.....listening to the kids sing every word to their favorite songs on the radio (Oh how they love Imagine Dragons)......getting flowers delivered from my sweet hubby.....my quiet kid-free time during preschool....playing dolls with my daughter....Wesley's toothless smile.....watching Supernatural with my hubby on the couch.......green tea in the mornings......getting 10,000 steps on the FitBit......hunting for treasure with Greta at the thrift stores....eating dinner together as a family.....hearing all about Wesley's day at school on the drive home.....being a mom to these two incredible little people.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

 

Party Prep

"So what have you been up to lately?"


Well it's so nice of you to ask! I have been pretty busy this week. Every available moment during the day I have been sculpting. This year I wanted to do something special for the kids in Greta's preschool class for Valentine's Day. There are only ten kids so sculpting each child something wouldn't take too much time right? Well that's what I thought too. It seems like everything takes longer than I plan, but it was all worth it. I think the kids will like their little sculptures. I made sure to put their names on them too. I got little bags and put the Valentine card, Hershey kisses and each little teddy bear in. Oh and Greta is ecstatic to give them out tomorrow at her preschool party.

Zombie Fog

I had to stop on the dirt road to take a picture of this lovely sun rise. There was a nice haze of fog floating on the grass. The kids refer to this as "zombie fog".

Scouting

So the kids and I decided to scout out a new park yesterday. It's not a new park mind you, just new to us. This town is about twelve minutes away and I always figured there was a park I just had never happened upon it. Finally I Googled it. Sure enough there was a park, and an awesome one at that. Most playgrounds are pretty cookie cutter playgrounds. This one has some new and cool stuff I've never seen before.

The down side? Everyone in a 50 mile vicinity also thought going to park yesterday would be great. After all it was a 70 degree day in February. It was packed! Very fun though.

Whenever a tree is cut down they form the stump into a chair. So the kids ran from tree chair to tree chair posing for the camera.

I took them shoe shopping afterwards followed up by a rousing trip to the natural grocery store. They were completely and utterly worn out by the end of it and I got a very quiet and peaceful trip home.

I hope everyone is having a nice and relaxing weekend!