Recipe Box

Dear friends, 

I will hopefully someday find the time to sit down and write an actual blogpost soon. I just feel like I'm drowning right now. 

Just thought I would pass on some clean recipes we've tried and liked lately....

Banana Bread Balls
Loved these for a snack or breakfast...I used my food storage freeze dried fruits. A mix of apple and strawberry instead of banana.

http://paleoparents.com/featured/banana-bread-balls-nut-free-larabar-wannabes/

Egg Foo Young
Loved this for breakfast:

http://nomnompaleo.com/post/5568966009/egg-foo-young-ish-spinach-egg-ham-coconut

Tropical Chicken Burger
We devoured this with a baked sweet potato:

http://thehealthyfoodie.com/2012/10/09/the-best-darn-looking-tropical-chicken-burgers-ever/

Tomato Basil and Beef Soup
Great lunch: (Added a little more seasoning but good)

http://onceamonthmom.com/tomato-basil-and-beef-soup/

Thai Lemon Shrimp
Really flavorful dinner- Instead of shrimp we used chicken cut in strips and served with zucchini. It was really good. We marinated it over night. Next time I'll do a little less chili paste though.

http://www.closetcooking.com/2008/06/thai-lemon-shrimp.html

Bacon wrapped chicken poppers
Good dinner! Love this one...only difference is I dredge my chicken in honey before I do the other stuff.

http://onceamonthmom.com/paleo-bacon-wrapped-spicy-chicken-poppers/

Plantain Pancakes
And I think I've posted this before, but it is soooo delicious. I use bananas instead of plantains and caramelized bananas are AMAZING!!!!!

http://paleomg.com/caramelized-plantain-pancakes/

Just wanted to share. 

P.S. My baby cries most of the day.

Love, 

Keshia

Victory!

Today is the end of my 21 day sugar detox!!!! It has been fantastic. I have went 20 and three quarters of a day completely sugar free! 

Explanation: Shannon is the Satan of Sweets. He has been a pretty good partner in this sugar detox, but occasionally he would try and get me to have candy or some treat. I didn't cave. EXCEPT the night that we planned the "gender reveal" I tried to get Shannon to agree to purchasing a baby gender appropriate outfit, wrapping it, and video us opening the outfit to send to my family. Satan of Sweets chose CUPCAKES! Due to videoing error, we ended up needing to reshoot 3 times and therefore we ate 2  cupcakes for the recording. Let me just tell you it was not worth it. I was SO sick. It's weird cause no sugar for 16 days straight and then 2 cupcakes that are heavily frosted= throw up! yuck!

So besides that little hiccup, I have done without honey, maple syrup, store-bought peanut butter, cow's milk, bread, oatmeal, pasta, pre-packaged seasonings, anything packaged or processed, ketchup, salad dressing, store-bought mayo, fruit (aside from one green banana or green apple/day), potatoes, and sugar for 20 and 3/4 days!!!!!! :)

I feel great and it really hasn't been hard. What do I look forward to tomorrow? Honey on my muffins for breakfast! They need a hint of sweetness! :) 

********************

Happy Thanksgiving! 

What am I thankful for? I've had a rough past week and my husband always looks for ways to cheer me up. He sent me the following in a text tonight that truly made me LAUGH OUT LOUD! I'm thankful for a hot husband! :)

The Name Game

What's in a name? Do you look for a name that's meaningful or unique? Trendy? Firm? Classic? Were you named after an ancestor or close family member? Or were you like me and named out of a baby names book because your awesome mama wanted it to be fun and different!? (I love you Mom AND my name! And thank you for not naming me Tamara or LaToya...they were in the front of my baby book as options.) If you've named a child before, did you take into consideration of how it will suit him or her when elderly? And I even go the other direction as well, there are some names I love for adults that do not seem to suit a child. At the end of the day, does any of this matter? Some say it does. I have actually never really thought about naming my children after someone that I love or have looked up to. I just always wanted my children's names to be different and unique. Hence Keshlyn and Kyden. (totally not good grandparent's names though...)

Their names do have meaning to me. Keshlyn is inspired from my name. Jolee is spelled that way because my middle name is Lee and I have always loved the French language. I took a couple years in college and would love to be fluent someday. Jolie means pretty. And I thought that was fitting for my pretty little girl.

Kyden has his name because I always thought the name Kye or Kai was a great boy's name. But I didn't want to just name him Kye. I am a nickname person or a name shortener...which to some may be annoying. I like to call people by shorter names (i.e. Jennifer = Jen, Jessica= Jess, Debbie= Debs etc.) I tacked on "den" to make it longer. And I wanted to spell his shortened name "Ky" because of my love for my home state of Kentucky.

So if you missed the news from my last blog post and video we are having a...

GIRL!

I like the idea of naming her after my two grandmothers. They were very influential to me growing up. Shannon loves the idea of naming her after someone we love but just doesn't like the sound of the name that I had picked out.  He vetoed me. 

SO.....needless to say I have no other ideas. I told him he is in charge of naming this little lady. He is taking on the challenge. He has offered 2 names. I like them but am unsure if  they're "it." I like having a few options though so we can decide when we see her cute little face.

Keshlyn has been very clear on her name choice. She says her sister is to be named "Cinderella." 

If you do not want my child to be named Cinderella or Kenya, please provide some name ideas for this lady in pink! :) 

Lame?

Gender Reveal Parties? Fun or lame? Well of course it's kind of lame and cheesy...but that's how I roll. I'm so glad that I had planned a tiny little reveal dinner party for tonight at a friend's house in Vegas, stayed up late to make a cute little "Bow or Beau" banner and cut out lots of mustaches and pink bows (Thanks, Collett for the help)...ONLY TO WAKE UP this morning to a Keshlyn with CONJUNCTIVITIS! 

Look at my sad, sweet girl! And then come to find out my friend Jennifer (host of the gender reveal event) was awakened by the same thing by her little boy this morning! Except her poor Cole had pink eye in both eyes. Needless to say, we had to cancel the night. I was super bummed (mainly because I needed some adult interaction).  

But I still wanted my family in Kentucky to receive the news in a fun way, so we decided to tell them with cupcakes and a video. We were super giggly because it took us THREE TRIES to get it right. (*ahem, we won't blame the operator at all....because she didn't have it recording the first time...lol). The frosting was so rich that it made us sick to eat it on the third take, so Shannon went with pretending. He's such a good actor. *cough* Take a gander. 

It's A.....

Sorry the video is so blurry...it was done on the phone.

Good advice...

I so needed to read this! Soon I will be a mother of 3! And to say that it FREAKS me out is an understatement. I had such a rough adjustment from 1 to 2 that it makes me feel incredibly inadequate to be a mother and anxiety certainly sets in if I let it. I realized just how easy it was to be a mom of one child...

and now I'm afraid I'm about to see how much easier it was to be a mom of 2 than 3! LOL :)

 I try to be pretty positive and push fear out of my mind. Sometimes that works and sometimes it fades back in...if you are a mother that's struggling with juggling children and especially if you are expecting, read this mother's (of 6) honest, truthful, and inspiring advice.

P.S. You know when I explained how clumsy I am and my little mishap with the homemade mayo? It splattered everywhere and I had to start over? Yeah...well....I was putting away my little mayo jar from using it and I dropped it it slipped from my hands, fell to the tile floor, and shattered. Glass flew... and consequently so did the mayo. Back to the drawing board...AGAIN! Grrr. Darn my clumsiness!

My Greatest Fear

At this point in my life, my greatest fear is that life won't get any better. I know fear itself can be debilitating but when you feel you're doing the best you can to make the best of a situation and see no results from it, fear sinks even deeper. You always hope change is for the better, but sometimes it just may be for the worse...

just my thoughts today.

P.S. Still doing great on the Sugar Detox! If you want to know more about it, go here.

Fa La La

Are you feeling the Holiday Spirit yet? I am already in Christmas mode because you see, I travel to Kentucky in the middle of December so I don't have as much time as most to get gifts ready for family and especially to prepare my advent calendar: Random Acts of Christmas Kindness. I talked about it last year in a post here. 

Would you like to keep Christmas centered more on Christ and living your month of December full of service like He did daily? If so, here are several ways you could create an advent calendar based around service. 


What I did was create tags and then we would hang them on the tree once the service was completed. I loved it because at the end of the season our tree was filled with "service." I put the date and the service to be performed on one side of the tag and then on the other side, a scripture about Christ and/or service that we would read in the morning when Keshlyn pulled out the tag for the day. It was like a quick little devotional.

Sorry for the cruddy pictures, but this is just to give you an idea of what I did. My tags were assorted green, red, and cream. Thank you Cricut for making cutting tags so fast and easy! A punch would work great too.

These tags are laminated so that I can use them year after year but the side with the service is taped on. This is so I can take it off and redo the services each year. I look forward to some new ones!




On to the calendar ideas...These links are not to "service calendars" but they're cute ways you could display a calendar with cards, tags, or slips of paper that list a service/Random Act of Christmas Kindness to be done that day. 

option 1.
Socks. This is the one I want to do...easy and cute. I am hoping to find enough before the first of December so that I can use this calendar.
http://www.marthastewart.com/270492/baby-sock-advent-calendar?czone=holiday/workshop-christmas/quick-and-easy-ideas&center=307034&gallery=856465&slide=170672

option 2.
This is the one I made last year because I was too crunched for time to go out and search for the socks...however this took much more time that I though it would due to all of the detailed scrapbooking. It requires a lot of scrapbooking embellishments/paper and may not be the best choice if you don't already have it on hand like I did or if you're looking for something quick and simple.
http://kimberlypetersen.typepad.com/photos/things_i_made/advent.html

option 3.
If you don't care what days you do what service...you could totally just do something cute and simple like this one. Make up all your service cards or tags (whatever you want to do) and put them in a glass jar to pull one each day until Christmas. I can't do something like this because I choose services on certain days for a reason (i.e. one that takes more time on the weekend, ones that I can do while in Kentucky, etc...) When you click on this link, you'll have to scroll down just a bit to see the jar display idea.
http://kindertastic.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=39

option 4.
This one is super cute and simple. Brown paper bags made cute with a little ribbon and cutesie numbers. (Psst. the numbers are printable from the site! So all you would have to do is get cardstock, make sure you have colored ink, and print them all out and attach to to the paper bag.)
http://bethproudfoot.blogspot.com/2010/11/countdown-to-christmas.html

option 5.
Another cute paper bag calendar idea. Read through this link because this is actually the site that helped me develop the whole thing last year. She actually provides a printable as well that I used. It is a card that you leave with your service or give to the person you're doing the random kindness for. It's really cute. You'll see what I mean.
http://tsjphotography.com/blog/random-acts-of-christmas-kindness-summary/