Happy 5th Birthday Benjamin

May 24, 2008

Ben,

Where does the time go? I can't believe 5 years ago we were blessed with being your parents.  You steal my heart everyday and it's been amazing to watch your personality grow over the past year. You love anything that has to do with the ocean. You will spend hours drawing and coloring. Swimming is your favorite sport and you're gentle with your sister, EmmyLu. 

May 12, 2013

You've made amazing strides in your speech therapy and now talk up a storm. You're excited for Kindergarten but nervous about leaving all your friends at Kid Works (so are we). Your favorite TV show is "My Little Pony," you insist on wearing black Spiderman to bed every night,  Mr. Anglerfish had to be in our family photos and your favorite food is still carrot applesauce. 

May 19,  2013

I'm excited and nervous for the next year, little buddy.

Love, 

Mommy

How to make safe, chemical free deodorant [Video]

safe, chemical free deodorant

Folks are baffled when I tell them that I make my own deodorant (recipe here). Why make your own? It's simple, the ingredients used in commercial deodorant MAY cause cancer.

Since this is something I use everyday, I felt I had to find something that was chemical free and safe to use on a daily basis.

I tried MANY natural, chemical free deodorants. The best I found was Soapwalla BUT you can't use it right after you shave because it irritates the skin. No bueno.

Two years later, I'm still making my own and using it daily. Watch the video and you'll be making it yourself too!

I'm venturing into videos. I might as well put that good ole state university broadcasting degree to good use, right? I used that broadcasting degree for a whole 9 months right out of college (while I was in college, I worked in television for two years though). Luckily, I learned how to edit video the old school way and the new school way -- on the computer. 

Meatless Monday: Baked eggs in marinara

How often do you have eggs for dinner? As we sat down and enjoyed this meal last Monday my husband said "We don't have eggs enough for dinner. We need to do this more often."

Simple and quick meatless Mondays go far in our family and I'm pretty sure, this simple, quick and easy recipe will find it's way back soon into our tummies soon (well, maybe tonight even).
The recipe basically calls for four ingredients: eggs, marinara sauce, cheese of your choice and herb of choice. We used goat cheese and basil (it's what we had on hand) but I'm sure the sky is the limit. I may try feta and dill next or pepperjack, cilantro and salsa. Is it dinner time yet?

Baked eggs in marina 
adapted from Linda Wagner 


4  eggs
1/2 cup good quality marinara sauce
cheese of choice
herbs of choice

Place a small, non-stick saucepan on your stove top over med-high heat. Add 1/2 cup marinara and crack 4 eggs – one in each corner -over the sauce. Cover with lid and let cook for about 5-7mins or until eggs are slightly firm.

At this time, preheat your oven and set to “Broil” at 500 degrees.

Once the eggs are starting to set, remove pan from heat. Remove lid and add a few dollops of cheese to the top of your eggs and place the pan under the broiler and cook until just slightly brown. About 1-2 mins.

Top with fresh herbs and serve.

Meatless Monday: Roasted Vegetable Tacos

I love Mexican food. I could eat a plate of loaded nachos all by myself. When I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I had to make that for meatless Monday!

By looking at the photo, you can see, it's very colorful and combine that with cumin, garlic and olive oil roasted for about 25 mins, this almost replaces my standby ground beef taco.

I roasted the vegetable on Sunday to save time on Monday night after I got home along with making the super easy avocado cream sauce in my small food processor.

I usually don't like corn tortillas but Trader Joe's has these amazing  corn and wheat tortillas that are quite tasty. Pick them up -- I wouldn't sway you wrong.

These tacos were a huge hit with my husband, myself and the baby. My son is hard to please and he opted for a cheese quesadilla.

Delicious!

Roasted Vegetable Tacos
from Naturally Ella

Ingredients
Filling:
1 small zucchini, diced
1 small summer squash, diced
½ medium red onion, diced
1 ear sweet corn, removed from cob
1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 medium red pepper, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons cumin
¼ teaspoon salt

Feta or Goat Cheese
4-6 corn tortillas
Cilantro

Avocado Cream:
1 ripe avocado
⅓ cup full fat, plain greek yogurt
¼ cup cilantro
1 tablespoons lime juice

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400˚. Prepare all the veggies as described and toss with olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and cumin. Roast in a pan in a single layer for 20-30 mins until tender and lightly browning.

While veggies are roasting, whip together avocado, greek yogurt, cilantro, and lime juice.

To assemble tacos, warm up tortillas (in the microwave wrapped in a damp paper towel or a oven with a damp tea towel) and assemble with roasted veggies, avocado cream, and a sprinkle of feta.

Green your lunch: get a reusable fork

I often eat snacks at my desk as I work almost 55 hour weeks.  I was noticing that I was using a lot of plastic forks and spoons one day and then remembered my trusty camping spoon from Light My Fire.

Slowly, my family has stopped using plastic bags, paper coffee cups, plastic sandwich bags so it's a natural fit I either bring utensils from home or use my camping spork.

How do you green your lunch routine?

Journey to finding a new, fuel efficient car

For the next 12 months we'll be researching cars so we can purchase two in the spring of 2014.

We'll be saying goodbye to our trusty and faithful 1997 Honda Civic and our gas guzzling Jeep Liberty.

The goal, to buy one reliable commuter car for my husband with cash and have payments on another car that gets better gas mileage than our Jeep (currently gets 15 mpg in the city) for me.

Buying a car, for me, has always been an exhaustive search -- with the exception of our Jeep -- the car we shared busted a head gasket and we needed a car NOW. My husband was more into looks rather than fuel efficiency and "just needed that Jeep." Since he drives 60 miles a day roundtrip, he drives the Honda.

Prior to marriage, I'd research consumer report and ask friends and test drive 15 cars.  My dad was quite annoyed by the process. I have never been into flashy cars but functional and reliable. Our Jeep has been reliable as well as our Honda but our Honda is getting up there in miles though 1990s Honda have been known to run forever.

I don't need an SUV -- mainly, I just want something that gets better gas mileage.

Anyone have any suggestions? On our list are Subarus, KIAs and Hondas but I'd love your input! What you like or don't like! We have a whole year to make this happen.

Month 2 Shaklee update

We're 60 days in ... watch how I'm doing!

This is a sponsored post as part of the Shaklee Corporation blogger program. I have received free products, online support and incentives for participating. My opinions are my own. People following the weight-loss portion of the Shaklee 180™ Program can expect to lose 1-2 pounds per week.