{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama
Monthly Archives: March 2013
I’ve gained even more weight since then! (2012-12-24)
I have gained so much weight since I got married. Food is a big challenge for me. I am an emotional eater and it doesn’t matter what emotion it is, I will eat to cope with it. Multiple diets, tons of education, and heaps of self condemnation have not resolved this problem. I know what to eat. In fact, I would say that with my scientific background, I know better than most people just exactly what happens in the body which explains why we should eat the way we should. But I don’t.
And as I have been toying with freezing meals and organizing my recipes I have acknowledged that I am lazy. I am SO lazy! It’s crazy! But … who cares!? I am no longer going to make myself feel guilty for my laziness. Just like I’ve been doing with my organizing projects, I am learning to observe how I eat – no judgment – and identify problems and fix them!
For example. I need to eat fruit. I like oranges. So, I buy a bag of oranges and put them in a pretty bowl on my counter. I like to look at them – they are pretty! I don’t eat them. When I’m hungry, I go into the kitchen and look at the oranges and then make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The oranges mold in the bowl. Oh, the guilt! “Why are you lazy? Why are you wasteful? Why are you weak?” SCREW THAT! I am not judging myself anymore, just finding solutions!
Before marriage and pregnancy (2012 -10-10)
So, in finding solutions – one meal at a time – I discovered I like breakfast cookies!! Mmm. And if I make a double batch, I can freeze enough cookies for two weeks worth! I pop them in the microwave for 45 seconds, pour some milk, and grab a banana. I eat that!
Here is my cookie recipie:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 c rolled oats
3/4 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c light brown sugar
1 1/2 T flax meal
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4 c unsweetened applesauce
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients; mix well. Gently fold chocolate chips and raisins into the batter. Drop batter onto the baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 12 minutes.
Makes 7 servings. Cals 410.9 fat 11.1g carb 73.1g fiber 8.2g sugar 34.7g protein 10.0g
Next up, lunch! O.o
He’s a whole year old! I spent a great deal of time making decorations for his party. Early in the week (while the husband was at a conference) but late at night (while the baby was sleeping) I had a sandwich delivered and I dyed eggs. (Did you know Jimmy Johns delivers big fountain sodas and delivers UNTIL 4 AM!!??)
I emptied 3 dozen eggs and, using the recipes and procedures described at “not martha”, I dyed them up, leaving them to dry until the morning.
I was so pleased with how vibrant they were! The magenta was indistinguishable from the red (for me), but it worked out just fine. I filled them with candies and stickers, then glued matching tissue paper over the holes. They were a big hit with adults and children at the party!
Next, I was inspired by Half Baked – The Cake Blog to decorate his cake like a robin’s egg. I went a bit extreme, though, when I decided to make a two-tone cake to look like a hard boiled egg. Here’s what I ended up with (my dad made the cake stands for me, straight from this wedding blog):
One change to the directions given on the blog was that, instead of directly dabbing the cake with a brush, I cut the brush short, wore gloves, and drew my thumb against the brush to fleck cakes with chocolate. It was messy on my hand, but didn’t get everywhere else.
To top the cake with little eggs (I didn’t like what I saw at the stores) I tried to make my own. I flecked them in the same manner as the cakes. First, I stuck pins into the ends of chocolate eggs (foil removed) and melted some candy chips:
I used the pins as handles to dip into the candy and then as hangers to let them dry:
After flecking them, I put them on the cake and cupcakes.
I also played with plastic eggs making a banner (inspired by skiptomylou) that ended up being not very noticeable hanging from the tree and a wreath (inspired by u-createcrafts) which I forgot to photograph.
We took his very first photo next to his height chart (inspired by ME! I’ve been making these for nearly 12 years now!) and I’m looking forward to doing this year after year. I’m sure he’ll be more comfortable with grass by next year and will stand on his own!
(Oh, I forgot I made a number “1”, following creative jewish mom‘s blog – you can see it on the other side of the chart from Robin)
It was a beautiful day and we had fun playing with the family in the spring sun.’
Happy Birthday, my darling bird!
{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama
I have won my struggle with a healthy snack that both Robin and I can eat! Yay!
Smoothies. They’re easy, no big deal, all over the internet. But, for me to be successful with this, I have to freeze the yogurt in portions. Using my muffin tin which holds 1/2 cup when filled to the top, I line it with clear wrap, spoon in plain yogurt, and then freeze them. Once frozen, I take them out of the tin and clear wrap and put them into a freezer bag.
Each day, when I take out two frozen cookies for breakfast (oops, I didn’t tell you about them yet!), I take a yogurt puck out and put it into my blender. In a few hours, it’s thawed and ready for smoothies!
My smoothies usually are:
1/2 c 2% fat plain greek yogurt (usually the non-fat version has more carbs and less protein)
1 banana
1 T flaxseed meal
1/2 c 2% milk
1/2 c frozen blueberries
cals 416.3 fat 8.89g carbs 73.12g fiber 10g sugar 45.12g protein 19.22
The next step in my office/scrapbooking organization was to deal with the office supplies. There are more than I would have thought! At the beginning of this quest of order, the office supplies started out in piles in front of and in the bookcase (lower right).
The Solution was a totally ineffective bookcase hidden behind my husband’s desk. You can see it peeking out there, but what you don’t see is that the shelves that aren’t visible are relatively empty!
With a little rearranging in February, we moved the shelves out where we could use them and moved the office supplies – which by this time had migrated to a huge pile on the right side of my desk (not pictured) – haphazardly onto the shelves so I could work on that lamp issue.
I finally sorted the boxes out and finished organizing them. I also put labels on!
It would be lovely if I could leave the shelves like this (sans my helper):
But, we have too much stuff, so I had to use the wasted space over the boxes, but it’s still a HUGE improvement!! Yay!
{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama
I saw on Pinterest someone had used Styrofoam bowls as diffusers on their camera. So, after a meal with Styrofoam take out boxes, I made one for my little Sony.
Drew around the lens onto scrap paper, cut out a hole:
Testing the scrap on the lens – looks good:
Transfer hoe to Styrofoam:
Cut that out and tested on camera:
Random photo with no diffuser:
Diffuser cut out and on camera:
Random photo with diffuser:
Now, to try it on people!!
I have to give up my illusions here…
I don’t like to cook. Sometimes I fantasize that I will become passionate about cooking, so I look at recipes and cookbooks, but I don’t. And so I collect books and recipes on cards and from magazines and I never do anything with them. I found three recipe card boxes. One had a bunch of Martha Stewart recipe cards that I never used. Another is empty. The third had all the random recipes I DO use crammed in it. Since I am a techy girl, I am abandoning the cards.
I spent the weekend transcribing (or finding online) all of the recipes I would like to someday make and saving them in the recipe app I am using (My Recipes). There are pros and cons to it, of course. I like that I can tag and sort, make grocery lists, change proportions, but especially that it saves the recipes in my DropBox. It doesn’t let you easily track nutrition information or plan meals and calculate meal nutrition info, but the developer is pretty responsive so it may be a feature someday. Also, it is kind of a pain to add ingredients one at a time – I’d love to be able to just copy/paste from a text file, but that’s pretty unreasonable to expect.
ANYWAY – I am all done! Here’s the stack I recycled:
There were a few that I wanted to keep because my mom or grandma wrote them, so for now I have put them in plastic sleeves in my Household Notebook in the Meal Planning section.
And here’s the reveal of yet another project: The Family CookBook. We’ve already made a PDF of the original one (113 pages of recipes, photos, and illustrations), but I’d also like to have them in My Recipes or at least a searchable index available. And then we need a new and updated one! It would be nice to have all the old and new recipes available online when I’m done with it, too.
But, I will save that for another day!! O.o
Too hard to decide:
{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama