Living, loving and growing!

A little about what's been going on with us... We found out in Sep that we were expecting another baby! I had been sick for about two weeks and finally took a test! We were pretty excited as it was perfect timing for how far apart we'd hoped our kids would be! I was super sick and started showing really fast. My mommy intuition told me from day one that I was carrying twins! At 13 weeks we found out I was right in a very painful way when we lost one of our babies! It took some time of grieving that I'd never in this world get to hold that baby in my arms, to accept that God has a plan and for some reason that I can't understand He choose to take that baby straight into His Arms. I can grieve for my loss, but I can't grieve the fact that I get to look forward to meeting my little one in Heaven or that one of my children will NEVER know pain. How amazing that one of my babies will know nothing but the glory of Heaven and being in the presence of God! What a thought! We were scared that we'd lose our living child as well, so we had many prayer warriors pleading with God to save this baby! Our prayers were answered and this little one is healthy and growing! Another Spring baby, actually due on big brother's original due date! And speaking of big brother, let's switch subjects and talk about my almost two year old baby boy Zayden Alec!!

Zayden is growing so fast and becoming such a fun helper! I baked some English Muffin Bread the other day using this AMAZING recipe. Zayden helped stir it up, taking a break to have a drink of our strawberry banana smoothie, then he ate his fair share of fresh warm bread when it came out of the oven! Look at that sweet little face! I love him so much! He's starting to understand that I have a baby in my tummy! Or as he says Bahby! Last night as my midwife was checking on baby, hearing the heartbeat and measuring my tummy he was watching with big eye's, saying over and over again, bahby? Bahby?? He's learning to be more gentle with me too, no more flying head butts into Mama's tummy! We're doing our best to prepare him for the coming arrival of his little brother. Thankfully he loves babies in general(though is is partial to baby girls) and is "usually" very gentle and loving. I sometimes think that he can tell there's something going on with me, he's become quite a snuggler in the last few months. Not that I'm complaining though, I cherish each moment with just him! I picked him up the other day and realized that he's not a baby anymore, he's tall and lanky, loves to help me around the house and Daddy in the garage, loves all things loud and fast in the car dept, but is a sweet lil guy most of the time! We're working on cutting out as much dairy as possible as he developed a bad sensitivity to it at about a year old, he's become a much happier baby as we find the worst triggers and eliminate them from his/our diet! After the baby comes we're planning on doing a huge lifestyle change in the eating dept! Brad and I are determined to get healthy and stay that way! I'm working on small changes now, but as I struggle with daily morning sickness through my entire pregnancies, some days I'm lucky to eat much at all, forget trying to make and plan a full healthy meals!

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 A few things I've been researching on the healthy eating plan is trying to incorporate more raw foods into our diet, there's so many great recipes out there. Though I don't want to switch to a 100% raw diet, I do think there would be great health benefits to adding a bunch more raw items to our menu! I mean, look at this yumminess on the plate below! Epic Raw S'more! I got the idea for this from this video from EasyToBeRaw's Megan Elizabeth! I'll post my adapted recipe down below! It was seriously as rich or more so than a "real" s'more, not to mention it was totally free of any non real foods! Healthy, sweet, no refined sugar, a real guilt free treat! Zayden gave this his vote of approval as well and I found that just rolling the cookie mixture into a ball and rolling it in coconut flakes makes it perfect for little baby hands! Yum!

My recipe for the raw s'more adapted from EasyToBeRaw..
*"Chocolate" Sauce.* Blend it up as smooth as you can, mine wasn't perfectly smooth, but it didn't matter :-)
10 soaked dates
A heaping TBsp of cocoa powder
Splash of vanilla
1/2 C water

*Cookie* Pulse in a food processor until totally pulverized and easy to squish into cookies! I found it was easier to make into cookies if I rolled it into a ball, rolled it in coconut flakes and then squished it so it didn't stick to my fingers so bad!
1/2 C walnuts
3/4 C chopped dates
1/4 C raisins
1/4 teasp cinnamon
1/4 teasp vanilla
(About 1/2 cup coconut flakes for rolling)

*Filling*
A ripe banana or two sliced up! Thickness is up to you :-)

To Assemble Your S'mores in 3 easy steps!!
1. Make your cookies, I found it easier to make all the cookies at once so I could wash my sticky fingers off before starting on the rest of it!
2. Spread your chocolate sauce on the inside of two cookies, stack as many banana slices as you want on top of the sauce on one cookie, I opted for one overlapping layer and then kinda squished my top cookie on it to make them stay!
3. Enjoy this yummy healthy treat and share it with your friends and family*

Lots of new adventures and VANILLA!! :-)

So I have a deal going with a good friend over at pipeandharp. We're both young wives and mothers, so we're encouraging each other to post more blog entries! She's already got a jump on me with some wonderful posts about cheese making. Seriously Natalie, you're making me so hungry! :-) But on that note, I need to start my own post.

There's been a lot going on here, Brad's doing well at his new job and has already earned a raise :-D I'm busy baking bread, keeping house and taking care of our lil one! Looking forward to the Spring and Summer! I'm planning on purchasing a good waterbath canning set and putting up lots of fruits and veggies! Particularly, I'm planning on putting up lots of tomato products. I'm so excited to start my garden! Here are some things that I'm looking at differently this year though. I'm steering clear of Genetically Modified seeds, I'm planning on planting all heirloom seeds and plants this year! I'm also starting a journey of teaching myself how to use herbs A LOT more! In both culinary and medicinally ways! Herbs are so powerful and so much better for you than chemically based meds. I'm also getting honeybee's after about 3 years of wanting to! Yup, I'm finally taking the plunge. So here's to looking forward to posts on bee's and sweet sticky honey! :-)

Zayden is growing so fast, almost 9 months old, saying Ma ma and Da da, signing Mom, Dad, Milk and More, starting to eat table food, crawling, standing and walking around items(while holding on)! I've been babyproofing the outlets with ducktape :-) And he's loving his lil phone and laptop, I think I have a potential techie on my hands!! 

Anyhow, I'm going to start trying to post something each entry regarding cooking, organizing, gardening or herbal! This time I'm going to just post a bit about my vanilla! :-)

Here we have 80+ vanilla beans that I ordered from Amazon.com from Beanilla Vanilla. I was very impressed with the beans. I split each bean in half lengthwise and stuffed them in the gallon glass jar! My kitchen smelled SO good. After they were all in the jar, I poured a gallon of vodka over and gave it a good shake! Then I placed it in my pantry for about 5 months, shaking it every few days. You want to let it soak for at least 4 months but not really longer than 6!

Here we are after 5 months, I dumped it out and WOW, did it smell good! It was so rich that it was almost syrupy. Yum!

I pulled all the beans out and laid them on a towel-Tell you why later :-)

Then I started ladling the vanilla into my jars, I made sure to stir it up each time so that each bottle would get lots of the lil black seeds inside! Mmmm! I also added a few beans to each bottle, kinda a lil creative flair I guess :-) 

Here's all the leftover beans, I stuck them back in the jar and added......

SUGAR!!!! So in 6 months I'll have a gallon of yummy vanilla flavored sugar to use in my iced coffee and baking!

I made a HUGE batch as I intend to sell some, to give some as gifts and cuz we use a lot of vanilla! You   can totally make smaller batches!

New adventure(s) continued! :-)

So the new adventure I was talking about THREE weeks ago was the fact that after a year of being VERY unhappy with his job at the county, Brad QUIT! :-) That's right, he gave his notice and is now happy and busy working at Borden's Auto Parts! We prayed quite a bit over this decision and really felt that the Lord had opened the door for Brad to leave the county. Brad has come home for the last 2 weeks with a smile on his face and excited to tell me what happened during the day. I love it! I'm a happy wife here! Please keep us in your prayers as we manage a pay-cut with this change, and Brad as he learns new things.

Cooking adventures!!!
I've started on a journey, a epic quest you could say to rid our home of chemicals, preservatives and HFCS(High Fructose Corn Syrup). So I'm going to be posting pictures and recipes here soon of Homemade Ketchup, BBQ sauce, Ranch and Mayo! And no, the ranch is NOT a packaged mix :-) I'm so happy to have a great resource in Heavenly Homemaker's blog!  Check it out!! Fantastic!

Here's a quick pic of some Fall Fun with my Sweet Lil Son! 4.5 months old here! My lil sweetie!

A New Adventure Begins! To be continued!

No, I'm not pregnant :-) But there is a big change that happened today! I'll you all about it later. I've been BUSY! Baking lots of bread and trying out new recipes, lots of talking with my Sweetheart about the "change", LOTS of prayer in the last few days. Looking forward to the new doors that have been opened and also learning to trust God even more for the future.
A new chapter, nay a new book.
It's a time to reflect, to take a good look.
The vision we see, what for granted we took.
There's so much more, if we allow God to write the book!
So here's to baking yummy bread, being thrifty and good with money and starting on this next adventure :-)

The Challenge~ Day 10

Ok, so I decided to accept the Homemaker's Challenge last week! It's been really good, though I have to admit I haven't been following it to a T. You see it was stressed at the beginning that you need to take it as you can, as it works for the stage or season of life you're in at that point! I'll share the reason's that I'm chosen to do things a bit differently here in a second! First though, I need to share that the start of this journey that I'm taking right now, being a homemaker, a good wife and Mama was a decision to throw away what the world wants me to be! I'm refusing to buy into the lies anymore, the lies about Motherhood, and being a stay at home wife and mother! Now that was pretty easy for me, but one thing I did realize I wasn't doing is finding out the best ways to bless my husband! Now I can tell myself, that I have enough to do.. Taking care of a baby and cooking good meals is all I need to do, I mean that should be plenty right?? No! It's been on my heart that one thing my sweet husband would REALLY like is a cleaner home, a place that's relaxing and free from clutter, a place he can walk into and drop the burdens of the work day off his shoulders and just enjoy being home. If the house is messy, he can't do that. One, because he can't get my undivided attention to talk about his day(I'm to busy being distracted by the mess). Secondly, because the mess is chaotic and very un-relaxing. Last but not least, he can't be happy and relax because I'm not happy! I know how silly is that right? I'm not happy when my home is messy, yet I don't always keep it clean! So now we get back to my first subject, why I'm not following "the plan" :-)
I'm reading the challenge everyday and when I can fit in the challenge for that day I do, but there's something else I'm doing that comes before that... Are you ready for this??? Every night for this past week I have been asking my husband what I could do the next day to bless him. Every night he tells me something that would make him very happy to see cleaned or done. One night he was sweet enough to leave me a lil list, he knows I like being to cross things off :-) Our home is getting much cleaner, I'm much more peaceful and joyful, Brad enjoys just being in our home and relaxing and I feel like a million bucks! It's so fun for me to clean in my home when I think of it being for him, for the man that I love so very much! Why has it taken me so long to change my view, I've been looking at cleaning through a dim, dirty window and it seems that it's finally clean and I can "clearly" see what I didn't see before! It's a way to bless my husband, a way to make him happy and to thank him for going to work everyday and allowing me to stay home with our son! But I think that I had to be ready for this revelation, I had to work up to this heart change as I see now that it is! I wouldn't have been able to do this before, it's been through prayer and some tears that I've come to see it this way! I wish with all my heart that I'd not been so stubborn and willful before, now my home is happier and I can feel the approval from both my husband and God. It's a wonderful feeling!

Quick note!

What have I been doing lately? My life recently has been busy, buying and selling on e-bay, hosting a Stampin' Up party, baking and selling bread, learning to cook gluten free for Brad, taking care of my lil Darling, and making my own vanilla(can't wait to try it in 4-6 months) (Got the recipe here from Heavenly Homemakers Blog! Probably one of the only times I'll ever have vodka in my home!) Now one of my biggest desires is to have a clean well organized home! I'm going to be talking about what I try and what works for me and what doesn't! That said, I'm going to start with a five minute cleanup in the kitchen while Zayden sleeps!
Oh and this past weekend, I saw a pod of Orca Whales and... Got stung by a nasty Red Jellyfish! It hurt... BAD!!

~Hello and welcome~

Well, hello blogging world! It's time to get my feet in the sand so to speak! I'm looking forward to this new adventure! My plan is the blog about my life, the life of a young Christian lady striving to be what the Lord would have me be. You can expect honesty and a fun look inside my lil world! I'm going to be sharing some victories and struggles, my heartaches and tears and of course we're going to be laughing at my expense a time or two! Anyways welcome to my world as a 23 year old mother to a sweet darling lil blessing named Zayden and wife to the most amazing man in the world named Brad!