Juicing

Today starts day three of my juice fast, or juice feast, depending on how you look at it. Basically this consists of fasting from all foods and only drinking juice and water throughout the day. These fasts can be done for one day, three days, or even up to ten days or more. A juice fast is a much safer option than a water fast because you are still able to gain nutrients during the fast. Actually you are often times gaining more nutrients than you normally would because of the large amount of fruits and vegetables you are consuming.

Digestion requires 30% of our bodies' energy. When you are consuming all your nutrients in a liquid form the stomach is able to immediately absorb them. All this saved energy can then be used for other needs in the body. This can be extremely helping in the case of chronic illnesses, or even at times for a short term illness. It is often recommended that as soon as you get a cold/flu to begin a juice fast so that your body can focus less on digesting and more on healing.

Some other benefits of a juice fast:

- Detoxifies the body and helps flush toxins out.
- Safe and effective weight loss
- Increased energy from all those nutrients you are absorbing
- Loss of water retention

Read more about benefits here

Of course if you do a juice fast you will need to juice your own fruits and vegetables and should consume an equal amount of both. This is the difficult part for me because the fruit juices taste SO much better! Also you are suppose to consume around a gallon of water a day. There are many expensive juicers you can buy. I have one that my dear mother allowed me to borrow. It is older but it works just fine!

Some people limit their juice to three glasses a day. I have been drinking as much juice as I want. My reasons for doing the juice fast are to allow my body to focus more on healing and to rebuild my body with good nutrients. So for me the more juice the better.

Even if you just juice for one meal or snack a day I would suggest juicing to anyone. Its also GREAT to make for your children! My little ones love a fresh juice and I can even sneak in a little spinach and they will still drink it. Green juice can be fun for a kid if you make it so!

Here is one of make favorite juices I've made so far! Try it out! Cheers!

Rise and Shine Juice

2 apples

2 carrots

2 stalks celery

inch ginger

two handfuls spinach

1/2 lemon

Back to Blogging!

So I haven't blogged in a long time. In a really long time actually. Mostly because our lives have been somewhat crazy over the last nine months. Well to be honest they have been really crazy. I originally created this blog to post craft ideas, party ideas, and recipes. I love celebrations and making everyday occasions special. Of course that's where the blog title came from.
Over the last nine months I have learned how important it really is to celebrate the small things. In February I suddenly became sick and just could not get better. Test after test continued to stump doctors as to what was causing my low blood pressure drops, extreme fatigue, body aches, and the list continued. We tried medication, slight diet changes and I continued to get worse. When you have two little children and you don't have the ability to get out of bed to care for them and no one can give you answers things start getting really difficult. Your world changes when you start hearing doctors mention serious illnesses such multiple sclerosis, dysautonmia, and other autoimmune diseases.

I can say with absolute certainty that God intervened when he led me to Middle Tennessee Center for Alternative Medicine. I began seeing a wonderful naturopath doctor there and slowly began to improve. Simply by changing my diet, detoxing, and taking all natural supplements. I decided not to continue with my medical doctors and seek a diagnosis but to continue treating it holistically and trusting God to heal my body. We are fairly certain that this is an autoimmune illness of some type. Which one? We don't know and I honestly have no desire to know. To me that would only instill fear and I choose to have hope that I can overcome this or at least control it in a drug-free way.

Where am I now? Well overall I am about 75% symptom free. My blood pressure no longer drops, my fatigue has improved, and the body aches happen less often. I have to follow a very strict gluten/dairy/sugar free diet. The closer I stick to the diet the better I feel. I have to rest when I need to rest. Which is VERY difficult for me! I still have bad days and still can't do everything I would like to do but God is teaching me so much through this process.

I want to continue blogging and sharing my journey. I have learned so much about healing naturally through this process and discovered so many new recipes. This is something I am now so passionate about and I'm eager to share it with others. 

Each day is a new day and I never know what to expect but each one is filled with its own small celebrations. Sometimes simply having the strength to talk a walk with my children or being able to attend church is a celebration. Like I said before- I've really learned to appreciate the small things. :)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways submit to him,and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

Foam Ornaments

This weekend I helped my two year old make her first Christmas ornaments. We are planning to put our tree up this week and I wanted her to have some ornaments that she had made herself to put on the tree. So I rummaged through my craft box and found some foam, buttons, and ribbons, and we got creative.

There are several foam ornament kits that you can purchase. Of course this is much simpler but I love tyring to create something with the materials you have. I want to encourage creativity in my daughter and we had so much fun trying to decide what would make a good snowman scarf, arms, etc.

Ornament #1 - Christmas Tree

I started with a 4x6 piece of green foam and sketched a Christmas tree on it, drawing a circle at the top of the tree so I could punch a hole at the top. You don't have to be an artist to do this! As long as you can draw a triangle, you can draw a tree! If your children are older they can even do this themselves.

Next, punch a hole in the top.

Now the fun part! Give you child a selection of buttons and let them glue the "ornaments" on the tree.



She had so much fun doing this and ended up with a pretty cute tree! Tie a string or ribbon through the top and you are finished!

Ornament #2 - Snowman

For our snowman I used my circle punch to cut out three circles from white foam. If you don't have a circle punch you could always draw the circles yourself- this was just quick and easy!

We used toothpicks for the arms, ribbon for the scarf, and buttons for the eyes. The hat and nose are both foam pieces as well. My two year old needed more help with this one but she loved helping me choose the ribbon and buttons and colors to use.

So simple and fun! Now we just need a tree!

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Pancakes

Pancake breakfasts on Saturday mornings are starting to become a tradition around here. My two year old loves to help me make pancakes and would eat them for breakfast everyday if I would let her. (Of course I don't, although it's tempting because I love them as well!) I love trying different pancake recipes and I figured pumpkin pancakes would be a perfect breakfast for a beautiful fall morning. Pumpkin is so good for you and I also used whole wheat flour to make them even healthier. Of course in order to make sure my daughter would eat these "healthy" pancakes I threw in some chocolate chips. The flavors of pumpkin and chocolate are a match made in heaven!

These were so good and a nice change from regular pancakes. The whole wheat flour does give them a different texture and taste so if you are not a fan of it then just use all purpose flour. Or you can use half of each to give them less of a wheat texture.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Pancakes

1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup of buttermilk
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 cup of pure pumpkin
1/2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 chocolate chips

Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Make a well in the center of the mixture and set aside.
Combine the milk and egg and mix well. Add the pumpkin and stir until blended. Finally add the melted butter and stir again until well blended.
Add the egg mixture to dry ingredients and stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy).

Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto a hot lightly greased skillet. I just use my measuring cup to scoop the batter out and pour on the skillet. Place the chocolate chips on the pancake. You can use as many as desired! I use about 6-7 per pancake but depending on your love for chocolate you may want to use more or less! Cook until bubbles form on the top of the pancake and the bottom is golden brown and then flip and cook on the other side. Do not flip more than once!! You never want to overflip a pancake!

Serve these little pumpkin babies warm with hot maple syrup and watch them quickly disappear!!!

Maple Glazed Chicken with Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Last night we had one of my favorite fall time meals. I love sweet potatoes this time of year but they are especially good mashed and go so well with this chicken. Oh and this is such an easy meal to make! This recipe originally came from Allrecipes.com but I have made a few changes. This is a must try!! As far as the maple syrup I have made it with both the real stuff and imitation syrup. Either way was great! I don't often buy real maple syrup so I just use whatever I have on hand. Here's the recipe!

Recipe for Mashed Sweet Potatoes

1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes peeled and cut into one inch slices

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Place peeled potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to boil over high heat and then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until tender (about 20-25 minutes). Drain and mash the potatoes with a hand masher. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

Recipe for Maple Glazed Chicken

1 pound of chicken tenders

2 teaspoons of Montreal Steak Seasoning

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup Maple Syrup
1/2 cup minced onions

Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle chicken tenders with seasoning and cook in hot skillet over medium heat until no longer pink (about 5-8 minutes per side). Remove chicken and add maple syrup and minced onions to the skillet scraping up any of the browned bits still in the skillet. Bring to a boil and and simmer 2 minutes.

Now you are ready to eat! To serve place chicken on top of the mashed potatoes and pour the glaze over the entire thing! So delicious! This is the perfect combination of savory and sweet!

Fun with Fruit Loops

So I haven't posted since last week because we suddenly found ourselves bombarded with things to do. During the busy times we find ourselves eating out more often and the time spent at home involves chores. So this means I have done very little cooking and of course there has been no time for fun crafts. Today however we have been back at home and I spent some time this morning working on counting and sorting skills with my two year old. (And I will be cooking Maple Glazed Chicken with Mashed Sweet Potatoes tonight - so look for that recipe in a future post!)

So my two year old loves Fruit Loops. I usually don't even buy the cereal because I know it is just pure sugar and if they are in the house then she is constantly asking for them. But my husband went grocery shopping with us last weekend and we somehow ended up with Fruit Loops and sprinkled donuts. He tends to be a bit of a push-over when it comes to his little girl. :)

So since we have these colorful  little cereals all over our house I decided we would use them for a little bit of learning this morning. I had saved an empty egg carton and baby food jars with really no purpose in mind except that they could be reused for something. Combine the cereal and my empty household items and we ended up with a Fruit Loop learning center.

Here's what I did:

I covered the baby food jars with different colored paper and labeled with the name of the color. I let her use these jars to practice sorting her colors. She LOVED this! She knows most of her colors and this was excellent practice in sorting. She would pour them out and resort them over and over again. The labeling is also good for word recognition!

 The second thing we did was use the empty egg carton to practice counting. I used a circle punch to cut out twelve circles.

I wrote the numbers one through twelve on them and I then placed each circle in the bottom of each egg carton cup.

We then practiced counting by placing that number of Fruit Loops on top of each number!

This was a little more challenging for her since she is only two, but was great practice! She eventually just started putting the Fruit Loops wherever she wanted them but was still counting the entire time. I can easily keep this and we can pull it out and practice repeatedly. This could also be used with money, buttons, marbles, beans, etc.

Oh and of course she ate several of the Fruit Loops during the process but at least she was learning while doing so! :)

Thankful Thursdays

I love the month of November. I love the fall colors, crisp air, yummy foods, and of course the best part is ending the month with Thanksgiving. I love the idea of spending not only Thanksgiving day, but the entire month reflecting on the things you are thankful for. So I decided that this year I'm going to create a jar, where each day I can jot down one thing I am thankfull for and place inside the jar. Now I'm sure there will be days where I forget, quite possibly more days that I will forget than remember, but this seems like a nice goal to have.
So I simply took an old vase, wrapped a ribbon around it and I'm placing this in my kitchen because I spend a large part of my day there. I think if nothing else the vase will be a daily reminder to slow down and be thankful for the little things in life.

So what am I thankful for today? Simple. The fact that I am able to stay home with my sweet children each day. I never knew how much I would enjoy this. Now it is definitely not easy! When both of them are screaming and the house looks like it was hit by a tornado, I feel like pulling my hair out. Some days I think I want to go back to work! Or simply just get out of the house! Or have an adult conversation during the daytime hours!

 But I wouldn't trade these small moments for anything. The moments when I hear those little voices waking up and calling momma, the moments when we all pile into my bed in our pajamas, the time spent reading stories, singing songs, and laughing together. My favorite part of staying home is the time to spend savoring the little things.

 Now I'm not at all a stay at home kind of person. In fact me and the kids rarely stay home :) Sometimes I miss my career and find myself wanting more to do! (crazy i know!) I get bored easily and I'm constantly trying to find something to fill our days and keep us busy. But sometimes during the moments when the three of us are just sitting in the floor playing together, it hits me. I am so blessed! I need not complain about anything because I get to spend my days being a mother to two little children that love me with all their little hearts. So today during the chaos and quiet moments, I'm thankful for each second I get to spend with the greatest little blessings God has given me.