Life

I've been having the blogging itch lately. Real bad. It seems like life, while literally amazeballz right now, is just interfering with my grand delusions of blogging. Either that, or I just have some time management issues. Nawwww. I blame being pregnant. Oh, and MOVING. But not really moving. 

SO: we decided to move about an hour and a half away from where we were living. It started with us putting our house on the market and coming to the realization that we had no clue where we wanted actually wanted to move to/ live. Because Matt has a very flexible job with a large territory and I'm a stay at home mom, the possible area where we could live around Portland was huge. We loved the idea of living in the city, but also really love the small town vibe, but after months of trying to make a decision, nothing seemed to just... work... or fit... or feel right. 

One evening, after hearing some very thoughtful insight from our parents, we realized life is just too short and if we had a place in mind where we really wanted to live then we should just go for it. Well, we did. It was always our dream to move to Astoria, but it just seemed so out of reach. Matt made a call to his boss and found out he could be transferred within a month, and we just went for it! So now we're at the coast, living with my mother in law, a baby on the way, our house house on the market, bouncing back and forth between two cities and while a bit crazy, it just all feels so very, very right. Like, everything will just workout in the end. 

While I sit and keep my fingers crossed, I'm going to take the time to actually write/ be more consistent with blogging. Maybe I don't have time to do all the cool bloggy things I originally intended to do, nor post ten times a week or even month, but I need to commit to something amid all the chaos of life. 

And now some tiny human time. Here is the original tiny human denying me his cuteness.

Cucumber, Tomato & Goat Cheese Salad

It's health. It can be a snack or a lunch. And it's ma fave. I love simple recipes that can be tweaked to a persons liking and this recipe is one if many, so I figured I'd share it! 

Also, I consider this recipe paleo friendly. We have been practicing what I dub a "pretty much paleo" diet, where the only slight exception is some soft cheeses such as goat cheese and occasionally feta in very limited amounts.

Ingredients:
Greens -- can be kale, spinach, lettuce -- get creative
1/2 Cucumber -- I had half leftover from the night before
~1 cup Tomatoes
1 tablespoon Goat cheese or Feta
1/2 tablespoon Olive oil
Salt/ Pepper to taste

Directions:
Chop the veggies up & mix everything together-- couldn't be simpler. Also, feel free to add protein of choice, be it shredded chicken, tofu or left over grass-fed, organic hotdog from your tiny humans lunch.

Homemade Strawberry Fruit Snacks

I've been wanting to make my own fruit snacks for a while now, and finally did. I honestly don't know what took me so long-- they were incredibly easy to make & taste delicious! 

As a family, we have started a new food venture based primarily on the Paleo diet. I'm just sick of everything we buy at the grocery store containing a bunch of unnecessary additives and ingredients which were never meant to be put into, nor digested by, the human body. I could turn this into a twenty page rant about our food market and the food industry, but alas, I shall just continue to complain and interject my opinions whenever I see fit. (Let me know if you want more info about the Paleo diet and/or if you would like to hear my food tirades and I will gladly oblige.)

So the fruit snacks I usually buy have so many unnecessary ingredients it blows my mind. The fruit snacks I made have four. Fricken. Four. Ingredients.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups Strawberries (can be fresh, frozen or any other type of berry)
1/2 cup Lemon Juice (can be fresh, or from a bottle)
2 tbs Honey
1/2 cup Gelatin

Directions:
Heat lemon juice and strawberries on medium low heat until the strawberries are soft (note: frozen fruit also works in this recipe). Then puree fruit in a blender and let sit until cool (about 5 mins). Whisk in honey & gelatin, but whisk gelatin in small amounts to avoid clumping. Pour into silicone mold (silicone ice cube molds would make fun shapes) or pour into baking dish lined with parchment paper. Let setup in refrigerator for about 2 hours. Remove from mold and cut into fun shapes/squares/use your imagination. 

Pictorial process:

 

Hiatus

So to say I have taken a blogging hiatus is somewhat of an understatement. It all started when our computer decided to have an early life meltdown. The flucking thing is only three years old. We are fortunate enough to have many other computer like gadgets, thus enabling us to be somewhat lazy about fixing the computer. So, instead of fixing the thing, we put it off. Then put it off some more. 

Anywhooo, we basically let our computer sit and collect dust, and blogging from the iPad is just plain difficult, so with all these excellent excuses adding up, I just didn't blog (some other fun stuff happened, but I'll get to that in a quick second). Well, flash back to a couple weeks ago, we took our iMac to the Apple store and they fixed it for free... for free! Nice, we waited for no reason. 

It was a nice break though, but I'm definitely ready to get my blog game on again! 

As for the fun other stuff that played a role in my blogging hiatus; we found out we are expecting baby #2!! Pretty cool right? Totally. I'm now 21 weeks (about 5 months for all those 'have-yet-to-make-a-baby-people-who-don't-talk-about-babys-growth-in-weeks'), but those first three months were brutal and I was a HUGE lazy sloth. I didn't wanna blog. I didn't wanna be conscious most of the time. It was fantastic. You shoulda seen my house. 

Other questionably fun stuff: we decided to sell our house (still trying to sell it), we decided to change our eating habits and are practicing a Paleo based diet (recipes to come) our tiny human turned 4, annnnnd I dyed my hair purple-- I'm a mermaid now!

So, now I'm gonna post a bunch of awesome pics from what has happened over the past few months and begin blogging again, yay! 

Ready, go!

October/ Halloween time:

Olins 4th Birthday/ November:

December/ Christmas time/ January/ Feburary: 

Tiny Human Learning Games

Last week the tiny humans were exhibiting signs of boredom in the form of chaos-- with the rainy weather comes pent up tiny human energy. I decided to come up with some creative learning games to focus some of this extra energy. I took some basic colored construction paper, wrote the colors of the specific paper on them, then played a game of collecting items of that specific color and spelling that color every time they brought me a new item. They also took turns taking pictures of their progress. The activity encompassed spelling, reading, color matching and team skills, and they had a great time doing it over and over again. When they were done they decided to color on the paper while practicing color matching and spelling with crayons. I swear, the simpler the activity, the more they love it, and this one was a hit!