We have been enjoying fruit smoothies a lot lately. The kids love to make them and they are such a healthy treat I’ve been indulging them quite a bit. The key is to have at least one of your fruit items frozen. We use frozen blueberries or strawberries. Really all making a fruit smoothie entails is throwing a bunch of fruit with a little juice and or yogurt into the blender. But if you’d really like a specific recipe this is the one we’ve been doing this week.

In a blender:
1 cup of frozen blueberries
1 banana (the riper the better)
1 cup of strawberry yogurt
1-2 cups of apple juice.

Add enough apple juice to make it all “go” in the blender. If you don’t finish it all put the blender in the freezer. Take it out at dinner time to “thaw” and you will be ready for a treat after dinner!

Enjoy!

We have an active garden… and we also have 2 active fishermen in the house. Last summer dh dumped the left over night crawlers (worms) from a fishing expedition in one of our planters and Kyle is forever going over there ready to see his “worm farm”…. Well after reading this article on doing our own worm farm/ compost box this is right up our alley. Pat is sure to love all the science, we have a garden with plenty of trimmings to feed the thing and Kyle and Amy are sure to love the concept of it! AND is it sacrilege to say we’d have night crawlers to boot…. !… At least we didn’t’ buy them in a Styrofoam container.. and we caught our own food with them.

It’s been a slow conversion for me. I had a tough battle… I was a working mom and most of Kyle’s first foods were doughy and starchy and processed… but he had a fabulous care provider so I can’t complain about the food selection. And I’ll admit… I was so overwhelmed with baby and home and work that I just said “he ate!” and was happy.

Well fast forward 5 years.

My husband has a family history of high blood pressure and high cholesterol and Pat is following right in that family history. I look at the women in my family and BOTH of my grandmas are still alive, the women in my family live to a ripe old age. I’m not worried. But poor dh.. they are DOOMED by biology. And realizing my children now have 1/2 the DNA in their mix we are on a revised diet in our home not just for dh… but also setting life style for our children who will face the same bad heart conditions that Pat currently is facing.

Bottom line.. family history bad heart… Pat has it… he is seeing all test results to support it… and we need to live a more healthy family life style to help the kiddos eat more healthy to avoid the family curse. And let’s just hope my old woman genes are spliced in there somewhere…

Well I’ve given you the “symptoms” but no cure! The cure is evolving and very long but step one was we went “whole wheat.” Kyle was used to the doughy wonder bread from day care and for a year I tolerated this. But in Missouri we could at least buy the “wonder kids” or some other named bread that was vitamin infused and had the daily requirements of calcium in it. In Oregon we only had plain old wonder bread in its bleached wheat puny nutrient form.

So I took a radical step and I started buying whole wheat bread. I went for the orowheat which is packaged with an inner wrapper which IMHO helps keep the freshness. We are big toast people anyways so I use the tender loaf centers first for sandwiches and save the outer pieces for toast. Kyle was on to me Immediately… I had to wear the boy down, tough him out… but not too long ago we were at some one’s house and they had doughy white bread and he turned up his nose. I don’t eat white bread… he said!

Coming next how I banned Jif!

Amy has outgrown all her Jammies and since I have flannel coming out of my ears I have decided to make her some new Jammies rather than buying them. So today I made pair number one and almost finished pair number two.

I LOVE this fabric. It was one of those prints that caught my eye at the store and then I dismissed it. Came home and all of a sudden it was in my head. Two days later I was back and bought the rest of the bolt. I hate running out of a print I love! Amy was thrilled with her first pair, dh liked the price (didn’t tell him I bought the whole bolt!), and I felt really good about making something so darn practical.

Punk and Pink is available in our Etsy shop, I haven’t gotten it up on the website yet.

I just saw a thing on Nightline about a guy in NYC who has taken a year of his life to have No Impact on the environment. And he’s doing it with his wife and two year old daughter! I looked up his No Impact Man Blog and what a great read. I’m pretty sure I could never go that extreme, but he had some great suggestions about how we ALL can be more earth friendly.

I used to get beautiful posts with pictures showing, and it would only “excerpt” when I chose that option. HA! I apparently have broken my blog and lack the skills to fix it… if you have them let me know! Now they are all posting as excerpts. I am SO not a computer person.

Well I will carry on and if worst comes to worse when I can afford it pay someone to fix the problem. I suspect it was incurred when I messed with the sidebar. Of course I lacked the sense at the time… a major “ah ha” moment… to save the original file. So I’m just stuck with the mess up, possible suspect one.

At the rate I’ve been blogging I guess it probably doesn’t matter!

We were off for a 4th of July week to camp at Diamond Lake in Oregon’s Cascade mountains. Pat did a lot of fishing there as a boy and he’s been itching to get back there and go trout fishing. The lake has had a tough few years as it’s been inundated with Tui Chub which wrecked havock on the lake ecosystem. Finally last year they poisoned the lake to deal with them and it is now back in great shape and stocked with trout!

I’m feeling a little sun burnt and bug bitten but other than that came back very relaxed. The kids had a great time. Camping always seems like such a hassle to get packed and out the door, but once you’re there it’s so relaxing!

Pat and Kyle, our 5 year old, did a ton of fishing. They caught 9 fish! Yesterday they caught a really big one, 21 inches! Kyle just loves to fish with Daddy. The rest of us stay at camp though, we’re not exactly quiet all loaded in the boat, and fish don’t like noise.

The big catch…. 5 fish! WOW!

The BIG one. Mount Bailey is in the background.

Evan… he is such a little ham, always mugging for the camera.

My dirty little ragamuffins. Camping WILL leave you feeling crusty!

New in our shop today are our exclusive Bug n’ Belle Stroller Blankets. There are some darling fabric combinations for these.

Our Baby Belle Stroller Blanket is made of soft, high quality 100% cotton flannel. Generously sized it measures approximately 42″ x 42″. This blanket will grow with your child and still cover him/her at the age of two. Double sided with decorative stitching at the edge to give it a nice finish.

We Guarantee the quality of our items 100%. Machine wash warm/ tumble dry, this blanket will hold up to lots of wear and tear.

We have some new and super cute Swaddling Blanket prints in our shop today. As always our blankets are made with love, completely sweat shop free! Generously sized at 42 x 42 inches. You will keep your newborn snug and have a great blanket to use for years beyond that. My 5 year old toted his around as “blankie” until just over a year ago. My 4 year old is still toting hers.

Up until now I thought I had it all figured out. I thought people who had nap issues with their toddler had other issues they weren’t dealing with. I now have a 2 year old who won’t nap on my hands. And I will admit I was wrong. I don’t blame Evan for not napping, life is WAY too exciting with Big Bro and Big Sis around, WHY would he ever commit to a nap with all the excitement going on? Now granted I could get militant with him but Evan is not a baby to cry it out, he just gets more, and more, and more worked up. I also ate crow on my CIO philosophy with him because now, I know, there are children who are not meant to CIO and he is one of them.

So anyways, he is only just 2 and he does nap on occasion, but it’s more of a drop dead from exhaustion thing than a routine.

Here you go… I took this yesterday… do you think he needs a nap? I put him in the high chair for a late afternoon snack. This is mid bite! I had to swipe his mouth and get out the food so he wouldn’t choke in his sleep. Notice we are still using the Dex Dura Bib, I love those things!

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