A Little Catch Up & Spring Cleaning

I've been unsurprisingly absent from blogging and I have to say I miss it!!  I love having our experiences and pictures all in one spot but I can't seem to catch up on regular life!  I seem to be in full nesting mode so hopefully that will include some blogging AND catching up on our picture books.

Mostly I've been been enjoying my time with the boys.  I know our family dynamic would change regardless of whether Baby 3 was a boy or a girl but I'm just enjoying "boy" time while I can.  There will be plenty of time for dress up and dolls.  Right now we are focused on trains, planes and lots of blocks!  The weather has started to get a little nicer and thankfully my hip and pelvic issues are better this week.  We've enjoyed 3 walks recently and I am SO ready to start walking again regularly!

I've been super productive today and have started my "before the baby comes" to do list.  Well...in my mind.  Here are some of the big things.

Go through every. single space. in our house and purge.  If you know me you know how much I hate the extraneous periods in a sentence but that is how serious I am!   I am SO tired of things not having a place...piles of stuff...never feeling like anything is really clean because there is so much clutter.  Today I am making a list of the "spaces" I need to do.  I'll add to it if I need to but ultimately my goal is to de-clutter each of these spaces long before the baby arrives.

So..

1. Declutter
2. Plan a garage sale for after baby
3. Get a new bin for shoes for by the front door
4. Get a small dresser for Reed's closet/room for his clothes so baby girl's clothes can go in Stafford's room
5. Move an antique piece of furniture downstairs and replace with a small/cheap bookshelf
6. Go through boys clothes
7. Go through 0-3 clothes to see what baby girl can use
8. Decide on a baby name so we don't have to keep calling her baby girl
9. Maybe make a couple of freezer meals?
10. Come up with an eating/exercise plan for after baby arrives
11. Order a new bedspread and start a new color scheme for our bedroom!

So...number 11.  I've been on this black/silver/grey kick for the last 6 years and it is time for a change.  We bought our last "bed in a bag" two years ago and it's been great but it looks gross and I just need something new.  Ok I don't need it.  I want it and I am getting rid of the other one.  So....

here are some options.  Tell me your favorite!!

      

    

Also...still trying to decide on a monthly animal to take Baby Girl's picture with each month.  Any ideas?  Stafford has a pelican and Reed has an orca.  I had been thinking about a peacock but I'm open to other thoughts!

***

Spring has sprung and with that comes putting away the winter wardrobe and getting out the summer.  It's actually fun to do that with your makeup and accessories too!

To celebrate spring I'm offering the next person who orders Rodan + Fields as a preferred customer a FREE Self Tanner OR Suncreen OR Body Lotion.  They all smell amazing and are the perfect compliment to your new spring wardrobe!!  Message me today!!

Can't wait to hear your thoughts on our comforter and animal ideas!!!!

Happy Friday!!!

Triple Chocolate Cake

This is one of the best and easiest recipes!!  I love chocolate so an excuse to have even more chocolate in a recipe sounds good to me!  You can actually make this moderately healthy by using low or non-fat versions of most of the ingredients.

1 package of powdered chocolate pudding mix
1 package of chocolate cake (I use Devil's Food)
12 oz. package of chocolate chips
2 eggs
1&3/4 cups milk

Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.  Pour into a greased bundt pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes at 350.  Cool for 15 minutes before taking out of the pan.

That's it!!  So easy but SO delicious.  The pudding makes the cake extra moist but still make sure you watch it carefully and get it out of the over before overbaking.  Dry cake is not fun.  I've made this before with sugar free pudding and cake mix.  It still works well and tastes ALMOST as good!  You could also change it up and use any combination of  pudding, cake mix and chips.

3rd Quarter Top 5

I've been missing in action for a while and it probably wasn't the best time to start a new blog!  Some of my reasons for starting a new blog were wanting to be able to share a little more information with  family and friends on our "family" blog.  We live far away from grandparents and basically the "family" blog is transitioning to more of a picture center!

I don't plan on posting tons of family pictures here but I have enjoyed working on my photography for the past year and heck, even if the photography isn't great I love taking shots of my little one.  Little Guy is our first baby and that is how I'll affectionately refer to him on this blog.

I hope you'll follow along and enjoy learning a little bit more about my faith, food and family!

Some of my friends host this fun link-up.  If you have kids or pets link up!

Here are my five favorites from the past 3 months.

Everytime I look up this kid is climbing on something!  Thankfully he hasn't learned how to climb out of the crib and hopefully he won't for a while!

My favorite shot from our "smash the cake" session for his first birthday.  Love that little foot up in the air!

We took an awesome vacation this summer and visited some National Parks.  I love this shot of Little Guy and his Daddy so much!!

This man loves his Cheerios.  It makes him super happy in the morning!

Another shot from his cake session.  I couldn't resist the look on his face.

The Best Banana Bread

I've posted a number of recipes on my previous blog and eventually I'll re-post all of them here.  I had to start with this one because I made two loaves today with the zucchini that two of our neighbors dropped off.  Isn't that sweet?  It sure is nice to feel welcome in our new neighborhood.


The original recipe comes from my great-grandmother.  She was a fabulous cook and baker.  I have tried lots of banana bread but never tasted better!  I like that it doesn't have any oil in it, although there is plenty of butter!  We had an overabundance of zucchini in our CSA the last couple of years so I modified the recipe to make a yummy zucchini version. I hope you'll try both of them!


Mama Thomas's Banana Bread
1&1/2 cups flour
3 ripe bananas
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1tsp baking soda
Bake at 325 for 50 minutes.
This stuff is so good! It is super moist and if you take it out just a little early the top it a little squishy and makes it extra good! To modify the recipe do the following:


Chocolate Chip-Banana-Zucchini Bread
3 cups flour (i use 1/2 wheat flour and 1/2 white flour)
1 cup sugar ( i don't double the sugar...i don't think it needs it but you can if you'd like)
1/2 cup melted butter
3 bananas
2 eggs
2 tsps salt
2 tsps baking soda
2 small/medium zucchini grated
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Bake at 325 for 50 minutes. 

No Heaven?

One of my dear friends is doing a great series of posts on responses to the question....

If there were no heaven would you still be a Christian?

Whoa!!  It's loaded with all kinds of theological and eternal complications but very interesting and thought provoking to think about.

I'm guest posting today with my answer so I hope you'll check it out!!

Also, if you are new here welcome!!  I've just started this blog as a spin-off of my personal blog.  I hope while you are here you'll become and follower and check back often!  If you are a new follower leave me a comment to I can return the visit!  If you are wondering how to follow all you have to do is click the "follow" box on the right side of the page and follow the prompts.  Thanks!!

Turkey Kielbasa Bake

For the last two years we've joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).  Each week we get a fun box that is filled with local produce.  It was like Christmas opening that box every week wondering what goodies would be inside.  Sometimes it was filled with ingredients that we knew how to cook.  Other times it sent me straight to google to find out what in the world we were going to do with things!

This 1 dish dinner combines 3 produce items that we would often get in our box.  It is easy, relatively healthy and a big hit with our little one.

Ingredients

10-15 small redskin potatoes

1 lb of fresh green beans (or a can if you don't want to use fresh)

1 medium onion

1 package of turkey kielbasa

If you are using fresh green beans you'll want to steam them first.  I'm a cheater and I use my baby food maker.  It is so easy!  While your beans are steaming quarter or halve (depending on size) your potatoes.  Dice your onion and slice your kielbasa.  Mix them all in a 9x13 pan.  Pour your steamed green beans over top.  Cover with foil and bake at 400 for about 25-30 minutes.  You'll just want to check to see when the potatoes are finished, again this will vary depending on how large or small you cut them.

That's it!  I only do easy and delicious recipes and this fits both!!  Our little one loves this.  And I like it because it has no extra seasoning.  The onions and kielbasa season the rest of the dish.  It is so fragrant while it is baking!  I hope you enjoy this easy dinner as much as we do.

Why Wild Honey & Locust?

Well for starters Locusts and Wild Honey was already taken.  So I got creative.  Really creative.  And I switched the words around!!  Clearly you are reading the musings of a genius in the making!!!

In all seriousness I wanted to start a blog where I could concentrate on the things that I love the most in life (other than my sweet family)--my faith and food.  So this blog will be a place where you can come to hopefully get a pick me up for your soul and a recipe for your stomach!!  I'm sure with all my free time I'll be posting some other DIY projects but I mostly want to concentrate on feeding you!!

I was looking for a blog title that accurately reflected my interest in faith issues and food stuff.  I googled "food references in the Bible" and got a bunch of verses and this one stood out to me the most.  Probably because it is a little strange and I tend to gravitate towards things that are just a tiny bit "off".  But then I started researching the meaning behind it and I thought it was pretty neat.  I found several references and parallels for both locusts and wild honey.  God prescribed this diet to John the Baptist for a reason.  I found this article particularly interesting.

So regardless of why you read I hope you find a little something here for both your soul and your stomach!