No Sugar September: FAIL

So at the beginning of September I decided I wasn't going to eat any sugar for a month.  Fun right?  No big deal, I'd done it before and lost 4 pounds with out even trying!  Plus I totally lost my sweet tooth that month making it much easier by the end.  

2012: I did great for the first two weeks.  Then, slowly and surely, sugar crept back in.  A bowl of Corn Pops here, a bite of Adam's cookie there. 

So technically it was a fail.  Still, I'll count it as a good experience.  Here's why:

I ate way less sugar than I would have otherwise.  I didn't eat any of my mother-in-law's chocolate chip cookies (not a whole one, anyway!) and they are probably one of my favorite things in the world.  I can't eat one, or two, I usually eat three. I also avoided other candies I might have otherwise eaten that I don't even really care for, like the airheads I bought for my nanny kids. 

After all this effort, I gained a lot this month.  But my doctor measured my tummy and assured me it was all baby.  Of course he added I should still keep trying to be healthy and get in my exercise. 

That being said, I'm quitting early!  (Um, not that I've been totally following the rules or anything. . .) I'm considering today to be the last day of September and allowing myself some slack starting with the weekend! 

To keep in line with my healthy promise, I'm going to be making treats from Chocolate Covered Katie more often than the Pioneer Woman.  :)  Also, Monday I'll be sharing one of my favorite "sugar free" treats (processed sugar free).  Have a great weekend!!

"We make our own shampoo"

"First we take some grapes and mix them with juice.  We let that harden and then we add in some poison.  Then we just use it on our hair!"  --Max, age 5

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Thanks for the recipe Max, but I think I'll stick to Herbal Essence. 

Fall Bucket List

Okay, first, is there a better word than bucket list?  Because no one is dying come Dec 21.  Fall Fun List?  Yes, let's go with that one.

Every year I really look forward to fall.  I have all these romantic ideas, like picking apples or collecting fall leaves and then. . . fall comes and goes and none of these ideas really happen.  So now I'm making a concrete list of things I want to do when the weather cools so the season doesn't pass me by.  I am my father's daughter.

1. I want to visit Logan.  Specifically Tiffanie!  I just love Logan in the fall.  Its got that small town feel and its a little cooler than Salt Lake and I feel like there has to be somewhere you can pick apples here.

VIA

2. Thanksgiving Point's Cornbelly's corn maze.  Adam and I have gone together every year for the past 4 years, even before we started dating!   This will be our fifth time going.  And we'll still have a fight about whether or not we're going in the haunted maze.  I will win and I will not go.  Adam might go alone.

VIA

3. Farmer's market downtown.  Two huge bunches of basil for $3, does it get better than that???  This year I will not let unused basil go bad.  I'm making and freezing my pesto for future use. 

VIA

4. Make a roast chicken.  It just smells like fall when you have a bird roasting in the oven.

VIA

5. Take Olivia trick-or-treating in her lady bug costume.   How many houses can a 1 year old handle?  We're thinking 2 or 3.  I'll be honest, this is more for us than for her!

Lady Bug costume by Carter's from Costco

6. Buy and carve a pumpkin.  Adam and I go to the same little pumpkin patch every year.  Its where he got his pumpkin as a kid.  Its a small house and the same man has been growing and selling his pumpkins for years.  Support independent local farmers!

VIA

7.  Our annual Halloween party with Andrew and Martha! 

Its Tigger, Barbie and Minnie Mouse!!  (Olivia, Kimberly and Martha)

8. Teach kids how to make butter in a jar.  I loved doing this as a kid.  I want to teach the kids I nanny and I want to teach Olivia's cousins at Thanksgiving dinner.

VIA

Mom! Olivia's copying me!

Did you ever say that as a kid?  Or did your siblings ever say that about you?  Probably.  Isn't it annoying???  You know what isn't annoying?  When your kid copies you.  Its darling.  Or scary.  Mostly funny.

Olivia does push ups with her dad.  The smile on her face when she does shows how proud she is to be doing something strong daddy can do.

Tonight at dinner I made guacamole and I tasted it (a few times!) with my index finger.  Olivia ate her guacamole with her index finger.

Last night I got excited about something Adam said (can't remember what) and I shouted "Shut up!"  And then so did Olivia.  I guess I need a new expression. . .

I'm glad I don't swear!

The Halloween Bug

Source: keeperofthehome.org via Tracy on Pinterest

Its like an official sickness, the Halloween Bug, and I get it every year in September.  I feel a cool breeze and I get all excited for scarves and spider webs and pumpkin flavored everything.  Here's the thing: I have to chill out and not think about it.  Its like a timer goes off in my head when I start getting all Halloween excited and I can only be excited for 31 days.  So if I get excited now, I'll start trying Thanksgiving recipes on October 20th.  And then I'll listen to Christmas music on November 2nd.  And I'll try to start dieting on December 15th.  Just kidding about that last one!  But I really do like New Year's resolutions.

So to keep from wearing out Halloween I'm trying to just love the fall for now.  I plan on taking the kids on a leaf walk when the leaves turn and having them scrapbook their findings.  Doesn't that sound pleasant?  It wont be.  It will be totally chaos and lots of yelling for them to slow down, I'm sure.

What do you do to really appreciate the fall season, without getting too excited about the holidays?

On the flip side, if you're ready for Halloween fun, check out my pinterest holiday board.  I'm just looking back at things I pinned last year and. . . its not helping!!

My dad: The Original Hipster

Growing up it sometimes bothered me that my dad was so counter culture.  As a child I made bread in a solar powered oven in the backyard.  The wheat for that bread?  Ground it myself.  No one thought I was very cool (at least that's how I imagined it.  They were probably worried others were thinking the same thing about them . . . ) but now going against the grain is the cool thing to do.  Even better if you were the first to think of it.

My dad and I performing at my wedding dinner.

Nearly all of my father's clothes come from a thrift store. 

He doesn't drive a car, he rides a bike.

He built a solar oven from mostly cardboard and newspaper.  We made bread in our backyard for a couple summers.  On Sunday's we would use it like a slow cooker and make roast and potatoes.

No more Sunday roast for Dad.  Now he's a vegetarian.

He heats his home with a wood burning stove and cools it with an evaporative cooler.

He saves table scraps and composts them for his garden.

He's more of an environmentalist than most Democrats who preach it every waking moment.  My dad is a hippie Republican who lives it, and doesn't go around tooting his own horn (much).

Chickpeas Five Ways

Last summer I had a significant amount of baby weight to lose and my husband had an ARC (advanced reader copy) of a diet book from the publisher he worked for.  I read it, fell in love and knew that this was one of the best diets.  The WOW Diet focuses on fresh, seasonal ingredients and unprocessed foods.  I lost a good amount and was feeling really healthy.  Then life happened, and I haven't been as good at following the diet as I was.  BUT one thing I learned from the book was to incorporate more beans into my diet.  They are filling, full of good things for your body, and if you make them right, they are so yummy!  Here are my five favorite recipes for chickpeas, which is the least glamorous of the legumes after the lima beans, but it sure cleans up nice!

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Source: chocolatecoveredkatie.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

Three Bean Salad

Source: simplyrecipes.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

Humus
 (try to find an attractive picture of humus, I dare you)

Ingredients:

1 can of garbanzo beans, rinsed

juice of 1 lemon

1 clove garlic

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil

Directions:

1. Blend all ingredients in a food processor, adding olive oil a little at a time until humus blends smoothly.  

2. Eat with chips or pita bread.

Roasted Chickpeas

Source: thekitchn.com via becca on Pinterest

One thing I do not mentioned in the roasted chickpea recipe is to turn the oven to 200 after they have reached the color you like and let them dry out a little more for an hour or two.  This give more consistent crunch to your snack.  

Avocado Chickpea Salad

Source: twopeasandtheirpod.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

To find the recipes click on the small links under the pictures.  Meanwhile, I'm off to the kitchen to make them all!

I cook! And talk too much

My friend Tiffanie recently started a food blog and thank goodness!!  One of my favorite recipes is one she recommended almost three years ago.  Every Friday she has a guest post by one of her followers and I got to be her third guest post!

Writing this post was hard for me.  I used to teach foods to high school students and I watch Food Network like a crazy person and so I can narrate every step of my cooking process and I can give you a lot of details about the food and so, in theory, it could take you as long to read the post as it did for me to cook the meal.  Yeah, that's too much.  So I tried to keep it simple, but I didn't quite attain that goal.

But enough talking.  Why don't you go check it out for yourself?  And hang around with Tiff a bit.  She's got great taste in food!

No Sugar September!!

Source: photoxyz.com via Delaine on Pinterest

Last year for Labor Day Adam and I went on a whirl wind trip to Logan UT and then down the opposite direction to Parowan UT.  Adam ran in a mud run, we visited friends and then met up with my parents during my dad's high school reunion.  We had a great time but after eating a huge bag of M&Ms and a large basket of fried food at my grandpa's old dairy freeze I was feeling pretty crappy.  Not to mention I had 20 pounds of baby weight needing to be lost!  So the day after Labor Day I decided I would not have any sugar at all for the remainder of September.  Crazy, I know. 

But I did it!!  And I lost five pounds with out even doing anything else.  When I went a little crazy on October 1st (and 2nd and 3rd. . . ) I didn't gain any of it back. 

As I looked back on that goal today, I've decided to try it again.  Its hard, yes, but knowing you'll have these foods again in October really helps me say no.  My mother-in-law's cookies?  They're always in the freezer.  Chocolate chips?  The grocery store isn't going to run out.  Plus there is a lot of sugar I eat that I don't even care for!  Sour patch kids?  I'll eat them if you offer, but I'll never go out of my way for them.

I'll be following the same three rules as last year:

1. Honey.  I can't eat my 7 grain cereal without a little sweetener! (And I DON'T do artificial sweetener)  *This year I am also going to include agave. 
2. Sugar that is included in non-dessert food.  I'm talking yogurt, peanut butter, ketchup and other stuff that I can't think of right now.  You get the idea.
3. Fruit, and other naturally occurring sugar.  Like sweet potatoes.  Mmmmm.

Of course I'm in no condition to be losing weight, but my doctor has approved of me gaining as little as possible as long as I'm eating plenty of healthy food and working out.  The baby should do just fine if keep eating lots and lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains.

Join in?

Julia gave me an award

My friend Julia awarded me the honor of answering some questions, and this one only has 11, unlike the one I made her do (which had 65 62).  Okay so here are the official rules:

The Rules:

-Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
-Answer the questions that the tagger set for you PLUS create 11 questions for the people you've tagged to answer
-Choose 11 people and link them in your post
-Go to their page and tell them. (no tag backs)

1. I sing all the time.  Real songs, made up songs. . . I'm not picky.  Once I almost got fired from a job for singing too much.  That was mean.

2. I also talk very loud.  People often shush me.  They set my classroom up with a mic system a couple of years ago.  I laughed at them.

3. I love vinegar and pickle juice.  All the time (not just when I'm pregnant).  I can drink it straight up.  My dad has a salt deficiency and asked my mom to buy him some Gatorade.  I told him to go BYU football team style and drink some pickle juice instead, you know save some money.  Oh man, you should have seen his face.  Classic.

4. I really like watching TV.

5. I try and keep a Dr. Pepper chapstick handy at all times.

6. I'm horrible at spelling.  I never even made it past the first round of the in class spelling bee.

7.  I'm going to pause working on this to play Song Pop on facebook.  I know pretty much all songs ever written (okay, not really).  My roommate Elise called me kimPod (like an iPod) but my husband Adam thinks he came up with the name. 

8. Its 9pm.  If I go to bed now that will not be uncommon for me.

9. I hate the word "craft".  I do not want to have a craft room, I want a studio.  I am not crafty, I'm a designer.  I don't make crafts, I make art.  I know its just semantics, but it matters to me!!

10. I suck at twitter.  (ooh, but follow me!!  @kt_designsalt)

11. I have two blogs.  I also have an interior design blog, Design Salt.

Yay!!  That wasn't so bad.

Okay so here are the questions Julia made for me:

1. If you had one super power, what would it be?
Super energy.  I am one of the least energetic people.  Not like I'm boring but I'm just always tired.  I take iron supplements, and they help, but super energy would be nice.

2. What's your favorite book?
I used to say the Scarlet Letter but I haven't read it since I was 16.  So I'm gonna go with. . . Life of Pi, just because it popped into my head and I like it.

3. Do you own anything of sentimental value that you just can't seem to give up? If so, do tell.
I have lots of cards and pictures from students.  I need to photograph them and toss them, but I just can't right now.  I hate carrying around boxes of stuff I never use though, so maybe before our next move.

4. If you were a fictional character, who would you be? It can be from a movie, TV show, video game, whatever.
This is a really hard question for me!  Its just something I've never even thought of. . . hmmm. . . 

5. If your house was on fire and you could only grab five things, what would they be? [you can assume family members and pets made it out safely]
The chevron rug in Olivia's room, my sewing machine, laptop, camera and probably the art I've been working on for Olivia's room.

6. What's the best present you've ever received?
My honeymoon to Fiji was a gift from my grandparents.  I guess the college education they gave me was also a great gift!

7. What's the worst date you've ever been on?
Read all about it here and here.

8. When was a time when you were really, really embarrassed?
So I have two stories that are kind of connected so I will tell them both.
First, it was a snowy night in February.  Olivia had gone home with her dad and I had to stay at work for parent teacher conference.  When I left the building there was about three feet of snow on my car, no joke.  I managed to clear it off and started driving slowly home (because I'm from CA and I still have not gotten used to driving in snow).  I called Adam to complain/have him talk me through it.  No answer.  I tried a few more times.  No answer.  I even got lost at one point just because I couldn't recognize the streets in all the snow.  By the time I got home I was fuming.  I walk in the door and there is my husband sitting by the fire, laughing and chatting.  First words out of my mouth?  "Where is your phone???  I could be DEAD on the HIGHWAY."  Then I look around at everyone else in the room.  "Kim," says my father-in-law, "come meet our new bishop." (He's the leader of our local congregation, if you're not familiar with Mormon leadership structures.)

Second, it was a warm night in June.  I was watching Design Star in my pjs and my brother in law Ian answered the doorbell.  He came down stairs and told me it was my sister.  (my sister has been serving a mission for the church and in order to stay focused they limit their contact with family and friends.  This would be easier to do if her mission was in Africa.  Its not.  Her mission is in the very same city where I live.  We've lived in the same city for almost a year and a half and not seen each other!!)  I got really excited when he told me, no not really.  As I walked past him to see who it really was I said, "Ian, quit pissing me off."  And there were was a sweet older couple missionary companionship with a gift my sister asked them to drop off. 

I don't embarrass easily, but I hate showing my temper, especially to nice religious people (a group I'd like to consider myself part of, but I guess I still have some work to do!!)

9. If you were in prison, going to be executed in the morning, what would your last meal consist of? Oh, and you're in a prison that does last meals.
There is this steak at Wild Rose with a beautiful blue cheese brie (not the actual name, but that's essentially what it is) melted on top and a rich sauce. . . one of those, medium rare, I'm in heaven.  (And hopefully, once I die, that is where I'll actually be.  I was wrongfully accused.) 

10. If you had to date one of the Avengers, which one would you go for?
Thor.  If I had to.

11.What was one of your favorite games as a kid?
My brothers and I loved playing nintendo but we were not lucky enough to have one so we had to make our own nintendo game with pillows and we would take turns being Mario and the bad guys.  I'm pretty sure that was more fun than actual nintendo, we just didn't know it at the time.

Now I'm supposed to tag people, but I'm really tired and I don't feel like it!  I was always the person who stopped chain mail too.  So sue me.