Happy Mother's Day

So it's Mother's Day and I have spent the day with tears streaming down my face.  As well as snot.  Not because I'm crying, but because I seem to be suffering from the worst allergies of all time.  I'm pretty sure it's not a cold because it just feels different, ya know?  I'm a loooong time allergy sufferer so I know the feelings very well.

But I am sad about a couple things.  1. Not getting to taste the special dinner Adam made me (I'll still eat it, but I can't taste much when I'm so stuffed up)  2. We didn't go to church (Olivia is sick too and so it was a domino effect) which means we didn't dress up which means no Mother's Day picture!  I have one from every year since Olivia was a baby.  I guess we'll just need to take one next week.  I hope I remember!! 

Not the best picture, but new motherhood was really hard on me :)

 

 

Not the best pictures, but such a fun reminder of my sweet babes.

Five Little Confessions: Food

 This month guys, it's all about my eating habits! 

1.  I love hot dogs.  I feel like this is something girls are not supposed to like.  In fact Adam just brought me one from his work activity last night and even though it wasn't "clean" (hot dogs in white flour buns are not a clean food, it wasn't like dirty or anything, just very processed) I ate 2/3 of it.  Mmmm.

2.  I've been off sugar since May 1st and it's going so great!  Except chocolate chips.  I don't count those.  I eat like ten a day, so not over the top.  Also they're in my banana bread, which otherwise is sugar free.  I don't think it counts.  I just love chocolate.

3.  I made this banana bread four times in the last two weeks.  And I didn't really share with anyone.  When I see ripe bananas at someone's house, I ask if they are going to use them or throw them out.  If the answer is throw out, I snag 'em.  Bananas never have a chance to get very ripe at my house.  

4.  Before I was married I would eat really odd meals.  Like a can of green beans for dinner.

5.  Tonight I made a smoothie with mangos I diced and froze like a year ago.  It tasted good.  Which is lucky because there are still a lot of mangos in the bag.  I don't use them faster because I don't want to use them all up.  It's like I'm trying to save them for something special, but c'mon.  Seriously?  I need to get over it. 

An InLinkz Link-up

What we watch when we're sick: Willy Wonka

Let's take a moment to admire that title.  All "W" words except sick.  I couldn't think of a "W" word for sick.  But honestly I didn't try that hard.

We've had the flu here for FOUR DAYS.  That is a long time when you have kids.  I haven't gotten it (fingers crossed) but Adam just came home from work last night with symptoms.  Great.  Olivia has had it the worst and so it's been a lot of TV for us.  Axel doesn't watch TV so he's more difficult (except that he does like to spend many hours in his bed resting, so that is a plus!) but Olivia can watch TV all day, napping off and on.  I thought it would be fun to rent a movie for her and since she's been loving songs from Willy Wonka on Pandora I picked that one.

We have seriously watched it ten times at least.  At least.  And I still love it!!  I thought she might be a little young for it, but I was wrong.  The music, the imagery and the candy make it a great movie for young kids. 

What I love about it:

1. The candy man song.
"Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream, separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream?  The candy man, the candy man can."

I mean sure, this song might have helped contribute to the problem most of us have with eating our feelings, but the lyric is beautiful. 

2. The teacher. 
"Of course you don't know. You don't know because only *I* know. If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you - and for a student to be teaching his teacher is presumptuous and rude. Do I make myself clear?"

"I've just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we learned during the week will now take place on Monday before we've learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn't matter in the slightest. Pencils ready!"

3. Watching Olivia get so excited about Charlie finding the last golden ticket, every time.

4. Willy Wonka eats the cup.
I don't know why, but I just love this moment.  And Olivia does too.  We laugh and laugh every time.

5. She's a bad egg.

What movies from your childhood have you introduced to your kids??  Probably one of my favorite things about having them.

Clean Banana Bread (make this banana bread right now)

One of my friends made whole wheat banana bread a few weeks ago and I have been wanting some ever since.  But I was sure there were recipes that didn't include a ton of sugar, or any sugar actually.  I'm trying to not eat sugar.

I found this recipe, and it was awesome!!  Call me crazy, but I thought it was a little bit sweet, so I swapped the honey with the applesauce and I think it was much better balanced.  Instead of 1/2 c honey and 1/4 c apple sauce, I did 1/2 c applesauce and 1/4 c honey.  Perfection.

It's so good for you, you can eat it for breakfast.  It's so good tasting, you can eat it for dessert.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp ground flaxseed (I never have any so I leave this out)
• Pinch of sea salt
• 3 ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/4 cup raw honey
• 1/4 cup safflower oil
• 1/3 cup chopped dark chocolate (or semisweet chocolate chips)
• Olive oil cooking spray, optional

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, flaxseed and salt.
2. In a large bowl, with a hand mixer, beat bananas until smooth. Add egg whites and beat until combined. Gradually mix in applesauce, honey and safflower oil.  (OR you can do what I do and put the bananas and eggs in the blender and whip 'em up good and then add in the the remaining wet ingredients) 
3. Mix dry ingredients into banana mixture; stir in chocolate. (You can add the dry ingredients to the blender and pulse a few times, but you'll have to stir the chocolate chips in with a spoon) 
4. Mist a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan with cooking spray. Pour batter into pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until browned on top.

Honestly, I have a hard time getting my banana bread not gooey in the middle.  Sometimes it comes out great and other times not.  I'm going to try five degrees hotter and five extra minutes next time I make it.  Tomorrow.  Or today.  Right now. 

Update: When I pulled my banana bread out of the oven I stuck a knife in it and it was still doughy in the middle. So I put some foil over the top and stuck it back in for ten minutes and voila!  Perfectly baked.  Also, when mixing the batter I used a whole egg instead of two egg whites because it's just one yolk and I hate to waste :)

Hexagon (honeycomb) shelves -- DIY

When I posted my living room pics, I mentioned that I didn't know what to put above my TV.  My friend Rachel (mentioned two posts in a row, this girl has GREAT ideas and great taste) suggested some hex shelves.

Best. Idea. Ever.

I learned last summer that vacations at my parents house are more fun when I have a project to work on.  Last summer I did my mom's second wing back chair.  (The link takes you to the summer before when I did the first one) and so when I went down in March I asked my dad to help me make some hexagon shelves. 

We went and got some plywood at Home Depot (not a sponsored post, but Hey!  Home Depot!  Wanna sponsor me????).  One of these big sheets was way more than we needed.  I think half of it made our five shelves.

This kid was such a fun boy at Home Depot.

So we sliced that sucker into five inch strips.  And then cut the strips into ten inch pieces.  We tried 12 inch pieces but the hexagons are going to be bigger than the size of one side.  12 inch pieces ended up being HUGE.  So we cut them down.

Now for the hard part that took us way too long to figure out.  You're going to cut the ten inch pieces at an angle.  So, some geometry for you.  Each angle in a hexagon is 120 degrees.  Divide that in half because you're bringing two pieces together, and you get 60 degrees.  But what got us confused is that the saw only cuts angles up to 45 degrees.  It makes sense because 45 is half way, and then you're just cutting the other direction.  What you do is realize that an uncut board is 90 degrees.  You need a 60 degree angle, so you cut off the 30 degrees.  Does that make sense?  It doesn't have to.

30 degrees, that's what you cut the edges of your boards.  That's all you need to know.  Disregard that paragraph above.  I'm no math teacher!  We used my dad's chop saw to do this.  Just google chop saw if you don't know what it is.

After we had the pieces cut, we put some wood glue on and staple gunned them together.  To make sure they were exact we had an angle checker, but we found that by putting a string around the entire hexagon and slipping in small pieces of wood around the edge until its tight made it pretty true.  After the glue had dried we sanded them and I painted them back in Utah. 

Here you can see the string and little wood scraps we used to make the angles tight and true. 

One down, four to go.  And if you look closely you can see our ten inch pieces with their little 60 degree angles.

To hang them I bought some picture hangers and nailed two them on the top board, one on each side.  Then each takes two nails to hang and I feel like that is heavy duty enough to hold them and any small trinkets I want to put in them.

The finished product!!  I'll show them decorated when I do my final living room reveal.  In two years.  I kid, I kid.

If you're annoyed with how wordy I am, you can blame the fact that I used to teach 90 minute class periods and had a looooot of time to fill ;) 

My new fabric designs

I have had the dream of opening my own etsy shop since Olivia was born.  I've made a LOT of sample products, always creating my own patterns and I've finally come up with some products that I love.

I was forever searching fabrics, for hours at a time, trying to find cute knit prints for my jammies and leggings.  It was a lost cause.  In the end there was only one thing to do: Design my own.

Saturday I got the samples!!  I carried them every where.  It was like Christmas for me.  If you follow me on facebook and instagram you've already seen them, but indulge me. 

They are. . .  not cheap.  But I eventually decided that if I'm going to really do this, designing my own fabrics was the only way to go.
1. They absolutely fit my brand (except maybe those hearts, a little too rainbow)
2. No one else will have them.
3. They can never go out of stock.
4. I can order the same prints in different fabrics.  My jammies and leggings use knits, but I like a woven cotton for my tank dresses.  I can use the same navy star print and get it in both!

The navy stars are destined for baby boy jammies and tank dresses for the 4th of July (thanks to my friend Rachel for the patriotic idea!!)  The mint dots (well actually it turned out a little more green than mint, but I'm adjusting the color) will also be tank dresses and bloomers and the coral flower will be for girl jammies.  I'm currently using a metallic gold stripe for my leggings but I need some boy leggings and eventually I'll run out of metallic gold and so I'll need to design some new fabrics for leggings!  (I am bummed that I can't design a metallic fabric on spoonflower so I will still have to buy some of my fabrics from JoAnn)

Yep, this is happening.

How to grow your Twitter

My blogging buddy Bonnie posted this about our latest round table blogging discussions.  I was reading through the comments and saw Caitlin had asked for some ideas for growing her twitter.  I started giving her some ideas and realized that I know a lot about growing twitter.  If you wonder why I don't have more followers, I wonder that too.  Haha, but really it's because I don't do all of these things as much as I could.  Also, I don't care that much.  But I have more twitter followers than blog followers so I'm obviously better at one than the other. . .

1. Bonnie mentioned using a giveaway to get more followers on twitter, and you certainly can do that, but I get very little interaction from the followers I've gotten from giveaways.  But numbers help and it's always nice for them to be boosted.  And just because they aren't tweeting with me, doesn't mean they aren't reading my posts. (they probably aren't)

2. If you're new to tweeting, it might feel really awkward to start talking to no followers, but you just gotta.  You have to start somewhere.

3. When I first started tweeting I was using it in conjunction with my interior design blog so I would live tweet #DesignStar and that's where I got some of my first followers.  Tweet live events and use the hashtag.  If people like what you say they might check you out (why it's good to start tweeting even if you have no followers) and start following you.  You can use other hashtags too.  Follow Jimmy Fallon and some of his hashtag games are really funny and will get you more exposure.

4. Interact with those you follow.  Tweet meaningful things back to them.  Sometimes people will follow me back right away, other times we have to have more interaction before they start following me back.  And I once got tweeted by one of my favorite bands, Good Old War, so that was awesome.

5. Follow more people.  It's just the law of averages  (I'm not really sure if I'm using that term correctly).  The more people you follow and interact with the more you'll have following you back.

If all else fails, just tweet about breastfeeding.  Once I tweeted this:

and got like ten new followers.

What are some ways you have gotten more followers on twitter?