Anyone else working on getting healthy this year? Here are my two favorite snacks for easy “grab n go”. Awesome part is the kiddos love them too. This could be a bad thing if it means you have to share these snacks of pure yumminess.
1. Seaweed Snacks: so many stores carry these now. There are 3 different top brands [Gimme Organic, Annie Chun’s and SeaSnax]. I’ve tried all and they are equally fresh and yummy. I enjoy the different flavors that Gimme Organic has. Their Wasabi is my top choice.
Low calories: 20 per serving
Low carbs: 1g per serving
Free from preservatives, artificial colors, and artificial flavors
Only 3 ingredients
Gluten free
2. Bel Gioioso Fresh Mozzarella: seriously can’t get more perfect then this. Each package has 3 fresh mini mozzarella balls. Costco for the win here. To top it off, they are made in Wisconsin 30 min from where I grew up (high five to my fello WI peeps). *buy local*
Happy St Patrick’s day! I take lots of joy in my job as a nanny. I’m grateful for the memory that children have to remind me of things that at times I blank on (I can’t be the only mom like that LOL). Yesterday was one of those days, when the 4 year old said “Remember last year, the leprechaun peed green in their toilet, leaving footprints and special chocolate gold coins.” Oh shoot! That’s right, the “Leprechaun” did do that last year! Oh thank you Jesus that sweet boy remembered the day BEFORE to buy me time to plan.
Welp, the Leprechaun visited today! He left a special letter, making note that he hid a three-leaf clover for the littles to search for!
My little reading the letter. Dirty nails provide proof it’s been a morning of playing outside in the warmer weather.
Snow is all melted this year so he didn’t leave any messy green boot prints around the house like last year. But the hunt for the clover was even more enjoyable.
“Here!” the little voice said as he spotted the clover.
The three-leaf clover was so fun to make! Who loves origami?! Here is my picture tutorial, inspired by Noreen Doll’s three-leaf clover at crafty journal.com. They are made from three $1 bills folded into the shape of a heart. I followed Noreen’s tutorial.
Face the dollar backside up. Fold up the bottom of the dollar 1/4 inch.Fold the dollar in half, make a crease. Open it back up.Fold the bottom right edge of the dollar in toward the center crease.Do the same on the left side.Turn the dollar over, so Washington makes eye contact with you. Stuff is getting real now ;). Fold the two center corners downward to line up with the top of the dollar.Take the outer corners folding them, downward to line up with the top of the dollar as well.The pointed edges each get folded inward. Do so, that the points meets the other points from the corners of the dollar .
Voila! A beautiful heart.
In honor of this day I want to share a prayer of St Patrick’s, as this is my prayer for all of you today. We used this today to also tie in talking about God’s strength, power, and wisdom with the kids. Be safe, have a great St Patrick’s Day!
Prayer For The Faithful
“May the Strength of God guide us.
May the Power of God preserve us.
May the Wisdom of God instruct us.
May the Hand of God protect us.
May the Way of God direct us.
May the Shield of God defend us.
May the Angels of God guard us.
– Against the snares of the evil one.
May Christ be with us!
May Christ be before us!
May Christ be in us,
Christ be over all!
May Thy Grace, Lord,
Always be ours,
This day, O Lord, and forevermore. Amen.”
I’ve been going through my house Konmari style the last many months purging anything that doesn’t “spark joy”. This book is amazing and life changing! If you’ve not yet checked it out, well you should of like yesterday. For me the kitchen cupboards, my pantry, kept haunting me and brought me zero “joy”. I’ve been baking a lot this past year and make most things from scratch especially having recently being diagnosed with celiacs. I’ve come to enjoy my kitchen time a lot. So even more so, I wanted an easy accessible, compact, durable, tight sealing, but yet eye appealing way to store both the spices and the typical pantry items.
Being green and keeping as many toxics out of my home, especially food, was a must when considering storage containers. Naturally (pun intended haha) I settled on using glass. You’d be surprised at how many glass canisters have horrible reviews on actually being air tight, the whole purpose of pantry storage. So after about a month of looking at different glass containers from Amazon, Crate And Barrel, World Market, and others, I decided to try the Hobby Lobby glass jars for the majority of my items.
I went with the square shaped, flipped lid, harness top jars found here. It’s a fantastic design for a good tight seal with the silicone ring. I’ve had zero problems so far with things going stale. Many other brands with similar designs felt cheaply made and the metal harness clamp felt weak. But these are a solid design. I would suggest when washing the jars you remove the metal harness and clamp to prevent rust. The 650ML (H: 5 1/4″) size is perfect for fitting two small cans of baking soda, baking powder, meringue powder and those other baking ingredients of smaller quantities. The 1200ML (H: 8″) works great for holding 24oz bag of Bob’s Red Mill corn flour, coconut flour, or oatmeal. I used this size for storing my sushi rice as well. The 1500ML (H: 9 1/2″) is what I used to store brown sugar. The 2100ML (H: 11 1/2″) is tall enough to store spaghetti or an entire 40oz bag of Bob’s Red Mill almond flour. For the spaghetti and penne noodles I decided on Hobby Lobby’s trendy looking glass jars with brushed metal screw on lid. These canisters add some variety yet still keep a clean look to the pantry. I got the 2100ML one for the tall spaghetti, and the 1600ML for storing the penne. I also used these for my tea and coffee that will be placed on the coffee bar (when that project is finished). For the bulk items I choose Hobby Lobby’s 1 Gallon jars with a screw on lid. The gallon jar size holds comfortably an entire 5lb bag of flour. Win!!! For the little spice jars, I ended up going with the most adorable 4 inch tall glass harness jars , also found at Hobby Lobby. They are my favorite just because of how cute and colorful the spices look being displayed in them! Who doesn’t love seeing the fun pop of color when opening the cupboard to cook dinner!
For the labels, I fell in love with the trendy chalkboard idea but wanted something chic, not too modern. Lord knows I was not about to pretend I had stellar artsy penmanship (forgive me as I lust over the penmanship of the women who have that cutesie style writing. You know, those added dots and swirls…*swoon*). I needed a template that I could edit to add in some of those less popular pantry items like corn flour, coconut sugar ect. I came across these adorable labels designed by Lia Griffith on her site here. I decided to use my own fonts instead of those from the font download she provides, though her fonts are adorable! It’s super easy, you download the file and then since these exact ones are an editable download, you type in your so desired pantry items. I printed mine out on Avery White Full-Sheet labels (8165), from amazon. Voila!!!! Cutting them all out is a bit tedious but so very worth it!
My pantry is well on its way to being complete. Next will be the oils and vinegars to be bottled and labeled. Still deciding on if I want a cork or harness top. I’ll post the update on those when I do decide. Happy Konmaring and decorating – Sarah
Here is the birth story of my precious baby. He’s now 7 1/2 months old and I’m finally getting around to writing it down 🙂
My due date was June 12th. Baby was measuring big at 10 ½ lbs. On the 12th I was 2 cm dilated. Dr stripped my membranes and we waited. My due date had come and gone. I did EVERYTHING to start labor. Walked about a trillion miles, or so it seemed with my painful hips and pubic bone, drank raspberry leaf tea like it was going out of style, rolled back and forth on the yoga ball, got a pedi and foot massage, thought about taking black and blue cohosh herbs, but ended up not, ate pineapples, tried the pressure points on the ear, hand and little toe, I mean I tried just about everything. This is where I realized that all though I’m sure some of those techniques work for some people ultimately baby comes when baby is ready.
Me trying to walk that baby out
On the 16th, fathers day, I started having some contractions around 6pm. I was the happiest soon to be mama on the planet! They were 8-11 minutes apart, all where I could walk through them. I was pretty
sure I was going into labor (can you tell I’m a 1st time mama haha). Contacted my doula and we waited for them to get stronger, however they did not. I went to bed that night. Woke up the next morning on the 17th and the contractions were about 5-8 minutes apart. Some took my breath away but still were not strong enough to go to the hospital. This continued all day long and night. Next morning was the 18th and I had an appointment. I was positive I was going to be dilated more I mean after all I had been in early stages of labor for almost 2 days now. No such luck. Instead my blood pressure was high and so they said they were going to have to admit me. Before they did the Dr. stripped my membranes a 2nd time.
41 weeks pregnant arriving at the hospital
We arrived to the hospital, my mom, Kevin and I. My amazing doula also joined us. Contractions were about 5 minutes apart. They checked me in, this seemed to take forever even though I was pre registered, I remember hating having to sit or stand still while I filled out some papers. I got all settled in a room and they hooked me up to monitor baby and my blood pressure. At this point my blood pressure was normal. I asked to go home to continue laboring and of course they said no. Now as many of you know, my birth plan was to do an all-natural birth. To me this meant no medicine, no epidural, no IV’s. As I sat rolling back and forth on my birthing ball the doctor came in and approached me with the idea of C-section for the purpose of how big my baby was measuring. I think the look on my face said everything. I was NOT going to have a C-section unless it was medically needed for my baby’s safety. I told the Dr “God gave me this baby so I’m going to birth this baby”. The Dr explained to me their concern of my baby “turtle-ing”, where the head comes through but the shoulders get stuck and then the baby slides back in. She expressed how this is a very serious thing they try to avoid because with in a minute baby’s oxygen is cut off when this happens so it results in breaking baby’s shoulders to get baby out. Still hesitant on this C-section mumbojumbo, I said I would like to talk to Kevin and my doula alone and then make my decision. The time was about 11:30am. We decided at this time to thank God for modern medicine and go with the scheduled C-section for later that night at 6pm. Genetics were working against me, there is a history with my mother and grandma both having C-sections because their labor stopped progressing, I came to terms with maybe God’s plan for my baby was not what I had in mind. We waited and waited and my contractions seemed to stay around 5 minutes apart slowly getting more intense. I still kept praying I would just go into hard-core labor before the C-section time. I was pretty stuck on that natural birth still… part of that lead by so much fear I think. I was terrified of a big freaking long needle being stuck into my back. Worried about not having the skin on skin time with my baby during that “golden hour” after birth since I would be in the OR. Worried about the effect it would have on breast-feeding if I didn’t deliver vaginally. Then the peace came, the peace that passes all understanding. I worked with the nursery nurse to still plan to do skin to skin in the OR…. I was shocked they supported me in that, but so grateful they pulled strings to still help the birth plan I wanted to happy even though it was going to be a C-section.
Right before being taken back to the OR
Kevin and I got all suited up. I said good buy to my mom and Kevin as I was rolled back to get that massive needle put in my back. They took me back to that freezing cold operating room and I sat on the table as they prepped the area for the needle to go in. All the sudden my water breaks. I say to the nurse and anesthesiologist “I did not just pee on your table. That was my water that broke” totally wanted to reassure them it wasn’t pee. They continued the cleaning of the area and I turned my head to look at the needle and the nurse grabs my head “honey your not going to want to look back there” wow, that’s sure calming I thought. The needle went in perfectly and I’m now lying down on the table. Kevin walks in and stands up by my head. It’s around 6:15pm now. They had my baby praise and worship music playing softly just like I had wanted in my birth plan. The feeling of the surgeon tugging was so strange. I started to have a reaction to the medicine and got very itchy on my face, a fairly normal reaction. However since I’m highly allergic to antihistamines they couldn’t give me medicine in the IV to counter act the reaction. I heard the one of the Doctors say “We have meconium in here. We need to get this baby out now!” my heart just about jumped out of my chest, I knew exactly what that meant and the impact that could have on my precious baby. I knew at that moment one of the reasons WHY God’s plan was for this baby to be born via C-section instead of waiting hours longer for my labor to progress and possibly loosing him to the toxic maconium. The doctor then said to Kevin “Mr Steinberg your baby’s about to be born stand up” as Kevin processed to try to walk around to the other side of the curtain. Oh he was so ready to see his baby all right! Nurse stops him and says he can’t come on that side and to just stand up. In seconds I hear the sweetest most pure cry my ears have ever heard. I start crying. “Here is your baby boy” the Doctor says, “6:25 is the time” as they held him up for Kevin to see. They checked him out real quick because of the meconium. With in minutes they brought him to me and placed that perfect baby boy, our Luke Evan, on my chest. I continue crying tears of joy, overwhelmed, as my whole world feels so complete now! He was so perfect. He just lay there; he instantly stopped crying the moment he was on my chest. He was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. That moment will forever be in my mind. Perfection!! Luke’s nurse said “He is one of the most chill babies” I just beamed! After about 10 minutes they had to take Luke away while they finished stitching me up. He weighed in at 8lbs 13oz. and 22 ½ inches long. No 10lb baby. But 8lbs 13oz of pure cuteness! His name we chose for a few reasons; Luke because we loved it, and the meaning “bringer of light” and oh is he such a light of joy. Evan we chose because my maiden name is Evans. I loved the meaning of it too “God is Good”. I praise the Lord for the life of Luke, for how He really protected him. I learned that no matter what our plan in life is, even with a birthing plan, God sometimes has a better plan, for reasons at the time we can’t even understand. As far as my fear about breast-feeding after a C-section, my little Luke had such a wonderful latch and latched on right away. Recovery was the normal length for a C-section about 8 weeks, and went very smoothly. So there it is, the birth story. Here are some photos! Enjoy
Skin to skin time in the OR. Grateful for that special moment as tears streamed down my face of pure joy.
Meeting sweet baby after coming out of the OR. pure love! My Heart!
Natural Faith Filled Mama 