Random Photos, Valentine's Day, Raingutter Regata, Little House on the Prairie Party

Lots of random uploads today with some events as well. I'll just jump in, it's late and I want to make sure I get this post finished before I go to bed or I'm afraid it will never get done!

First up, SarahMae reading a story to Ruby. Ruby looks super happy about it. SarahMae is seriously in love with this dog, and Ruby is incredibly patient. :o)

Next up, Raingutter Regata for American Heritage Girls. They made a boat to race at one of their meetings. Rick and Shiloh worked on it together for several days. Shiloh was very insistent on a specific design that she wanted. I got some pics of them working on it one morning when Rick used some comp time to stay home with her.

Ignore the boxes of Cap'n Crunch Berries in the photos -- no, we can't eat that type of cereal, we had just bought them for a care package for a missionary from our church. 

SarahMae couldn't be left out of picture taking, of course. :o)

"Hi!" or, more accurately, "Di!"

At the race, playing around with friends. 

Racing her friend, Gracie. I think she had fun! 

Sharing a snack after the race, graciously allowing SarahMae to sit at the table with her and her friends.

 The actual design. Hot pink boat, covered with daisies of all sizes, with a candy-cane striped mast, and a white sail with a red diamond surrounded by a blue circle. Like I said, very specific ideas. :o)

Posted these on facebook, but still part of 'random photos.' Shiloh's ballet bun pigtails. She really loved these and have asked me to make them for her many times since. They're cute!

After class. Cutie!

Mommy-Daughter date to Chik-Fil-A, on her request. We had sweet tea and french fries. And made funny faces. :o)

Again, SarahMae with Ruby. Sitting on her cuddle blanket that I made for her last year for Valentine's Day. She didn't care for it too much last year at first, but these past several months, she's gotten fairly attached and drags it around with her most places in the house. Here, drinking her morning milk. :o)

Shiloh and SarahMae playing with puzzles. I'm realizing that my kids are in PJs in a lot of these photos. I promise, they also sometimes wear real clothes!

Snow day!

Valentine's Day! Shiloh's and SarahMae's gifts. Shiloh got a new drinking cup, a sew-your-own doll (which she sewed all on her own, working steadily for three hours!) and eye mask. 

SarahMae got a new book, crayons and drawing paper. She's been slightly obsessed with coloring lately. :o)

First thing in the morning. Shiloh said "It's Valentine's morning! Take my picture!"

"Let's go get SarahMae!" This is a seriously sweet picture. :o)

Yay new eye mask! She wore this thing all day.

Shiloh had gotten me a card, and I had no idea! My goodness, how sweet can a girl be?!

Cuteness!

Opening gifts from Nana and Papa.

Reading the card first, of course. :o)

New PJs!!

And, we have to test out the PJ/eye mask combo, of course. :o)

Finally, a birthday party! Since Shiloh's birthday fell right in the middle of the Christmas season/Nutcracker ballet craziness, we decided to wait on a sleepover birthday party until things had died down a bit and her friends could make it. That wasn't until this weekend, unfortunately, but at least we did it! She chose a book theme, Little House on the Prairie. She really loves the series and had all sorts of ideas of things she wanted to do. 

First of all, the two main party favors were handmade, like they gave to friends in the books. Shiloh wrote out her friends' names on the fabric and started to embroider it, but, let's face it -- that was a lot of embroidering, so I finished it. :o) I completely forgot to take an after picture, but these are before they were stuffed. I made one for Shiloh after this. 

Also, I sewed bonnets for all the girls. This is Shiloh modeling one for me. She had been asking for one ever since she started reading the books.

And, party time! The girls got to play Kinect Party, which was SO much fun! It's a camera image of the living room, and it super-imposes images on the screen for you to interact with -- fills up the room with balloons so you can pop them all, boards for you to "karate chop" through, buildings for you to knock down. They loved this. 

We had food from the book, "garden" food -- mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, cornbread muffins, corn on the cob. Then, chocolate pudding and chocolate cupcakes for dessert. :o)

And apples. Which many of the girls dipped in their pudding. :o/ Defeats the purpose, no?

Opening presents...

In keeping with the theme, we made bread from scratch. I handed out ingredients to each girl, and they each got to to add something, measure it out themselves, and get to stir it up.

They scooped out some for each of their mini loaf pans, we let it rise for about thirty minutes (which they all seriously thought was like magic!) and then baked them. 

 Next, we made candles from soy wax, and Shiloh chose a rose scent to add to each candle. I got the containers at an antique store, they were shaped like little flower petals of different colors. We talked about how in the books, they made candles in the same way from beeswax.

(Also -- they drank out of mason jars the whole time, they thought that was so neat!)

And... more desserts. :o)

Settling in for the night, watching a movie (or two)...

Shiloh requested that Rick and I dress up like Ma and Pa. I just wore a long skirt with an apron. Rick wore a flannel shirt with tall rubber boots, much more like the "real" Pa. We played fiddle music all night. This is my "leave Ma alone and let her wash the dishes" look. ;o)

Then, they decided that they weren't "settling in" after all. A dance party ensued for about an hour. :o)

The following morning, a fashion show with dress up clothes, first thing. Priorities... ;o)

Breakfast! Pancakes and scrambled eggs with orange juice. Sooo yummy!

After breakfast, we made "church dolls," an old-fashioned type of doll made from a hankerchief, we used squares of fabric. They sewed on little pieces of lace for bonnets. So cute!

Aaaaand.... more Kinect Party. That's a seriously fun game. :o)

SarahMae enjoyed some leftoever popcorn as an after-breakfast snack.

Then, she asked to do more crafts and we made button necklaces, like Laura and Mary did in the books. Except Shiloh, of course, turned hers into a noisemaker instead. :o)

I think Shiloh had a really great time, and I always like seeing her play so well with her friends. She has made friends with a seriously incredible group of girls who are genuine with each other and help each other whenever they can. They also hold each other accountable, apparently -- at one point, during a game of princess Monopoly, one of the girls began talking to them all about being Christians and how important it was. Then, I heard Shiloh say "Yes, that's VERY important. Also, I hope you're all reading your Bible every night." Accountability at seven years old! Let's pray that these girls stay friends forEVER!

Lastly, more snow this afternoon and a few funny pics after church when she finally got to play in it. 

And that's all for now! Lots has happened this month, and we stayed very busy. For goodness sake, my girls are getting so BIG! 

Valentine's Party 2013

I didn't want to flood facebook with pics, but I wanted to share our Valentine's Day with you. Shiloh did a lot of work for our homeschool co-op's Valentine's Party. :o)

We cut and folded scrapbook paper and stamped homemade Valentine's cards.

Shiloh (and I -- not gonna lie, those are a lotta hearts) cut and sewed together little heart pillows to attach to glue dots on the inside of the card. They turned out so cute, I think!

She kept saying "I love to sew. Sewing is so relaxing." Hey, I'll take anything that Shiloh finds relaxing!

 Front of the card, little random heart stamps.

And the inside -- sweet!

We ended up making forty Valentines. That was a lot of hearts!

At the party, there were snacks. We made chocolate cupcakes with white, pink and red icing arranged in the shape of a heart (sorry, no picture) and chocolate chip cookies. We made the cupcakes to share, and this time, I failed to advertise that they were gluten free and color-dye free maybe on purpose, and they were almost all gone by the time we got to them! I made a typical buttercream icing but added strawberry juice to make the pink icing and just a few drops of beet juice to make the red icing. No one knew the difference! Hah! And it looks like these two goobers enjoyed the snacks as well. How cute are they with chocolate all in their teeth?!

Working on one her three crafts. I didn't get a good after photo, but she got to hammer some nails into a board with this one. It took quite a long time. :o)

Shiloh's Valentine's box. We glued pink yarn on the front, yellow construction paper decorated with hand-drawn jewels and swirls all around, and a foam crown with jewels and sequins. Fitting for a princess. :o)

Lastly, another craft. Jewels glued on scrapbook paper and framed. It's a diamond. (nudge, nudge.) ;o)

A few random pictures from the past week or so. 

This one I posted on facebook. I told Shiloh that Rick was coming home and she parked it in front of the window saying "I'm looking out the window looking for the Daddy." :o)

Also, I finished this blanket. I. Love. It. It was my most favorite that I've made maybe ever. I made it for my friend Christina's new baby. I learned the entrelac knitting pattern, which looks like strips woven over and under the others, but it's all made in one piece. It's so neat! However, I've never liked the way that knitting looks on the back. I saw a blanket similar to this one online and they had sewn minky fabric onto the back, making it a quilt. They had bound the edges, but I didn't want to do that, it seemed too bulky to me, so I just made a wide straight stitch border to define the edges. It felt so nice, I had serious second thoughts about giving it away. ;o) I know Christina's baby Isabella will love it, though, so I managed to part with it, but I'm definitely going to be making more of these. :o)

Lastly, look at this cutie while out on a walk the other day when it wasn't snowing, raining or the mid-70s and breezy. :o) I have more pictures of her, but they were on my other phone that was recently lost, and I had been too lax in transferring the images to the computer, so they were lost along with my phone. :o( I had given my mom what was on there, though, when were in KY about a month ago, so she'll send them to me (right, Mom?!) so they won't be lost forever. :o)

Happy early Valentine's Day!

Feed Your Family for $100/week? (Plus a bit more of my Celiac story)

Is that possible? I know that put in global perspective, $100 is quite a bit of money and we should all be able to feed our family for that amount. But in America, with fuel and food prices being the way they are, is that really reasonable?

I was prompted by this blog post to see if we could do this ourselves. Now, I'm not a couponer. I like to get deals, but I don't hunt for them, and I don't always go to the cheapest places. There's a Schnucks about thirty seconds from my house and I would prefer to shop there. It's closer. Dierbergs has a large organic USA-produced selection and lots of allergy-sensitive foods. Neither are particularly inexpensive, and I know that periodically, I'll shop at hole-in-the-wall health food stores, farmers markets in the summers and fall, and we're working on growing most of our own food. I wanted to see if I could shop at the places where I would normally go, buying the things I would normally buy... just plan it better.

But, there's a backstory (Isn't there always? I can never just tell a story without telling a bunch of other ones first. You knew it wouldn't be as straighforward as that!). First, let me say that we're vegetarians and have been on a $500/month food budget for about a year, which is a bump up from our $400/month food budget, where it stayed for several years.

But, our food choices weren't very healthy. Like, not very healthy at all. Like, pretty atrocious, actually. I'm talking, processed-straight-from-a-box-or-a-can quickie meals. Lots of pasta, vegetable oil, starches with a side of starch and less and less fresh produce. Shiloh has a hyperactivity/attention issue, so I was a good mom and careful to avoid high fructose corn syrup and color dyes. But, the busier we got with children's activities, involvement in leadership roles, a new job with a more demanding schedule.... we began, like most of America, to favor convenience over quality. And that's sort of where we languished. I tried to plan healthier meals, but I just didn't have the time. We were definitely in a food funk.

In mid-January, though, after struggling with a myriad of health problems, I was finally diagnosed with Celiac Disease. This, as many of you know, required a radical change in diet. A complete abstinence from all things gluten (boo! hiss!). After removing gluten from our diet (Shiloh as well), we noticed a drastic improvement in our overall health, as we had unknowingly been poisoning ourselves with gluten all these years, while watching our family's health worsen. After removing gluten from our diet, it became evident that my body had begun treating soy as its gluten substitute, and while I'd always had a soy sensitivity, I had now become all-out allergic. Furthermore, while I was able to tolerate dairy in respect to Celiac, I discovered that with the removal of all other allergens, dairy aggravated a separate health problem with which I'd been struggling for years.

So.

No meat. No gluten. No soy. No dairy. This was way worse than the standard remove-all-gluten mandate with which I had previously begun. What were we going to eat?!

My ever-gracious husband, after seeing the difference that the diet changes had made in Shiloh and I, refused to allow any gluten or soy in our house whatsoever and was willing to part with the dairy as well, his only request being that I keep a stick of butter for him to add to his morning oatmeal. Fair enough. I *guess* I can concede. ;o) (As an aside, Shiloh's allergies aren't as severe as mine, but as I am currently the fourth known generation dealing with essentially the same set of health problems, the odds of her inheriting them as well is quite high. So, she and I are on the same diet.)

Aaaand to finally bring it back to the original topic..........

I assumed since we would be eating specialty foods and mostly fresh produce, that our grocery bill would skyrocket. We added an extra $200/mo, bringing our final monthly total to $600. I wasn't sure where to start, so I just began scouring the internet for recipes and running to the grocery store for random ingredients. I was beginning to get aquainted with all the various flours I would need in lieu of 'regular' flour, some good base recipes that we could recycle, where to buy some good organic fruits and vegetables, etc.

As I was sort of barging into this whole lifestyle change haphazardly, it was reflected in the amount of money spent. Even though we had been eating unhealthily before, I planned our meals every two weeks and was never surprised by the amount we spent on groceries. Now, I felt out of control of our grocery budget, but chalked it all up to "well, i guess this is just how it'll be if we want to be healthy." I just didn't feel like I knew enough about the types of food we were eating to go at it any other way.

This time, though, I decided to try to go at it differently and try to meal-plan once again. Not only that, though, but I was going to keep it under $100/week. My two-week budget was going to be $200. I had serious doubts.

I did some online research, paired with some of our favorite meals we'd been eating lately, and came up with  a plan that covered 15 days -- 15 dinners, various options for lunches and breakfasts, plus some extras for snacks. Mind you, these may not be what you would normally consider 'snacks' or a 'good, hearty' lunch or breakfast. However, it's what our vegetarian/gluten-free/soy-free/dairy-free family has embraced and actually begun to (dare i say it?) prefer to the Standard American Diet.

Here's our menu for the next two weeks, from this evening (Friday the 16th) until Thursday the 29th, the night before I budget for our next two-week pay period.

1. Vegetable Pizza on Gluten-Free/Soy-Free/Dairy-Free Crust. Crust bought at Dierbergs in their allergy aisle, brushed with olive oil  and sea salt, with a chopped green pepper, half a can of marinated artichoke hearts, one chopped tomato, and one chopped onion, with basil/oregano/garlic cloves sprinkled on top. This is the most expensive meal b/c we bought the crusts 2 pkgs at 2 per pack, they're personal sized. They were $5.40/pkg. This meal is AMAZING. By far one of our favorites, which is why I pay the extra.  
2. Eggs and Pancakes. I bought a gluten-free mix, 100% Pure and Organic Maple Syrup, and a dozen cage-free Organic brown eggs.
3. Rice and Beans with Tomatoes. We usually plan family lunches on Sundays so we aren't tempted to eat out. It's easier to resist McAlister's potatoes if I know that we have food waiting for us at home. This may sound 'blah,' but this is one of our favorite meals and why we repeat it later on. It's just brown rice on one side of the bowl, seasoned black beans on the other and topped with fresh tomatoes. So simple, but quick and easy and cheap. :o) 
1. Potato Gnocchi in Mushroom and Sweet Pea sauce. Dinner. This is a new recipe, although we do like Potato Gnocchi, just haven't tried this one yet. Excited about the mushroom sauce, especially.
4. Quinoa Pilaf. Another simple favorite that makes a ton and we love, thus repeat often. It's simply unseasoned quinoa, with sauteed/raw sweet peppers and onions. Sooooo good!
5. Shepherd's Pie. Good ol' fashioned Shepherd's Pie. Minus the meat. :o) Cooked carrots, peas, corn, green beans, vegetable broth topped with mashed potatoes and parsley. YUM! 
6. Tomato Basil Soup with Spinach. Yet another recent favorite. Cooks up in about twenty minutes and makes a ton. Sooo good with a side of baked potato or a slice of freshly baked homemde bread. 
7. Rice and Beans with Tomatoes. Seriously. We love this meal.
8. Baked Potatoes, Steamed Carrots and Homemade Baked Beans. Okay, this is two types of starches in a meal, which we don't normally do, but Rick makes the BEST homemade baked beans, and it just seems to "fit."
9. Spaghetti Squash in Garlic/Olive Oil sauce. Another new recipe, but spaghetti squash is SO good, and a much healthier alternative to pasta. :o)
10. Sushi -- Nori wraps, sushi rice and avocado. This is more for a light dinner, but so filling and we love it!
11. Vegetable Stir-Fry -- Raw/steamed onions and peppers with baby corn and water chestnuts mixed in with whatever sauce Rick decides to try that night. He is a MASTER at sauces. 
12. Quinoa Pilaf. Again. Serious favorite.
13. Garbanzo Potato Curry Over Brown Rice. This is actually a recipe we've had in our rotation for a long time, but it just happens to be meat/gluten/soy/dairy free and also one of our favorites. Cubed potatoes, onions, sweet peas in a curry sauce over brown rice. 
14. Tomato Basil Soup with Spinach. Okay, so we repeat our favorites. Who doesn't?

Now, I also added these following "spare" meals in case we weren't in the mood for one of the others:

1. Rice Noodles in Thai Peanut Sauce (we could have this every night, it's so good!)
2. Organic Gluten-Free Pasta with Red or Garlic Sauce
3. Leftover Vegetable Crockpot Soup in Seasoned Vegetable Broth

Additionally, I picked up fresh fruit and greens (at least half of which are organic) that we use for morning breakfast juices and sides to gluten-free hot cereal and oatmeal, which we buy in bulk every few months. We also eat fresh fruit as morning and afternoon snacks, and lunch sides. This particular trip, I picked up:

1. 3 pounds of Organic green apples
2. 2 pounds of Organic oranges
3. 2 pounds of Organic bananas
4. 1 pound fresh blueberries
5. 1 pound fresh blackberries
6. 2 pounds green seedless grapes
7. 2 large bunches Organic Dinosaur Kale
8. 2 pounds Organic Spinach
9. 1 large bunch asparagus (for juicing)

Lastly, I bought ingredients for extra yummy snacks, namely:

1. 1.5 pounds raw cashews
2. 2 pkgs pitted dates
3. 1 pkg allergy-free chocolate chips

We use the former three ingredients to make our own version of "Lara" bars, blending them all together in a food processor and making them into balls or bars. This doesn't use all of the chocolate chips, though, and I have a recipe that uses different types of flours to make Chocolate Chip Cookies or Mint Chocolate Chip cookies. YUM! We also regularly keep stove popping corn for snacks and dessert, tossed with sea salt, garlic powder and onion powder.

As far as Rick's lunches, he packs leftovers, and Shiloh and I may eat sandwiches on homemade bread made from Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free mix with a few of my own modifications, leftovers, lettuce wraps or baked potatoes.

Beverages -- we drink water. and that's all. So I don't buy anything in this category.

So. The grand total? For two weeks' worth of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, desserts....

$182!!!

I will concede that of this list, I already had a large can of tomato puree, a can of corn and green beans, a bag of onions, a can of baby corn and water chestnuts and the spaghetti squash. All told, less than $10 worth. But then, I also bought some things that weren't necessary, either -- two chocolate candy bars to snack on on the trip around town, a real Lara Bar for Shiloh, a more expensive brand of toothpaste than we normally use, etc. All told, it all evened out.

And, we have about $18 left to replenish the fresh fruit next week. 

So. While it may not be ideal, it's definitely possible to eat a varied menu with plenty of options to spare on $100/week or $200 per two week pay period. 

Woo-hoo!