Grilling Out and Local Food

I think local food is highly under appreciated in many parts of the country. It usually requires a bit more work than the one trip to the grocers, and many of us don't have the time! I'm very fortunate that I shop at a grocer who carries local milk, eggs, meat, and produce, and labels it boldly to make my shopping for local food easy. Local food has so many advantages, both to health and to the local economy, buying from farmers and supporting small local business is a great way to spend your dollarvotes. I just recently visited the farmer's market in my city (Baltimore, Maryland), and it was fantastic! DB got to pick out some food he wanted, and settled on blueberries, strawberries, and currants. There was lots left over, so I made a berry icebox poke cake out of the rest of them at the end of the week and topped it with local cream I whipped up with a touch of sugar. The rest of the veggies left at the end of the week, and there were a lot as we went a bit overboard at the temptation produce carnival known as the farmer's market, went into a salad. Salad and cake went with us to a barbecue and complimented summer perfectly, with seasonal local food!

McCormick spices have always had some of my favorite grilling flavors and they recently sent me a box of spices to try out this summer. I have to say that it made me try a new flavor I wouldn't usually pick. I liked that the ingredients listing is simple on the seasonings I tried, and I could pronounce EVERYTHING on it, which is a big deal in our house! I enjoyed testing out some of their new marinades and rubs. We had a great cook-out. Food, cold beer, and summer backyard grilling conversation, it doesn't get much better than that!

A new look, a new leaf

Notice anything different around here? I spent some time recently deciding on and designing a new look for the page. I thought the old design looked...myspacey. Yes, I know. *shudder* That's not a good thing in the design world. Ick. Now I'm no design pro, but I know my way around a font or two, and Photoshop is a friend of mine, so I just committed to getting it done and I did it. How do you like it? I'm going to be slowly converting the buttons and widgets to a lighter color scheme to match, but for the most part I'm done and I like the new, light, fun look.

I also have a new facebook fan page, so if you care to, go on over and "like" me, facebook official! I'm working on a few new blog posts, slowly but surely. You know that if they take more than a fw minutes, they're packed full of great stuff, so hopefully you'll appreciate the effort in spite of the delay! Family first, internet second, and I've been soaking up lots of time playing with DB recently. Have suggestions or feedback? Leave a comment or email! I'd love to hear from you! Namaste!

Swim Suit Time!

I recently had the pleasure of being able to go to Old Navy and review a sample from this season's swim suit line. I was online shopping before hand so I could take less time in-store, as shopping for clothes with a toddler is always a bit of an ordeal, with or without help, and the more prepared I am walking in the door, the better! I should have learned by now though, that shopping online before going in Old Navy doesn't work out as well as I'd like, things always look SO different in the store and I usually end up walking out with something that I had dismissed online, as well as disliking something in store that I loved online. C'est la vie! I took my husband along to help watch the kiddo and lend his expert opinion on the suits, because I know he'll be honest no matter what! (and he was, he vetoed several selections!)

I ended up with an interesting plaid bikini, I've been working hard to eat right and work out, so I wanted to reward myself with a two-piece that I would not fall out of. I think it's cute! There were lots of options I liked, and though I usually only get one suit per season, I thought of getting two!

This suit was given to me in exchange for my review, and I found this sampling opportunity through Crowdtap! If you want to join me on Crowdtap collaborating with brands and providing them feedback, you can click HERE!

Home Made Sidewalk Paint! (AKA too hot to do anything else)

  It is so hot here! So hot! It's been in +100 this week a few times, which is nothing like +100 back in the southwest. Today DB wanted to get outside, and I don't blame him, we've been cooped up due to the temperature, but he's too little to understand that there's a temperature point where even the most modern of playgrounds become scalding hot torture devices. I knew that even if he could stand the oven of a car ride to an appropriate play area, he'd only be outside for about 20 minutes before he'd be too red and sweaty to have any more fun, so I had to brainstorm. Front yard? Too steep, a hill of doom, if you will. Back yard? Too many rats, and the neighbors throw rat poison around out there all willy nilly, DB's not even allowed back there. Front steps it is. Now how to make the boy not kill my pathetic little grouping of edible plants? Then DB solves the problem for me with his typical 19 month old attention span. The chant changes from "outside outside outside" to "paint paint paint!" Bingo. I google. Trusty google. "homemade sidewalk paint" turns up way more entries than I had even hoped for. And they're easy, eco-friendly, and cheap. All my favorite words. So we mixed some up and had a BLAST painting our porch, steps, and landing. The paint was "all gone" (there were a couple spills/crashes depending on your fluency in car-obsessed toddler terminology) in about 20 minutes, just as my beet-faced little boy was soaking his curls with sweat. Here's how we did it:

Homemade Sidewalk Paint

• Cornstarch
• Cold Water
• Food Colors

  You want equal-ish parts of cornstarch and water. I found it easiest to mix the cornstarch and water in separate containers from the beginning as opposed to dividing it later. It tends to settle a bit no matter how freshly stirred it is, so this way they all have equal opacity. You can use more or less water to reach the consistency you want, ours was about like 2% cow's milk in appearance. The paint may seem very thin but that's fine, it may even look like you're hardly using a color at first, but it will brighten considerably as it dries and on a hot day like today it was drying very quickly. We went with about 2 Tbs. of cornstarch and 2-3 Tbs. of water per cup, and we did 4 cups of color. Add food color drops until it's the shade you want, I'd err on the side of a few more drops than you think you might need, the actual color of the dried paint will be more pastel than the shade of wet paint. DB picked Purple, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Take a variety of brushes out with you, and have fun! It can wash off with rain or you can spray it off later and it's fine for plants and animals and even tots, if they get some in their mouth. There is a possibility of staining, though our clothes didn't, so play in clothes meant to get dirty.

 

It's a Jungle In Here! (a wild Madagascar tot picnic brought to you by Crowdtap)

If you've been following the blog, you've seen a few of the opportunities I've had to host parties, sample products, and provide feedback to brands through the brand interaction found on Crowdtap. Well last week was a really fun one as I got to host a Madagascar themed party to celebrate the theatrical release of Madagascar 3, which will be in theaters tomorrow!

We had a whirlwind week, but wanted to find some time to get a celebration in there anyway. I decided the best way would be a lunchtime picnic, indoors, with all the best tot-friendly healthy lunch choices I could muster up and an invitation to pot-luck in some of your own. We picked a Friday midday and I laid out the biggest quilt I had, rented Madagascar 1, and had some friends over!

DB's just starting to figure out what a movie "oovwee!" is,  so he was fairly excited to have a new one to watch. In typical tot fashion, no one watched the whole thing, but the whole thing did play, and bits and pieces entertained the youngsters as we hung out, enjoying good food and good company.

I made some Marty the Zebra themed cookies, low sugar and gluten free, and they were a hit with the tiny tots, as were all the berries and cheese, I expected to have some left over, but there was NONE! :) I myself ate more than my share of whole grain peanut butter and local jam sandwiches that an attendee brought with her, and the big batch of fresh popcorn with sea salt I popped up at the beginning of the picnic was completely gone by early afternoon. We had a great time and it was nice to have friends over, we usually always go out somewhere! If you'd like an opportunity to sample brands, host sponsored parties, and provide brand feedback, you can join me on Crowdtap by clicking here!

Reason Not to Nurse In Public: "Intimate Moment" Fallacy

"But nursing is an intimate moment between you and your baby, you should have a quiet moment for just yourselves. Wouldn't you be more comfortable alone somewhere to enjoy that? You shouldn't do that here."

I've actually heard this a few times. It's the RNTNIP I hear that I find hardest to respond to. Partially because they are correct about a little part of it. I've thought for a few weeks on how to write this post out, and last night it finally came to me exactly how to put words to my feelings.

Sure, nursing CAN be an intimate moment between mother and child(ren). Some of my favorite nursing memories of me and DB are laying quietly on our big fold-out sofa under the sunlight streaming from the window, just staring at each other. Intimate, lovely, peaceful. But allow me to interrupt this beautiful breastfeeding moment to bring us all back to reality. Nursing is just food. For every beautiful nursing moment of bliss, there are at least 40 other times that were just business! That's not to sound callous, it's just a fact. Breastfed infants nurse upwards of 14 times a day. Older infants and young toddlers can still nurse upwards of 8 times a day (these don't even include night feedings!). Keep that number in mind as I explain why the "intimate moment" fallacy doesn't hold water.

Imagine this scenario: you and a close friend, perhaps a partner, perhaps a date, perhaps a spouse, are enjoying a wonderful brunch in bed, or cande-lit dinner, or a moonlight picnic. It's a lovely, intimate setting for a meal, and it really is enjoyable and wonderful. Now imagine that no matter when or where you were hungry, you HAD to re-create that moment. Every time. Three meals a day and snacks besides. Sound exhausting? That's because it would be! It would be horrendous! It would also likely rob those intimate moments of all their "special", because you would be working constantly to make this intimate setting over and over day after day.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that most people would find the scenario above to be ludicrous. People simply don't do that. You have to eat, you eat! You drive through and get a smoothie, you pick up a sub sandwich, you pull in to the farmers' market and grab some fruit, you eat a packet of almonds out of your purse, or you grab a snack as you walk into Target. Sure, you enjoy a nice intimate dinner or brunch, maybe you even have an intimate meal once a day, connecting with another human over a meal is almost instinctive, it seems, but that's not the main purpose of food.

Walking up and to someone eating a burrito as they rush around getting errands done and saying "why aren't you using the good china and sitting down at a white linen table" isn't something we'd do, because we understand that sometimes, you just have to EAT! We can't expect nursing mothers to be forced into this preconceived and poorly conceived notion of intimate nursing when their babies are just trying to eat, and have to do so easily 2-3 times more often than you do! Not only that, but these mothers really are eating for two, so they also have to balance their own meals in addition to being someone else's meals!

When you say something about the "intimate moment", it may be because you genuinely thought that's what a mother needs, it may be because you aren't fully educated on a nursing mother's needs, and it may be because you are simply uncomfortable and want her to be elsewhere but don't know how to say that without sounding ignorant and closed-minded. Whatever your reasoning, it's not ok. Unless a nursing mother asks your opinion, don't share it. People have to eat, even and especially tiny people, sometimes at a candle-lit dinner, and sometimes in line at the grocery store.

Look? Doesn't Mommy look PRETTY? Can you say Ooooh, Pretty? (Or, how to fish for compliments from a toddler)

So I got a new dress! In my "professional" life, I play ballerina and wear soft stretchy things to work. I wear soft stretchy things around the house, and then when/if I go somewhere not work or home, I pair jeans or hiking pants with soft stretchy things. Don't get me wrong, I love love love fashion, and I have some stellar pieces, I just don't get to wear them often. My wardrobe goes from plain-jane to rock concert goddess to high-fashion with no in-betweens, so finding a cool casual dress that I like is usually a challenge that I just don't accept.

The lovely folks at Old Navy gave me a chance to go pick out one of their new dresses and give it a test-drive recently. I had it in my head that Old Navy dresses would mostly be beachy cover-up and cheap jersey dress type pieces. Not the case! There were a surprising number of different styles and materials of dresses, from business to beach, jersey to linen, crepe to chiffon. I had a hard time in the dressing room, most of the dresses just hung funny on my frame, but there were three contenders by the time the flurry of trying on was done, and this one was the winner!

This dress is super soft and swishy, I find myself swinging around in it just to feel it move, which is either the little girl or dancer in me, maybe both. The print is a fun black feathers on cream. It looks like a vintage material, and I like that air of quirkiness about it. The length is nice, which is always hard for a short girl like me. Dresses tend to be way too long, way too short, or an awkward middle that just makes me look somehow shorter. This one falls perfectly. I like that the waist drawstring is adjustable, it helps give me a bit of shape, and since I'm a bustier petite, it's an empire waisted dress, though on some it might fall at the natural waist. It's cut just sexy enough that I feel confident and gorgeous in it and not so sexy that I'm falling out all over and feeling trashy. Today I finally had a chance to get dressed up in it. I paired it with some vintage turquoise earrings, cowboy boots, and a micro-crocheted lace belt as a headband.
I spun around the living room and tried to get DB to tell me I looked pretty. He giggled that I was spinning and asked me to put on his sandals. Oh well, at least I tried! We took The Hero some lunch to work and he thought it was a great look on me. I held my head up high all day as I ran my typical mom-errands. I felt like a million bucks.

Full disclosure: I was given my choice of dress from Old Navy as a gift in exchange for review. I found this sampling opportunity through the awesome site Crowdtap! I've been a member with them for over 6 months now and I can say that it's been great fun, I've earned over $70 in gift-cards to Amazon as well as opportunities to sample and give feedback to brands. No spam, legit rewards, minimal effort on my part. All a win! If you want to give it a shot too, you can accept my invitation by clicking on the link above.