DIY Sunflower Butter

C is addicted to sunflower butter and at 6 dollars a pound we can't let him have it as often or give him as much as he would like. I stumbled across a diy make your own recipe and figured it had to be worth a try right?
I'm kicking myself we didn't try this sooner.  So easy less than 2 dollars and you control exsactly what goes in it. It didn't take any time at all either.

I roasted 3 cups of raw sunflower seeds in a pan. Apparently you want to roast them yourself so you don't lose the oils that are released in the roasting process and you get a nice nutty flavor.  Don't over roast them, watch them closely and stir constantly.
Transfer the seeds to the food processor (leave the vent open to let out the steam) and turn it on and let it go. Every once in a while stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the processor so it keeps chopping the seeds up. It takes a while but eventually you get something that is sort of butter like. I think it was around 20 minutes or so till we hit that stage. We added a pinch of sea salt and then add a little extra virgin olive oil to make it creamy start with a little let it run till you reach a consistency you like, same goes with sweeter (honey, maple syrup both work well) start with a little until its the right amount sweet.
Here is a guess for the add ins but its just a rough guide.

• 2-4 tablespoons light tasting oil (I prefer coconut oil or light olive oil)
• ¼ teaspoon honey (optional)
• ½ teaspoon salt (to taste, or omit entirely…depends on your taste buds)

That's it your done. So Easy.  store in a jar in the fridge.

Sewing Projects

This pretty fabric is for wet bags and produce bags.

I've finished up the winter markets, we did really well. We are reworking out website to make the online shop work better and look nicer it will be great once we get it done. For the most part I can take a break from Roxy Roodle to work on all the baby projects I have that need to get done in the next 8 weeks.

I'm hoping to make a good start of mama cloth, produce bags, and wet bags today.  I have the wool prepped for making infant diaper covers. Menu planning for my postpartum freezer fill is under way.

Tutorials on the sewing project and other projects are in the works.Please leave a comment below if you are really interested in seeing one of the projects more than the others and I'll try to get that one written up first.  I'll post our organization and prep for hopefully making the transition to a two child house easier and then update them at some point with how well our plans worked after the baby has been here a while.

I'm totally excited to get C down for a nap and start cutting out fabric and figuring out just what prints I want to use for what and to write out a master sewing/ project list to try and keep myself on task.

Coconut oil whipped lotion

Today I had a good amount of coconut oil that needed to be turned into lotion. Coconut oil is amazing stuff but if its cold it turns into a hard block of oil that can be tricky to spread all over you skin. I'd read online that you could put it in the kitchen aid mixer and whip it and that would keep it from being a block and it would stay in a nice fluffy whipped consistency.

 Turns out it does, we added a little honey to part of the whipped oil and it was a little difficult to convince a certain two year old to stop eating it. It made a really nice lotion.
 I added some melted bees wax to another batch and made a lip balm, hand cream for Rob his hands get so chapped in the winter they bleed its no fun. I'm hoping that it will help keep his skin hydrated and from cracking.

 C boy has had some dry skin and peeling skin so I added a little Epsom salt to a little oil to make a body scrub (I would have used sugar but we seem to be out.) and we scrubbed down his elbows, knees, and baby bum to get rid of the dry skin and then slathered him in lotion after his bath. He smells like a soft little coconut. He helped put lotion on my growing baby bump too which was pretty cute.

 I put most of our new lotions into small glass mason jars, the lip balm got separated into little batches and put in plastic baby food freezer containers that just hold a few ounces and the lotion for the shower ended up in a travel silicon reusable container since glass and showers don't mix. 

This was such an easy, fast, and cheap way to make a bunch of safe body products. I would write up a tutorial but there really isn't anything to write, it was that easy. I didn't measure anything or need to add anything to the oil, all the extras I added in where done on a whim. You can add essential oils to make scented oil too but I didn't have any that I wanted to smell like so I chose to leave them unscented.

Gluten Free Corn Bread Bites

C is a little obsessed with bread, part of it is that its a rare treat to get anything bread like, since he is gluten free and the gluten free breads that you can buy are expensive and don't taste good, we don't do bread very often. Today we made corn bread in mini muffin tins which is the perfect size for little hands.  I didn't exactly follow a recipe, shocker.  I substituted gluten free flour for the whole wheat and used water instead of milk, the recipe called for butter but I used coconut oil and EVOO in its place. I added sunflower seeds, flax seed, flax meal and used molasses in place of sugar. They came out great yummy slightly nutty. Happy baby, happy mommy. I will post the actual recipe tomorrow and pictures of the little guy cooking tomorrow when we make another batch.

In other highlights today was the third stroller exercise class today, its hard and one of the babies actually pointed at us and laughed while we were doing a particularly hard set of exercises  Its a fun class however and I'm hoping that after a month of going three times a week, I will be a little closer to summer swimsuit weather.
  C and I also learned that apple cider vinegar makes amazing conditioner, you only smell like a fish and chips shop for a few minutes and then the smell goes away but it leaves your hair bouncy and tangle free. You should not let it get in your babies eyes it makes them scream and scream and will feel like a horrible mother. He got over it and is happily sleeping next to his puppy now.
All in all it a fulfilling day.

Its been a long week...

25 weeks

 So pictures of me at 25 weeks. I've had a few people ask if I was due soon (nope just a large German baby) I'm not measuring huge, I just look huge.
It was a crazy week with bee swarms, lots of kids, yelling and general chaos. I've got a bit of time off now to get sewing done, house cleaned, one of our apartments painted and cleaned, and all the little things that need to be done that haven't been done.

All in all things are going well, I'd love to get things together and not feel so behind  and I can't quite believe how close October is getting and how much needs to be done before this baby is done.

25 week bump

Big steps and a lot of pictures

 Here I am, at 18 weeks. I'm showing people have been stopping me sharing advice. Best so far is don't carry a newborn around on a pillow, they don't brake. All in all I'm feeling pretty good. Baby has been moving around off and on mostly I  think its been happening more than I notice most of the time Rob saying I sway and rub my bump a lot.

 I've been working hard on selling stuff at the farmers market exciting and its been going well. Which is has been going good. I'm learning a lot about what I need to do to make my booth even better each week.

We did a lot of work in the house today. Our bedrooms started out looking like this and it need to get repainted and things needed to be moved around to fit all the baby stuff in it. We managed to get the room painted, install an new light and outlet plugs AND get our bed, dresser, crib, and a changing table in the room which was amazing. I still need to decorate and get things just right but I'm happy with how its looking so far.

BEFORE

BEFORE

Our before is a bit of a mess, the room is really small its only about a 10x10 with a tiny closet and you have to walk through our bedroom to get to the bathroom.

old light

new light re painted walls

Help from Rome

More help from Romey

Baby's things its a tight fit but its going to work.

So now I need to get the art work back up, sew new curtains, put the AC in the window, and our bedroom will be basiclly ready for Baby. The crib needs to be sanded down and painted, we set it up as it only has three real sides and we want to train the dogs that they can't go in it. Thus the brightly colored mobile I'm not a huge fan of it, it spins around and plays music, Roxy hates it so it is serving as a way to scare her from sleeping in the crib. Later on we will take it down but hopefully it will bother Roxy enough that she decided that the crib isn't for her and Romey usually does what Roxy does so we will see how it works

Fabric

I love going to the thrift stores and looking the the fabric. I found theses cool patterns for a dollar.  I'm not sure what I am going to do with them  but they are interesting.

Soap

On our quest to make our home less toxic and in the spirit of diy, we have embarked on making shampoo.
The  other day I made a yummy body scrub out of coffee grounds, and  today we ran out of shampoo. After reading Skin Deep and how toxic the stuff that we are putting on our bodies, I vowed to make over our shower. We are going green, and that means that we are making shampoo.  I read a lot about making shampoo.
What we ended up doing, and we will see how well it works it using  Castile soap, made out of olive oil it should be good!  All  the reviews are  pretty good online so here we go.
After trying it for two weeks we gave up on the homemade shampoo it is horrible,  We tried a few different combinations of  Castile soap, olive oil, mixing it with other shampoo nothing worked so we've broken down and have switched to another type of shampoo that is organic and much better than the other stuff that we had been using.
We may try again the Castile soap smells good and makes a nice body wash but as shampoo it just made our hair dry,oily. 

Remodeling ~ Bathroom

Before

After

           

We spent the 1st day of the new year painting our bathroom and the second day hanging bead board. We worth it though, I think.  Our bath room is tiny and a looked a little depressing so we decided that the first project of 2011 would be to give it a face lift.  When we bought the house it had really ugly wall paper that we pulled off an painted the walls white. It was a little boring and so we decided to freshen up the little space with wainscoting, and chair molding. A classic, look that fit the style of  our house. We painted three of the walls a very pale yellow green and the wall with the sink a dark gray the end result is fantastic. With the bead board and little updates it looks much more fitting in our old house. 

earrings

I got a card from my aunt today and we have a package that is sitting waiting to go to her house, her birthday was last month and I never know what to get her but I was cleaning up my desk space and thought why not throw a pair of earrings together for her to go in the package.
the result. They came out amazing if I do say so myself. I may just have to make up a bunch and sell them I was thinking that different colors would look cute.

Spring!

So spring is finally here and there is so much that I want to do this year I'm working on turning our boring grass yard into a garden. I'm not a fan of grass you have to mow it and water it and its just so boring. I would much rather have a yard filled with wildflowers and not have to do anything to it. (just one of the many perks of native plants)

I have been working on this transformation on a limited budget and so most of the plants have come from freecycle and amazing group where people post things that they don't want any more for free. its great check it out at http://www.freecycle.org/


We needed to put in a fence to keep our cute little puppy from running around in the street, and it needed to be cheap to build, the solution wooden pallets, they are free from the local hardware store and they make a great fence.

I can't wait to see what it looks like when it gets finished but so far its looking good, it will look even better when we stain it and there are flowers growing all over it.