Yummy Healthy Homemade Fruit Snacks

So I have already posted this recipe before but when I made it this time I made a few changes to it. Anyways I am going to post the way I made it then at the end I will leave some tips on how you can make the fruit snacks the way you would like them to taste! 

Homemade Fruitsnacks:

• 1 cup fruit 
• 2/3 cup lemon juice*
• 4 tablespoons honey*
• 4 tablespoons plain gelatin 

First start by taking your fruit, fresh or frozen, and lemon juice and put them in a saucepan on medium high heat until the fruit is nice and soft. (to the point where you can easily cut through with a spoon. Next let it cool for a few minutes but don't let the mixture get completely cold, and depending on what you have (blender, food processor, stand mixer) puree the fruit. 

*Make sure you blend it pretty well because depending on the fruit you use you can get weird fibrous chunks like if you use pineapple or mango. Also, if you want to use berries be aware that if you don't have a very good blender to pulverize the seeds the fruit snacks will have crunchy seeds. 

Now add honey. Now one tablespoon at a time whisk in the gelatin. 

*Do this slowly or else you will end up with gelatin chunks, and make sure the mixture is still warm or else it will easily get clump with cold pureed fruit. 

Now depending on what size fruitsnacks you want you can pour the mixture into either an 8x8 dish or a 9x13 dish. 8x8 will give you thicker gummies and a 9x13 thinner ones. 

* I lightly greased my pan before putting the mixture in too afraid it would stick. 

Now place in the fridge for about 30 min or until solid. take out flop onto a piece of wax paper and cut into desired sizes. Or if you have fun shaped cutters use those! 

*keep refrigerated because they can go bad sitting out. 

*know your fruit, if you know your fruit is more tart them maybe using orange juice will help it become sweeter. If your fruit is bland lemon juice will bring out the flavor. However if you use lemon juice you will most likely need to use a sweetener if you don't like sour.
* with the gelatin if you like softer tummies then do 4 tablespoons if you like firmer then do 5 each way it turns out perfectly. 

*honestly with the sweetener you can use whatever you prefer sugar, honey, agave etc. and I would honestly do it to your taste, put however much you feel is necessary to make it taste good to you! So make sure you do a few taste tests! 

Easter's Coming!

I don't know about you but I really enjoy all the fun holidays and wish to get into them with my kids, however I only have one 10 month old right now and he isn't exactly into the holidays like I would like. But, hey? What can I do he's only a baby!

Anyways I try to make the holiday at least somewhat fun and entertaining for the both of us! So now here Easter is coming up and of corse I am not going to buy the typical candy for my 10 month old so I came up with this cute little Easter basket for babies, especially a little boy!

Now to the supplies!
first off I had to go with the cute little blue basket for this little boy, but  I guess whatever color floats your boat then so be it. Next must have for a the basket is a pair or blue bunny ears. He will probably only wear them once but hey! You got to get some good pictures to embarrass him with when he's older!

Of course during this Easter/spring season they sell the most adorable touch and feel books so I had about a dozen books to choose one. I chose baby animals touch and feel book. He already has one with farm animals and that book seriously keeps him occupied in times I need him quiet! You also have to put some fun little toys in the basket, so the cutest one I could find for a boy was little dino toys. (I hope he likes them!) Now lastly, put in one of their favorite snacks. Sawyer loves those squeezable fruits on the go! 

I am so excited for Sawyer to see all the fun little things in his basket and I hope he likes them all! Of course all of this can be made to fit a girl as well, just turn the basket and ears into girly colors and the dino toys maybe into a small stuffed animal! Just have fun with it!

Up-cycling and DIYing

So spring is here and that means warmer weather and if your like me that means a lot of t-shirts! Well, I have to say, being a person who loves fashion and being comfy, I have a love hate relationship with t-shirts. Why? One because they can be so plain and have no style to them and I love them because they are just so comfy. Also, spring means spring cleaning and that means cleaning out closets of clothes you don't wear anymore. So I have an awesome craft today to fix that problem!

No-Sew Peter Pan Colar Necklace: 

Things you will need:

• old shirt
• t-shirt
• scissors
• felt
• glue
• ribbon

So I started with an old jean shirt I had for the collar part and then a T-shirt to use for tracing out the collar.

Sorry, I'm not very fancy and don't have a pattern, I just drew it out myself. (I do things the hard way!) So what I did was place a paper inside the shirt up around the collar. I folded it in half to so I could find the middle.

Then I drew out just one half the collar and cut it out. 

Next I traced it on the inside of the old jean shirt. Doing 2 flipped right side up and 2 upside down. If your like me and make mistakes easily make 2, it came in handy when I realized I messed up halfway through with one of the steps.

 Now, get your felt and repeat the previous step.

Cut all the shapes out now and get your ribbon and glue ready. I measured the ribbon out longer just so I would have room for mistakes and could cut it down to the perfect size for my neck after I'm done.

Place glue on one side of the fabric and one side of the felt. Make sure that when you put them on top of each other they match, this is where I accidentally glued on the wrong side and when I was going to place them on top of each other they didn't match.

 place ribbon down on the felt so that it the edges won't stick out on the sides of the collar.

Now place fabric over the felt and ribbon so that it evenly matches and repeat this step with the rest of your fabric, felt and ribbon.

Ok so I lied, there is a tiny bit of sewing in this project. 

However, its super simple just flip it over to the back where the felt is facing up and sew the two pieces together. Only sew the felt part so you won't see it on the front side. 

And now you are done! You know have a wonderful piece to wear with those plain T's this spring and summer! 

Life Lately

Well, its been forever since I have written on my blog. When I first created this blog I wanted it to be more about crafting, decorating and cooking. Doing the things I love. However, it is now kind of half and half, part life/part crafting.

Anyways on to updating everyone on where we are at.

In december Paul graduated from college! (Now I just need to finish :-/ ) This was seriously a great day in our marriage! He worked so hard to finish while working full time at his internship with Melaleuca for web design (he's really in graphic design but thats another story).  I am so proud of him for getting through school and working hard to provide for our family.

Now Christmas has come and gone, as well as our anniversary and my birthday.

During Christmas we got to talk to my sister Sierra on her mission. That was an awesome experience after not seeing her for 6 months I was really missing her! It was also great because this was the second time she got to see sawyer in person (kind of) since he was born! Christmas was fun having a baby though it could have been more exciting if Sawyer could open up his presents or even know what they were. I'm just excited now for the next Christmas with him, hopefully he will be just as excited as I am! Then on the 30th Paul and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary! It was awesome to think that we had been married for 2 years thinking of how fast the time went by. Then on January 4th I turned 22! I feel so old now, or more like I am no longer a kid, I guess I don't really know how to describe the feeling. However I know I have many more years to live so I have to forget about feeling old and try and live in the present. 

Well here we are now to today. Sawyer has turned 10 months old today and I am missing my little newborn baby boy. Though I love Sawyer more than the world, it is true what they say that time does fly by so fast when you are having fun. He has grown up so fast, I feel like it was just yesterday he was so small and sweet in my arms smiling at me for the first time. Now he is such a big boy and starting to want to do a lot of things on his own. (Except for the past few days he's been teething and wanting nothing but to be held)

Paul has still been working with Melaleuca, and I can't say we were completely thrilled when his internship ended and they didn't promote him yet, but told him that he would be kept on as an extended intern. However, we feel blessed to be able to have a job and feel that we are better off than most people who just graduated from college. I have to say that is one thing I did not think would be so hard to figure out. I thought that once school was over for Paul we would be on our way with a new salary paying job, living in a bigger house and not having to worry about day to day expenses. Finding a job has been tough. About 2 weeks ago Paul came home and told me that his boss had talked to him that day and to get to the point of it all pretty much told him he would either be hired or fired by the end of June. The news came like a slap across the face, what were we going to do? I started to freak out a little, which wasn't necessary he wasn't fired (or hired) yet. Sometimes it can be hard when your in this situation. You look around, and about all you can see is how easy and successful life seems to be for other people and how hard life seems to be for yourself. Paul and I were talking about this last night because as of yesterday Paul was informed that he did not get a Job he interviewed for in Utah which he was so sure he would get. It's so easy to get down on yourself and to feel like for some reason you aren't doing things right in your life, that maybe you just aren't good enough to get a job. However, we can't think like this, and no one should who is going through a hard time. This is a trial for us in our families life. However, if we have learned anything about trials in our marriage its that we have to be hopeful and we have to move forward in faith, trusting in the Lord that things will be alright. That's one thing I am thankful for while we are going through this is to have such a faithful, supportive husband and to have the Lord on my side. I have felt a tremendous amount of peace when life starts to feeling too much to handle. I know something will come up for us and life is still good, we honestly have nothing to complain about and we have everything that could ever make us happy.

Sorry if this has been such a boring read! Anyways, the next post will be something more interesting! 

How the Time Flies!

Well I can't believe it has been four months since my dear Sawyer was born! I wasn't sure if I should post about that day but it was an experience I hold dear to my heart I would love to share!

Sawyer was due May 18th and when that day came and past I was a little disappointed wanting to meet my little son so bad at the same time I almost didn't feel ready for it to come. The next day was my sister and laws birthday and I was so exhausted. I didn't want to do anything and it being a Sunday I was so tired and uncomfortable I told my husband to take me home from church early. We later went out to my in-laws for a birthday party and everyone was talking about when the baby would come and what I was going to do as I had a doctors appointment the next day. My dad had actually texted me that day and told me to call him and act like I was going into labor to freak my family out which was kind of a funny little prank.

After all the fun Paul and I went home and discussed what we were going to do tomorrow. I told him that I wanted him to come to the appointment with me and skip class so just in case I was told I needed to be induced I would have him there by my side at all times. Well then at 3:30 in the morning I got up to go to the bathroom as I did every day and as soon as I got in bed the pain started. I thought to myself it couldn't be labor it's just my stomach hurting or something. I lay there for an hour going through the cramps when they started to hurt a little more and I started to moan a little through the pain. I can still remember Paul's reaction when he woke up to me moaning. He turns over like he wasn't even asleep at all, full of excitement he asks me "Are you in labor?" with a big smile on his face. I immediately say "no" then "I don't know" not wanting to jump to conclusions. We agreed to time  the contractions as we lay in bed for about a half an hour and found they were five minutes apart. Still not feeling to confident about if I was in true labor or not we looked up when we should go to the hospital and it said when contractions are five minutes apart. I remember my mom saying that she was sent home with me and I really didn't want that to happen so I told Paul I was going to take a shower, bieng told that if it is true labor if you get up and walk around and take a hot shower they will not stop but get harder. Well needless to say I could barely stand in the shower. I got out got dressed and Paul asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I said no... again. However, just then I started to having a contraction again and it hurt so much I said we needed to go. Well Paul was dressed and ready in no time and me being the very organized and prepared person I am I had a baby bag and hospital bag packed a month in advances so we just grabbed them and left.

We got to the hospital and they hooked me up to the 'machine' whatever they call it checking the contractions and heart rate and checked how dilated I was. I was at a four they told me and my heart sunk! I thought for sure they would send me home but they called my doctor and he said it was ok to keep me. Well that was just the beginning of a long day. They brought me to another room and got me all settle in and told me if I needed anything for the pain let them know. Well it is about 6 almost 7 at this time and I had not plan on whether or not I was going to get an epidural or not, I just wanted to see how things would go and if I could handle it or not. Well as soon as they came into break my water laboring for about 5 hours now I decided I had enough knowing contractions would get harder after they broke my water and got an epidural. Best decision of my life! I was able to nap and watch T.V. without having to worry about pain. On the mean time Paul was freaking out the whole time because the nurses weren't coming to check me very often and he was very anxious. On top of that Sawyer was posterior and I had no idea if he was still in the position.

My mom had arrived with my sisters at about 11 and they came in to see me for a second before leaving to get something to eat. they had been on the road since 7 and were hungry. Well when I was dilated to an 8 I told them how I was worried that he might be posterior and I wanted to be checked. Well they checked but never told me if he was or not and by the time I got to a 10 I was started to wonder how things were going to go with getting this baby out. Well once I finally reached a 10 they told me to labor down for an hour, whatever that means. So I laid there for about at hour waiting for them to come back having the strongest urges to push, plus the epidural was wearing off and I was starting to feel my toes. Finally not being able to take it anymore I called them back in and they got my doctor in to check me. Well surprise, surprise he was still posterior and my doctor was freaking out trying to turn him around the right way and then ultimately told me he would let me push for a little but that its a good chance he might have to come via c-section.

I did not want a c-section at all so this was it I had to get him out if it took everything I had. I had only been pushing for about 15 minutes when the nurse said that I was going to be able to push him out myself and said she was going to get the doctor. Now an hour of pushing later they placed my sweet little Sawyer Joseph had arrived! It was honestly the best experience of my life and so worth all the pain that only lasted a moment compared to all the joy you get from such a sweet little angel!

Now fast forward four months later and I have the most sweetest baby I could ever dream of. Yes he does have hard days, mostly when he isn's sleeping like I would like him to, but for the most part motherhood has been a breeze. My life is so much better now that I have this little angel in my life and I am so excited for the minutes, hours, days, months and years to come that I get to spend with my growing family.

A Day in the Kitchen

Well, I should probably be doing my homework right now but blogging about all the fun stuff  I was doing sounds so much more appealing!

I really wanted to show you all my chalkboard I have in my kitchen. I think it is one of my favorite things I have that I made! I also just love this quote! "Love is what you go through together." I feel it is so true, as time goes by and with all the experiences Paul and I have been through I constantly feel reassuring love for him! I just love that man! Especially for putting up with me and all my craziness (not to mention all the pregnancy stuff as well) and working so hard to keep our relationship strong.While we are on the pregnancy note I will have to say I had my first food cravings of pickles with peanut butter, and now I desperately want McDonald's hotcakes. My pickles and peanut butter craving has been fulfilled but I don't think I could live another day without those hotcakes. I am hoping Paul will be up for going into town early tomorrow so we can get some!

SO now to the nitty gritty of things... Pretty much I am posting this recipe because I made it up yesturday and it was so good I needed to write it down somewhere so I wouldn't forget! (Pregnancy brain fog, I seriously can never think straight it seems!)

Creamy Kale Bacon Pasta

Ingredients: 

1 Lb spaghetti 

1 package bacon 

5 Tbs unsalted butter

1 large Shallot, finely diced

1 large bunch of fresh kale, stems removed and thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

4 Tbs all-purpose flower

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 cups milk ( I used 2%)

4 Tbs garlic powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese 

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions: 

• Start out by cooking spaghetti as directed on the package. Then drain and set aside.
• Meanwhile, start cooking bacon in a large pan. For this you want to cook it enough so that it is crispy and can easily be broken apart.   
• Once bacon is cooked chop into little pieces and set aside. Then drain most of the fat leaving just a little bit of the drippings in the pan, about 1Tbs. 
• Over medium-high heat,  add 2 Tbs of the butter and once melted add the shallots and the garlic. Cook until most of the liquid is absorbed. Add kale and stir a little getting the flavorings over it and cook until it looks tender or slightly wilted. Add the bacon bits, then cover and set aside on very low heat. 
• In a pot, melt the remaining 3 Tbs of butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour and Parmesan cheese. Slowly Add 1/2 cup heavy cream, whisking it so it does not clump. Then add garlic powder and Italian Seasonings. Let thicken a little, stirring occasionally, then Add 2 cups a milk with salt and pepper to taste and cook until desired thickness. (Might have to add more flour, again I cannot remember exactly what I did so some of this is a little bit of guessing, sorry it's my stupid pregnant brain.) 
• After you get the desired consistency and taste add bacon and vegetable mixture to the sauce and its ready to serve over pasta!

Okay, now for one more recipe I made! Sorry I know! A lot in just one blog post!

The other day I was on Pinterest, as I usually am day after day (AGH I'm addicted!), I stumbled upon a recipe for homemade fruit snacks. Well if anyone knows me I love fruit snacks, fruit leather, dried fruit etc etc. You get the picture.  Anyways these claimed to be healthy fruit snacks, so I was interested because I try to find healthy alternatives for sweet things I like so when I crave them they won't be as bad for me. Here is the recipe I followed with a few modifications.
 (Recipe slightly modified from thankyourbody.com) 


Ingredients:

2/3 cup fresh lemon juice (you can use fresh orange juice as well)
3/4 cup frozen or fresh berries
3-4 Tbs honey
5 Tbs gelatin (original recipe asks for gelatin from grass fed cows, Knox works perfectly fine though)

Directions:

In a small saucepan add lemon juice and berries. (I had a frozen mixed berry pack so this has raspberries, blue berries, and black berries in it)  Over medium heat, cook until berries become soft and tender stirring occasionally. Then add honey.

Then puree the mixture. I used my immersion blender. However, any kind of small blender will do, a magic bullet works great as well. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes off heat then 1 Tbs at a time whisk in gelatin making sure to not make it clump.

 

Add mixture to a 9x9 or 8x8 glass dish. (I am too paranoid about ruining my dishes so I lightly sprayed Pam on mine, however the original recipe says you don't have to so if you are braver than me and think Pam might give it a weird taste, which it doesn't, you don't have to use it) Let it sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes to an hour or until it is firm. 

Once set, it came right out of the dish and I flopped it onto some wax paper to cut it. 

I used a pizza cutter to cut it into small pieces and as you can see a few pieces are already missing from me not wanting to wait to take a picture before trying it. (you can if you want also do small molds as well to make fun shapes for the fruit snacks instead of a glass dish.) 

 

And there you have it! Voila! The best and tastiest healthy fruit snacks you will ever have! (P.S. raspberries and black berries are very seedy so it may have a little bit of crunch from the seeds)

Being Poor , Wanting to Craft and Other Craziness.

Well first lets start with a pregnancy update. I officially have 8 more weeks left and I am seriously blown away at how fast time is flying by!

Paul and I love feeling that little boy wiggle and kick inside of me. Feeling something move within me is an amazing feeling, yet at the same time it is so strange at the same time! His movements have gotten a lot stronger now, which makes me happy because I know he's well, but at the same time they can hurt and make me feel so uncomfortable. Sleep has become almost a chore these last few weeks. I am so exhausted yet my body doesn't seem to want to let me, not to mention my hips are starting to kill me.
 I have also developed the pregnant woman waddle, and I think because of it a lot of people are thinking I am about to go into labor any moment now. I love it when people ask me when I'm due or talk to me about being ready to have him, the look on their face when they found out I still have two months left. I must look super anxious or something, if not me Paul definitely does. He just can't wait to find out what his little boy will look like.
I'm starting to get Braxton Hicks, they don't hurt but do make me feel uncomfortable and make it hard to breath it seems sometimes. It seems that's what I have too look forward to these next 2 months is being uncomfortable, but it's all worth it right?
Now onto the fun stuff I've been up to lately!
A couple weeks ago my dad finally brought up our second couch and I was so excited to have it our living room. It looks so much more complete now with it.

As you can see we still have quite a bit of space on our walls for decorations which is my next project, but for now I am fine with what I have. That is the price you pay when your poor, going to school and having a baby. However, I did just put that cluster of pictures up. 

 

There's nothing like some black paint and sand paper. The framed "P" was actually from a previous project  I did where I framed individual letters to spell out "PIEPER". I decided I didn't want the rest of the letters and just the P for this project. It was originally painted yellow, so I sanded it down and painted it black then make it look a little distressed by sanding it again, just a little around the edges. The "P" is a wooden letter I found at the local craft store, and the background is a tan colored fabric. I bought the frame from the thrift store (fyi it didn't have any glass when I bought it). I then took the picture out of it and glued the fabric to it, painted the "P" black and glue that to the fabric board. Framing it was kind of a challenge because you had to kind of jam it into the space being a little thicker now with the fabric. 

 Next project was a fun one and I really enjoyed how it turned out. DIY mercury glass.

 You can find the instructions here. I would tell you how I made it but I can't take credit for the instructions I followed, plus it would take too long to write all the directions and the other blog has some nice pictures to follow. 

This is one of my favorite projects I did. This one takes a lot of time I think, but it is definitely worth it!

Again I wish I had taken pictures step by step on how I did this one, but its called a paper dahlia medallion. The easiest instructions I found on it was from this site here.  I used some old books I had bought from the thrift store. The old pages make a nice color and style to it. On her instructions, she said she glued a ribbon on the back of it to create a loop to hang it from. Well I tried that and I don't know what she used to make it stay but the glue was not strong enough so I glued and stapled it, just a good hint for if you try to make one because they can be quite heavy and glue is not going to 

cut it. 

Now I don't know if anyone else has ever had the LDS church's bishop store house food before, but one of the things you can get is granola. Well, I have to say that is probably the best granola I have ever had. It so tasty and it has been on my mind a lot lately. This last week I had been absolutely craving it, and unfortunately I don't think you can buy it, so I decided I needed to make my own granola. 

Well here it is! And you can probably guess already by now that you can find the recipe I followed here! Now the recipe called for hazelnut, but I couldn't find any when I went to the store, and quite frankly I don't even know what hazelnuts taste like, so I decided to do raw pumpkin seeds instead. This recipe turned out so good and it is so easy to do as well, which is a huge plus. Also, I cooked mine a little longer because I like crunchy granola and I think it turned out pretty well. 

Well, not much has been happening lately except for all that. Baby preparations are being made and hopefully the next post I can show you all his room, but for right now it is a disaster! This semester is almost over, we only have 3 more weeks of this semester and then a little one week break until the next so wish us luck as we go into finals soon here!