This weekend we...

What a great weekend this was!

The kids got along great for the most part (it was the first time in weeks!), I got caught up on all my house cleaning and laundry, did some studying and was even left with lots of creative and play time.

I printed some color-by-number worksheets online to help my daughter learn her numbers. Technically, she isn't supposed to start preschool until September, but since I am planning on homeschooling her for preschool, why wait?! Lately, she has been showing serious interest in learning "school things" like letters and numbers. And I believe that going to your child's rhythm is the best way for them to learn. She is ready. But I'm keeping it light and fun, obviously, as she is only still 3.

So they did a Cat in the Hat worksheet, and before I had time to turn around, she was done and asking for more :) Apparently, she's all about speed...

While Ashton is all about taking his time and doing it as good and precise as he can.

The kids were playing pretend with Arianne's Ikea pots and pan set and Ashton came out of her room asking if I could make them some felt eggs... so felt eggs they got :)

It didn't take too long to whip those up and as soon as I was done making one, it disappeared into their play area :)

We also made homemade bread (among other things)... well... tried to, lol. I purposely didn't buy any when I did the groceries last Thursday, so I would be forced to make our own when we ran out. Because homemade is so much healthier for you without all those additives and preservatives.

But what a mess that was! I'm no bread making expert, but I know I can make bread, I've done this recipe before and it came out perfectly the first time I made it. I just didn't understand how this could have happened. Then I noticed a very important detail on the recipe I had copied from HERE. The temperature was in Celsius, not Fahrenheit! That explains why the bread was still so raw inside, LOL.

So this morning was round two of bread making. I baked it at the right temperature this time and voila!

Awesome, fresh, warm, homemade vegan bread for lunch! Ashton asked to have his with the local raw honey we had just picked up at the farmers market on Friday and he was in heaven. He might be just 5, but I swear he could have eaten most of this loaf if I would have let him. But he had 3 slices instead. Along with a hard boiled egg and some raspberries. I'm shaking my head as I type this, because I really don't know where he puts all of it, he's so skinny!

And my last creation of the weekend... a felt cinnamon roll!

Yes, only a single one. Completely hand stitched. This took me most of this afternoon to make from beginning to end. It was way more time consuming than I had anticipated, but the kids were beyond happy! I think my kids are pretty happy with my felt creation addictions, because before bedtime, Arianne requested more owl headbands (more on that soon :), and Ashton asked if I could make him some green eggs to go with his Dr. Seuss Book.

I guess there won't be a lack of creative posts here anytime soon at this rate! :)

I hope you all had a great weekend as well!

Stephanie

{this moment} Ski-dooing

The picture was taken a few weeks ago before the kids got sick, but I still wanted to share :)

{this moment} - (inspired by Soule Mama) A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Treating colds and flu's naturally

As I mentioned in my last post, my kids were quite sick last week. There's a flu bug going around in our town, and it's not a pretty one. A lot of people I know (kids and grown ups) ended up with bronchitis or strep throat as a result of this flu. When a cold or flu is just starting, I will take (and give my kids as well) echinacea to boost our immune systems and since doing that, we usually are able to dodge the flu bullet.

Not this time. There was no warning signs. We were at a play date and bam! The moment we got home, one of them just crashed and that was it. So what do you do when your kids have high fevers, stuffy noses, and a cough that sounds like they are about to hack up a lung?

I took my essential oils out!

I already had some of these, but also bought the tea tree oil during this flu, as a result of what I learned about it. First, let me tell you that my kids fevers were too strong to just leave alone (in my opinion). I did use acetaminophen and ibuprofen to diminish their fevers. One evening, my daughter's fever was so strong, that she was delirious and unable to speak even though awake. And that's scary to any parent! I'm not completely against conventional medicine and use it from time to time, like in the case of this fever. But if there's something I can do that's more natural, I'll do it. I'm just learning more and more about natural remedies, and after this nasty flu, I can tell you it worked wonders for us.

During the day, when my kids were coughing and congested, I burned eucalyptus oil (with carrier oil) in my diffuser, as it is a wonderful decongestant and it always helps them breath better when they need it.

In the evening, after they went to bed, I'd burn tea tree oil in the diffuser instead. Turns out tea tree oil is a powerful antiseptic, antibacterial, anti-fungal and antiviral agent. It also helps stimulate the immune systems, which makes it useful against colds and flu's. By burning a few drops of tea tree oil in a diffuser (with carrier oil), it helps to cleanse the air from the bacteria.

Turns out my rather large school reference book (the one I like to refer to as "the Doctor book"), came in handy!

Something else that you can do with the essential oils, is to add a few drops at bath time or have a steam bath with them. Steam is wonderful to open up the air ways, and to add essential oils to it just makes it that much better. It was difficult to convince my kids to do the steam bath with the towel around their heads, so I had to add some oils to their bath. Just put 2 drops of lavender combined with 2 drops of eucalyptus oils to the bath tub and just let your child breathe it in at bath time. I was surprised to learn that lavender, has some of the same effects as eucalyptus when it comes to help with breathing, and is not just good for calming.

(My organic produce order from 2 weeks ago :)

Eat plenty of fresh foods! If possible, add more onions and garlic to your foods, this will help you fight the flu faster! Another trick with onions I was told by a good friend, is to cut an onion in half, place a half in a bowl cut side up and place in every room of your house. This is supposed to ward off the flu virus, but I didn't try it. I opted for the essential oils ;)

I also always give my kids a multi vitamin daily, but because of this, I purchased a kids vitamin C supplement to give them daily as well. I will continue to give them this until the cold and flu season ends :)

And last but not least, get plenty of rest!

Disclaimer: Note that I am not a doctor and I am only sharing with you what has worked for us. Also, it is important to be careful when using essential oils, as some of them are not suited for pregnant or nursing women, or if you have certain medical conditions. Make sure you do your research before using essential oils.

It was a long week, but we got through it without ending up at the doctors, like so many had to. I almost caught the flu as well, but was able to fight it by following the same steps. Rest, echinacea, lots of fruits and veggies, essential oils, and was able to fight it off. Now that it's over, I'm happy to be back into our normal routine and looking forward to more creative and play time with the kids! This also means I should be back for regular postings again too :)

Stay healthy my friends!

Linking to:

Felt owls: a Valentine present

I had been wondering what to give my kids for Valentine's day. I can't do the typical chocolate or candy thing since my son can't eat it, and didn't really want to buy "valentine-y" things from the store, just for the sake of getting them something, and have it end up in the bottom of a toy bin, followed by the box to the goodwill.

So last night I finally decided on making these little

love owls. You know how I've been having fun with felt lately, and my

kids have been fascinated with the things I've been making with it as well. Every time I make something, they want it, weather it was intended to be for them or not. Tough I was not sure if my son would care for it, I went ahead and did it anyways, keeping my fingers crossed.

I started with sketching an owl before cutting into the felt.

And two owls and hours later, I finally finished them. They may be small, but they are pretty time consuming for such little owls.

Well worth the time and effort though. He loves it!!

Look at those two happy little faces!

Now I wonder, what am I going to make next?? ;)

Wishing you a Happy Valentine's day!!

Linking this post to:

Showing my little ones some LOVE

After a really busy week, it's been nice to spend the weekend at home hanging out with the kids. One day last week, I took the kids to the city and found this little gem... well, actually, I found 4! They were on sale for $1.50 each, so I was not going to pass that up!

My daughter was very happy to have a snack of strawberries in this bowl today :)

Even though it's been nice to be home with the kids with no plans and no obligations this weekend, one thing has been less nice: my son has been sick with the flu!

He started getting sick on Friday evening, and is still sick as I write this. I believe one of the reasons he got sick, is because he had been so tired (from our busy, busy week) and that it weakened his immune. Thankfully, his appetite surfaced now and then throughout the day, but only in small doses. I could have fed him Cheerios or plain toast all day, but not me.

Though he had a slice of bread with jam for breakfast, the rest of the day, I gave him nutrition. He snacked on some raspberries, and then had a nice salad for supper followed with the best sick-kid-friendly treat: Ice Cream!

Well... sort of. You see, I don't buy ice cream, because my kids and I are all lactose intolerant, and my son reacts to sugar and food coloring. Thankfully, he loves home made banana soft serve though :)

Just put a few frozen bananas in your food processor and add a bit of water to get it going and blend for about 5 minutes, scraping down the sides from time to time, and voila! You have a raw vegan banana soft serve! But since my little guy was sick, I replaced the plain water with coconut water (and had to add more than a bit of coconut water, as my bananas were frozen too solid to whirl properly, so just add a little at a time and see how much you need).

Why coconut water? Because it's full of electrolytes! And for a little guy who's been trowing up randomly and not drinking quite as much as he needs, electrolytes are very important.

Then I served it in this cute ramekin, just for the cuteness factor. He was so happy, he didn't care the dish was pink :)

He ate all his ice cream (that a boy!).

And even smiled for the first time all day :)

Weather it's sponging my son's feverish face with a cool cloth, cuddling with my daughter on the couch wile watching a movie, or serving their food in super cute dishes, I love showing my kids some LOVE. And sometimes love, is in the little gestures.

And there will be more of the above tomorrow I'm sure, as my daughter started getting a fever as well this evening right before bed. Yes, that's right. Two down and hopefully I'm not the last one to go, LOL.

Question of the day: I had started a food blog a long while ago, but have not been good at keeping up with it.

So my question is this: Would you like if I talked about food and nutrition (and recipes) on THIS blog along with crafts and all the other things I talk about, or do you like this blog just the way it is, and think it makes more sense to have my nutrition and food talk on a separate blog? I'm curious about what you think about this.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

And I hope you all enjoyed a loving weekend!

{this moment}

Peaking through her new "mermaid" bed

{this moment} - (inspired by Soule Mama) A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Blog awards!

I got a... well... 4 blog awards!

No, no, not all at the same time. Well actually, 3 of them came almost all at the same time to tell you the truth, and the first one was from months ago. Yes I know, I'm very late about it, aren't I?! So instead of writing 4 different posts for them, picking other amazing blogs to pass it on, (and spending hours writing these 4 posts), I am breaking the rules, putting them all into 1, and not passing them on, gasp!

Instead of passing them on, I am inviting you to go check out the awesome women and their blogs that gave me these awards in the first place :)

I got this award from the lovely Kat, at For love of my oceans.

I received this one from Dawn (aka Autumn Mama) from Chasing the seasons.

And this last one was recent from both Chasing the seasons again, AND from Ella over at Lifeologia.

Thanks to all you amazing ladies for sharing the blog award love with me! I'm so sorry I'm not passing it on, but with the amount of time these posts can take to write and if you've seen the amount of school reading I now have to do and am feeling a bit stressed about, I hope it's enough for you all to forgive me. But it's always so heart warming to receive an award, even a virtual one ;)

My school books are in!

If you read my blog regularly, then you'll recall this post, and how my life is about to change. It's about to get chaotic, interesting, fun and difficult, all at the same time!

Today I got my school books!

Well, that's most of them actually. There are 4 courses I must complete in order to receive my Holistic Nutrition diploma, and these are only for 3 of the courses, as one of them is back order until the end of this month.

I am feeling so excited! It's something I'm so passionate about, so learning more about it will be so great. It will also force me to have a bit more discipline, and learn better time management. It's not because I'm doing this online course, that it means I want my kids to suffer from it! My plan is to try to get about an hour of reading in the afternoons, while my kids are having quiet time in their rooms (I say try because quiet time does not always happen quietly. Sometimes they get out and come ask me for something every 2 minutes... but that's part of being a mom ;) , and do the rest in the evenings after they go to bed.

With all this excitement, I am also feeling anxious...

Can you tell how thick this book is? It's the size of a phone book!!! This one scares me a bit. I have 28 months to complete the entire course, including exams and all. Add to this having 2 kids that I take care of mostly myself, since hubby works away 14 days at a time and is only home for 4 days after that, running errands, weekly yoga lessons, oh, and 1 other thing. I also work part-time 3 mornings a week! Phew! Yes, organized I shall become or everything could fall apart.

With that being said, do not worry my friends, I'm not going to disappear from the blog sphere. I just don't know that I will be blogging 5-6 times a week, but I will be here :) But for this week, I have a few more posts in store, as I was so busy last week and still have all these things to share with you :)

I'm going to start studying now... wish me luck!