Life, Gluten Free

Amy and Brian's Coconut Juice Review

 

We have been drinking coconut water for several years now and Sophie loves it. Our brand of choice is Amy and Brian's coconut water, because 1) we like the taste and most importantly 2) we have spoken to them on the phone to verify that it is produced in a gluten-free and nut-free facility (they only produce coconut juice).

So, what benefits do you get from drinking coconut water?

Coconut water is very hydrating to the body because it is high in electrolytes, especially potassium. It even can take the edge off of hunger, making it a great snack if you are waiting for lunch or dinner.

Amy and Brian's coconut water won us over by its great taste, and of course, that it's allergy-safe for us. We often buy it by the case because it's more affordable that way. Of course, some of you may be thinking: it's in an aluminum can, is that safe?

There is evidence that shows that there can be harmful side effects of long-term exposure to aluminum. I believe in always being cautious, and it does make me wonder about the correlation between the consumption of canned food items and alzheimer's disease. (If anyone has more knowledge of this, please feel free to leave a comment!)

There are many coconut water brands out there (some are not safe for us, O.N.E brand coconut water produces a cashew flavor) and some are in tetra paks. While tetra paks are thought to be safe, they cannot be recycled.

Do you drink coconut water? What's your favorite brand?

*this review is not sponsored by Amy and Brian's. It is purely my opinion and I did not receive any free samples nor was I asked to post about it.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

I'm signing off to finish getting ready for Santa and his reindeer. There's gluten-free cookies to be made. This is serious busines you know. Don't forget to leave carrots for the reindeer.

Need last minute holiday recipes? here's some. Take your pick!

Gluten-free Banana Bake

A reader made this and said:

"I made your recipe this evening and it was heavenly.  I made mine with apple bananas orange juice lemon rind gluten free granola as a topping and in the center of the dish I made a well and put in one cup of gluten free peach yogurt. It was so good it tasted like a apple banana custard pie."

Doesn't that sound good? Thanks again for your email Ellen! I appreciate it very much. :)

Pumpkin Spice Bread

Pumpkin Cookies

Apricot Fig Bars

Baked Sausage and Brown Rice (we don't eat grains anymore, but it's a great recipe if you can tolerate grains)

Tomato Sauce with Balsamic Vinegar

Last minute gifts or something to keep the kids busy?

Easy pom-pom garland for kids to make

DIY felt tea bags and cookies

and from Tinker Lab comes something so sweet and fun, DIY kits that kids can put together for their friends. We are thinking about making one of the "Make an Ornament Kit," it's honestly just to awesome to pass up. Great ideas from Rachelle at Tinker Lab.

And in other news, the calendar said yesterday was the official first day of winter and mother nature said "you're darn right it is" and left us with this:

Sorry Santa, hope you don't slip on our roof. By the way, we don't have a chimney.

Thanks for reading my blog! You are cherished. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Easy pompom garland for kids to make

This pompom garland is really easy for kids to help make!

It has become our tradition to decorate a mini rosemary tree for Christmas. And since we love DIY Christmas decorations, I put my crafty think cap on and thought of: pompoms!

Later I realized, what a great idea this was because we don't eat grains. Since we can't string popcorn, we can string pompoms :)

The best part for me was how happy this made Sophie. She was able to do this all by herself. I wish I had recorded her excitement so I could play it back to you! Here are some exerpts:

"I can do this all by myself! I love this!"

"Wait until Daddy sees!!"

*Please note it is important to supervise children during this craft. I gave Sophie a "blunt" needle to use. It was only very slightly pointy at the tip, and she was very careful. I showed her how to thread it through the middle of the pompoms for best results. She remained sitting during this activity (never let kids roam around with a needle!). See our how-to below.

How we did it:

We used pompoms of a variety of size and color.

I threaded a needle with regular sewing floss and tied a large knot at the end so the pompoms will not slip off.

Sophie pushed the needle through the center of each pompom (we used jingle bells too).

Once done, we trimmed the string and then I tied another large knot to secure.

If you make one, let us know! :)

DIY Felt Tea Bags & Cookies - Homemade Gifts for Kids!

My daughter loves to play with her kitchen, and she especially loves playing tea party. I recently spotted some wooden tea bags for kids, but they were pretty pricey for just 4 tea bags. They also smelled funny (polyurathane finish). So I thought, why can't I make some? with felt?

I drew a pattern for the tea bag onto paper, cut it out and traced it onto cream colored felt.

When I was finished, I had made 6 tea bags and it was super easy (and very affordable!).

I decided to make some cookies too. I simply cut those free hand, but you could make a circle pattern if you wish.

I love the handmade look and I think handstitching adds personality and shows each one was made individually by hand - with love! ♥

I think we will be served many cups of tea, with cookies, in the near future.

And I will savor each taste :)

The tea bags and cookies are stuffed with a bamboo blend batting. It's very soft, and more ecofriendly and healthy for kids.

 

I am so excited and I can't wait to give them to her for Christmas. I think she will be so thrilled!

5 Fun & Educational Gifts for Kids

Still doing your christmas shopping and need a gift for a kiddo in your life? Look no further.

I visited The Stubby Pencil Studio and put together 5 great gifts that are fun, educational, non-toxic and inspire creativity. Gifts that you can feel good about giving!

Here is a sample of what you will find there:

Do-It-Yourself Kaleidoscope Kit - ages 3+

Tea Party Puzzle - made from 90% reycled paper, ages 2+

Creative Scissor Pack - Ages 3+

Glob Natural Blends Paint - biodegradable botanical ingredients, ages 3+

Finger Printing Art Kit - ages 3+

Honestly, it was hard picking just five items! I could go on and on.

Okay just one more. Real quick. #6 Jumbo Felt Pens. I may have to break down and get these soon! What a fun stocking stuffer.

Visit The Stubby Pencil Studio and check it out for yourself, while you are there be sure to check their bonus + specials.

You will be pleased, I guarantee it!

*PLEASE NOTE*: I was not asked to blog about The Stubby Pencil Studio. I have ordered from there in the past, I love the product selection they offer and I want to support them by spreading the word. This post was my idea, and it was not sponsored in anyway.

Our 2011 Christmas Advent Calendar (Plus Activity Ideas!)

December 1st is almost here and I don't know where November went!

There are so many lovely homemade DIY advent calendars on pinterest that it makes me feel kinda lame for using our store bought wooden one. But, it's quite cute and we like it. We purchased it last year on sale, I've had to reglue some of the knobs that haphazardly fell off for no apparent reason. It makes me glad I didn't purchase it for the full price, which was a whopping $60 bucks, we paid $20.

One of my favorite DIY advent calendar ideas is this one, where you wrap 25 christmas-themed books and then unwrap one each day and read it. I counted how many christmas books we have, and we don't have near that many yet! We will have to work on collecting some and maybe we can do that next year.

Do you need ideas for what to put in your christmas countdown calendar this year? This is what we came up with.

Using some top notes from Paper Dozen, I decorated one side using christmas stickers and stencils. On the other side, I wrote down one activity per card.

Next, Sophie helped place one in each drawer. After she was done, I folded up some hidden picture pages from a highlights book and stuck them in a few of the drawers for an extra surprise.

Here are the activities we used (in no particular order):

1. Go ice skating

2. Color a christmas picture

3. Read a christmas storybook

4. Wrap a present

5. Make a christmas card for a friend

6. Do a christmas tree math activity

7. Have a christmas tea party

8. Take a drive to see christmas lights

9. Make a handmade gift

10. Draw and Decorate your own Snowman

11. Make a christmas craft

12. Make gift tags

13. Count Share savings and pick a charity (Sophie has a money bank with three sections: Spend, Save & Share)

14. Make a snow dome

15. Listen to christmas music & dance!

16. Make a snowflake craft

17. Make beeswax dipped glitter pinecones

18. Play a game

19. Watch a christmas movie

20. Make a christmas reindeer craft

21. Have a puppet show

22. Make snowball coconut cookies

23. Make warm honey coconut "cocoa"

24. Christmas savenger hunt

And on a few of them, I wrote little "clues" that we can read to Sophie to see if she can guess the activity.

Do you do an advent calendar? If so, what are you doing this year?

DIY Give Thanks Holiday Banner

 

For me, Thanksgiving is about taking time to count my blessings and spend even more quality time with the ones I love.

I bought a pack of acorn jingle bells at Joanns for 75% off and I knew that I would make something fun with them.

To get into the thanksgiving mood, I had an inspiration to make a "be thankful" banner and here is what I came up with:

Using round pre-strung gift tags from Paper Dozen, I wrote some of the things we are thankful for (love, hugs, family, friends, laughter, joy, play, etc).

I used jute string and I tied the tags to it, in between the acorn jingle bells.

For a bit more color, I used a piece of red and green washi tape on two of the tags at tied one at each end of the banner.

And then I had my husband hang it with two nails :)

I also used some paper leaves we had in our craft stash to make a banner that says "Give Thanks."

I wrote on it with a black paint-pen and taped teach leaf to the wall.

Super easy and fun banner! Looking at it makes me smile.

And it reminds me how very much we have to be thankful for.

Each other especially!

With Thanksgiving drawing closer, I recently told my husband that Thanksgiving was never my favorite holiday. He said "let's re-invent it." In other words, let's celebrate it the way it feels best to us.

We have been doing that in the past few years (one year we took Sophie ice skating on Thanksgiving. This was a great idea, and there was hardly anyone else on the rink!).

As we talked about it, I realized the reason why I never loved Thanksgiving is that..... IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOD.

Let me tell you a little about how we spend our time from day-to-day:

1. Cooking

2. Eating

3. Washing Dishes

4. Repeat Step 1-3.

We don't eat out.

We make all of our meals from scratch.

Remind me again what Thanksgiving is all about? Oh yeah, everything we do already everyday!!

So, we want to make Thanksgiving more about taking a break and less about making more food.

For us that really means, making simple meals for Thanksgiving and cooking ahead.

That way, we can eat a healthy meal and have pleanty of time to go ice skating, or whatever activity we have planned for this year (no plans yet, but ice skating again sounds promising!)

How do you spend Thanksgiving? What about Thanksgiving makes you feel good?

(Sophie's depiction of a turkey. I love it!)

Holiday Ideas from Pinterest

We've been sick.

It has not been fun.

Our daughter was sick first and she had to be hospitalized for two nights/days and on oxygen. She had some type of respiratory virus, coupled with reactive airway. After she was home and getting better, my husband and I got sick (sore throats, etc).

Today is Friday.. it's actually been about 10 days since Sophie's symptoms first started but we're all finally getting better. Thank goodness. 

We did start on a few crafts but our attention span was limited due to feeling overall not good.

Sophie started on some holiday wrapping paper designs (paint, glitter glue + freezer paper = one of a kind wrapping paper). We worked on a few holiday ornaments, too.

Those I can show you when I feel like getting the camera, taking a picture and downloading it onto my computer is actually a feasible challenge to take on. Right now I feel like it would be equal to lifting 50 pounds of potatoes.

For now, I hope you ejoy these few ideas that I've found on Pinterest. (If you aren't familiar with Pinterest, simply click on my links below and then click on the images to go to the original blog post for the tutorial on each project).

DIY Turkey Countdown to Thanksgiving 

Thanksgiving Postcards 

Coffee Filter and Glue Line Leaves

DIY Paper Snowflakes

Reindeer Fingerprints

Fall Button Tree

Do you go on Pinterest? It's a fun way to get inspired to make homemade gifts, home decor, etc!

How to Boo Your Neighbor

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon "How to start the BOO in your neighborhood" from Skip To My Lou. It was such a cute idea, Sophie and I knew we had to try it out. We picked a couple of neighbors and made up a BOO bag and a BOO bucket. I didn't get pictures of the BOO bag but it was very cute. It had casper on it and inside we put different goodies (pencils with eraser, necklace, stickers, a halloween craft, etc).

For the BOO bucket pictured above, we used some halloween-themed paper and re-used a halloween greeting card from last year to glue the poem to.

Front:

Back:

There are different poems to choose from but I decided to write one of my own. You are welcome to use it.

You've Been Boo'ed!

This bucket I filled with treats galore,

and I left it at your front door.

I ran with glee,

knowing what a surprise it would be!

You will find treats but no tricks,

it is only a friendly "BOO' from me to you.

If you enjoy it and want to employ it,

simply leave a "BOO" at a neighbors house

to surprise them with joy and be oh so coy.

Leave it at their front door, no one will suspect

it's a friendly "BOO" to say "I like you!"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

It was so much fun and Sophie had a blast putting together the treats.

For the BOO bucket, we put in several things, including:

a bracelet

a halloween story book

stickers

a wooden wand that Sophie decorated

a balloon

inka chips

a collage by Sophie (using magazine cut-outs and washi tape)

a mini DIY pumpkin game

Have you ever BOO'ed a neighbor?

Do you want to? It's not too late, go gather some treats and get your BOO on!!

DIY Pumpkin Game

We really love pumpkins.

Do I even need to remind you how many grew in our garden? I think not.

So when I saw this project for felt pumpkin faces, I knew there was a reason that I placed approximately 20 pieces of different colored eco-felt in my shopping cart some days prior. They were on sale for .25 cents a piece too. Now who's the frugal one? I kind of felt bad for the check out guy who had to peel them a part to scan each one.

Kinda.

But glory be, good thing I purchased all of them because I had plenty for my well-planned projects and enough to spare for this cute pumpkin face game.

I just free-handed the shapes and it was a very simple and very quick process.

I am going to put it out for my daughter's halloween party this weekend.

We also made a mini version for a friend of Sophie's (not pictured, but it's the same thing just smaller).

I know you can make one too! It's very simple and the end results are a bunch of sillyness and laughter. Who could ask for more? All for a very small price!