Chilled Strawberry Delights

With the weather getting warmer, I thought it would be a perfect time to share a recipe with you from my friend, Katrina. She made these for class last summer at the Practical Herbalism class she taught. They were so good and I will definitely be making them for snacks, or desserts, this summer! They have so many super foods and health boosting ingredients as well so you don't have to feel guilty about having seconds...or thirds. :)

Crust ingredients:
2 cups walnuts
1/4 cup coconut palm sugar
2 TBLS cocoa powder

Filling ingredients:
2 cups fresh strawberries
1 cup raw cashews
2 TBLS vanilla extract
1/4 cup raw local honey
pinch of salt
1 cup melted coconut oil
8 dates (soaked in warm water for about 5 minutes)

Grind crust ingredients in food processor and press into muffin cups. Place all filling ingredients into blender and blend until smooth. Pour into crust. Top with a strawberry and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Enjoy!

So Many Things to do!

Recently, Zach and I watched the movie, "Sanctum." There were tons of cool scenes of adventure things I have on my list of 100 things to do before I die. I have yet to be cave spelunking, but from what I've seen, it's just beautiful down there.  

This movie renewed my excitement for scuba diving all over again. I got certified almost 3 years ago now, but have yet to go diving somewhere "cool". I've only been diving at La Jolla, CA, and it was awesome being 60 feet underwater and seeing huge crabs, sting rays and gigantic weird looking slug things, but going somewhere tropical or seeing a wreck or cave diving would be breathtaking. After watching this movie, I started looking up places to go and what to see and adding all scuba diving movies to my Netfliks. Here are some pictures of the cave diving scenes from the movie. SO COOL!

 

 
Then I remembered since I was pregnant I wouldn't get to go scuba diving for awhile. :P Oh well, next summer for sure!

Even though I've been feeling better for over a week now with those prenatals, today marks day 2 of feeling completely back to my old self. All nausea, headaches, and tiredness are gone. Yay! I'm 16 weeks today...I've been pregnant 4 whole months now. Three to four more weeks and we'll find out boy or girl!

Our computer was acting weird for awhile and I wasn't able to upload any pictures. It's finally back to normal and I got our Christmas pictures uploaded. It's way passed Christmas now, but I thought I'd post a few of my favorites.

 The whole family helping decorate the tree. 

 Haha, I was so excited when I found those pants. So Zach. ;-P 

Obviously, something was pretty funny on my phone.

A VITAMIN can do that???

When I talked with my midwife at our last appointment about how sick and miserable I was, she gave me a lot of suggestions of things to try. I had my list of supplements, herbs, and homeopathic remedies to see what would work for me. I couldn't afford to just go out and buy everything at once so I figured I'd try one thing at a time for a few days and see how it went.

The thing I was most interested to try was a homeopathic remedy called "Good Morning Mama".

This pregnancy was just bad timing I guess because there is NO WHERE you can buy it. Everyone is back-ordered and out of stock. After fighting on the phone with two different companies two different times for taking my money, but not having "Good Morning Mama" in stock even though their website claimed that they did (and I did finally end up getting my money back), I gave up trying to track this remedy down. I'll order it way in advance for the next one because I want to try it!!!

Anyway, the next item on the list was a prenatal vitamin. I'll be honest, I didn't think a vitamin would do anything. After all, I had tried two nausea prescriptions already and THOSE didn't even work. My midwife told me it would help bring my minerals and electrolytes in balance plus be high in things like folate, B vitamins, zinc, and iron which would help take away the nausea. I might as well give it a shot!

What makes this prenatal different from the others is that it's all whole foods. When you read the ingredient list, all the vitamins come from whole foods and superfoods. There is nothing synthetic about it. That is what is supposed to help taking it when you're nauseated or on an empty stomach because it's easier for your body to digest. The first two days I saw that 3 was the serving size and took them all in the morning. I felt so sick and texted the midwife to tell her the prenatals made it worse. Then she told me you are supposed to space them out throughout the day. Ohhhhh. :)

So I've been taking them four days now...spacing them out between morning, afternoon, and night and let me say, it works!!! No throwing up, I've been out and about running errands and grocery shopping, and today even tackling multiple house cleaning projects. Now, granted, I don't feel 100% yet. Stomach still doesn't feel back to normal completely yet...still a bit unsettled. Certain smells do make me gag and certain foods still just look and sound disgusting to me, but the 24/7 feeling of needing to throw up and not being able to drag myself off the couch is totally gone with this prenatal. I'm so happy to have found something that works and to have found something this soon. With Elliott I was 20 weeks before feeling how I do now at only 14 weeks. What an answer to prayer!

To celebrate feeling good for this many days in a row (LOL), we are headed to the library to try out their toddler reading time. Elliott has finally been getting into books and wanting books read to him. Plus he just loves to get out and loves to be with other kids. :) Should be fun!

A Little Update

I know it has been awhile since my last post. That's because I have not been able to think of anything to write about. Life is basically just surviving each day, trying to not throw up all the time and taking care of a 16 month old. And I have no recipes or healthy tips to share because my main meals consist of spaghetti o's, KFC, macaroni and cheese, and chips. And while most sweet thing make me gag, I must confess that I did spend one breakfast eating almost the whole box of thin mints.

Elliott and Zach aren't eating much better. Pretty much just living off cereal and frozen meals. Man, it really is true that you forget all the bad parts of pregnancy (and I'm sure labor too) until you go through it again. The thing I was most bummed to find out is that the medication that was my miracle pill with Elliott, isn't working this time around. It worked for a week or two, but now does nothing. So I'm on my own to tough it out. I'm 13 weeks today (yay! officially done with the first trimester!) and figure I have about 7 more weeks to go before I feel normal again. Ughhh, 7 long weeks.

Keeping Elliott busy has been easier since he is starting to finally play by himself. But still, we have our routines like watching a Blue's Clues every morning.



(Sorry these pictures are blurry. I was having a hard time getting the pictures from my phone upload right on the blog so I just copied and pasted them which made them blurry, but the other way was freezing up and I didn't have the patience. haha!)

And he happens to love baths and I like being able to just sit there and watch him so he's been taking tons of those.



Of course when daddy gets home, it means lots of play time and running around and going for walks while I rest which is wonderful.






Zach, like always, is so understanding and never says anything about the piles of laundry, stinky dirty dishes, messy house, and me (and sometimes Elliott too) still being in our pjs when he gets home from work. I know it's been hard on him too. Especially since I have been pretty grumpy and irritable and everyone and everything is bugging me...I'm going to blame it on the hormones and the fact that I haven't been able to get a good night's sleep in forever. ;-P

But overall things have been good. Being sick means the baby is healthy so I can't complain. Because I've been feeling so awful though, I've been dragging my feet about setting up doctor appointments so we haven't heard the heartbeat or had an ultrasound yet. I have an appointment on Monday so hopefully we can get an ultrasound set up soon.

So that's a short little update of our simple, but not so healthy life. :)