Our Valentine's Day

We had such a nice Valentine's Day today! Nothing exciting, just some nice time with family and some very good food. For me Valentine's day isn't butterflies & romance, it's fun & silly and a time to be with people you love, and not just romantic gushy love. Oh, and it's a time to eat chocolate. Hubby gave me a giant block of Belgian dark chocolate for a gift. And I gave him a bag of Twizzlers. We're easy to please.


I got all my son's Valentine's cards ready yesterday:

And we went to his school party today. I have such fun memories of school parties...handing out & receiving cards. It's fun to relive that through my own kids.

We had a very nice family dinner tonight with inlaws and my mom. My contributions to the meal included this delicious Strawberry Spinach Salad:

I thought it was kind of Valentine-y with red heart shaped strawberries :)

I also made this yummy Roasted Asparagus:

I wish I'd had enough for a double batch of that, it was so good.

And for dessert I made another Cranberry Lime Galette:

I also made a pan of brownies since I wasn't sure the pie was enough for nine. I used a boxed mix of milk chocolate brownies. I subbed 1/4 c of the oil with a couple tablespoons of peanut butter, then sprinkled crushed up heath bars on top. Very yummy, wish I had a pic but I didn't think they'd be blog-worthy...oh yes indeed they were!

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I'm counting my blessings this Valentine's Day. I am indeed blessed way beyond what I deserve. My daughter tells me about 10 times a day..."I'm so glad I have a Mommy like you!" and "I just love my family!" You can't get much sweeter than that.

Stained Glass Hearts (an easy Valentine craft)

I got this idea last year from a friend. It's a fun little craft that is quick & easy! All you need is some old crayons & some wax paper.

Take a few crayons that are Valentine-y colors and grate them like cheese. I used our fine grater.



Take your shavings and your wax paper along with some newspaper and head on over to your ironing board. Spread out a few layers of newspaper on your ironing board then put a large piece of wax paper on top. Sprinkle the shavings evenly over the piece & take another equal sized piece of wax paper and put it on top.



Put more newspaper on top of the 'sandwich' then with a hot iron (no steam) move it back & forth until your shavings are melted. The wax will seep through, I didn't use enough newspaper last year & I still have stains on my ironing board to prove it :(


When it's cooled off, cut it into some heart shapes...or any shapes. My daughter cut some lovely little rectangles.



We punched holes in our hearts and hung them from the bottom of a blind.



There just happens to be a register underneath this window, so the hearts have a gentle breeze that makes them twirl & dance :)

When we made these the other evening, the sun was coming through the window so beautifully. Check out this picture I got of the sun shining through this heart!

Happy Valentines Day!

Cookie Dough for Breakfast!

I just love Snack Girl. I've gotten so many great ideas from her site. Simple ideas, simple recipes using simple ingredients but that are healthy and still taste simply wonderful! The other day she featured a post on this super duper simple breakfast idea. She calls it Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie, but I think it's more like cookie dough! We had it for the first time this morning and I loved loved loved it. But I like anything oaty. The true test was when the kids tried it....and...it was a win win! My son said it would be even better with chocolate chips which coincidentally is how Snack Girl's son prefers it too. The batch that's in the fridge right now does indeed contain chocolate. It will be a great thing to wake up to on a Friday morning!

Here's how I made our breakfast cookie dough:

1 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup milk
1 T peanut butter
1 T maple syrup (REAL)
chopped walnuts
dried cranberries

Mix everything in a bowl the night before and let it sit in the fridge. In the morning, get a spoon and dig in! This recipe makes about two servings.

You can warm it up of course, but we liked ours cold. And you can change up the extra ingredients. I think a dash of cinnamon would be good, or a touch of vanilla & some raisins. Or chopped apples or blueberries. Lots of possibilities!


Try it!!!

Superbowl!

We had a great little Superbowl party tonight! Though we needed a few more people here to eat all the food I made. When it comes to dips and appetizer foods I go a little crazy. I can't help it. Appetizers are my favorite food group. So, here's the run down on our spread:

Pizza Dip, Garlic Bread and Buffalo Chicken Dip:

Hot Pepper Peach Cheeseball- recipe HERE. I just use regular peach preserves and some cut-up jalapenos in place of the fancy pepper peach spread.

Stuffed Jalapenos- sort of morphed these two recipes HERE. And I wore my rubber gloves this time like a good girl.

Spinach Dip- I now make this dip with fresh cut-up spinach instead of frozen. I love it that way! And it's easier too. No messy squeezing of the frozen stuff.

Cocktail Weenies- I just throw these together, about equal parts yellow mustard and plum jelly tossed with some little smokies.

I didn't get a pic of my homemade salsa, but it was lovely and delicious.

And for dessert I made these amazing brownies!


They are called Slutty Brownies, I need to change the name of them to something more child appropriate since I will definitely be making them again! They are three layer brownies, bottom layer is chocolate chip cookie dough, the middle is Oreo cookies and the top is brownie batter. SO easy but so sinfully wonderful. Even more wonderful with some ice cream cause they just don't have enough fat & calories on their own.

Good news is we have enough leftovers to last us the next couple days! Bad news is I need to workout about twice a day all week to make up for this weekend's yumminess.

Back on Track...for now

Ever since the holidays it seems like I've lost my motivation to eat healthier, or at least to eat less. I allow myself to indulge for the holidays hoping that when life gets back to normal, I'll fall back into my groove of a healthier disciplined diet & exercise regimen. Well, up until last week that hadn't happened. Since I stay home with my daughter, I have this problem of just eating all day. A little here & there, but it adds up and my jeans were getting waaay tight. Mornings are my main problem. I like to graze and eat about 3 or 4 breakfasts worth of food before lunch :(. I do love my cereal/pancakes/waffles/muffins...you get the picture. And those foods don't really keep my satisfied & full. So, it was good timing that I ran across this recipe for a 'Power Smoothie' on Our Best Bites. We haven't been using our Blentec much lately like we should, so I decided to try this smoothie and hopefully let it do its magic. I even tracked down the oat groats at the 'healthy grocery store'.

I've changed up the recipe some, my smoothie is basically this:

1 frozen banana
1/2 c frozen blueberries
1 apple
1 orange
handful of spinach
1/2 c greek yogurt
2 T oat groats
1 c orange juice


This smoothie tastes wonderful! It's hard to believe you're ingesting all that goodness when you just drink it up through a straw. I can't imagine having a whole banana, apple, orange, pile of spinach, etc on a plate and eating it, but in a smoothie, it's so fun & easy, not to mention delicious! And it has really changed my eating habits, seriously, almost magically. I make one after returning from taking my son to school, drink it up and I am NOT HUNGRY the rest of the morning. And it seems to carry over to the rest of the day. I just don't get those wild cravings of wanting to eat anything I see. My other little trick is my carrots & peanut butter snack. They make an awesome afternoon snack, low carb and protein rich, carries me over to dinner time, no problem.

I've also been working out 3 or 4 times a week. I've been doing Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred along with a couple Denise Austin DVD's that I really like. I have a couple new ones on order since I'm growing tired of my little library.

So, I'm feeling great for now, under control, a bit fitter and more energetic. But...we've got a party weekend coming up so I'll need to get back to damage control come Monday. Thankfully I'll have my spinach & oat groats standing by.