Tree of Life Mothering

I hate missing weeks of blogging, it just hurts me! I start to get depressed and stressed without my therapy of blogging. You probably all don’t mind at all when I take blogging breaks, but if you do, know that it is for a good reason. So sorry for the break! I have so many blog post ideas that I have to put on hold and keep in my “blog drafts” folder. It’s so hard to squelch these ideas, but I have to for a bigger reason! I found out a few weeks ago that my husband got a long-awaited for, prayed-and-fasted-for job in Arizona, so we are moving! We went down there a few weeks ago and found a house to rent and scoped out the place. There’s a huge, long, complicated, emotional back story behind this move, but I don’t have time to tell it. Just know that as sad as I am to leave Utah, with all of its LDS and homeschooling resources, and our dear friends and family here, I feel that God’s hand is in this move. He wants us to move there. So I am excited for a new adventure and new friends (and a bigger house!). In the meantime I just wanted to share the news and ask for any tips on moving.

My Veggie Gal friends held a farewell party for me and gave me this beautiful gift, pictured below, with all their pictures on it. I have known most of these ladies for over 15 years, some for 20 years, since I went to my first La Leche League meeting when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. As my mother in law says about her relatives, “I could tell tales about all of them.” These Veggie Gals and I go way back! Some of our kids found each other at college and started swapping stories about the “unusual” food served at Veggie Gals and I’m sure laughed uproariously. Who can forget the “gak” crackers made from sunflower seeds and the fudge made from black beans? I have laughed and cried with these Veggie Gals. They are the best friends a woman could wish for!

So these are pictures of the farewell party. First we had a Kundalini yoga session taught by my dear friend Shauna (who shares a birthday with me) then came the food. The food! Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the food! I always eat the best food of my life at Veggie Gals gatherings. All of the kids disagree. They say there’s never good food at Veggie Gals. That’s just because they don’t have mature taste buds that appreciate healthful food, even though all of us moms cook that way. It’s a mystery! Anyway, then I also have pics of my husband’s and my trip to AZ and the views from the home we will be renting. I am soooo excited to have a larger kitchen, I can’t tell you how excited I am! The home is out in the country on 5 acres, with a vegetable garden and a flower garden already cultivated. It also has a fire pit so I am looking forward to a lot of outdoor parties.

I remember reading Michelle Duggar’s first book. She had a tip in there about moving. She suggested creating an index card for each box where you list what is in that box, so if you need something before or after the move, and the box is still unpacked, you can quickly locate the item. When you have a lot of kids and a lot of stuff, and a lot of logistics to manage, that sounds like one of the best tips ever! I have started doing it and already had a need for it.

This is the view from the front porch of the home. Lovely, isn’t it?

Does anybody else have any tips for moving? I would love to hear them!

Here’s an episode from the Duggars, my favorite TV family, on moving.

This month of October, I’ve focused on books about courage, early American history and controlling speech, to harmonize with our homeschool unit themes. The book pictured above is a true story.

My kids totally enjoyed this book, we got it on CD and they listened while doing dishes. 

After years of hearing about Call it Courage, I finally exposed it to my kids. They really liked the book on CD. Another winner that held their attention, and made doing dishes more enjoyable. 

I got this especially for my 11 year old boy. We are still plowing through it. I got the anniversary edition that has notes from the author. 

Cute, simple picture book about trying things out for the first time and why that’s important.

This is a great book full of inspiring stories about how native Americans in the Montana lived hundreds of years ago. The part about the mom having twins and fighting to keep both the boy and the girl got me a little-teary-eyed. 

I have to admit, when I read the above book aloud to my kids, my mind wanders. It is not my favorite, but I am determined to finish reading it to the kids. It is based on a true event but it is late so I won’t recount the event to you.

This is one of my favorites. I get it every year or so from the library. I noticed for the first time the girl’s devotion to her mother that got her to fight when she was about to give up. 

I really liked this one. It is based on a true story of a boy born in slavery who escaped by being mailed in a box. Very inspiring!

The above two books are for my Quest class. I love learning about history! I did not finish reading the Parley P, Pratt book. I liked the annotated version by Scot and Maurine Proctor. It is full of photos of hte places Parley visited and a lof of footnotes that the average person doesn’t care about, but if you love LDS Church history then you will enjoy reading all the footnotes, full of explanations. 

I found these two sewing books about the library. They so make me want to just spend all day sewing. Someday I intend to do that. I do love skirts and these books have some ideas for the flirty, feminine skirts I love. Maybe in the winter I will sew more…I say that every year but maybe this year it will be different. 

So we took the kids and my mil to see Once I Was a Beehive, and my mil told me after it was over that one of the stars lives in her former ward in Provo. The enthusiastic camp leader, Sister Carrie Carrington. Her real name is LIsa Valentine Clark and she actually has a whole series of funny videos about being a mom and wife, called Pretty Darn Funny. In the first episode, she decides to clean up the stand-up comedy scene in her town by creating a new comedy troupe with clean jokes called Pretty Darn Funny. I am posting my favorite episodes here. Some of them aren’t as funny, kind of like Studio C, where some episodes strike me as hilarious and some just don’t. Watch these when you want something light but still somewhat meaningful and totally clean!

This one features the “Cheap Seats” Theater of my childhood, fondly called “Sticky Shoe North,” in American Fork Utah. I love the line, “Ma’am, I’m not authorized to use that much nacho cheese sauce.” So funny! The whole idea of ‘movie cheating” hits a chord with me. Back in the days when my husband traveled a lot for business, sometimes he would see movies without me, so I can relate to Gracie.

In this video, Gracie resorts to some crazy tips to save money.

What mom doesn’t need the “scream saver”? 

This one about how moms can go overboard with creating perfectly-pinnable- Pinterest-images is probably my favorite. 

OK, so remember when I shared my Cheesy Broccoli Chicken Soup awhile ago? I indicated at the bottom of the post that I was thinking of changing a few of the players to make a soup just like the Cheesy Wisconsin Cauliflower soup I had had at Zupa’s that day with my girlfriend Tara. May I present to you my result, as pictured above, ta-da! I am sorry you can’t taste it through the screen. It was simply divine!

To make it, go to the broccoli soup recipe, and instead of cooking chicken, cook up a package of bacon. Get the bacon going first, according to package directions. Instead of cooking broccoli, steam some cauliflower. Do the rest of the recipe the same. If your family doesn’t like chunks of vegetables in soup, then puree the cauliflower so the soup is velvety smooth. Then crumble up the bacon for putting on top of the soup. Salt and pepper to taste.

Just in time for your chilly fall nights…some recipes for homemade s’mores! Last year at Halloween I got a hankering for homemade s’mores. You know how sometimes you get an idea and you just have to do it! You just can’t stop thinking about it until you actually do it. That’s how it was for me and homemade s’mores last year. We stayed home from a family dance so I could make these while the kids watched Star Wars, which is a rare treat. I hardly ever let them watch it because it gets them acting crazy. I decided I could handle it that weekend. It knew it would be quite a job to make all three elements for s’mores from scratch in one night, so I actually planned ahead (something I am learning to do more of) and made each element on a separate night. When I do homemade s’mores again, I will cut the marshmallows into smaller pieces, as they are so goopy once they melt and they really aren’t my favorite part of the ensemble. Chocolate is! Anyway,we had fun using the fire in our fireplace for the roasting. If you don’t have a fireplace or fire pit in your backyard, you could melt the marshmallows over a stovetop burner, held over the burner on the end of your roasting stick. Or build the s’mores,arrange them on a cookie sheet, and then pop in the oven to melt slightly. Just don’t leave in too long or they turn into puddles. I speak from experience. I don’t remember how long I left them in, but if I were to do it again in the oven, I would experiment and start with one minute at the lowest setting and then keep checking the marshmallows every minute until they are slightly gooey and the chocolate is slightly melted.

I have had many experiences this past year making s’mores, and I offer the following tip to have the best, flavorful experience:

1. Have the crackers ready to receive the roasted marshmallows, with chocolate on top, as close to the fire as possible, so that the warmth from the fire gets the chocolate already melting, and so you can quickly slide the melted marshmallows off the roasting stick onto the chocolate and melt them more with their residual heat.

2. Then quickly put the top cracker on and squish the marshmallow down to get the pressure and heat from the marshmallow to melt the chocolate even more.

3. Have lots of baby wipes handy to wipe sticky hands.

4. Have the chocolate as thin as possible, because the whole thing tastes better if chocolate is melted. The chocolate can’t melt much if it’s too thick for the roasted marshmallow to melt. You have to have the right ratio of chocolate to marshmallow and crackers.

5. Roll the crackers as thin as possibly as well.

5. Or course, don’t let the marshmallow burn. Roast close to coals and not a flame and let the marshy get golden brown.

Here is the recipe for the homemade graham crackers, Weston A. Price style, because you soak the flour.

Here is the recipe for the chocolate.

Here is the recipe for the marshmallows, in the video below.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/31826016

Enjoy, and may the force be with you!

If any of you are still harvesting tomatoes from your garden, or you are done and still have loads of tomatoes on your counter, waiting for you to preserve or eat them, I suggest you make the best thing ever that you can make from tomatoes…pico de gallo!

I learned this recipe from Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman. You can get it here. It is so scrumptious! I now use this instead of plain old salsa on all of my burritos and taco salads and to accompany quesadillas. I only regret I didn’t discover it sooner! It is pretty to look at and it just restores my faith in humanity when I eat it. I hope it does for you too! 

Have you ever felt overwhelmed about transitioning to a real food diet? If you are new to real foods, the learning curve can be steep! What do you do with all of your kids’ favorites, like mac and cheese?

The good news is that this ebook, Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food for Rookies can help you in a jiffy!

I give this ebook 5 out of 5 stars. You are going to love this ebook! It is full of common sense and helpful information such as:

• a quick reference chart to show you how to choose real food over mainstream food choices, for ALL foods, such as grains, fats, dairy, produce, soups, salts, seasonings, condiments, sweets, and beverages. It’s more than just choosing whole grains over refined
• why raw milk is better
• why animal fats are needed in the diet and not factory-made fats
• why natural sweeteners are better
• how to make bone broth
• the top ten foods to avoid
• how to overcome all of the obstacles to serving real food in your home

In addition, she has real food recipes for a typical family’s favorite foods, such as chicken nuggets, French fries, pizza, ice cream, popcorn, and soda pop. Her recipe for pizza is in the video above.

I love the common sense real food principles that she was inspired to create to line up with Dave Ramsey’s money principles. It’s really true that when you eat like other people don’t eat, later on you will be able to do things other people can’t do, like go hiking when you are 90!

This book is 170 plus pages and a goldmine of real food information. I am hosting a giveaway of the book. Please enter your comment below on why you would like to win the book to be entered for the random drawing. It will be held on Friday October 30. If you want to just go buy the book right away, go here. You can get it in ebook (Kindle) or paperback.

Here is an interview on a podcast with Kelly, and Sarah from thehealthyhomeeconomist.com

Here is an interview with Kelly and the wellnessmama.com mama Katie on the reality of real food.

Here is another interview with Kelly and Katie, the wellnessmama. Enjoy!

For our date night last night, dh and I went to the temple and then to a movie. We saw “Once I Was a Beehive.” I give it 5 out of 5 stars, even though it is a little cheesy. It is a great, clean, fun movie for the whole family to watch. It’s a story about the magic of Young Women Girls’ Camp in the LDS Church. When I first heard about it, I was a little wary. I didn’t want anybody making fun of Girls’ Camp. I have tons of sweet memories of Girls’ Camp, it truly was magical for me. Well, it turns out the moviemakers did it right. They had plenty of jokes poking gentle fun at Girls’ Camp without being irreverent. We both laughed out aloud a lot and left the movie feeling better. It was fun to see the different characters of the girls. I loved how most of the characters were female. You don’t see that much in movies. I also like that two of the Young Women leaders are LDS in real life, and one of them, Hailey Smith, who plays Holly Valentine, is in a YW presidency in real life. I am sure that added to the realism of the movie. I also loved the costuming and hairstyles. They certainly had cuter clothes and hair in this movie than I ever remember having at Girls’ Camp! I was chuckling in the movie over the fact that four of the characters look just like people I know in real life.

Here are some of the things about Mormon culture the movie pokes gentle fun at: Mormons’ tendency to make up names and use the same initial for family names, YW leaders over-the-top enthusiasm for camp that involves preparing for a whole year and doing cutesy things for it, and the tendency at Girls’ Camp to have lots of drama.

So if you get a chance, go see it! If you go here, you can click where it says “click here to demand to see it in your city,” and get 249 other people to do that, it will come to your local theater. You can also click on the “download the song” button at that same link and get the mp3 and sheet music of the original song featured above called, “Together,” written by Hailey Smith. It is totally catchy!

As I’ve eaten low carb foods to help me lose 60+ lbs and maintain the weight loss, I’ve felt challenged to find a new recipe to replace my creamy broccoli potato soup. Eureka! I have found it! I came up with the greatest broccoli soup ever! I won’t ever make my broccoli potato soup again because this one has such a lower glycemic index.

Here it is, inspired by the real food cheese sauce, without Velveeta (!), recipe from Kristen Michaelis, over here at the foodrenegade.com. I have used the cheese sauce as the creamy base, with the recipe slightly modified.

Cheesy Broccoli Chicken Soup, Grain-free, Potato-free

This recipe makes a big batch, to feed a family of 7 and have leftovers for lunch the next day.

First, get a child to come grate a 1 lb block of cheddar cheese for you, or have three kids do it by slicing the cheese into three smaller blocks and having each one take a turn grating a slab. If you want the soup to be cheesier, do more than 1 lb.

Then get a pack of chicken breasts simmering in a pot of water. The packs I usually get have six breasts in a bag. 

While those things are going on, mix together over low heat:

2 egg yolks

2 T arrowroot flour

1 cup cream

1 cup water

Stir occasionally, and keep it cooking over low heat to thicken up.

While the creamy base is cooking, chop up two big bunches of broccoli into fine pieces. Then steam the broccoli. If you can take a steaming basket or steaming pot and place it inside the chicken pot, then you will conserve burners and don’t have to find another big pot. But maybe you have plenty of pots in your kitchen. Or you can just cook the broccoli on top of the chicken, if you don’t mind fishing out the chicken from the broccoli later on , to shred or cut it, I like to save three of the chicken breasts for meals later that week, like the southwest black bean chicken salad I love to make, or chicken quesadillas.So for those pieces I rinse the broccoli particles off if I didn’t use a steamer pot with holes in the bottom.

After the broccoli gets going, take the cheese and put it in the creamy soup base. Then add  2 tsp. salt, 1 to 2 tsp. garlic powder, mix thoroughly, and then taste and add more if desired. Add pepper to taste. 

Check the chicken. If done cooking, shred or cut up and add to the soup base. Remember to reserve half of the chicken breasts for a future meal. (I feel so ahead of the game and organized when I have preshredded chicken breasts in my fridge!) Check the broccoli, and when cooked to desired “doneness” (some people prefer a “bone” in their veggies, others like them more mushy) add to the soup. 

Serve with sourdough toast slathered with butter, cheese slices, and a salad, or platter of veggies and dip! Yum, yum, yum!!!!! 

My girlfriend took my out to eat for lunch yesterday. We had this totally awesome creamy cauliflower with bacon soup that I am going to recreate with this same cream base. I am going to add chopped up cauliflower, pepper jack and mozzarella cheese, and bacon instead of the broccoli and cheddar.

I have lost 60 lbs! Woo-hoo! I can fit into the size I was when I got married, including my wedding dress! Watch for a future blog post about how I did it! I am having so much fun wearing new clothes, and I am loving finding clothes that I love to wear! Shopping for clothes is a joy again! I haven’t had this much fun shopping since I was in college, which was a LOOOOOONG time ago. (Literally decades, BK, before kids, and my oldest is 22 now, LOL!) To celebrate my new body and new clothes, I have decided to blog more about fashion. So here goes. I feel like I am going out on a limb, since I am no fashion expert and have spent decades not caring much about it as a harried mom. But, I promise, even if I haven’t always shown that I care, I do know what looks good on me, and what looks good on others. I love how changing some lines and colors and texture can make someone go from looking ordinary to looking fabulous! Something I learned from reading fashion books is that everyone can look beautiful, if you find the right lines, shapes, and colors that go with your features so you learn to emphasize the great features and de-emphasize the not so great. (Losing 60 lbs. as well helps too of course, LOL!)

I hope to share some outfits in the next few months from my “thrift store haul” that I bought back in August to celebrate losing 60 lbs!  I invite you to share your outfits on this blog as well that meet the following qualifications. Before I get into the qualifications, I want to address a common concern among moms. Some of you might be saying as you read this, “Oh, who cares about clothes?! I have much more important things in life to worry about, like, dealing with unruly children, homeschooling, unclogging a toilet, preventing my marriage from falling into divorce, going visiting teaching, and emergency prepping for the impending collapse of the nation and the second coming of Jesus Christ.”To quote the immortal Anne Shirley of Green Gables, ““It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.” If you look and feel fashionable, it is easier to be good and do all those good things, plus more! And “fashionable” doesn’t mean dressing in the latest trends, it means, according to Carol Tuttle, dressing your truth. More on that later. 

Anyway, here are the qualifications for an outfit to be considered “Modest, Stylish, and Thrifty”:

1. Modest: hemline to the knees or longer for the dress, skirt, or pants, shoulders covered, no cleavage or abdomen showing, and nothing showing that wouldn’t be covered by a modest swimsuit, of course

2. Thrifty. All of these outfits I will be sharing will be less than $20, and some will even be less than $10! Tell us what each piece of clothing or accessory cost and where you got it. Don’t be ashamed of telling us you got it from a yard sale, thrift store, or even dumpster diving! No shame here, as long as you didn’t steal it!

3. Stylish. This is subjective of course. How am I defining stylish? If you feel like you look good in it, I am going to define it as stylish. Remember what Carol Tuttle says, It means dressing your truth.

I absolutely love this top, I think it is so cute! If you are into Dressing Your Truth, then you probably recognize it as a Type 1 energy. I haven’t taken the course but from what I’ve heard from my teen daughter, Type 1 energy has lots of motion. This top has a busy print, including circles and lots of different shapes and colors. I picked the flower necklace and hoop earrings to repeat the circle/flower theme. Unfortunately they aren’t totally Type 1, because according to my daughter, Type 1s are supposed to use gold, and these are silver. Oh well. Maybe you can tell from the picture, that the top has a texture too, of raised dots, like dotted Swiss fabric. I have always loved dotted Swiss! The top also has ruffles which is total Type 1 thing. I absolutely love this top, did I already say that? It is soooo cute! It makes me soooo happy just looking at it! When I look at it, I think of my little sister and that this is fabric she would have in her cheery, nurturing home. I can see it as a blanket, curtain, or tablecloth. I don’t mind that I am happy to wear fabric as a top that could be used as a blanket, curtain, or tablecloth, as long as it fits my energy. It makes me happy when I think of this fabric and my little sis, even though her home is now far away from me in Maine. My teen daughter said when she first saw the top, “That makes me think of Aunt Emily!” Agreed! I also love that this top is so versatile. I can wear it with sooo many other things, like jeans, both my light blue ones, my dark blue ones, and my white ones, my khakis, and some petite gingham checked baby blue pants. Plus, three other skirts, my black one, my khaki one and my white knit one. Oh, I just remembered, I just got a navy skirt that goes with it too! I can “fancy” this top up, like I did in the very first photo above, to wear it to church, and then I can dress it down a bit with jeans and be casual.

Cost and where I got everything for the top photos of me in the skirt:

Earrings: Walmart $5

Necklace: Walmart, I don’t know the cost since my daughter gave it to me as a Christmas gift. Probably around $8, but I know someone who got the same necklace for clearance for only $1!

Top: $5, from Deseret Industries, brand is Cherokee

Skirt: $3 (!) from Deseret Industries, brand is Worthington Works. I love how the “cut” of the pieces sewn together make it have a natural swing and flare!

Shoes: $3 from Deseret Industries, brand is Fioni. I love these gold-colored heels! I also found the same pair in white about a year earlier.

Total Cost for me: $16, since the necklace was a gift! Hooray!

For the bottom photo of me in the jeans:

Top, the same as above

Jacket: free, from a bag of hand-me-downs

Jeans: ditto above

Earrings: $3 from Walmart on clearance,

Necklace: $8 from Walmart

Flip flops: you can’t see them in the photo above because my feet are buried by weeds, but they look like this, below. I got them from D.I. for $3 a year or two ago. They are looking a little ragged these days because I have worn them so much, even to the point of wading in the Mississippi River when we went to NauvooI I have loved them! They coordinate with most of my clothes so I wear them all spring, summer, and into the fall.

Flower: I can’t remember, it was a birthday gift from my husband from Claire’s Boutique, probably $5

So total cost, $19.

This isn’t a typical fashion blog post where you can go buy the exact article of clothing by clicking on the name of the article of clothing to take you to an online store.. But maybe you can find something similar on ebay or other thrift stores, or it will just inspire you to go find your own treasures at the thrift store. I am sharing and asking you all to share your pictures of your modest, thrifty, stylish outfits so we can all be inspired to see that it doesn’t have to cost much to look great and feel confident. Just post the picture below in the comments box, and write about it, or give a link to your blog or site.