Pinterest Pedicure?

For Mother's Day this year, my mom gave me and my sisters the ingredients for a "Pinterest Pedicure" she had seen.

I'm always interested in finding out whether the stuff on Pinterest is legit or not. Believe it or not, back in the old days of Pinterest, there wasn't nearly as much bogus junk on there, and all the links actually took you to awesome people's blogs where you could find out the details of the cool thing you just saw.

These days, everyone and their mother (literally!) is trying to take advantage of Pinterest's power to drive tons and tons of traffic to their website and make you the most popular person in the blog-world. Kind of annoying.

Anyway, I digress. Mom gave us little gift baggies with a bottle of listerine, a bottle of vinegar, and some awesome Trader Joe's coconut oil body butter.

To create the soak, you combine 1/4 cup listerine, 1/4 cup white vinegar (or apple cider I hear also works), and 1/2 cup water. Then soak for 10 minutes and then "the ded sken juz FAWLZ ovf!"

I figured it was worth a shot, so I doubled the recipe for the foot soak and both me and the hubs* tried it out.

*Don't tell him I told you he did the foot soak.

To be honest - the listerine felt all good and minty and it definitely softened my feet up for awhile...but don't believe the claims that the dead skin just falls right off when you're done. Unless you pretty much have no dead skin on your feet - in which case, 1. I want to know your secret and B. Why would you even try this? - then this might work wonders for you.

However, the BEST part about all of this is the AMAZING Trader Joe's coconut body butter. Seriously. Go get 5 jars of this and throw away all your other body butters. It has coconut oil, vitamin E, and shea in it and it seriously smells like sugary frosting. Thankfully it's not as greasy as rubbing frosting all over your body would be. It absorbs great and smells divine. The only downside is that it makes me want a cupcake.

So, in closing:
1. Get this body butter as soon as you can. But leave a couple for me in the store, ok?
2. If you're feeling like you want a mouthwash foot soak, it's not as magical as it sounds, but it does soften your feet a little bit.

Dog Food

Stella never ceases to crack us up with the funny things she does. Last time Loren was re-filling her food container, she decided to sneak on up to it and steal a few bites when he left to put the food bag away. 

I'm all about good behavior around here, unless it's really cute and funny and then I take pictures first. 

Enjoy the cuteness!

Steller-Beller

I am totally aware that I verge on being the ridiculous dog-owner who overly-loves and constantly shares pictures of my sweet dog.

laying on the front porch watching the rain!

"sharing"

she does yoga with me sometimes.

snuggles

sunning

But, I mean...if she wasn't just the cutest thing ever, I could see how you would think it's weird. 

But, she is, so it's totally normal that I absolutely love her to pieces. 

And she has the CUTEST little personality. 

And when I say little, I actually mean very strong and she communicates her "opinions" quite well. 

She has turned into such a little snuggler and the older she gets the more loyal she becomes, which I just love. 

Her puppy-ness is fading - although she's still very spunky - and she has just become a great companion and buddy. 

She is definitely a member of our little family and a beloved one at that! 

The Birthday Boy

My middle nephew, Alden, turned 4 a few weeks ago. 

Thanks to some nasty sickness going around, we had to postpone celebrating with him until tonight. 

He didn't seem to mind having another birthday party one bit. 

He had a serious case of the grins when it was time to blow out his birthday candles. It was so cute, I snapped about a million pictures while we were singing to him.

Apparently, my phone creates a cool little flip-book-like image whenever I take a bunch of pictures at once. I thought this was pretty awesome, so I thought I'd share!

And below are a bunch of pictures of Alden thoroughly enjoying being the birthday boy. 

Happy Birthday, Alden!! We love you to pieces!

3 Ingredient Cookies

Anybody seen those 3 ingredient magic cookies on Pinterest?

Me, too!

I made a batch last week when I had pretty much a whole bunch of over-ripe bananas that were at the point of use-'em-or-lose-'em. The good thing is, it is so rare that I actually eat a dessert anymore that I think these are fantastic. If I were still in my days of regular chocolate chip cookie (dough) frequenting, these would probably be gross.

But if you eat a healthy diet and aren't severely addicted to sugar - good for you! You are unlike 90% of Americans. And, you'll probably love these cookies.

I adapted my recipe from Skinny Taste's recipe.

3 Ingredient Cookies*
makes about 30 cookies

5 over-ripe bananas
2.5 cups oats
1/2 cup chocolate chips

*More like four ingredients because I also added:
1/4 cup natural almond butter (no sugar - just almonds!) - or other nut butter. Same rules apply.

**Actually now that I think about it I added a little vanilla extract and a smidge of salt. I'm gonna say those don't count as "ingredients" for the sake of the name of these cookies.

Mash bananas well, add oats. I have used a food processor to blend the bananas before. (Don't put oats in the food processor, though. Whole ones are necessary to keep the recipe from getting too soupy.)

Add chocolate chips (and almond butter and other "non-ingredients" if using). Mix well.

Use a cookie scoop, drop rounded spoonfuls onto a parchment/silicone/sprayed cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for about 7-8 minutes. Keep an eye on them  - they bake fast! Enjoy hot and keep extras in an airtight container. These stay soft and, at my house, they are gone in no time!

Chocolate Raspberry Avocado Mousse

There are tons of recipes out there for Avocado Mousse - a delicious little concoction that tastes like chocolate pudding, but is really avocado based!

I try to eat a diet high in healthy fats. Lots of coconut oil and olive oil and nuts. And avocados! So I love this little treat because it's a dessert plus a source of additional fat in the avocado and coconut milk. Plus it's delicious, so that helps a lot.

I made the basic recipe awhile back, and liked it. But for some reason when I made a 2nd batch, something got into me and I decided to experiment with flavors - raspberry and mint. Together.

Here's the basic recipe:

3 ripe avocados
1/4 cup cocoa powder (the higher quality, the better...and feel free to use more or less as you wish)
1/4 cup honey or agave nectar. Or more.
1/4 cup full fat coconut milk (from the can)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend. Tweak with extra honey/cocoa/coconut milk until the mixture is pudding-like consistency.

If you want to add the mint flavor, sub that in instead of vanilla. I used 2 capfuls so probably a little over 1tsp. I like it strong.

Spoon or pipe into small bowls. Top with frozen raspberries and place in the freezer overnight.

When you're ready to eat, just let it thaw for about 15 minutes and then enjoy! If you absolutely hate the  idea of a raspberry/mint combo, you can leave out one or the other - or both!

Time in the Word - How I Finally Made Time for God Every Day

For years growing up I would go back and forth being really consistent with my daily quiet times, and then drop off and have a hard time making time every day. Shortly after I got married, I realized that a) I was an adult now, and b) I needed to be much more disciplined in many areas of my life. Discipline had never really been my "thing", if you know what I mean, so the task seemed daunting. But I really wanted to get to a place where I depended on my time with the Lord. I didn't want it to be something I could go without.

One day about a year ago, the Lord allowed me to cross paths with a blog called Good Morning Girls. I was looking for a free Bible study to start online, and when I found their site, I was so excited to have finally found a resource that would help me with the discipline of a daily quiet time. Their whole goal is to facilitate women being engaged in Bible study and equipping them with the tools they need to start having a daily quiet time.

The bloggers at Good Morning Girls give out free reading plans for each of their bible studies, which usually run between 6-12 weeks. You are encouraged to create or join a group that can keep you accountable and all be studying the same stuff. The gist is to have a group to check in with every day by text, email, Facebook, etc so that you have some accountability for having your daily quiet time. Hence the name - Good Morning, girls! Every morning after you finish your quiet time, you contact your group to let them know and share any insights or prayer requests you have. The awesome part is that you become fast friends with the people you study with and it gives your daily personal time with the Lord a community aspect that is absolutely beautiful.

I led a group that chatted over Facebook last summer as we studied Proverbs 31. It was an amazing summer for me personally as, for the first time in my life, I was studying and meditating on God's word daily, and I had other people doing it with me at the exact same time! After the summer was over, I joined up with a GMG group that posted their daily check-ins on Instagram.

I've been continually studying and Instagramming with that same group for almost 9 months, and have formed such sweet friendships with the ladies in my group. I know for sure that if we all ever met in person we would instantly love each other! We have prayed for each other through extremely difficult times in each other's lives, and watched the Lord do miracles and asked Him to change us. And He has!


I haven't exactly lived a lot of hard life stuff yet. I'm thankful that the Lord has kept me out of the way of much personal tragedy, and I know He has rewarded decisions that were made through seeking His will and obeying His Word with tremendous blessing. So please understand that when I say that I have finally found victory in the battle of daily spending time with the Lord, I have not yet experienced the struggles that young moms with young children face when it comes to this issue.

All that said, I really do think no matter what is going on your life - whether you're in high school, college, not in school at all, a SAHM, or a full time employee, or a part time employee, or a working mom, or anyone- it will be a struggle to find daily time to spend with the Lord in prayer and Scripture. It just will.

Why is it so hard? My response to this is always that this is one of the things in your life that has an enemy who is working diligently against you being daily involved with God. He wants to see you crowd your relationship with God completely out of your life, overwhelmed with "all the stuff" you have to do. Our answer is that we have to work diligently AGAINST the enemy's desire for us, by making an effort to connect with God every day.

Not a checklist that makes us pat ourselves on the back for being so spiritual, either. That's not really working against the enemy either, because that means he's subtly convinced us that we have to do X, Y,  and Z to please God and make us a good Christian (=legalism). We are "good" and able to be "Christians" only because of Christ. Not because we read our Bibles this morning.

The community aspect of Good Morning Girls is such a great combatant to that "checklist" mentality. When you've got your girlfriends waiting for your check in and you know they are praying for you and always there to encourage you, it doesn't seem like just another thing to get over with. It seems like a joy to be sharing life and studying God's Word with other believers. Some days, the insights I read from my group members are exactly what I needed to renew my mind or refocus on the character of the Lord in my situation.

Of course these groups are never to replace your involvement in your local church, so if you have a Bible study available to attend at your church - plug in with those women first! God uses each individual person in each local church in a special way to minister to each other's needs. Your church needs you to be involved in their ministries!

But, If you are struggling with the discipline of having a daily quiet time, I encourage you highly to check out Good Morning Girls. There are also other resources that do similar things like SheReadsTruth - they even have YouVersion reading plans that you can follow along with each day!

If you have any questions at all about this or other resources, please leave a comment below!