We had so much fun with this party theme for Hazel's 4th Birthday!  She has always loved watching Angelina Ballerina on Netflix and when I realized that my niece who really really loves Angelina was going to be visiting a few weeks before Hazel's birthday... well, an early party was immediately planned!

My sister is one of those crafty type who throws things together without much thought or planning and everything looks amazing.  I'm one of those "copy ideas to a tee off of Pinterest" crafty types.  Together, we were a tad exuberant.  

The hardest part was deciding when to call it quits :)  We focused on shades of pink, polka dots, ballerinas & mouselings.

Oh my...this is a GREAT surprise!  Thrive is offering some of their MOST POPULAR foods, storage systems & emergency supplies at deeply discounted prices!

HURRY... there are limited quantities!  I suggest trying some of the Neaopolitan Bits (save almost $10!) and snagging some Pantry Plus Cansolidators (save $30!) so you can {finally} tackle that "organize the pantry" goal!

These prices are the same whether you buy online or contact me to place your order. 

Author's note:  This post was written last year and I, er, forgot to post it.  This year I missed strawberry season :(  Please be sure to "Pin" or bookmark this post and we'll compare notes next June!

We are lucky enough to live near a strawberry farm.  For the past few years, I haven’t picked my own... choosing to pay a little more for the pre-picked strawberries.  However, now that my girls are old enough to “help”, this year we picked our own!

YUM!  While the girls ate their weight in strawberries (sorry farmer!), I filled two HUGE baskets.  Overly ambitious?  Definitely!  However, I’ve always wanted to be a true farm girl, so I set out to make my first batch of strawberry jam, strawberry syrup, strawberry ice cream (the left scoop in the photo) & my new favorite:  STRAWBERRY PEPPER GRANITA.

I know what you’re thinking, “What does she mean pepper?”.  I mean GROUND BLACK PEPPER.  Weird, but DELICIOUS!  The flavors truly complement each other.  You may also be thinking “What is a granita?”.  

Granita is basically just a frozen, crushed dessert (think thick daiquiri).  In the August 2011 issue of MaryJanesFarm, Mary Jane shared a few granita recipes and I was so intrigued by the strawberry & pepper combo, that I ripped it out and saved it for the next strawberry season.  

Here’s the recipe as found in MaryJanesFarm:

Raise your cyber hand if you've ever eaten GORP by the fistful?  Many of my happiest (and oddly enough, sweatiest) moments have involved GORP:  endless card games on rainy days while camping with 10 youngsters as an adventure guide, hiking the high peaks of the Adirondack mountains with my college friends, scaling rock faces with my mate...

In fact, I have consumed inordinate amounts of GORP and was completely blown away the other day when I discovered that my kids had NEVER had it!  WHAT A FAILURE I AM :)

It was tons of fun surprising my kids and actually buying candy at the grocery store!  For our first batch, we stuck with the traditional recipe:  Raisins + Peanuts + M&Ms.  Hmmm, I suppose the true traditional recipe would just be raisins and peanuts, but that would seem sacrilegious!  Simply mix equal parts of your ingredients and hit the trail!


There is not specific recipe and you can let your creative juices flow!  Here are some of my favorite additions:
*note:  when mixing GORP, I prefer to mix small amounts at a time.  Depending on the humidity, peanuts may soften/ raisins may dry/ freeze dried food might loose it's crunch...

• vanilla yogurt bites
• craisins
• freeze dried corn (tastes like candy!)
• freeze dried blueberries/ raspberries/ apricots/ mango/ bananas (hello extra serving of fruit/vegetable!)

What's your favorite GORP combo?

This is a fun, CHEAP & effective way to keep your back porch from looking like a looted shoe store.  Ok, sometimes my porch still looks like that, but when it does, it's super easy to send out my 4-year-old house elf who most often enjoys putting shoes back in this rack.

As you can see, all I did was PROP an old wooden pallet against my house, and stick my shoes in, toe first.  For the past two years, I've been meaning to actually screw it into the house... because I do worry about my wee ones pulling out a shoe and the entire rack falling down.  However, I just haven't gotten around to that {lazy} and it's never happened... but perhaps you're a more cautious {and loving} parent?

Now, if only I could figure out how to solve the problem of having multiple entrances to my house which results in shoes in FOUR different locations!?!?

Any ideas on how to solve a similar problem:  COATS!

Whether you’re around your backyard fire circle or at a campground, breakfast is one of the most fun & easiest meals to make.  Now, we all know the basic ideas:  pancakes, eggs & sausage, french toast, etc...

But today I’m going to teach you how to WOW your friends and your taste buds!  You can make eggs and bacon, over a fire, in a BROWN PAPER BAG!

I read about this years ago and finally tried it.  It was so easy and fun.  Granted I did catch one bag on fire, but that was because I was being impatient and attempting to cook over flames.  Don’t do that and you’re golden :)

Materials:

• Brown paper lunch bags (one per person)
• 3 half slices of bacon for each person
  
• 1 egg for each person
  
• stick
  
• hot coals
  
  

Ideally, you had a huge fire the night before and have some gorgeous coals simmering under a large log in the morning.  If that’s not the case, start a roaring fire first thing in the morning, within about 45 minutes, you should have some nice coals that you can use.  Here’s my easy tutorial on how to build a campfire.

This month I’m sharing a fitness related post with you- but it’s not the type of fitness you’d expect. No lifting. No cardio. No sweat or special equipment required.  This is about a mental fitness – and taking a mini challenge to give yourself the gift of clarity and mental freedom.  I truly believe that a clear mind is critical to physical fitness success too. So, we’ll start with the head. 

What on earth is she talking about you ask? I’m challenging you to an Un-plugged weekend.  Why on God’s green earth would you do that? You like your phone. Your iPad keeps you happy. Your kids are quiet when the TV is on.  I get it. Believe me. I do.  But now, after my own 48 hours of being unplugged- I get the other side.  (Those Amish may be onto something yet! And I say that with the utmost respect…and also realize they can’t be offended as they don’t know what I said because well, this is an online blog so well…you get it.)  

Anyway- last week I had the bright idea that we would have an “unplugged” weekend at our house.  Let me preface by saying I don’t think my family is on a phone, iPad or in front of a screen nearly as much as we could be (kids only get 60 minutes/day) - but we are no strangers to the screen (especially me and my phone!) OK. There. Confession time. This challenge was for me. I run two businesses online so I’m on my phone/iPad a lot running those.  And while I try to use my phone when I’m not with my family- I admit that it’s on my mind likely more than it should be. SO – we unplugged. The originally idea was for just me to unplug.  I was thrilled when my husband and kids joined the “screen free/unplugged” weekend.  Here is how it went. 

Friday Night at 11:45 p.m.  

I have 15 minutes left plugged in. AH.  This is actually happening. 

Midnight Friday:

Time to unplug.  I’m still sitting on the couch uploading photos onto the computer.  I add some to facebook.  I want to finish them. Then people start to “like” the photos. I want to see what they say. AH. I didn’t get to finish what I was doing.   My sister was over and literally takes the computer away from me and turns it off.  

OK. This just got real.  

Saturday Morning: 

I wake up and get out of bed. I head to the kitchen to make my Shakeology smoothie for breakfast. Grab my iPad and sit down at the table to enjoy breakfast and checking email, facebook and my Etsy shop as I do every morning. CRAP. Unplugged time.  Sigh.  Return iPad to the kitchen counter and drink my shake.  I make a to-do list for the day. I finish my breakfast and to-do list making and am in the shower earlier than I usually am. (OK, so I may stall my mornings with my screen time. Noted but not accepted yet. This is a fluke I’m sure.) 

Husband is up and complains he can’t read the news or check the sports scores (again, on the iPad.)  He recovers from this trauma and then gets ready for the day…and actually takes less time than usual in the restroom to get ready! (Read – the score updates and news sucks some serious morning time for him. The jury is still out for me- I’m special you know!) 

Kids wake up- stumble to couch and oldest grabs remote to flip on the TV. I remind her it’s screen free/unplugged weekend.  I may as well have told her Santa Claus wasn’t real. “NOOOOOOO- why!? I want a show.  It’s the weekend.  PLEASE!? I WANT SOPHIA THE FIRST!”  The youngest chimes in “Pleeeeeaaaase!? Just one show?  Please Mommy!?”  No.  No screens this weekend.  TV turns off.  Remote is back on shelf.  It’s breakfast time.  

We sit and talk over breakfast about why we are having an unplugged weekend and what the kids want to do.  The to-do list grows with kids activities….buy rollerblades, go on a bike ride, play outside, Legos, clean up rooms, color and get the water table out.  

We shower- get dressed and we’re off for our un-plugged weekend. 

By noon on Saturday we have accomplished more in a few hours than we normally do all weekend.  The kids have cleaned their rooms (by choice). This wasn’t just a “shove it away” cleaning. This was an actual deep, get it all off the shelves, organize it, make piles of what to keep/donate/sell and then put it all away cleaning.  WOW.  The rooms look beautiful.  Piles are loaded into the car to donate to Goodwill and items are ready to list for sale.  Awesome.

In part of the cleaning, I organized the kids’ baby books and scrapbooks.  My oldest has 5 scrapbooks (she turns 6 next week. Yes. A book/year. I used to be a good mom.)  We all look through the scrapbooks and laugh and recall special moments.  The youngest gets her books and opens it and asks a question that makes my heart sink “where are all my pictures mommy?”  OUCH. Stabbed through the heart.  Parenting Fail of the year. #worstmomever.  The child has a scrapbook….but the pages aren’t…well….done.  There are photos stuffed into the photo pages.  Her sister had 2 completed and beautiful books by age 2.  The youngest, well, she has a book of photos shoved into sleeves. 

Note- this was corrected this weekend! The babybook for the oldest had its final pages completed.  Baby books end at Kindergarten. So I shed my tear, finished her book and stored it into the newly created Rubbermaid tub for such special books. And, the youngest now has 1 completed babybook, photos for the 2nd have been ordered and will be completed by the next weekend. Maybe she won’t need therapy after all.(I’m starting to think there may actually be some merit to the fact that screens are time suckers.)  

Afternoon Saturday:

By the afternoon the thought of screens was out of everyones' minds. I couldn’t even tell you where my phone was.  We had gone on a bike ride, the hubs had finished his ENTIRE to do list for the weekend (note, this is rare- that list usually carries over to the next weekend), kids rooms were spotless, floors were cleaned (not just a brief sweep- but actually cleaned, mopped, baseboards cleaned and I even switched the vacuum bag.)  We had spent time outside, oldest had a play date (those things are a lot easier to arrange when you can call someone. Instead, we walked to the friends house….asked her to play…then walked home to play.  It worked.  It was very, well, Amish. All that was missing was our horse & Buggy, but it worked).  We had dinner on the porch with family and sat around talking, laughing and enjoying one another.  Someone asked what the weather was to be like tomorrow- and everyone started to reach for the phones- then remembered “oh, we can’t.” So we just accepted “we’ll see what it is.”  On our way inside from our picnic, our oldest picked up some items from the yard- took them to their “home location” and then came inside. She did this on her own, unasked, just did it.  When we thanked her she simply said “I saw they weren’t where they belonged so I wanted to help.” Um, WHAT!?  OMG.  Call 911. My heart just stopped.  

Saturday night: 

We played a game as a family, read books together, then the kids went to bed. The kids were asleep and the hubs and I poured some wine (OK, let’s be honest- we took the bottle and a couple glasses to the porch) and sat there for a couple hours – alone- in peace- sitting, talking, drinking. No interruptions. No phone “pings”. No checking of emails or looking at the latest text or notification that buzzed.  Just us. Wow.  It was great.   The kids didn’t get out of bed to see us. They didn’t complain when we put them to bed. They went to bed, let us have our adult time and they didn’t wake until ….

Sunday morning at 9:15 a.m. That’s right. They went to bed without compliant (especially rare for the youngest), slept all night, and woke up nearly 90 minutes later than normal. WHAT!?  The kids slept in on Sunday- but so did we.  We were still asleep when we heard the kids wake up. But they didn’t come to our room. They didn’t turn on the TV. We woke when we heard the sound of laughing and Legos drawers opening. They woke up- let us sleep- and started playing with Legos together. Oh. My. Gosh.  Is this Heaven?  I’m feeling like Mother Teresa. Clearly I have provided such an environment for my kids to thrive while I lay in bed sleeping in.  

Sunday continued to amaze me with the difference from being plugged to unplugged. We went to lunch as a family.  No one asked to turn on the TV in the car.  No one asked to play a game on the phones or iPads.  We talked uninterrupted.  The kids were cooperative.  They played together.  We heard more polite manners from them than I’ve heard in a long time.  You’d have thought Recuse Nanny 911 was in the house.    

The Amish life had a few “oh my gosh- I use my phone for that too” realities such as needing to deposit a check and instead of using my phone, I actually drove to the bank and used the ATM (who knew those were still around?!)  I also needed directions and instead of the typical plugging into the phone GPS, I used a map.  Yes. Something with paper and lines and a legend.  I felt very 1985 doing so.  AAA and their trip-tiks would have been proud.  I filled in our weekly family “fridge calendar” and when I asked the hubs his schedule, we realized that it was on his phone and I’d have to wait until Monday to find out his details.  When driving, I believe I was a better, more focused driver.  I knew the phone was at home so I wasn’t tempted to call, text or use it at all. I just- well- drove (novel concept huh?!) 

Why did this work? Well, despite Steve Jobs best efforts….life beyond the screen is pretty awesome!  

Everyone was fully present with one another.  No one was distracted with a screen in the face. No one heard “Just a minute while I check this”. No one was interrupted mid sentence by an incoming text.  We were focused and present. 
The kids didn’t have any influence other than our family. They didn’t have any behavior they saw on TV or movies. They didn’t have an excuse to tune out and play brain dead while a box entertained them.  
Hubs and I are always very busy- but were so much more productive unplugged. We didn’t have the option or planned distraction to plop on the couch and do nothing, to watch hours f sporting events (even if it was a true interest), or flip channels until something caught our attention. 
The kids didn’t see us tune out. They saw us active and making steps toward goals at the house. They did the same. 

And on Monday morning when the phones, iPads, computer, remotes were allowed back in our lives….they still weren’t reached for as quickly as they were last week. I had 64 texts and 50 emails to review. But you know what- the world was just fine without me checking those messages over the weekend.  It was still spinning without me.  So much for my self esteem.  While we did check our emails, texts, pings, etc.- the feeling of being unplugged was definitely on my mind and one I am going to try to channel more on a daily basis. 

So…..now that you’re done reading on a SCREEN that is likely PLUGGED IN or CHARGED somehow….go unplug. You may be amazed just how much you learn! I was. 

Like most things in life, there is not one “right” way to build a campfire.  Some of us might use flint (my brother-in-law) while some of us might use jet fuel (my father).  I fall somewhere in the middle and have successfully started many fires...even in the rain!  

At summer camp (www.lutherlyn.com), I was taught the “dead, down & brown”rule.  This rule can probably apply to other, more unpleasant things (anyone else picturing decaying groundhogs on the side of the road?  Well, now you are!), but for this particular lesson... let’s apply it to wood :)  You absolutely do not want to attempt to burn twigs pried off of trees, rotting/wet limbs, nor recently fallen branches.  You might succeed in getting a lot of smoke, but not much fire!

Ideally, you will find branches that fell awhile ago, but are not completely touching the ground and therefore moist.  One exception is the small, dead twigs at the base of pine trees!  Snap those babies off for great tinder.  

You need 3 types of wood:

So sorry for my prolonged absence.  I have so many THRIVE & green things to share, but have needed this time away due to the death of my beloved father.  

Fortunately, my fitness & Etsy expert is here to help you start or beef up your Etsy site!  So many of us LOVE to roll up our sleeves and create, but very few of us actually earn an income doing what we love.  Fortunately, Lesley is a successful AND generous ETSY shop owner and she's here to help us get more from our passions :)