ahhh!

It's been quite awhile since I've updated with the whole crazy moving thing but we are now moved and settling into the new place...we're waiting on cupboard doors so we're still living out of boxes but hopefully we will have them this week and we'll get everything unpacked. Then I can decorate...I love Christmas! We are planning on taking a trip to cut Christmas tress this year, depending on if its snowing or not. We'll be taking some good friends along with us, it should be an awesome time and I'll take lots of pictures.

Also in honour of the Holiday season a good friend and I are going to start Christmas baking and we're going to do The 12 Days of Cookies! Starting on Monday we'll be baking a recipe a day (some will be spaced out) for 12 days, they will be all sorts of different recipes, which will be very exciting (we might toss a few extra in there like the classic shortbreads etc!) I'm going to attempt a couple gluten free cookie recipes too which should be interesting. I will be blogging about them as we go so you can stay tuned...I'll give you a hint for Monday it will be something yummy, that smells slightly reminiscent of spices and you can use it to build things!

supper yumminess!

I am a Celiac and as such I'm always on an adventure in baking and cooking gluten free. Yesterday my mom asked if I could make a gluten free treat for her to serve at her get together this morning. We didn't have alot of gluten free goods in our house so I dug out my cookbooks and searched for a recipe that didn't use alot of flour in it. I found this wonderful recipe for fudgy brownies and so I decided to try them using the Bob's Redmill Gluten Free All Purpose Mix instead of the flour they called for and well they turned out to be the best brownies I've ever eaten!! They were crunchy on the outside and perfectly soft, moist and chewy on the inside. I'm definately considering making more today since I only got to have a taste test of them yesterday. And I am going to share the recipe :) I got it from the 125 Best Gluten Free Recipes cookbook and I made a couple adjustments to the recipe so I will post the cookbook version and then my version.

Fudgy Brownies (the cookbook way)

1/3 cup yellow pea flour
2 Tbsp potato startch
1 C packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
1/2 tsp xantham gum
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup shortening
2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

Glaze
2 tsp shortening
2 oz White chocolate

In a large bowl or plastic bag combine dry ingredients and walnuts. Mix well and set aside. In a large bowl, microwave shortening and chocolate on medium for 3 minutes until partially melted (or melt in a saucepan over hot water). Stir until melted, add eggs one at a time, stirring to make sure its blended. Stir in Vanilla extract. Slowly add the dry ingredients, stirring until combined. Spread evenly in a prepared pan and let it stand for 30 minutes. Bake in a preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with little moist crumbs on it. Transfer to a rack to cool completely. Let cool for 15 minutes on the rack and prepare the glaze.

Glaze:
In a small bowl partially melt chocolate and shortening. Remove from heat and stir until completely melted. Spread onto brownies and enjoy!


Fudgy Brownies (my way)
1/3 C + 2 Tbsp Bob's redmill gluten free all purpose mix
1 C packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
1/2 tsp xantham gum
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 C soft margerine
1/2 C semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

In a large bowl combine dry ingredients, mix well. In a small microwavable bowl, melt margerine and chocolate chips on high for 3 minutes or until the chocolate chips are partially melted. Stir until melted the rest of the way. Add eggs and vanilla to the dry ingredients and mix well, make sure the batter is nice and smooth. Add chocolate mixture and mix well. Pour into prepared cake pan (an 8 inch square pan works great). Bake in a 350 F oven for 10 -15 minutes until the top is starting to get crispy but its still really soft and doughy. Turn off the oven and let it bake indirectly for another 10 to 15 minutes or until the brownies are fairly firm. Remove from oven and let cool in pan. You can glaze or ice them if you wish but I found they were perfect just the way they were.

And the piece de resistance....the yummy yummy brownie...

Wordless Wednesdays

Boobs, Babywearing and Cloth Diapering Oh My!

I went to a craft sale this weekend with a friend and my mom to display some of our WAHM made wares and hopefully sell things (we sold 1 item but at least that's better then nothing!) And I had little A with me, of course I had my wrap with me and she was in the most adorable longies with a princess crown on the bum and a cloth diaper. My friend and I ended up spending most of our time talking to some wonderful pregnant mamas about cloth diapering and dispelling the "old school" thoughts on cloth diapering from our Grandparents and parents generations. It was rather enjoyable, we also got to chat about birth (another of my favorite topics that will pop up here one day) and babywearing. Now babywearing, cloth diapering, breastfeeding etc are relatively clandestine "hippie" activities in our community, although they are becoming more mainstream. It always amuses me and fills me with joy when I go out in public and put little A in the wrap. I always and I mean ALWAYS have an audience of fascinated bystanders whatching what I am doing.

Yesterday wasn't an exception. In this case I had several sweet little grandma types who were not only fascinated with what I was doing but quite taken with the beautiful little girl in the wrap. We met one wonderful little old lady and I hope someday that I will be similar to her (she was quite amazing). She wanted all the information she could glean from us on cloth diapers, mama cloth, babywearing, breastfeeding etc because in 4 years she might have great grandbabies and she had to be prepared for that fact! She was particularily taken by my wrap. She (along with all the others) were amazed that within minutes of little A going into the wrap she was sound asleep and remained that way for a couple hours. She also had to learn how I was wrapping her. So once little A woke up I ended up in the middle of the craft sale giving an impromptu babywearing lesson. She was so tickled and excited that she had to write it all down and go home, find a piece of fabric and a doll and try it herself. For me it was an amazing experience. And it got my friend and I talking and we decided that there are 3 main things that make my baby happy :) Boobies, babywearing and cloth diapering.

Wind Wind Go Away...

So a typical day here usually includes some sort of wind...and I'm not talking about a little breeze, I'm talking gale force winds! Today happens to be one of those horribly windy days...with good weather comes the wind, it's the curse of the Canadian Rockies Chinook *sigh* so that cancels our trip outside to the park with our friends today. Instead we will be doing mountains and mountains of laundry and on my less than 6 hours of sleep I felt inspired and compelled to share my homemade laundry soap with you. We make our laundry soap in a powder form (you can make it into a liquid if you so choose) and it works great plus its cheap and not too chemically :) so here's the recipe:

4 litres of water (warm so that powders dissolve better)
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1/4 cup baking soda
I use about 1/2 cup per load. I mix it before I use it each time.

I also occassionally use oxyclean on the whites.

We don't dissolve it in water and we add about 1-2 tbsp in with the wash on a cold wash cycle. Although we don't use this on our cloth diapers, we use Dr. Bonner's Pure Castille Soap as the borax can break down the PUL in diapers.

Just for fun! What do you use for your laundry? If you make your own soap please do share your recipe! Leave me some tips or funny laundry stories :)

Freecycling

Well its the first week of November and I have great news already! We found a place to live so now its just packing and cleaning and downsizing. Which brings me to my topic of the day! Freecycling!! Freecycling has to be one of my favorite things of all times. For those of you who are unfamiliar with freecycle basically its a group of people who's goal is to pass along unwanted/unused items for free to other people to keep them out of the landfills. As long as its something in good working order someone out there might want it. You don't even have to have face to face contact with anyone. You can leave your items on your step and they'll just come and get it. I love freecycle, we have received several awesome items such as a high chair and umbrella stroller from freecycle. We have also gotten rid of a bunch of stuff that was sitting around in our basement and we will be getting rid of so much more in the next few weeks. So next time you have something you want to get rid of (like that ugly lamp that you were given for a wedding gift) don't throw it out, look for your local freecycle group and offer it there...who knows someone might actually need or want it!

It's November...the count down is on

Well its offical, Halloween is done with! now on to....Christmas! In the midst of everything else that will be going on. But first we must get through moving...I can't tell you how much I hate moving. All the packing, stacks of boxes, frantic search for a new place to rent and not getting what we want, plus cleaning, dealing with a baby and a toddler...argh! Can I say stress? So the official hunt is on and we're counting down. We've seen a couple places already but they haven't been quite "right" so we'll keep looking and looking and looking...eventually something will come up. Gotta love the start of the month! But at least I get to start thinking about Christmas. I've made an executive decision to minimize the amount of presents we buy people this year (we have to buy gifts for 15+ people normally) and if they can't be made with items we have on hand or can get for cheap then well it's probably not happening. We're only going to buy for the kids if need be. We are planning on making a play kitchen out of recycled materials for L for Christmas. But it hasn't been started yet...someone procrastinates...We also might head up to Ikea and buy a few items for the kitchen for him. But I'm asking all the family to buy him kitchen items and playfood (felt, crocheted or wood would be awesome). And little A has her presents already, I've been picking things up through the year, she's getting the 25th anniversary edition of the Cabbage Patch Doll. I got her one that looks like her a little bit. It's cute and its the classic one which I love. Christmas has to be my other favorite time of the year, I can't wait to dig out the Christmas Music, decorations, and recipes!

Happy Halloween

1 more sleep!

Soooo we're a bit late today but tomorrow is Halloween and we spent the evening carving pumpkins :) I'm going to give you a teeny sneak peek at L's super Halloween costume that his daddy has been working his butt off on! And then the chronicles of our pumpkins...yes...we went there...for those of you who are fellow geeks and gamers...we carved a D20 pumpkin, which I jokingly suggested to the hubby that we use as an actual dice for sunday's DnD session...Well here's your sneak peek at Halloween!

Can you guess L's Halloween costume?

Pumpkin Carving










The d20



The inspiration for pumpkin #2



The Tink pumpkin



A and L cute shots





and now I'm off to sleep...mmm sleeeep!

Diaper Free Baby...oops!

**Warning** This post contains poop related content...so if you don't think you want to hear about baby poop then don't read this post :)**

So we have a tradition in our household, first thing in the morning little A gets to roam diaper free. She loves to be naked and this way she gets to air out after night time. Well this morning as usual she was roaming around the living room diaper free, I don't worry if we get a little bit of pee on the floor because we clean our floors on a regular basis, and she was having a grand time, giggling and babbling as she went on her many adventures...and then I realized that there was poop, so obviously I check on L first because well he's the usual suspect for early morning poops. Surprise it wasn't him, (we really need to start PLing soon). So I look over and here's little A sitting there with the hugest grin on her face and poop smeared everywhere! Not only had she pooped on the floor but she decided it was to be a great game and play in it too. Oh the joys of babies! It's all cleaned up and she's had a bath, which L insisted he needed one too...the joys of toddlers...So both kids bathed, and roaming free...maybe I shouldn't make this mistake again! Off to go find them clothes and diapers!

Why Cloth?

I get asked this question so many times...My answer is very dependant on the person who asked the question as it leads to more questions or comments from eeewwww that's disgusting! to Isn't that alot of extra work? But I will share my reasons for cloth diapering with you.

Why Do I cloth diaper my children?

Well first and foremost I guess its the cost factor, we are on a very tight budget, and using cloth diapers with two children in diapers definately saves us around $200 a month not having to buy boxes of disposable diapers and wipes because we went through alot of diapers and we were buying boxes every two weeks at least. Don't get me wrong, cloth diapers have a significant start up cost, but for us in the long run they were the cheaper alternative.

It's also the green factor! I can reuse cloth diapers over and over again, and use them for more then one child, plus they aren't filling up the landfill. And with cloth diapers I know that there aren't a bunch of weird chemicals against their skin.

The Cuteness factor- cloth diapers are cute! not only are the cloth diaper bums super cute, but the diapers themselves are adorable. I have diapers that match outfits, diapers just because they are cute, A has a Tinkerbell diaper just because I love Tink and L has a pirate diaper and darn that one is adorable!

What about Convenience? Isn't it a pain to cloth diaper when you go out? What about ALL that extra laundry?

A lot of people think that cloth is more inconvenient because you need to wash and dry diapers all the time. In a household with two children in diapers, we only need to wash diapers every other day, that’s one extra load of laundry added to the laundry we are already doing. And besides if you run out of diapers you just throw them in the washer. You don’t have to worry about running out to the store to buy more when you suddenly run low. (and believe me in the middle of winter with 3 feet of snow on the ground and a blizzard outside you can be VERY grateful that all you need to do is throw a load of laundry in!) Cloth is also just as convenient for going out of the house as well. With products available like travel sized wet bags and bio-degradable diaper liners, cleaning up a diaper in public is a breeze!

Little A in a Goodmama Dipe!

Our Story

I decided to create this blog to share the many adventures we have in Lemurland with our two wonderful beautiful munchkins (L & A our little Lemur and our little Koala Bear). L just turned 2 in August and A is 8 months old. They are 18 and a half months apart. Parenting 2 under the age of two is not easy! Every day is a new adventure, from crayon pictures all over your floor to a screaming teething baby, you name it we've experienced it. We are very much attachment parenting oriented and a as green as we can get on a limited budget family. So we find that people come to us with questions like why do we cloth diaper? how do you do it? How the heck do you find time for everything? and it is my hope that I can share some tips and advice and answer those questions.

A little about us....

Well where to start... I'm a crunchy slightly backwards eccentric work at home mommy of two munchkins who are 18 and a half months apart. I have my own small home business that I started with a dear friend of mine. We sew, crochet etc a vast variety of products such as cloth diapers, wool shorties, longies, skirties, nursing covers, receiving blankets and beyond. I'm kind of a craft addict! I also spin and weave as well! I'm a Birth Doula in training, and I'm working hard to complete my certification. I'm married to a wonderful man who I consider to be my best friend and he's such an amazing, loving, caring, slightly annoying, pain in the butt, overly geeky, awesome daddy! Our two munchkins are our greatest joy and our greatest trial. L is very much a little monkey, from the moment he was born he has been the most difficult child, from not sleeping to colic, to breastfeeding issues, to the most terrible of terrible two's each day has posed new challenges. A is a little angel, she's our miracle who we weren't expecting, and such a dream compared to her brother. She loves to cling and snuggle in the wrap or sling, so she's our little koala bear. I love both of them equally, I'm not sure that I can even express in words how I feel about my children. They are so amazing and I'm blessed that I get to see them grow into wonderful individuals.