Saturday Sampler

Since it is Saturday, I am going to share with you a sampler of things that have caught my attention from the Web.

1.  My kids and I are planning this next Friday. I am so excited! Don't tell!

2.  I read this to each of my daughters this week. Everyone needs this message, especially all of our girls.

Your Body is Not Your Masterpiece


3. Yea Colbie Caillat! I love her.

4. I want to get involved in this powerful cause.
They provide hygiene items for girls in impoverished countries so that they can stay in school during their periods.

Days for Girls International


5. I have spent this week writing the life history of my incredible sister-in-law, Sabrina Rowley

Sabrina's Obituary

I have been interviewing her parents and her brothers and I have been reminded again of her beauty and strength. I have felt so close to her spirit.  Everything we do to connect our families to our ancestors is powerful. Everyone has a story that needs to be shared and preserved for future generations.  I will share more of Sabrina's story in the future.


6. I wrote a piece about Mormon Women and the Priesthood that appeared on the FairMormon blog site. Yikes! Those people are smart.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you are interested in my opinion on the controversy that has been in the news lately about women not being ordained to the priesthood, you can read that below.

What is God thinking?

7. Finally, my heart is aching for sweet Cassidy.

The Cassidy Stay Fund

Enjoy your weekend. We will see you back here for the winners of Hogwarts Week 4 and more fun summer ideas next week.

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Healthy Pumpkin Cookies

By Deborah Rowley

This is our favorite healthy cookie recipe. My kids gobble these up! They even know that they are made with honey and whole wheat! So you know that the recipe has to be good. I love making these during the fall season when anything pumpkin is so yummy. Here is the easy recipe:

1/2 cup butter
1 egg
3/4 cup honey
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips... (yes, they do have chocolate chips but they are still super healthy. I am a BIG believer in the health benefits of dark chocolate!)

First mix the butter, egg, and honey together. Before you pour the honey in your measuring cup, spray the cup with PAM spray. You will be amazed at how easily the honey slides out of your measuring cup!

Then mix in pumpkin and blend well. Add all the dry ingredients. Bake at 350@ for 10 minutes. That is it!

The cookies are really moist and soft and they don't flatten out on the pan so you can really load them close together. I can get 34 smallish cookies out of this batch. Which is great because I load them into ziplock bags and store them in my freezer. Then I can just pull out a baggie to send in my kid's lunches or the kids can pull out one or two for their after school snack. I promise you will love these! And you won't believe that they are actually good for you.


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Feel Great in 8 Challenge

Yesterday I posted about Old King Cole making healthy food choices. How about the rest of us?!! My sister Tiff is starting another round of Feel Great in 8 on Monday. I absolutely love her program and have done it with my cute teenage girls. If you are looking at entering the holiday season with some extra help and motivation to stay healthy, this is the way to go! It is amazing! 

October Feel Great in 8 Challenge - Let's Spread the Word!

Image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

The next round of the Feel Great in 8 Challenge starts on Monday, October 7th!

First of all though, I just have to tell you something...

I had the coolest, cheesiest, most realistic dream last night. I woke up with it fresh in my mind and I've been thinking about it all day.

I'm going to tell you about it, but no making fun of me and my cheesiness. ;)

In my dream, the October challenge was the biggest yet. 10,000 participants to be exact...realistic, right?! {haha}

That's not to cool part though, in the dream we were all together. 10,000 of us walking together down a long road. We were holding hands, patting backs, and had arms around each others shoulders. We were this huge force of positivity, cheering each other on, lifting each other up, and supporting each other to the finish. We were strong and brave and happy.

As I type this I can seriously still feel it. You guys, it was awesome! 

So, today I've been thinking about how we can make it happen. Something magical is coming, I know it.

I just need your help to get it going. Take a minute to think of anyone you know (or 10 people you know) who need this, who want to join us on this healthy path, and would love to be part of this amazing group of support. 

Let's use pinterest, facebook, emails, texts, actual phone calls, face-to-face chats, and even twitter to spread the word! *Just don't ask for my help with that last one, I'm not cool enough to understand twitter. :)

It's going to be amazing.

Feel Great in 8 Challenge

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Old King Cole Eats Healthy!

By Deborah Rowley

Here is a fun variation of Old King Cole that you can use to teach preschool-age children and nursery kids about healthy eating. Here is the original version as it is sung on Barney. (I won't blame you if you can't bear to watch it! Just make up your own tune!)

Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul
A merry old soul was he
He called for his pipe

He called for his bowl

He called for his fiddlers three.

Dance with the fiddlers
Dance with the fiddlers
Dance with the Fiddlers Three!

I had the children hold up the pictures at the right time in the song. We talked about how unhealthy it is to smoke with the pipe. When we held up the bowl, we talked about how unhealthy it would be to just eat sweets and sugary cereal all the time. Then when we come to the fiddlers and the dancing, we would start to dance and then fall on the ground in the middle of our dancing because we were so sick and unhealthy! The kids loved that part.

Here is our original version about making healthy food choices. When it came to the dancing part, we would dance and skip around energetically, since we were feeling so healthy and strong, of course!

Old King Cole
Was a healthy old soul
A healthy old soul was he.

He called for his fruit.

He called for his grains.

He called for his vegetables three.
Dance and be healthy.
Dance and be healthy.
Dance and be healthy like me!

If you enjoy this Nursery Rhyme, check out our other nursery rhymes at the links below.

Humpty Dumpty

Hey Diddle Diddle


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{DIY} Box Doll

I made this cute box doll to use as a teaching aid for my church nursery class this morning. 

The 7 children, aged 18 months to 3 years old, loved her! I named her Lucy and used her to teach a lesson about Jesus.

I told the children 3 simple stories about Jesus from the Bible. In the first story, Jesus shared some bread and fish with the 5,000 people who had come to listen to him.
After I had told the story, the children were able to feed Lucy little imaginary pieces of bread.

Then I told the children about Jesus blessing the children and hugging and loving them.
Then I walked around the room with Lucy and let each child give Lucy a hug.

Finally, I ended the lesson by telling the story about Jesus healing the blind man. I had each child cover his or her eyes and imagine that they couldn't see. We talked about how sad it would be to be blind or to be deaf or not be able to walk.

I showed the children Lucy's legs. They were wiggly and floppy so she couldn't walk very well. Then I let each child hold Lucy's hand and help her walk for a few minutes.
We talked about how we can share, and hug, and help just like Jesus did.

Each child, even the littlest ones, were so engaged with this lesson. I was amazed at how they waited for their turn to interact with Lucy and even stayed on their little chairs the whole time.

I can see using Lucy again in lots of teaching situations. She would work great when we were talking about eating healthy foods. The children could feed Lucy lots of pretend foods that I could provide.

Lucy could also be used to eat foods of certain colors or foods that start with certain letters if you wanted to use her for preschool aged children.

She was so simple and easy to make and so much fun to use!

All I did was glue some white cardstock to a box.

Then I cut out Lucy's head by using a bowl as my pattern. I used tan cardstock for her head and arm and legs. Once I had drawn Lucy's mouth, I cut a slightly wider opening on the box and then glued Lucy's head in place. We added yarn hair and a cute patterned dress with scrapbook paper. Katie coordinated her cute bows and sash and buttons.

I think she took me about an hour to make and didn't cost anything as I used supplies that I already had at home!

What a fun Nursery day! Thanks Lucy!

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Brick Oven and Cooking with Kids

I apologize for not posting yesterday when I normally do. On Saturday we were given a HUGE salmon freshly caught in Alaska on Thursday as well as a small fillet of halibut. Hopefully, most of you are thinking, "Lucky!"

Unfortunately, I was thinking, "Oh no!" I don't know how to cook fish. The reason for my lack of culinary knowledge is that most of my family hates fish. (Read me and all of my children.) My poor husband!

So all day yesterday I slaved over this fish. I cut the meat off the spine and picked out the pin bones with my eyebrow tweezers.  I know...my husband owes me big time.

After that fun experience, I grilled the salmon using an Our Best Bites recipe. It turned out awesome! I even liked it. We had invited company over to help us devour this delicacy.

Orange Teriyaki Salmon

I also made homemade fish sticks with the halibut for the kids using this recipe by Emeril. It resulted in this awesome compliment from one of my teenagers, "Mom, your fish doesn't make me want to puke!"  Thanks, sweetheart!

Mommy's Fish Sticks

I purposefully didn't cook anything else so that all my kids would be forced to try the fish or go hungry. I am a good mother that way!

But this morning I made it up to them by making chocolate zucchini muffins using this recipe from Our Best Bites. It was heavenly. I made 18 muffins and one loaf of zucchini bread.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

In other cooking news, we are super excited about the Brick Oven that my husband is building in the back yard. It is going to be a pizza oven and we are so excited to have lots of friends and family over to enjoy our delicious brick oven pizza!

Here is a close up of the brick oven right now.

Here is the tile saw he is using to cut the bricks.

Here is the place in the backyard where he cleans out the wheelbarrow to get ride of the mortar mix when he is done with it.

Here are the pavers that we have been hauling as a family to go around the brick oven once he is done.

We will also build a fire pit in this area. Not that we haven't already been building fires on the dirt but it will look so much more hip and non-redneck when we are done.

Stay tuned for a cool campfire food idea that we discovered recently. I will be posting that on Friday unless I get another drive by fish delivery!


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5 Simple Changes to Improve Your Family's Health

My sister Tiff is such an inspiration to me. She is really passionate about eating healthy and feeding her family simple, delicious and non-processed foods. You can find her great recipes over at Feel Great In Eight.

I have tried to incorporate many of her suggestions and have tried all of her recipes. We were just talking about how much I miss sampling her great food now that she is no longer living right next door.

Since my children are older and resistant to change (read picky teenagers!), it has been challenging for me to implement a healthy food overhaul. But there are a few changes that I have made that have been easy and painless for all of us and that help me feel better about what I am feeding my kids. Try implementing these changes next time you go to the grocery store!

1. Natural Peanut Butter

2. Real Maple Syrup

3. Just Fruit, No-Sugar Jams

4. Real Butter instead of Margarine

5. Homemade, Whole Wheat, Breakfast Foods including Pancakes, Crepes and Waffles. My kids gobble them up!

Our favorite pancake recipe is here.

Try out our favorite crepe recipe here.

Tiff makes an awesome waffle here.

We also love Tiff's homemade Pop Tart recipe! Delicious! Find it Here!

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Yummy Chocolate Bran Muffins

By Deborah Pace Rowley

Chocolate Bran Muffins are a staple in my family's diet. I discovered them 10 years ago and make them almost weekly. They are yummy, delicious, and healthy and my kids gobble them up. But the main reason that I make them so often is that they help to keep my kids digestive systems functioning regularly (if you know what I mean!) If you are looking for an easy way to add some fiber into your family diet, you need to give these a try.

This recipe was originally a weight watcher's recipe that had only two points. (An added bonus!) You will love how simple and easy these muffins are to make with only 3 ingredients. I can even throw them together on a busy morning before we all head off to school.

You need:
Water
Baking Powder
All-Bran Original Cereal
and
Krusteaz Fat-Free Brownie Mix (any brand of Non-Fat or Fat-Free Brownie Mix will work. I have tried the low-fat mixes before and they have a slightly different texture that didn't work as well.)

In a bowl, mix 3 Cups of All-Bran Cereal with 1 1/2 teaspoons of Baking Powder. Pour 1 1/2 cups of water over the whole thing and let it soak for about 5 minutes.
After the All-Bran is finished soaking, add in the dry Fat-Free Brownie Mix. In the beginning it is really dry and you will wonder if you have done something wrong. Keep stirring and it will all get mixed in and moist eventually.

Then scoop the thick batter into muffin cups that you have sprayed with Cooking Spray. I have the regular size muffin tins and this makes 18 medium sized muffins. Bake at 375 for approximately 15 minutes.

That is all there is!
Serve with some milk and fruit and enjoy the long-lasting benefits!

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