I don't like using chemicals if I can avoid it - especially on my skin. But one thing I've always felt I could never live without is a good facial moisturizer.

A few months ago, I was talking to mom and she asked if I needed anything from town since she was going. I asked for a certain brand of lotion to which she replied "why? I know you have a 5 gallon bucket of coconut oil." Well yeah, but the idea here is to keep oil off of my face. She informed me that she'd been using coconut oil for years. Well, no one could deny that my mom had good clear, not to mention young-skin, so I agreed to give it a trial run, even though I was skeptical.

I should mention here that I had tried oil cleansing - that is, washing my face with oil. I broke out really bad, and my face felt gross all the time. No way.

Ever since that day, I've had a little baby food jar of coconut oil sitting in the bathroom cabinet and I massage the smallest amount I can manage into my face after washing with goat's milk soap and warm water, and before applying my homemade mineral makeup (okay, so that last part doesn't happen more than twice a week ). I couldn't be happier with the results.

• No acne
• no oily feeling - the oil absorbs into the skin very quickly.

Why did it take me so long to learn that coconut oil is not just good for cooking and soap making, but a wonderful, antibacterial lotion? I don't know, but I'm sure glad I found out! You can read more about the health benifits of coconut oil Wellness Mama.

I don't feel very smart right now. We all know that you have to "strip" cloth diapers every once in a while, but for some reason, I guess I just had a brain glitch in that area.

Garrett's diapers, the ones we've been using for most of his life, were giving him terrible rashes. I couldn't figure out what was going on. At first, it was just if we used them over night. I assumed that was because of the lack of breathability in the PUL covers. Then he started getting a rash after several days of day-time cloth diapering... then it turned into a rash after one day. We used paper diapers along with various rash creams to clear things up each time, and I was ready to give up cloth diapering all together.

I decided that Garrett must be allergic to the micro-suede diaper liner because he does have sensitive skin. Now why I would think that he'd develop a sudden allergy after nearly two years of using these same diapers, I have no idea. I guess I've become a little jumpy about allergies.

I had always avoided the idea of stripping my diapers. Surely if I was careful to wash them properly they'd be fine, right? Stripping sounded so... involved. The instructions I'd read went something like, "lay them inside-down on the top rack of your dishwasher..." What?! I don't have a dishwasher.

Finally though, I got desperate. Something had to be done, so I went and looked up a bunch of different methods and chose the one I liked the best. Honestly, I was very skeptical, but hey, it was worth a try.

Turns out, it was ridiculously easy, and had nearly miraculous results. we haven't had a rash since. Not one. Except for on his inner thighs the day I let him wade around in the creek. Apparently wet PUL can give you quite a rug-burn.

How to Strip Cloth Diapers

Now, I'm not saying it's good for the diapers, but I'd rather be a little hard on the fabric once in a while, than not be able to use them at all, so here it is.

You'll need:

1. Dawn Dish liquid - original formula  (the blue stuff)
2. Bleach (I've heard that store brands don't work as well as Clorox)
3. Vinegar
4. A Washing Machine

Place all of your diapers in the wash machine, set it to the largest load possible, using hot water.

Add:

1 Tablespoon of Dawn

1/4-1/2 cup bleach

Let the diapers wash, then add 1 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle.

Rinse at least twice more (Note: you can use cold water for subsequent rinses), and continue rinsing the diapers until there are absolutely no more suds coming out.

Dry as normal.

It works! And my diapers didn't even come out of the wash with holes or bleach spots in them.

Well, we've been in the third trimester for a full month now. It's good to know that “the most miserable trimester” is one third of the way over. Besides, it makes us that much closer to meeting our baby.

Gabriel's been telling Garrett that were having a baby, which he thinks is great, but then Gabriel tells him he/she is in mommy’s tummy, and he just looks at Gabe like he has three eyes before going back to play with his cars.

Garrett loves babies - which can be kind of scary.

As Summer here at the farm gets busier and busier, my workouts become more and more sporadic. Once again, I only managed to squat twice last week. Once again, I plan to shoot for three times this week. Fortunately, again thanks to the warm weather, I'm still getting plenty of less formal exercise. Pushing a stroller sure isn't as much of a "piece of cake" as it used to be, which makes me feel better about counting it in with my exercise.

Monday:
Squat - 95 lbs 3x5
Bench press 75 lbs 3x5

Wednesday:
Squat - 100 lbs 3x5
Over head Press - 55 lbs 3x5
Shrugs - 45 lbs 2x5

As you can see, I finally added a third exercise. Woohoo! 45 lbs is a really light shrug, but that was just sort of a test drive to see how it went. I suppose I'll add 5 lbs per workout until I start getting some muscle soreness. Shrugs are supposed to help prevent delayed muscle tension when you're performing a lot of shoulder-tensing work. You know, like pumping 3lb dumbbells for half an hour or say, carrying 7 (ish) pound newborn around all the time. Here's hoping it works!

Heartburn

I tend to get a lot of heartburn during pregnancy which, not surprisingly becomes more of a nuisance the further along I get, so I thought it might be nice to share a few ways that I've found to control it. These may not work for everyone, but so far, they're working for me. I may have to update you over the next two months to let you know how it's going though!

• Look for your triggers - Pay attention to what you eat and what triggers your heartburn. For me, a big trigger is chocolate. Bummer for me, but from what I understand, that's a pretty common trigger.
• Whole foods - I haven't looked into it to find out exactly why, but I definitely notice a correlation between the type of food I eat in general, and how much heartburn I have. Keeping the refined foods out is a huge help.
• "Fasting" - Intermittent fasting is becoming something of a fad in numerous variations. It's not for everyone, (and I think some of the variations should be for no one), but I think it's been the single biggest factor in minimizing heartburn. I think if I stuck to it consistently, "IFing" might even eliminate it. Why? I think it's because it allows your body to deal with what's already in it, maybe even giving your digestive tract a rest before starting again with a "clean slate" so to speak. For me, I shoot for eating between the hours of 8-10:00 Am and 6:00 Pm, giving myself a "fasting window" of 14-16 hours. On those days when I stick to it, I have no heartburn.
•  digestive enzymes  - It's not always possible to "fast", whether because we have a dinner engagement with friends or family, or our schedule just gets out of whack, or whatever.  When that happens, Popping a few  digestive enzymes  works wonders. It's not an instant fix, but it does help. You may want to keep them up out of the sight of your kids though - mine thinks they're candy.

I remember the first time my mom made pineapple upside-down cake. Actually, I'm sure she'd made it before - she seemed to know what she was doing - but it must have been before my time. Anyway, I was quite thoroughly impressed with the results, being a pineapple lover and a cake lover (and an anything-gooey-dessert lover), but for some reason it maintained its status as a rarity in our home.

Well, we've had a can of pineapple rings taking up space in our pantry for a couple years now, so I decided to try resurrecting the recipe gluten-free style.

A problem I've had with many gluten-free cake and quick bread recipes is a tendency to sink in the middle and/or crumble when they're cooked in larger pans, so, having seen pineapple upside-down cupcakes on Pinterest numerous times, I decided it might be better to try that than an actual cake.

The results were successful, and quite a hit with hubby and Garrett (who refers to anything muffin-shaped merely as “cake!”)

The only drawback was having to cut down the pineapple slices to fit the muffin cups - not that Garrett and I weren't more than happy to, ah, dispose of them. we ended up with about 3/4 of a slice squished into each cup.

Pineapple Up-side Down Cupcakes

Topping:

1 can sliced pineapple
2T. Melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

Stir butter and brown sugar together.
Grease a muffin tin and divide brown sugar mixture evenly between the 12 cups.  Place one pinneapple ring in Bolton of each cup. You'll probably need to cut the ring to make it fit. Add half a marachino cherry to center of each ring if desired.

Cake:
1/3 cup butter
1 1/4 cup flour mix
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 t. Baking powder
1/2 t. Salt
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 egg
1 t. Vanilla

Mix first 5 ingredients together. Add juice, egg and vanilla. Beat well. Pour into muffin tin (as prepared above).

Bake at 350. For 15-20 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes. Loosen edges of each cake with a butter knife and turn into a wire rack. The tips should be flat, which may not look the prettiest when you take them out of the oven, but since they're going to be served “up-side down” that's a good thing!

Enjoy!

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Allergy Free Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday Cast Party

Image Credit

I've got this crazy little thing I do that keeps me from over spending.  It's something I've always done (depending on the circumstances), but until recently, haven't really been conscious of it. What made me think of it was an article I read which stated that touching an item makes it much more difficult to resist buying. It that true? Probably so. Once it's in your hand, it naturally goes from there into your cart... And then on to the cash register.

I'm sure most of us have bought things on impulse a time or two, only to ask ourselves a few days later, “why did I do that?” For me, this mostly happens with clothing.

I've been able to avoid a lot of that regret though, by putting the item I want in my cart to “think about it” and continuing on with my shopping, hitting the grocery section last to give myself plenty of time to make up my mind if I happen to be at a big box store such as Target.

Most of the time, I end up walking all the way back across the store (hey, it's good exercise!) and putting that cute dress  back on the rack from whence it came.

This happens a lot at goodwill with kitchen gadgetry that I want, but don't need or have space for in the kitchen. Although in this instance, it usually doesn't even end up out of the aisle before it gets put back on the shelf.

So yeah, touching it may make it hard to resist putting in the cart, but if you make yourself walk around with it for a while before checking out, you may just find the willpower to put it back after all.

So, it's quirky... maybe even weird, but it sure has saved my hide on a lot of impulse purchases.
 

Is it Tuesday again already?! Time flies when you're having fun I guess. Or when you're incredibly busy!

Truth be told, I hope the time keeps flying like this. Not that I'm not enjoying this pregnancy to the extent that I can, and not that I don't realize how difficult it may be to have both a toddler and a newborn, but nine weeks sure does seem like a long time to wait to finally get to meet our baby, and find out whether “it” is a he or she, and to hold him or her in our arms. And to chuckle at Garrett's interactions with his new sibling. If they're anything like being around his newest cousin, it could be amusing.

On to workouts. In a way, they were pretty wimpy last week. There's only two workouts, and I only managed 3 sets of squats on the second one. I'm thinking seriously of switching from 5x5 to 3x5 because the former is really wearing me out! I did hit a new personal record of 120 pounds on the first set though.

Friday, on a whim, I decided to do some cleaning/reorganizing in our cabin preparatory to turning it into a farm-store kind of thingy. It ended up being a massive project in which I couldn't leave well enough alone and moved a lot of furniture and feed/seed bags around (hooray for strength training!).

So, no workout Friday. Not a formal workout anyway.

Monday:
Squat - 115lbs 5x5
Bench press - 70lbs 5x5

Wednesday:
Squat - 120lbs 1x5 100lbs 2x5
Overhead press - 50lbs 5x5

I had a visit from my midwife late last week - how awesome is it that she makes house calls?!

First, she asked me if I was eating enough. Uh... Yeah. Gabriel commented that the only way I could pack in more calories was to start eating (more) junk food. Yes folks, I eat as much as my husband.

My weight gain is fine at 17 pounds up, but with Garrett, I'd gained at least 30 pounds at this point, so I guess that caused some concern. What can I say? I'm lifting weights yes, which is building muscle, which is burning calories, yadda, yadda, but it's also keeping me in good enough shape that I'm also able to be a lot more active with this pregnancy - though I am noticing that pushing Garrett in his stroller up and down hills is really leaving me winded these days! Those things combined I guess, with eating mostly whole foods is keeping the weight down a bit. I still expect to balloon at any moment though!

She (the midwife) took measurements and listened to the heartbeat and was satisfied that everything was going well. She said at this rate, that she expects an average-sized baby. That's good to know! No ten pounders for me please.

Also, I'm measuring a week behind. I asked her if she'd ever noticed that moms who measure behind schedule, tend to deliver late. She said no. There are a number of factors that could be causing a difference of one centimeter (which is the case with me), the baby’s position being the most likely culprit. If the mom is consistently more than one cm behind, it's usually due to a miscalculated due date. I'd be shocked and lose all faith in fertility awareness methods if my due date is off.

After seeing homemade fruit gummy recipes all over Pinterest for a while, I really wanted to try them - after all, a child's life is not complete without fruit gummy snacks, right? But I never did make any, because a). We don't buy fruit juice very often, and b). Even if we did, we don't really want Garrett guzzling it. Fruit juice being full of fructose, it's kind of like drinking sugar.

Anyway, I was browsing a blog linky one day and ran across this recipe for using kombucha to make gummy snacks. Don't they look beautiful?

Photo From Homemade Mommy

We aren't brewing kombucha right now, but we did recently start making water kefir, so after reading the recipe, and comments from various people who'd tried it, I decided to give it a shot with my own modifications. You could use fruit juice instead of keifr or kombucha, and eliminate the honey, but using a fermented, probiotic drink makes these extra awesome - and cuts down on the volume of sugary juice being consumed.

Mine aren't nearly as photogenic - or maybe I just need to use a better camera.

I used unsweetened cranberry juice in mine (you know that's sour!), but with only three Tablespoons of honey, and the kefir which isn't sweet, Garrett loved them!

Kefir Gummy Snacks

1 1/14 cup water kefir
1 cup fruit juice or puree
2-3 T. raw honey
6 T. plain gelatin (I use beef gelatin)

Heat fruit juice/puree in a sauce pan with the gelatin until the gelatin is dissolved. Let cool until still warm, but no longer hot. If it's hot, it kills the good stuff in the kefir, if it's room temp. it solidifies.

Stir in the honey and kefir. Pour into molds or an 8x8 pan. Don't worry about greasing or lining the pan, they'll come out when they're cold.

I had some molds from my wedding and baby shower mint-making days, so I decided to make "cute" gummies.

Turns out, Garrett can eat them faster than I can pop them out, and I can't actually "pop" them out because the molds are too small and detailed. From here on out, we're using a plain old square pan.

Refrigerate for half an hour or so, cut, and dump out of mold. Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

I'm looking forward to trying these with peach and/or strawberry puree, lemon juice, and maybe even with no juice at all!

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Allergy Free Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday Cast Party

We've barely gotten any gardening done this spring. I found myself stressing about it for a while. After all, we're supposed to be growing as much if our own feed as we can, but then I realized, it's okay.

This year is just not our year for gardening. In fact, for us, putting more of our (limitted) energy into gardening this year might be what Gabriel calls "penny-wise, pound-foolish". On the face of it, it seems to be the best way to conserve resources, But in the grand scheme of things this year, with all that's going on, I'm not so sure.

A dream come true? Maybe so!

Our beef and dairy goat businesses are finally taking off. We've been working toward this for a long time, and part of me thinks that the reason it's been so slow going is because we've been stretching ourselves too thin. I think it's high time we slowed down (in a manner of speaking) to focus on just a few things, and really make them work.

This year, for the first time, we have enough product to commit to farmer’s markets, We're able to participate in our county’s local food tour this month, and it looks like we might be able to set up a sort of farm store for customers to come buy directly from the farm while taking the opportunity to visit the animals and enjoy the country side.

These are really exciting developments for us. A dream come true!

I find myself getting excited at the possibility of the farm actually generating a livable income. Up to now, we're stretching every single dollar to the best of our ability, hoping that we can make this happen before it becomes necessary to look for a job away from the farm. And now, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.

These last few weeks have been so incredibly busy. I cross one thing off of my to-do list, only to add three more. (It's good to be busy).

Tomorrow is our first farmer’s market day, and a meeting for the farm tour participants, our community choir performance (I had no idea we would be this busy when I joined back in January). We've spent almost the entire week gearing up for those three things.

A scrumptious section of our tiny garden

As busy as we've been, I can't imagine the strain that trying to keep up with a large garden would be. We do have a few of the basics that we’re enjoying the fruit of, such as lettuce and onions, but here it is, the second week of May, and we never did get around to planting potatoes, and only a few tomatoes.

This summer, with the new baby in tow, I think I'll be really glad of that.

This spring has been so cold, it's hard to believe that it's already time for the summer markets to open, but it is!

Maybe we won't be enjoying home-canned marinara sauce this winter, but I bet there'll be other fruits of our Labors evident.

How was your week? Mine was mostly good, with a somewhat significant downer in that I put my upper back out Friday, which is why you only see two workouts this week - loading a weighted barbell on top of a misaligned spine isn't such a great idea. Fortunately, I'm married to a massage therapist, and with his help, everything is now back where it's supposed to be (I think).

Other than that, I felt like we had a pretty productive week. We got a beef back from The slaughter house, I made several batches if soap, and made a lot of progress with our fledgling dairy herd-share side business. That's been fun.

So, the rundown for last week’s workouts was:

Tuesday:
Squat -  105 lbs (5x5)
Bench press - 65 lbs (5x5)

Thursday:
Squat: 110 lbs (5x5)
Overhead press: 55 lbs (5x5)

Whew! I tell ya, that overhead press is tough! I'm not really sure what is considered “good” on that, so this may be laughable, but I think 55 pounds is about all I can do for 5 sets of 5. I guess we'll find out later this week. Gulp (j/k)

So, last week I said I was going to add in some other exercises to replace the deadlifts and rows. Well, that didn’t happen (obviously). Mostly I guess because I'm lazy, but also partly because I'm not sure what to add. I want compound exercises rather than isolation moves (such as curls). Gabriel suggested shrugs to replace the rows.

This is going to sound hypocritical after all I've said about bulk not happening that easily, and not worrying about looks, but focusing on strength and health but... The last thing I want to do is build big traps, so I'm hesitant to try shrugs. On the other hand, strengthening the traps might do a world of good for when I'm holding the baby all the time. I still remember all the shoulder and neck tension that came with constantly holding Garrett. >shudder<

Yeah, maybe I should incorporate shrugs. Starting with 2 sets of five perhaps?

Oh, can I claim goat milking as an exercise? Grip strengthening, ya know?

I found a book at goodwill the other day called The Complete Book of Running for Women. Running seems simple enough, but so does everything at first brush, and since I've done a fair amount of running in the past - okay, a little bit of running, and hope to complete a half marathon in the future, I decided to buy it and get studied up. Should be interesting. Hey, if I can't run right now, I can at least read about it, right?

I've argued against running in the past, and still do. Just so you know, nothing about that has changed. I think that if you're going to choose an activity for the sole purpose of fitness, weight training is the way to go. There's a bazilion reasons, some of which I've covered in the past, but there's also just plain old determination to reach a long held goal. For me, that's a half marathon.

Will it ever really happen with two kids in tow? Who knows. There's no doubt that a set of weights out under the carport is more convenient than having to find someone who can watch the kids while I spend an hour or two running. Not to mention heavy lifting has much more practical application.

Wow, sounds like I'm working hard to talk myself out of it.

Check it out! Our baby is fully developed (albeit skinny )
Lets hope he/she is also up-side-down

In other news, I feel like the baby has taken over my entire abdomen. Seriously, if I bend over, I get what I think is the baby’s posterior stuck up under my ribs, meanwhile his/her head (I think) is poking into the opposite hip bone, and arms and legs are pretty much everywhere. Oh, and when the kiddo starts moving around, everyone in the room can see it. I'm sure it's a little disconcerting to see someone's stomach jump around like that. Now there's an amusing thought.

Wow, this page filled up with rambling fast! Time for me to be off cutting and labeling soap.

TTFN!

It's funny how having a toddler around, eating everything in the house makes you think twice about what you have around for him to eat. take pancakes for instance. Sure, I've always known that all that sugar and flour and stuff wasn't really good for us, but then Garrett comes along and suddenly I'm thinking, I don't want Garrett eating that junk. 

Then a few weeks ago, I was perusing a blog linky, and found a recipe for three ingredient, grain-free banana pancakes. I honestly thought there was no way it could work, but I could always doctor the batter up with some extra flour and baking powder if the first pancake failed. 

Oh, but it didn't fail. It's great to be able to feel good about feeding Garrett one of his favorite foods (second only to waffles - and trust me, you don't want to put these things in the waffle iron). I didn't have any coconut flour, so I used almond flour the first time, the second time, I just used a little rice flour, we've added a little extra flavor with cinnmon and/or vanilla depending on the cook's mood, and next up on my experimental list is peanut butter, because we all know that banana anything is better with peanut butter, right? I haven't tried it without any kind of flour (yet) but I've seen numerous versions of this recipe using only banana and egg. 

From The Tasty Alternative. One day, I'll learn to take photographs like that.
(Don't laugh)

Adding more flour does make these pancakes easier to handle - especially if you like to make big pancakes, but if you ad a lot of flour, you'll want to add some sugar or honey to sweeten the batter, and since this is supposed to be a healthy pancake, that kind of defeats the purpose. 

Healthy Banana Pancakes

2 Ripe Bananas
2 Eggs
3 T. flour
1/2 t. Baking Powder

Thouroughly mash or blend bananas. Add eggs and beat (or blend) well. Mix flour and baking powder together and add to banana/egg mix. Blend well.

Heat a skillet over medium heat with a little oil. Pour our pancakes in 1/4 cup rounds and fry on either side until golden. Butter and drizzle with honey or maple syrup.

Enjoy guilt-free!