La Ney Ferme Tour

A few days ago, my mom, a few family friends, my grand parents, and I got to tour a local veggie farm (that's what I call a farm that doesn't have animals) called La Ney Ferme.

It was neat to see how different ways of planing plants can effect their growth.  For instance, he had some plants planted inside mini "caves" or "tunnels" and others planted in normal garden beds.  The plants in the tunnel things grew quicker and faster than the crops growing outside.  It was quite interesting to see how the peas grown in the tunnel were about 3 feet taller than the peas growing outside... and they were even all planted at the same time!!!

My mom gets a lot of produce from the farm we toured.  I'm going to have to say that the strawberries are so good when they are fresh!!!

It's amazing how the "good stuff" at the store tastes absolutely terrible compared to fresh produce from a farm.

Question of the day:
What has been your favorite tour you've ever participated in?

Mine:
There is this ride at Disney World called Living with the Land (sounds boring right?).  You get in a boat contraption thing and it talks about plants and "living with the land/living green".  Anywho, it has an amazing garden place where they grow plants in different ways to see how somethings might grow better than others.  But my mom was able to get us into a behind the scene tour of the place it was absolutely AMAZING!!!

Here are a few pictures from that tour:

Brownies and Ice Cream

Chocolate is the answer to all problems.  

Well... almost all problems.

Ice cream solves the rest of them.

Anyways, as a lot of you know, chocolate is my love.  It is what keeps me sane or insane.  The latter would happen if chocolate suddenly stopped existing.

Yes, chocolate is my love and life.  So, what does a chocolate lover like me do when she is craving chocolate like there is no tomorrow?

She makes Brownies of course!

And to add to the magic of chocolate she makes ice cream too...  

As long as it's not green smoothie "ice cream."

But wait!  What about the Food Nazi dilemma?  (I'm sure some of you were wondering about that).  Since we are all trying to be "good," we took a little inspiration from the Body for Life program and recipe book.  But of course, we had to tweak it a little to fit what we had in the pantry.

Heehee... I love chocolate...  And ice cream..

Brownies:
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup xylitol
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
6 egg whites, beaten
1/4 cp unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly coat an 8"x8" baking dish with cooking spray.
In a large mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour-salt).
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients.  Pour wet mixture into flour mixture and stir until just well combined.
Pour bater into baking dish and bake until edges spring back when you touch them gently (center will be soft), about 15-20 minutes.
Allow to cool and then cut into 12-16 pieces.

Ice Cream:
1/2 cup almond milk*
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
2 frozen bananas, sliced

Blend almond milk and protein powder together.   Add sliced bananas and blend on high speed until smooth and creamy.
*NOTE:  You may need more almond milk, depending on your protein powder.  We used SunWarrior Warrior Blend and it really congeals liquid, so we used 1 cup of almond milk.

Question of the day:

What food keeps you sane?

Me:

CHOCOLATE!!!

Chocolate Pudding

Trick question for all of you chocolate lovers:

WHO HAS EVER BEEN ABLE TO SAY THAT THEY HAD CHOCOLATE PUDDING AND ICE CREAM FOR DINNER?

ME!!!

Yes, that is right.  My food Nazi of a mother actually let me have pudding and ice cream... for dinner.  Now, I know that you are probably wondering what alien from Mars abducted Mom. 

But I am here to tell you that she really did not get abducted.  Nor was she drugged unsuspectedly.

However, there was a catch.  My pudding was healthy (but still yummy)...  As for the ice cream, it was a green smoothie gone wrong.  Fortunately it was NOT an avocado-artichoke smoothie.  It was my favorite frozen fruit mix with a bit of butter lettuce.  It was yummy, but it was the consistency of ice cream.  That's why I can say I had ice cream for dinner. :)

Back to the pudding (I LOVE PUDDING!)

Non-Dairy Chocolate Pudding Recipe:

1 lb silken tofu

4 Tbsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 Tbsp xylitol (or another 1/4 tsp stevia)

3/4 tsp stevia

1 banana (could be frozen)

Put into a blender and blend until smooth.  Refrigerate until creamy, and thick like pudding.

(If you need to, add a little bit of almond/coconut milk to the mixture.  My mom and I did that, but it ended up being very runny.)

Question of the day:

Have you ever had dessert for dinner?  If so, what did you have?  And if you haven't, what would you like to have?

Me:

I had pudding and "ice cream".  And, I've had dessert crepes for dinner!  YUM!!!

Conch Shell Blowing

In the hectic days of my life, I was finally able to find time to play with my cousin Bekah, and, on that particular day, we decided it would be fun to try to blow a conch horn...

In all honesty, I failed miserably...

So did my cousin Bekah.  I felt a lot better when she, too, was struggling with blowing the conch.  

But my happiness was extinguished when my dear, sweet mother graciously proved that she could, in fact, blow the conch.  I guess it helps that she was a music major and knew how to play all the brass instruments... and the conch.  Is that really considered a band instrument?!

After a short tutoring session, I finally got how to do it but had a severe headache afterwards...

That was fun...

(*Cue sarcasm*)

Owwww!!!!

So go ahead and watch me make a fool out of myself...

ENJOY!!!

Me playing the conch

Question of the day:

Have you ever tried to play the conch...

Or, if you haven't, would you like to?

Ribbon Bows and Flowers

WOOHOO!!!

I finished my bow hanger.  AND to top it off, I made some ribbon bows and flowers to hang on it!

Hehe!

I'm so happy!

Anywho, Angela and I did get a hot glue gun.  My life couldn't be more perfect... Unless, I had a big tub of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top and a big peppermint stick on the side...  THEN my life would be absolutely perfect.

Ok, so it wouldn't look exactly like this.

It would be WAY bigger but still, you probably get the general idea.

The bows were pretty easy...  Thanks to a wonderful thing called Pinterest and Google Search, they make life so much easier.

Question of the day:

What is one thing that would 'perfect' your life (please be creative and NOT serious).

Mine:

The above when I talked about my big tub of hot chocolate, whipped cream, and the big stick of peppermint.

Bow Hanger Head Board

So today, I was going to blog about learning how to crochet or knit.  But, after about two hours of trying I finally gave up...  It also didn't help that my mom doesn't know what she is doing either.

After wasting thirty minutes of my life trying to figure out what to blog about, an idea came to me.  I can make hair bows!!!  I got out a huge box of ribbon and went strait to work.  I had put together some really cute bows and then...

SMACK!

Reality slapped me hard in the face...

Our hot glue guns were missing!

I searched the whole house looking for our two hot glue guns but to no avail.  So, I decided to make a bow hanger instead.

It's great because I didn't need hot glue.  All I needed was cardboard, paint and paintbrushes, and good painting abilities.

Check, check, and not really.  I mean, I'm okay at painting but the brush and I don't get along... I still struggle with painting a smiley face!!!

So instead of painting from the heart, I sketched out what I was going to do and then painted it.

Hopefully I can borrow a hot glue gun tomorrow so then I can make some cute bows to hang on it.

Question of the day:
Have you ever gotten a great idea and in the middle of accomplishing it had reality smack you hard in the face?

Mine:
Durrr!
Good thing I was able to think of something else to blog about.

Random question of the day:
If you could change one thing in this world what would it be?
(I don't want a serious answer, I want something along the lines of: turning everyone's skin green or something ridiculous like that.  NOT something serious like: No more cancer.)

Tie Dye

Hello earthlings!!!

So yesterday, I finally did something to make up for like a whole month of no blogging!!!

So, Guess what I did?

*Drum roll*

I did Tie Dye!

Tie Dye is where you dye your shirt and make super duper cool designs on it.

It is a great way to recycle dingy, old white clothing!  

All of a sudden, those old articles of clothing turn into vibrant swirls of color 

instead of a funky shade of grayish-white.

I had a blast Tie Dying a few of my shirts... Maybe I should go to D.I. or Savers and get all of the white shirts I can find... 

TIE DYE PARTY!!!  

That would be really, really fun. :)  

Anyone want to join me?

What you need to Tie Dye:

Dye

A white... something (a shirt, shorts, sun dress, whatever)

Rubber bands

A bucket

4 quarts water

What to do:

1.  Pour 4 quarts of water into your bucket and soak your white shirt (or whatever you're tie dying) for 30 minutes.

2.  After that long wait, wring the water out of your soon-to-be-dyed something.

3.  Now it's time for my favorite part: designing your shirt and dying it!

If you don't know any designs then that's ok.  I found a site that shows how to make a lot of different designs.  I did not use that site because I had a tie dying kit.  I used bottles of dye and squirted the dye onto the material instead of dunking it in buckets of dye.  I like the squirt bottle method because it gave me a lot more control over where the dye went.

4.  Allow to dry on grass.  If you don't, you may end up accidentally dying something you are not supposed to... like the concrete surrounding an unnamed basketball court...

Oops...

Sorry Mom and Dad!

Question of the day:

Have you ever tie dyed before?

If not, would you like to?

And if you have, what is your favorite design?