Easy Sweet Potatoes

Image Credit: ForwardCom

Over at Mary Ann's House, I read a post about making sweet potatoes in the Crockpot. We eat sweet potatoes several times a week and I hate to bake them in the oven for an hour when it's 90+ degrees out.

What a brilliant idea to put them in the Crockpot!!! Here's how dinner worked Monday night:

• Sunday night: I put a frozen roast in the Crockpot on low
• Monday morning: cooked sweet potatoes in the Crockpot before we went to the pool. I also put frozen green beans in a pan.
• Monday night: warmed up the roast and sweet potatoes. Sauteed the {defrosted} green beans in bacon grease. Dinner was easy and took all of 10 minutes to warm up.

Note: each Crockpot is different...I cook 2-3 sweet potatoes at a time and it takes about 1 hour 30 minutes on high.

This post has been linked to FoodRenegade:

Budgeting Principle: Letting Money Sit

Christmas is about six months away. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, how much money have you put in savings?

There was a quote buried in a forum post over at YNAB that I loved. They said:

That's teaching the skill of letting money sit.

Such an important principle that we need to be teaching to our children.

If you spend money at Christmas time, you need to have a plan in place that allows you to  have the freedom to celebrate without stress. Personally, we try to put a lot more than we need into our Christmas account so we don't have to worry about extra food costs, gas, gifts, etc. Definitely helps with the stress!!!

Paleo For Women

Image Credit: gobran111

An article worth reading:

Women Losing Weight: How I’m a Liar, 

and Why My Method of Weight Loss is Actually Hard as Hell

I really like the first comment:

 I came to realize that you cannot eat toxic food “intuitively” and self-regulate your appetite. When you’re eating things that are not only harming you, but are truly addictive (like wheat and sugar), what hope is there to “eat sensibly”? Discovering Paleo clicked the key piece of information into my understanding and has left me with a blueprint for getting to my healthiest for the long term.

I love how her focus is on being healthy instead of losing weight.

How to Get Your Kids to Help Part 2

Here is the look of .... ummmm.... surprise? when using Jennifer's idea to get kids to help around the house.

Our conversation went something like this:

Me: You kinda got hosed buddy...you sure had to do a lot more than your sister.
Son: I know - it's not...{I interrupted him so he couldn't finish}
Me: Thanks for not complaining about it.
Daughter: Well, at least you didn't have to humiliate yourself and say "My mommy is so cool" in a mouse voice.

I laughed so hard I almost cried! Oh the simple things...

Good vs. Great: Kids in the Kitchen

As a homemaker, my job is to manage my home. It doesn't mean that I do everything, it means that I make sure everything {that is important} gets done.

Menu planning got a lot easier for me this summer since I have my daughter cooking on Tuesdays and my son cooking on Thursdays. Kitchen clean up on the other hand, got a lot more time consuming. I'm teaching them to clean up as they go, but their level of clean is significantly different than mine.

Good VS Great

I can choose to have a clean kitchen {good} or I can raise kids who can create a menu plan and cook {great}. If I harp on them about every little thing they are doing wrong and/or different than I do, then we will not enjoy this experience at all.

In fact, I may teach them to hate to cook. Cheers to sticky floors!!!

More posts on teaching your kids:

1. letting go
2. help around the house
3. laundry

Judge Johnlyn

Image Credit: CreationC

While reading different blogs this week I came across three new commandments for you:

1. Thou shalt not wear a bikini.
2. Thou shalt not read romance books.
3. Thou shalt not drink alcoholic beverages.

There were really long explanations to support these new commandments. As I read the posts I couldn't get over the fact how much these imperfect people were judging others. I can totally relate because I judge others waaaaayyyy too much. My friend used to say:

Judge Johnlyn, we don't need you in the courtroom today.

All those gray areas in the Bible? You know the areas that people that call themselves Christians cannot agree on? Apparently people spend hours and hours trying to convince people that they are right about gray areas in the Bible.

It seems to me that we're Christians of convenience. Here...let me pull out one Bible verse that supports my theory.

Why aren't we focused on the cross and what it represents?

If you have established a relationship with someone and you believe that they are sinning...by all means PRAY about it. If you know for a fact that God wants you to speak with them about it then, by all means, talk to them about it.

Note to self: if not, then SHUT UP and focus on yourself and all the sinning that you are doing. There's something in the Bible about taking the log or plank out of one's own eye before looking at the speck in another person's eye, but there I go, pulling out a Bible verse just to support my theory.

Baptism

My 13 year old getting baptized.

This mini rant was prompted when I attended a baptism this weekend. Two different people had heart wrenching testimonies.  Nobody told me I would need a box a case of tissues. The only way that these people learned about the power of God's love was through a group at our church called Celebrating Recovery. The amazing people in that group had profound affects on these two individuals. It wasn't the people telling them how screwed up they were, it was the people sharing how God loves them no matter how much they mess up.

I got to thinking about often I DON'T do that (more tissues anyone?) How often I look at other's mistakes without knowing anything about their background. Isn't the climax of the Bible something like this... Jesus dying on the cross, saying "please forgive them for they know not what they do."... rising from the dead ....conquering death?

Steps to Change

So how do I change? How do I fix the bad habits that I have? Where do I go from here?

Image Credit: Poppy Thomas-Hill

Mahatma Ghandi said:

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

Magnesium

Now Magnesium Citrate

I have been taking magnesium to help with an annoying eye twitch and a few other things. Lately I've had some trouble taking the magnesium citrate so I stopped taking it for a while. Sure enough the annoying eye twitch came back. I found this at WestonAPrice.org:

When excess calcium enters the cells because of insufficient magnesium, muscle contraction is sustained for too long, and we suffer, for example, twitches and tics in mild cases. When magnesium deficiency becomes chronic, we suffer the symptoms of heart disease such as angina pectoris, hypertension and arrhythmia, or the spasms and contractions characteristic of asthma, migraine headache or painful menstrual cramping.

A long time ago I bought some magnesium oil spray. It burns burns burns when I put it on so I hadn't been using it (doesn't burn my husband or son when they use it.) When the magnesium citrate stopped working I decided to tough out the burn because it seemed like a better alternative than the eye twitch.

It was burning so bad that I wiped the spray off. Shortly after that my eye stopped twitching. This revelation is FREAKING ME OUT!!! I just cannot believe that by spraying on the magnesium oil and wiping it off a few minutes later could help the eye twitch, but I've tried it repeatedly and over and over again I have the same results.

I always thought "those weird people" that claimed we are ingesting what we put on our skin were crazy. I thought they just wanted me to buy their products...ummmm I may have to rethink my position on this. CRAZY!!!

You can read more about magnesium deficiency over at MarksDailyApple. I know that it has helped people with migraine issues as well as muscle spasms at night.

Iherb

I buy a lot of my vitamins from Iherb because I've found they have the best prices. If you would like to use my affiliate code EDE958  you can get a discount the first time you order from them.

This post has been shared at FoodRenegade:

Love/Hate Relationships with Flylady's Routines

I've mentioned a time or two {or a million} just how much I love Flylady.

Perfectionism: A Little Background

I didn't know I was a perfectionist until I "met" Flylady. I wouldn't do anything around the house until I could do it perfectly. Oh how I didn't like my husband when he would make my clean and shiny floors dirty.

Now, mind you, HE is the one who kept the house picked up all.the.time. I was the one who would spend HOURS making it shiny. But it was still a mess because I didn't pick up all.the.time like he did.

Routines

Thankfully I found Flylady and realized that my husband was onto something! For the past month I've let my routines slide. I've been working on automating my Clothe-A-Kid project, updating my blog, enjoying having my husband home more, etc. etc. etc.

My husband mentioned the other day that our son does better if he has routines. Little light bulb moment for me...so do I!!! So I spent a few hours (dang perfectionism) creating fun worksheets for my routines. Monday was a holiday and messed me up, Tuesday my husband got off work early and messed me up, Wednesday the kids and I volunteered at the food pantry and messed me up,  Thursday I had a CAK project meeting and messed me up.

See all those "messed me ups?" That's stinkin' thinkin' as Flylady would say! Would I rather do my routines or hang out with my husband? Would I rather volunteer at the food pantry (with my kids!) or do my routines, etc. etc.

Here's the love/hate part about routines:

My routines show me how much time I have left in my day for other things. 

Having a decently clean/"company ready" home is important to me...but that doesn't take much time once I have the clutter under control and really basic routines in place. After I'm done with an item on my to do list I draw a smiley face. I put a dash through it if I didn't do it or don't need to do it (ie. it rained so I don't need to water the lawn.)

For now, if I have more smiley faces than dashes, my routines are working. Baby steps will get me there. Because I *really* don't want to miss out on puddle jumping (even if I'm only taking pictures):

This post has been linked to Works for Me Wednesday.