Cover of Little Women (Collector’s Series)
Saturday with no promoting on my part, the girlie pies looked through our movie stash and chose to watch Little Women
a la Winona Ryder and Christian Bale
The boy fell asleep listening to Yo Yo Ma performing Bach’s cello suites.
to borrow a phrase from a friend:
“Boom! goes the dynamite”
(Which I’m assuming means something like: “Hot Dang! I’m Awesome” and “My sneaky plan worked!” all rolled into one.)
Baby Dumpling is saying lots of cute things right now.
When she sees someone else eating something she wants, she reaches for it, saying, “num num num num.”
When she’s happy, she toddles all around the house saying, “gabby gabba gabby dagabbada.”
She loves to rock baby dolls.
It is always fun for me to see how each of my children are different and like different things. That old nature versus nurture debate always interested me. I definitely think that some things you are born with. Only 2 of my 5 daughters really like playing with baby dolls. Another prefers puzzles, another is always creating elaborate games and props to go with them, and the other girl is always talking (loudly) about what would you think of this or that?
The dolly that Baby Dumpling is holding is one I made 2 years ago. We had a big blizzard that trapped us in our house for a week, but we still had electricity. An unsual occurrence here in southwest Missouri where a big storm is often more ice than snow.
The girlie pies and I made 3 dolls using the Prairie Flowers Doll Pattern & Tutorial from By Hook or by Hand. It’s a very thorough tutorial with lots of pictures.
We used freezer paper to trace the pattern and ironed it right onto an old sheet to make the doll’s bodies (We were snowed in, I had to use fabric available!)
The sheet turned out to be a mistake in the long run because the fabric has torn across the doll’s arms and legs and at the necks. What do you all use when you make dolls? Perhaps the sheet would have been okay had it not already been so old?
I crocheted little caps for the dolls which we tied fringe all the way around to make their hair. I sewed the wigs to the doll’s heads with invisible thread.
Two of the girls chose for me to embroider their doll’s faces and one chose to color the face. 
It was fun to let each girl choose the fabric scraps for her doll’s shoes. Peach Pie’s doll is the one with the belly button. Pumpkin Pie is the one who chose to draw her own face, different from the pattern. 
We used an old American Girl Doll pattern reduced to 70% for the dresses and they look so pretty! (Specifically it is Josephine’s brown dress but with short sleeves.) They each chose the fabric for their doll’s dress as well, and here is where I had to bite my tongue. I wanted the switch 2 of the dresses to match the shoes, but the girls didn’t take the shoe color into consideration at all. I told myself, it’s their doll, let them choose. But it was hard.
I never mind snow days when we still have electricity to run the internets and the sewing machine!
Julia: “Mom, what do you get for your birthday?”
Me: “Hugs and kisses from girls that I love.”
Julia (giggling with excitment) : “I’m a girl.”
I have reasons to make a change:
**I feel nauseous after I eat.
**My mom had cancer when she was 37 and I am turning 34 next month.
**I’m struggling with low energy & dramatic mood swings.
**My kids need to eat more vegetables.
**I’d like to lose weight.
I have history: I grew up eating healthy.
**Whole Wheat: My dad made me eat cracked wheat mush nearly every day for breakfast whether I wanted to or not (on Saturdays mom made whole wheat pancakes.) Any kind of baked goods, my mom made with 100% whole wheat flour that she ground in her electric wheat mill. Bread, rolls, pasta, cookies- all 100% whole wheat.
**No Sugar: Mom only used honey for sweetening things like cookies. When she made pancakes, she would make a little syrup on the stove boiling honey & water together.
**Lots of vegetables: Most of what we ate either came from the garden or it was a kind of dried legume. When we had meat, it was a small part of the meal–a little hamburger in gravy to go over mashed potatoes. The only time I ever saw a chunk of meat on the table was Thanksgiving Day and Christmas day. Those days we had roast turkey, although one year, I remember going to Grandma Bennion’s house and she had made some kind of a baked brisket. It was so good. On the menu for dinner at the Hansen house depended on the season.
Early spring: Asparagus soup or Broccoli soup; lettuce
Late spring: boiled potatoes with cream sauce & peas; steamed green beans; milk; cantaloupe
Summer: tomato & cucumber salad; mashed potatoes; corn on the cob; milk; or garlic & parmesan cheese coleslaw; watermelon
Fall: split pea soup; bread & butter; milk;
Winter: home-canned tomatoes poured over rice & homemade cheese; milk
The eating healthy train is derailed:
Then I left home to go to college. I ate the cafeteria and reveled in the glorious bounty of meat and gravy, white flour pasta, cookies, pudding, and cake.
I gained 10 pounds.
Then I went to basic training for the army. I ate in the Dining Facility. Everything they gave me, I ate. I was so worried about having enough fuel to work with. I didn’t eat syrup on my pancakes though–I couldn’t stomach that much sugar in the morning. I would pour the strawberry yogurt we got on my pancakes in place of syrup. Saved me time anyway.
I gained 10 more pounds. But to be fair, a lot of it was probably muscle since I went from not being able to do a single pushup to being able to pump out 42 in 2 minutes.
Back on track for a little while:
When I got back to college, I suddenly couldn’t stomach the cafeteria food anymore. I still had to eat at the cafeteria (since I was living in the dorms) but I switched to omelets for breakfast and bagels & salad for lunch and dinner. I just could not bring myself to eat all those meaty, gravy, fatty foods. I lost 15 pounds, but I’ve felt guilty about it for a long time–that I “starved” myself skinny.
Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized: I didn’t starve myself at all. I just went back to eating like I did at home as a girl, or as close to it as I could at the cafeteria. I chose to eat what didn’t make me feel sick: vegetables. The salads I ate were not just a bit of wimpy lettuce–the glorious thing about a cafeteria salad bar is all the chopped vegetables you want, and you don’t have to be the one who chopped them. My salads were a plateful of lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumbers and mushrooms and green peppers with chopped boiled egg and sunflower seeds and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots drenched in ranch dressing and cheddar cheese. There is nothing starving about that!
Marriage (in other words, keeping the Man happy):
About 2 weeks after our marriage, the Man of the House asked me, “When are we going to have meat for dinner?”
I was confused. “What are you talking about? I made chicken soup this week, pizza, hamburger gravy and mashed potatoes. All those things have meat.”
He said, “No I mean a chunk of meat.”
I did not know how to cook a chunk of meat. But I had The Joy of Cooking and 2 Relief Society cookbooks full of cream of mushroom soup casserole recipes. I learned how to cook pot roast, country fried steak, pork chops, and 5 kinds of chicken. After 2 weeks of eating a chunk of meat every day, I decided our budget couldn’t handle that much meat. Surely people didn’t eat like this all the time?
But a fundamental shift had occurred in my thinking. I no longer thought, “What am I cooking for dinner?” I thought “What meat am I cooking for dinner?” If there wasn’t meat in it, the Man of the House insisted that it wasn’t a “hearty” meal.
I did manage over time to shift some of his opinions. I made homemade cinnamon & raisin swirled bread and gradually, week by week, increase the amount of whole wheat flour in it until he liked to eat whole wheat bread. He insisted that there wasn’t a difference between margerine and butter. I only used butter. A month later at his mom’s house, he put margerine on his bread, took a bite and made an icky face. “What’s this?” he asked me. “Oh, that’s margerine,” I said, probably a little too smugly.
I reduced the amount of meat I cooked as much as I could, using only 1/4lb of hamburger per quart of spaghetti sauce and making things like stir fry that had lots of veggies. But my thinking was still, “What meat am I cooking for dinner?”
I’ve blamed the weight I’ve put on in the last 13 years on 6 pregnancies, but I think it had a lot to do with all the meat and all the desserts my husband wanted me to cook and my inability to not eat just one serving of said dessert.
Everybody is ready for a change:
The Man of the House has gradually come to his own realizations about eating healthy. He knows that the less processed a food is, the better for us it is. He likes to eat spinach, kale, and bok choy. And now, he is wanting to feel healthier too.
The Change: 4 changes for 3 weeks:
**Green Drinks. The plan is for the adults to drink 1 quart of green drink and for the kids to drink 1 cup to a pint of green drink every day. Here is my recipe for now:
2 1/2 cups water
6 cups kale or spinach or beet greens (I’m working up the courage to try comfrey)
1/2 tsp truvia
1/8 of a lemon (peel & all)
2-3 cups frozen fruit
1-2 small apples (sometimes)
Blended in my wimpy Walmart special blender.
I won’t go into all the reasons why this is good for you. Suffice to say, we are getting more raw veggies than we were before by a long shot. Kale & spinach are both packed with all kinds of nutrients.
I bought The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw. Much of what she said about how you should eat reminded me of what I grew up eating. It was good to have facts to show the Man of the House and the more I read about the nutrients in raw food, the more I realized how much I had been worrying about cancer. Now I know what to do about it.
**Less Cow milk. Being the daughter of a dairy man, I grew up on the gospel of milk is the best food on the planet. But after I read the research, I decided it might not be so. I stopped drinking milk ( I was drinking a gallon a week- more than twice what the rest of the family put together drinks) and realized that nauseous feeling I had all the time was caused by the cow milk. I’m considering getting a goat, to see if raw goat milk would sit better, but until then, no milk is better than processed milk.
**I have shifted my planning mindset back to “What vegetables and fruit are we having for dinner.” We aren’t going vegetarian or anything, but my focus is on the vegetables.
**I’m cooking with olive oil and coconut oil and a little butter. No more soybean based vegetable oil.
I also plan on eating **Less Sugar, but I didn’t manage that one yet. I’ve realized that I’m addicted to sugar.
Results:
After 3 weeks of green smoothies (although I didn’t make them every day- more like 3 times a week), only drinking 1-2 cups of milk per week, and using coconut oil instead of soybased oil:
I feel so much better! I don’t feel nauseous all the time and my mood swings have dramatically evened out. (I think the Man of the House is massively relieved.) Also, by the way,
I LOST 4 POUNDS. That might sound like a little thing, but I haven’t been able to lose more than 1/2 pound in a week for the last 12 years, and I had to carefully count my calories and exercise until I was red in the face and sweating buckets to do it.
I lost this 4 pounds (more than 1 pound a week) without suffering; without exercising, without spending hours planning meals and counting calories, without feeling hungry, and I ate more sugar than I should have. Like I’m talking about a whole bag of mellow cream pumpkins and 2 bags of Lindt chocolate truffles. (sorry for not sharing, Dear Husband.) Then there was Julia’s birthday cake and after school cookies and etc. etc. etc. Just think what might happen if I did not eat sugar and exercised a couple times a week!
Now I’m 38 pounds away from what I weighed when I was married and suddenly it doesn’t seem like a hard thing, but a possible thing that those pounds could go away.
(and I’m so glad because 3 is such a whiny age!)
Her favorite song is “The Smile Song” …If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay…
She also often asks me to sing “The Sunday Bean song”
which my brothers probably think is “Beans, beans, the magical fruit,” but it’s actually “Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam.”
And the “Naughty Flower song” which is “In my pretty garden the flowers are nodding” but we have to sing extra verses:
“In my pretty garden the flowers are silly” and “In my pretty garden the flowers are sleeping.”
Key Lime Pie likes to play baby horses, so she and I and Banana Cream Pie spend some time every day crawling around on the floor whinnie-ing and “eating” grass.
She is potty trained FINALLY. I tried lots of things, but the one that motivated her was that if she went on the potty, she could watch Dora the Explorer. We watch a lot of Dora, but I don’t have to change diapers. It is worth it.
Her favorite things to eat are toast, cheese, bananas, and raman noodles.
She likes to pretend to be Flynn Rider and carries around her “Flynn Rider purse.”
Last year for her birthday, she requested Chocolate Rapunzel Cake.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a kid with such a long memory. This year she requested Vanilla Flynn Rider Cake. And she wanted it to be round instead of square.
So I had the genius idea that if I couldn’t find a little Flynn Rider doll, that I could print out a little picture of the guy and tape him to a toothpick and stick him in the middle of the cake and voila! Flynn Rider Cake.
but then the Man of the House and I got into an intense, but civil, debate over this TV news anchor which maybe I will blog about later, or maybe not, because I’m kind of bored with the whole thing now.
Anyway, I got distracted by the debate and almost forgot to make the frosting until the last minute, hence I did forget to make the little Flynn Rider guy.
Key Lime Pie didn’t care. She had round vanilla Flynn Rider Cake.
Sadly, my new camera no esta aqui. Here, however, is my delicious recipe.
***Honey Vanilla Cake***
2/3 cup coconut oil
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
3 cups cake flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk)
1. Preheat the oven to 325*F. In an electric mixer, cream the coconut oil with the sugar and honey. It will whip up fluffy just like butter does.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla, continue to beat on medium speed until the eggs are well incorporated.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add them to the sugar mixture alternately with the milk until everything is blended in.
4. Pour the batter into 2 round cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Top with your favorite Vanilla buttercream frosting. I can’t tell you my recipe. I just whipped a stick of butter and added a little milk and powdered sugar until I thought it tasted right.
But I think the cake itself has such a lovely subtle flavor and frosting kind of covers it up (haha) so really just leave the frosting off if your family will let you get away with it.
One of the girls’ favorite things to do is watch Cupcake Wars with their Grannie on Sunday evening. The problem with watching a show about cupcakes on a Sunday evening is we all get really hungry for cupcakes. They’ve been begging me for awhile to have our own cupcake wars.
So on Memorial Day we did.
I went easy on myself and bought 2 cake mixes rather than making the batter from scratch. I listed the “pantry” choices on the fridge and the girls each planned their cupcake. For the filling, I made a cream cheese & sugar base and let them stir in their flavor of choice. For the frosting, I made vanilla buttercream and again, let them add the extra flavor of their choice. They were thrilled.
Cupcake: butter or chocolate
Filling: cream cheese, chocolate (cocoa), peanut butter, strawberry jam
Frosting: vanilla, chocolate, caramel, lemon
Decorations: twizzlers, silver dragees, colored sugar sprinkles, gummy bears, star shaped marshmallows
Our theme (chosen by Grannie) was Girl Scout Camping.
Cherry Pie made a butter cupcake with chocolate filling and vanilla buttercream, topped with a twizzler camp fire.
Pumpkin Pie made a butter cupcake, no filling, with vanilla buttercream, topped with a smiling girl scout face made with twizzlers and silver dragees
Peach Pie made a butter cupcake with peanut butter filling and vanilla buttercream, topped with twizzlers and marshmallow stars.
No one chose gummy bears, much to my amazement.
We made Uncle Eddie & his friend Kaitlyn be the judges. Everybody won and everybody was happy.
I made 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes with chocolate filling and salted caramel buttercream frosting. (Salted caramel seems to be the fad in desserts right now; it shows up a lot in cupcake wars. I’ve been dying to try it.)
I got the delicious recipe I used here at CHOW.com. (That’s right, sisters, I didn’t just pin it on Pintrest it, I actually made it.)
Many people who commented on Chow complained about the ratio of butter to powdered sugar. I personally prefer buttercream that has more butter than sugar, so I knew I would like this one! I did end up adding a little more sugar, but it was because I heated up the house with all that baking, and the butter was too soft.
Go make some cupcakes. You know you want to.
**Warning: sappy post**
It was all started by a book, as many good things in my life are.
I have never been a “Huggy” person or a “touchy-feely” person. I like my personal space to stay personal. Not that I didn’t love my children, but somewhere around their second birthday, I just didn’t actively think about hugging and snuggling them any more.
That changed the summer I read “Missing May” by Cynthia Rylant. It is about an orphan girl who has been passed from relative to relative until she is taken in by a couple named May and Ob.
“…the first time I saw Ob help May braid her long yellow hair, sitting in the kitchen one night, it was all I could do not to go to the woods and cry forever from happiness. I know I must have been loved like that, I must have; otherwise, how could I even recognize love when I saw it that night between Ob and May? ….[My Mother] must have known she wasn’t going to live and she must have held me longer than any other mother might, so I’d have enough love in me to know what love was when I felt it again.”
I spent several hours after reading that imagining how if I took in an orphan how I would hold her and sing to her every night and tell her how much her mother had loved her. Suddenly I thought, “I don’t even do that for my own children.”
Yikes! So after that, I started remebering to hug my kids when they got home from school. And instead of saying, “Last one in bed gets a spanking,” I said, “First one in bed gets a snoodle.” Actually, everyone gets a snoodle, but it still works every time. They all go running and laughing to bed for the honor of the FIRST snoodle.
What, you may ask, is a snoodle? Well is is a cross between a kiss and a raspberry. You start about 2 feet away from your child and make those kissy smoochy noises as you get closer and closer and suddenly plant a whole bunch of little kisses on that tickly part of their neck. Admittedly, I have had my face smashed a couple of times by a wriggling giggling child, but it is worth it.
Here’s what I found: our family is happier. Hugs make the hard parts of the day work better, like in the morning getting ready for school, at bedtime, any other stressful time. When I say “no,” to my 4 -year old and she starts wailing, instead of saying something like, “stop that awful noise,” or the old “Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about,” I just hug her. I don’t give in and give her what she wants, but I do hug her. I let her know that I understand it’s tough when we don’t get our way. After all, I have seen many an adult (including myself) throw a tantrum because they can’t have what they want. Working from a viewpoint of empathy is so much more effective than working from the angle of force and control.
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 