Uncategorized Archives • Page 52 of 55 • New Nostalgia

Welcome Sorta Crunchy Readers! Here’s A Bit About Me:

When Megan from Sorta Crunchy asked if I would guest post while she enjoyed a trip away for a few day, I was more than happy to oblige. Her blog is one I have read since I discovered the joy of blogging, so it made me smile when she asked if I would be a part of her 40 Days Of Joy. You can click here to read my guest post about what brings me joy, and to visit her beautiful blog.

If you are visiting from Sorta Crunchy, let me WELCOME you! I hope you enjoy a quick visit here at New Nostalgia. I would love for you to continue with me, as I try to do life simply and well, with a mission to get back to the basics.

{me and my DH}

Here are a few posts that will give you a peek into my world:

Recipes-I try hard to use ingredients that have been around awhile, before processed “food” came about. Simple and healthful is my goal.

{Easy Iced Tea}

{Chocolate Mud Balls}

{Mashed Sweet Potatoes}

{Whole Wheat Brownies}

{At Home Salad Bar}

{Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes}

Beauty-I am a hairstylist turned full time homemaker, so the creative in me loves to find beauty in everything. I like to explore beauty, without spending a fortune doing it.

{A Simple Shade}

{How To Wear A Scarf}

{Different Do’s I Have Done}

{8 Simple Ways To Freshen Up Your Look}

{Smokey Eye Tutorial}

{Real Beauty, Fake Beauty}

Family-oh, to have this one figured out. I love being a mom. I do my best, but have much to learn! My prayer is that I will never stop growing as I explore this thing called motherhood. I post as I go, sharing the things I discover that help me in this amazing job called “mom.”

{Grocery Shopping With Kids}

{Fall Break Fun} (could be spring break, too:))

{A Saturday At Home}

{A Must See For Moms}

Crafts-again, I love to create, and so do my 3 girls (age 10, 9 & 6). Here are some of the things we have done together.

{Homemade Coloring Book}

{Thank You Note Tote}

{Treat Containers}

{Homemade Wrapping Paper}

{Art Bags}

Homemaking-a job I take very seriously. We have such power as moms to create an environment to (as my joy post said) hurt or heal. I desire home to be a place where my family can come and be fully who they are, and to heal from what life brings. This, to me, makes home environment so important!

{Keeping Your House Picked Up}

{De-cluttering}

{Homemade Household Cleaners}

Spirituality-it is THE thread that holds all of who I am together, it affects all that I do, because He is.

{The Potter}

{Coffee Shops And Merry-Go-Rounds}

{My Prayer Bench}

{The Very Best Valentine}

{Hurting Humanity}

Thanks again for visiting and reading!

Please come back, and know that you are invited to participate in my

“Anti-Procrastination Tuesdays” Link Party. It is a place where you and I can get things done together!

I would love to have you link up or leave a comment!

If you would like to receive new posts from New Nostalgia in your inbox, or if you would like to subscribe to New Nostalgia, there is a link for both in my sidebar. For more information on subscribing, read this post.

Blessings To You And Yours!

Healthy Eating/ RECIPES/ Sweets

Chocolate Mudballs

Well, Laura at “Heavenly Homemakers” has done it again. She has taken a simple recipe, used whole ingredients, and provided my recipe box with one more “make often” recipe.

These chocolate mudballs just hit the spot! They are great when you are wanting a bit of a chocolate treat, but use ingredients like wheat germ and oats to make them a treat that has some health benefits. Love that!

I whipped them up in literally minutes, right before I left for my Tuesday Night Women’s Bible study group. These women are often my taste testers with new recipes, I love their honesty and can count of the variety of tastes in the room to know whether or not a recipe is blog worthy! (I made bars that resembled bird seed one week and we all wondered if the birds would even eat them…they were NOT good:) These little mudballs received rave reviews, so here they are!

Mudballs

1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup sesame seeds

Cook the peanut butter on honey over low heat until melted. Add remaining ingredients. When cool enough to handle roll into oohey gooey mud balls.

This batch made 12 balls, next time I will double the recipe.

My girls loved these. They felt like they were eating cookie dough, and were disappointed that we had to share with my group! I made them yesterday, and plan on going to the store for more sesame seeds so I can make them again today.

I had a reader send me a recipe she thought I would like (how sweet is that?) and she was right on. They are balls that are just like these, with just a couple ingredients switched up- they use ground flax seed instead of wheat germ, so it would be a great way to get those Omega 3’s! Here is the link to that recipe if you want to check it out, the link will take you to a Disney website. I will let you know when I make them how they turn out.

This post linked to:
Food On Fridays @ann kroeker. writer.
Recipe Swap Wednesdays @ Remodelaholic
Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays @ Blessed With Grace
Just Something I Whipped Up @ The Girl Creative

HEALTH/ Healthy Eating/ How-Tos

What Will Kill Our Children

This post is linked to 30-Minute Blog Challenge @ Steady Mom.

It is estimated that one out of every three children in the United States is obese. It is an epidemic.

This video is one of the absolute best I have seen in making this real. Please, please watch even just a few minutes. Jamie Oliver is now on my list of favorite people. I love his message, I love his delivery (he is funny!) and I hope as many people as possible can view this video. Please share this with those you love. Share it on facebook, email it, tweet it-get the word out and save our children!

Uncategorized

Do You Twitter? Here are some fun sites..

For Twitter 101, click here.

Topsy
A search engine powered by tweets. Searching by tweets is more likely to produce results that are hot at the time because exchanges are taking place in real time.

CrowdEye-what all the twitter is about..
From their site:
Real time…Social…Search…
That’s what those of us at CrowdEye are obsessed with. The internet has been evolving for years into a place where informations flows quicker and quicker. Now it is becoming increasingly possible to tap into that stream of bits and bytes and use it to draw conclusions and make informed decisions based on the “wisdom of the crowds”

Wefollow.com
A site that allows you to find tweeters with similar interests. Shows you who are the biggest fish in the twitter pond.

Tweet Beep
Messeges you whenever your keyword is mentioned on twitter. Great for bloggers who want to know what is being said about their site! Keeps track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates. Great for online reputation management!

I’m pretty new at this twitter thing, but I’m starting to get what all the hype is about.
If you want to follow me, look in my sidebar for “Twitter Updates” at the bottom right is a link.

HEALTH/ Healthy Eating

Omentum–huh?

photo from Oprah.com

Omentum, ya know what that is?
Belly blubber.

Why should you know what the Omentum is? Well for one, having a large, unhealthy omentum can shave up to 15 years off your life.

A healthy omentum appears lacy and almost see through, like the one oprah is holding. The one Dr. Oz is holding is from a deceased man who was only about 30 pounds overweight!

The omentum is split into 2 segments. The greater omentum is a mass that sits in front of the stomach and the lesser omentum covers the liver. They both store fat. When the greater omentum is large, the stomach appears distended and hard, which many call “a beer belly.” That hard, intense look is the omentum, pushing up against your stomach, all coiled up. This is not the type of fat you can pinch, it is a hard fat. Hard fat=scary fat! It is scary because the bigger the omentum fat, the higher the risk of inflammation in the body that leads to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries. Big omentum = big risk of disease.

Photo from Oprah.com

The omentum also stores hormones like cortisol (which is called the stress hormone). High stress can stimulate growth of the omentum. Take care of your stress! People with high levels of stress find that it is very difficult to reduce the size of this hardened belly fat. Stress and belly fat are connected.

I love this video from Dr. Oz, it is an animated video of what happens to food when you eat it and how it stores as belly fat. It is a GREAT animation, brings it all to life for me and helps it all make sense. If you don’t want to watch all 5 minutes, move the timemarker under the video to about 2:15, that is where the animation begins.

So, is your omentum too large? There is a very simple way to discover if you have a healthy belly. It is called the hip to waist ratio. Here is a brief video of how to measure your waist (*correctly) and figure out your hip to waist ratio, and what it should be.

For more of what this post is about, click here.

Brunch/ Healthy Eating/ RECIPES

Healthy Buttermilk Coffee Cake

We had company from out of town this weekend. I love having company, especially when it is dear, dear friends who are coming to visit. I have a post on “anti-procrastination” coming up, where I will talk more about our company, as I think everyone should meet them-yes, they are THAT great.

While they were here, I made coffee cake.

Our friends are coffee snobs, so I knew I would need coffee cake to go with our coffee snobbery. I left it up to them to make the coffee, and boy was it GOOD, they know coffee!
I made the coffee cake, and was really happy with it! I had never made it before, and it was on the healthy side, so I was not sure how it would turn out. I knew if it bombed, I would still be loved, because coffee is the only thing they are snobby about. 🙂

I found the recipe at Passionate Homemaking. It uses many wholesome ingredients including buttermilk, and if you read this blog regularly, you know I have a thing for buttermilk. It is part of my every week shopping trip, it is great for the gut and cheap! You can read more about the benefits of buttermilk here. (scroll down when you get to the post)

Healthy Buttermilk Coffee Cake

2 1/4 cup flour (I used 11/4 cups whole wheat flour & 1 cup white flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup rapadura (or sucanant (whole cane sugar))
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup walnuts, optional (I left these out)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk

Combine flour, salt, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon into a large bowl. Add sweeteners and oils. Mix till well blended. Take out 3/4 cup for topping and add chopped nuts, and 1 tsp. cinnamon and mix. Set aside. To the original batter, add soda, baking powder, egg and buttermilk. DO NOT OVERMIX. If you do so, it will not rise well. Place in oiled 8×8 pan or pie pan. Sprinkle topping. Bake at 300 degrees for approx. 45 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. (I had to bake mine for about 55-60 minutes)

My friends liked it, my kids liked it, and it complimented our coffee just perfectly. I will for sure be making this again! Thanks for the recipe, Lindsey at Passionate Homemaking!

This post linked to:
Made By You Monday @ Skip To My Lou
Market Yourself Monday @ Sumo’s Sweet Stuff
Mouth Watering Monday @ A Southern Fairytale
Tasty Tuesdays @ Balancing Beauty and Bedlam
Tuesdays At The Table @ All The Small Stuff
Foodie Friday @ Designs By Gollum
Real Food Wednesdays @ Kelly The Kitchen Kop

FUN/DIY/ HEALTH/ Healthy Eating/ How-Tos/ RECIPES/ Valentine's Day

Fun For Kids Food!

Thinking outside the lunchbox.

What little one would not want to eat this? Read more here.

Something that surprised me when I started blogging was COMMUNITY. I had no idea I would ‘meet’ such great people. There are many amazing mom bloggers that I have learned so much from, and have had a great time commenting back and forth with. I’d like to introduce you to one of them. Her name is Sarah, from For The Love Of Naps. Isn’t that a great title? She is a “Lover Of Naptime,” the mom of two young boys, and she “takes each day, starts fresh, and tries to learn moment to moment.” Her perspective on life and parenting is one to be admired. This quote is under her header on her blog:

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”
-Anna Quindlen(Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11)

Yep, she ‘gets it,’ and I love reading and learning from someone who does! She has a great way of seeing things through the eyes of children and instinctively knows what would delight them. Here are a few fun food posts of that in action, shared with her permission. Read on, then take some time to go visit her, here.