We be Jammin'!

We had fun picking strawberries on Wednesday.  We picked 53 lbs with our friends the Moylon's since we had to get as much as we could before we leave on vacation or all the strawberries will be gone by the time we got back.  We then had fun cleaning the berries and then froze most of them.

 Then we made a batch of Strawberry Jam made with honey, brown sugar and grated apples for a natural pectin.  I had some for breakfast this morning, OH YUMMY!  These ripe from the vine strawberries make all the difference!  For 8 lbs of strawberries I only used 1.5 cups honey and 1.5 cups brown sugar with 2 grated apples and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  That's it!

Pumpkin Spice and everything nice!

I made homemade Pumpkin Spice coffee creamer today!  Yum!  It is so great to know that there are not a bunch of chemicals in this creamer, so much cheaper and it tastes so much better.  I used Almond Milk along with the pumpkin puree, pumpkin spice, cinnamon and vanilla.  I didn't use any extra sugar since the Almond Milk was already sweetened.  Super easy to make, just put the ingredients in a pan and heat up a little to incorporate.  I let it cool a bit and then poured the creamer into a washed out creamer container.  Perfect!  My morning coffee just got that much better!

You can Be your own Barista and make your own homemade flavored creamers too!  I was so excited to find this post and how many different flavor creamer recipes I could make homemade.  I am sure there will be one you will like too.  The Pumpkin Spice I had to try first, but there are so many others I would like to try as well.  I would love to hear if you made any of these flavors and how you like them.  

Fun "not-to-eat" recipes

I made some Homemade dish soap & Tea Tree and Lavender Whipped Body Butter in the last couple days.  Both of these recipes are from this great blog called Sustain, Create and Flow.  I love finding blog sites that help me with new recipes and challenge me to change the things that I can in my life.  These 2 recipes I have been wanting to try so I finally had all the supplies and the time!  

Here is a picture of all the supplies needed for the dish soap.  Just heat water to melt the shaved soap add castle liquid soap and washing soda and any essential oils if you like.  I used Dr. Bronner's Lavender castle soap so I used Lavender essential oil to go along with that. 

I then poured it into a cleaned out dish soap container.  I was waiting to finish off this last bottle so I can replace it with homemade dish soap.  Wow, so easy to make and no chemicals!  No more store bought dish soap for me! :)

Yesterday I made Tea Tree & Lavender Whipped Body Butter.  Even though I have only my 3 lotion recipes, I have decided I LOVE to make lotions!  I love to watch how the oils change from liquid to lotion!  Of course its no surprise, I also love to make lots of things like soap, food recipes, cleaning supplies, basically anything that smells good; but lotions are just amazing!  :)

This recipe is so easy and it looks so good you could eat it!  I mean look at this:

 Doesn't that look like frosting?!

Wow!  After making this recipe I now know how to whip lotion!  I quickly had to take this picture and put the overflowing lotion into another container and get it into the frig, since it was pretty warm yesterday it was starting to melt.  No biggy, it just won't be whipped anymore if it melts, but the frig keeps it in the whipped form until you are ready to use it.  

Let me know if you try these recipes, I would love to hear from you. 

Lotion, Ice Cream, Brownies, Oh My!

What a raining day today turned out to be!  So much for a BBQ and playing outside today, but I had fun making a few things while Gregg and the girls were playing video games or doing homework.  I made Magnesium Lotion, homemade Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Chocolate Ice Cream and Chewy Fudge Brownies for a special Holiday dessert! 

First is the lotion.  I had everything except the Magnesium flakes last week, so I ordered a bag from Amazon and today I finally had time to make this recipe.

  Modern Alternative Mama's recipe was so easy and quick! I melted the oils & wax together.

As she says in her post you can add essential oils and/or infused oils to the recipe.  So I replaced half the Avocado oil with some Calendula & Rose hip infused Sweet Almond oil and I added some Lavender, Vetiver & Clary Sage essential oils.(to help with restless leg syndrome).

Then I mixed the oils with the magnesium oil, and like magic it get think and turns to lotion!  It is just so cool how that works!  

Here is the final product!  It is a great body lotion and it really smells good too! 

Next up, the Gluten free Chewy Fudge Brownies! Oh my goodness are this yummy!!  These brownies are chewy and rich and yet crunchy on the sides and the top!  Best of both worlds.  What is crazy is these are made with oats and no wheat flour so they are gluten free!

So easy to make, just put the oats in the food processor and blend until flour like, then add the other ingredients and bake.  They taste as good as they look!

I made the brownies to go with the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Chocolate Ice Cream tonight.  The recipe is from the ebook Just Making Ice Cream, this is a great book with some awesome ice cream recipes that I never knew you could make homemade! This recipe is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough pieces made from real food and no chemicals!  Although, it was a very soft serve ice cream because it was getting late and the girls had to go to bed for their last week of school, it still was very yummy ice cream!

 Here is the sinful combo that I am eating...

                                                           so, got to go, time to eat this yummy dessert!

What to do with 99 Chocolate Chips!

I have a guest blogger today.  Check it out, she wrote this herself and she baked all by herself tonight too!  Enjoy!  Make sure to let her know how you liked her post! :)  Rene'

Hey all y’all bloggers on the internet in the CRAZY ALL NATURAL cyber space! This post is commin’ from a very special guest on the Crazy All Natural Mama’s blog. I am the daughter of the creator of the blog that you are reading. Well, let’s get back on topic. (That is, if we really started one yet) :)

Today, I made some real yummy banana muffins. Of course, my mom tells me to follow the recipe, so, I did, but I altered it a bit. With my instinct, my brain tells me ya know what, everything goes better with 99 chocolate chips. So I literally counted them out one by one while my dad was makin’ dinner. Why 99 y’all may ask? Well, 100 just seems too even and too perfect. Anyway, I never thought that banana mini muffins would taste good with nutmeg and a few other spices the recipe called for. You can make so many great things that taste good and are not packed full of chemicals. They even taste better because you know you made them from scratch. You probably have most if not all the items needed to make multiple deserts that are better for you than store bought stuff. Try NEW things… You never know what you will find!

Here is what the muffins looked like when they were done!

Elizabeth
age 13, first time blogger

One down, one more to go!

Had a busy and yet very productive day today!  First the girls and I did the Run for the Meadows 5K this morning; it was a beautiful morning for some good exercise!  We then came home and finally got all the veggies planted in the garden in raised bed #1.  I guess it was good we hadn't planted the garden yet since it was down to 42 degrees the night before.  We are hoping the weather will stay warmer and that the green soaker hose looks like snakes to the local rabbits to scare them away!  :)

So in raised bed #1 we got tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, several herbs, cucumbers, onions, garlic, tomatoes, marigolds and more tomatoes.  Did I mention tomatoes?  Yes, I want to be able to can lots of tomatoes this year!

Gregg was working on bringing lawn chairs and table out from the shed and draining the water from the tarp on the pool.  We are hoping to have the pool open by the end of this long weekend.  What a great weekend to work out in the yard, soak up the Vitamin D and enjoy the sun!

Tomorrow we will plant in raised bed #2.  Check back then to see what is being planted there.

Aloe to the rescue!

The wind has been so strong these last few weeks, it has not been good to my plants!  I put my seedlings in a small green house just outside the back door, but wind kept blowing it over, so not sure how many of the heirloom seedlings will make it.  Even with bricks to hold the greenhouse down, it just kept falling over and dumping the seedlings.  I even put my Aloe Vera plant outside to enjoy the sunshine, but even that was blown over while sitting on the bricks.  It didn't like being dumped over and it looked pretty sad, so I decided before it died to salvage the gel from the leaves. So, Lizzy helped me with this very gooey and tedious job.  We added some citric acid and vitamin E and blended it in the food processor then sealed it a pint jar and stored in the fridge. We got almost a cup worth of gel from the leaves.  Check out all the benefits of the Aloe Vera plant here.  Do any of you have an Aloe plant?  What have you used it for?