It is official!  We are moving to Florida!  Everyone keeps asking me why… well why not!  Why not go live by the beach for a bit and give it a try.  We are not tied down here and have jobs that let us work anywhere… so why not!

Just as we made it official we received this little present in the mail from my sister…

Funny right!!!!?!?!  Who knew you could mail a coconut!  Just so you know the background story of why my sister sent us this coconut, you should know that my hubby lived in the Philippines for two years before we were married…  that adorable man wrote me a letter every single week for two years! He never missed!  We were engaged 3 weeks after he came home and married 3 months after that.

While living in the Philippines he drank from these young coconuts all the time.  He has been craving them since we got married, almost 10 years ago now.  Whenever we go to Florida he is always eyeing them, but is too big to climb up a tree to get them!

He tries throwing rocks at them, using a sticks to poke at them, pretty much whatever he can think of.  Now that we have a six year old who is half monkey – half boy he has encouraged him to climb up the palm trees to pick the young coconuts for him.  Don’t believe me… see pics below!

 

So yes, now we are moving to Florida in one month where we can have all the young coconuts we want!

 

Although, here is my motivation for moving!  Starting off my day with a morning run on the beach is absolute bliss!!!!!  Florida here we come!!!!!!

This recipe is definitely a keeper AND a great one to take to a Memorial Day cookout.  I say this because most likely other people won’t bring it and you’ll have something healthy to eat too.

My friend sent me this recipe so I thought I would give it a try.  We make it almost every week and it’s great to snack on or eat as a side with any meat!  I got the recipe here.  It’s basically substituting the potatoes in potato salad to cauliflower.

What you’ll need it:

2 heads of cauliflower (I use 1 because it makes SO much)

1 dozen eggs, hard-boiled and diced (I used 8 )

1/2 a medium sized red onion, finely diced

6-8 celery stalks, finely diced (I used 3 )

A lot of dill pickles, diced (I bought mine already diced, I know call me a cheater)

About 1 1/2 cups of my Paleo Mayo

2 tablespoons of dried dill

1 teaspoon of crushed garlic added.

About 1 teaspoon of yellow mustard

Black pepper to taste

 

How it’s done:

Cut the cauliflower into florets and steam them for ~10 minutes.  Rinse with cold water so they don’t continue to cook.

Hard-boil your eggs (**I put my eggs in hot water, put them on stove, wait until water boils then allow to boil for 12 minutes.  That makes the perfect hard-boil egg).  Once they are done on stove, immediately place into water with lots of ice.  Peel and cut them.

Mix mayo, dill and crushed garlic.

Add all contents to bowl and mix.

Wahlaaaaaaaa….  Doesn’t it look good with steak?!?!

Some other ideas to take to a fun cookout:
Peanut Butter Fudge Trifle
Healthy Avocado and Tomato Salad
Popcorn Cake
Chex Mix
Peanut Butter Frosted Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies
Spinach Dip
Avocado Hummus
Too Much Chocolate Cake

 

My family is big on trifle.  We have it at most get togethers and have tried a lot of different variations (peppermint, candy bar, fruit, cherry pie filling, oreo, etc…).  We love our trifle!

So when I came across this Peanut Butter Fudge Brownie trifle on www.howsweeteats.com I was shocked that I had never seen this kind before!  I couldn’t wait to try it!  So I got all the ingredients and planned on making it for our next family pot lock, but as it turns out two other people were already bringing dessert.  Bummer!

I ended up just making it for myself!  That’s right… don’t judge!  I wanted it, so I made it!  Ha!  Besides, I have three half monkey – half boy children at home that are always willing to gobble up desserts!

So this trifle was awesome.  My favorite variation of trifle thus far.  I think it was the peanut butter layer that did it for me… well that and the entire top layer of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups!  So yummy!

PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE BROWNIE TRIFLE
Brownies layer (any kind you like)
Whip cream layer
Peanut Butter layer
Chocolate pudding layer  (I used one box of instant pudding mix)
1 Bag Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

***Cut your brownies into cubes and put half of them along the bottom of your trifle dish.  After this you just put the different layers on in any order you like and then repeat.  Then top with sliced Reeses Peanut Butter Cups!  It’s so pretty at the end you will want to dig right in and start eating!

So here is the how-to on the layers:

Whip Cream Layer
2 cups Heavy Cream
3-4 Tb granulated sugar

*Beat heavy cream and sugar together on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form.  Stick bowl in the fridge until you are ready to put in trifle dish

Peanut Butter Layer
1 cup creamy peanut butter
8oz of whipped cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tb milk

*Beat peanut butter and cream cheese together until creamy.  Add powdered sugar and mix well.  Add 2 Tb of milk.  Take 1 cup of your whip cream mixture from the fridge and fold it into the peanut butter mixture until just combined.

Now you are ready to layer your ingredients in your trifle dish!

The letter M was an easier letter to do because of all the fun possibilities!  My 2 year old loves baking and doing little tasks that make it seem like she’s a big help.  She had such a great time!  Here are just a few fun ways to learn the letter M.

Ella started learning the letter M by using Markers to fill in the letter M, template here.

We also made {and ate} Muffins!

Using Marshmallows to create the letter M was another fun and edible learning tool!

She also went and put her birthday invitations into the Mailbox.

Ella loves counting her Money and putting it into her piggy bank!

Lastly, we read “If You Give a Moose a Muffin”

Learning letters and making out the sounds are great preschool activities.  Check out all of our other letters too!

Letter B | Letter C | Letter F | Letter H |  Letter I  |  Letter K |  Letter L  |  Letter Q  |  Letter R  |  Letter W | Letter X

 

 

Since we moved, spray paint has become quite popular.  Even though I wanted to change the color of some things, I still liked the look.  This time around, I changed the trash can, soap dish and tissue box cover in the girls bathroom.  I used this spray paint:

Here is the before:

They all still had the price stickers left on them.  The trash can was $11.99, soap dish was $4.99 and the tissue box was $8.99.  I bought these for my husband (boyfriend at the time) when he was fixing up his college bathroom.  I saved ~$22 by spray painting instead of buying new.

Here are some after pics:

Overall, I’m extremely happy with the less than $4 transformation.

Tip:

Make sure you spray far away from the object.  It’s better to do a few coats than one thick one.  It will drip!  Mine dripped on one side of the trash can and I quickly figured out that slow and steady wins the race.

Coming soon:  Spray painted wicker furniture

Today I guest posted on another great blog, www.supernovamom.com.  That is another fun site you should check out when you have the chance!

Anyway, I made this adorable flower bouquet of all kinds of different hair bows for an upcoming baby shower.  Check out the link above to see the details on how to make some of the bows.  You’ll love it.

It will make a great center piece at the shower as well as a cute present for the new mommy!

 

Check out our other hair bow posts!

Daisy Pinwheel Hair Bow

Korker Hair Bow

Regular Daisy Hair Bow

I babysit full time and trade off teaching preschool so each year I am always searching for a cute Mother’s Day craft the kiddos can do.  I decided to have the kids do hot pads this year as they will go nicely with the aprons we did a few years back.

These are really cute and really easy.  You can order the hot pads on oreientaltrading.com or you can buy any light colored hot pad.  You will also need some fabric markers and/or fabric paint to decorate them with.

Mothers and grandmothers everywhere will love these!

 

@EnchantedMamas

We finally moved up in the world!  Follow and tweet us!!!!

Yes, we’re still on the Paleo kick. How could you not be with a meal that looks this delish?!

My New Year’s Resolution was to get a little more “creative” in my cooking.  The only meat I used to buy was chicken breasts and ground beef.  Well, it’s May and I have finally realized it isn’t that hard to be more creative.  I actually found all the spices at the Asian grocery store, literally right across the street from my house.  You should try a Global Food, all of their produce and spices are a lot cheaper than the regular grocery stores.

I love butter chicken and I found this Paleo chicken butter chicken recipe here.

This is what you need:

• 2 x 2 tbsp of pastured, grass-fed butter
• About 1 Kg chicken cut in chunks
• 2 tsp garam masala
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/4 tsp chili powder (adjust to taste)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 6 bruised cardamon pods
• 1 can of tomato puree
• 3/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• splenda to taste (optional… I used this because I wanted it a little more sweet)

Here is a pic of the cardamon pods in case you’re lost like I was:

Here is how you create the butter chicken!

• Heat a pan, add the first 2 tbsp of butter and stir-fry the chicken chunks.
• Remove the chicken from the pan.
• Put the second 2 tbsp of butter and slowly heat the spices for a minute or two until you can smell the aroma.
• Put the chicken back in the pan and stir so you mix in all the spices with the chicken.
• At this point, add the tomatoes and simmer for about 15 minutes. Stir from time to time.
• Add the coconut milk and lemon juice and let it simmer for another 5 minutes.
• Taste and add splenda if needed.
• Enjoy a healthy meal!

 

Enjoy this fancy meal!  We enjoyed it over cauliflower rice, recipe here.  Yum yum yum.

Also, enjoy a Paleo smoothie with it!

I tutor a couple evenings a week.  One night after one of my students came over he told me how he almost forgot where I lived and then remembered that I still had my clover wreath up on my door and was able to find my house.  Ha!  Yes, my clover wreath from St. Patricks Day in March.

Wow, I am a slacker.  So I set out to fix that asap.  I got a few suplies from Michael’s and was ready to go.

The stick wreath part was $4.99 and each of the three colors of flowers were on sale for $1.29 each.  I also had a 50% off one item coupon.  So basically I made the entire wreath for under $7.  The premade wreaths in this style are selling for $30 – $60 so I feel pretty good.

I love finding a good deal.  I use to say that I am cheap, but my mother-in-law has since taught me that its not being cheap it is being frugal!  Frugal sounds so much nicer!

All you have to do is pull your flowers and leafs off the stems and arrange them anyway you like on your wreath.  Then use a hot glue gun to glue it all together.  You can hang it to your wreath hanger using any ribbon or string.

This was so easy and turned out so cute I think I will make another for my mom for Mother’s Day.