PUMPKIN SEASON.

pumpkin-meme

Yes, I stereotypically love pumpkins and am not ashamed to admit it.  Call me basic, call me mainstream – whatever.  BRING ON THE PUMPKIN.  Seriously.  Bring it on.  I had my first Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season this weekend and it was better than ever (thanks to the addition of actual pumpkin… hmph).

 

Anyway – I’ve been making PUMPKIN SPICE COCONUT OIL CHOCOLATE and am officially obsessed.  If you have not had my coconut oil chocolate, please stop reading this immediately, run to your kitchen, and whip up a batch. They are so easy and so delicious (and also pretty healthy to boot).

pumpkin spice chocolate

These are very similar to the original recipe, but I use a Special Dark cocoa + pumpkin spice (you can easily make your own) + almond butter (instead of peanut butter).

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Hah!  Blog photography problems.  Moving on…

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Pumpkin Spice Coconut Oil Chocolate

Ingredients (for 10 chocolates):

  • 1/4 cup coconut oil
  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1/4 cup chia seeds
  • 1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
  • 1 and 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin spice
  • 1/2 tablespoon honey

Directions:

  • Set out 10 cupcake wrappers on a plate.
  • In a microwavable bowl, scoop in coconut oil and peanut butter.  Microwave for 30 seconds or until coconut oil is melted.  Mix well.
  • Mix in chia seeds, cocoa powder, and honey.  Mix well.
  • Pour equal amount into the cupcake wrappers.  Place plate in freezer.  Cool until hard.  Transfer to a sealed container and store in the freezer.

 

You know what I’m really looking forward to doing this year with the kiddos?  Making Baby Hand Print Pumpkins!  This is a totally fun DIY project if you have children.

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(Baby Henry!)

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You can read the complete instructions here, but you basically use a stencil of their handprints to make eyes for your pumpkins.

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Other fun ways to EAT pumpkins:

 

DIY Pumpkin Spice 

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Pumpkin Pie Cream Cheese Dip

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Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

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Pumpkin Spice Tofu

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Are you or aren’t you a pumpkin person? 

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Best House Ever

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Good day!  This awesome breakfast took me just a few minutes to throw together thanks to meal planning and cooking ahead.  Wahoo.  I knew there was a good reason that I was cooking until 9:30 PM on Sunday!

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Speaking of the weekend, people keep asking me what I did and I’m not really sure – it was one of those Black Hole Weekends… know what I mean?  I think we mostly just hung out and ran errands…  But thanks to my iPhone, I do have evidence of one really fun outing.  We went to my sister in law’s boyfriend’s house and played in his INCREDIBLE backyard.  Seriously, this place is a kid’s dream.  He has a slack line for tightrope walking…

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… An amazing tire swing, ATVs, a zipline (IN HIS BACKYARD), and a little farm!  Complete with chickens…

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And very friendly goats, one of which really wanted to take a selfie with me. 

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There were lots of toy cars for Henry to organize.  I love the way he lines up toys like this – it is so adorable.

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And there were real cars, too!  Did anyone else REALLY want a Powerwheel as a kid?  I lusted for one so badly.  The battery in this one was kind of flat so my awesome SIL pushed Henry around the backyard – that was no joke!  That thing was heavy.  Aunt of the Year!

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LOL to Claire charging through the grass.  I see so much of Henry’s daredevil personality in her already…

 

Our evening of fun concluded with an excellent dinner on the patio.  Henry keeps asking when we can go back to Mr. Richard’s – that house put ours to serious shame!  And it almost made me want to move out to the country… Almost!

 

Here’s today’s to-go lunch in my stainless steel bento box <— I loved Henry’s so much that I got a bunch more for the whole family. 

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Oh, and if you saw this post on my Instagram…

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You know that we’ve been having kiddo sleep troubles.  Claire is getting both top teeth AT THE SAME TIME (poor dear) and Henry has been coming into our room multiple times a night.  There’s not much I can do about teething (although I would like to try those amber necklaces – anyone have real success with them?), so I was mostly taking to Instagram for bigger kid advice.  I tried putting a baby gate in front of his door and explaining that it was going up as a reminder to stay in his own room (he could, of course, just knock it down) and so far – SUCCESS.  Wahoo.  I love it when the solution is so easy!  It usually isn’t so.. thank goodness!

 

What was the best thing you did this weekend?

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Are You “Done”?

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You have one baby, and the question everyone asks is, “When will you have the next one?”  You have your second, and the question everyone asks you is, “Are you done?”  I would be curious to know what the questions are after #3 or #4 (I’m betting, “Aren’t you done yet?” Hmph).

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Before I had kids, I wrote a post called Planning Parenthood.  I asked, “How did you know when you were ready to have kids? Would you do things differently in retrospect?”  Over 575 people responded with the most interesting comments.  (Turns out that I was ready – I got pregnant just a few weeks later!). 

 

A few months after Henry was born, I wrote a post called The Only Child.  It was all about how I grew up as an only child, liked it as a kid and hate it as an adult.  One funny thing about having a blog is you write how you feel at a particular time and it’s etched there forever – it’s interesting to look back and see how I felt at different times.  In that post, I wrote that we occasionally wavered on the idea of having a second.  I think I was just having trouble adjusting to motherhood because, in retrospect, I can’t remember ever REALLY feeling that way!  I also wrote that, if we did have a second, we’d want some space in between the kids.  I said 3 years (and we ended up deciding we didn’t want that much space between kids; Henry and Claire are 2.5 years apart).

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So now, we find ourselves with a 3 year old and a 9 month old, and I can’t help but think, “Are we done?  Like, really done?” And… I think we are.

 

Reasons I think we’re done having babies:

 

I don’t feel a wistful twinge of, “Oh, this could be me!” when I hang out with pregnant friends. 

When I think about getting a baby out of my vagina AGAIN, I kind of want to curl up in a fetal position and sob.

Newborns smell really good, but I want to hand them back to their moms after 5 minutes or so.

I added up our ages with the kids’ ages and realized that, God willing, we’ll still be in our 40s when Claire leaves for college.  And that sounds pretty damn awesome!

I saved everything after Henry – but I sell clothes and gear as Claire outgrows them.

We feel “complete.”

 

I guess that last one is the biggest one – the Husband and I just both feel done.  It’s hard to describe what feeling “done” feels like, but… it’s just something you know, deep in your bones.  We feel like our family is completed by Henry and Claire and no one is missing from it.   And I feel blessed – and am very grateful – that we get to decide we’re done, you know?  But one thing we have learned, of course, is to never really say never – we’re each only 31, and I can think of several situations in which we would have a third child.  And a surprise third is always a possibility because we’re not willing to commit to any more permanent preventive methods.  But it would be a pretty big shift if either of us changed our minds.

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So – I’d love to know what you think.  Are you done?  How do you know?  Did you ever think you were done but really weren’t?  Was being done – or not – a choice that wasn’t up to you?

 

Related Posts:

 

How Long Did It Take You To Get Over Childbirth?

Things I Learned About Having a Newborn

Claire’s Birth Story

Henry’s Birth Story – Part I and Part II

Pregnancy Posts

My review of the Bradley Method (pre-birth and post-birth with Henry)

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Candy Cane Lane Granola

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Race to the weekend!

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Is it Friday yet?  Seriously – I can’t wait for the weekend.  Yay!  Lots of fun things planned.

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But until then, I have this yummy granola recipe to tide me over.

 

This granola is CANDY CANE LANE granola.  Last year, I learned that you can actually bake with herbal tea – yup, you just tear the bag right open and dump it into the sauce, cream, or whatever.  I made Candy Cane Lane Cupcakes that were OUT OF THIS WORLD.  Candy Cane Lane is – by far – my favorite tea.  So when I was up this morning at 5:15 AM thinking of granola recipes (because that is what I do, apparently), this combo came to mind!

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So yes – you just dump three bags of Candy Cane Lane tea into the granola while  mixing it up, and then bake it all together.  After cooling, you’ll have a wonderfully sweet mint granola that tastes like the holidays.  YUM.

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Candy Cane Lane Granola

 

Ingredients:

 

  • 2 cups oats
  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
  • 1/2 cup raw cashews (unsalted) chopped
  • 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons coconut oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • Contents of 3 bags of Candy Cane Lane tea (unbrewed)
  • 1 egg white

 

Directions:

 

  • Preheat oven to 325. Cover a cookie sheet with tin foil and spray with cooking spray.
  • In a large bowl, combine all ingredients.
  • Spread granola out on the cookie sheet and pat down.
  • Bake for 25 minutes (watch to make sure it doesn’t begin to burn at the end).  Lift foil off the cookie tray so the granola doesn’t continue to cook on the hot tray. Let cool on the counter.
  • Store in an air tight container when cool.

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See the flakes of tea?  So good.  I may eat granola for the next three meals…

 

Have a wonderful day!

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Garage Gym

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I’ve been struggling to make it to the gym lately.  I really miss my boot camp classes but can’t seem to make my work schedule and the kids’ sleeping/napping schedules align so I can go to classes.  And when I do work out, I really want to be outside since it’s so lovely out.  So I’ve been trying to get creative with at home strength training – Monday’s workout at Brandi’s house was pretty awesome!

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Brandi and her hubby have an awesome garage gym, complete with two benches, a tire for flipping/banging, a bunch of free weights, and other odds and ends.  Their garage opens up right to the backyard, so the boys could play safely in the dirt while I got my strength training on.  I was pretty jealous of the set-up by the end and immediately started plotting ways to do something similar at my house!

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I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find something similar to this dumbbell collection on Craigslist, right?  Heck, I probably just need a few 10s and 30s – I’ve already got some 20s.

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Claire is at a really great age where I can let her crawl around and look at stuff, but she isn’t fast or curious enough yet to really get into big trouble.  She had lots of fun checking out the garage while I sweated!

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Here’s what I did:

 

Goblet squats with overhead presses

Weighted lunges

Chest presses

Bicep curls with a static squat

Toe touches on the tire

Jumping jacks

Jump rope

A variety of ab moves

 

No tire flipping, though!  I could flip Brandi’s tire this summer when I was really into boot camp, but I tried to turn the 250-pound thing over this time and couldn’t do it for the life of me.  So sad how fast the strength goes away!

 

Do you have a home gym?  What’s in it?

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