Winter...

Winter is here!!! We had a big snow storm a few nights ago. It was fun to watch the huge snowflakes fall. Not so fun to drive home on I-15 in the middle of a huge blizzard. So grateful that we made it home safe on Saturday night.

This place never ceases to amaze me. The pioneer house looks so good in whatever season is upon her (can a house be a gender?)...

My garden covered in snow...

I'm not sure how many inches fell, but it was a lot!

Poor apple tree with it's weighed down branches.

I love this walnut tree. I'm glad that we were able to get the leaves all raked up before the snow fell. The day before the storm we spent the day outside raking, putting things away, covering up my husband's duck hunting boat. So glad that we did all that!

And last but not least, the first snowman of the season!

Now all I want to do is curl up under a warm quilt and knit...

Bread or Baby?

 

Hi my name is Meg... and it's been 14 days since I've had a baked treat.

And that last treat was a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie...

I grabbed it on my way out the door to my appointment. I had every intention of eating a good breakfast that morning, but time got away from me and I needed to grab something quick to make it there on time. I finished it before I even left the neighborhood. I almost turned around to go get the other two that I'd left on the counter but I knew if I did I would be late. So I did not... and I completely regret that now.

I had been told a few months before upon the confirmation of my PCOS that I needed to change my diet. But I had put it off. It was birthday season after all. And turns out I'm a complete emotional eater and took up quite the Dr. Pepper habit after my ectopic pregnancy in August. Every day I said, "tomorrow I will eat better" but it never happened.

Laying back on the hard table having an ultrasound done to see the state of my poor ovary the need for this change was confirmed. My midwife said, "Good news, your ovary is back to normal. But it's very polycystic. We need to make some major changes here to help you have a baby."

Then she said something that no health care provider has ever said to me before.

"How's your weight and eating going? {flipping through her notes}. You've gained 3 lbs since I saw you two months ago. You haven't changed your diet yet have you?"

I told her what I believed to be true. That I felt like I was completely addicted to sugar. I eat it everyday. I feel like I'm addicted to crack (not that I know what that would be like but I'm sure it's close).

Then we had the conversation that immediately got me off of this sugary substance...

"No more. You can't do it. Sugar is so hard on your body, especially on girls with PCOS. You need to cut all sugar. No honey, no agave. Nothing baked. No bread. No potatoes. No starchy foods whatsoever. You also need to be eating protein four times a day. Oh... and no cheating. This is not a diet to lose weight, you have to do this everyday. You don't get a cheat day or a cheat meal... this is everyday."

Next week is Halloween... I dared to mutter.

"You're right! And then Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Valentines Day... then throw in all the birthday's that happen. There is never a good time of the year to make a change like this. You have to do it right now. Today. This second."

 I looked her in the eye and said, "Okay, this is it. No more."

I'm not sure what it was that flipped the switch for me, but I really did decide in that minute that I was going to completely change my diet and see if this will work. There are lots of things that we are trying right now to help me get pregnant, but this is one thing that rests completely on my shoulders. Every time I open my mouth and eat food I say to myself:

"Do you want bread, or a baby?"
"Do you want a donut, or a baby?"
"Do you want pop, or a baby?"

Baby has won out every single time.

I'm so grateful that I had a full five days of doing this before the first Halloween party hit. It was hard, standing there looking at the delicious spread on the table and not being able to eat a single thing. I almost cried tears of joy when my sister in law came in with a plate of deviled eggs (thank you Nicole!!!) and I was finally able to eat something that wouldn't be cheating.

Halloween was fine. I am still in awe that I sat around our house for days with candy everywhere and did not take a single bite. I love candy. But I want a baby more. It really took about a week and now I am not tempted at all to eat these things.

Something else I feel I need to mention. I pray. A lot. I pray that I will be able to resist food temptations. That I will be able to stick with this and eat healthy. I think that has made a world of difference as I've gone through this change.

So here's the deal. Girls with PCOS have higher levels of a male hormone (androgen's) which causes them to not ovulate, have irregular periods, gain weight, have acne... etc, etc. There is also a link to insulin resistance which they think causes this hormone problem. So eating a low glycemic diet and taking a diabetic medication (yep... on that too) is suppose to help girls like me get pregnant.

I've bought a book called The Glycemic Index for Dummies and now that I've learned a little bit more about it it's not so bad. For example, I can have dark chocolate!!! Hallelujah! At the end of the day when I've been super good all day and eaten what I'm suppose to I get a tablespoon of peanut butter and cover it in dark chocolate chips. It's pure heaven people.

As of today I am even down 7 lbs. The weight is literally melting off. This weight I've been carrying for three years is melting away!!! And to think this is all because of bread and sugar!?! Insane...

I've always tried to eat healthy, and I thought that I was being healthy by eating whole wheat bread. I ate a lot of bread. For breakfast I used to have whole wheat toast with peanut butter and fruit. Lunch, a sandwich. Dinner a lot of the time would be whole wheat pasta or something in a whole wheat tortilla. Turns out whole wheat is just as bad as white when it comes to raising your insulin levels. I had no clue. It makes me sad to think that this could be part of what has kept us from having more kids in the last 1 1/2 years. Something as "healthy" as whole wheat bread...

I've always been against diets that make you cut out food groups (like the Atkin's diet). So I just want to clarify that I am not cutting out carbs. I'm just cutting out carbs that have a high glycemic index. I still eat oatmeal and brown rice daily. I eat quinoa. I've made naan with spelt (a low GI grain). So I am not cutting all carbs. Our bodies need carbs, so I'm learning about what ones I can have and what I can't.

I realize that this might not be a "cure all" for me, but we're giving it a shot. And even if I'm not able to have a baby this will make me healthier, help me lose weight, and hopefully help me be a better mom and wife for my family.

So I'm saying goodbye to my runs through the McDonald's drive through to get a Dr. Pepper. Goodbye york peppermint patties that jump into my pile of groceries on the conveyor belt at the grocery store. Goodbye whole wheat bread. Goodbye Twix. Goodbye my beloved pumpkin chocolate chip cookies... Goodbye, and good riddance!

photo from here

grapes, walnuts, and apples...

Aside from the stuff that we grew in our garden this year, we've been harvesting other food around the ole' pioneer house. I've been working so hard to get all of this stuff processed and in bottles/bags for winter. I'm starting to feel like the squirrel in our walnut tree... work work work work, gathering nuts for winter.

First came the grapes. The fences surrounding the property here are covered in grape vines! All different types of grapes in a whole variety of colors. For the whole month of September the yard smelled like grapes, it was amazing! I wasn't going to do anything with the grapes because we don't have a juicer and the one we found was $170!?!? (one can buy a lot of grape juice for that amount of money). But our friends had one that they weren't going to be using this fall so we borrowed it.

Oh boy...

Over a two week period of time we filled 102 quart jars with grape juice. INSANE!!! It took forever. Once I had the juicers going on the stove I didn't want to stop until I had all of the juice out of those little grapes, which made for some very late nights.

Sometimes I had to just admit defeat when situations like this happened at 1 AM... it was just time to call it a night and go to bed.

My awesome sister in law's came over during Priesthood session one Saturday night and stayed until 11 PM doing grapes. They picked, washed, and separated while I worked the juicers. Oh... and 14 kids between all of us were playing in the living room the whole time! It was a mad house, but we got so much done. It was so much better to do this with them instead of all by myself.

Trent did help (since this was his idea), but he would usually get it started and then have to go to work and I would finish it up. I was really happy when all of the grapes were finally gone and I was able to de-grape my kitchen! I don't think I will be doing this next year, it was sooooo much work.

There is the most beautiful walnut tree in the back yard that I'm sure is over 100 years old. It is gorgeous, and it makes hundreds of walnuts. They started really dropping a few weeks ago and we have been gathering them up everyday almost.

We have the walnut process down now. We rub the husk off with our shoe on the grass unless they fell off already out of the husk (those are my favorites). Then we crack them and put them on a cookie sheet and roast them in the oven for a bit. Once they cool off we bag them up, easy peasy... right.

Sad thing is... I can't eat walnuts. They give me canker sores if I eat them. So we've been making them for Trent and his family to eat. They are beautiful.

Last but not least, we picked a box of apples from Trent's grandparent's house (because we hadn't had enough craziness I guess) and we made a 8 quarts of apple pie filling. The rest of the apples we dehydrated into apple chips like we did last year. And with that I. am. DONE! None of this trunk full of apples this year. I would like to do something else with my life other than process and can food. I need a break, so we are calling it good with the apples.

*** I realize you may be wondering why on earth our apple pie filling is red. You see, for some reason I have yet to figure out, Trent thinks that apple pie is suppose to be red. I don't know why he thinks that, I'm blaming it on the fact that he is color blind. But every time we make apple pie he sneaks in the red food coloring and dyes it red. And my friends, sometimes you have to pick your battles, am I right? I let him have his red apple pie filling this year, with the agreement that next year they will not be colored, and if they are red there need to be some raspberries in there or something... no more fake dye.

Red apple pie anyone? Does that even look good to you? I don't get it...

Wolverine + Lumberjacks

Our boy wanted to be Wolverine so badly this year! I like to make his costume, but I was not going to attempt Wolverine with the blade hands and the muscles that he was requesting.

He really liked getting into character in these pictures...

This is what I got when I asked him to smile... silly kid.

I have not dressed up for Halloween since I got married, I'm pretty sure. But Trent's family likes to do a Halloween party every year and this is the first year that we've been able to go! So we dressed up. I wanted to push the easy button on this one because I just wasn't feeling it... so we went as lumberjacks. We already had hats, flannel shirts, a plastic toy ax. It was easy. But the night before we had this great idea to make yarn beards for our costumes. OH BOY!!! I have to say that making and wearing a yarn beard is one of the funnest things I've ever done! I'm being totally serious. I could not stop laughing thinking about wearing my beard.

Beard kisses... a little strange, yet so funny!

I loved watching people look at us and our ridiculous beards. I may have stared at a few drivers along the road until they looked at me so that I could see them laugh at my dumb beard. It was so much fun! Now I'm trying to figure out where else I can wear my beard...

Anyone want a beard? I'm going to make our boy one just in case we need all of us to have beards sometime. That could happen right?

Halloween fail...

I pretty much failed at decorating for Halloween this year. I had good intentions, but I've been so busy canning and harvesting the food we grew around here that I really did not put much effort into decorating.

The only new decoration I was able to make was my awesome wreath for the front door. I did this in mid September with my friend on a girls day and I love it!

We sprayed the branch wreath black and added some black birds (with red eyes) and a pretty bow. I looked around on Pinterest for a wreath that I wanted to make but didn't find any that I loved, so we came up with this! Take that Pinterest (just kidding... I really do love you).

I pulled out the bat garland that I made about 4 years ago...

Trent's aunt brought over some pumpkins that she grew in her garden this year.

And... that's it! I feel bad. I wish that I would have tried a little harder. Maybe in March or April I can work on some Halloween crafts since Fall seems to be super busy for me.

My little dude tried to help out. He colored several pictures that he hung around with magnets on anything metal. Here is one that I though was super cute.

Maybe next year I will be better...

29 by 29...

At the beginning of the year I decided I wanted to do 29 things by the time I turned 29. The time has come and gone and here is my list of what I got done! I tried to blog about most of the things as I did them. I completed 15 of the 29 (some of them are halfway done). So... not wonderful, but not bad! Better than not getting anything done all year. I discovered that it's hard to know at the beginning of the year what your year is going to be like. When I made this list I was living in my in laws basement, no knowing where I would be living or what I would be doing for sure. Some of my priorities changed during the year. Such as.... I don't have "plant a garden and learn to can" on this list but that has taken up a majority of my time this past summer/fall. Either way, I feel very accomplished for doing some of these things. Some of them have been in the works for a long time or were on my bucket list and are now done. So I'm happy with it!

1- Go on a hike to Lake Mary
2- Make a hexagon quilt - bought the stuff for it... but haven't started sewing
3- Make a quiet book for my boy
4- Run in a race (5K or half marathon... either way!)
5- Grow my own basil and make homemade pesto from it
6- Make an apron for myself (I've honestly never done this) - nope
7- Lose 30 lbs or get pregnant (cause if I get preggo I probably wont be losing the weight this year) - I'm checking this off... because I did get pregnant, just didn't work out. I only lost 5 measly pounds though.
8- Do all of the temple work for 5 ancestors (I'll explain this better when I do it) - halfway there
9- Find a great lipstick shade I really love Cover Girls outlast lipstain. That's my go to everyday.
10- Add 5 new items to my Etsy shop - sadly no...
11- Participate in a craft fair - nope
12- Finish the quilt for our bed - Halleluja!
13- Organize and re-label all of our files - halfway there
14- Build a toy barn for my boy
15- Go on a date to The Little Acorn, where I first met my husband - We did it but we went through the drive through... does that still count? Sure!

16- Do a 30 day sugar fast - HA! No...
17- Organize all of my recipes into a binder - nope
18- Take my boy to see the Buffalo's
19- Take a yoga class - As fate would have it my bff invited me to go to a class with her a few weeks ago and I did! It was wonderful and I hope to go again soon.
20- Write more consistently in my personal journal - funny story here. I hid my journal in a super sneeky place so that nobody would find it and read it (we had a few babysitters come over and I just didn't want to chance it) but then I couldn't remember where I hid it and couldn't find it until last week. So no...
21- Get some house plants, and not kill them - I have one plant and it's not dead yet... so I'm counting it!

22- Pay off all my medical bills - sigh... no. We did pay off our car though.
23- Learn how to use different saws and get more into woodworking
24- Organize a "command center" for my home
25- Go to Yellowstone for our 10th year of marriage (this is where we honeymooned) - nope, maybe this year!
26- Finish the stupid Santa cross stitch that I've been working on for the past 8 years!!! - and frame it for Christmas - NO!!! DARN!
27- Exercise at least 4 days per week - Yes... until I hurt my knee. So for half the year I did.
28- Organize my pantry better - I don't have pantry so no
29- Do my hair in different ways other than straight down at least once a week - Well, I decided a few months ago that I was sick and tired of washing my hair everyday and waiting for it to dry. So I started washing it every other day... and it's going pretty well. On the days that I don't wash it it's usually in a ponytail, messy bun, braid, or I curl it. So I'm counting this as a yes.

Goodbye garden...

I've spent the last few weeks ripping out what was left of the garden. The only things that are left are the tomatoe plants and the swiss chard. I decided to leave them because the deer have been coming down and eating them up so I figure why not? Might as well let them go for it.

Half eaten swiss chard...

 

 

We picked what was left of the green tomatoes before it froze. They've already ripened though, so I made some raw salsa this week with our last tomatoes.

 



I loved growing a garden this year. It has been one of the most rewarding things I have done. We're already making plans of what we want to do next year. More tomatoes and peppers so I can make salsa for canning, lots more squash. We're hoping to grow enough pumpkin to can some puree next year to keep us stocked for the winter.

Also, more flowers. The only flowers I did this summer were my sunflowers. Next summer I want flowers that come and go all season long! I'm thinking some orange poppies, black eyed susan's, daisies... I can hardly wait!

Tiny...

Do baby feet really come this tiny? I made some Mary Jane booties for my sister in law Kim who is going to have her first little one in a few months. I have never done booties before. It was nice to make something other than hats and leg warmers. They turned out so cute... and tiny! I hope that they fit her for a while.

The pattern made up really fast and were so fun to make. I see more booties being made in my future.

Five...

Well, birthday season is officially over in our house. This little dude just turned five last week {he posed himself for that picture btw...}. Gosh, I don't know how times flies so fast! He is such a sweet little boy. Very active and adventurous as always.

He wanted to have a "yes day" where we did whatever he wanted to all day long. So we played mini golf, ate lunch at McDonald's, got him a treat at the gas station... and he didn't want to go to bed all night. So we stayed up until 11:30 PM watching Ninja Turtles till he conked out on the couch ;).

We had grandparents over for homemade pizza (cheese for the birthday boy) and cake. He wanted a Wolverine cake and so I made it happen. I don't think I will ever make a fondant cake again, but I'm happy that he liked it. Even though the hand coming out of the center just looks like a big blue blob (because it was...), I'm glad he was happy!

So happy to be his mom. Love you little boy!

Twenty nine...

I'm glad that my husband married me. Even though my birthday is during the muzzle loader deer hunt every single year. It's his favorite hunt you know, always has been. Thankfully we've avoided this predicament for the past 7 years that we've lived out of Utah. This year though... it was back.

I honestly don't care if he hunts on my birthday anymore. We can always celebrate later right? I would rather him go and have a good time with his friends then worry about hunting on my birthday. Well, I guess there was this situation a while ago... on my 21st birthday... where I was left by myself at a cabin for the whole entire day without any phone service or sight of another human being until late into the evening. Yep, I really did spend my 21st birthday all by my lonesome, and was a little sad about that. I'm over it... really I am! But my husband has taken a personal vow to never have that happen again, and to no longer hunt on my birthday.

My boy and I decided to drive out to where he was hunting this year and camp over on Friday night. Such a good decision! I didn't want to spend the whole week with a bunch of smelly hunters {no offense}, but one night was not bad at all.

This was my view when I woke up Saturday morning...

And I just knew it was going to be a beautiful day.

 

Twenty nine this year... my golden birthday. I don't know why but I've been looking forward to 29 for a long time. Still in my twenties, but hopefully a little wiser than I was in my early twenties.

 

The boy needed to use the potty, which was a few miles away. We normally would not drive to the potty while out camping in the woods but I felt like going on an early morning drive to see this beautiful place we were in.

 

Best decision of the day.

 

You see, mother nature had a {few} wonderful birthday presents for me on this drive. I left camp, turned a few corners, and found myself in the most beautiful golden aspen forest. 

For miles, and miles, and MILES all you could see were golden aspen trees! I drove slowly along the dirt road trying to soak in as much of the sun reflecting off these golden beauties as I could... it was magical to me.

It was one of the most amazing drives of my life. I know that it's the time of year for leaves to change, and I was up in the mountains, but it almost felt like someone had painted all the trees gold the night before just for me on my golden birthday. I shed a few tears at the beauty I was beholding and considered it a gift.

The next gift that was on my drive... sheep. Lots of sheep. I love seeing wildlife outside and Utah has a lot of it. But seeing hundreds of sheep brings me back to my college days when I went to Snow College. There were many mornings I would be walking to school and the roads in Ephraim would be covered in sheep. This city girl {who wishes she was a country girl} loved it when the farmers would do that.

So we slowed down even more and watched the sheep.

I took the most awesome movie of the hundreds of sheep surrounding our car... but I can't for the life of me get it to load. So sorry, that you have to miss out on that one ;). It was pretty amazing to see all these sheep out there.

Even with all my tree gazing and sheep watching going on, we still made it to the loo in time. I love that my birthday started out with something so simple yet special. It's the small and simple things that sometimes bring us the most joy. When we got back to camp we packed everything up and headed home. My cute husband was true to his word and did not hunt on my birthday. He made me feel very special. Mother nature made me feel special. My wonderful friends and family members made me feel special. It was a great day. I'm lucky to be so loved and have such great people in my life.

Command center...

 I'm not a very big fan of the stacks of paper that seem to accumulate in my house. I would even say I downright hate them. I love the idea of a command center in my home that has all my important things right there where I can see them and find them. Here us phase 1 of my command center.

I walk by this little wall so many times a day. The main things that this one houses is my calendar and my to do list. I print my calendar off of word every month. It's simple, I can scribble all over it. It helps keep the three of us more organized. I found this awesome to do list from Wit & Whistle which I love! It was very simple to put together and I'm a sucker for mustard colored anything.

 I bought this magnetic board from Roberts a while ago and really love it! I painted the border black when I bought it and hated it. So recently I sanded off the black paint, stained it a dark wood color, and painted on the chevron print. I love it now! It makes me super happy. I used this template for the chevron which was really helpful. Just a word of warning if you try this, don't be a cheapskate like me. Buy the frog tape!!! Don't even waste your time with blue painters tape because it is $2 cheaper. You will regret it! Also, don't use cheap craft paint. I started with that and it looked awful. I ended up going with the sample can at Home Depot that is paint and primer in one. Much much better. I had to re-sand and stain the bottom of the frame because I was too cheap to do it the right way the first time. Trust me on this one...

The other little wall in my kitchen is going to be phase 2. I was going to put up a frame with chicken wire in it to hold my bills, coupons, etc on this wall. Well... the chicken wire is in a mangled heap in the backyard right now with a beat up frame. It did not go well. So I'm scratching that idea and going to find something like this for the wall. The moral of the story is, sometimes crafting ideas go bad in a bad way. For me I would say it happens about 25% of the time. No worries... take a deep breath and figure something else out. But for now the wall will remain naked and my bills and coupons will remain in a stack of papers on the counter.

 

How do you manage stacks of paper in your house from taking over and swallowing you alive? Please, do tell...