This smoothie was an instant hit – it actually tastes like liquid chocolate covered strawberries! It is SO good … I had saved some for later, but that was devoured within seconds of taking the photo. (Hey! The kids can’t be the only ones who get to enjoy!)

The superfood and cacao I like to use:

And, in case you’re wondering what supplements I hide:

During our regular home school curriculum the other day, we were working on patterns. This is a challenging concept for little ones, so I decided to try to make patterns a little bit more fun this morning … with bead necklaces! It was so easy and she had a blast creating her own pattern necklaces. We started off with these cheap Target beads, then used our Melissa & Doug bead necklace kit for more complex patterns with shapes and letters. We had so much fun, I hope you’ll try it out with your toddler!

We recently did a 3-day Raw Food diet (not a lose-weight diet, just to change things up and try to cleanse). One of the things we LOVED from it was the first day’s smoothie – a peanut butter-banana smoothie. While I won’t recommend this particular raw diet (we actually gained weight on it), we really enjoyed several of the recipes and plan to use some of them in the future. As usual, I ended up changing the smoothie recipe a bit to suit our taste. Yesterday morning, I decided to try something new – which turned out to be a huge hit! So, I thought I would share these two smoothie recipes with you. Enjoy!

I recently bought a juicer and was so excited to get juicing! When I went to empty the pulp bin, I realized how much was being wasted! Couldn’t I use that for …. well, something? Thought it would be good to start with something easy – carrot pulp into carrot muffins. I found a few recipes – one that used pulp but sounded disgusting and most that were GF but sounded disgusting –  so I compiled bits and pieces, my pulp, and came up with what turned out to be a HUGE hit with my kids (who devoured ALL of them in just a couple short days).

The little one turned 3 on New Years Eve … and how did she wish to celebrate? With her favorite color, of course – PINK. She specifically requested a PINK PARTY and even chose the dress that the theme was centered around (a multi-pink ruffly number from Gap Kids). We put pink everywhere – pink lemonade, pink cups, pink candy-filled jars with pink rock candy arrangements, pink balloons and pink tissue paper flowers, pink cake, pink dress, pink wand and crown, and even a pink-iced cookie tree. I had pinned a pink ruffly cake a while back on Pinterest, but she saw another pink cake I pinned and decided at the last moment that she wanted it instead. That exact cake. And she got it. The only way it could have gotten any pinker was if I’d painted the walls. She absolutely adored it, as did I, so I wanted to share a few pics with y’all.