I’m pretty sure I’ve mastered homemade kombucha, and I’m sharing my new favorite recipe below. Follow our instructions and you’ll create a nice citrus-flavored kombucha with a light floral aroma. yay!
A few years ago, I made a concerted effort to cut back on chemical-based cleaning supplies. One of the main resources I’ve turned to is this book. While spring cleaning gets all the glory, for me, the post-holiday clean-up and start of the new year is when I’m really inspired to give our house a good cleaning.
As you might expect, we are seasonal eaters. In the winter I love to start my day with a bowl of oats + all the fixings. Since many people are looking to reset their diets after the new year, we wanted to share our super simple method for making steel cute oats.
Well hello there second week of January, didn’t expect you so soon. As usual, we can’t let the holidays go, keeping our decorations up until at least Russian Christmas.
Even with the tinsel still up, I’ve started my new year reset. To me, there are two times of the year when I feel like we get a fresh start : January and September (that new school year vibe!). And so, I think we’ll spend the rest of the month sharing some of the ways that we start our year on the right foot. Of course, we totally understand if you’re feeling the post-holiday, mid-winter blues; those feelings totally creep up on us too.
This month look for posts focused on body, mind, home, and family – all the good stuff. I’m particularly excited (EXCITED) to share with you a new monthly routine that’s super environmentally friendly and completely took me by surprise. We have a few food posts that aren’t fancy-dancy, but they are easy ways to help jumpstart healthy eating routines. We’ll talk about cleaning – both your shower and yo’ face. And, you can bet there will be some book posts, because there’s no time like the present to plan your reading list for the year.
As we’ve mentioned in previous years, we love to set a few resolutions for the coming year. We have a “resolution keeper” in the family. He gets the conversations going around the holidays, encouraging everyone to think about what they’d like to accomplish in the coming year. He also keeps a running list of everyone’s resolutions from previous years and does a good job of cheering us on or chiding us depending upon how we’re doing. As the years have passed, everyone has gotten into the spirit of setting resolutions. Look for Sarah and I to share a few of ours next week, and we’d love to hear yours.
Going to end this with a little shout-out to my favorite planner. So excited to fill you up.
Hey there! I don’t know about you, but I need at least three more weeks of November. I need time to SLOW down. There’s just too much good stuff to pack into one month. Too much eggnog to drink, too many candles to burn, and too many festive events to attend.
So, I’ve done what any holiday-loving person would do : I started December by jumping in with two feet. This past weekend was spent hanging decorations, walking slowly among the shops downtown and finding the perfect gifts, and evenings on the couch working on holiday photo projects.
As the year comes to a close, it’s natural to look back at the previous 12 months. For me, much of that reminiscing starts the moment I start compiling our annual family photo album. If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by the thought of a year of photos, putting together a personalized calendar with family photos is a great alternative. I just ordered ours on Shutterfly, and (big surprise) these make great gifts for grandparents! Word is that Sarah’s working on a few photo projects/gifts that she’s going to share on the blog this month.
The photo projects are always the first on my to-do list because of their early printing deadlines, but once I’m done with those, I have a few other projects up my sleeve. Similar to last year’s coffee mugs, I’m going to work on another project from the boys. This one requires a little bit of work on my part, and I’m excited to see how it turns out. I’m sure I’ll share the results, but it’ll probably be after the new year.
As in previous years, I’m starting to think about my 2019 resolutions. For us, these are part self-improvement, part check-list of things we’d like to accomplish. I’m sure we’ll share our resolutions when January arrives… I just checked my previous resolutions posts, and realized that this year may be a catch-up year, because I have a few unaccomplished goals that are still nagging at me!
Between the looking back and looking forward, there’s going to be plenty of living in the now this month. For me that involves not over-scheduling our days. I want to enjoy the holidays without getting caught up in having/wanting to do everything. And yet, in the process, our days will feel so full.
There will be plenty of days like today. Our favorite Christmas music will be playing. I’ll set the boys up with a holiday craft or two. I’ll spend a bit of time in the kitchen and a bit on the couch working on gifts. We’ll make sure the bird feeders are filled for our feathered friends. And, if we’re lucky, we’ll take a brisk walk before the sun sets.
Of course, If you’re starting to feel the angst of being cooped up on these short winter days, the end is near! December’s Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year, and you can take solace in knowing that by the end of the month, we’ll be creeping our way back towards summer and longer days. And definitely mark your calendars for the Christmas Bird Count. It’s a great reason to get outside. Want to do it with a group? Many parks and wildlife organizations hold group bird counts near the end of the month.
There’s no better time than now to decide how you want to spend these precious and oh-to-short December days. We hope yours contain plenty of joy and nog.
This is the last coffee post to close-out our Ingredient of the Season, so there was no other choice than to end it with dessert. And tiramisu at that… here’s the part where I admit that we’re ending with tiramisu because I was too intimidated to make it earlier in the season.
Don’t be me; tiramisu is not a difficult dessert to make. Just follow our instructions below, and then refrain from eating it all by yourself. Because that’s the hard part.
Tiramisu is a coffee-flavored Italian dessert that’s a little bit cake-like and a little bit creamy custard, but note that you don’t even bake the “cake” part, and you barely do anything to form the custard layers…. of course, not everyone *has* to learn how to make tiramisu.
From my basic web-browsing, this is a dessert that comes with a lot of opinionated makers and eaters. But not us, we aren’t from the motherland, we aren’t sticklers about our lady fingers (lady parts, now that’s another story), we’re ok with trying different alcohols with the coffee. All we know is a good thing when we taste it, and this is good!
The recipe below is a variation on this one. As you’ll see, that recipe has five star reviews. After reading the comments below that recipe, we made a few changes and were really happy with the results.
*And note that the final 4-6 hours of rest time means that you should make this at least that far in advance of when you want to eat it. I made mine the night before and it was perfect.
Today I wanted to share personalized DIY coffee mug that makes the perfect gift for the coffee and tea lovers in your life.
With the holidays just around the corner, we wanted to share a super simple toddy recipe with an extra kick of cinnamon that’s sure to warm you up!
Now that you’ve got the gear, and you’re making your coffee at home (go you!), what do you do with the used grounds?
Instead of tossing them in the trash, add them to your compost pile!
