healthy new year

Everyone's always telling you to eat your vegetables, right?  (Including me.)  Although I, myself, eat a fair amount of veggies in any given day, I wanted a way to make it easier and more fun for my kids to choose veggies with lunch or dinner.  You know, so they don't always bug me about eating cookies before breakfast, after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before dinner, and after dinner.  Oh, and mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  Oh, and before bed.  (You get the picture.)

So I picked up a few glass jars at the store, cut up a whole bunch of carrots, celery, radishes, and cucumbers, filled up the jars, and put them out with the lunch offerings on Saturday.  They each also got a little individual size serving of ranch dressing.

And guess what?  They loved it. 

They both ate a plateful of veggies along with the rest of their lunch.  Win!  Will and I enjoyed them as well and ate what I'm now going to call, "Snack Lunch."  I'm envisioning this lunch including popcorn just as soon as my air popper is out of it's box in our storage unit.  I know the kids will both love that.

I spent quite a bit of time in my kitchen yesterday as I made more All-Purpose Baking Mix and my first attempt at a gluten-free pizza crust.  

For breakfast, we ate apple spice quick muffins - mix up the ingredients, spoon into sweet little ramekins, and microwave for 2-3 minutes.  The boys don't love them, but Annabel and I sure do!

 I took a few minutes to make my new favorite dessert from "Wheat Belly":  Dark Chocolate-Nut Crunch.  It's good.

 Then Annabel and I made more breakfast cookies. 

Well, I made the cookies and she did this...

She refused to wear socks...and pants.

And then we ate this...

I'd say it was a pretty good weekend!  Only made better by this little bit of time I had to relax on Saturday while the boys were at a Richmond Spiders basketball game and Annabel was taking a nap...

Fake fire, pretty knitting, Mr. Potato Head.

Also, we checked on our house again on Saturday.

Foundation!

Yes, I'd say it was definitely a good weekend!  Have a great week, and Happy Birthday, Dr. King!