Hylan & Emily's Blog O' Life: Snippets of Life: Delicious and Mischievous Edition

I've got plenty of pictures of Hylan and Kingo, but here's one of me and my buddy on a rare lazy night! Give him a break, he just woke up from a nap. Ha ha.

I feel like many of us "not for profit" bloggers have taken a hiatus from blogging now that it's summer. I'll forgive you if you forgive me, but really, I do appreciate having something to pull up on my google reader when I'm bored! So, keep me updated.

Speaking of which, now that we have faster smart phones, I hardly ever get on a computer that isn't handheld. Our laptop is old (like 3 years) and the battery is totally kaput, so I have to plug it in to turn it on since it won't hold a charge at all...um so yeah, I haven't been using it much lately because it's such a hassle, though I have missed pinterest which is terribly inconvenient on a phone.

I was having one of those days where I was feeling like I'll never really be great at anything, just okay at a tons of things (jack of all trades, master of none syndrome), and then I read some student evaluations of my classes at UVU and it surprisingly perked me up. I don't know why I was bracing myself for the worst, but there were some very positive comments from my students that just made my day. Maybe I can be better than average at some things. Maybe. I've still got a lot to learn in the fitness teaching area, but I've been doing some great learning from my mentor over the past 7 weeks at UVU.

So, Downton Abbey has also been keeping Hylan and I delighted for the past several weeks. We have the last episode of Season 2 to watch, which we keep either not having time for, or it gets usurped by the NBA Playoffs, or we just want to save it for a time when we're not tired. We will accomplish that mission this weekend, I hope!

Some other bits of randomness. Golden Delicious Lemonade. Blend two golden delicious apples with the juice of one lemon and ice. Very refreshing. This particular one I added a kiwi (and a little water since I still don't have that Blentec yet and had to use my Magic Bullet). You should try it. I love these simple healthy recipes.

I've been noshing on these lately too. They are high protein & fiber, low sugar & calorie chocolate chocolate chip muffins. I often have one for breakfast with a smoothie (by the way, I've recently discovered that coconut milk tastes surprisingly a lot like coconut...milk...ha ha).

This recipe makes 12 normal size plus 24 mini size (or 24 normal size). I made them like this because sometimes I like a big one and sometimes I like a few little ones and because I don't have two normal sized muffin tins. I froze most of this batch so that I could enjoy them for a much longer period of time.

Anyway, it's one of those recipes that you make in a blender (will I get a proper Blendtec for my birthday, please?). It's surprisingly good for being one of those healthy types of recipes. I made mine with whole eggs (I'm not scared of a little fat from a yolk) instead of just egg whites, and real sugar (about 2/3 cup--I would have tried Stevia but I didn't have enough little packets). It was tricky in an improper blender, but I still prevailed. And proper moderate use of sugar is okay by me, so stop trying to feed me lies about how evil sugar is! Ha ha.

Here is the link to the recipe. Notice how mine look nothing like the ones pictured in the link.

I made little travel books for my nieces and nephew (thanks for the idea from your road trip last year, Bridget!) I hope that they got some use out of them on their trek east to the homestead (I'll find out when we join them next week.)

I'm not sure what happened to the quality of these photos. The cover was meant to be blank so they could color it in, the first page had a tracking sheet of how many days they've been on the road and the other example page displayed has animals on it--the idea being when they spotted the animal on the trip, they could color it in. I thought it was clever anyway. I repeated that idea with cars, bugs, food, etc. The binders had a crayon pouch (and colored pencils for the girls), plenty of activity pages of things they might see or experience along the way, and stickers.

I've had several harvests from my spinach pot (and it's still growing strong)! I grew those tender leaves from seedlings. Yum. I hope to post about the harvest of the other plants I've got brewing in pots outside, so we'll see how they fare during our vacation.

Oh, and more healthiness coming atcha. What a great simple Greek Quinoa Salad. I absolutely adore this salad and was so thankful to have it in my fridge for those starving times when I'm too weak to make something. I don't know why Hylan doesn't love quinoa, it's freaking awesome!

Okay, last bit of randomness. I accidentally left the downstairs bathroom door open for a couple minutes, and when I went back to close it, this is what I found.

Ha ha. Oh the stories I could tell of how this cat is like a 2 year old. But he's our babycat and we love him so much and freely forgive him for his little mischievous acts. Just look how proud he is of his accomplishment.