Preggo piña colada

Being preggo is uncomfortable. Being hot is uncomfortable. Being preggo in record-breaking heat? Yep, also uncomfortable. But not necessarily unbearable. So what's the secret to survival here?

A comfy chair, a camera, and a hummingbird feeder. And a preggo-friendly piña colada. Step one, obviously, is to make the piña colada, which is easier than you might imagine. All you need are three ingredients, four if you're not preggo and want to add rum, you jerk.

Add equal parts of coconut milk and pineapple juice to a blender (1/3 cup or so is a perfect serving size) and enough ice cubes to cover the liquid (6-8 ish). Blend until smooth. Pour into your favorite honeymoon souvenir cup and enjoy, preferably while sitting in a comfy chair with a camera and a nice view, like of a hummingbird feeder. 

Who knows what could happen next? You might even end up with a few share-worthy hummingbird photos. 

How else do you beat the heat?

A Monday morning post

If there's one thing I look forward to about Monday mornings, it's a nice hot cup of coffee. Or, depending on the weather, a nice cold glass of iced coffee. Being preggo, I know I'm supposed to keep my caffeine consumption under 200 milligrams a day, so I usually drink one cup of coffee and save the rest of my caffeine for miscellaneous chocolate cravings. That way, I know I'm not going overboard, but I don't feel like I'm depriving myself. And I'm also not counting every milligram of caffeine that enters my bloodstream. It's a win win. 

Now, as far as I'm concerned, some good creamer is an essential part of the perfect cup of coffee. Creamer is basically a combination of the classic coffee additives cream and sugar, with an infusion of other delicious flavors. But have you looked at the ingredients in coffee creamer from the store? I don't want vegetable oil in my creamer, thank you very much (which is at least a step in the right direction... I saw one once that had palm oil in it, but that's a topic for another day). 

At this point, you may be wondering how I enjoy a cup of coffee with delicious flavored creamer without all the weird ingredients. I make it myself. It's super easy, and healthier, as far as I can tell. There are two basic ingredients:  

Combine equal(ish) amounts of milk and sweetened condensed milk in a resealable container, add whatever flavoring you want, and shake it all together. Like I said, super easy. It costs about the same as the creamers you'd find at the store (the condensed milk is about $2 a can), lasts as long as the milk, and doesn't have any scary ingredients. Plus you can put it in a cute container like this one: 

How you want to flavor your creamer is completely up to you, but I'll share a couple of my favorites in case you need a jumping off point. Vanilla extract and cinnamon make a delightful cinnamon roll creamer. Simple vanilla is nice, too. Start with a teaspoon or so of vanilla, and add as your little heart desires. Or sprinkle in some pumpkin pie spice for the fall/winter/anytime you miss pumpkin. Just remember to shake well before using. What other coffee creamer flavors do you enjoy?

Adventures in voting

As my California readers know, today is our primary election. Because my hubby and I live in a small, rural community, our great state has decided that it's not worth their effort to provide us with a polling place. Which means that we get the ease of voting by mail and are deprived of the "I voted" stickers to wear around after showing up on election day. 

Except that my mail ballot didn't arrive. I checked our county's voting website, which was useless--want to register to vote? No problem. Want to find out what to do when you don't get your mail ballot? Too bad. I called their voting hotline, which was useless--I gave up after 15 minutes on hold. I called the state's voting hotline, which at least told me it was useless--a friendly recording told me that there were 114 people on hold ahead of me, at which point I knew I should hang up. I ended up finding my answer on a non-official website: I could vote in person at any polling place. 

Excellent! The nearest polling place was a mere 25 minute drive away. My hubby figured he might as well come too and deliver his mail ballot in person so we could both have our votes counted today and so we could both get our "I voted" stickers. So of course we decided to get lunch while we were out. And stop at Home Depot. Who doesn't love Home Depot? So my hubby got a new chainsaw. Which he actually did need because his old one crapped out. When you heat your house with firewood and live in the woods where there is a lot of dead wood around, you need a pretty zippy chainsaw. 

So now we're home, sporting our "I voted" stickers, and my hubby is happily chainsawing away in the woods.

Pregnant brownies

I think I might be pregnant. I have brownies in the oven right now. Not for an after-dinner treat, but for the main course. You can thank my cravings and my hubby. I told him to talk me out of making brownies for dinner, but they have peanut butter in them. He loves peanut butter. Besides, the brownies are made with eggs and peanut butter, which have protein, and you're supposed to eat protein when you're pregnant, right?

Right. 

The hardest part about baking while pregnant is that you often have to break one of the cardinal rules of baking: taste it before you bake it. Luckily, my hubby was on hand to be my official taste tester and give his chocolatey thumb's up (and will be on hand to make sure I don't eat an entire pan of brownies by myself. He's such a giver). The only part I was able to taste was the peanut butter filling (which is why I'm calling these "pregnant" brownies: they're carrying around peanut butter goodness in their middle). I may or may not have cleaned that bowl with my finger. 

Shortly, my pregnant brownies will be cooked to perfection and I'll finally be able to taste them! Recipe to follow (after dinner). 

How to not stick to a budget and/or have nice things.

With so many posts floating around the Internet about how to budget and/or have nice things, I thought I'd weigh in on my experiences. So, how do you not budget and/or have nice things? Simple! Have pets. Or probably kids, but I don't have any experience with those yet. This is the culprit responsible for today's anti-budgeting-and-nice-things:

He's a little monster, but he's my (our) little monster. 

Last weekend, this handsome little monster decided to eat a baby squirrel. Shortly thereafter, he developed a cough. My thought was that something crunchy from his tasty tasty kitty treat got lodged somewhere in his system. My hubby is of the "lets wait and see if it gets better on its own" school of medicine (likely from his years of experience as a Doc in the Navy). So we waited, until this morning, when we were tired from a night of listening to the little monster coughing, when I made an appointment to take him to the kitty doc this afternoon. 

Even though my hubby and I have 3 kitties, we don't have a kitty carrier. Luckily for me, the little monster is the "good" kitty. Last time he needed a trip to the kitty doc, he did fine loose in my car, so I figured we'd do the same thing this time. I plopped him on the passenger seat with the words "please don't poop" (we have a history of cats pooping in cars). 

He didn't poop. He did get car sick and puke. Twice. The first time, he started yowling so I stopped on the side of the road in time to witness the little monster puking on the backseat. The second time, I identified the yowling sooner, stopped the car sooner, and pulled him onto my lap to try to settle his stomach with soothing and looking out the window. It was a great plan, until it wasn't. When he started making the sound (you know the one I'm talking about), I had little choice but to catch his puke. In my hand. And then roll down the window and glop it onto the ground. 

And that is the last time I put a kitty in the car and don't bring a towel. Actually, I should probably just ALWAYS have a towel in my car. 

After the little monster successfully emptied his stomach onto me and my car, the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We spent over $200 to learn that he most likely has asthma and/or seasonal allergies. On the plus side, the kitty doc accidentally took extra X-rays of his abdomen and didn't find any trace of last weekend's tasty tasty kitty treat, so no negative consequences there. Except for the baby squirrel. 

And there you have it: how to NOT stick to a budget or have nice things. 

Start a fire

On warm, sunny days like today, it's so easy to be productive. Even taking frequent breaks so I don't over exert myself (not something I worried about before I started growing another human), I've already finished two (albeit small) painting projects, cleaned up the yard, gathered some firewood, washed the dishes, and done a load of laundry. And there's still another 5+ hours of daylight (okay, 4 now... The Avengers was on tv). Have I mentioned that I'm solar powered?

Even in sunny Southern California, days aren't always warm and/or sunny. This past weekend, we got an inch of much-needed rain. But, I'll admit, it's hard for me to want to get anything done when it's gray outside. Especially if it's chilly, too. Like I said, I'm solar powered. 

When it's chilly, I tend to huddle up with whichever warm bodies are readily available (any combination of hubby, dog, and kitties). Over the chilly, damp weekend, my hubby got the fireplace going to the point where I was comfy in just a t-shirt. Until I needed to take the dog out, obviously. 

The point is, I was warm enough to be productive, at least a little bit. And I worked on something that's going to help me be warm next time it's chilly and damp out. In less than an hour and for almost free, I made 84 fire starters. How, you ask? Let me show you!

First, gather all your supplies: as many cardboard egg cartons as you have (free), sawdust from cutting firewood (also free), candle wax (I got 10 pounds of wax on Amazon for less than $20, which is enough to make more than a year's worth of fire starters), and a double boiler (which prevents the wax from behaving badly while you melt it).

On the kitchen counter, fill each egg carton well with sawdust. 

Then, melt the wax in the double boiler (I think I spent $10 on my double boiler, and I only use it for melting wax, which means I literally never clean it. Hooray!). See the melty wax in the middle?

Pour enough melted wax on top of the sawdust to almost fill each well. 

Here's the tough part: let them cool on the kitchen counter until the wax is hard (tough for me because this literally takes up ALL of the counter space in my tiny kitchen). 

That's it! They might not be the prettiest fire starters, but trust me, popping one of these little guys in the fireplace under some tinder (little pieces of wood, for you city dwellers) is SO much easier than crumpling up every piece of scrap paper you can find! And cheaper than the store-bought fire starters (that don't work as well, anyway). I'll follow up with instructions for how to use your homemade fire starters next time we have a day that's chilly and/or damp, but until then I'll be outside recharging in the sun!

Finding Happiness

In honor of today being Mother's Day, and because I'm going to become one in five short months, I've decided to take this blog in somewhat of a new direction. 

My hubby and I have chosen to live our lives differently than most of our (especially my) peers. Instead of idealizing a life in the suburbs, we've decided that we would be much happier moving out of civilization and into nature, which is why we have made our home in the woods. Literally. This is our backyard:

Pretty awesome, right?

Anyhoo, I grew up in the suburbs and living in the woods has definitely been a learning experience for me. And, I'm hoping, that it can also be a learning experience for anyone else who thinks they might be interested in taking the plunge that I'm taking. Or maybe my experience will give you the confidence to take your own plunge in your own search for happiness. 

From here on, let's focus on making improvements. Making improvements to our home, our diet, our feelings of self-sufficiency, our happiness, and whatever else we can improve to make our lives, our family, and our planet better.