movie monday: haircut!

Isadora's first haircut from carissaabc on Vimeo.

and for reference, here’s gabriel’s first haircut.

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movie monday: flashback to april

chickadee and the monster 3 from carissaabc on Vimeo.

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movie monday: the happy little baby takes the stairs

isadora takes the stairs from carissaabc on Vimeo.

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movie monday: swinging!

izza swings from carissaabc on Vimeo.

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starting a salad swap

IMGP0339at the beginning of this summer, i was reading a blog (sorry, can’t remember which one) that made a passing comment (i believe it was facetious) that her new diet plan was “eat a salad every day.” while this “diet plan” came with absolutely zero further explanation or scientific back-up, it seemed like a pretty solid goal nonetheless. i was ashamed to think about how many days sometimes passed between salads in my menu. i decided to try eating a salad every day (or at least closer to every day) for awhile. trouble was, i didn’t want to eat the same salad 5 days in a row and i didn’t want to have a bunch of rotting produce in my refrigerator and so the concept of the salad swap was born.

IMGP0332i e-mailed my church and asked if anyone else would like to participate.  here were the basics:

1. we decided to swap mason jar salads.  everyone needed to find wide-mouth mason jars, as many as they want to swap each week.

2. if anyone wanted to join the swap but had dietary restrictions or preferences, they needed to give the group a heads-up so that things could be left out of one jar for them.

3. each week, whoever is in town and wants to participate brings as many jars as they want to swap.  i usually aim for 5 days a week, so i make 5 jars of the same salad and take 4 to church to swap and keep one jar of my own salad at home.  some weeks there might only be 3 participants and we take home a few duplicate salads. other weeks, there are 6 or 7 people participating and we choose whichever salads look tastiest to us.

4. we agreed to be honest with feedback as we were all learning together the best way to build a salad in a jar. so if by day 5 the nuts in one of the salads had lost their crunch, or if the avocado had turned unappealingly brown, we sent an e-mail and all learned that maybe twisting some of those ingredients in a bit of plastic wrap and tuck them into the top of the jar, they last a little longer.  i found this blog post particularly helpful.

5. each week, anyone who wants to swap, tucks their salads into the refrigerator at church and right after the service, we meet up in the kitchen to swap jars and let others know if there’s any special notes (e.g. “mine has avocado, so you might not want to leave it until the end of the week”).

IMGP0337although a church-based swap works well for me, i could see this also working well with a group of co-workers or neighbors.

everyone in our swap has been so excited about this idea. it feels “like christmas” to find out what salads we’re getting each week!  i think each of us try to make an extra special salad since we know we’re sharing it with others and there have been some truly incredible combinations (i still can’t stop thinking about the one that had a curry dressing, chickpeas, crunchy roasted almonds and homemade pickles.  sooooo good!). and it’s so easy to grab a jar each morning while packing lunches for work!  yes, i’d say that prep-time on sunday afternoons can sometimes take an hour or more, but that’s usually my own fault for picking complicated recipes.  our family is also trying a csa for the first time this year and i’ve enjoyed the challenge of finding recipes that match the contents of our box each week.

IMGP0343i also finally found a use for this basket that i think was a wedding gift.  i think maybe it was supposed to hold silverware or napkins for a picnic, but it works great for hauling jars safely to church each week.

i highly recommend trying out a salad swap for yourself!

Posted in clean, summer, yum | 2 Comments

more favorite apps

dad+mei know that some of you really enjoy my app recommendations, so i thought i’d post a few of our new favorites. first, the apps that get the most actual playtime by the happy little dude:

dipdapiconDipDap–in this app, users are invited to complete a drawing of an object that DipDap needs–a car, a lawnmower, a basketball, whatever. you can choose to follow the faint suggested lines they give you, or you can make a crazy scribble or draw whatever you want. once you finish your drawing, they drop what you’ve created into a humorous animation where DipDap uses the object you’ve drawn. This app has the highest “giggles per use” ratio that i’ve seen in a looooong time. highly recommended.

BigReadingShowIconThe Big Reading Show–an app produced by hooked on phonics, this one has been a surprise super hit with both the boy and me. it’s got excellent, catchy musical riffs, a well-designed user interface and (here’s the best part) it has actually noticeably increased the happy little dude’s interest in and aptitude for reading. you can get the first “episode” for free and the rest are a rather pricey in-app purchase, but i can say that the investment is totally worth it on this one. tons of fun, solid pedagogy and songs that will get stuck in your head all day in a not unpleasant way.

other apps that both the happy little dude and i love (my reviews are available at each link below) include:

babypants_iconCaspar Babypants’ Music Time

Gappy_icon Gappy Learns Writing

metamorphicon Metamorphabet

miximal_icon Miximal

drawnimal_icon Drawnimal

loopimal_icon Loopimal

fietematchicon Fiete Match

fiete_spot_icon Fiete Spot the Difference

endlessSpanishIcon Endless Spanish

simple_machines_iconsimple machines by tinybop

 

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movie monday: the happy little baby crawls

this footage was taken back in january, but i finally got around to making it into a movie.  it’s a sequel to this one from october and reminiscent of this movie of her brother.

Chickadee and the monster 2 from carissaabc on Vimeo.

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tutorial: a flower garden for toddlers

IMGP0307way back at christmastime, i made a flower garden toy for my niece after reading this blog post on the artful parent. once i’d gathered all the parts, i realized it was pretty simple and inexpensive to make (though mine isn’t quite as nice as the one she links to), so i thought i’d share how i created this “flower garden” toy.IMGP9434-001

supplies:

silk flowers (not pictured below)

wood*

drill with a bit that is about the same size as the stems on your flowers

measuring tape and pencil (optional)

IMGP9924*finding the wood was probably the trickiest part.  i ended up finding a piece that was intended to be a pre-finished “parsons table” furniture leg from a home improvement store. it had a screw set into one end. for the one i gave my niece, i couldn’t figure out how to remove the screw, so i just screwed a wooden ball over it. when i made the second one for the happy little baby, i asked a wood-working friend if i could use his bench-mounted vise and a vise grip wrench and it was simple to unscrew the screw from the wood completely.

instructions:

1. first, measure your wood and mark regular intervals where you want your flowers to be planted.  mark the intervals with a pencil.

IMGP99252. drill holes where you’ve marked. be sure to only drill about 1/2 way or maybe 3/4 of the way through the wood.IMGP9926 3. insert flowers. if your flowers are super tall like these were, you might want to cut the stems with a wire cutter and seal the ends with a bit of hot glue to keep the wire from poking your child. for the second set, i used a daisy “bush” that had multiple flowers on one stem and those stems had solid plastic encasing the wires making them somewhat less dangerous.  if you’re still concerned about the sharpness, you can try smoothing it out by rubbing it over some industrial sandpaper or emery cloth.IMGP9442-001as i mentioned here i made a set for my own family after seeing how it was indeed popular with my niece (and my nephews for that matter). so far, she’s mostly been interested in removing the flowers and flinging them around the room and putting them back in the holes is low on her list of priorities, but maybe when she’s a bit older?

IMGP0292lucky for you, dear readers, i decided to make an extra set as a giveaway to celebrate my 10 year blogiversary! if you would like to own one of these lovely little flower garden toys, simply leave a comment on this blog post telling me your favorite happy stuff tutorial by next tuesday, june 30,2015 and i will draw a winner.

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movie monday: zoom zoom

love to see these two playing together!

 

Zoom Zoom from carissaabc on Vimeo.

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mail-order meals: home chef vs. blue apron

IMGP0276a few months ago, i read a rave review of a mail-order meal service called blue apron (her blog is really hilarious, especially if you like mommy humor) and i was very disappointed when i went to blue apron’s site and discovered that they did not yet deliver to my area. i entered my e-mail address to be notified if they ever did add us in and was excited to get a message from them in late april saying that indeed they could now deliver to us!  i had a coupon for some money off, so i thought we’d give it a try.

basic premise — blue apron plans 6 menus each week (3 veg, 3 omnivore) for two people and 6 different menus for four people.  you sign up for the number of people and state basic food preferences (vegetarian, no fish, etc.) and then they send you all of the ingredients (in just the right portions) and the recipe cards to make three meals each week.  you cook the food, but you don’t have to search out recipes or shop for it or fill your fridge with jars of strange ingredients you’ll never use after that one recipe you tried from pinterest (i’m looking at you, trader joe’s soyaki sauce!). you can choose to skip delivery for any weeks you don’t want to have them deliver food and you can stop the subscription anytime you want, no obligations.  you can also go onto their website each week before the delivery and choose different menus (for instance, if you don’t like one of the default meat options, you can switch to one of the vegetarian meals instead).

we tried blue apron for three weeks. i wish i had some pictures to show you, but weeknight dinnertimes are rough around here and i’m doing great to get food on the table before the kids’ bedtime and taking a photo is one more step i just didn’t do. but i wanted to share our experience with you nonetheless.  the 2-person and 4-person options from blue apron are totally different and the 4-person options are a bit more family-friendly than the 2-person, but i didn’t think we needed 4 servings, so we chose the 2-person option which was plenty of food for us (we sometimes even had leftovers) but that was mostly because the happy little dude refused to eat pretty much any of it. some of it was too spicy for him (the posole the first week was almost too spicy for me!), some he just didn’t like because it was new. he did eat some of the raw golden beet and the happy little baby ate raw tomatillos with gusto, but the actual menu items? not a big hit with either kid.  and to be honest? only about a notch or two above “meh” most nights for mr. happy stuff and myself. this could be because i had high expectations and these didn’t jump up that high. it could be because of some operator error (the fried fish for the fish tacos lost all of its breading every time i flipped a piece in the pan). but i thought it might be worth looking to see if there were other similar services to choose from.

i found two — hello fresh and home chef. looking at their menus, hello fresh looks very similar to blue apron and home chef looked… more home-y? a little more like food my whole family could get excited about. so we signed up to try them out. so far, we’ve gotten one box (and i’ve got two more on the way). first of all, home chef provides each user with 10 menu options each week (regardless of whether you’re ordering 2 portions or 4) plus a “breakfast” option (which we ate for dinner), a smoothie option and a fresh fruit option (the last two are half the price of the meals). you can choose as many or as few meals as you want, but if you want free shipping, you need to order a minimum of 3 (but i do appreciate the option to order more if i want to!). you can also set up your default order to include criteria like “low-carb” or “low-calorie.” home chef also offers more flexibility in delivery days — you can choose from 4 days of the week, whereas blue apron i think gave 2 options? of the foods we’ve tried so far, one of the three was happily eaten by both kids (roasted pork tenderloin and soba noodle bowl!), one would have been eaten happily (i think?) if pizza wasn’t the other option that night (we were dining with friends and i chose to share my cajun blackened chicken (not super spicy, hooray!) with a cucumber, tomato and feta salad with my host and she provided pizza for all the kids), and the other was… disappointing (i really think it might be me and my frying technique).

overall, with both companies i found myself frying a lot more things in a pan than i usually do (whether that was fried chicken or steaks or burgers or kibbeh), eating way more whole pieces of meat than i normally do (we’re usually more of a ground beef or shredded chicken sort of family) and… a lot less shredded cheese, come to think of it. we’ve all been asked to try foods we don’t think we like (chicken mole for me. nope, still don’t like it!) and we’ve discovered a few new foods that we do like. it’s a bit pricey for us to commit to doing this year-round, but i can see wanting to order a box or two to get us through particularly busy points in the year (like, for instance, the start of summer reading club at the library?). the packaging and branding for blue apron is a little more polished (if that matters to you) and they feature small farmers and artisan ingredient producers whenever possible. home chef includes the name & photo (and sometimes blog address) of the chefs that created each meal. my only complaint about home chef so far was that there was some confusion with one of their recipes (what they sent and what the recipe called for didn’t quite match up). both boxes stayed plenty cold all day while i was at work the days they were delivered. depending on the menu for any given week, i would still happily order from either of them.

both companies have given me 3 invitations that would allow you, dear reader to get some free food, so i thought i’d do a quick giveaway to reward you for reading all the way to the bottom of this long post.  actually, i’m hoping to do several giveaways in the next week or so to celebrate my 10-year anniversary of my first blog post here on happy stuff! if you’re interested in trying out free food from either of these two services, leave me a comment below stating which company you’d prefer to try and which of the “categories” in the side column is your favorite kind of post to read on happy stuff.  deadline to enter is monday, june 22, 2015 at midnight.

Posted in reviews, yum | 9 Comments