Hankerin' For A Change

  Nine years ago, we built our forever home.  We finished it up within a couple of weeks of our the birth of our third son, Carter.  Just in the nick of time.  We put our whole heart and soul into building our little home to raise our boys in.  Our home is settled in at the edge of the woods overlooking my parents' farm land.  The inside of our home is definitely "lived in".  The boys wrestle, jump off the furniture, eat in the floor, make messes, track in mud, leave marks on the walls and scratches on the furniture.  I don't really mind those things.  I've never much believed in a house looking like a museum.  I adore our home and the memories we have already made in it, but I am ready for an update.  Our home hasn't had any updates in nine years (aside from a new coat of paint in our master bedroom) in any of our living space. I am frankly sick of looking at the same stuff.  Therefore....I decided to make some lipstick changes to our home.

   The first change I knew we wanted to make was to create a more substantially sized area for our big screen television.  We bought a new big TV last spring when our other tv one quit working properly, but we never had the right sized piece of furniture to put it on.  The large tv completely dwarfed the entertainment stand that it sat on.  It looked so out of proportion.  Thankfully, I am married to a super hero.  My super hero husband was able to see my vision for the area and was able to create a lovely fireplace that now looks proportionate to the big TV.

 

This corner area was created with old barn wood that has family history.  The wood came from an old barn that stood on our property when I was a child.  The fireplace area was created with airstone.  We are now in love with airstone.  It is very easy to work with and much less expensive that buying real stone.  The finished project turned out just like I envisioned.

 

We still have lots of little updates in our home to work on, but I am jumping for joy over our start.

 

Next project.....

a cabinet update!

 

I'll keep ya posted.

Low Sugar Peanut Butter Balls of Deliciousness

    Our family has now passed the one year mark since we cut sugary treats out of our diet.  When we began the diet change out of desperation to help stabilize Sawyer's hypoglycemic related mood swings, I honestly never expected that we would stick it out.  I have always had such a powerful sweet tooth, that I figured I might be sneaking some sugary treats now and then.  Strangely though, I am rarely even tempted to take a bite of a sugar filled snack.  There have been a couple of occasions, though, when I have almost been overcome with the desire to dig in to something full of sugar.  One of those few occasions happened two days ago.  One of my kindergarteners brought homemade peanut butter balls to share with the class.  I opened the lid to the Tupperware container and the little sugary jewels were screaming their peanut butter smell at me and begging me to pick one up and eat it.  I resisted with all of my power and did not succumb.  I did, however, take several really close up whiffs of them.  Ahhhhh....they smelled heavenly.

   After thinking about those peanut butter balls for two days straight, I knew that I had to do something to fulfill my craving.  So, out of peanut butter desperation, I created my own low sugar recipe.  The turned out amazingly!

 

In a bowl mix:

 

1 sleeve of graham crackers (crushed in a blender)

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup of sugar free chocolate chips

 

Plus.....a couple more crackers crushed used to roll the balls in.

 

 

After it is all mixed up, use your hands and roll out a ping pong ball sized amount.

 

Drop the little ball of yumminess into the extra cracker crumbs. 

Roll around to coat.

 

This recipe made a batch of 20 balls.  It has only 2 grams of regular sugar in each ball from the graham crackers.  Of course, more grams of natural sugar comes from the honey, but honey is our friend and doesn't adversely effect blood sugar.

 

My desire for a sugary peanut butter treat has now been sated.

 

Now, hurry up and go eat yours before the rest of the family spies them.