Cure for breakfast woes

Do you hate waking up in the morning?

Do you hate making breakfast? 

Do you hate even more when you wake up to late and don't have time to make breakfast and end up starving yourself all day?

Well come one come all I have a solution for your breakfast woes! (Provided that you make it the night before and aren't to lazy for that either)

Here is my recipe for *drum roll* Overnight oats!

This treat can be eaten cold or warmed up it's however you prefer it!

Now mind you this is only the second time I have ever made said oats and I can't promise amazingness every single time but, hey, it can't hurt to try right?

Anycow, here's what you do...

1/3 cup old fashioned oats

1/3 cup Greek yogurt 

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp chia seeds

Mix ins 

What I did this time was used yummy vanilla Greek yogurt, and regular milk, however you can use whatever kind of milk you have at your disposal. I mixed in 3 strawberries and half a banana.

Shake it up to get it all mixed in together, pop it in the fridge, and viola! Delicious breakfast ready to run out the door with you!

Till next time!

<3

It's the little things

I have to admit something to you all. I have a pretty stinking awesome husband.  Does he drive me absolutely crazy everyday of my life? I would be lying to you if I said no. I love him nonetheless. Why this proclamation of love you ask?

Well I had a chuckle to myself today about his reaction to something.  To tell you that story I have to start with this. 

I am a bit of a wild child, extremely flighty and am always coming up with new ideas and plans for our life (like recently I've told him we are going to start listening to country music and raise chickens in the country) and he more often than not goes right along with me even adding his own to whatever it is I've come up with. I can't tell you how many times he's come home and all our furniture is moved around or a room (or my hair) is painted another color and he just goes "wow I like that I wouldn't have thought of that". More recently it's been my DIY of life that he has patiently gone along with and supports. When I said to him "hey babe. I'm gonna stop shampooing my hair" he didn't look at my like I was crazy but listened to me and was all for me trying the no poo life. And when I said to him "I'm gonna make my own deodorant!" He nodded and waited for me to tell him all about how to do this as well. But tonight when I asked him "did you throw out the coffee grounds? I want to use them for a self tanner." His eyes bugged out of his head and he said "what?! That sounds crazy! Show me right now!" So to the bathroom we went and I rubbed coffee all over my legs and all in all he approved and went right on with his night. 

The results were pretty good! It's nothing drastic but you can see a slight tint to my skin that wasn't there before, and it's an awesome exfoliant so my legs and arms are so soft! And there may or may bot be just the slightest hint of coffee smell to my skin which I am a big fan of as well! 

I also made my homemade deodorant tonight, but I have not used it yet. When I do I'll give you a blog with the how to and all! 

Xoxo

Pumpkins everywhere!

I know I know, it's fall. There are pumpkins everywhere. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin lattes, pumpkin pumpkins. Ok maybe not the last one.

If you are anything like me, when you see the bright colors of fall you get very excited to well, to eat.

Up until about 2 years ago I wanted nothing to do with pumpkin thinking it was not for me, that was until I started drinking pumpkin beer. That yummy treat changed my mind to the whole pumpkin experience. Was it the cinnamon sugar on the rim of my glass?

Maybe. Whatever it was I was hooked and now couldn't wait till the next pumpkin season. So two weeks ago when I went grocery shopping and saw pumpkins everywhere I took it upon myself to try to bake pumpkin goodies from scratch!

Most of my friends and family will tell you I am a fantastic baker. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I make something from a box and people rave about it, but I always tell myself a lot of people can't even get that right! But nevertheless I always strive to try to make things from scratch instead. I feel far more accomplished about the whole thing, and love to watch as people eat what I've made and tweak my recipes. My bffl Kate and I want to start up a business someday in the near future.

Check out our blog here ourfrostedcupkates.tumblr.com She too inspires me to try new baking adventures and get creative.

On our blog your can find all of our gluten free, vegan, and just plain yummy baking adventures. But, I digress, this blog today is about my lastest pumpkin baking adventures, and it all begins here... First things first when it comes to baking from scratch with pumpkins is well, baking the pumpkin itself! Being a complete novice to the whole thing, I searched around the internet and pinterest and found the easiest way to do it for me personally. Firstly, preheat your oven to 350. I washed the outside of the pumpkins to get rid of whatever gross is hanging out on there.

Then cut open the pumpkin, I tried my best to cut through evenly but I just ended up ripping it open by hand.

Scoop out all the guts, ie. the stringy insides and seeds. I seperated all the seeds and saved them for later (i'm still looking for a good pumpkin seed recepie).

Take your pumpkin halves, slices, whatever, and place them in casserole dishes or baking sheets whatever you prefer.

The article i had looked at told me to put them in casserole dishes and put lids on them. This I did not do, and nothing went wrong so I leave that up to your digression . Anyhow, put your pumpkins in the oven and bake them for 40-90 mins. It really depends on your oven/pumpkins etc how long you will have to have them in there, just remember to check them and see if the guts are squishy and then go from there. This whole process is much like cooking spaghetti squash, so if you are a pro at that then you are pretty much good to go. When your pumpkins are all nice and cooked on the inside, just use a spoon to scrape out the insides into a bowl and then puree them.

I used my Kitchen Aid and mixed it till i had a nice squash looking puree and i was good to go!


 From there I was ready to start making my Pumpkin Pie!

I used this recipe that I found on pinterest. I have to admit, I did not have the evaporated milk that it called for, even though i thought I did. As i had already opened the can and was pouring it in i realized that i was condensed milk, and my thought process was oh crap its ruined. This was not the case, it was delicious! Crisis averted! I also have to admit that I did not make my own crust from scratch, I was to lazy at this point and just made a boxed JIF crust, but i did add a bunch of cinnamon to the dough and it made it taste very homemade-y.

Cinnamon is always my secret ingredient. Next I made Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting, also found on pinterest at this blog These were amazing.

And the frosting was to die for.

Definitely going to be making these again and again. Also going to look into making a gluten free version I think.

 This weekend I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. These, we stupidly easy to make, and VERY lazy. 1box of yellow (or spice) cake mix 2cups of pureed pumpkin 1cup chocolate chips oven at 350 and bake for 15min. These were just amazingly delicious, I brought them to a friends house later that day and they were gone in about half and hour, I wasn't able to get any pictures since they were devoured! Well there you have it, my recent baking adventures!

Let me know if you have any requests for any yummy treats I can concoct! au revoir!  

Purple hair don't care

So no poo has been going well so far! Saturday was my second wash day and my hair has not revolted yet! My friends all did smell tests on me and no one was disgusted by my hair so ill say all is well! Even have a little purple going on for the weekend. 

Thinking of blogging tomorrow about my pumpkin baking adventures the past two weekends. More on that tomorrow!

Day four

Day three of no poo arrived. All in all everything is normal. My hair feels much like it would normally 3 days after washing it! Tonight I went out so I did a little styling and hair spray it all held well! 

Yes I am writing this from bed where I an overly sleepy, but my hair looks good! 

I plan on doing my next wash tomorrow before I visit my bffls, one of whom is going to go no poo as well! Very exciting!!

More later!

~*ginge 

Day 2

It's been 24 hours since I washed with the "no poo" method and so far so good! My hair is soft and happy! The only parts of it that are feeling greasy are the parts I put the jojoba oil on. Which is fine with me! 

Here it is today. 

More updates later!

"No Poo"

So I, Hannah Hope Stephens, have decided to take the "no poo" challenge.
What is that you say?
You are no longer going to poop?
No sillies!
No Shampoo!

Again you say WHAT?! You aren't going to wash your hair?!
Once again, no. Stop being ridiculous.

After reading many articles, and blogs, and pinteresting all over the place, I've decided to make the switch and ditch my shampoo and conditioner.

The idea is, using Baking Soda and Vinegar to wash your hair instead of using expensive products full of nasty chemicals that are doing nothing good for you. Shampoo is like a detergent that strips your hair yes of all the gross nasty but also of all the good happy oils that you want to have in your hair. So by using baking soda you only have to wash your hair maybe once or twice a week and your hair will start to go back to normal and produce its own oils and good stuff and yay happy hair!
Basically here is the blog that i like the best that explains it the best way http://livinginanotherlanguage.com/blog/tag/no-poo/


Anyway today is day one,
I just washed it about an hour ago, and although it was a snarly mess that is nothing new. I rubbed a little jojoba oil in there and i was good to go. So far the hair that is dry on the top of my head is super soft and happy, and according to Caleb it smells just like hair! haha

I shall continue to update as the process continues!

I'm going to make home made deodorant next! More DIY to come!!!