The Guavalicious Life

Confession: I am a secret hoarder. Out in my garage we have a gigantic stash of used plastics. You see, our city as great as it is, only recycles one and two plastics. So we save up our yogurt tubs and cheese lids and ferry them to Dallas when we visit family. Yep, we are a little bit crazy about recycling. We are one step away from joining the earth liberation army.

Suffice to say, I am a wee bit into green living. So I jumped at the chance to test out Tide Coldwater. We almost always wash our clothes in cold water but I haven’t used a detergent made specifically for cold water laundry. I love my natural detergents but I admit that they don’t always tackle the stains that two five year old girls leave on their play clothes.

And it totally came through. Even without any kind of pre-treatment. I am so looking forward to pulling that off of my laundry shelf and adding less plastic to our garage stash.

Disclosure: I received a product sample and was compensated with a $50 gift card.

So I am a total Christmas freak. I am chomping at the bit to get home and pull out my Christmas decorations this afternoon. To celebrate, and since I wasn’t able to finish my Thanksgiving giveaways, I am giving away twelve gifts for the first tweleve days of December. No leaping lords here, though that would be kind of cool. Instead there’s gifts for you and for your kids.

To start off with a bang, I have six sets of stocking stuffers from Briarpatch to give away. Each set has one I Spy Wonder Tube and one mini game. I alreayd raved about how awesome these two items are after I saw them at the Big Toy Book BlogHer Party. They are sure to be a hit with any kid.

To enter click through to the Rafflecopter entry form below. I use Rafflecopter because I find it an easy way to enter contests. And be sure to like my Facebook page to keep up with all the giveaways I will be doing.

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Andrea from Great Thoughts  is guest posting today about her online book club and she is inviting us to join in. I will definitely be jumping into discuss and I hope you will too!

With Thanksgiving and the December holidays approaching, I thought I’d announce our January book choice early so that you have plenty of time to read between tinsel, candles and cranberries. And our January book is….

Best Kept Secret by Amy Hatvany

This wonderful novel will be the #Gr8books book club pick for January.

The details:

Thursday, January 26th

8-9 PM CST

Hashtag #Gr8books

Here is another copy of my review of Best Kept Secret. I can’t wait for you all to read it!

Have you ever had one those “kid-intense” days that led you to a second glass of wine, maybe even a third? I know I have. But I never imagined the unintended consequences when such an occurrence becomes a practice. This is the premise of Amy Hatvany’s thought-provoking novel,Best Kept Secret.

It is the story of Cadence Sutter – what a name – a writer for the Seattle Herald who, upon the birth of her first son, Charlie, quit the paper to become a full-time mom and a freelance jounalist. It was love at first sight with Charlie, and Cadence set out to be the perfect mom.

Along the way, Cadence’s husband has an affair and she divorces him. Full-time motherhood takes over with no time or energy for writing and money running short. Two glasses of wine a night turns into two bottles a night and the downward spiral into alcoholism takes over. A two day binge leads Cadence to rehab, along with the loss of her child to CPS. To make matters more heartbreaking, Cadence’s ex sues for custody of Charlie.

It is here that Cadence’s journey to recovery – of her sobriety, her life and Charlie – begins. This is a fast, but painful and haunting, read. Amy Hatvany tell an all-to-true story of motherhood – the challenge to be the perfect mother, keep all the balls in the air, and make it look totally effortless.

This is a great book – definitely not a mindless summer read, no fluff here – but such a reality read! This is definitely one of the better books of 2011.

Visit Andrea’s blog to enter to win a copy of the book!

What a day, I make the Aiming Low Twitter list and I get to feature a guest post from the Queen of Sparkle Ms. Emily, aka @ColoradoMom. For more amazing recipes as well as toy reviews, crafts, and parent talk check out her site ColoradoMoms.

Cake Pops from @ColoradoMom of ColoradoMoms.com

Everyone loves cake pops. If you haven’t heard of this craze, let me introduce you. Cake pops are yummy, mini balls of cake dipped in candy melts and decorated to look like just about anything. There are many websites, books and blogs dedicated to these tasty treats and now they even sell cake pop makers to make it even easier to craft these bite sized delectables.

In my circle of friends, I’m becoming known for my cake pops. I will spend hours upon hours crafting them expertly, only to be a bit sad when they are eaten. I take many pictures to remind myself of how awesome they were before the kids got a hold on them. I’ve made alien cake pops for a Toy Story 3 party, ice cream cake pops for another party and even made over 60 cake pops in my kids school colors to sell at their bake sale.

This week, it’s all about Halloween! I found bright green candy melts and some candies shaped as eyeballs. Naturally I did what any sane woman would do in the middle of the craft store. I shrieked and grabbed as many of them my arms could carry. Now I get to share the monster cake pops with you and give you my not-so-secret recipe for them.

Bakerella first introduced me to cake pops three years ago. Her original post and recipe can be found here. I don’t want to take credit for her work as it’s her recipe I go to time and time again.

Basically, you bake a cake as usual and then crumble it once it’s cooled and add a half cup (or more) of frosting to it. Shape into balls, freeze and viola: the base for your cake pops.

Here is where I get crafty with it. For the monster cake pops I melted the lime green candy wafers (you can find these at most craft/hobby stores) and dipped a lollipop stick in and then put them in the frozen cake ball and let harden. I usually pop these in the freezer in batches of twelve to make it easier.

After you have your cake-on-a-stick, I dipped them back into the melted candy wafers and let the excess drip off. I took an extra lollipop stick and started tapping the melted candy wafers all over the place. While still warm, I put a candy eyeball right smack dab in the middle of it all and let cool.

That’s it! Really, these monster pops are probably the easiest to make because you don’t have to be perfect. Each monster is a little different and you don’t have to get a smooth coating of the candy on them. Try it for yourself! Your kids will thank you.

If you follow me on Twitter you might have heard that I was run over on Sunday. Literally. I fell off a hayride and got run over by the trailer. And I am fine. Well fine being just bruised and banged up. It’s kind of put a damper on my week. I was all ready to take on the world and now it hurts to walk and it’s hard to work since the Vicodin is making me woozy. Thank goodness for the following things that have kept me going.

Top Ten Happy Things

1. Facebook groups: I love these small groups of friends who keep me laughing and learning.

2. South by Southwest: Got the word today that I am speaking at South by Southwest. I submitted a panel discussion with my friends Jen Reeves and Rob Hummel and I am thrilled that they accepted it. We will be discussing uniting the special needs community through technology and I can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

3. My husband: He came down with a really bad bacterial infection Sunday. Which sucks for him but is excellent for me because I have had company in my misery. And time together reminds me how much I like the guy.

4. Arnicare: I have written before about how much I love this stuff but wow, it really does work. I didn’t realize one spot had been affected until yesterday and didn’t rub any Arnicare on it. Guess what? It’s the only spot with a bad bruise.

5. Doing less: I’ve been forced to take it easy this week and I really like it. It feels good to just say no.

6. Books: Sometimes I forget how much I love to read. Until I have a big chunk of time to do it. Then I devour a book a day. Feeds my soul.

7. This post about the perfect mom drink.

8. My iPhone: Allowed me to keep in touch without balancing the laptop because that hurts.

9. Nine hours of sleep last night. Sleep rules.

10. Funny Facebook videos.

While my husband was out of town on a five day trip (he gets home tonight, thank goodness), I made it a mission to tackle the paper in my house. As I gathered receipts that go in my “blogging expenses” folder, I started reflecting on blogging, especially this blog.

I started this somewhat on a whim. Not only did I want somewhere where I could write my non-niche thoughts, I also wanted something to talk to people about at blog conferences. Since I have found that people’s eyes tend to glaze over when you start talking about your local blog about your city of 100,000 people.

So when I started blogging in this space, I wasn’t sure where I was going to go with it. I knew I wanted to talk about all the things I love like wine, food, decor, and green living. I also wanted to be open about how hard it is to “do it all” and how I struggle balancing my kids, my marriage, and me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do sponsored posts and giveaways because I wasn’t sure how I felt about them. Was it weird to blog about doing stuff with my kids?

But as I have started to dip my toes into the typical mommy blog posts, I am surprised by how much I like it. My mom was the type to really create activites and fun for us and I have to say, that’s not me. My girls end up spending more time crafting and painting with their grandmothers than they ever do with me. And while I don’t think that is a bad thing or even feel guilty about it, I do wish I did more of the hands on activities the grands excel at. Not sure what holds me back… inertia? uncraftiness? lack of ideas?

Blogging takes care of most of those. New ideas flood my inbox, toys sometimes show up on our doorstep, and occasionally I even get paid to write about playing with my kids. Sure I don’t need those things, but if they help then I don’t see how they could be seen as a bad thing.

Confession: I am a total holiday dork. I love the decorations and the special foods and the general giddiness that surrounds them. For this I place the blame squarely on my mother’s shoulders. She made holidays so fun and so special (and yes stressful at times but I mainly remember the special.) Lately I have really been trying to emulate her by not just putting the decorations up but by going the next step and coming up with fun things to do.

So after we put up window clings the girls and I sat down to get our Play-Doh on with some fun ideas I got from the new Play-Doh Playdates section on the Hasbro website. Have you seen the playdates section? They have great themed ideas for play dates (or just an afternoon of fun) completely with play doh activities, printable crafts, and snacks. Lucky for me, they just came out with their Haunted House play date.

I had the laptop close by so I could show the girls the steps as we worked on our ghost, cauldron, and spider web. It was great to have the visuals since I was having a hard time explaining the rolling technique. Plus we got to practice our sequencing.

Unfortunately, only our ghost turned out anything like the pictures (you can see it in our collage above) but we had a lot of fun working on them. I am looking forward to trying out some of the other ideas like the Art and Fall ones.

Disclosure: This post is part of a SocialMoms product evaluation, for which I’ve been selected. I’ve been compensated for my time with 8,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of SocialMoms or Play-Doh.

This past weekend I got started on our Fall bucket list by planning an outdoor adventure for us. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate with my original plan of taking the girls canoeing for the first time.

We live twenty minutes from the Missouri River and I’ve been itching to canoe it since we moved. I was so excited that the girls were finally old enough to go and figured early Fall would be the perfect time. Darn those clouds.

Instead we headed our for a modified Missouri River trip… some time on the Katy Trail along the river. I toyed with the idea of us biking down there but since I didn’t think it was fair to ask my husband to pull the girls the entire time, we took the car instead. We started off in Rocheport with a pit stop for ice cream and then started down the trail. I envisioned a little more hiking but the only stress was avoiding the hordes of bikes. I was glad however, that we had packed snacks and water bottles as the stops were plenty. But who can blame the girls when they had this to look at?

The best outcome of the day? Finding out that the girls are finally really into this stuff. They have th attention spans to keep at a longer trip and the curiosity to want to keep walking to see what comes next. I want to keep up these mini adventures in day trip form for awhile and then work up to a true family vacation.

My dream would be to go on one of the family adventures that Austin-Leahman offers. How cool would it be to take an active vacation like biking in Europe or touring Europe with the kids?

Disclosure: Austin-Leahman sponsored this post through Mom Spark Media. Opinions are my own.

Totally intrigued by this new site Foodiacs that launched today.

The deets: “Foodiacs is tailored to people who are passionate about food and will connect them with product offerings that are exclusive to the site. Each Foodiacs offering will be available for only a limited time, and at a limited quantity, and will not match any offer at any other online retail outlet.”

As a small city dweller, I don’t have access to a food specialty store so I can see myself becoming addicted to this site. The first offering is a mushroom growing set from Back to Roots. Each “Foodiac” that purchases two boxes will receive a third box and classroom curriculum to be donated to the school of their choice. Cool concept.

Tempting, very tempting. If it got the girls to eat oyster mushrooms, it would totally be worth it. The deals launch every one to two weeks on Tuesdays. Do you see yourself buying things from the site? Next year they plan to partner with the food industry for exclusive tastings, culinary tours and educational experiences and I think that will be more up my alley.

For more information visit: www.foodiacs.com or follow Foodiacs on Facebook and Twitter.