Fall!

Hi Everyone!  Long time no blog, right?  I wont even bother apologizing for not blogging over the summer (what's the point - you know I still love you guys, right?) - life just, well, HAPPENS.  I take it as a good sign that I only have time to post bits and bobs on Facebook (if you don't follow me over there, please join me - you'll see much more Peanut Free content that way).

Here's a small glimpse into what's going on in our lives right now:

School
B started 4th grade!  I can't believe it - 4th grade.  She starts middle school next year (yup, our district has middle school 5th through 8th grade and the whole idea of it makes me insane), so I'm just enjoying my little girl. The big changes this year are that she doesn't carry her epinephrine to the playground any more (her principal takes all the kids epis in a cooler each day to the yard) AND she's not sitting at the peanut free table anymore.  She was really starting to feel self conscious, and since she isn't airborne reactive, we are trying out her sitting at the regular tables with a buffer.  All of her classmates have known her for years, so they instinctively know not to sit next to her if they have peanut butter in their snack or lunch.  It's been working out great so far, and she feels less like the 'allergy kid'.

Anxiety
Along with school came B's anxiety.  BIG TIME.  She's just a creature of habit, and the beginning of the school year always brings a lot of anxiety until she's settled.  That, coupled with her existing anxiety over her food allergies makes it challenging!  How are you all dealing with anxiety??  We are lucky in that B's teacher is so supportive and helpful - don't know what we'd do without her!

Birthdays
Speaking of B, her birthday is next month (the day after mine!) and we are throwing a Candy themed party for her at her dad's house.  So fun!  I have a Pinterest board full of ideas - cannot wait to get all crafty!  p.s. you can follow me on Pinterest if you want - I have an allergy board too as well as all sorts of random things.

Enjoy Life Decadence Bars
The fine folks at Enjoy Life sent us a box of each of their new Decadence Bars.  Holy cow they are awesome!!  B's favorites, in order, are:

• S'mores
• Cinnamon Bun
• Cherry Cobbler
• Chocolate Sunbutter

I tried them myself and every flavor is DELICIOUS (and I'm not just saying that) and the textures are great.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, you really cannot go wrong with this brand.  The care they put into their product development is outstanding and so apparent when you taste their products.

Thank you so much to Enjoy Life!

Mondo Beyondo
This is a personal one for me.  I'm taking an online class called Mondo Beyondo and I'm just loving it.  This is my second time and it's even better this time around.  I highly recommend Andrea's classes.  They really just help let your dreams out so you can make them a reality!  No affiliate links or ads here, just my personal opinion.

Halloween
B has asked for a day costume and an evening costume (jeez, what did I agree to??).  Each year, B goes out trick or treating, gets all the candy she wants and then we either trade out unsafe candy for safe candy or she leaves the majority of it out for the Halloween Fairy and gets a treat in return (usually a small lego set or something equivalent). The funny thing is that she's a candy hoarder.  I still have a bag of her halloween candy in the freezer from last year! I should probably throw that out LOL...

Love
I'm still seeing the same guy. He's still traveling around constantly for work but his home is here with me and for that I am extremely grateful. Life is GOOD! :-)

Hope you are all doing great too.  Please do join me over on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.  I love interacting with you all and seeing what you're all up to!

Gabs

Halloween is Done!

We made it - Halloween went great!  B went as Wonder Woman (here's a shot of her and my neice - they were both WW actually - B is so teeny compared to her big cousin!) and came home with a great haul of candy.  And I only had to pull about 6 pieces from her loot - the rest was safe!  I mentioned my astonishment to her and she replied "I knew what I could have so I took those from the bowls."  To which I replied "But what about these non safe ones?  How'd they get in the bag?", to which she responded "Oh, those were from the moms that just dropped one in without asking. I didn't want to be rude, so I didn't say anything."  Love that kid!

She hasn't really eaten much.  Most of her time has been spent organizing and marveling at the abundance of the candy itself.  She doesn't realize that if she doesn't eat some soon she'll be out of luck - it will mysteriously disappear soon :)

A Tasty Peanut Free Snack: Sweet & Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

B and I carved a pumpkin* tonight - so much fun! And a great by-product is pumpkin seeds - all toasted and spiced. So dang good! BTW, don't tell B I said dang or I'll get a time out :)

I found a great recipe for sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds on Martha Stewart's site. Basically you take the seeds from your pumpkin (we had a kind of medium, bordering on large one that yielded about 2 cups of seeds but the ratio of sugar and spice to seeds works just fine), dry roast them in the oven and then saute them with sugar and a blend of spices.

Then you eat, like, a cup of them. Wait, did I say that? Ok, the last part I just added in. I'm not sure what's going to happen to me once I digest the cup I ate immediately after they were done, but that might be fodder for another post. D'oh!

So back to the recipe. I go to the cabinets to start getting ingredients. But then I look at the recipe and it had cayenne in. B's not a huge fan of spicy, so instead of the salt, cumin, cinnamon, and ginger, I substitute an equal amount of Lawry's season salt, but follow the rest of the directions to the letter (including the amounts of sugar - jeez it's alot). And then the magic happened.

Holy Schnikees. These were so GOOD!

Have I mentioned how good they were.

The longest part is the dry roasting of the seeds - takes an hour. But beyond that it takes about 5 minutes.

So one hour and 5 minutes later and you'll be set.

And for pete's sake, show some restraint. Unlike me. :)

* No, that photo isn't our pumpkin. Frankly I just don't have that much time on my hands. This image is from the Martha Stewart website. Isn't it gorgeous??

How Was Halloween? We made it!

Well, let's see. It started with me cleaning up vomit, and was punctuated in the middle by vomit, but we rallied and made it out of the house to visit two of our neighbors tonight in the sprinkling rain.

No more vomit talk! Why don't I start at the beginning of our Halloween festivities?

Thursday was B's school party. She dressed as a cheerleader:


Don't let her face fool you. She had a great time (she wasn't sick yesterday), but it took her a while to warm up to the party. You can't see it, but she's wearing a red satin bow in her hair that just killed me it was so cute. The only hiccup at the school party was looking at the 'chocolate' they handed out - it was a chocolate peanut butter eyeball! And they had no idea! Not that I was about to give B some strange chocolate eyeball, but another mom came up to me totally alarmed, wide eyed asking me "Did you see this?!?!". It is so sweet how the other moms are so protective of B. We've got lots of folks looking out for us.

Since B was feeling sick today, we passed on gymnastics, so there aren't any shots of her as a ballerina. Can you imagine if she was on uneven paralell bars and was sick? Good lord.

After she napped for a few hours, B ate some dinner and insisted that we go out so she could wear her costume (thank goodness she did - I don't even want to talk about how long it took me to make the thing). Here she is (please excuse my lovely belly shot - gotta photoshop that out soon):



And later on, she was playing in it at home:


Lastly, here's a look at my candy for trick or treaters:


Kitkats, Skittles, and Divvies. I made sure there were Divvies for kids with non-nut allergies (oh and the skittles were gluten free). It would have been great if we had more than ONE. Seriously. We only had one lone trick or treater. He scored ALOT of candy at our house.

After we ventured out, B came home and ate two pieces of candy (sweet tarts and some kind of nerd like candy) and went to bed. Happy. Tired. And still a bit sick.

So once all was said and done, it was a pretty good Halloween - no real close calls which was wonderful. Who knows where we'll be next year - maybe allergy free?

Hope your Halloween was just as uneventful (you know what I mean).

G

p.s. see that banner on the right? yeah, that's right, I'm going to attempt to blog once a day for the 30 days of November as part of NaPoBloMo. Not sure if I'll make it without a slipup, but I'll do my best. Wont you join me?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Everyone.

Hope it's peanut (and reaction) free!

G

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Little Red Riding Hood (aka Bella).

Stay safe tonight and remember not to take any spooky treats from strangers!