• The One Thing I Do With My Kids to Make Them Happier and More Confident.

    19/10/2017 - By 

    Whenever I speak to my friends who don’t have kids yet, they relate to my stories about my kids by sharing stories of when they were a kid. We start to talk about fond childhood memories and I find that one type of memory always sticks out. That is the time we spent with one parent and had their full attention; no technology, no distractions, nobody interrupting. The memories are all different, of course, but they all have the same feel. Whether it was baking cookies, reading together (even quietly and beside each other rather than to each other), throwing…

  • Healthiest 5 Minute Cinnamon Baked Apple Recipe

    04/10/2017 - By 

    If you live in Calgary like I do, you have already lived through a taste of winter. On the southeast side, it was a couple of days of bitter cold, with a good dose of icy wind and blowing snow. Of course, now it is warm out again and the sun is shining….because we live in the Wild West out here, where we are both prairies and mountains. When it was still cold, I wanted nothing more than a comforting cup of hot cocoa….but I couldn’t drink that. I restarted the Gut Makeover  after we finished our move and sugar, caffeine…

  • Sneak Peek Of My Bathroom

    03/10/2017 - By 

    Hello! I have the car today, so I am on my way to get groceries….I quickly snapped a pic in my lower level bathroom while I was in there adjusting my hat. I think I have to finally admit to myself that I have a thing for pink- my outfit matches this bathroom perfectly!  This is a sneak peek of my lower level bathroom. The other two walls are gray, as you will see when I do a full post on it. I call it my “Grand Budapest Hotel” bathroom and I think all of you Wes Anderson fans will…

  • Why Do We Have To Go To School?

    26/09/2017 - By 

    Every morning for my kids is a struggle. Hunter and Isabella are resistant to go to their new school. Isabella worries that her classmates secretly don’t fully accept her, even though she is extremely happy with her teacher and the school itself. Hunter says he is waiting until we move back to our old neighbourhood. I asked him if he had made any new friends and he said, “I don’t need any. I already have friends across town”. When I told him that it was good to have friends in his class and close-by, he just shrugged. Hunter is having…

  • Why I Am Suddenly So Concerned with Giving My Kids Healthy Breakfasts.

    25/09/2017 - By 

    I had an epiphany this weekend. My kids came up twenty minutes after finishing breakfast and they were hungry already….and crabby.  I asked Isabella what she had eaten and she said, ‘an apple sauce and some cereal without milk’. I realized that what she had eaten was basically a sugar bomb and it was no wonder she was hungry! Now that we aren’t moving anymore, and that I’m mostly unpacked, it is time to get on top of things again. I decided we would have more filling breakfasts full of real food. I also decided I would carve out time to…

  • We are Small House Living!

    20/09/2017 - By 

    We made it. Phew. It was a long road filled with a lot of boxes and challenges and red tape and grunting and swearing and some white-knuckle moments, but we made it. We are now officially moved into our townhouse across the city. Built in 1981 and coming in at around 870 square feet of finished living space, it is a lot tinier than our 1600 sq foot rental. Our family has adapted nicely to small-space living! Almost all of our furniture didn’t fit (some, quite literally, couldn’t fit through the door), so was sold to make room (and funds)…

  • I’m on BlogLovin’

    21/08/2017 - By 

    Finally put my blog on Bloglovin’, so feel free to follow me there. 🙂   <a href=”https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/19050769/?claim=t7xkyk5y998″>Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

  • My Life Is Boxes

    16/08/2017 - By 

    Exciting news! We are moving out of our cave of a townhouse and ending our rental life. With a government program, (Attainable Homes), we were able to get help with a down payment and we’re buying a small townhouse. For years, Josh and I have been obsessed with moving into the smallest space that would be comfortable for our family. We love the tiny house movement because it has finally caught up with our sensibilities. I know that, as you have a family it is normal to move up in space, but we have decided to do the opposite. We…

  • My Kid Makes Me Laugh

    24/07/2017 - By 

    I just eavesdropped on Hunter and Izzy playing a game…of house, I think. And I heard Hunter’s character say to Izzy’s character, “I’m not a kid anymore, Mommy, so you have to stop treating me like one.” It made me laugh and laugh. Wonder how long it will be before he is saying that to me?  

  • The Thing I Did to Help My Gut.

    20/07/2017 - By 

    As you know, my gut was in bad shape. I think the combination of taking maca powder for too long (you can read about that here) and then the food poisoning that happened a year or two later didn’t help. My eagerness to take antibiotics for every ailment stripped my gut lining and the food poisoning that lasted 7-9 days ravaged it. Through the process of elimination and doctor’s tests, I found out that, since the food poisoning, I had become severely gluten intolerant. With that came lactose intolerance (since the proteins in gluten and lactose are similar) and a…