What I've Been Up To

Life here has been a little crazy, as always.  Recently, I decided to really attempt to go gluten free and joined in with a 6 month challenge.  I am joining in with thedailydietribe.com for the challenge.  For the next 6 months, I will be gluten free.  I will get to talk with a health coach every other week, and I have to write a blog post at thedailydietribe.com 3 weeks out of the month.  It's been one month so far and I have had a few aha moments.  I've been working with Mia Davis at Blissful Chicks and she has been great.  She has been supportive and resourceful giving me recipes to try.

One of the recipes was plain yogurt sweetened with honey.  I bought some plain yogurt this week and was not really looking forward to trying it (not one of my favorite foods), but I actually let my son try it since he tends to like any yogurt.  I added some liquid chocolate stevia from NuNaturals for some sweetness.   I also gave his twin sister some to try.  He didn't like it, but his sister did.  I ended up eating his and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted.  I now feel like I can get plain yogurt and control the sweetness and use a sweetener that I like.  NuNaturals has had a few products that I have tried and been happy with.  I will say that NuNaturals did provide the products for free, but I will definitely be buying certain products that I love, like the liquid lemon stevia, liquid chocolate stevia, and the fast dissolving tablets.

I've also been trying to make time to be creative.  I have been trying to teach myself how to hand piece quilts.  I have made a couple of blocks so far and plan to make a whole quilt with hand piecing and hand quilting.  I have been working on a hexagon quilt as you go quilt.  I am trying to use flannel blankets from when my kids were little as well as some scraps of fleece and flannel.  I am trying to use up my stash since I don't really have room to keep a stash.

fabric for the hand pieced quilt

I am also working on a english paper piecing project where we complete 1 EPP block a month.  I have completed 2 so far with the 3rd one in process.  The 3rd one is made up of 81 1/2 inch hexagons and I just can't seem to bring myself to work on it much.  I will start the next month's block when we get it and work on June's block a little at a time.

1st month's block in process

I also took a class from my Facebook friend who is opening a craft studio/gallery.  We made floating lanterns and I had a blast.  I am contemplating teaching a quilting class as well as a knitting class.  She is actually doing my dream and if I can be part of it, I really want to take the opportunity.  

I am also practicing playing with fabric dyeing.  I have tried some tie dyeing, with the goal to get it to be less tie dye looking and more batik looking.  I'm not sure how to really get there, but it will be a fun thing to practice.  I am also thinking about trying some more art quilting and maybe even modern quilting to branch out.  I ultimately love traditional quilting, but I want to open my mind and learn a little more of what it out there!

Summer has just begun.  The kids will start summer school and I will start, hopefully, working during the day.  It will be interesting to see what the summer brings.  We have started our garden and started going to our local farmer's market.  I am really excited to start getting things out of our garden and using them to cook with.  I hope that I can keep up with my creative time.  It may be hard, but I plan to be really conscientious about maintaining creativity through the summer and beyond!

Amy

Trying To Be Healthier and Product Review

Over the last few months, my healthy lifestyle has given way to laziness and unhealthy eating.  This is partially due to the fact that I had months of back pain that resulted in treatment for a herniated disc.  Over the past 6 months, my pain has caused me to have the inability to exercise and even cook the way I like to.  As I write this, it feels like just a bunch of excuses, but I really was in a lot of pain.  About 1 month ago, I was treated for the herniated disc and now only have slight pain here and there.

Now that my pain is pretty much gone, I am trying to regain my healthy lifestyle.  One of the things that I have done is limit my coffee intake and increase my tea intake (I wasn't drinking any tea and I was having multiple cups of coffee and cream a day).  Recently, I had a single cup of coffee and decided to try some VanGogh Caramel Vodka with some NuNaturals chocolate liquid stevia.  This was the first time I tried it and it was really good.  Along with the chocolate stevia, I was given (by NuNaturals) a bunch of other products to try.  I love the liquid Stevia.  I love using the vanilla, lemon, orange, peppermint, and chocolate in my tea.  I also love using the lemon or vanilla liquid stevia in sparking water with some lemon juice to make a healthy "soda".  It's the best drink to have when you need your thirst to be quenched especially in the hot weather.

My husband and I have been using stevia for years as a healthy way to eliminate sugar, yet have some sweetness in things that we enjoy.  I hope to be able to try out some of the other NuNaturals products in baking.  In the past baking with stevia was difficult as there was always a horrible after taste.  I haven't experienced  any after taste with the NuNaturals products that I have tried.  Other than the liquid stevia, the other products that I have tried and love are the fast dissolving stevia tablets and the individual stevia packets.  The tablets are great even in iced drinks.  I love keeping a bottle in my car or purse and using it when I get iced tea out.  I use the individual packets in my husbands tea every day.

I am working on changing my eating habits so that I can lose some weight.  I have never been this heavy and I don't want to get this heavy again.  I am having trouble with making changes, but it will happen.  I need to eat less food, eat healthier food, and start exercising.  I am working with PT and need to get better at actually doing my exercises.  I am doing better, but need to do more.

I will continue to use NuNaturals in my tea and hope that I can eliminate coffee.  I need to limit my caloric intake and start eating healthier foods.  I need to increase my exercise and strengthen my back so that I don't hurt myself again.

Amy

NuNaturals Giveaway!

Last year, I was lucky enough to win a giveaway from http://www.thedailydietribe.com for stevia products from NuNaturals.  I had been using stevia for years at that point, but had not used the NuNaturals product before.

Stevia is a sweetener from the stevia plant that is not supposed to raise your blood sugar like other sweeteners.  After using stevia for years, I know that there are certain products out there that are better tasting than others.  Some people think that stevia gives a bitter taste to things that they use it in.  I have to be honest and say that I haven't really used stevia in anything other than sweetening my tea, but it is all I use for sweetening my tea.  When I won the NuNaturals giveaway, I was a little uncertain how it would taste since I have had certain stevia products in the past that were not good at all.

So far I have used their liquid drops, their powdered stevia, their packets of stevia, and my favorite their stevia tablets.  All of their stevia products that I have tried are really good.  There is no after taste with any of the products that I have tried and that has been one of the complaints that I have heard from people who have tried stevia and have had negative reactions.  I have found that their stevia tablets are great to put in my bag and take on the go.  I used to use an artificial sweetener (usually Splenda) when I ordered tea out since no one ever had stevia, which I would have preferred to use.  Now that I know that there are these tablets, I just throw the bottle of the tablets in my bag and go and I always have stevia on hand!

I was recently sent their new lemon and orange liquid stevia.  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I am looking forward to trying these new products.  NuNaturals has offered to give 4 of my readers one bottle of each of the lemon and the orange liquid stevia.  If you don't win (or if you do), NuNaturals is offering discounts placed on their website:  www.nunaturals.com.  When you get to the checkout page you should enter the DISCOUNT CODE ;  BLG0612  and you will receive - 15% DISCOUNT on your ENTIRE ORDER. This discount remains  EFFECTIVE UNTIL  JUNE 30, 2012 .




Online ordering customers may also receive FREE SHIPPING to the CONTINENTAL U. S. on all orders exceeding  $ 35.00 after discounts.

How can you win?

1. Leave me a comment about your experience trying stevia.  Did you like it or not?  How have you used it?
2. Go to the NuNaturals Facebook page and like them.
3. Blog about this giveaway, tweet about it, and/or Facebook about it.

Leave a comment for each of the things you do as well as your address so that I can contact you.  This contest is only open to readers in the Continental U.S. Sorry, my Canadian readers!  This contest will close on Wednesday June 20th and I will pick and post a winner Thursday June 21st.

I hope that you try stevia and enjoy it as much as I do.  I am looking forward to trying more recipes with stevia, especially since I want to try to cut out as much white sugar as I can for me and my family.

Amy