YUMMY Banana Bread/Muffins!

This afternoon, my wonderful husband took the kids outside to play. I was debating whether to aimlessly zone out into the internet for the hour or to do something productive, so I decided to be a good wife/mother and make some nice yummy chilli and some banana bread/muffins to warm them up when they came in from the cold.

I decided to make muffins instead of bread so it would be easier for the kids to eat, but I used the same recipe (with a little adjustments which are noted). These have to be the BEST banana bread/muffins I have ever had! They were SO good!

Banana Bread

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Instead of the 1/3 cup of melted butter, I used 1/3 cup of coconut oil  and instead of all-purpose flour, I just used the same amount of whole wheat flour. Just made them a little bit healthier!

I won the coconut oil on my friend Jenn's blog- The Daily Burns. It's definitely not the cheapest to buy, but the health benefits are wonderful, and it adds a yummy coconut taste to almost anything you make! We have loved using it!

Happy Baking!

Be still...

Be still my aching heart, God is still in control...

Thankful!

I'm so thankful for friends who will tell you how God see's a situation, even if it's not what you ~want~ to hear- but it's what you ~need~ to hear! 

"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17

I'm also thankful for my 3 1/2 year old daughter who randomly sticks a box on her head and starts walking and talking like a robot, and for my two year old son who points to his boo-boo and says "bye-bye boo-boo" when I tell him it's getting better, and for my 8 month old daughter who loves to seek out paper and eat it (yuck!!)!

I'm very thankful! It's not how I started off today (I was super grumpy), but it's the way I'm *choosing* to think!

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." Philippians 4:8

What are you thankful about today?

Custom Spot!

Hey everyone!

I'm so excited about all my new followers!

In case anyone is interested, I'm stocking a custom spot tomorrow at noon (est). I am no longer taking custom orders, so snag this listing while you can!

I've been working hard tonight on setting up catagories for my store. Since I haven't been taking custom orders, I've had a chance to stock some bags (yay!) so my store is starting to get full and I wanted a better way to organize it, so catagories it is! How do you like the catagories? I think I like it better this way!

Anyways, here's a link to my store:

http://hyenacart.com/lovingtouchwetbags/index.php

Sorry I don't have anything truly interesting to read tonight :) Maybe sometime soon!

The Milk Saver Giveaway!!

I'd like to start off saying, if you're a male, you don't want to read this...just trust me!

All through nursing my 3 kids, I've always hated wasting the milk that came out on the opposite side I was nursing from. Whenever the child would get the "let down" the other side would also leak. Sometimes not very much, but enough for me to wonder how much milk I would be able to save if I was to get a bottle or something to collect it! I never did get a bottle. I guess just the thought of how funny it would look for me to be nursing a baby on one side and holding a bottle on the other.

A few weeks ago, I received a newsletter from a store I shop with a lot online www.Mom4Life.com. They were advertising The Milk Saver. So out of curiosity I went and checked it out. I was SO excited to see that this is the type of thing I've been dreaming about and it's so discreet! So I'm determined that I NEED this item! Since it was $25 (with always free shipping from that store) I decided to wait and ask my husband if I could purchase it, and to my surprise, he gave me to go ahead!

The week that I received I was suppose to  be going out of town on saturday all day to do a farmers market in another town, so I knew that I was going to need to be pumping so my youngest daughter would have milk to drink while I was gone. I hate pumping. I do, I HATE it! Who has time to pump with you have 3 young kids running around? So when I got the milk saver, I washed it and the  very next time I nursed my daughter I put the milk saver in the opposite side. I was SO surprised to see that I had saved 1/2oz to 1 oz of milk. 

My milk supply is pretty leveled out now that my daughter is 8 months old, so I was pretty proud of that 1/2oz!! So what I did for the rest of the day is that I put that first 1/2 oz in a milk storage bag in the frig and then next time I nursed, I would collect the milk and put that milk in a bottle- you can't combine milk until it's the same temperature it can ruin the nutritional value. Then I put the milk in the bottle in the frig. The next time I nursed, I used the milk saver, then I combined the milk from the bottle to the storage milk bag since they were both the same temperature and then washed the bottle out, dried it, and then put the new milk from my recent nursing into that bottle. Do you see the pattern? By the end of the day, I had about 3 1/2- 4 oz saved! 

Every morning I was able to get a lot of milk being that she sleeps through the night. I would get at least 1-2 oz's in a morning feeding!

Anyways, I HIGHLY recommend this to *any* nursing moms! It's a nice easy way of saving your milk, saving you time, and saving you on nursing pads!!

I am SO SO SO excited to announce that I have spoken with a lady named Helen from Milkies Milk Savers and she has offered to send to you for FREE a milk saver AND a breastfeeding advocacy shirt!! I'm so excited that someone gets to try this for free!!


If you would like to be entered to win, please "follow" my blog, and leave a comment here with your email address and your fondest breastfeeding moment (just b/c I'm so in love with nursing and would love to hear everyones stories lol). Easy enough?

This will end November 1st to give people plenty of time to enter and tell their friends about it!

For more awesome information about the milk saver or nursing, check out the Milkies website!
http://www.mymilkies.com/

Getting focused!

For a while, I prided myself with being a mom, a housekeeper, a wife, a business woman, a friend, etc. My inlaws would say "wow Heather! We're so proud of you! We don't know how you do it with 3 kids and your business!" and they would just rave! My response would be, "Yeah, I don't know how I do it either!"

I didn't realize the reality of what I was saying though until just recently! I truly don't know how I was doing it! I was stressed, tired, grumpy, lethargic. I was being a bad wife, a bad housekeeper, a bad mother. Then last saturday I got together with some awesome Godly christian women and we were pouring our hearts out to each other. What our daily struggles were, what the Lord was teaching us, etc and the Lord really opened my eyes to the fact that SOMETHING had to change!

I didn't have my priorities right! I wasn't honoring the blessing and responsibilities that the Lord has given me! The Lord has given me Loving Touch Wet Bags. He's given me the ability and talent to make these gorgeous top quality bags, but it's all NOTHING if it comes before my family! It's NOTHING if I'm not honoring the Lord with it! I thought I was honoring the Lord! I was quick to give Him the glory for the success. I tithed off of everything I made, but none of it was any good if I put it before my family.

My first obligation, my first priority should be the Lord and my family. If ANYTHING else is before those two, I'm not honoring God.

So, with all that said, I'm finishing up with a big coop and a last few customs that are already paid for, and I will be closing for customs and just sewing when I can to make instock wet bags. Occasionally I will stock custom spots, but I will no longer be taking hundreds of custom orders. It stressed me out to much and because of the huge demand, I was placing my business before my family and I can no longer do that anymore.

I will still be stocking bags on my site (http://www.hyenacart.com/lovingtouchwetbags) and on the congo's I'm part of, I'm just no longer taking custom orders. Please continue to support me though through buying instock items. I will take requests for fabrics, I just can't promise how quickly they'll be up on the store.

I will announce here on my blog and also on my facebook (Lovingtouch Wetbags) when I will be stocking those few custom spots.

Anyways, tonight while sewing for the coop order, I decided to bring my laptop in by me and listen to some worship music and later on a teaching. I have found that sewing in complete silence isn't good for me. For some reason my mind tends to twell on things that bother me, or "what if's" when I'm sewing in silence, so I've decided to set my mind on things above, things that glorify Jesus which is why I chose to listen to worship music and teachings.

Well, tonight I started off with a song from Jesus Culture and then decided to listen to some teaching. Mike Bickle is the only teacher that came to mind that I've heard of in the past, and He was speaking about having One Focus, being focused on your intimacy with God, and when that's happening, everything else falls into place! When your focussing on your intimacy with Christ, it overflows into your relationships, it overflows into your home, it gives you the desire to reach out to the lost!

Not only did I get some work done tonight, but I was also able to get encourage and edified!

Here are the links (two parts to it) to the video's incase you're interested in listening!
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZvPVWE4gDY&feature=related

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFjO0x9rH_o&NR=1

Anyways, if you read, let me know! Just post a note or something! :) Thanks!

Last PUL update!

Hey ladies!

Ok! After much talking back and forth with Fabrite, I think I understand what is going on. I didn't believe them at first about it better just a "tighter" batch of PUL, but they sent me a sample of their 1 mil and it is very different from what I have, but the new roll is still very different from the 2 mil I've received from them before.

I'm going to use it though for the wet bags. 2 mil is 2 mil and it should still work just as good as the rest even if it is milled tighter.

So! I'm sewing like a crazy women again!

Thank you so much for your patience! I will have your orders out to you soon!

~Heather