Share my Recipe Sunday - Kitchen Stewardship - Banana Flax Muffins

I am so pleased that Katie from Kitchen Stewardship added this recipe to our list this week. She has won my "Gem of the Week" and can pick up the button for her blog. I have been trying to eat healthier and have for the first time been using flax seed in a smoothie this week. I haven't gotten advanced enough to add it into a recipe but I am excited to try this recipe! I love banana nut muffins. There is one that I used to get with Jenny Craig that I loved and is lower calorie. I haven't been able to find a recipe that I like as well for the calorie count it had. So...will defiantly try this one.

Please join us for Share my Recipe Sunday! You can pick up recipes and add new recipes weekly. You can add the Share My Recipe Sunday to your post and link it here so others can see all the recipes. If you win the Gem of the Award that week then you can pick up that button and add it to your sidebar or post. Be sure to link it to your recipe!


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Recipe Connection: Banana Flax Muffins

We’re thinking about omega-3s this week, and one way to get them into even your baking is to use ground flax seeds in place of part of the fat in a recipe. Here’s an easy, yummy, kid-friendly muffin recipe for you to try, or get bold and learn to substitute flax into your family’s favorites (see below for details)!

Banana Flax Muffins

* 1 ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour (works just fine with regular whole wheat)
* ¾ cup ground flaxseed
* ½ cup white sugar
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 whole egg
* ½ cup oil or melted butter
* 1 cup mashed bananas (I used VERY ripe bananas)
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 Tbsp. plain yogurt
* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional - but adds MORE omega-3s!)

In large mixing bowl, mix together flour, flaxseed, sugar, and baking soda. In separate bowl, mix egg, oil, bananas, vanilla, and yogurt. Mix wet into dry ingredients. Fold in walnuts. Use paper muffin cups or spray the muffin pans with non-stick spray. Bake large muffins 20-25 minutes (or mini muffins for about 15 minutes) at 350 degrees. Makes 12 muffins or 30 mini-muffins.

How to Substitute Flax into a Baking Recipe

* Take out some of the fat in your recipe - butter, shortening (eek!), oil, whatever. I usually have been very safe taking out 1/4 cup of fat, whether there’s 1 cup or 1/2 cup in the original recipe.
* Replace that with 3x as much flax meal. If you delete 1/4 cup of fat, add 3/4 cup of flax. That seems like a lot, but it always works!
* You may need to store your baked goods in the fridge - I found they go bad faster with flax involved.

Good luck and enjoy!
Kitchen Stewardship

Gardens - Helping the Budget

This is the garden that my husband and kids planted. They planted tomatoes, zucchini,cucumber, cauliflower and broccoli. The bunnies have polished off all but one of the cauliflower plants. So they planted peas in the place of all the missing vegetables. We also got some other suggestions for keeping out the bunnies. (Some were for deer that we do not have to worry about, but they thought it might deter the bunnies too). We got a couple of flowers that are supposed to repel them (my mind is blank at the moment) and also used moth balls. Not sure what is helping, but we haven't had anymore plants eaten. Oh...and we keep letting my dog out to chase the bunnies when we see them. She thinks it is big fun and I think she would play with them if she ever caught them....she wouldn't know what to do. All they would have to do is yelp at her and she would be scared to death! LOL

This is one of the zucchinis and the kids are so excited about it.
It is a lot of fun to have them help in the whole process. They spend a week at their moms, so when they come for their week here..that is the first thing they want to check on "their garden".
It is a great learning experience for kids, and provides some relief in the budget too!! Yeah...with this economy every little bit helps.

Now...where all of you come in. I haven't canned anything since I did it in Home Ec when I was in high school (long time ago). I remember you can freeze some things etc.
If any of you know of good sites that I can learn these things again or know of good storing techniques for vegetables...please pass them on!!

School Papers - Simple Steps to Decrease the Paper Clutter

Papers from school can be harder to deal with than if someone came in and dumped a garage truck full of trash in your driveway. Why? Because they are personal! Your children did them, worked on them and created them. That is why so many mom's have trouble getting rid of them. They just love to see what their child has accomplished.
So can you keep everything all your kids do from the time the start school until they finish? Sure...if you want to live in a trash zone or store them in a storage unit so they can rot in there.
No..of course you can't, and better yet, there is no reason you should.

Should you keep a few special papers each year so that you can enjoy them and they can see them when they grow up? Certainly! But only a few.

Here is a guideline to help you decide what papers to keep and what to get rid of.

ONE PAPER PER MONTH PER CHILD.

How is that for simple? It gives you a limit, a guideline and a goal. Can you keep less than that....YES!!

But what if they have 1 really good picture that won a school coloring contest and then an A+ on their first big report, but they are in the same month? Ok...no problem, go back through the other months and decide on which one is not as important to keep as these.
So really it is 12 papers a year. Yes...you can use the summer months as a cushion.

Don't keep all the worksheets that they do. They are worksheets..just to learn.
Look for the stories they wrote by themselves.
Look for the pictures they did not trace, but drew themselves.
Look for the reports they worked months on and were so proud of.

So what do you do with all the other pictures they drew, science fair projects with huge poster boards?

Take a picture!! Just like the above pictures. My triplets were thrilled to pose with their projects and loved that I liked them enough to take pictures of them. They don't care if they don't have that big poster shoved back in some cubby space in the basement anymore. They still have the memories..and that is all we need too.
You can scan them into your computer if small enough and you have the memory space on your computer.

You can create a photo book from some of these online places like Snapfish. Peter Walsh shared this idea on one of his Oprah shows. He said take pictures of their art work (you can put more than one of their pictures in the photo) and then at the end of each school year create one of these photobooks with their art work. There is room to write in the book accomplishments, teacher's names, accomplishments for the year. This would be much nicer for them to have when they are older than a box full of papers.

You can have a bulletin board that you keep a special paper of the day or of the week on to showcase it if its a little special and they worked hard on it that week. This will make them feel proud. Then when you take it down, if its not that most special paper of the month...throw it away. (They do not need to see you physically throw it away, nor do you have to tell them - they will just be thrilled their new picture is up now.)

If you keep everything....then nothing will seem special!!

Keeping big boxes of papers to give your children is a burden not a gift. They have to deal with getting rid of all the papers you felt to guilty getting rid of.
Being handed one box of things that goes from k-12 is not so bad, and photo books would be even better.


Remember, it is not like you are saying your child isn't special or you don't like the work they do by throwing it away. But keeping everything is not feasible if you want to have a home that is comfortable and not cluttered.

Work On It Wednesday - Exercising

I have been working myself on exercise again! I started 2 weeks ago on my treadmill. I have decided to start slow so that I do not injure myself (like I have before) trying to do too much too fast. I have never run in my life. But I have made a goal of trying to run 1 mile by the time I turn 50. That is next March. I know it sounds like a really lame goal to many of you...especially you that have the goal or who do run marathons. But for me it is a big goal.
Like I said I am starting slow. I am walking 1/4 mile to warm up. Then I am starting with just 1/10 runs and then walks. I am up to two 1/10 runs and working on a 3rd one.
I am just hoping I can do this.
Come join us for Work on it Wednesday. Add your name and what item you are working on. Then you can pick up this button off the right sidebar and post it on your Wednesday blog so we can help encourage you!

Papers...Papers....Papers!!

I did my momtv.com web cast last night on Paper Clutter. I am going to rerun the post that I did several months back, below.
Kristy asked in the comments about the family bringing in all the papers and how to handle that.
Have a "drop zone" for your mail. A basket or bin, some place that everyone in the family knows to put the mail. It may be children's papers (see this Thursday's post for Children's papers)from school too. Any papers coming into the house by anyone needs to go in this designated spot. Then you need to go through all these papers using the system below.
I mentioned last night in my web cast last night that Barbara Hemphill who wrote Taming The Paper Tiger has a basically the same system, but has made it very easy to remember the categories.
She says that every paper coming into the house goes into one of these categories.
F - File
A - Action
T - Trash
This is a real easy way to remember it. It gets broken down a little more than this and I go into it, but this helps you to realize that every paper has a place.



All of us have sooooo many papers coming into our homes everyday. We have bills, magazines, coupons, advertisements, newspapers, and many more. It can get completely over whelming!!! So what do you do with all of them? What do you keep? What do you throw away???
You would think that with the Internet and e-mail that our influx of paper would be greatly reduced, but it has decreased by very little.
Figuring out a way to manage the paper is the key. We have to control the paper and not let the paper control us!! I know that sound so silly, but it can be true.
You need to work out a sorting system for any paper that comes through your door. If you know what to do with it when it comes in..then it hopefully won't pile up.
Ok...its actually very basic.

You can do it all in 4 sorting bins.
1) Bills
2) Action
3) File
4) Pitch

The Bill bin could very well be in the Action bin, it is an action. But I like to keep them separated so that bills don't get lost in a pile of things that may not be as important or dated. It can be easy to get behind in your bill paying, and that can cause problems with your credit..not to mention your nerves.

The Action bin is anything that needs attention. Filling out a permission slip for your childs field trip, a form to order that book that you need for a class, a form that needs to be filled out for insurance, etc.

The File bin is any paper that you need to keep (notice I said "need") and will be filed in a hanging file of a file cabinet.

The Pitch bin should end up being your biggest pile. You do need to pay attention to what goes into the trash can. Having a shredder is important. You want to make sure that you shred anything that has any financial information on it, personal information on it or as some suggest even your name or address. With this age of someone being able to steal your identity, it's important to be careful.

So when you bring in your mail...take a minute and stand in front of your 4 bins (stackable plastic paper trays work great...and if you have the space, you don't need to stack them) and sort through it. Take each piece and quickly decide if its an ad and you don't plan to ever use it...pitch it! If its a bill thats easy. You don't have to take the time to open your bills at this point, unless you are unsure if it is or not. Take those zillions of credit card offers and put them in the pitch bin! Don't spend too much time on it. Any ads will come back again and you can always find information on the Internet.

If you take a few minutes each day to go through your papers and sort them then you soon can have a table that looks like this

Guest Blogger - Yard Sale Princess for Digging For Treasures

Have you ever wanted one of those craft rooms that you see in the magazines? But then you think, "But I don't have a room for it." Here is someone who took her craft room to a new place....her closet! She is lucky enough to have two walk in closets and she uses one of them for her craft room. I think it is great and love what she did with it. You would never know from the pictures that she is even in a closet. Check it out!
Go visit Yard Sale Princess's blog - Digging For Treasures to see more.
This is her first guest post and I think she did a great job!! She will be doing more soon I am sure.



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Thank you, Sandy, for inviting me to be a guest blogger! This is my first time ever and I am super excited!
Well let’s just jump right into this. Okay, I have a deep dark secret place that I even hide from Hubs, it is my crafting closet.


It is a long closet space that is in our master bedroom. (We have two walk in closets and my wonderful husband designated one as my crafting space.)
I try to keep it clean and organized but I also use it as a hiding place for things that I want my kids to stay out of. I literally toss something in and shut the door. I call this my “STASH AND DASH” system.

Due to this fact, it has become uninspiring. Hubs has tried to help me in the organization process. The cabinet and table were Christmas gifts 3 years ago and he is bummed that they are being abused. The pathetic wire shelves around the top were put in by the home builders and are just too high for me to really use effectively. It really has inadequate storage. When I found myself pulling my hordes of crafting supplies all the way down stairs to do a project just so I could spread out, well, I knew that I had reached my breaking point. So we have decided that if we are going to do a “craft room redo” then it should be done right! So we have taken EVERYTHING out of the room! We have repainted it a bright and inspiring color! Hubs was not allowed to have any input on the color, otherwise it would have been “tan”. Then we rearranged the existing furniture and added some new storage! I am so glad that I put everything into plastic tubs and labeled them. It is totally working out for me!
Ta Da….
Here is the end result!

This cabinet fit perfect in the cubby space! Look at the great paper sorter, it makes it so easy to see what paper I have and they are right at my fingertips.

Bins and baskets are used to contain items. The clear containers make it so easy to see what I have. Every container is labeled! Notice the spice rack that I used for all the little beads. They work great!!

I am absolutely in love with this room! I love the jars of yummy treasures and colorful tidbits,like buttons, corks, ribbon and such. I may add some of my own framed photography around the perimeter for inspiration but I LOVE IT!

Thanks for taking a look at my craft closet. You can visit me and see more of what I do at Digging For Treasures.

Yard Sale Princess