Real Food with Kids

hey strangers!

just thought i'd share our family's latest adventure!

We've had a snow ball of health concerns come up in the last year and it's caused me to put an even higher priority on the level of nutrition i provide for my family. Emery has developed problems with gluten, dairy, and all grains. She's handled it well for the most part, but i can see an even greater need for me, as her mom, to teach her the importance of healthy eating!

A few months ago, i started an Instagram account called RealFoodwithKids. I've been documenting my time with my little ones in the kitchen - posting recipes, activities, and discussions we've had. It's been so much fun to watch her grow in knowledge and skill!

I just wanted to share some of my favorite images and invite you to check out our IG feed if you're interested in including your little ones in a real food kitchen. I'm in the beginning stages of creating a blog to expand on the topics i've touched on, but for now, feel free to check out IG and/or our Facebook page!

We work together:

I teach her a skill and then she works alone:

Cooper is involved:

Daddy is involved:

We talk about purees and Baby Led Weaning:

We ferment, soak, sprout, render, pickle, clabber, and culture:

But most of all, we have FUN:

feel free to join our journey! 

IG name: RealFoodwithKids 
Facebook: Real Food with Kids

love and intentional parenting,
amber

urban rehab: our soon-to-be home {part 1}

this has been the craziest year of my life, hands down. 

shortly after getting out of the NICU in May, Andrew asks out of the blue, if i'm up for moving to midtown this year.

if you know us personally, you probably know we've wanted to move for several years now, but the timing hasn't been right. we've come up with about 87 different plans for when we're going to move and where - the most recent being that we would move as early as June 2014.

after my crazy pregnancy and our stressful NICU stay, i seriously don't remember what a normal life feels like anymore. so why not move and continue on with the roller coaster life?

we toured 3 houses and quickly knew which one we preferred. we hit a few obstacles, but seriously, doors were flying open for us to proceed. We would think we ran into a problem and were ready to sit back and wait on God's timing again, but then someone would approach us, saying, "did you know about such and such organization?" "have you heard of such and such new program?" 

we're being very cautious, but so far it seems like this is the right time and the right place for our family.

a few random facts:

• the home was built in 1905
• a company called Ribbon Cutters bought the house and is remodeling it for us, to our specific standards.
• We will be involved in as much of the process as we can. We will be doing all the painting, building a new fence, sanding the hardwood floors, painting all the trim, etc.
• we are in the beginning stages of the process. We meet with the company to do our final walk through this friday, October 11th and then the work should begin shortly after that!
• we are tentatively moving in on Dec 2013
• we are under no obligation to buy the house when they are done, even though they're rehabbing it to our standards. if something unexpected comes up, we can choose not to buy the house from them.

without further ado, here is the first floor of our new abode, pre-rehab. i'll share the 2nd and 3rd floors in the next few days so this isn't an annoyingly long post ;-)

Exterior - 1st Floor:

{exterior}
clearly we have a lot of yard work to do. we plan to cut down the pine tree and plant a fruit tree in its place. we need to rebuild the retaining wall and eventually we'll repaint. The Ribbon Cutters will be repairing all the damaged wood. I CAN'T WAIT to put a rocking chair on that killer porch.

{entry.way}
we will be keeping the windows with character, but all other windows will be replaced.

{living.room}

{dining.room}

{kitchen}
we plan to knock out the awkward wall in the middle and have the only entrance be the opening on the right. the space on the left will become a large counter work space with a stove, to keep the space open. In my perfect world, we would be continuing the counter tops/cabinets to go all the way to the wall {under the window, where that step ladder is}, but i'm pretty positive it wont fit in the budget. it's such wasted space though! hopefully we can finish it in the future.

{playroom+bathroom}
this is on the other side of the dining room. the photo on the bottom right is taken while standing in the kitchen. i'm excited for emery's play space to be right next to the kitchen, for the times she doesn't want to help me cook :-) i love having her nearby!

can't wait to post the progress and end result photos! i'm soooo excited to own our home, despite all the grumbling i hear from home owners about the bummers of responsibility ;-)

love and new adventures, 

amber,

color & shape theme for toddlers: beads and pipe cleaners.

sometimes i make blogging complicated.

i follow tons of bloggers that i love and admire, who do fairly elaborate posts 5 days a week and i wonder when they ever get sleep. or when they play with their kids. they must be way more efficient that i am!

i always want to post, but have been telling myself i can't right now because i have 2 kids that take up 90% of my day. They will ALWAYS be a priority over blogging, but i do love blogging. the 5 days a week of elaborate posting is not what's best for me and my family. it's not what works for me, but for some reason i've had it in my head that it's what i wanted to strive for.

silly me.

epiphany of the week: do what i have time for. this doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing. if i don't have time for an 80 page tutorial, blog anyway. 

+  +  +  +  +

so here's a little something emery loves to do every few days:

color bead sorting. she sorts them onto pipe cleaners, she sorts them in muffin tins, she sorts them in piles on the floor. the girl has found a way to combine her OCD personality with her love colors.

// i kid you not, she really is OCD. when she cleans her toys and puts her 2 baskets away on the shelf, the baskets have to be lined up evenly. the shelf we use has no back to it, so last night she went back and forth between the two baskets, pushing them a little to get them even with the other one, until the baskets finally hit the wall and were perfectly lined up. she would push one, start to run off, and then realize they still weren't even and come back to push the other one a little. it took her 5 tries. i love her. //

{she normally sorts them by color...
i think this was the very first time
she did beads with a mini muffin tin,
so she didn't care what color went where}

so that's that. super simple, super easy, super fun for the toddler in your life.

love and OCD two year olds, 

amber.