And thanks for all your glowing compliments about the pictures of Skylar. Scott’s already talking about keeping the boys away and her dating. We’ve got a few years though as I remind him. Yesterday I was so excited to open a package in the mail and find this lovely gift from Holly!
A few weeks ago I sent her a kombucha scoby so that she could start brewing kombucha at home. Making your own kombucha is super easy. This is the formula: Kombucha scoby + brewed and sugared tea + a covered glass jar + time = kombucha. Obviously doing it the first few times, there are tons of questions and lots of reading is necessary but one you get the hang of it, it’s so easy.
And, home-brewed kombucha tastes better and costs pennies to make a gallon of. Why would you ever pay like $3.99 for an 8 oz bottle of storebought when you could make a gallon at home for a quarter but I digress.
I never in a million years thought Holly would send me anything. But boy, I hit the jackpot. Holly apparently knows that I love all things vanilla. Yankee vanilla candles are The Best.
And she knows I love this gum. I wasted no time breaking into it. Holly is such a sweet person and great friend. I feel a special kinship with her since she lives in Minnesota and that’s where I grew up. There’s an expression “Minnesota Nice” and that holds true with Holly. She is just so nice. And if that gift wasn’t enough, blog reader, Michele, sent me this stevia. She couldn’t use it and offered to send it to me. I would never say no to free stevia!
I have a whole post with my stevia-containing recipes. Thank you so much, Michele, for your thoughtfulness! After all that loveliness in the mail, it was time to eat.
Plants with Vegan Slaw Dressing
And Pumpkin Honey Tofu If you: freeze the tofu first then thaw and press the water out of it very well then bake it it will turn out very “bread-like”. Dessert: No-Bake Dark Chocolate Coconut Snowballs (Vegan, GF, Freezer-Friendly) Questions:
- Do you consider yourself to have great friends? Junior high and high school were not times in my life where I’d say I had “great friends”. You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to go back to 8th grade. Conversely, I have gone through periods of my life where I’ve had great friends, such as my later college years and mid-twenties. Then, as I got older, married, moved around the country many times, I lost touch with many of my college and early 20s friends and the priority of making new friends sort of fell by the wayside. Just one of those ebbs and flows of life. Oh, and becoming a mom does nothing for one’s social life! You are at home with a small, helpless human being. You exist for them. Friends? Huh? When there’s another nursing session needed, a diaper to change, and cooking to be done, I couldn’t imagine finding time to hang out with “friends” back then. It would have been great, but didn’t happen much. But now, Skylar is getting older and more independent and re-connecting with my own friends, both online and real life, is becoming increasingly important to me.
- How important are friends to you? I don’t believe it’s healthy long-term to not have friends. So even though I am not one of those people who “lives” for being a social butterfly and organizing events, get togethers, or dinner parties with friends, and I don’t chat on the phone with friends that often these days, I know in my heart that I do have some really, really solid friendships with a half dozen women, and that’s extremely important to me. I could call any of them at 3am with anything, and they’d be there for me. No questions asked. I also “know” so many people. We all do. I would say my acquaintance circle is huge. As well as my circle of friends that although we don’t see each other tons or we’re not BFFs and joined at the hip, they are still good friends and I could count on them and they could count on me for anything.
- Have you made any friends via the blogsphere? Oh gosh, tons! Some of my closest friends now are women I’ve met blogging! We share the commonality of blogging (which unless you are a blogger or an avid blog reader, it’s hard to fully “get” this world) so there’s that, but we also have been reading each other’s every post for a couple years now. With thousands of emails exchanged with each other behind the scenes. I have met so many amazing people through blogging! If Katie, Madeline, or Jessica, had a nickle for every email we’ve exchanged, we’d all be rich. Those women have heard me laugh, cry, and I turn to when the chips are down or when I need a pep talk or I need to non-judgmental place to vent. Or to laugh hysterically about something. And there are tons and tons of other ladies who I exchange emails with and we laugh and talk shop and talk life. You all know who you are. I used to think making friends on the internet was somewhat strange. Now, I can’t imagine not having the friends I’ve met via the internet and blogosphere! Tell me about your friends and friendships? In real life or in the ‘sphere. Do you have lots of friends? A tight-knit circle or many acquaintances?
