The Gift of Mindfulness

I was awake at 4am this morning. AND it wasn't because one of the kids woke me. I was just awake! I could't fall back to sleep. The hours between 3am and 5am always seems to be ripe with insight and therefor it comes in the strongest. I wish it were more like 3pm but alas 3am is more quiet so there's that.

Mindful parenting came to me. Mindfulness in general has been a big topic on my mind as of lately.

The fact is that our culture is more connected with more people than ever before in history. The internet and social media have made it possible for one to connect with countless people all over the world. While those things are a blessing, they have inadvertently began to strip away the interpersonal connections to the things and people that are right in front of us. In many ways the focus on over production and also social media has shifted our attention from the inner peace that sits in the here and now. The focus for many, including myself at times, is towards the chaotic chasing of getting things done and on mindless distractions. But the real magic lies in the stillness of moments spent being completely present. Over tasking and stimulation takes us out of the peace of the present moment and into a whirlwind.

Having two small children there are many parts of my day that do feel like a whirlwind. Where I am wearing 6 hats and trying to get 10 things done at once. It happens, life happens. But there are other times of the day that I can choose to pick one task to do mindfully. Or I can choose one person to give my full attention to. Or at the opposite I could choose to fill the time with overtasking or mindless activity. We do have a choice. When I look back on my day and reflect on the parts where I was fully present, it's almost always my favorite most prized part of the day. When I can sit with my toddler and fully BE there with him reading a book or building a train track. It then becomes a gift to us both. When I can stop what I'm doing for just 2 minutes and give my husband my undivided attention to tell me about his day, it then becomes a vital moment of deep connection and is a gift to us both. When I can stop the over tasking, stimulation and mind chatter THATS where the magic of life lies. There are absolutely parts of the day that I over task, that I have my phone next to me or that I'm not present. But there are other magical parts of my day that I savor a single task, a single breathe. There are glorious parts of the day that I don't see a text come in because my phone is purposely in the next room. Because the most important thing in that moment is me looking into my babies eyes while he nurses. The magic is in the here and now. The practice of mindfulness is a gift. And I'm looking forward to slowing down and receiving more and more of it!

Love & Light,
Christina

Honey Corn Bread with Berry Coulis & Whipped Coconut Cream

It's been such a cold winter for us this year. So last week I made my ground chicken chili with gluten free honey corn bread. We had a decent amount of corn bread left over so I decided to work it into breakfast the next morning. And so was born this Honey Corn Bread with Berry Coulis & Whipped Coconut Cream.

Gluten Free Honey Corn Bread

Ingredients

1 cup organic gluten free cornmeal

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup organic corn starch (arrowroot flour/starch works nicely too)

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup local honey

1 cup whole milk

1/3 cup pasture butter (I love the Kerrigold brand)

2 large free range non GMO eggs

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400F

2. Grease an 8-inch square glass baking dish

3. Place the baking dish in the oven as the oven preheats. Allow the dish to stay in the oven while you mix you batter. Take out of the oven right when you are ready to pour in the batter. The hot dish will allow for a wonderful crispy outer crust.

4. In a mixing bowl mix together all dry ingredients.

5. Add in milk, butter and eggs. Stir until batter is smooth. 

6. Using an oven mitt take the hot dish out of the oven and pour in the batter.

7. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the cornbread is golden brown and the edges are a deep golden brown. 

8. Let cool for a few minutes then cut and serve.

We love to eat this cornbread warm with extra butter and honey drizzled on top.

Whipped Coconut Cream

Ingredients

1 can full fat coconut milk. Chilled in fridge.

1 Tablespoon Maple Syrup

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Chill a small mixing bowl in the fridge or freezer for 5 minutes.

2. Poor the chilled coconut milk/cream in the bowl

3. Whip by hand or with a handheld electric mixer for 30 seconds.

4. Add in maple syrup and vanilla.

5. Whip for 1 minute or until stiff.

Serve!

Berry Coulis 

Ingredients

1-2 cups of fresh berries

splash of fresh orange juice

squirt of honey

2 drops young living essential oil

Instructions

Heat berries in a small sauce pan over medium low heat. 

Add in honey and orange juice.

Allow berries to heat until they have a nice sheen to them but make sure they're still intact.

Turn off the heat and add in two drop of young living essential oil.

Serve!

Enjoy!
Love,
Christina

Lemon Blueberry Pancakes with Lemon Honey Yogurt Sauce {Paleo + Grain Free}

These pancakes are light and bright on the palette and offer up a sunny start to the day. The base of this recipe was from Elana's Pantry Silver Dollar Pancakes. The recipe is paleo, super easy and delicious! We make them often. I've started to play with the recipe and came up with the rendition that you'll see below: Lemon Blueberry Pancakes. The Lemon Honey Sauce is the perfect topping to these delicately sweet pancakes. 

Lemon Blueberry Pancakes {Grain Free + Paleo}

makes 16 pancakes

Ingredients

3 Pasture Eggs

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon

5 drops Young Living Lemon Essential Oil

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons local honey

1/2 cup blueberries

1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

coconut oil or pasture butter for cooking

Instructions

In a large bowl mix together eggs, lemon juice, vanilla, lemon zest, lemon essential oil and honey. Add in almond flour, salt and baking soda and mix together until well combined. Heat coconut oil or butter into a griddle or skillet over medium heat. One at a time scoop 1 very heaping tablespoon or half of a 1/4 cup of batter onto the skillet. At this time I like to hand place the blueberries on top of the cooking pancakes so that I can control the amount of blueberries in each pancake. Pancakes will begin to form little bubbles all over when ready to flip. Flip over and cook other side for an additional minute or so. Remove from heat and repeat the process with the remaining batter. We like to top with the Lemon Honey Yogurt, maple syrup and extra blueberries.

Lemon Honey Yogurt

Ingredients

1 cup whole milk unsweetened organic yogurt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon local honey {you could also use agave or maple syrup}

4 drops Young Living Lemon Essential Oil

Note: Not all essential oils are edible. Young Living brand is pure therapeutic grade and is safe and healthy to ingest. 

Tip: Often times I double this recipe and keep in the refrigerator for the next day or freeze for the following week. They are great defrosted in the toaster! 

Enjoy!

Paleo Vanilla Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

I've been making this cupcake recipe for years. I originally made it for my sons first birthday because I didn't want my one year old to be loaded up with unsavory ingredients and hipped up on sugar after his first cake experience. I felt really good serving these to him knowing that he would love the taste but that he was also getting wholesome ingredients in his body. I made these cupcakes again last week for a friends sons first birthday party. This cake recipe creates a rich and dense cake with a lightly sweet vanilla flavor. I liken it to more of a pound cake type consistency. The cake recipe was adapted from the Homemade Mommy Blog. The icing recipe is my paleo spin on a traditional cream cheese recipe.

 

Paleo Vanilla Cupcakes

Makes 20 Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 pasture eggs
1 cup honey (or other natural sweetener)
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 cup unsalted butter or coconut oil (I actually do 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup coconut oil)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Blend all wet ingredients together with a whisk or electric mixer.
Blend all dry ingredients together in a small bowl.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix together with a whisk or electric mixer.
Blend together until there are more lumps.
Fill muffin liners about 2/3 the way full with the batter.
Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool then frost.

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients
8 oz organic cream cheese
8 oz pasture butter (I use Kerrygold)
4 tablespoons organic maple syrup
2 tablespoons local honey

Directions
Let the cream cheese and butter sit on the counter to soften and come to room temperature. Once softened, place all the ingredients into a medium sized bowl. Mix with an electric hand mixer until the icing is smooth.

For these particular cupcakes I placed the icing in a plastic sandwich bag and then cut a small piece off one bottom corner. Then I iced the cupcakes starting with a circle on the outer edge and working my way in. I like the way that looked rustically pretty!

Coconut Lime Pancakes {Gluten Free}

As we go into the summer I thought it'd be fun to experiment with my grain free pancake recipe. I decided to liven up the ingredients with coconut and lime. The coconut lime combination make for such a deliciously sweet and bright pop of flavor! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did!

my sweet little kitchen assistant.

 Coconut Lime Pancakes

{Gluten Free}

makes 12 to 14 pancakes

Pancake Ingredients 

4 pasture eggs

1 cup and 1 tablespoons canned {full fat} coconut milk

2 tablespoons pure local honey

1 1/2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup coconut flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

pinch of salt

juice and zest of 4 limes

1/4 cup coconut flakes

coconut oil for frying

Pancake Instructions 

Whisk and combine the wet ingredients: eggs, milk, honey and vanilla and lime juice.

To the liquid mixture add: coconut flour, salt baking soda, lime zest and coconut flakes.

Stir well to combine

Let the batter sit for 3 to 4 minutes while you preheat your griddle.

Preheat griddle to about 325 degree or medium heat. 

Apply coconut oil to the griddle and allow to melt.

Pour 2/3 cup of batter onto griddle for each pancake. (The smaller size pancake makes for easier flipping)

When the pancakes start to have tiny bubbles all over the surface wait about 2 - 3 minutes and then flip.

Once flipped allow the pancake to cook another minute or so until both sides are golden brown.

Enjoy!

An Ode to My Son

This past Tuesday was my son's second birthday. They are correct when they say that time flies. I was looking through pictures of him from when he was a baby and it's hard to imagine how quickly it all came and went. But what a blessing it all has been.

 

This ode to my son was done upon a deep soulful reflection of the gratitude I have for him.

My Son

April 14, 2014

To my sweet son, my blessing from God. How can I accurately express the level of my love? The expansiveness of my gratitude that you decided to be mine. The honor of being the one who caresses your soft hair, gently rocks you to sleep and patiently guides you through life is both overwhelming and abundantly meaningful beyond measure. The twinkle in your eye leads me to know that your life, your journey will be full of adventure, wonder and excitement. The sweetness in your little hugs tells me that the love you have to give to the world is expansive and limitless. You are now two and as I sit here writing this, I'm overjoyed with the life and love you have gifted me with in these few short years. The lessons that God has had you taught me are humbling and a beautiful offering for my soul to expand to heights that it has for so long wanted to reach. You my dear one are a gift to my soul. You are a full time and permanent resident of my heart. My mind will never be the same. And neither will my body. But even that you have made more beautiful. You have forever changed and expanded me. My gratitude to you could fill and overflow the oceans. So today little darling, I say thank you.
Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your fiery nature. Thank you for your sweet embrace. Thank you for your twinkle. You are in fact a star. Thank you for the lessons and the way they expand me and mold me to be bigger, better and humbled. Thank you for teaching me about surrender and to have faith. Thank you for your light and shinning in on me and on everyone you touch. Thank you for your bounce. Thank you for your wit. Thank you for making me excited about the future. Thank you for inspiring me to want to sore to the heights my soul would have me reach. Thank you for expanding my capacity for love to a place that sometimes hurts because my heart is opening so much I feel it might burst. Thank you for the memories. Thank you for the wisdom of knowing there is so much love inside to give. Thank you for making me want to give that love to every child, everywhere because your sweet soul has opened my eyes to see and want to give my love abundantly and freely. I am inspired to pour out my love over the world, like a gentle yet steady rainfall in the spring. I feel compelled to hold and rock to sleep all the lonely, all the gentle, all the innocent and all the seeking souls of the world. Your presence has made me feel God's love and it has brought me to my knees. Yet has taken me to the highest mountain top and given me a glimpse of my purpose for this life. My soul pours out and rejoices in the immense and unwavering gratitude I have to God for you. For you. To you. My gift. My blessed shinning light. I lift you up and give God gratitude from the deepest place within my being. Love fills me deeply. Love envelopes me completely. Love is all that's left of me. And that's perfectly perfect, because love is all I ever want to be. 

Love,

Momma

Living in Purpose

We are all here for a reason. We were all chosen by God to have a life. And each one of us has a beautiful, meaningful and important beyond belief purpose for our life. When we are living in our purpose we feel enlivened and whole. The opposite feeling can be present when we are unaware of or are in desperate search for our purpose. No matter where on the path to your purpose you are there will always be an undeniable yearning and pull towards a deeper meaning to our lives. I think all too often we are searching for a label to the "life purpose". Something concrete to call it. Like my life purpose is to be a teacher, or my life purpose is to be a mother, a father, a writer, an artist, a doctor, actress, what have you. And if when we can't find the label to attach to the purpose or if something happens to seemingly prevent us from being the "athlete", "doctor", "artist", then we then feel lost. I think our life purpose is bigger than a label can hold. Labels are boxes they are small containers that are frankly too small to contain our immensely massive potential and divine life purpose. I like to instead think of our purpose as a fluid substance much like water that can flow and expand in many different directions throughout our lives. By allowing the essence of our purpose to be fluid we are opening ourselves up to fully receive all the aspects of our purpose as it presents itself to us throughout our lives. One way to begin to become familiar with your purpose is to ask yourself what it is that you've always done or always been able to do effortlessly but maybe never really thought of before. It is possible that you might have not acknowledged your purpose in the past because it is so imbedded in who you are. Take me for example, ever since I can remember I've always been the counselor to my friends and family. I've always had a yearning to help others and to help others find their happiness. So for me in regards to my life purpose I like to think of it in terms of a theme that I hold true in my heart. The initial theme I found for me is that "I am to help others heal, find purpose and joy". Through that initial theme if you surrender and allow yourself to stay open you can then begin to become aware of additional themes. For me I've been able to become aware of additional themes such as: "I am to spread love" and "to help others find deep meaning and happiness in their own lives". I find that by finding your "theme" you are then able to walk IN your life's purpose no matter what it is you are doing. And that as long as we are authentically living in our life's purpose in any given moment, (in line at the grocery store, with friends, family, business acquaintances and so on), we will be creating and opening up to the possibilities and opportunities to more fully day by day walk and live in our life's purpose. I also believe that the opportunities to experience and grow in our life's purpose will grow and expand with our life and that every moment is created for us to fully embody and walk in love and purpose.

- - -

Today I invite you to find a moment of stillness in your day. Close your eyes and take in a lovingly deep breath. Ask yourself what it is that you can contribute to this day. What can you contribute to the people or space around you. Ask yourself what is it that you've always sort of just done effortlessly that uplifts and benefits those around you. The answer to that question is naturally part of your purpose. A part of your theme. It's a chord to your beautifully unique melody that only you can offer to the world. Then continue to do this practice each day until you begin to become more open and aware to your divine reason for being and your divine gifts that you are to share with the world.

Do you have an idea of what the theme to your purpose is? I'd love this to become a place of sharing.


Sending you so much love from my heart to yours!
Christina