I am totally binging on Jessica Seinfeld’s new book, Deceptively Delicious, pretty pictures, easy to follow recipes.

I’m blessed to have three eager eaters. They are very comfortable eating brocolli (a.k.a. mini trees), cauliflower, carrots, zuchini and most fruits. However, beets, bell peppers, peas, sweet potatoes, spinach and avocados are battles that I don’t try to fight very often at this point, heck I don’t even like eating them. It just seems easier to stick to the vegetables they are used to eating and don’t fuss about.

Jessica recommends the Magic Bullet which I am a BIG fan of for the main reason that it looks nice and is not a counter top hog. When your kitchen is as tiny as mine every inch counts. One of the reasons I bought the bullet is they claim you can “drink your vegetables” by masking veggies in drinks so this is just the next logical step. Jessica has some fantastic recipes, I’ve already made the beef stew and deviled egg recipes but I can NOT wait to try the desserts, that chocolate cake is on the menu for tomorrow night.

After reading Deceptively Delicious I feel confident that I will be able to smuggle in these veggies without child detection!

I’ve been on an unexpected hiatus from blogging, the long weekend was a great chance to be with all three kids at the same time! Fun, but tiring and by the time I had them to bed I was pooped, I didn’t even check email…

Then I’ve had one thing happen after the other, primarily my blender broke, so now I have this fantastic cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, and no way to make the purees.

I really want to get another magic bullet base but I’m feeling really cheap and wish I could just buy the base. uggh…

I had a photo shoot with SteepingBeauty this morning for the girls. Girl2006 was in a retro shirt with a vintage LeSportSac in green and Rubick’s cube… see her trying to cheat by pulling off the stickers?

Girl2004 had vintage red Ray Ban sunglasses and a red Dofan purse. She wore her favorite blue beads and was ready to go. We went to our favorite thrift shop, didn’t find much, but we did find their Halloween costumes. I’m not big into Halloween so I was glad to find something very cute and cheap for both of them.

Both girls will be Unicorns, you’ll see pics soon enough! just need to get boy2001 a costume now. I shudder to think of the horrendousness but I’ll go along with whatever he wants to be! I promise!!!

I’ve been spending a lot of time, ok, maybe not that much time but more time than I ever have at Petco. We got our sweet little Roborovskii hamsters there. Unfortunately after a few weeks one of them died.

We saw them one morning and they were fine, running around, etc… well, we went out and came home and the kids wanted to put them in their exercise balls. I only saw one so I lifted the little house and we saw him laying face up with his mouth open and like he’d been crushed.

We’re still baffled by what happenned. I am pretty confident that the one who died was the slightly bigger more aggressive one. They were both really sweet, but one was a bit fatter and would start fights with the smaller one, chasing him off the wheel and up the tunnels. So, I’m really surprised by the turn of events. I wonder if they were sleeping and one smothered the other or I got an older one paired up with a younger one.

Anyway, since his death I’ve been spending a lot of time at Petco. They get their shipments of Thursdays and they keep saying to call in and find out if they got any Robos. They say they’re on order but they don’t know when they’ll come in and you can’t “order” one to come specially for you which makes no sense to me personally. I know they are live animals but if you know you have a sure thing why wouldn’t you oblige that?

The survivor robo seemed sad at first, lethargic, moping around his cage and tunnels. Now he seems back to normal, running day and night. These are really nice because they are very active, even during the day. Girl2004 was so upset about Chexter or Dexter being dead and now I’m really scared to put another one in there with him as I don’t need another scene. Last week there were 5 gallon aquarium sets on sale for $22 and I got one for boy2001′s room. We got two 10 cent goldfish which grow fast according to the sales rep. When he saves up he wants to get an anemone and a starfish (hopefully he can put them in the same tank). More to come soon…

Hey, I know you’re loving all these nature trail photos right?

Well here’s some more pics for you. For the past few years we’ve found these weird pods. Several of the pods grow on a stalk. When you open them up they have a silky thread material inside clumps to a seed like thing. I thought it was cotton at first but the material is like silk.

If you can identify this for me it would be great. They seem to grow around water near cattails. I’d love to find out a craft to do with this stuff or at least have a name for the nature journal we’re keeping.

There is nothing better then being outside with kids. They make you take a look at the stuff you never noticed before, all the little details of creation are huge for them.

My new obsession is planting trees. I planted 2 red delicious and 1 peach tree last week, now I’ve got my sites on Birch trees. When the kids and I went on our nature walk last week we found some Birch trees which I absolutely LoVe! I can’t wait to plant a couple of these on the north side of our house. I want to plant several to make a little forest of them, I especially the love the bark when it peels to reveal the salmon colored under-bark. The kids were amazed with it too. Birch is especially appealing for the winter when everything will be grey, Birch bark will add some color.