Easy Chocolate Bird Nests (No-Bake, Vegan, and Gluten-Free!)

Dairy-Free Orange Creamsicle Smoothie

The Ultimate Chopped Kale Chicken Salad

Last week my birthday quietly passed by and I slipped into the last year of my 30s. Such are birthdays the older we get: less fanfare and more tendency to forget about them in the midst of our busy lives.

I am one of those people who (annoyingly?) doesn’t care too much about getting older. You won’t find me coyly answering, “29” when someone asks my age. (Ask away! Not offended.)

Besides a strange preference for even-numbered years, 39 seems like it will be as good a year as any. Maybe it’s because I just have a natural tendency to embrace my age. Maybe it’s because I learned of the delicacy of life in my 20s.

Maybe it’s because my 30s rocked.

As I look back on the past decade, I see some of my best times of my life. Interestingly, none of it is exactly how I pictured it. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t as wise as I thought I was in my 20s.

Here are 10 reasons I loved my 30s so much, in no particular order.

10 Reasons I Loved My 30s

1. I stopped caring what people think. 

It’s so exhausting to care what other people think of me or my choices. Thank God I was able, for the most part, to shed that part of me with my 20s. It feels good to be comfortable enough with myself to not give a flying you-know-what about what the gossip folks are saying.

2. I had my babies. 

How could I not love a decade that gave me two precious lives to care for?  Sometimes, I look at them, and am still in awe that they are mine. Motherhood, with all its chaos, is a beautiful mess that I love.

3. I learned so much about what real health is. 

In my 20s, I thought having a Slim Fast shake for breakfast was healthy. I’ve spent the last decade consuming as much information about health as I can, and knowledge is power.

4. I understand how much I have to learn.

In my 20s, I thought I had it all figured out. Now I know I don’t and am focused on growing and learning everyday.

5. I feel better than I ever have. 

See #3. Taking care of yourself goes far. I know it has everything to do with eating a lot of fresh, whole foods, exercising, and being intentional about managing stress. I get sick less, am energetic, and just feel good. It’s nice.

6. Confidence.

In my 20s, I was insecure about so much. In my 30s, I became confident in my style, with  my body, and who I am. It feels good to be comfortable in my own skin. I think #1 helps with this a lot, too.

7. I get to make up the rules for my family.

My 20s was largely about being independent and figuring out adulthood. Now I’m settled into family life and it’s a totally different, but good, world. New traditions, figuring things out like dinnertime rules, how we spend our time, and what defines our family are all things my husband and I get to decide together. Does anyone else find this so fun?

8. The experience of long-term love. 

I met my husband Tim at 25 and married him at 28, s0 I guess you could say part of my 20s was dedicated to long-term love, also, but this whole decade has seen our love grow and develop. The love we’ve experienced in our 30s is different than the I-just-found-you-and-am-head-over-heels love, but it’s a love that is grounded, safe, and extremely satisfying. I love what our relationship has become as it’s matured.

9. I created something out of nothing. 

I’m talking about this space I call Happy Healthy Mama. At the start of my 30s I moved to a new state (Ohio, where we still live) and was very much alone in that I knew no one besides one couple and my husband in our new place. It was during that time that I started this blog and love the way it’s evolved into a creative outlet for me to share my passion about health. My 30s would not be my 30s without Happy Healthy Mama.

10. Forgiveness. 

It took me the better part of this decade to figure it out, but I’m finally at a place where I know that I can’t let other people’s choices, past or present, define my happiness. Grudges put a burden on my soul and I can’t hold onto that baggage. I am in control of my happiness and it feels good to be able to let go and forgive.

Everyone has different life experiences that define their best and worst decades, but for me, my 30s will be hard to beat. I’m looking forward to enjoying this last year as a 30-something.

I love reflecting on life when my birthday rolls around. Here are some past musings if you like that sort of thing:

38th Birthday: My 38 Favorite Books of all Time

36th Birthday: 36 Things I’ve Learned in 36 Years

34th Birthday: Embrace Your Age

33rd Birthday: When Life Hands You Lemons

P.S. Thank you to everyone who has purchased Conquer Dinner so far! It was such a scary experience putting a product out there, but your response has been overwhelming and the early feedback has been heartwarming. Thank you for validating the time and effort I put into what I do. I cannot adequately express what it means to me. 

 

The post 10 Reasons I Loved My 30s appeared first on Happy Healthy Mama.

source http://happyhealthymama.com/reasons-i-loved-my-30s.html

Your Healthy, Homemade Dinners Solution: The Conquer Dinner eBook is HERE!

Do you ever feel like you have the best intentions when it comes to preparing healthy, homemade dinners for your family, but in reality your execution just isn’t there?

Are you a busy, working mom who has zero energy by the time dinner time rolls around? Or do your kids’ crazy schedules make family dinners nearly impossible? Do you feel like healthy and quick can’t describe the same dinner?

I have the solution you’ve been searching for.

It’s called Conquer Dinner. It’s an eBook that will make dinnertime less stressful, less chaotic, more consistent, and healthier.

I was in your shoes a few years ago. Preparing healthy, homemade dinners has been a top priority for me since having kids. But as my two kids got older and started sports and different activities, our schedule was getting stretched so much, dinnertime was falling apart.

More and more I was turning to take out or convenience options that were much less healthy than a homemade dinner I could make.

I knew I had to make some changes. Something had to give or we’d end up eating half of our dinners in the car after a quick stop at the  drive-thru. I cared too much about healthy, homemade dinners to let that happen.

I wanted my kids to grow up with the memories of healthy, homemade dinners as much as I wanted to fuel their bodies with the best food I could.

So I developed a system. A system that would allow me to keep family dinners a priority without taking an hour to prepare each night. Nobody has time for that!

Conquer Dinner is the eBook that shows you exactly how to prepare healthy, homemade dinners really FAST.

How does it work?

First, meal planning is essential. Conquer Dinner does the meal planning and grocery-list making for you. Take that time-consuming part out of the equation.

You’ll get six weeks of dinner meal plans, plus the grocery lists and recipes with recipe notes.

Here’s what makes Conquer Dinner special: the step-by-step system that shows you exactly what to do to prepare some of your ingredients ahead of time. You’ll pick one day a week and spend about an hour (sometimes less) prepping ingredients, putting them into labeled containers, and setting yourself up for a successful week of preparing healthy dinners for your family.

This is the system that saved dinner for my family. I know it can do the same for yours.

If you’re ready to make the commitment for better, healthier dinners, in less time, it would mean the world to me if you purchased my eBook, Conquer Dinner.

It’s finally available and you can purchase it for $19.97. It’s an instant download, so you can start TODAY!

 

The post Your Healthy, Homemade Dinners Solution: The Conquer Dinner eBook is HERE! appeared first on Happy Healthy Mama.

source http://happyhealthymama.com/healthy-homemade-dinners-conquer-dinner-ebook.html

How to Plan for Eating a Bigger Variety of Foods

I’m as guilty as the next person of eating my favorite foods over and over. Hardly a week goes by that sweet potatoes don’t pass my lips. Nearly every day I eat a banana.

Even though I do eat my favorite foods a lot, I also am cognizant of eating a wide variety of foods and helping my family do the same.

Nature is so fantastic that it’s easy for us to visualize if we’re getting a good variety. Just look at the different colors of your food. Monochromatic is not the look we’re going for. Think lots of colors. Think about the rainbow.

Variety is important because different foods have different vitamins and minerals that help our body function properly. If you consistently skip out on a certain color of food, you’re likely missing some key nutrients in your diet.

Take a look at this infographic that illustrates beautifully what nutrients we find in different colored foods and what they do for our bodies.

This Infographic by Every Nutrient

It’s one thing to know we should be eating a big variety of food (especially plant-based foods). Knowing is easy. It’s much more difficult to actually make sure we’re eating a wide variety of colors every day and week. So how can we plan to eat a bigger variety of foods?

The key word is PLAN. When you are deciding what to eat, think about the different colors of foods you are planning to eat. How many different colors will you include in your meals?

I’ve put together a handy printable to help you with this planning. When you are planning, you can use this chart to help you make sure you’re getting all the colors each and every week.

Click here to enter your email address and download the free printable with no watermark.
I focus on weeks instead of days because I think it’s more important that we get a wide variety over the span of a week than individual days.

You can use this printable in a few ways. Like I mentioned, it can be used when planning your meals. You can use tally marks as you plan different colored foods into your meals and it can help you make sure you’re planning to eat a wide variety.

This is also a great tool for keeping track of the different colored foods you’re eating. At the end of each week, you can count up which colored foods you’ve eaten the most of and look for patterns over the course of the month.

If you’re consistently eating one color as your main color, you may want to work on more variety. It can help you focus on the colors that you’re consistently eating the least of, also, and work to eat more of those.

Of course, this is an outstanding tool for helping kids to learn about the importance of variety, too. Kids can use small stickers, stamps, check marks, or tally marks to keep track of the different colors of foods they are eating. It could be a fun contest among siblings or family members to see who can get every color every week.

If you’d like to use this free printable, Click here to enter your email address and download the free printable with no watermark. You’ll also be added to my email list so we can keep in touch and I’ll send you a weekly newsletter that’s filled with healthy living inspiration. Win win!

You can use this printable to plan for eating a bigger variety of foods. But, let’s just say you aren’t a big planner. Planning isn’t your thing. I’ve got something else that can help you with at least one of your daily meals: dinner!

My e-Book, Conquer Dinner, is coming out NEXT WEEK!!(Eeeeeeek! I’m so excited I can’t help but use the cap lock key and multiple exclamation points!!!)Not only will this e-Book help you make healthy, homemade dinners a reality for you and your family, it also has variety built in. I did the planning for you. At least you’ll know you’re getting a good variety of colorful plant foods in your days and weeks if you use my e-Book for your dinners! Exciting right?

If you aren’t on my email list, make sure you get on it because my email subscribers are going to get a one-day, early bird pricing special that I won’t talk about anywhere except in my email. Bonus! Get on my email list, get the free printable, AND early-bird pricing for Conquer Dinner. Do it—>

Click here to enter your email address and download the free printable with no watermark.
 

Eating a wide variety of colorful foods is so important to make sure we’re getting all the key nutrients we need. I hope you’ll be intentional in making sure that happens for you and your family. Your health is worth it!

The post How to Plan for Eating a Bigger Variety of Foods appeared first on Happy Healthy Mama.

source http://happyhealthymama.com/how-to-plan-for-eating-a-bigger-variety-of-foods.html

3 Healthy Homemade Gummy Bear Recipes to Try

Collagen is the most abundant protein in our bodies. A long-chain amino acid, it’s made up of the individual amino acids glycine, proline, hydroxyproline, and arginine. The only place you’ll find collagen in nature is in animal tissue (bones and connective tissue).

So why am I talking about collagen? Because it’s filled with health benefits!

Our bodies’ collagen production naturally slows down as we begin to age. You see it and feel it even if you don’t know it’s happening. We see it as our skin starts to wrinkle and sag and we feel it as our joints start to ache.

The good news is that we can help replenish our collagen supplies by eating collagen-rich foods. The bad news is that collagen-rich foods are not always part of most people’s everyday diets.

One easy way to consume collagen is to make homemade bone broth. At our house, however, we don’t eat whole chicken enough to have homemade bone broth available every week.

Instead, I have been working over the last year or so to find ways to use collagen powder and/or gelatin (derived from collagen when it’s heated) to supplement our diets. I’ve used this collagen powder and this gelatin in different ways, from stirring it in my coffee to adding it to smoothies.

My favorite way to get some extra collagen in my diet so far is eating healthy gummy bears! The healthy gummy bear recipes I’m bringing you today are made with gelatin. That means that each recipe comes with some great health benefits that I outline below.

Gelatin Health Benefits

• Improves gut health and digestion. You’ve heard me say again and again how important our gut health is. Gelatin helps improve the lining of the intestinal tract, which helps to prevent a leaky gut. (source)
• Improves your skin health. When our skin starts to show signs of aging, we know we’re losing collagen. As our collagen levels lower, we experience wrinkles, loose skin, and cellulite. Replacing lost collagen can directly improve the appearance of your skin. (source)
• Good for joint health. Studies have shown that supplementing with collagen can greatly decrease joint pain. (source)

While each healthy gummy recipe comes with those health benefits, I’ve flavored each one to have its own special benefits. I use foods with specific vitamins and antioxidants to make the gummies even more powerful.

Let’s look at the recipes and what these healthy gummies can do for you!

Happy Joint Gummies

These gummy bears have extra joint-healing power through the turmeric paste that is the base of the recipe! Don’t get me wrong, I love my Golden Milk Turmeric Tea, but these are perfect for an extra boost of joint relief with the added protection the gelatin provides.

Here’s how you make these Happy Joints Gummies:

1. In a saucepan over medium low heat, mix together 1/8 cup ground turmeric with 1/4 cup water. Stir until a paste forms. Stir in a scant 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.
2. Add 1 tablespoon coconut oil, 1 cup water, 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and a sweetener to your tastes. (honey, maple syrup, or stevia work well) Whisk until well combined.
3. When the mixture is hot, but not boiling, add in 3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin, one tablespoon at a time, whisking until it is dissolved before adding the next.
4. Remove from heat and transfer to molds. These are the molds that I use and love. Any silicone mold will work, or you can oil a baking dish and pour the mixture into the baking dish to set.
5. Allow to set in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before removing from the molds. If you used a baking dish, cut the gummies into squares and then use a spatula to remove them from the dish.
6. Eat 4-12 gummies a day (depending on the size mold you use). Store them in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Anti-Aging Beautiful Skin Gummies

The gelatin alone helps your skin, but I loaded these gummies with more skin-beautifying goodness. It has antioxidant-filled sweet potato, which helps combat free radicals that lead to aging skin. It’s also got some spinach, which is full of vitamins that are good for the skin. Last, you’ve got some banana in there, and the potassium in bananas help hydrate our cells from within, which helps prevent dry skin.

Here’s how you make these Anti-aging Beautiful Skin Gummies:

1. In a blender, blend together 1/2 banana, 1/2 of the flesh of a small sweet potato, a handful of spinach, and 1/2 cup water. Blend well. You should have 1 cup liquid. If you do not, add a bit more water. Taste and add sweetener if desired (I usually do not. You can use a liquid sweetener like honey or maple syrup or stevia if you think it needs more sweetness)
2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and heat gently.
3. When the mixture is hot, but not boiling, add in 3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin, one tablespoon at a time, whisking until it is dissolved before adding the next.
4. Remove from heat and transfer to molds. These are the molds that I use and love. Any silicone mold will work, or you can oil a baking dish and pour the mixture into the baking dish to set.
5. Allow to set in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before removing from the molds. If you used a baking dish, cut the gummies into squares and then use a spatula to remove them from the dish.
6. Eat 4-12 gummies a day (depending on the size mold you use). Store them in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Immune-Boosting Gummies

I’ve been making Homemade Elderberry Syrup for a while now. One child loves it (Luke), the other one just tolerates it (Meghan). When I told her we could replace her daily elderberry syrup with elderberry gummies, she did a happy dance. Literally. She danced around the kitchen screaming happily.

She tried them and said she likes them so much better than the syrup. It’s funny because I just take the syrup and make it into gummies. Exact same ingredients except the added gelatin. Kids are strange!

This has the same immunity-boosting power as the elderberry syrup, but it’s just in a different form, and has the added benefits of the gelatin.

Here’s how you make these Immune-Boosting Gummies: 

1. In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup elderberry syrup.
2. When the mixture is hot, but not boiling, add in 3 tablespoons unflavored gelatin, one tablespoon at a time, whisking until it is dissolved before adding the next.
3. Remove from heat and transfer to molds. These are the molds that I use and love. Any silicone mold will work, or you can oil a baking dish and pour the mixture into the baking dish to set.
4. Allow to set in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before removing from the molds. If you used a baking dish, cut the gummies into squares and then use a spatula to remove them from the dish.
5. Eat 4-12 gummies a day (depending on the size mold you use). Store them in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Of these three recipes, the Immune-Boosting Gummies are the most kid-friendly. I created these, though, mostly for adults. (Since we need the skin and joint health benefits the most!) I’ll have some more kid-friendly gummy recipes coming soon.

Which one of these healthy gummy recipes will you try first? 

The post 3 Healthy Homemade Gummy Bear Recipes to Try appeared first on Happy Healthy Mama.

source http://happyhealthymama.com/3-healthy-homemade-gummy-bear-recipes.html

Strawberry Oatmeal Bars (Vegan and Gluten Free)