Cereal Bars! Kinda

  My girls love cereal bars.  Many mornings the 1st thing out of Allison's mouth is, "E bar."  Sometimes I give in and other days I don't.  Have you ever looked at the ingredients?  They are aweful, so I definitely wanted to try a healthier version.  I found a recipe online for cereal bar cookies.  I thought this would be good b/c they would be smaller and hopefully not as messy.  Wrong, but they are so good.  They are about the size of muffin.

Some did leak everywhere.

But most of them stayed intact.

  These are definitely healthier b/c A. I can read the ingredients and B. They are made out of oatmeal and whole wheat flour.  Next time I'm going to add some flax meal to them.  There is brown sugar and butter also, but at least my body knows how to digest that stuff properly.  It's basically a muffin made out of struesel topping and has jelly in the middle.  I think I will keep  making these b/c they are easy, but definitely not as neat and car friendly as I was hoping.  Oh well, good thing I'm trying to get in the habit of vacuuming the van once a week.

Comparing Apples to Apples

I thought I would show the difference in size between my two girls with a t-shirt that they both wore.  Allison wore it once when she was 7 months old, and now Mary-Kate wore it for the 1st time today at 13 months.  It was very tight on Allison and now loose on Mary-Kate.  The shirt is size 12 mo. 

 Can't even go past the belly. :)

I had to post 2 pictures of Allison b/c she was so cute.  This isn't even her peak chubbiness.

  They are both 19/20 lbs in the pictures, but Mary-Kate is a few inches longer than Allison was when she wore the shirt.  Oh, the title is due to the apple shirt in case anyone couldn't read the shirt.

Busy in the Kitchen

I'm on another "homemade" kick in the kitchen. In a way, it's out of pure laziness oddly enough. I hate shopping of any kind. Unfortunately that includes grocery shopping, and I like to cook and Brandon likes to eats. Therefore I have to go quite often. I make a monthly food menu (its different every month bc again we like food), so I make huge shopping trips 2 or 3 times a month and then supplement trips during the week. Anyway, I kept forgetting to get Goldfish crackers and animal crackers, staples in toddler world. Therefore I made my own out if the desperate cries for crackers and cookies.
Both were super easy to make. The crackers only required 4 ingredients and animal crackers required 8. Both done in the food processor. The cheese crackers are good, but I'm not a cheese fan. Allison and Brandon love them even though they are not as crisp. The animal crackers are pretty darn good and close to the store bought ones.
A few other things I've made are larabars, kefir, and banana pops. The larabars are great a cheap alternative to the store bought one and refined sugar free. Dates are used as a sweetener. I used unsweetened chocolate in mine, and you cannot tell the difference.
Kefir is easy but time consuming but the health benefits are worth it. And I banana pops bc I had many ripe bananas to deal with. I used Wilton candy melts, and the chocolate hardened immediately.
Here is also a picture of the wedding cake for the few people who view this and not on FB. See, I've been busy.