My Favorite Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread Recipe

Over the last couple months I've started making my own bread from scratch. It was one of my goals for 2014 to both save money and make healthier choices for my family. I don't like serving a lot of mystery ingredients and since homemade bread only takes four or five ingredients it seemed like an easy way to cut out a processed food. I started with whole wheat bread but after reading the book Cure Tooth Decay I decided to give real sourdough bread a try.

Here's the trouble with bread (and grains in general) - the tend to have properties like phytic acid that prevent them from being digested and more importantly block your body ability to absorb nutrients from the foods you eat. Yikes. Based on what I've read I actually think grains are a big cause of cavities and other dental problems. If you haven't read this book and have any kind of problems with your teeth you need to check it out! The kindle edition is only $10 on amazon! The way around this is to do one of the three S's - soaking, sprouting, or souring. Basically you're breaking down the bad stuff before you even eat it! I tried a couple soaked bread recipes that didn't thrill me and sprouted flour is expensive! So that left souring.

2014 Year in Review

I was just looking back at some of my posts from the year and came across list of goals I wrote way back in January. My initial reaction? "Oh. I made goals? Oops." So... let's see how it went and if I'll be trying again for these goals in 2015!

Bake Bread - Success! I remember a slow start, making just a couple loaves in the first half of the year. But this fall I really jumped in and now make my own sourdough bread using a sourdough starter I made myself! We haven't bought bread in a couple months! The key for me was finding a really easy, doable recipe. I'll share it later this week!

Eat Whole Foods - Semi-success? I think we're definitely doing better than the beginning of the year, definitely more produce and more homemade food, but I hope to improve more still. I think an important step for next year will be meal planning or having easy, ready-to-cook meals in the freezer. Being unprepared is my bane, and many times we resort to fast food just because I don't know what we're going to eat for dinner.One of my favorite new recipes this year are runza pocket sandwiches, and one of the great things about them is that they are great for the freezer!

Teach Big Brother Letters - We didn't work very hard on this, but he does recognize the first letters of names for both of our families, and numbers up to 5! (see how I made his dinosaur birthday crown here)

Play Outside - We definitely hit this in the summer by playing outside and gardening every day. Our DIY sprinkler arch was a big hit! Winter is already a major fail though. We barely leave the house when it's cold. Brrrr. 

Time with My Boys - Work in progress. I think I'm doing better... but still working toward a better balance. The book Hands Free Mama has helped so much.

Read - I guess I am reading more but not int he way I planned. I've been reading to the boys a LOT more. Some of our new favorites are Pete the Cat, Skippyjon Jones, and Big Brother is really into Magic School Bus right now. 

I completely read The Hunger Games and Unglued (we did this one in mom's group and it was great!). I started the Allegiant series but didn't finish the third book, and started Cure Tooth Decay and Hands Free Mama (I'm almost done with these two). And I've flipped through Backyard Homestead and Four Season Harvest. So basically I finished five books. In a year. I'm hoping I just forgot some.

Garden - We tried really hard and had a big beautiful garden... and the squirrels still ate almost everything. I don't know what to do. We even started our own seedlings, made a mini greenhouse, and fenced in the garden. I did manage to freeze and can a little from our garden and from my grandma's garden so I guess it wasn't a complete loss. :)

Take Walks - We did a good amount of walking this summer. And Big Brother did a lot of bike riding. We even took pictures on one of our walks to make this custom storybook. I think family walks are very underrated and we highly recommend them!

Save $$$ - We haven't really saved much, but it's because we've been putting any extra on our student loans so we still feel pretty good about it.

Organize the Basement - miracle of miracles, this is mostly done!!! My mom and sisters came for a weekend and helped me knock most of it out. Only my sewing corner still needs a little clean up. Whew.

Family Devotions - It's been hit - or miss. Big Brother got a new Bible storybook and has reminded us most nights for the last month.

All in all I'd say we were pretty successful this year. In spite of forgetting about our list!

How about you guys?  What were your goals in 2014? Did you stick to them or totally forget?

DIY Custom Photo Storybook

We tried to really stick to our four gift categories for the boys this year (you can read more about that here) and one area we had a lot of fun with was "something to read." We made a custom storybook! We spent a day at the end of summer taking pictures of the boys at a local park and had them printed in an 8x8 Shutterfly book.

We went with the story "going on a bear hunt" because the pictures would be pretty simple and there were plenty of "scenes" in the park like going over a bridge, across a stream, etc. For each area we started with a picture checking out the obstacle.

Then a picture going across.

Then a picture running away after they find the bear! This one at the cave is my favorite. Big Brother really got into it at this point.

We made sure that all the pictures of the hunt had the boys going from left to right, then all the picture of them running from the bear go from right to left. We used Photoshop to make the pages 8x8" and add text to the bottom of each page. We printed a couple sample pages on our home printer to make sure the font size would be readable.

And the bear? My sister drew a few bears for us to photoshop into the running pages. Like this one:

Once all our pages were put together we loaded them into an 8x8 book on the shutterfly website. We used the "modern white" style for our book. The page designs didn't matter for us since we used the full-page photos we made in photoshop, but this style gave us the tan binding. (You could also use a different page layout to do a picture at the top and type the words into a text box, instead of making whole pages in Photoshop.)

We used a cute "behind the scenes" photo for the cover page, complete with a bear. When Big Brother saw this page he was like "THERE'S A BEAR!!!"

The first few pages show us reaching, then crossing each of our five obstacles - tall grass, a bridge, a forest, a river, and a cave.

Then there is a page of the boys running back across each obstacle away from a fuzzy little bear.

And all the back home, up the stairs, and into bed. With the last page very appropriately saying "We are never going on a bear hunt again!" Which is how we all felt by the end. You can tell by all the tears.

We're already coming up with ideas for a book next year! What a fun way to watch how they grow over the years. Here are a few more favorite pics from our day at the park.

King of the rock. "It's the biggest rock I ever saw!"

I kind of regret not using this for the Christmas card this year....

Have you ever made a storybook with pictures of your kids? Some of the ideas we've thrown around for next year are a treasure hunt, something with dinosaurs, or something with pirates. What would you do? We need ideas!

A Very Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve! And from our little house to yours, we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas is tomorrow and this is the time, friends. As we're frantically running, trying to check the final things off our lists. This is the time to take a breath and remember what's really important, and to honestly ask ourselves what needs to be done. Honestly. Probably not a whole lot of things on that list. Certainly nothing that makes us ignore little smiles or brush off a bedtime story or get frustrated over the littlest nothings, right? So all together now (I'm still working on this lesson myself) let's log off of Pinterest, put away the glue guns, and decide we don't need 10 different foods for dinner. Instead let's use this precious time to do the things that are really important.

Let's enjoy this time with our families. This time that we can never have again. Let's laugh, snuggle, talk, and just be together.

Let's know that even if everything isn't done the way we imagined, it is still good.

Let's be thankful.

And most of all, let's remember the greatest gift that was ever given. And make sure our kids will always remember it too. Make this Christmas count.

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

"The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!"

Luke 2:11 NLT