For the lip balm, I found this super easy recipe using only real food ingredients and Rene created some super cute labels for them.

As for the gingersnaps, I never liked them till I made this real food version.  I found this super easy gingersnap recipe in Jenny’s Healthy Meal Plans, and they were such a hit that I decided to make them for everyone!

Together, Rene and I produced this video of how we made both the lip balm and the gingersnaps.  Please enjoy the video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you make anything to give away this holiday season?  Or did you receive anything handmade from an awesome gift giver?  Tell me all about it below!

Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101

BACKGROUND

First, let me give you my background with mobile devices, so you can better understand where I’m coming from and better gauge how useful my review will be to you.  I’ve been using iOS on iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 for a few years now, so I’m very familiar with how that OS works and what Apple product limitations are.  For several years now, I’ve wanted a mini laptop because I wanted a device that would be small and light/mobile with a real keyboard so that I could write up blog posts in a jiffy while sitting in a coffee shop.  While I have improved my typing speeds on my iPhone over the years, that speed is nowhere near how fast I type on a real keyboard because there’s just nothing like being able to feel the keys while you type, so having a real keyboard was very important to me.

I was also very drawn to the new ebook reading devices, and I really liked how the iPad offered this while offering more than just a reading device.  However, I decided against the iPad 2 because it cost a lot without offering a real solution to a real keyboard.  Yes, I know I could have purchased a bluetooth keyboard, but then the price of the device becomes even higher and I’d have to purchase some sort of case that helps me use the keyboard with the iPad in all the different sitting conditions I would inevitably sit in with my device.

I also wanted to be able to play games and view movies on whatever device I got, and for a while I wasn’t into buying a computing device that didn’t have a real operating system because it would limit what games and videos I could watch.  However, I think that we’ve hit a point in the iPhone and Android market places that most of what you can and want to do on a computer can be done via some app found on either platform.  There are still drawbacks to not having a real operating system, but I was willing to give that up for a tablet device that offered a new way to read books.

REVIEW

Hardware

When Asus introduced their new Transformer tablet with docking keyboard, I was excited.  Here’s a device that looks like a laptop when the tablet is docked, and can transform into a tablet device when not docked.  Plus, it offers a mini HDMI port, USB slots (in the keyboard dock), and memory card reader slots (mini and SD), which makes it way more customizable to my needs than the iPad.

Sits just like a laptop, more important than I originally thought. Is this even possible with an iPad?

Transformer transformed from laptop into tablet, it's like transforming your makeup from day to night!

The Transformer tablet costs only $399 for the 16GB version and $499 for the 32GB version.  I got the 16GB version because I can always buy bigger memory cards and throw it into the SD slot if I really need the space.  Plus, with digital clouds like Dropbox, Google Music, and Asus’s 1 year free unlimited web storage, there’s not really a need to have too much storage on your actual device now.  The keyboard dock costs an additional $149, but it’s well worth it.  That put my purchase to about $550 before taxes.

Feels perfect under my fingers!

My original concerns about the device was that the keyboard might be too small, as I have never owned a 10.1 inch laptop before, but after using the keyboard for a week now, I find that it is no different to me than a 12 inch laptop keyboard or my regular full sized keyboard.  I think I have slightly smaller hands than most, but Rene has also been using this keyboard without any issues and his hands are larger than mine.  The keyboard is optimized for the Android platform while still offering all my needs from a computer keyboard.

Chicklet keyboard plus multi-touch pad, note all the Android friendly keys!

The mouse pad is like that of the new Apple laptops with multi-touch functionality, though I still need to learn how to use it as I haven’t owned a laptop with multi-touch pads before.  However, because the tablet is a touch screen, I find that I often don’t even want the mouse pad and I turn it off with a handy button on the keyboard.  It’s much easier to just touch the screen where I want my mouse to go, or scroll through pages by swiping on the screen.  This is more intuitive than I originally would have thought and I think that future laptops might do away with mouse pads altogether because this way of using a computer is just way more intuitive than a mouse pad.

The tablet and touch screen works just as amazingly as many of the videos online show it to work.  From what I recall how iPads feel at the Apple store, this touch screen works exactly the same.  It’s very intuitive, and really needs no explanation when you try it out.

Like the iPhone charger, can connect via USB to a computer or into a wall plug

The battery life is amazing, both with the dock and without.  When the tablet is connected to the dock, it adds a few extra hours of battery life, which I’m sure I’ll have plenty of use for while I’m mobile.  The power cable is a bit short, so I probably won’t ever be able to use it in a coffee shop, but with the amazing battery power on this device (about 16 hours with the dock and 9 hours without), I probably won’t ever need to charge while I’m out and about.

The weight is very light, exactly what I was looking for.  It’s small and light enough to hold in my hands while I’m walking without tiring me out and it fits in my purse without adding too much bulk or weight to my bag.

It's also super sleek looking when it's closed up. Looks just like a laptop, you can see the outward facing camera at the bottom.

There are both front and back cameras on the tablet.  I haven’t figured out how to video chat with it, but the camera seems perfectly adequate with an easy to use camera app.  On a video comparison I saw online, I think the iPad 2 cameras are better quality, but not by too much more.  At the end of the day, though, I’m not going to make a movie using my tablet so the quality only needs to be good for video chatting, and let’s face it, even the highest wifi speeds nowadays downgrade the best HD web cam images.  It’d just be wasteful for the camera to be the best HD thing you’ve ever seen.

The Transformer has wifi capabilities, but not 3G.  I didn’t want a 3G device since there are plenty of wifi in public now, and if I really need 3G, I always have my iPhone.  I think there are likely ways to tether, but I haven’t looked into it yet.  The wifi has worked perfectly, I haven’t had any issues with it yet, and the speeds are amazing!

Apps

As a reading device, I love it!  I’m currently looking to figure out which eReader app will be the best one so that I can read both on my Transformer and on my iPhone without switching apps.  I’m hoping to read a lot more now that books can fit in my tablet, I can’t wait to get reading!

Digital Jane Austen, yes please!

The tablet is also an amazing way to read email.  I used to hate having to sit at my desk scrolling through hundreds of email at a time.  Even worse on my iPhone, the screen is just too small.  But with the Transformer, reading through hundreds of email is almost fun and the interface (I’m using the Gmail app) is just really intuitive and quick to breeze through.  Something just feels different about reading email when you can “touch” it with your fingers.  And when I have to write a long email, I just dock my tablet to the keyboard dock and I’m all ready to write a huge novel if I need to.

Doesn't look as exciting as it feels to experience it, email should always be read on a tablet!

Writing on this tablet is pretty easy.  The Transformer comes with a bunch of Asus apps, such as Polaris Office, which looks pretty much like your basic word document software.  I haven’t tried it much because I’m all on Google Docs now, but the Google Doc app is pretty easy to use on this tablet, and I love that it syncs online as soon as I write something.  I’ve been asked if the device is good for note taking, and the answer is yes, it’s as good as any mini laptop would be.

In the video department, I love that I can watch Flash videos.  Apple refuses to give support to it, and that really did kill my want to buy an iPad for $500.  No matter what I add to an iPad, there is just no way for me to watch Flash videos, and as a filmmaker and crazy consumer of online videos, this just isn’t acceptable for me.  Now, neither Netflix nor Hulu Plus have apps on the Android market which work with the Transformer tablet yet, which I wish I would have known about before, but I’m confident that those apps will likely be made eventually.  Plus, I might be able to get some sort of app or trick that will allow me to view Netflix and Hulu via the browser, as I’ve heard that people have done this before.  I’ll need to do more research on this for sure.  At any rate, there’s no pesky Apple software getting in my way!

As for games, I know I’m not going to be able to play something like World of Warcraft or Left 4 Dead on it, but then again, those are games I enjoy better on my desktop computer.  On my Transformer, I’ve enjoyed several games of chess with Rene (something we’ve never played together till we got this device), and I’ve even started to fall for Angry Birds (a game I didn’t really like on my iPhone).  Something about tablet gaming is quite satisfying to me, and I’m now on the hunt for more games to take advantage of it.  BTW, one of our favorite things to do with the Transformer now is to sit casually at our favorite restaurants while we play a two player game on the tablet.  There’s just nothing quite like it!

Android Platform

The rest of my review would be on the Android as a platform, but I feel that I’m not truly familiar with it enough yet to give a good review.  For now, I’ll give my take on it as an iOS native user.  Most important things I need on my iPhone is available on the Android market, so most of my needs are met.

There are no folders like on the iOS, but I don’t really miss it since there’s tons of space on each page for all my apps and more.  There are five pages which I can move between, and they are prettier than the iPhone pages.  The background is a lot more customizable and has tilt sensitive backgrounds, which makes it more fun than on the iPhone.

Highlighting, cutting, copying, and pasting are slightly different from the iOS, but once I got used to it, I think it’s perfectly usable, maybe even better than the iOS.  I think with a little more time on it, I’ll be as spiffy with it as I am on my iPhone.

The apps store is also a lot easier to use than the Apple app store.  Like by A LOT!  It doesn’t keep asking me for my password, I can browse through tons of new apps without having to refresh my page and updating apps is way more intuitive.  Plus, I can download stuff while I’m on my desktop browser without having to go through something like iTunes.  Apple should really take a look at how Android does it and change up how they do their app store.

The Android also doesn’t have those annoying numbers that pop up next to my app.  I know that they’re useful on my iPhone when I want to know how many emails are waiting for me in my inbox, but I find that it generally annoys me when it’s on an app I don’t use often, and it slows my productivity because I keep wanting to check these apps that I would never think about if it weren’t for that pesky number.  Instead, when I open up my Transformer, I go to the apps that I want to go to, and that’s that.

Oh, and I also like that I can choose which browser is the default.  I don’t really like that I have Firefox and Opera on my iPhone but I never use them because the phone just defaults to Safari.  With the Android, I get to choose which one I want, and I like that customizability.  AND, when I use Google apps, Rene and I can easily switch between our gmail accounts with a touch of a button, making the device really easy to share with a colleague or family member who might use the device as much as you do.  In fact, that goes for most parts of the Android platform.  I like to customize my stuff for my own needs, and Android really does provide that.  In fact, it might provide too much customization and that’s likely why it’ll take me a few more weeks to figure everything out about the Android platform.

CONCLUSION

Would I buy it again?  Yes, without a second thought!  Are there things I would like the App store to have which aren’t there yet?  Yes, but in the meantime, there’s still plenty I can do with my Transformer and I’ll gladly wait for those apps to come out.  Do I recommend it to others?  Most definitely so!  If you’re thinking about buying a tablet device or a mini laptop, I highly recommend looking into this tablet.  It’s fairly versatile and I think many consumers will like what Asus is offering here.

I know this was a long post, but I hope that it is helpful!  If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

Can you already guess what happened to me?  This past Monday, I totally lived up to my “unaccomplished” alias to a most extreme!  For some reason or another, I wasn’t being careful while I was slicing up some apples.  And so the unthinkable happened, I was being careless and accidentally cut the tip of my thumb off!  I know, you’re probably making a sound like something stings, that’s the response I’ve gotten from everyone in the ER, and everyone that I’ve told this to.  But don’t feel too bad for me, luckily, it was only a very small tip of my thumb (and my nail is completely intact and not affected), and I’m told that it will grow back in time by my ER doctors.  In the meantime, it only took me about 4 days to begin to function a little closer to normal (today, Friday, being the first day that I’ve felt like the pain in my thumb is bearable enough to venture out in public and show my face to people again, and also shamelessly admit to this blunder publicly).

I'm all ready for hitchhiking! Bad joke? Too soon? Oh, I'm glad I can still have a good disposition despite my misfortune.

Okay, so what I did to my thumb sent me into a lot of pain, stress, and shame.  And I feel like as ashamed as I am about doing something so foolish in the kitchen, this is exactly the kind of experience I wanted to share in this blog for my readers.  Not because I want you all to know what pain I’m in, but because experiences like these usually teach me a lot about myself and the world.  It’s times like this, when I do something so silly like not be super careful while using sharp tools in the kitchen, that I really feel quite depressed and ashamed of my lack of attention and highly foolish behavior.  And it’s accidents like this that put the real dangers of sharp tools into real perspective for me.  Sad to admit, this wasn’t the first time I had to run to the ER for a hand injury.  In fact, this is the third time I’ve visited the ER for a hand related emergency, all of which involved my right hand.  Yeah, I can be really careless with the safety of my right hand, I think that’s pretty clear now with injury number three!

The other two incidences: 1. I accidentally slammed my first pointer finger in my car door, and 2. I had foolishly stuck my right hand into a small glass while washing dishes and the glass broke and cut my knuckle on the broken glass. Each time I come home from the ER, I feel bad and foolish for the silly mistake I made to merit an ER visit.  And each time, I think I go into hiding feeling a lot of shame for being so stupid to have these little accidents happen to me.  Well, this week, while I endured lots of pain while recovering, I decided that I wasn’t going to let myself beat myself up for my latest “unaccomplished” deed.  I can’t say that I was hugely successful as I think I went through a lot of emotions coming to terms with the fact that I cut my thumb really bad.  At times I even felt like I could understand what it might feel like to lose a limb.  My injury was no where near as bad as losing a limb, but my roller coaster emotions definitely made me think of this plenty over the last few days.

Now that the pain is starting to slowly subside, I think back to what Rene told me when we were leaving the ER and I was feeling really stupid, noting to myself that I’d been to the ER quite a lot for someone as young as me.  In trying to make me feel better, Rene told me that young people don’t usually publicize to everyone when they do go to the ER.  And that had me thinking a lot about how much shame I felt, and the stress I was going through, not because I was in pain and healing, but because I was ashamed to tell this to everyone.

And so, this is a big reason why I’m sharing this with everyone on my very public blog.  Yes, I was stupid and I admit it wholly, and me being able to say that so publicly actually makes me feel a lot better, less stressed, and ready to move forward with my injury.  I imagine that I’ll have a lot more emotions to go through as my thumb slowly recovers back to normal, but at least I don’t have to beat myself into shame about it anymore, or at least not as much as before my admission.

One of the things that all the ER doctors kept telling me while they were treating me was that I probably won’t be keeping my new mandoline anymore because of this accident.  But, actually, I still am excited about the fact that this is a tool in my kitchen.  I don’t want to poo poo my new mandoline just because I was being foolish, so while I may not exactly be using it myself anytime soon (I’ve gotta emotionally hype myself back up before I use it again), I don’t want to throw it out or never use it again.  With time, I hope to use it a lot in my kitchen, and with all the safety precautions in place!

And I’m reminded yet again how lucky I am to have Rene in my life.  A relationship can be really tested when someone has to go to the ER and then come home with a severe injury, preventing them from doing simple day tasks.  While this last week wasn’t a walk in the park, Rene has been so caring and kind to me that I feel like I am the luckiest girl in the world to have someone like him take care of me when I am injured.

Alright, so this is me moving forward with my own personal injury.  Anyone else want to share about their own silly blunders and/or ER visits?  By all means, please share, we should’t be ashamed of our accidents, we should feel free to share so that others can learn from our mistakes!  I mean, if no one learned to be more careful with a mandoline after I told them about my experience, I would truly feel that I had cut my thumb for nothing.

You can use any berries for this sauce, I grabbed a bag of frozen mixed berries from my freezer and threw them into my Vitamix.  I also set aside a few frozen strawberries for the simmering stage of this recipe.

Frozen raspberries & strawberries in my Vitamix

Next, I added in some sucanat.  To keep this a real food recipe, I replaced white/brown sugar with this much more nutrient dense sugar.  White/brown sugars are very heavily processed and so they lack a lot of the nutrition that existed in the sugar cane.  However, sucanat is simply dehydrated cane sugar and retains most of the natural nutrients found in sugar cane.

Adding sucanat

Now, it’s all ready to be blended down into a liquid!

Sucanat stands for sugar cane natural, and if you're going to use sugar, this is the most nutritious form you can get sugar in

Blend!

Mmm, it looks yummy already!

Next, I grabbed a few frozen strawberries that I had previously set aside and threw it into a pot.

A few intact frozen strawberries to add some berry chunks to the finished sauce

And in went the liquefied berries and sucanat.

Mix it all together

I turned on the stove to low and let it simmer in the background as I tended to my soaked pancakes, or whatever else I might be making at the same time.

Simmer on low heat

And after 20-40 minutes of simmering, the sauce was done, yum!

It looks a bit dark here in my picture, but it tasted amazing!  And what a relief to know that there’s no additives or crazy bad corn syrup in this berry syrup!

What’s your favorite waffle or pancake topping?  Do you make it yourself or buy it from the store?  If you have a winning recipe, please share!

Rene and I can be awesome partners in a lot of fields, in business and in life, but one thing I’ve come to learn about us is that I am just more naturally driven to clean up our home and home office than Rene does.  That doesn’t mean Rene doesn’t like it clean, it just means that I end up doing more cleaning than he usually does, which I don’t really mind when I’m in the mood for cleaning.  However, when I’m not in the mood for cleaning, this has caused a lot of issues for us, because I would start pointing fingers at him for not tidying up after himself even though I’m being just as lazy about not cleaning up myself.  Yes, a very unaccomplished characteristic indeed!  I also often wonder if it’s just in my female genetic code to be more drawn to cleaning than Rene.  I know that I’m not the only naggy girlfriend out there who complains how messy her boyfriend is!

I love it and I hate it! Oh cleaning, why do you treat me so?

So after a few months of this in our first apartment together, Rene convinced me that we should hire a maid to help us clean up when we were too busy to do so ourselves.  This was actually quite difficult for me to accept because my family (consisting of my mom and me) has never hired anyone to do cleaning for us, and it seemed too luxurious of a thing for Rene and I to suddenly hire a maid for our small one bedroom apartment at the time.  But it turned out to be one of the best things we ever added to our lives!  I absolutely loved it when we could afford to have a maid come in to clean up when things got too hairy or before/after we threw parties in our home.  And it was quite affordable, too.  In Los Angeles, you can easily hire a maid to clean your apartment for as low as $45 and it only takes the maids 1-3 hours to do it.

Earth Friendly Maid Service: The best eco-friendly maid service in the Los Angeles area!

Our cleaning experience got even better when I researched into finding a green/eco-friendly maid service that only cleaned with natural products.  I found Earth Friendly Maid Service, which cost a little bit more than the average cheap maid service in Los Angeles, but boy is the extra cost so worth it!  Now when the maids come to clean, the house smells like beautiful natural flowers afterwards, and we have the ease of mind that nothing toxic is being used in our home.  On top of that, the owner of Earth Friendly Maid Service, Deborah Davis, is amazingly passionate about cleaning, and I wouldn’t want to hire anyone who wasn’t as passionate about what they do.  Just check out their website, she’s thought of everything about cleaning and her site exudes that passion!  When she or one of her employees comes to clean, I know they’re going to do an awesome job that would be way better than if I tried to clean myself.

Over the years, we’ve refined our maid services to come clean for us from every other month down to every two weeks.  And because we’ve outsourced most of our cleaning, Rene and I are able to make more money rather than waste time on cleaning all the time, which allows us to afford maid service more often!  We just started implementing cleaning services every two weeks about a month and a half ago, and I absolutely love it!  I even have them do my laundry, which means I never have to do laundry again if I don’t want to.  As someone who has spent way too much of my life thinking about cleaning and actually cleaning my home and clothes, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest and I’m now free to pursue other endeavors without being bogged down with the pressures of cleaning.

Can someone explain to me why this is the signature maid outfit? It's not practical at all, and probably hinders the act of cleaning altogether! I think a male needs to explain to me the appeal of this.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how accomplished having a maid service is.  It’s almost like I’m failing as a “house wife” by not doing the cleaning myself, but if that’s not something I really enjoy doing all the time and not even something Rene wants me to do, then it’s probably a good accomplishment on my part for coming to terms with my level of cleaning in my household and hiring someone else to do it for us.

What do you think?  Do you hire someone else to do the cleaning for you?  Do you do it all yourself?  Do you think it’s too expensive or not worth hiring someone to do such an easy task as cleaning?  What are you tips and tricks of keeping your home clean and tidy?

Personal Goal: To be more well-read, more well-gamed, and more well-balanced

1. Learn to read faster via PhotoReading (or other fast reading methods if PhotoReading doesn’t work out)
2. Read at least 2 of the health books that are piling on my night stand and book shelves (more would be better!)
3. Read at least 2 fiction books (okay, I was going to go for 5, but I want to be realistic and not bog myself down with too large of goals since this is only one of many goals I’m making!)
4. Read at least one philosophical book, but better if at least 2 or more!
5. Play at least 5 new video games via console or PC (That’s right, I’m adding in gaming to my goal list! Oh, and I’m not going to allow iPhone games in this category, because I easily play 5 new iPhone games a day if I’m not careful.)
6. Finish Mass Effect 1 and play Mass Effect 2 (I’ve been so pumped about ME2 because I’m told that there’s an awesome story line in it, and the completionist in me says I need to start from game 1.) (Heck, while I’m at it, also finish The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii & Fable 2 on Xbox360.)
7. Exercise at least 3 times a week (I’m thinking of starting this off as once  a week and upping it from there, likely to start with something easy like getting back into Yoga. All those Yoga Groupon and Living Social Yoga deals I snatched up last year should help with beginning this goal, I hope!)
8. Create a balance between work & play (This is very general, but it’s to remind me why I have gaming as a resolution.  I’ve come to realize that I don’t value play as much as work on a daily basis, so to force myself to try something different, gaming is going to be a big part of 2011, or so I hope!)
9. Take on photography & painting as hobbies (yes, they are different arts, but they are very similar in how I relate to both, and I simply want to pursue another art form that is not just writing in a blog or making a video)
10. Save up for and go on vacation (I’m allowing things such as the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions Conference because let’s face it, I want to go to that more than I want to go to Hawaii, or perhaps even Europe!)

Career Goal: To grow my small film production company into one that produces our own creative projects

1. Set up business hours where Rene & I only work on business stuff and nothing else
2. Focus on our booming commercial business rather than be split between commercial production and trying to develop creative stuff at the same time (This is a huge revelation that we came upon after speaking with really successful business owners and retirees.  More on this in a future post!)
3. Clean up & organize our home office so that everything is streamlined and we aren’t always searching for things at the last minute
4. Purchase the Panasonic AF100 and upgrade our current Sony Z1U camera set up (and if we’re feeling even more ambitious this year, also purchase the Sony PMW-F3, surprisingly, this camera is very close to being in our price range!! and we would just get this camera only if it weren’t for the fact that we don’t want to lug a $16k camera with us every time we go out on a client shoot)
5. Focus on making bank from commercial productions, organize infrastructure of business in prep for and hire our first employee to free us up to do more creative projects with our time (this is also not that far off from happening, and I can’t wait to bring on my awesomely talented best friend as our first employee!)
6. Set up creative endeavors as a “hobby” instead of half-assing them like we did last year while trying to juggle the two and develop hobby into successful money making projects (Another awesome tip we got from talking to successful business owners!)
7. Get back into writing creatively and finish a script of any length (does not have to be good, just has to be a finished first draft)
8. Produce a new creative project from start to finish & distribute to fans
9. Finish the movie I started for the Senior Thesis, distribute it amongst film festivals & fans
10. Build up a strong network of film/web/social media industry professionals

Okay, so knowing me, I’m likely going to eat my words on some of these goals, but I find it important to at least list them out.  Even if I haven’t written them the best, I think it’s important I put it out there so I can be more accountable to trying to accomplish these goals.  I’ve basically also written up a rough template for at least 20 different blog posts, too!  Here’s hoping that I get a good chunk of these done this year!

Feeling ambitious this new year? What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

(If you’re a recipient of one of these holiday crispy nuts, I hope you love them! When I was making these, I couldn’t stop snacking on them.)

I made huge batches of crispy nuts just like I did in this post.  To recap, I soaked & dehydrated raw nuts to rid them of their phytic acid (an anti-nutrient that prevents our guts from being able to absorb key nutrients that our bodies need).  After that, I had about 4 pounds of crispy raw almonds and walnuts to transform into holiday yummies.

I found this Honeyed Crispy Nuts recipe from Kim @ The Nourishing Cook, just what I was looking for.

First, I put honey, vanilla extract, butter, and sucanat (a more natural and nutritious sugar) into my pot to start heating up into a syrup.

Raw Local Honey

Homemade Whiskey Vanilla Extract

Grass fed Butter

Sucanat stands for Sugar Cane Natural

When it started making sizzling sounds, I added in the crispy almonds.

Starting to sizzle

Crispy Almonds

I mixed it up with my wooden spoon until all the crispy almonds were well coated.

Mixing

Well coated

Then I spread the almonds out on my dehydrator trays to harden up the syrup.

Spread out for dehydrator

Close up, they look yummy already!

Dehydrator & trays

I dehydrated them for about a day, and then they were ready for putting into gift jars.

Candied almonds ready for storage

However, I had forgotten something!  I had forgotten to add in the salt when making the syrup.  I didn’t even realize until I had Rene try some and he said they needed salt.  I panicked since I had already put all the first batch almonds into jars when I realized this.  But Rene was fast and came to my rescue, he grabbed a salt shaker and a chopstick and worked his magic on those jars of almonds.  He salted all of them without even missing a beat!

Not to worry, Rene came to the rescue! Armed with a chopstick and a salt shaker, he diligently mixed in some sea salt into the jars where I forgot to add salt. He's so sweet!

And he carefully saved all the first batch jars!

On the next batch, I definitely made sure I remembered the salt!

There's the sea salt on top of the other ingredients.

And after I finished with the almonds, I did the walnuts, too.

Candied Walnuts

They made pretty cute looking presents, if I may say so myself!

Holiday Crispy Walnuts & Almonds (Bows made from Whole Foods paper bags, designed & implemented by Rene)

Anyone know if these nuts are still raw?  Crispy nuts are raw because they are dehydrated during the drying stage (I like to dehydrate them at around 118 degrees to maintain rawness).  But these nuts may have been cooked slightly during the syrup coating stage, and that was brief, so maybe they still retained some rawness?  At any rate, all ingredients I used were organic whole foods or homemade, making these delicious despite their raw status.

Did you make anything to give away this holiday season?  Got a favorite candied nut recipe?  Let me know, these were so easy to make, I want more recipes just like it!

But now that I’m in the midst of this big project (of which I should really be working on full time right now, instead of taking the time to write this blog post), I can’t help but constantly think about the creative properties that I’ve been dreaming about for the last year.  You see, while Rene and I have been busy working on client projects, we’ve also been secretly plotting a plan to make our creative filmmaking dreams come true.  Something so big that Rene and I can’t stop talking about it and coming up with new ideas for it every single day.  That’s right, every. single. day.  That’s how excited we are by it.  We’ve also been working on it as much as we can when time allows, but with the recent increase of client work, we’ve unfortunately had to put it on the backburner a lot more than we’d like to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the client work we get.  I’m totally not trying to be whiny about the jobs that help us pay the bills and help feed our hungry tummies with awesome real food.  But I think my subconscious, or inner higher self, or some mystical part of me is trying to tell me that I need to get my butt towards my creative dreams as fast as I can.

This is the same feeling I got when I was sitting at my day jobs, day in and day out.  This little nagging feeling that I just shouldn’t be sitting at my hamster wheel desk just waiting for a paycheck every two weeks.  That nagging feeling became so overwhelming, I dreaded going to work, and it culminated into me quitting my day job and starting my own business.  So the fact that I’m getting this same feeling right as Rene and I are getting the biggest project of our commercial film production careers, is definitely a big sign for me.  I guess even when I’m not working for “the man” in some big corporate day job office, I still am if I’m not truly pursuing my real dreams.

So what does this mean?  I guess I gotta suck it up and get myself psyched to do these commercials, which isn’t hard, it is a fairly cool concept.  And it’ll be fun for Rene and me to get on our A game again to produce stuff that will not only knock off the socks of our clients, but that we’ll also be super proud of.  And when this project is all said and done, I’m going to go at that creative dream of mine with full force.  No more excuses anymore, it is game time or I won’t feel right with myself till I get it done.

It’s odd, when I had the time to pursue the creative dream in the past few months, I always stopped myself with thoughts of needing to make the moneys.  Our creative dream project has built in income sources, but ones that need time to grow, so it was always expected that it would be a slow race to make it all profitable financially.  When the bills would come in every month, it would stress me out enough to not work on the creative dream, and go in search for big commercial gigs to help pay the bills.  And here I am with a big commercial gig sitting in my lap, and I’m totally not as happy as I thought I’d be.

Why is it that we always want what we don’t have?  Even if what we have is sooooo super awesome and everyone else would be super happy in the same situation?  I don’t know.  But lesson well learned for me.  I’m going to take a moment, listen to some Lady Gaga or Muse, get myself psyched up for these commercials, and knock them out of the park.  Then, I’m going to pursue my creative dream, and gosh, knowing my fickle attitude about everything, I hope I’ll be excited to do that when the time comes.

And if not, I hope some awesome readers kindly remind me of this post.

Do you get in the way of your dreams?  Are you happy with what you have now?  Are you sitting in your hamster wheel or have you broken free of the system and living your dreams?  Sometimes when I feel this way, I feel like I’m the only one who feels this way.  Please show me that I’m not the only one and share your stories below!

Alright, maybe she wasn't dressed like that in person, but isn't that an awesome gamer pic??

Playboy just released the video, check it out!  And tell me what you guys think.

As a former World of Warcraft gamer, I thought it was super awesome! Got to play their latest new games & expansions, got tons of yummy free press food, got to shake the hand of Blizzard’s CEO! Almost made me want to pick up WoW again…maybe.

Speaking of gaming, I was doing pretty well in balancing my work and play until I forgot to play video games this past week.  And of course, all hell seemed to break loose in my life.  Lesson well learned, I’ll be grabbing some gaming time sometime this week as soon as my schedule opens up for some!

Does video gaming make a big difference in your life?  What are you favorite games to play in order to relax?

It all started a few weeks ago when my company received several gigs to work on.  It was mostly exciting stuff with quick turnarounds and fairly decent to high paying dollar signs.  Definitely nothing to complain about, but it did mean that Rene and I needed to work a lot in a short amount of time.  So after we finally finished most of the work and had a little more free time to enjoy, we rewarded ourselves with some major chillaxitude.

We went out to eat and enjoyed the scenery of LA (with bonus rain pouring, too!).  We cashed in Groupons and other coupons and just enjoyed ourselves nonstop (one coupon was for horse riding lessons, it was so fun!).  I tried out a few new real food recipes, all with great success (finally got to making bone stock and now I can’t stop making it!).  I even started playing video games again, and got a good chunk of playtime in for Mass Effect (my new gaming addiction!).

Life was grand, but I couldn’t help but feel that I had forgotten something.  That’s right, my blog!  So I tried to think up what I wanted to write about, and I simply felt so very unaccomplished in all my chillaxing, that I didn’t feel accomplished enough to write about anything.  It’s only now, three weeks since my last post, that I’m realizing the mistake I made in all this hard work and play I was doing.  I’m lacking balance between the two, and I end up doing both super extremely, leaving the balanced stuff simply forgotten (like blogging, reading all the numerous books and blogs I’ve been wanting to read since forever, social media communicating and even returning emails in a timely manner).

I’m not sure what the best way to balance work and play is for me, especially since my work generally comes in waves, and I’m at the whim of clients, but I’m determined to try something and finding something that will work.  Rene and I just got our biggest gig yet which will commence any day now and probably take us through till the end of the month to complete.  I’m so excited because this is our first gig that will bring in 5 figures, and the commercials we’ll be producing will get real big exposure!  It means a lot of big things for my company, and I can’t wait to get started.  But at the same time, I want to prevent the imbalance of work and play that I have witnessed in myself in the last few weeks.  The coming weeks will be even more intensely crazy with work than ever before, which means more pressure to go into crazy chillax mode afterwards.

So I’ve decided I’m going to try to set a few things that I want to do everyday, no matter how busy I get.  They won’t be big, but should hopefully remind me to keep things a little more relaxed and balanced on a daily basis.  Here they are:

1. Read at least 10 minutes before I go to bed each night.  I’ve been trying to read a million books, but because I’m such a slow reader, I simply get bored with my slow pace and forget to read for weeks or even months on end.  Don’t get me wrong, I read a ton of stuff online almost daily, but real books become so difficult for me for some reason.  I’ve previously found it helpful to read before sleeping anyways, so I’m hoping that taking up this goal again will help.

2. Play video games at least once a week.  Since I started playing Mass Effect, I’m finding that video games are really good for forcing my mind to think of something else other than all the worries of the world.  I’ve unfortunately taken on the bad habit of worrying about silly things such as finances and where our next gig will come from and not accomplishing goals that I want to accomplish.  Video games are an outlet for me to just stop the worries and put my mind elsewhere, in a place that’s both fun and challenging.  Ideally, I’d like to play more than once a week, but I’m not going to push my goals too aggressively until I feel like I can take on more.

3. Cook up a lot of real food at home, preferably in one day or two.  Cooking real food is not only a good way to help me forget my worries, but also nourish myself and Rene so we can keep up with the hard work and play.  I’ve been mostly cooking things up every other day, but in preparation for busy work schedules in the coming days, I want to make sure my fridge is well stocked with easy to heat up real food.  In case I don’t meet this goal to my satisfaction, we have a lot of good organic restaurant nearby that can deliver good food, so I won’t stress too much if this goal isn’t fully accomplished each week.

That’s about it.  I will be updating this list in the near future as I see how well I actually get to accomplishing it.

What about you?  Do you have trouble balancing your work and play?  What do you find works well to help you truly balance your life so that you’re getting both great productivity and lots of fun?

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

I never took a painting/art class in college, so I don’t know much about the background or technicalities of this painting.  But I do know that at some point in human history, Venus, here in all her near nude glory, was considered a beautiful woman.

Today, while Rene was trying to describe to me how her face has great ratios and thus looks really beautiful and healthy, I couldn’t stop looking at how well rounded Venus’ body is.  She’s certainly not ugly by today’s standards, but a woman of her shape would be considered a little pudgy now.  I mean, she does have a little pudge on her belly there.  Swimsuit models of today certainly don’t have those.  But despite that, she still looks really healthy and beautiful in this painting to me.

I was still thinking about this painting a few hours later when I got out of the shower and got a quick glance of myself in the mirror.  I suddenly realized that my body doesn’t look all that different from Venus’ body.

I was going to find some skinny models to show the difference between Venus and modern skinny models. Then I realized that most people already know what skinny models look like, so instead, I found pics of plus-sized models who may be the modern version of Venus, with full voluptuous bodies. This is Lizze Miller.

I’ve been recently feeling bad about my body because I’ve put on a few extra pounds.  I’m not sure why I’ve been putting on the extra weight lately, but I think it may have to do with the recent kidney and liver cleanse I’ve been on for the last few months.  The cleanse has been bringing me back to lower energy levels I had back before I ate organically and Weston A. Price Foundation friendly, and I’m guessing that the weight gain may just be my body drawing out the bad stuff I had eaten years ago that have built up in my kidney and liver.  I’m still eating fairly healthy right now, but maybe I’ve been eating too many grains for a protein type like me.  At any rate, I’ve put on extra weight, had to go up in some clothes sizes again, and just feeling plain bad about the whole situation.  Luckily, I’ve just finished my cleanse, so I’m hoping my body will return back to my prior size and weight.  And I’m also trying to cut down on grains I don’t prepare myself.  So yes, I feel bad like most other women do when they put on extra pounds, and I can’t help but try to plan to get that extra weight off my body as soon as possible.

Plus sized model Crystal Renn. I actually think she's really sexy looking here.

However, when I saw my body today in the mirror looking so similar to Venus’ body in this painting, I realized that even though I may feel bad about my increased dress size and extra pudge around my middle, Rene still thinks I’m super beautiful, just like he thinks Venus is here.  This gives me a little more perspective about changing female body images over the ages, and it makes me a little jealous that I don’t live back in the days where my body now would have been considered the most sought after body type of all.

Another Crystal Renn, she makes thick legs look beautiful! Now I don't feel so bad about my big thighs...as much.

Luckily for me, Rene thinks that most women in the media are too skinny, and he likes women who have more curves and roundness.  Not fat, but not like a surfboard either.  I still have trouble believing that Rene thinks this, I think I’ve become ultra sensitive to the super skinny models and wanting my own body to look like that.  So while my body does look like Venus’ here, I feel like I’m fat, and yet I think Venus is beautiful…something is definitely not connecting right in my brain on this matter.

Whitney Thompson proves that plus sizes can wear bikinis and still feel sexy.

I think I’m going to try to stare at Venus here a lot (along with all these other beautiful plus sized models), and try to shift my brain into thinking that I am not fat, but rather beautiful like Venus, like real women with real bodies.  Maybe if I stare at her enough, it will make me stop comparing myself to all those really skinny bodies on magazine covers.

It's really nice to see plus sized models in professional photography. It kind of gives us a sense that we all could look really good with just the right touches of makeup, clothes, photography and lighting.

I know I’m not alone on this matter.  I know a lot of other women have bodies just like mine and freak out just the same when they gain a little extra weight.  Women, tell me about your struggles with your body.  What do you feel when you suddenly have to go up a pants size?  What do you do when bikini season is around and once again you don’t feel sexy/fit enough to put one on?  What do you do to help you feel better?

And men, do you think Venus here is beautiful?  Is she fat or just the right shape?  Do you prefer her over skinny models?  Do these plus sized models look less beautiful than the really skinny ones?

My new ice cream maker

In the future, we want to try to make ice cream without very much sugar/sweetener, or maybe with no sweetener at all, but for my first recipe, I wanted to try someone else’s tried and true recipe so I can gauge how the ice cream maker works, and where to make adjustments from there.  I grabbed some fresh raw cream from the farmer’s market and a real food ice cream recipe from GNOWFGLINS and quickly got started. (Note: I omitted eggs from my first batch since Rene is currently not eating eggs at the moment.)

First, I started with some sucanat, a more nutrient dense sweetener.  I imagine this is what sugar used to be like before they refined it to the white stuff that’s commonly used these days.  Sucanat stands for sugar cane natural, and I’ve been told that if you do decide to eat sugar, this is one of the few options you should choose because it still has a lot of the vitamins and minerals that sugar cane has.

Sucanat in Vitamix

Because the sucanat is a bit large and coarse, I use my handy Vitamix to grind it into a finer consistency.  You can’t see here, but when I finished grinding and opened up my Vitamix, a huge cloud of super fine sucanat came out to hug my face.  I was a bit startled at first, but it didn’t seem to do much harm.  Next time, I’m going to be more careful about sticking my face into my Vitamix after grinding sugar.

Finer Sucanat After Blending in Vitamix

Next, I added the fresh raw cream I just picked up at my local farmer’s market.  Mmmmm…..

Add Raw Cream to Sucanat

And finally a bit of vanilla extract.

Add Vanilla Extract

Then I blended everything together with the Vitamix.  It started to smell pretty good, yum!

Blended Sucanat, Raw Cream and Vanilla Extract

I had previously frozen the bowl component to my ice cream maker so it was all ready to go.

Empty Ice Cream Maker

I turned on my machine and poured in the raw cream, sucanat and vanilla extract mixture.

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 1

Wooo! Look at it go!

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 2

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 3

And after 25 minutes or so, I had fresh made soft serve vanilla ice cream!

Soft Serve Vanilla Ice Cream

It was SOOOO DELICIOUS!  I dare say it was only second best t0 the most delicious ice cream I’ve ever had in my life: authentic gelato in Italy!  Not too shabby for ice cream here in the states.  I was really tempted to eat this ice cream as it was, but I also wanted to know what it would be like fully frozen and not soft serve style, so I put it in the freezer for 2 hours.

Ice Cream in ready to freeze container

It was really hard to resist eating the ice cream for 2 hours after having a quick taste of it, but I resisted and here’s the finished ice cream!

After Freezing, Ice Cream is all ready to eat!

And of course, Rene and I dug right in!  I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to store bought ice cream ever again.  Not when this stuff is way cheaper, and so much more nutritious for me!

Yummy Pastured Raw Vanilla Ice Cream

I can’t wait to make another batch.  I’ll probably try the chocolate version next.  I’m also interested to see what happens if I make a raw cream and raw milk mixture rather than a full on raw cream mix like I did this time.  Oh, and there are endless possibilities of add ins and all that yummy stuff.  I can’t wait!

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?  Mine is vanilla, and boy was this one superb!  Does anyone else out there make their own ice cream at home?  What’s your best recipe?

When I head back, I usually stay at my mom’s house, I don’t have to cook or clean or do laundry, and I often don’t have to pay for much either.  It’s pretty awesome going home, since I suddenly return back to the norms of when I was a kid.  I also usually hang out with my high school buddies, reminding me even more of my younger self.  Everything is taken care of, and I just leave my worries at the door.  I know this happens every time I go back to my hometown, and every time, no matter what I try, I always revert into what I feel is a kid mode of living.

When I’m here in LA, living/working/playing hard, I am a decidedly different person from when I’m in my hometown.  I cook and clean a lot, I get work done, I can make a lot of decisions very decidedly and I come up with a lot of great creative and business related ideas.  In contrast, I feel more like I’m in an adult mode here.

I don’t think I mind being in either mode when I’m in the designated cities, and I do enjoy being in LA and in my hometown for very different reasons.  The thing that always gets me is when I’ve returned to LA and I’m still in kid mode.  Suddenly it’s a lot harder to cook a meal, or even be responsible enough to drag myself somewhere to eat a good meal.  Cleaning up seems so very difficult to do, and working isn’t even an option.  It usually takes me a day or two to readjust to my adult mode, and return to my usual amount of productivity.

I’ve yet to learn not to plan for very productive days when I get back into LA.  In fact, I just planned a very productive day for myself yesterday, and it was a major fail for most of my to do list.  So I’m hoping this post will remind me next time I’m in this position again, to simply plan for a day or two of chillaxing after a trip to my hometown.  As for today, I’ve planned a less productive day, and taking it easy!

Does anyone else ever feel this way when you go back to your hometown?  If so, what helps you return yourself back into a productive adult again?