Sweet Claire

Last week we had a first hair cut... first hair cut by someone other than mommy that is! Natania got into the scissors and gave her little sister a hair cut. i was trying to find a good "before" picture but i just cut Claire's hair a couple weeks ago into a cute bob. and was probabably feeling a little pride about how adorable she was with her cute little hair cut. Well, as you see below, her golden tresses are rather short in some areas! We've tried to down-play the whole "oh Claire your beautiful hair is gone!" response while still taking the "playing with scissors" seriously. Even at this early age she is learning from us what beauty is and we want to be very intentional about treating looks healthily and without very much importance. I would love to raise girls who are free from the lies this culture and world teaches us from day one about beauty and needing to conform to a certain image that media and current fashion feeds us!

Ok, so here is the evidence!

Flour-Less (yes it's true!) peanut butter cookies

Ok, i was looking for a new Gluten Free cookie recipe to try out for Daryl and came across this recpie. I was skeptical at first, but i know this blogger does a lot of GF cooking and blogging and after reading through a bunch of the reviews on her site, i decided to try them and wow, i'm glad I did! Daryl loved them and we were both surprised at how good they came out without any flour. I read that some people substituted honey (only 3/4 cup instead of 1) for the sugar and also had great results... i think I'll try that next time. I don't normally like PB cookies, but these were delicious! (i did add a couple chocolate chips to the ones i baked for myself. If you like chocolate then i'd suggest adding a couple chips on top- wonderful) I did change the recipe a bit because Daryl isn't eating "peanut butter", so here is my version of the recipe as well as the process!

Becky's Cashew/Almond Butter Cookies
(how many things do you have to change to a recipe to make it officially yours?)

1/2 cup cashew butter
1/2 cup almond butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. baking powder
(extra sugar for rolling the cookie dough balls in)

that's it! ...i'm serrious! so simple.

Step 1. Mix ingrediants. Here is the dough... pretty sticky












Step 2. Make into little balls and roll in a little sugar. Small is good; apparently they hold together better if they are smaller. (this much dough would make a very big cookie! I made mine much smaller!)














Step 3. Press the classic fork "x" on them.













Step 4. Bake at 350 for 11 mins. Then let sit on pan for 5 minutes or more, then remove them from pan and let cool longer on wire rack or plate. As the cool the outer sugar coating gets crispier!

Step 5. Enjoy!