High Five for Friday {8}

Not much has happened this week, so I've taken the opportunity to work on some crafts. 

Labor day weekend was nice, Kyle and I didn't do much, but we were able to spend some time doing things together. I babysat two of our little cousins and must say that I made an exceptional "Baby holding fairy princess soccer player" and yes, that was all at the same time! E. had a list of things for us to play and baby wanted to be held. What's a girl to do. We were also able to go to a family BBQ and Kyle got to hold the baby for the first time. I can not wait till we have our own children one day, Kyle is going to be such an amazing father. 

What I've done this week:

1. I repainted the bathroom finally!!! It went from teal to a nice tan. I like it so much better now! I do still need to do some touch ups because whoever painted before us got paint all over the tile.

2. Kyle and I went to Joann's and got some great deals on fabric! 

My parents re-did their kitchen and gave us two of their old kitchen chairs for our porch. I bought this outdoor canvas to re-upholster the chairs in.

3. I also bought fabric to make a Maxi Skirt! My tutorial can be found here!

4. I've been wanting a calendar to hang, so I made this paint chip calendar. Tutorial here!

Recipe

5. I've been trying really hard to come up with some new recipes that fit Kyle's diet.
Last night, I made this no carb pizza. This is just the crust. Apparently we were too excited to eat it because I never got a picture of the finished dish!

I hope you've had a fabulous week!
Anyone have any Keto friendly recipes to share?

Linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk

Cauliflower Fried Rice

When Kyle first decided to go on the Keto diet it seemed pretty easy. However, ever since we went off of it in July for family vacation, it has been so hard to stick to. 

For one, I am having trouble thinking of what to eat that will satisfy my picky eater. A lot of the substitutes include things like coconut milk or other things that are just not going to happen. 

I've been trying to slowly branch out more and try at least one or two new recipes a week. Thank you pinterest! 

I had seen this idea floating around for awhile, but since Kyle's not a huge fan of cauliflower I had been reluctant to try it. I have been completely craving comfort food this week so I decided to try it. 

 
 Original Recipe

Of course, true to fashion, I changed up the recipe to best suit our taste.

 

Step 1:

Grate a head of cauliflower. If you have a food processor I would suggest doing it that way! 

It wasn't too bad without one and I only had one casualty!

 

Look at all that cauliflower!

This made a ton!

 

Step 2:

Chop up 1/2 a small onion and 2 cloves of garlic

Saute in a tiny bit of oil

 

Step 3:

Add in cauliflower and flavor with soy sauce.

Cook approximately 5 minutes or until tender. 

 

Step 4:

Push vegetables to the side making a hole in the middle.

Crack in three eggs and scramble. 

Once the eggs are cooked, mix all together. 

I served it with strip steak. 

Hubs actually ate a ton of this and even said that he almost couldn't tell it wasn't regular fried rice. 

Our version wasn't quite as healthy as the original, but it was definitely better than regular fried rice. 

P.S. I wish I had known how to make homemade fried rice years ago. That stuff is so simple and yummy! 

Homemade Loaf Bread

So far, we are really pleased with the Keto/Paleo lifestyle change that we made. However, we've been trying to decide how we would like to continue after Kyle reaches his goal weight. We want to keep eating healthy, yet not quite as restrictive. One thing that I decided was that I was going to start making our bread when we did have it. For my first attempt, I tried a basic loaf bread. It wasn't quite as flavorful as I would have liked, but it was so easy and perfect for sandwich bread! I'll have to try out more once I'm not the only person eating bread around here!

 

 Seriously, how pretty!

Since Kyle and I have been married I have been trying to plan out our meals on a weekly basis. This helps me not only know exactly what I'm making, but I only buy the ingredients that I need at the store. Now that I've combined my meal planning with freezer cooking I'm planning even better. I currently have the next two weeks of food planned and 8 meals ready to go in the freezer for that time!

Keto and Paleo and Diets, Oh My!

 A few weeks ago, Kyle mentioned that he had been reading about this diet called the Keto diet and it was something that he really wanted to try. In all the years that I've known Kyle he's never seriously talked about losing weight, so I knew that this was a big deal. However, since I'm the one who does all the cooking I wanted to spend sometime researching it before we jumped in. So for the past few weeks that's what I've been doing, researching. I also came across the paleo diet which is very similar, and personally I like it a little better than keto. Therefore, Kyle and I are doing a mixture of the two of them. He's strictly keto and I'm leaning more towards paleo.

What I really like about these concepts is that it's more of a lifestyle change than a diet. Basically the goal is to eat healthier by only eating foods that can be found in nature, nothing processed, no carbs. We started on Monday and are planning on trying it out for the whole month of June, we're going on vacation the beginning of July, and will decide from there how it's working out for us.

I'll be posting updates on how it's going and what types of food we're having as we go along. Kyle says I can't post about his weight gain/loss unless there's a decent amount of difference!

I will admit that I cheat a little bit. I still have yogurt and homemade granola, and creamer and sugar in my coffee! Some things are just harder to replace.

What we're eating this week:
Meatloaf with steamed broccoli (freezer meal)
Teriyaki chicken (freezer meal)
Cheese steak in a bowl with mashed cauliflower (freezer meal)
Chicken stir fry (freezer meal)
Balsamic Onion pot roast

For breakfast/lunches we've been having eggs, bacon, grilled chicken lettuce wraps, and salads