Recipe: Clean Banana Nut Bread!

OH YA! I wanted to share a recipe I found a while back. I’ve made this multiple times for the family, and they all LOVE it! SO, it’s for banana nut bread, and if you leave out the nuts, don’t give it to your father-in-law, because apparently that’s unamerican haha! It really is so delicious, and this is coming from a girl that doesn’t like bananas, or nuts. Another fantastic thing about this recipe is that it’s healthy! No oils or sugar, instead it uses honey and unsweetened applesauce! SO here’s the recipe:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar free applesauce
• 3/4 cup honey
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3 mashed overripe bananas
• nuts, any kind/amount desired

Preheat oven to 350 and grease your loaf pan (or smaller loaf pans if you want 2 smaller loaves). Combine all your dry ingredients, then combine all your wet ingredients. Add your wet ingredients to the dry, mix til moistened, then pour into your loaf pan(s). Bake for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean! For the smaller loaf pans, cook for about half the time. Cool for 10-15 minutes. Enjoy! 

I’ve been asked to make this for my family multiple times. They really do enjoy it, so I bet your family will too! Let me know if you make any yummy adjustments or have any feedback! I found this on pinterest, so of course I had to try it!

xo – n

 

(Found on the 8weekstoabetteryourecipes blog on blogspot!)

A few things on my mind;

SO, I started my new part time job this past week, and I actually love it. The people I work with are great, and they’re really nice even with all my questions of trying to understand what I’m doing and why. For those of you that don’t know, I’m a new barista at Starbucks, but it’s hopefully only for a little while, until I can find a full time career (which isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’m too picky, or not qualified enough) BUT, it’s a job, and it’s actually something I somewhat enjoy. Until then though, I want to start doing some extra stuff, like making things and putting them onto Etsy, or just getting word around by mouth that i’m making/selling custom stuff, my only problem being that I don’t know what people want now a days. What is something you want, but don’t want to make yourself? I can already make scarves, and I’m learning to knit other things, but other than that, I have no clue 🙂 Just a thought that’s been running through my head, something to get myself a little extra income until Josh gets through training and what not and things start to settle back down, (or if I love it enough, I’ll continue, if that’s what’s wanted 🙂 But yeah. SO, if you’ve got any bright ideas, or anything that you might want (or know someone that wants something made) let me know and I’ll see what I can do 🙂 I’d greatly appreciate any feedback on this one! Hope you guys have had a beautiful week!
xo – n

Paint with Spirit!

So there’s this place, called My Spirited Art in Knoxville (apparently there are a few throughout the southeastern states) and well, I was invited by a friend to join, so I did! We painted what looked like a cherry blossom branch. I didn’t think I really do that good, nor did I think I’d actually like going out somewhere to paint, cause I usually just do so when I happen to have free time around the house (which lately has been a LOT of free time, but that’s another story, lol) I would love, love, love to go back again and again. There are tons of different paintings and the more you go, the more you save. So when I go four times, I get my fifth painting free! haha. So exciting!
On Another note, I got a job today! Part time at Starbucks at Tanger, but it will work until a career happens to come along. I have another interview for another part time job next Tuesday, and it’s with The Disney Store and I couldn’t be more excited to work for that company again! So I’ll most likely be working two part time jobs until something comes up, or until I get moved up, which hopefully wouldn’t take long. Seems I don’t quite have the experience everyone wants for an assistant manager, but hopefully working back in these roles, I’ll get there, even if it’s with retail. Only bad part about my two part time jobs is the locations. Starbucks is in Sevierville, and The Disney Store is in West Knox at the mall, so it’ll be interesting. If anything, I can just work at the West Knox store once a full time (or career) spot opens up for me somewhere 🙂 prayers, please!
We’re still waiting on the closing date for the house in CO, but once that goes through, we’re going to be on the hunt for a house here! Only bad part about my two part time jobs is the locations. That’s about the only updates right now. Thanks for reading! 🙂
xo – n

From May to now;

Basically, a lot has been happening the last few months. We moved home in May (back to Knoxville area) and from then on we’ve been getting together with friends, having fun, and enjoying the down time before we head back to work and such. J separated from Active Duty and is now a member of the TN National Guard.  We should find out more in the next month or so on his stuff, but for me, I should be starting a new job soon (Prayers, please!) and then hopefully we can start saving for a nice vacation 🙂  That gets you caught up to now, basically.. here’s some more in-depth stuff! ha

Our drive home was long, and we had to drive through the bad storms in Kansas (all the tornadoes and the crazy wind/rain and what not) and the dogs didn’t quite care for the drive. Farix was on something, and so was Orion. They were kind of in a daze the whole trip, but I could tell they wanted it to be over. They’d get so excited at every stop, only to have to get right back in the car. Poor babies. Once we got home, Orion didn’t eat for a few days, but is luckily on a normal routine of scarfing down his food 🙂

June was very lackluster and boring. We did not get into much, other than my finally getting some hits on jobs (and a call back, which is hopefully coming through for me soon!) Our house in Colorado is on the market, and not even 2 miles away was a fire, quite a large one, that we had to worry about. It put a halt on the showings, but soon after things started picking up and we started getting showings towards the end of the month when the fires were contained. Now that brings us to July..

We had 8 or so showings within a week, and finally, from one of those, we got an offer. I was in awe, shocked and beyond excited, so I quickly called J, who was at home with his parents, discussing what we should do (since I was not there at the time) and we quickly came to a decision.  Shortly after our counter, we got a counter back, and well, we didn’t want to lose it, so we took it! We now have our house in CO under contract and we are waiting for it to close. yay! Aug 6 is the potential close date and now we can start focusing on what’s gonna happen next. That’s about it though for us, not too much excitement going on, other than our new huge tent and our urge to go camping soon 🙂

I’ll end it at that! Thanks for reading!

xo – n