Taking a little nap...

Look at my cute family (Andrew and Olive) taking a nap together on the couch. I had to capture the moment=)

A New Granola Bar Recipe

I made granola bars about 6 months ago and didn't like them at all. I have finally decided to try my go at them again, this time with a different recipe.... Can I say SUCCESS!!! I didn't use protein power and my additives were craisins, almonds, and flax seed. This is a must try.

Peanut Butter and Honey Granola Bars

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Old Fashioned Oats
• 2 tbsp of your favorite “chaser”: such as millet (shown), flax seed, flax seed meal, wheat germ, etc. (optional)
• 1/4 cup of Soy Protein powder (optional, but gives nutritional boost)
• 1/2 cup Smooth Peanut Butter (I use natural/organic)
• 1/2 cup Honey
• 1 tbsp Brown Sugar (optional, I don’t need it, but my husband prefers it)
• 1/2 cup of your favorite “additives”: sunflower seeds, raisins, cranberries, dried blueberries, figs, almonds, pecans, whatever your heart contents
• 1 tsp salt (optional, don’t use if you are using salted butter or salted nuts already)

Preheat your oven to 400F. Prepare a small saucepan with the honey, peanut butter, and brown sugar (if using)

Take this time to get out a 9×9 baking dish and line with parchment paper. Also set out a cooling rack.

Spread the oats (and chaser if needing toasting, such as millet or almonds) onto a deep dish baking pan. Place pan into oven. Turn the saucepan onto low to med-low heat. You want the mixture to get warm and combine smoothly, but be careful not to burn or simmer. You know your stovetop best to know what setting will work to accomplish this.

While the oats are toasting, prepare the additives into a medium sized mixing bowl and coat with protein powder (if using). Be sure to watch the oats carefully, they don’t taste good when they get burnt. Take out of oven when they are a golden brown. This takes about 5-10 minutes for me, usually around 7 minutes.

When oats are done, carefully add to the medium bowl with the additives. On top of this, add the peanut honey mixture. Mix well with a wooden spoon. This will take a bit of muscle work, but it is possible to combine it all together.

Plop the mixture into the baking dish lined with parchment paper and spread evenly into baking dish. The bars are ~1/4″ in depth when spread correctly. Carefully lift out parchment paper from baking dish and let cool on baking rack. After about 30 minutes (or cool to touch, I like to flip the block over to cool more evenly.

Our new house: Project #1

About 4 months ago, Andrew and I bought a new house in a more urban neighborhood that we eventually want to live in and invest our time in. We are not living in it yet due to the fact that our current house has not sold. We have a few of Andrew's friends renting it from us right now which has worked out perfectly.

We are about to undergo the 1st project of many on this house. When we bought the house, it had a crazy "garage/apartment/bbq brick room" in the backyard which was definitely not built up to code and left us with no backyard. Andrew and the guys at the house tore everything down except for the original garage. Now we are going to hire someone to rebuild it back into a garage. Here are the before pictures with most everything already torn out. We are getting bids so the final product will be coming in a few weeks.

This was during the demolition time

Now with everything tore out

We adopted a puppy

Ok, so Andrew and I have been throwing around the idea of getting a dog for awhile but with no kids, we travel and go places a lot so we didn't want to have to figure out what to do with a dog during those times. Well, we put our big boy pants on last week and went down to the SPCA and looked at the dogs they had there. Now, it was time to decide what kind of dog we wanted. Both of us are not tiny, little yippy dog people and because of where we live and the fact that we both work all day we didn't want to get a big dog (even though we really like bigger dogs) so we dicided to go for a small to medium dog. As we walked through the SPCA, there was this little red and white dog that had the cutest little eyes. I must say that I think it was love at first sight.

We brought home our new dog, Olive, on Tuesday (my mom's birthday). She is about 9 weeks old so definitely still a puppy. She is pretty scared but has made definite improvments from the first day that we brought her home. She is a cuddler and could lay next to you all day.

Olive

These pictures were taken the day we brought her home so she was very scared.

Give a day, get a day...

Last year Disneyland provided an opportunity that if you volunteered your time at a participating nonprofit you would get a free ticket to Disneyland. Well who doesn't love to spend time at Neighborhood Thrift?!?!? Andrew, Bryan, Kim, Christian, Lacy and I all received tickets to Disneyland so we planned a trip. Last weekend we spent the day in the happiest place on Earth. A little rain wouldn't slow us down.

The return of Captain E.O. in 3D

Shaver

Our Fast family took a weekend get-a-way up to Shaver. Plenty of fresh air, family, good food, and great times were had by all. Of course being able to hang out with Henry for a whole weekend was one of my favorite parts!

Chicago

I love Andrew's job, I get to travel to all kinds of different places...

For the past 3 years Andrew has gone to a conference called CCDA, Christian Community Development Association, for his job. Every year this conference moves to a different city. This year the conference took place in Chicago and I was able to go with him. How great... some conference... some city ... what could be better. Ok, it gets even better. Bryan and kim went to the conference also!! We had an amazing time hanging out together and experiencing a new place.

Here were a few highlights from the trip...

The Obwald Kids

Andrew and I baby sat the Obwald kids this past Friday and Saturday while Dave and Erin had a Southeast/Fig get-a-away for some church dreaming. Our weekend consisted of some charades, Mario Cart and Just Dance for the Wii, taking a trip to the splash park, Barbies (this playing with Barbies stuff was a 1st for me), watching an episode of Little House of the Prarie and I Love Lucy, and a birthday party for Emma and Casey Jo Getz. We had a great time being parents for a few days. If only they all came out well behaved and potty trained!!!

My classroom blog

Now that school has started, I will definitely be posting a lot less on my blog.... I guess someone has to bring home the bacon=) In place of my posts here I am going to have a classroom blog this year to help my parents keep up with what is going on with their child at school. Just in case any one is interested in checking in on my little squirrels, my blog address is...

http://feils5thgrade.blogspot.com

Enjoy...

Back in the swing of things....

I mean, staring Denise Feil...

Well I have officially finished my 1st day of school for the 4th time. This year things are much the same as the last 2 which I am totally excited about.

Reagan Elementary

5th grade

Room 17

Go Red Hawks!!!

Today went extremely well. I only have 19 students at the moment which sounds like a great thing but which also means we will be the feeder school that gets all of the new kids in the district... in other words... new kids ALL the time. I am excited for this year. I could not ask to for a better school to work at.