True life: We're obsessed with our dog

Our oven broke last week. So that's the real life story behind these pictures and our delightful trip to Lowe's :) While on our way to the oven section of the store we saw Lowe's Christmas tree set up and it was just BEGGING for a portrait session. This is what happens when you are obsessed with your dog/don't have kids.

She hated it.

Apparently she's really pleased about us getting a new oven though!

- B

Healthy Recipes I've Tried

This could be a really long blog post including a lot of life updates, but I'm tired and my head hurts so instead I'll just share some of my favorite clean/paleo/gluten free/etc meals I've made lately! It's always hard to find clean recipes that actually have a lot of flavor so I hope this helps!


This lemon pepper baked salmon served on top of a caesar salad is loosely based on this recipe.

Levi loves pesto and it's super easy to make your own. The blog is no longer up with this recipe but it's very simple. Spread pesto (jarred or make your own) along the bottom layer of a baking dish. Lay chicken strips on top of that and then cover in pesto sauce. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes (I think that's what I remember). I had some extra grape tomatoes so I threw those in there too and then served it over whole wheat pasta.

My friend Natalie got me into quinoa veggie bowls after she made me one for lunch! It's pretty much a catch all for whatever vegetables you have lying around. Ours was a compilation of sweet potatoes, kale, garlic, ginger, red pepper, garbanzo beans, poblano pepper, and onions. You just saute it all in a pan and then add the quinoa!

I bought a large container of roasted red pepper hummus at SAMs and had a ton in my fridge. Luckily the container had a recipe on the label for chicken salad! Use a can of chicken (drained). Stir in chopped red peppers, green onions, and a large scoop of hummus. I served mine over avocados but have plans to try it in a whole wheat pita this week!

Another quinoa bowl courtesy of Gimme Some Oven! This one includes sautéed onions and peppers, corn salsa, and taco seasoned chicken. This was A+!

With the rainy weather I was craving a hearty soup. Budget Bytes had a recipe for Vegan Red Lentil Stew and it was good! I paired it with whole grain naan because bread.

This kungpao chicken stir fry is a GO TO in this house. I make it at least once a week. It's so easy and good. I added in red peppers and that was smart, will try more vegetables soon!

Also at SAMs, I bought a bulk bag of frozen cod. Then I found this roasted chili lime cod recipe and made it twice in one week!

Ok. So there's brown sugar in this recipe. SUE ME. Flourless peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They were really, really good.

Here's a few honorable mentions that were good but went unphotographed:

Healthy Chocolate Fudge Bites
Flourless Morning Glory Muffins
Vegan Flourless Banana Bread Muffins (added dairy free chocolate chips)
Thai Baked Salmon


I hope this helps all of you fellow healthy meal makers out there!

Holiday Photos 2015

Better late than never to share these Christmas photos I guess! Levi and I weren't planning on doing a Christmas card this year but I still wanted to get some pictures of us + Winston and Mosely since we didn't have any of the four of us. Well, they ended up turning out so good that I HAD to send a Christmas card so I ordered the bare minimum and just sent them to family! We threw this little shoot together on a whim in our backyard with the help of our sisters Kristi and Kelsey! I had a hard time narrowing down my favorites so enjoy the many good (and funny) pictures below :) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Because we wanted to incorporate Winston into the photos, we tried to set up something as close to our backdoor as possible! I went out to check out the backyard about 30 minutes before we started and decided it would work! We just grabbed a few things we had around the house and wala!

A few test shots with Mosely

I am actually SHOCKED at how well Winston did! He never goes outside, but he did great! He was just bird watching the whole time.

Normally Mosely is really easy to photograph and well behaved, but I think we introduced the treats too early in the session and so she had this crazy intense look on her face this time!

Levi said I looked like the crazy animal lady because I was holding all of them...

If you can, you should definitely zoom in on the above photo to get a good look at Mosely's face- she was SO over it by this time. 

This poor dog.

You can't tell, but I was forcing Mosely to lay down with all of my strength in these pictures, haha!

Just so you know what many of my photos look like, I included the super flattering picture below:

- Bethany