Mac Barnett

I met my favorite children's book author yesterday. 

This fall when we were in Austin, TX, he was speaking in a town a few hours away, and I almost went, but it was too far with the little time we had there. So when his newsletter said he'd be speaking in Duluth in May, I knew this was my chance to go.

My sister E, also a huge Mac fan, came along with Jaron and me. We stayed with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and they actually watched Jaron for me during the author talk. 

Mac is the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a position chosen by the Library of Congress. He selected "Behold! The Picture Book" as his platform. It's pretty amazing how he summed up my views on the picture book and articulated them in a polished and cohesive way. 😜 Picture books were one of my favorite ways to share stories with my 5th and 6th graders ( and 7th and 8th graders) when I was teaching. You get the whole story in about 15 minutes, and oftentimes there's a second story told in the illustrations

Mac's main goal for being the ambassador is to stress to parents, educators, and librarians how important and special the picture book is for readers of all ages. Picture books are very rich in vocabulary and context and emotion, and they are the perfect means of sharing a story with someone. They are where children and adults meet as equals and adults need to do a better job of giving children high quality picture books to read. 

So, that was a big part of his talk. He also read us a few of his picture books, and he gave the adults some pointers for reading books aloud to children. Use voices, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Show your kids your vulnerability.

My two big takeaways were: 

Don't let your disdain for a book ruin the book for a child who is trying to figure out their own taste in books. Many adults have ruined a story for a child because they think the book is garbage. 

When you read a book to a child, always give them the best possible version of the book you can. There are a lot of junky children's books out there, but you can still give them your best. And that goes for the books your kids want you to read over and over and over and over and over and over again. Don't rush through them, or skip pages. 😅

And then talk about the books with your kids. What did they like, what didn't they like? 

Even though E and I sat in the front, we were able to get to the front of the signing line. He had the idea I should have the dedication of the signing be "to the best read alouder in the world", which I thought was funny, so I did. That prompted a short discussion between Mac and me about doing voices in read alouds. 

I still remember the first day I tried doing a different voice from character in a read-aloud book with my 5th and 6th graders. They were a bit taken aback, but liked it. I was so uncomfortable I'm sure I was blushing, but it definitely got easier with time. One of my favorite things to do with read aloud was to ask my students what kind of voice I should give a certain character. It was always interesting to hear what they had to say! And a lot of times they would ask for a voice of a character from a previous book, making connections between the two books and comparing the characters. So cool. 

Mac and I were chatting so much, unfortunately E didn't get any chatting time, but he did do a secret handshake with her from the book she had him sign (book three in the Terrible Two series), which was pretty awesome. 

We were back to Jaron after about 1.5h of being gone. They'd taken him on a walk in the stroller, fed him first supper, read books, and looked at pictures on their digital photo frame. My brother-in-law said that every time Jaron saw a picture of someone in our family he began to whimper/cry. I think he missed everyone. And when I came back the switch flipped and Jaron was happy and chatting up a storm. We enjoyed second supper (for Jaron, first for us) and nice conversation before bed. 

Definitely worth the four hour drive! 

Cocoa Butter

After my C-section with Jaron, my physical therapist recommended cupping the scar area to keep it flexible, especially when pregnant again so that the scar keeps stretching as I grow. The cups are a clear, squishy silicone or plastic. She also recommended using cocoa butter to let the cups slide around. 

All the cocoa butter I could find had fragrance added. 🙄 So, I'll just do it myself! 

The recipe is super easy. 

1/4c cocoa butter 

1/4c oil - grapeseed, almond, or jojoba 

2 tablespoons coconut oil 

5 to 10 drops of essential oils (opt)

Melt the oils together in a double boiler. Stir, cool slightly, then cool for 30 to 40 minutes in the fridge. Whip with a mixer for 3 to 5 minutes and fold in the oils. Scoop in an airtight container and use dime size amounts. 

Side note - these cocoa butter wafers are fantastic. I've used them to make my own chocolate too, and they're great to eat just plain. 😉

Double boiler melting...

The finished whipped product. 

I skipped the essential oils this time and actually whipped it by hand with a whisk. Seems like it worked anyway! 

Homemade Shampoo

I've finally run out of shampoo. Whenever there was a sale on Pantene, I'd buy it since that was the kind I liked. But since I'm switching what I can to things with simple ingredients/no fragrance, I need a different option. 

A few years ago a friend of mine shared her recipe for homemade shampoo. It's pretty simple- castille soap, coconut milk, water, olive oil, essential oils- but there's a short shelf life, and I don't think I'll go through a recipe fast enough before it goes bad. That and I don't want to be making it every month. 

Shampoo bars have always intrigued me, and I found a recipe for a shampoo bar that seemed simple enough. 

1 lb melting pour soap base 

2 tbsp cocoa butter 

2 tsp olive oil 

2 tsp vitamin e oil 

25 to 50 drops of essential oil

Cut the soap base into chunks and melt it in a double boiler with the cocoa butter, stirring occasionally. One smelted, removed from heat and add the olive oil, vitamin e oil, and essential oils. Stir and pour into a mold.

I've been putting off making it because it seemed like it would take a long time or be difficult, but it actually went pretty quickly. It even cooled in the mold quickly. 

After that, you are supposed to pop them out and let them cure on their sides for 48 hours before using. Store the rest in an airtight container for up to a year. I'm guessing they will keep longer since there's not really anything that will go bad except the oil going rancid. 

I scraped the edges of the bowl into a mold and squished the pieces together to make something solid enough I could use. 

The instructions said it doesn't make much of a lather and it can take a while for your hair to adjust to this new recipe. But I think my hair responded pretty well the first time! It felt very clean and fresh after my hair dried.

Next up is making my own conditioner...

Barefoot Shoe Expo

This past weekend we took a road trip to Chicago (the western edge of Chicago) for a foot health expo. It's officially called the Barefoot Shoe Expo. It lasted two days and had speakers going on all day in one room and another room to shop for barefoot/minimalist shoes, foot health accessories, and specialists who can help with balance, gait, and movement in general. 

We spent Saturday with the speakers (with a little peek at the exhibit hall) and Sunday in the shopping room. 

The first three speakers on the schedule were surprisingly good. They left me with a bunch of foot stretching exercises to do at home. 

The balance training session was probably my favorite. Balance is something lacking in pretty much everyone, and it's the easiest and quickest thing to build back because it's neurological (compared to improving muscle, strength, etc). Even just practicing standing on one leg with your eyes open and closed can improve your balance!

We had to partner up and toss a hacky sac back and forth while on one leg. Then they challenged us to do a tap of the ball before catching it. Then they told us to announce which hand our partner should catch the ball in while on one foot. After that we had to say right or left, but the partner had to catch with the opposite hand of what we said. Whew! That was tough. All in all, fun and good practice, which is the Foot Collective philosophy on improving balance. If it's not fun, you won't do it. 

Katy Bowman was the speaker I looked forward to the most (and the last one we listened to before checking into our hotel). I listen to her podcast about movement and she's the person who inspired me to look into minimalist shoes in the first place (and my chiropractor who said I had the beginnings of a bunion on my right foot 😅). 

I had her sign my book at the end of her session and we were able to chat at her booth a bit on Sunday afternoon. 

We did squeeze in a Costco run, ate supper at a deep dish Chicago-style pizza place, and went to church Sunday morning before the second day of the conference started.

Sunday we spent the whole time in the exhibit hall checking out vendors. I took a ton of notes about shoe brands, their fit/cost, and future shoe possibilities for Jaron. We did buy a few pairs of shoes, and a pair for Jaron. He slept for a good chunk of the shopping, which made it much easier. 

Two challenging things about the weekend: packing food. I wanted to bring lunches for us both days, so I made a cold pasta salad for Saturday and a deconstructed spring roll salad for Sunday. Saturday's meal was great, but Sunday's salad would have been better if we had eaten it on Saturday. I did have plenty of snacks along, so we didn't go hungry, but the prep for getting us to that point took a lot of brain power and energy. 😅

The other challenging thing was that my baby carrier got left behind. 😭 It was sitting on the bench in the basement with a couple other last minute items to be packed, and when I came downstairs with Jaron, they weren't there. I assumed G had grabbed them. He thought he must've taken them, remembered something else he wanted to grab, and set them down somewhere. 

Devastating because I had planned to strap Jaron to my back so that both G and I could participate in the sessions and we could shop uninterrupted by an 18 month old who just wants to walk. It ended up being okay. G entertained him so I could participate in the session activities. He even got Jaron to nap on his chest! It still would've been easier with the carrier, but it worked out okay in the end. 

Will we go back to the conference? I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat (only $15 for both days), but it's not going to be a yearly thing for us. We'll probably go back at some point, when Jaron is older and needs more shoes.

Protein Ball Mix-up

I love having protein balls in the fridge for a quick snack or a prebreakfast tideover until real breakfast can be made. I've been making a double recipe because I go through them so quickly, but this time I had the idea to use some of the homemade nutella as a substitute for peanut butter. Not sure if it would turn out, so I did a single recipe of the nutella and a single recipe of the normal. 

But when I mixed them up, both batches were very sticky. 🤔 That never happens. 

So I added more almond flour. Still sticky. More flax seed. Still sticky. More ground chia seeds. Still sticky. More oats. Still sticky. What's going on??

Then I realized I had halved all the other ingredients, but I put the doubled amount of honey in both recipes. 🤦‍♀️ 

At that point I was sick of stirring. The mix was pretty sticky, but rollable, so I rolled a few and then decided to put the rest in a container to either roll out later or eat straight out of. 😅 

The hazelnut ones don't actually taste very chocolatey or hazelnut. It was a good experiment but I wouldn't make them again. Maybe I should mix both batches together and see what happens. 

Fruit Room Update

I've decided to call the fruit room the cave of wonders. Jaron loves going in there, seeing all the colorful things on the shelves. It brings me a lot of joy going in there as well. 😅

With all the freeze drying we've been doing, we need more shelf space, so I did an overhaul of the fruit room adding more shelves basically anywhere I could. 

Some shelves are at specific heights to hold tall items we keep stocked, like lemon juice and olive oil. Some are short for pint jars and the rest fit quart jars. 

I even found space above the door frame for putting salt, my vanilla extract mother jar, and medicinal tinctures - i.e. things I don't need to access frequently. 

This wire shelf got rehung over a stud section that has an electric wire running up the side. I had avoided putting wooden shelves there because I would've had to cut openings for the wire and that seemed difficult, but with this shelf I could go right over top!

And it's deeper so it can hold the bigger bags of items that wouldn't fit on the wooden shelves. 

The back low wooden shelf got reorganized too. Now it holds our chips, broth, and beverages. Those come in large numbers so I can have them stacked deep and be able to access everything still. 

All in all, a great project finished! Now time to tackle the laundry room...

Homemade Cayenne

I am not a huge fan of spicy food. I'm working on increasing my spiciness tolerance, but it's still pretty low. Somehow, I ended up with a couple of cayenne pepper plants in my garden last year. Probably freebies from the garden center. 😂 I hate throwing plants away, so I stuck them in the ground and figured I would find a use for them.

Of course the peppers were quite prolific and I ended up with so many I had plenty left over even after giving a bunch away. I dried them so they wouldn't go bad, and left them in my pantry for months. 

Eventually I had the idea that I could grind them up to make them into ground cayenne. I do use cayenne in cooking from time to time. Also, I found a recipe for boosting chicken egg production that uses cayenne, so worst case scenario the chickens get to eat it!

Wear gloves to protect your skin and eyes from the heat. Pick the green tops off.

Save a few seeds because ground cayenne is actually a really good idea and I didn't have any in cayenne seeds in my seed stash.

Grind them in a spice grinder! 

I wasn't sure if the seeds would grow. I remembered that I dehydrated some of the peppers in my dehydrator and some of them were left to air dry. I couldn't tell the difference, so I saved/planted seeds from both- one pepper had darker seeds, possibly dehydrated? The other had lighter seeds, probably air dried.

I had horrible pepper germination earlier this spring, so I made sure to plant a bunch of seeds, expecting a low germination rate. Of course they all sprouted. 🙄 Both kinds too! Anyone need cayenne pepper starts?? 😂