Bloggers Corner, Guest Post: On A Breath

I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to have four guest bloggers on A Taste of Something Unimaginable that would post one most a month. A different blogger each week. This is the first post in this series and I am proud to announce it is from my dear friend Alicia who is the owner of Onabreath.com (an awesome blog all about mommy hood!) Below is her first post, I know you will all love her as much as I do.

Introducing yourself on a blog is always an awkward post to write, isn’t it? Patricia invited me to come guest blog here at A Taste of Something Unimaginable, and I graciously accepted the exciting opportunity...But then thought to myself, “what the heck and I going to write about?”

So I thought I’d just introduce myself and talk about how I know Patricia. My name is Alicia, I am 22 years old and I live in East TN with my husband, Jason, and my 8-month old son, Elliot. I studied French at a small liberal arts college, but now I stay at home with my little man. We focus on natural parenting, which includes practices such as cloth diapering, attachment parenting, and eco-friendly living.

I met Patricia when we were both newly pregnant through a forum specifically for moms that were due in June of 2012. We didn’t really know each other yet, but when our forum turned into a Facebook group, we connected because we’re both two of the younger ladies in the group, we were both having boys, and we were both planning on cloth diapering (lets be honest, Cloth Diaper moms are a special kind of brand!)

My personal blog is all the “remarkable experience of raising a family.” I write about cooking, cloth diapering, and parenting. I do reviews of products, and I’m starting giveaways just this week.

I’m not certain what I should blog about here, so why don’t you tell me what you would like to see from me? Favorite recipes? Raising a preemie? SAHM-survival tips? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think I should write about!
Love her as much as I do? Leave a comment telling her so!!!! You can read her blog here You can like her facebook page here

Our Struggle With Eating: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

I begin this by saying I never thought I would be a mom who made baby food. Any baby I had ever been around was always formula fed and ate gerber baby food. While for some families there is nothing wrong with that. With formula and gerber baby food of course your child is still getting the needed nutrition, but do you really know what is in that jar of food?
I broke the norm from all babies I had ever been around, interacted with or even seen. I breastfed, although it was only for about a month, the attempt was there. Let me tell you, IT WAS HARD. I'm not talking like oh this hurts hard, I'm talking HARD. Being the only one able to feed your child, the only one that has to get up at all hours, constant pain in the boobs(CONSTANT), and stressful. Oh and of course with stress comes lack of supply, which then causes more stress, it became a downward spiral from there for myself. It was after I was hospitalized for 4 days due to an infection that i finally threw in the towel. I felt defeated.
I had received my baby bullet as a gift from Dennis' mother. After I could no longer breastfeed I knew I would make James food from then on.
I then took that a step further when Dennis and I decided that all James food we gave him(within reason) would be organic. Sure there is plenty of organic baby food lines out there, but we figured since there are still additives in most of those(ever wondered how they stay fresh so long??) we would make as much as we could.
Anyways, so here is how we make James baby food. The example is just one type of vegetable but we basically make every food this exact same way, so you get the idea!

So this is what the Baby Bullet looks like.
The kit includes:
Large Batch bowl
Power Base
Date-dial Cups
Short Cups
Stay Fresh Lids
Blend Blades
Milling Blade
Storage System Completer Kit

Basically I was making sweet potato's in the picture, so I baked them first so they would be soft, along with cooked. I then put the sweet potato in the big batch bowl along with a little bit of water. That is what I like most about making my own food that because I control how much water I put in with it I then control the consistency. Like when James was 4 months old trying his first foods I would make his food very runny. Now that he is almost 8 months old I make his food with very little water. Another advantage is when I steam vegetables like apples, instead of losing all the nutrients when cooked I actually use the steamed water to mix the food with, that has all the awesome nutrients that would be lost. 

After I mix the food I either put it in the date-dial cups, or an ice cube tray. I love using the ice cube tray method because then after I have all these frozen cubes of food I then put it in the freezer safe bags, it takes up much less room that way. Plus food is good for 3 months in the freezer so you can make a bunch at one time so you don't have to constantly keep making it!

You can purchase your own baby bullet from Amazon right here:

Rockin' Green Review/Giveaway

Rockin' Green isn't a secret to most cloth diaper users but it might be to the public. It, in fact, is one of the preferred cloth diaper detergents. What most people don't know is that it can be used on regular clothes as well. For cloth diapers you only need 2-3 tablespoons, but I imagine you might need more for just clothes. You only need so little for the cloth diapers because if you use more you can create a build up residue on your diapers-this is true with all detergents, not just Rockin' Green. Before doing the review for this product I had only used Tide Original Powder for my diapers, which was working okay. After trying Rockin' Green, clearly I was wrong.