I think you'll love my easy recipe for low carb pizza. Because there is no flour in the crust, I’ve been able to slash the carbs. Your taste buds will swoon and you’ll discover that even on a restricted carbohydrate diet you can still indulge in pizza.

About twenty frozen tomatoes

¼ cup water

Penzey Italian spices or taco seasoning and Lawry’s Season Salt and salt and pepper if you wish

Simmer for 3-4 hours or more. Skins pull off tomatoes easily when done

Blend sauce in a blender when it’s cooked down. You can keep tomato sauce in fridge for a couple weeks.

Fry a pound of Italian sausage and drain.

Posted September 11, 2014 by Pam Young

Does procrastinating make you happy and stress free? Of course it doesn’t, so why do we do it? Take it from an expert! As a woman who has done her fair share of procrastinating, I’ve come up with 7 steps that I hope will open your eyes to how silly it is to put things off. Before you read the 7 habits pick something you’ve been putting off and hopefully at the end of my blog you’ll take care of it.

I think you’ll love my recipe for homemade, low carb pizza. It starts with the most sumptuous, delicious sauce that I make from my own tomatoes-- even the crummy looking ones you thought you had to chuck! Then, of course I show you the secret way to get rid of the skins on tomatoes just like you were a master chef at the Ritz. And the crust? Wait ‘till you see how we'll make one without rolling out any dough. It's so simple and fun you'll wonder why you thought the only way to serve pizza was to take or bake something in a cardboard box. Never again! Ummmm, the smell is heavenly when it's baking and the gobs of sausage, salami and olives are too yummy for your family to resist. It's time to say "ciao" to the best ristorante in town...your kitchen!

Low Carb Pizza

Fresh Tomato Sauce

About twenty frozen tomatoes

¼ cup water

Penzey Italian spices or taco seasoning and Lawry’s Season Salt and salt and pepper if you wish

Simmer for 3-4 hours or more. Skins pull off tomatoes easily when done.

Blend sauce in a blender when it’s cooked down. You can keep tomato sauce in fridge for a couple weeks. Fry a pound of Italian sausage and drain.

 Crust

Two cups parmesan cheese

½ half cup almond flour

Mix together and fry the mixture on medium high five to six minutes on each side. Cool on a rack.

Build the Pizza

Put crust on a cookie sheet, smear sauce on crust. Put on Italian sausage and other items you choose. Salami, pepperoni, olives etc.

Top with cheese if you wish.

Bake in oven at 400 for five or six minutes.

You can also make bread sticks or croutons out of the pizza crust.

Marla Cilley, also known as Flylady, has helped millions of women get organized using the systems my sister and I created over the years.

By Greta Heddy

September 4, 2015

As I explained yesterday in Part I of my blog for you, I do not like exercise. I don't like to sweat either. "Exercise" is a four-letter word in my vocabulary. And, yet, exercise is good for us. Even if you don't buy into the weight loss benefits of exercise (which I don't), exercise is still good for building muscle, gaining strength, and pouring those wonderful endorphins into our brains. Exercise helps us sleep better at night, be more emotionally stable, and all around helps us be a better us. Most exercise articles give lists upon lists of ways to exercise, places to exercise, and with whom to exercise. This is not that kind of article. As I did in Part I, I'm going to list some more ways for you to get your unique self in your unique situation to exercise for your unique reasons.

1. Get Others Involved

Make a pact with a friend. Find a goal she wants to work on, and then set up a time every day to call or text each other to say if you did it or not. Give each other whatever encouragement you can. No yelling allowed. Currently, I am in an 88 Day Challenge with two friends - one who wants to declutter her house a little each day, and one who wants to get back to exercising regularly. It's fun to report successes and great to have a sympathetic shoulder even when you don't need one. Use the "Oh, yeah?" Principle. If someone tells you that you can't do something, you say "Oh, yeah?!" and then work hard to prove them wrong. Pretend that someone has said that to you and then prove them wrong! Get an exercise buddy if that will help. Or join a gym, class, dojo, etc.

by Greta Heddy

September 3, 2014

I do not like exercise. I don't like to sweat either. "Exercise" is a four-letter word in my vocabulary. And, yet, exercise is good for us. Even if you don't buy into the weight loss benefits of exercise (which I don't), exercise is still good for building muscle, gaining strength, and pouring those wonderful endorphins into our brains. Exercise helps us sleep better at night, be more emotionally stable, and all around helps us be a better us.

Most exercise articles give lists upon lists of ways to exercise, places to exercise, and with whom to exercise.

This is not that kind of article. I'm going to list some ways for you to get your unique self in your unique situation to exercise for your unique reasons.

1. Know Who You Really Are

Ask yourself what worked in the past. Think back to your childhood. Kids never "exercise,” they play. Whether it’s a sport or game like tag or hide and seek they have fun. Biking around the neighborhood, climbing trees and fences, building tree houses and forts, hiking in the wood, running everywhere, they have fun at it.

Ask your inner child (that little girl who still resides in your psyche) what might be fun to do! Are you a morning or night person? Do you like to exercise outside, or inside at a gym or at home? Do you swim and are near a pool with hours that fit your schedule? Would you prefer to sneak exercise into your routine, like having an exercise ball instead of a chair at your desk, or walking up stairs instead of the elevator, or would you like the camaraderie of a martial arts class after your day in the office? Do you like to exercise with your children or prefer exercise to be alone time? Do you like a personal trainer that bosses you like a drill sergeant or would you prefer a kinder, gentler instructor? Only you know for sure. Choose exercise(s) that fit into your current situation three to five times a week.

I’m a hermit exerciser. I loathe working out with others with the exception of dance classes which don't feel like exercise to me - they feel like fun! I get easily bored with routine activities. I have a flexible work schedule, which makes planning exercise time a challenge.

My favorite exercises are reading, knitting and watching movies, but recently, I decided I needed to really exercise. Though I've successfully gone to a gym in the past, this time I chose some aerobic/strength-building exercise videos by Teresa Tapp, plus a yoga video for "inflexible people." I have the benefit of an instructor but on my own time schedule and in my own living room. After I memorize the routines, I plan to mute the videos and listen to audio books, music, or movies while I work out so I don't get bored.

I'm torn by what happened today. It all started when we got in the Subaru to head to downtown Woodland, Washington and my husband Terry said, "Uh oh, there must be a mouse in the car! Look at those pumpkin seed shells all over the floor board by your feet." He pointed to a little scattering of shells on my side of the car.

Now I'm a big fan of Mickey Mouse, but he doesn't blaze through space when you least expect him to. It's that scurrying that mice do, like a flasher at a wedding, that scares me to death, and the thought of a mouse in our car made me ready to spring like, well a set mousetrap. "Where do ya think he is?" I asked, as if my  mouse husband were a big deal mouse expert.

"I don't know, he could be back at the house getting more pumpkin seeds."

That thought calmed me as we drove into town.

Just as we pulled into the bank parking lot, I sneezed (no I'm not allergic to mice) and reached for a Kleenex in the glove compartment. That's when I saw IT! The mouse had made a nest out of the Kleenex! I screamed, slammed the glove compartment door, wiped my nose on my sleeve and took some big, deep cleansing breathes to calm myself. Terry was hysterically laughing as I continued to try to regain my composure.

 And for the rest of the story……

Have you heard people say, “The kids today have short attention spans. Because of quick-paced television, they’re used to watching three to four-second bites and become restless when the action is diminished.”? HOG WASH! As I sit in an Amtrak station waiting for a train that’s now 38 minutes late, I’ve been watching a grandmother read Curious George to her five-year-old grandson.

From my vantage point, she appeared to be a rather listless reader, void of expression, sound effects and lifted eyebrows accompanying some of Hans and Margaret’s incredible thoughts, yet the child was glued to his grandma’s side listening to the story.

When the book was finished, he pulled another from his backpack and she proceeded to read it. The train turned out to be an hour late and the child remained interested in books the entire time. So much for the short attention span.

So here are what I believe are 6 benefits of reading bedtime stories to your children.

1. Cultivates Imagination

Now that visual stimulation is served up via television, IPads, IPhones, Xbox etc., children rarely get to tap into their imaginations unless we read to them, or until they can read. As a child, I loved radio (it was before we had television) because my imagination provided the visuals. Because we don’t have kid radio, unless we read to our kids, their ability to use their precious imaginations and be able to visualize will weaken.

I remember one Christmas, my daughter Peggy bought a bunch of children’s books at a neighborhood garage sale and recorded reading them on a cassette tape recorder for her non-reading cousins as gifts for Christmas. As adults, those cousins still speak of how they loved her gifts of being read to.

My husband Terry and I recorded books on CDs, the same way Peggy did with a cassette recorder. This way our grandchildren could listen to us read the books we gave
them as gifts.

God knows we humans get bored and I think that’s why He made seasons for us. But when it comes to kids, sometimes the seasons are just too long! By now, I’m sure you’ve heard those dreaded two words: “I’m bored.” And you know telling your kids to go outside and play just doesn’t work.

I scoured the Net for new ideas to help bored kids and I got bored with the same old stuff I’d read in magazines when my kids were young; like read a book, watch TV. I did find a few out of the hundreds I read, which I share in this blog, but I’m also going to tell you about some things I did with my kids when they got bored, that still work with my grandkids today.

Blame it on routine

We can blame boredom on routine and that’s probably why we love to go on vacation to break away from the everyday grind of routine. As a reformed slob I know that when I was in a pigpen, it was my disorganization and lack of a routine that put me there. But I must say I was never bored in those pigpen days!

I escaped the pen by creating a routine that had my kids and me up, dressed and fed by 7:00 and in bed with a clean and tidy home by 8:00. I love what Flylady says, “Routines and habits are the backbone of a peaceful life.” Routines and habits breed success, but they are also the perpetrators of boredom. When boredom creeps in, it’s time to shake things up.

A Lesson from the bears

There’s a place in West Yellowstone, Montana called Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. The Center offers every visitor to Yellowstone a chance to uniquely experience the world of grizzly bears and gray wolves. All the animals at the Center are unable to survive in the wild and serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts. Terry, my husband, took this photo at the Center.(I promise this has something to do with boredom.) If you plan to go to Yellowstone don’t miss this place. But what does it have to do with boredom? Hold your pants on, it’s next.

Animal behaviorists have discovered that bears in captivity get bored. Have you ever seen a bear pace back and forth at the zoo? (There’s a polar bear at the San Diego Zoo that does it and it’s heartbreaking.) A pacing bear is a bored bear. There are no pacing bears at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, because they experience change every day. When you think about it, Nature is always in flux. That’s why it’s so good to get out in Nature as much as we can.

At the Center, visiting children are each given a bucket of food for the bears and they’re allowed into the bear’s cage to hide the food (the bears are put in a holding cage while the children are hiding the food or else the children would be the food).So your first boredom-buster is:

One thing I always tried to do as a parent when my kids were young was to create a sense of wonder and magic in their lives. I really believe that summer is the perfect season to make memories. My mom was a master at creating memories for my sister and me. Thinking about why my summers as a kid were so special, I have renewed admiration for what my mother put into planning our summers.

She was a BOP (Born Organized Person). She always had a daily agenda for the summer months and it included household chores first and then fun. Attention moms, use fun activities you plan as a reward for getting the mundane household responsibilities accomplished every day.

We lived in the country on a 20-acre farm, surrounded by other farms which are now lovely subdivisions with fancy-names like Salmon Creek Estates, Crest Ridge Acres and We Are Rich Now Village.

Our farm was a ghost farm, because there were no pigs in the pigsty, no chickens in the coop, no cows or horses in the barn but we had all the buildings to play in. Because I was the oldest (my sister is five years younger) Mom was thrilled that I was so creative. If you want to know how creative, you’ve got to read The Sidetracked Sisters’ Happiness File.

Once our chores were done and that was usually by 10:00 in the morning, my sister and I spent the rest of the summer outdoors, interrupted only by the horn of our 1955 Ford. The beep either meant lunch, or time for the day’s planned activity which is the source of my blog today.

Are you ready for your next adventure?

I wrote this song, Goin’ to Grandma’s for your kids to sing along with. It’s filled with that little kid giddy-ness that comes when you get to do something really fun, around people who make you feel special and loved. Enjoy the song and remember how fun it was to go to Grandma’s when you were young. 

If you missed 5 Tips for Relieving Stress (Part One), be sure to read it.

The 5 tips in Part One were: 1. Exercise. 2. Be Organized. 3. Just say “NO.” 4. Keep Your Perspective. 5. Be Selfish. The tips in Part Two) are:

Moms may seem to have an easy job, but in reality, although it's a wonderful profession, it includes quite a lot of stress. Many people (including women before they have kids) may think of the life of a mom as days on end of freedom from time clocks, bosses, commutes and difficult co-workers and or customers. I remember when I was a child, I loved playing house, dressing my dolls and pretending they were real babies. I honestly thought it was going to be just like that when I brought my first baby home. I had worked in a bank before I had kids and when I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t wait to quit and really play house.

When I said, “I do,” I had no idea how much had to be done! As a young mom, I was shocked at the scope of my responsibilities. I was also stunned at how little sleep I got. I’d never known sleep deprivation like I experienced as a young mom. In fact I coined a word for how I felt. “Panicky tired.” In that state of fatigue, I lacked any plan. I slept when I nursed the baby and when he was awake; I stared at him a lot and relished the miracle of this human being that came out of me! The house suffered, the daddy suffered and I ultimately suffered from the stress that goes along with running a household and having a family.

One of my daughters, said to me once while we were watching her two-year-old manage a small step up onto the patio, “It’s really like taking care of a small drunk.”

So now that you’re in the middle of caring for small drunks, I have learned some ways to relieve stress that just might help you.

With firework stands popping out like gnats on a rotten banana, in preparation for our country’s celebration of its freedom, I got to thinking about that word, “freedom.”  Patriotism is really all about being grateful that we live in a free country.

Freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand and it’s up to us to raise responsible citizens of our free country. I remember my mom saying, “Raising children is like holding the reins on a fine horse. If you give the horse too much slack, it’ll run wild, pull back too tightly (being too strict) and it won’t go forward.”

The 4^th of July was a big deal to my mom and she instilled such a love for my country in me. As an American, I asked myself, ‘why am I patriotic? I came up with these 5 tips. Hey, I figure if they worked on me, they could probably work on any kid.