Teese Vegan Soy Gluten Free Cheese Review

Dairy free cheese. I know, it sound SOOOOO delicious doesn't it? I've had a few that I have actually enjoyed. Then came that entirely different beast, finding a dairy free, gluten free and SOY FREE cheese. No matter how many times I force myself to smell a fake cheese, that "odor" gets me right in the stomach. I've always been too turned off to even try them. Until now. 

Do I still think they smell like barf? Sure do! BUT, now it wasn't about ME getting a cheese replacement, but finding one for my child. 

Since managing the various nutritional issues of my children, mainly my son, I've had to come out of the box and try these fake cheeses. So far I've tried two. The first of which I didn't do a review on because at the time I wasn't interested in reviewing anything, just finding a vegan soy free cheese that didn't make me want to barf. No kidding. I once had the unnamed brand of fake cheese on some mexican rice. My husband walked in to the room and asked if I had farted. All I could muster up was "No, it's this. It smells horrid and tastes like yuck, but I told myself if I keep eating it I will eventually just dislike cheese all together". How could that be good? Here's how, if I associated real cheese with the nastiness in the bowl in front of me, I wouldn't crave real cheese anymore and I wouldn't need to keep searching for one that would meet that craving." 

I had stopped the search for some time, and then I came across this little tube of "Teese" on the shelf at Wegman's while visiting family in New Jersey. I read the label (as per the usual) and my child could actually eat it without incident. But would he ACTUALLY eat it without wanting to barf? Here's his (our) review of the Teese Brand Vegan Cheese that is also gluten and soy free.As a little note, it still has that terrible "smell" I can't stand, but it greatly reduces in au de barf when I cooked it! 

 I hope you enjoy the clip! 

I Would Never Do Everything You Do...

     In a recent conversation with a very close friend, she said "I would never do everything you do. My kid would just itch and have eczema." But she was wrong, I told her that. Because I'm honest, I also told her that if it was her kid, her love for that kid would be what drove her to make it better. That is how I got here…I just spent almost two hours answering questions and typing up my sons health history with a synopsis of the last 5 years of his life. Boy have those been fun: digestive issues from birth, eczema, atopic dermatitis, leaky gut, ER trips, ear tubes, food allergy and delayed hypersensitivity reaction. Just reliving, and thinking of it all is exhausting. Did I ever sleep? No, not for a few years I sure didn't.

     Before him, I didn't care much about eating "healthy". I thought all of the healthy eating trend was more annoying then anything. I got tired of being TOLD whatever I was doing was wrong or bad for me. I didn't see how these things could be bad if they are being sold at the store and how they could possibly have anything to do with many of my own medical issues. No way.  Then this life changing event happened: I had a tiny human. One who needed more, who needed BETTER then I ever gave myself, one I love more then I had ever loved myself.

     When you have this tiny human who is in distress, and YOU are the person they rely on to make it all better, you do what you "gotta" do. You loose sleep finding any information you can. Because you have faith and hope that the answer is out there. So you learn, everything you can learn.

     I am a firm believer now that the food you eat GREATLY effects your health, not b/c someone told me that, but, because I see it in my son. If you have different "medical" issues, some of those could be controlled with what you stuff in your pie hole. Eczema and Psoriasis are both signs of a food sensitivity. Covering them with steroid creams is only masking and pushing the issue deeper into the body. Once you stop the cream, it will come back 100 fold worse. Find the real route of the issue. It's likely it will be food. If you are ok with just covering these issues with creams for the rest of your life and suffering, that's up to you. You have a choice as an adult. But this wasn't about an adult, this was about a child. One who relied on ME to make the choice for him, and I had NO RIGHT to sit back and allow it to happen that way. I needed to know if there was another way and or a reason, something in the situation that I could control for him that would give him relief.

     Do you think I wanted to have to make almost everything from scratch? NO. I sure didn't. I'm talking about the convenience foods kids get, they are inconvenience foods for me. Have a carrot and call it a day child! Pop-tarts have nothing in them that should be consumed by a child. I know this now, but boy, did I eat them up before I had my son!
   Do I want to make homemade laundry soap, body wash and creams? NOPE.
   Do I want to make loaf after loaf of bread to cut and freeze? NOPE. (Before we realized he needed Gluten and Diary free, he was just soy free and I would make 3-4 loaves some days that I would freeze for later).
   Do I want to make food that matches the food at every birthday party we go to? NOPE. That's actually a pretty big annoyance in my life.
   Going to dinner or a party at just about anyone's house, while a nice gesture, is actually something that makes our lives more difficult. I still need to cook, just come to my house!
     I could list 100 things I have to make from scratch or homemade and allergy free that are all done, not out of my love of doing them but, for the necessity of my child's health.

    Much of my life is consumed with and complicated by my sons internal/digestive/skin issues. After the Elisa LRA/ACT testing I had done on him, in December of 2103, we are FINALLY in a good place, and hoping to start therapies to heal his gut very soon.  After everything we've done, tried, researched or failed at in healing him over the last 5 years the most important lesson I've learned is this:  the leverage I needed to lead a healthier life, was the love for my child and the healing of him.  In healing him, we have all gained a healthier lifestyle as a family.

Here's to no longer having itchy skin my boy, Mommy is here, and she will do everything in her abilities to heal you. Because, that is leverage, that is love.

Homemade Gingerbread House Lawn Decoration

The entire idea came from the shape of the back of my sons baby glider chair. What a perfect shape for a hobbit door. There was no "plan" or measurements or anything to tell me how to do this or what to use. I just went off my gut and own creativity. I even searched Pinterest and never found anything as awesome as I wanted. So I made it up myself.

My Mission:
1) Use anything I can find in the garage, and repurpose it to build this Ginger Bread House of Awesomeness.
2) Make it completely collapsable for storage and moving purposes.
3) Spend as little as possible, out of pocket, so my husband doesn't think I've lost my mind.

Here is the final product. Well as close to final as it got for pictures.

                                               

Some things I used along the way...

 Remember the OLD christmas ornaments that were styrofoam covered in string? When you take the string off you have a perfect little ball. Cut in half, paint with crafters paint and spray with clear coat and you have: Jawbreakers! My kids did the multi colored ones.

These aren't on the actual house, but where used in the walkway up to the door. Those little dog food containers that I had saved a TON of because I just knew I would find something to do with them other then organize my screws, nails and craft supplies. Decoupage, glitter and clear coat. Adjusted the lights to be in the order of color I wanted them and altered the lids to have room for the string lights wire and TADA! Gummy candy lights. I think I made about 99 of these. I start to loose count and actually realized at about 40 that you don't even need the glitter. They look just as cool at night without it. 

These are those little floor tiles with the letters on them that kids play areas have. I sure had a TON of those from when my son was younger. We had hard floor in our house when he was a baby and I basically covered EVERYWHERE in these.

Covered in dollar store fabric lined table cloths. 

Looks like taffy to me! It need MORE. This was NOT enough, I didn't want it to appear like a little house, I wanted in to be OBVIOUS it was supposed to look like candy. So I brainstormed.















Here are some pictures of me building it along the way. Each step was figured out as I got to it.

I definitely didn't get this far in a day. This took quite some time to complete. Notice the arch for the door? That's the back of my glider chair. You can see the from and back are the baby crib and the cross supports are the PVC as well as the roof trusses. 

"Mommy, mommy, mommy…can I help?"

"Mommy, you build this house for ME!!!" 

It may look like a box of junk to you, but to me, it could be ANYTHING!

 WORK in progress. The roof took quite a while as I was figuring out the best things to use. I ended up using screening material I had, duck tape and some RV roof sealer (clear) that I had left over to keep the taffy attached and we able to fold it for storage. You will see that more a few pictures down.

I used my old gazebo cover, cut it to size, spray painted with some brown I had for the walls and staple gunned it to the stutter. I had to make sure I did it in a way that it would be able to fold up and come apart. 

Getting FANCY! The Gum drops above the front door are baby food starts painted and glittered. I adhered their lids to the structure with the white caulk I used as the royal icing.

I scored some dollar store holiday ornaments on clearance. I know, my jaw dropped too. I had NO IDEA Dollar Tree did clearance. Anyway, some were only $.12 a piece, I used them as empelishments.

LOVE the roof and the "icing" detail. 

The last three days have been exhausting and that's putting it nicely. My body has been pushed to maximun exertion limits, but I will never let that stop me. If you now me, I don't let much stop me.

Here are my top 10 thoughts on this process and the last 3 days:
 1) My children aren't adjusting super great to all of the life changes, lots of crying and whining and arguing. Guess they enjoy change just as much as their Mommy does? In case you weren't aware, I'm not a fan of change. Unless of course it's in my physically, mental or intellectual abilities in a positive way. I am a creature of routine as are my tiny humans.
 
2)  Thank goodness for my Mom and stepdad Bill and Mother-in-law and her BF Greg for coming here to unload the PODS. Those two men worked harder in these three days then Dave and I did loading the PODS in the first place. I was so fatigued by the time they got here, they really saved the last two days!

3) Having a house with multiple stair cases greatly increases the level of difficulty of a move! Who knew? Oh, that's right, every military spouse I knew that said I was crazy for doing a DITY (Do IT Yourself) Move.

4) Every one of those military spouses that said I should have the movers do the job were 100% correct. We were perfectly capable when we did the move to CA, doing it ourself, but logistics of that process have changed in 2.5 years and yeah, never again. No seriously. I will NEVER do a DITY again. Ever.

5) Thanks to my sister in law Chrissee Bee for coming and essentially meeting her niece Lillian for the first time, and spending time with both of our children. It warmed my heart to see how much you've grown up. And yes, my pink hair is merely extension and not "real" (hahaha).

6) A big thanks to my big sister, Megan Costa, and my bro in law, Frank P. Costa II, for letting us crash at their place for the last few days and for helping with the kids at bedtimes etc. Because, seriously, being able to shower in your fancy pants bathroom allowed me to have a few moments of feeling like I was in a resort bathroom. I think I even giggled over that thought a few times while flopping around your gigantic bubbly tub in amazement at the amount of chill room in there (which I used for stretching my soar muscles). Legit, I totally stretched in the tub. It was glorious, and will likely happen again on some random day when I'm at your place. ;)

7) Yes, again, all of my lovely friends (and husband) were correct, we have "too much stuff" for being a military family. Lucky for me, in a few short weeks we will be a "civilian" family and we will no longer be "free to move about the country" when the duty calls, therefore, I reserve the right to have as much "stuff" as I want. But, I do admit when I am wrong, and while I didn't say I was correct, I will say that my friends were. Everyone who said I should have just purged, purged, purged is on my genius list. ;) (P.S. I spelled genius wrong and autocorrect fixed it. Gave me a chuckle).

8. I also reserve the "right" to hire movers the next time we move. I don't care if we are moving up the street, or 100 miles…I will never load a dresser or washing machine or freezer again, and have come to understand why so many military families just sell their appliances before moving.  LEGIT, that washer was almost put on the curb because it was such a beast to move! P.S. I'm officially donating that bad boy to the rental property we are calling our new digs for a while, because I will NEVER move it again. Let's hope it doesn't magically stop working in the next few months, but hey, if it does…I'm totally paying Lowes to remove that bad boy. So I still won't have to move it. Winning.

9. Moving without your spouse there SUCKS.
Example A: I called Dave "Hey, where do you want this super heavy guitar amp".
His reply "Our bedroom".
Insert quiet pause. Then my reply "Garage, I can give you garage. That's about it. I'm not carrying that to our bedroom!"
Hope he an find it when he eventually gets here. It's in that massive pile of boxes somewhere.

10. In addition to reserving the right to hire movers next time, I have also predetermined with the hubs that the next time "we" move, I'm going to go away for a few days with the kids. This will be his chance to plan, orchestrate, and manage a perfectly successful move, while the tiny humans and I take a "holiday". After all, he's the Mac Daddy at Transportation and Logistics Management…so I think he can swing this. ;)