Coconut Oil in Brownies

Use coconut oil instead of vegetable oil in your brownie mixes. We made them for my husband's birthday. I promise you'll never go back.

Best Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

We like chocolate covered strawberries at our house. If strawberries are on sale, or they just look particularly yummy, we take them home and dipped them.

My husband it's a big fan of coconut, so I've been experimenting with coconut and chocolate covered strawberries. Here's what I came up with. It's so so yummy.

You will need:

◆Fresh strawberries (however many you want)
◆Melting chocolate (I use milk chocolate chips. Half a bag will cover about 30 strawberries, give er take)
◆Coconut oil
◆Wax paper
◆Cookie sheet
◆Glass bowl for melting

1. Wash, dry, and chill fresh strawberries. Air dry works best, I've found, but in a time crunch a paper towel pressed lightly around the outside of a wet strawberry works well enough for the chocolate to stick. And they don't have to be cold, but it helps the choclate set up quicker, so I definitely recommend chilled. Leave the stems on. Makes them prettier and gives you something to grip while you dip.

2. Put the chocolate in the glass bowl and microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and repeat a few times. 30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds stir, until it stirs out smooth. Usually after 3 times for me. (I don't recommend any longer than 30 seconds. I've had burned chocolate on my hands.)

3. For half a bag of chocolate chips, I use a pretty heaping spoonful of coconut oil. (Regular eating spoon). Add coconut oil to melted chocolate and stir until oil is all melted. Your chocolate will thin a little.

4. Dip strawberries into chocolate mixture, and place on a wax papered cookie sheet. If you use chilled strawberries then the first ones dipped will be pretty much set up by the time the last ones are dipped.

Other tips:
If you want a fun textured chocolate layer, add toasted coconut into the chocolate mix before you dip. The picture shows the coconut on the outside which is what I tried first, but it kind of hurts your mouth to eat. So stir it into the chocolate. That worked much better. 

I recommend eating them within 48 hours. They're best the sooner you eat them.

They make GREAT treats for friends. They're so easy and yet kind of a delicacy.

Change Your Prayers.

So, I've been on this reading kick... I've been reading up a STORM since I started nannying again. (The baby sleeps 5 hours a day, so what else am I supposed to do?)  :) Well, I was reading some books about love and how it applies to the Law of Attraction, which is actually kind of irrelevant except that because I was reading those books I was led to read a book called Drawing on the Powers of Heaven by Grant von Harrison.

I think I missed the point of the book, because this concept hit me so hard, so I'm actually planning on reading it again, but as I was reading a thought came to me about prayers and the agency of others. We know that we have no power over other people and can't control them because of agency. (And, this can be frustrating when the people we love are making stupid choices, but what can we do?) Oftentimes, I find myself praying these people will make different choices, which IS (of course) an act of faith BUT Heavenly Father can't make anyone do anything either 'cause He's bound by the same laws we are, so what good is it to pray THAT people will make certain choices if Heavenly Father CAN'T make them make those choices? Then, a couple other books I've read talk about how love creates miracles and how we can use love to get the things we desire, to change our relationships, to eliminate negativity in our lives, to help others live better lives as well, and to change any personal circumstance really. (I've tried this out a couple times in the last couple months, and am kind of astounded at the results. VERY cool. I totally believe it.) SO, since we are only in charge of ourselves and the choices WE make, I was thinking that maybe we could all think about how our prayers go, and think about how to change them so that we're praying for US and not "THEM".

Historically I have been praying like, "and bless {whomever} that SHE'LL..." or something. I have been focusing on the things I think THEY (the people I pray for) need to be doing instead of the things I could be doing to help them. So, I changed my prayers. Now it's more like, "And help ME to know how to love {because love creates the miracle} in ways that will help {whomever} feel the Spirit and draw closer to Thee." or "Bless that I can receive the promptings that will help ME help {whomever} make better choices in their life."

This does 2 things: 1. It takes the focus off the people we're hoping will change and creates a "sense of doing" in ourselves. When we pray for something and don't do anything to help realize the blessing, then it's not Heavenly Father helping us develop faith, it's just Heavenly Father doing it for us, which isn't going to happen. We have to be doing SOMETHING for the blessing to be realized. (see D&C 130:20-21) "Faith without works is dead" kind of thing. And, according to the Powers of Heaven book, just asking isn't real faith. Part, yes, but not the full thing. And 2. It opens each of US up to the gifts of the Spirit. I really think that praying for ME instead of THEM will bring promptings and ideas that will help me bless said others, yes, but as I act on promptings, I get better at listening and hearing the Spirit and I get to have more promptings and guidance in other areas in my life. As we practice anything, we get better at it, so why not practice receiving the Spirit and practice acting on the promptings and practice praying for the opportunities to do so? I don't see a downside, if we're practicing in faith.

An example of what I'm talking about (just in case I'm not making any sense, and/or you need evidence) is the sons of Mosiah in Alma 17. They were responsible for the conversion of a ton of Lamanites even though, as it says in verse 14, they are describes as a "wild and a hardened and a ferocious people." Here's what verse 9 says, "And it came to pass that they journeyed many days in the wilderness, and they fasted much and prayed much that the Lord would grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with them, and abide with them, that they might be an instrument in the hands of God to bring, if it were possible, their brethren, the Lamanites, to the knowledge of the truth, to the knowledge of the baseness of the traditions of their fathers, which were not correct."  Notice that they prayed for THEMSELVES that God would give them the Spirit so that they could help the Lamanites learn that they were making stupid choices (which, in their defense, they probably didn't know, in a sense, were stupid choices 'cause they were just following the "traditions of their fathers", but i digress...)   :)

And if that's not enough evidence, just read The Lord's Prayer (Luke 11, Matt 6, and 3 Nephi 13). Christ himself, a perfect being, prays for himself as he prays for the other people present.

I've tried it on a couple "little" things. One example: I am a nanny. One of the children I tend is a very adult-like 4 and a half year old diva-fashionista. (seriously, she gives me fashion tips.) :) I haven't been nannying with this family very long, so sometimes it feels like my little 4 year old and I are just not friends. I want her to enjoy being with me, because, let's face it, she's with me a lot, and it should be fun. Occasionally, I end up with a melt-down on my hands. (Not as in a temper tantrum, just sad that her mom's not there at the moment, or just super tired, but I can't let her sleep or something) Sometimes, I have exhausted all my good ideas and have suggested all the things I know she likes to try and make hanging out with Rachel fun. If that doesn't work, and she's still upset, I say a quick little prayer that goes something like this, "Heavenly Father, I want to help Casey be happy so that she has a positive experience with me since she sees me more than she sees her parents. Help me to know how to love her right now so that I can find something fun to distract her." Once, the thought came to me to ask her if she wanted to sit in my lap. That was a weird one for Casey, but I didn't have anything else, so I tried it, and it took! We even ended up reading books while she sat on my lap. Casey's not really a book kind of girl either, so that was a little strange as well. Then the next melt-down I started with the lap book idea, and it was a no go, and tried everything I could think of, and said my little prayer and the thought came to me, "When's the last time she's eaten?" and I offered her a snack, which fixed the problem. This concept has made a big difference for Casey and me. I know it works, y'all.

So a quick recap: Change our prayers, receive the inspiration, follow the promptings, change your life.

I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear about your experiences with this, should you choose to accept the challenge. Leave a comment or e-mail me your stories.

Favorite Quotes From A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

I wanted to put all the great points I got from A Return to Love in one place so i could remember them better and find them more easily. That's what this is. Maybe there is something useful in here for you! :)

"When infants aren't held, they can become sick, even die. It's universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all."

"Again--nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth."

"When we stop trying to control events, they fall into a natural order, and order that works."

"'God' means love, and 'will' means thought. God's will, then, is loving thought."

"To say that we're on earth to serve God, means that we're on earth to love."

"To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten."

"To ask for another relationship, or another job, is not particularly helpful if we're going to show up in the new situation exactly as we showed up in the last one."

"God and man are the ultimate creative team. God is like electricity. A house can be wired for it, but if there aren't any light fixtures, what good does that do?  ...we are His lamps. It doesn't matter the size of the lamp, or it's shape, or design. All that matters is that is gets plugged in. It doesn't matter who we are, or what our gifts are. All that matters is that we are willing to be used in His service. ...Lamps without electricity cast no light, and electricity without lamps cast no light either. Together, however, they cast out all darkness."

"God isn't separate from us, because He's the love inside our minds. Every problem, inside and out, is due to a separation from love on someone's part. Thirty-five thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and there's no dearth of food. The question is not 'what kind of God would let children starve?' but rather, 'What kind of people let children starve?'"

"We must consciously recognize that, for God, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. Love heals all wounds. No problem is too small for God's attention, or too big for Him to handle."

"We will learn to love one another, but weather we learn it painfully or peacefully is entirely us to us."

"At the last moment, when things look the worst, God does tend to appear. Not because He had a sadistic sense of humor, waiting until we're totally desperate before showing us his muscle. He takes so long because it's not until then that we bother to think about Him. All this time, we thought we were waiting for Him. Little did we know, He was waiting for us."

"If I choose to bless another person, I will always end up feeling more blessed. If I project guilt onto another person, I will always end up feeling more guilty."

"Relationships exist to hasten out walk to God."

"A Course in Miracles says that everyone we meet will either be out crucifier or our savior, depending on what we choose to be to them."

"The places in our personality where we tend to deviate from love are not out faults, but our wounds. God doesn't want to punish us, but to heal us. And that is how He wishes us to view the wounds in other people."

"Forgiveness is 'selective remembering'--a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go."

"'Do you prefer that you be right or happy?' If you're judging a brother, you're wrong even if you're right."

"By bringing the past into the present, we create a future just like the past. By letting the past go, we make room for miracles."

"Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. We can't get rid of the darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat, because there is nothing to hit. If we want to be rid of the darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love.

"Pain doesn't stem from the love we're denied by others, but rather from the love that we deny them. In a case like that, it feels as though we're hurt by what someone else did. But what really has occurred is that someone else's closed heart has tempted us to close our own, and it is our own denial of love that hurts us. That's why the miracle is a shift in our own thinking: the willingness to keep our own heart open, regardless of what's going on outside us."

"Someone with whom we have a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow...those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds--the places where we feel we can't love any more, can't connect any more deeply, can't forgive past a certain point. We are in each other's lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal."

"The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of God."

"Praying for the right person is useless if we're not ready to receive him."

"Love is a decision."

"What is not loved is not understood."

"Dear God, please show me what it is I'm not seeing."

"When you ask God to heal your life, He shines a very bright light on everything you need to look at. You end up seeing things about yourself that maybe you'd rather not see."

"There is a story about Leonardo da Vinci that has always moved me. Early in his career, he was painting a picture of Christ and found a profoundly beautiful young male to model for his portrait of Jesus. Many years later, Leonardo was painting a picture that included Judas. He walked through the streets of Florence looking for the perfect person to play the great betrayer. Finally he found someone dark-looking enough, evil-seeming enough to do the job. He went up to the man to approach him to do the modeling. The man looked at him and said, 'You don't remember me, but I know you. Years ago, I was the model for your picture of Jesus.'"

"The last thing you want to do--ever--is to buy into the insidious delusion that spiritual lives and spiritual relationships are always quiet or always blissful."

"We're affected by other peoples' lovelessness only to the extent to which we judge them for it."

"The price you pay for not taking responsibility for your own pain is the failure to realise that you can change your conditions by changing your thoughts."

"The only real problem is that you have forgotten who you are."  (she was talking about being a child of God)

"The only advantage of knowing that you're angry, is so that you can make a choice to be otherwise."

"Just because we have an honest feeling, that doesn't mean it's who we honestly are. My angry self is not the real me. Does it have to be acknowledged? Yes, but only in order to go beyond it."

"Our true, purely loving self can never be uncreated."

"Love is not neutral. It takes a stand. It is the commitment to the attainment of the conditions of peace for everyone involved in a situation."

"We don't get married to escape the world; we get married to heal it together."

"This world is dysfunctional! But there is nothing we have been through, or seen, or done, that cannot be used to make out lives more valuable now."

"As we love, we shall be release from pain."

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world."

"The cosmic spotlight isn't pointed at you; it radiates from within you."

"Don't go to work to make money; go to work to spread joy."

"Miracles mean that at any moment we can begin again."

"There's no more potent way to thank God for your gifts, or to increase them, than by sharing them. You will be given as much power in the world as you are willing to use on His behalf."

"Our power lies in our clarity about why we're on the earth."

"Serving three people is as important as serving three hundred."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

"The Holy Spirit finds ways to express His power through vehicles we can accept. Medicine is such a vehicle."

"Anything used to spread joy and communicate love is a part of God's plan for salvation."

"Suffering, I've found, gives you X-ray vision into the suffering of others."

"Happiness is a sign that we have accepted God's will."

"Hope is born of participation in hopeful solutions."

"...you don't have to be a virtuoso at everything you do, in order to be a virtuoso at life. Virtuosity in life means singing out--not necessarily singing well."

(Quoted from the Book Quantum Healing, Dr. Deepak Chopra) "An Ohio University study of heart disease in the 1970s was conducted by feeding quite toxic, high-cholesterol diets to rabbits in order to block their arteries, duplicating the effect that such a diet has on a human arteries. Consistent results began to appear in all the rabbit groups except for one, which strangely displayed 60 percent fewer symptoms. Nothing in the rabbits' physiology could account for their high tolerance to the diet, until it was discovered by accident that the student who was in charge of feeding these particular rabbits liked to fondle and pet them. He would hold each rabbit lovingly for a few minutes before feeding it; astonishingly, this alone seemed to enable the animals to overcome the toxic diet. Repeat experiments, in which one group of rabbits was treated neutrally while the others were loved, came up with similar results. Once again, the mechanism that causes such immunity is quite unknown--it is baffling to think that evolution has built into the rabbit mind an immune response that needs to be triggered my human cuddling."

"Just another ordinary miracle today."

Ok, this is kind of weird, I know, but I think it's SO cool! So I've been reading these books... I read one called A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, and one called The Power by Rhonda Byrne. (Both very fantastic and life-changing, and I don't think it was a coincidence that I read them one right after the other.) The message that I got from reading these two books was that everything you think, feel, and do comes back to you, negative things and positive things. If you're a grouch then the negativity comes back to you somehow, but if you love, then you receive the love back in the form of great things because love creates miracles. Basically, you have more power over your life than you think, and it's wonderful. In the middle of reading the second book, I did a little experiment.

For most of life, I have had a recurring nightmare. It's not always the same dream, but the elements are the same. And I'm sure they come from some repressed memories or feelings or some other crazy psychological whatever, and maybe they shouldn't have effected me as much as they did, but the point is they were a strong, negative...thing...in my life that I've been trying to get rid of. WELL, one of the suggestions that The Power has is that you be grateful about something that is negative to you, and you will make it a positive thing, which attracts more positive things, and makes the once negative thing go away. Anyone else thinking Ether 12:27? "...for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." Then I'm just going to throw in Galatians 5:6, just for fun, "...but faith which worketh by love." Loving is a form of faith. By loving what God has given us, (people in our life, circumstances in our life, things in our life, all of it) are we not also loving God and thus showing our faith in him?

So, in the middle of reading this book, I had a particularly crazy one of these nightmares, and I woke up totally stressed out 'cause they're scary, 'cause I want them to go away and I keep having them, 'cause it feels real to me even though I know it's not, 'cause I dream quite vividly (always have, just ask my mom), and because I let them make me feel like a horrible person. Before I even got out of bed I, for some reason, (part of the miracle) thought about being grateful, so here's the experiment: I listed about a dozen things about those dreams that I was honestly grateful for: that they're not real, that I wake up and can choose to think about something else, etc. And about half-way through my list I realized that these dreams were never going to be a problem ever again. I had just given enough love towards them that they were no longer scary, no longer as real to me, and if I have them I can remember that feeling of gratefulness and love and can move on to the happy stuff in my life really quickly. Then, since I'm not thinking about them being scary and thinking about wanting them to go away, which makes them stick around, I also knew I would soon stop having those dreams altogether. And for THAT I'm super grateful, which adds to the love that will come back to me, and it's exciting to know that I can change something like that with really not too much effort on my part. And I can't even tell you how instantly that all happened, how big a deal this is for me, how excited and happy I am, how much I thought about how happy I was the rest of the day, or how much it spilled over into the rest of my week. That, my friends, IS a miracle. And I know the same kinds of things can happen in your lives too. Try your own experiment. And if you need some help thinking differently, send me a message, I'll help you out. I told you, it's weird, but it works, and I am happier for it. Just think, if I gave love to EVERYTHING like I gave love to those nightmares, then there wouldn't BE any negativity in my life, only really great things that I love. Sounds dreamy, right? (No pun intended)  :)

Whenever I start thinking about this stuff, for some reason I get The Beatles stuck in my head, "...it's easy! All you need is love..." And for the record, I haven't had any nightmares, at all, of any kind, in a month. That's pretty huge.  :)