Behind The Scenes

Thought I’d share some tidbits of life with you!! First up: photos of Mazen’s school fall festival! We had fun eating pizza with Miss Sylvia, cookie decorating, and getting his face painted. This was also one of our last really warm days – I was sweating during my volunteer shift at the bouncey slide and shivering in a coat in the days that followed!

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(Note the sweaty head because he insisted on wearing fleece winter pants!)

Shortly after Mazen got a terrible cold, I got a mild cold, and then I got strep throat!?!? So random because I haven’t had it in 20 years. I didn’t even feel all that bad, but my throat looked horrible. Had to take Penicillin for 10 days :/

And then I got stung by a honey bee!! He was in my kitchen and I ignored him – until I tried to turn on my faucet and I grabbed him in my hand! GAH that hurt!!!! My whole ring finger was swollen, stiff, and red for days after.

I drank this Honey Beast wine from Winc to numb the pain. It was my favorite white wine from the wine club yet!

Speaking of wine, I was sent these bottles from wineries around Virginia for the monthly #vawinechat hosted by Drink What You Like. While I participated in the chat, I couldn’t actually open and taste the wines because of the above mentioned strep throat diagnosis. So I’m going to host a few friends over in the coming weeks to taste them together. Stay tuned for that!

Also on the wine front (October was Virginia Wine Month!) I went out to Pippin Hill Farm for an Instagram meet-up hosted by Visit Virginia. We had the most epic cheese plate, plus yummy appetizers and of course Pippin Hill wines. It was great to be able to network with other bloggers and instagrammers from the area who I hadn’t yet met in person.

Brittney and Isaac came up for the event, and stayed in the KERF B&B. Love hanging out with them!

???? to blog friends @eatingbirdfood #vawine #loveva @pippinhillfarm

A photo posted by Kath Younger, RD (@katheats) on Oct 13, 2016 at 3:26pm PDT

This portion of the post is sponsored by Water Testing Kits

After all that wine, I needed to hydrate with good old water!! I was contacted by Water Testing Kits, who makes at-home kits to test your drinking water for common contaminants.

The kits are $29, and include tests for lead, bacteria, pesticides, iron, copper, nitrates, nitrites, chlorine, pH check, alkalinity and hardness. My house (and therefore the pipes) is not new, so I figured this would be a good screening to see if everything was safe to consume. They sent me two different kits so I could compare my faucet city water to the filtered water that comes out of my fridge. I actually really enjoyed the testing process – it was like chemistry lab all over again!!

My results turned out well – everything checked out and nothing was out of the normal limits. I noticed that the filtered fridge water was at the lowest level for everything on a spectrum, but my sink water was a notch higher (although still within normal limits). So I suppose it’s worth it to sip from the fridge for the cleanest taste and safety!

Thanks for the fun experiment Water Testing Kits!

And finally, some cuteness. Matt took Mazen to Nashville for his cousin’s wedding last month and just look at the outfit Karen put together for him! Bowtie, suspenders and everything. He had fun playing with Uncle Brian : )

And I am in Texas meeting my little niece this week! So far we think she looks a lot like baby Mazen!