Stearns Family Together!

I was soooo excited for this family session because this was the family that won my first session giveaway a couple months ago!  They were soooo much fun to hang out with and their daughter kept me laughing the entire time:)  Thanks again Stearns Family!

 

Kinsley whipping up something in the kitchen:)

my favorite shot of the day!

Deiss Family – Port Aransas!

Grab a cup of tea, lots of photos coming up in this post!  I had a blast hanging out with the Deiss family at the beach!  Our whole family went down to Port A for the day, kids got to all play together, I got to photograph a gorgeous family on a gorgeous day, plus we had the best lasagna I think I’ve ever had!  Great times!

possibly my favorite photo of the day, but it really is so hard to decide.

love this one too!

I think every Mama needs photos with her babies!  Just LOVE these of Emily and her youngest children.

Gluten Free Banana Muffins!

Okay, my family and I have recently (for just the past month really) adopted a gluten free diet.  Never thought WE would do that!  I’m known for my love of bread.  Now, even only being on the diet for a few weeks, I don’t even crave the bread!  We didn’t jump on the Paleo bandwagon, but decided to try the GAPS diet.  On the GAPS you can still have homemade yogurt (which we were already making), raw milk, and some cheeses.  I hesitate to even mention all this because you know how it goes, you tell people you’re doing something and then something happens, and you decide to not do it anymore and then you look silly.  Hopefully that won’t be the case, because we feel WONDERFUL!  I knew that I had stomach pain after eating, but I didn’t realize how horrible it was until I DIDN’T have the pain anymore!  We had gone a few weeks on the diet, and then on Easter Sunday I decided to treat us to some homemade baked french fries in olive oil (starchy veggies are not allowed on GAPS either).  Man oh man!  Both Oresti and I said how awful we felt after that meal.  So we won’t be cheating any more, it’s not worth the pain.

 

Baking has been fun, experimenting with flours.  I’ve settled on almond flour though, and I love it.  The best I think is blanched almond flour from Honeyville {you can only order it online}.  The almond flour at the grocery store is really meal.  It isn’t ground as finely as the Honeyville brand and will change the texture and density of your baked product.

 

This morning, we didn’t have enough eggs to feed the crew {we eat about 10 eggs at breakfast; I can’t imagine how many we will eat when these girls are full grown!}.  So, I decided to whip up some muffins.  This was my first time just coming up with my own recipe, I even wrote down on my paper “1st try” thinking they wouldn’t really be so good.  Oh my!  These were the best muffins I’ve ever had!  Which is why I just had to share the recipe so that any of you gluten-freers would like to try:)  Now it’s not dairy free {I don’t believe in cutting butter out of my life} but if you must be dairy free I’m sure you could use coconut oil instead and they would be good {I would melt the coconut oil though so you don’t have oil lumps}.

 

anyway, here’s the recipe:

Gluten Free Banana Muffins

3 cups blanched almond flour from Honeyville

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 eggs

1/2 cup raw honey

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick {half cup} melted butter

2 bananas {mashed}

heat oven to 350 degrees.  Either grease your muffin cups or use paper liners like I did.  In a mixing bowl combine the flour, salt and baking soda.  In another bowl beat the eggs with the honey, vanilla, melted butter and mashed bananas.  Spoon the batter into your cups {this made 15 muffins for me} and bake for about 25 min.  Watch it at the end, mind could have gotten too dark if I hadn’t peeked at 24 min.  Stick a toothpick in them, should come out clean.  And enjoy!!

EDIT:  I never measure.  I just go by how the ingredient feels in my hand.  But this morning I measured, and I would increase the baking soda to 1 tsp, and maybe decrease the salt to 1/4.  I also experimented and only added a spoon of honey, it wasn’t sweet enough for me though.  So I would keep the 1/2 cup in there.  But go ahead and make your own experiments!!

I am definitely not an expert on the GAPS diet, but I do so enjoy learning knew things about my health.  I may have to do a healthy post once in awhile, in between photographs:)

Calendar Update

Ok, boring post ahead:)  But I promise at the end is a lovely photo of my first born:)

 

First, I just thought I’d let you all know what kind of availability I have in the next couple of months.  Things at the Metka house are a little crazy, what with 5 children 5yrs old and under, plus a husband that is crazy busy with his amazing business building beautiful furniture, remodeling rooms, etc. . . and then there’s photography.  My love, second only to my family.  So far, I’ve been able to balance Mother, Housewife, and Photographer.  Not saying I’m great at any of them, but I’m balancing:)  I hope I can continue with photography, we’ll just see how each year goes.  I’m trying to not over book each month to make it a little more sane around here.

 

So here’s what I have available coming up (and this includes all full portraits which could be family, newborn, maternity, engagement, etc…just NOT mini sessions)

 

March – no more sessions available

 

April – 2 sessions available

 

May – 3 sessions available

 

June – 1 session available

 

Also, I know I’ve said I usually do Spring Mini Sessions and I’ve gone back and forth lately trying to decide if I would do them this year.  I’ve decided I will.  But, it will only be on one Saturday (April 20th)  and there are ONLY 3 spots available.  Email me asap if you’d like to snag a spot:)  katiemetka@yahoo.com

 

I am not offering mini sessions at any other time (except of course in the fall).  You are always welcome to sign up for a full session, you can email me for more info on that too:)

 

 

 

and as I promised, I photo for this post:)  We are having LOVELY weather right now, cool enough that you enjoy being in the sun (LOVE IT!).  Here’s Luli on our walk yesterday evening.

 

Favorite Portraits 2012

Beware, long post following with TONS of photos!  I decided to compile all my favorites from 2012 into one post.  Thank you to ALL my clients who helped make 2012 a wonderful year!  I loved photographing all of you and look forward to what 2013 will bring!!

F a c e b o o k