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morning devotion + chai tea + a cookie recipe

Starbucks and Unlikely Martha have teamed up to bring you this post. I’m a coffee drinker by nature, I’m trying out the tea life. Yes, I was compensated for this post.

This second week of school has been progressively better than last week when it comes to me not having to drag myself out of the bed in the morning and propping my eyelids open with toothpicks in the afternoon.

I’m in the process of confirming wholesalers, creating a marketing plan and deciding on inventory for my new online store that will go live on September 1 (more about that later) so my days have been rather long. Uneasiness started to creep in last week and I realized that I had gotten away from my devotional/quiet time in the morning that brought me so much peace throughout the day.

While I haven’t been much of a tea drinker outside of sweet tea, I’ve always had this thought that tea somehow had a calming and soothing factor that it’s cousin coffee does not. Starbucks was so kind to send me a few goodies that included tea, a fun mug and a recipe for Cinnamon Tea cookies. In preparation for my new weekly goal of getting up early for a little quiet time, I figured this was the perfect time to try out my gifts and make those cookies.

Sunday I whipped up the cookie recipe with the intent of dipping them in my Chai tea, and that is just what I did early Monday morning. At 4:50a instead of hitting the snooze button, I rose with a purpose setting my day on a great trajectory by filling my thoughts with positive messages and images. I started with a warm cup of tea and probably one too many of those cookies but it was 5a. sooooo……….

The cookies aren’t really the consistency of regular cookies but more like a biscuit, perfect for breakfast. Like really good.

Fall is coming, these cookies paired with Chai tea make the perfect snack for a book club meeting, or a cool evening spent chatting with a good friend. Or just eating, the options are endless and the cookies are delicious. Try them for yourself.

Padma Lakshmi’s Cinnamon Tea Cookies

Recipe Type: Cookies

Cook time: 12 mins

Total time: 12 mins

Serves: 30 cookies

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
10 tablespoons softened butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375F
Sift all dry ingredients except the sugar together in a bowl
In another bowl, combine sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla extract until smooth
Combine contents of both bowls together to form a cohesive cookie dough
Now, using your hands make small balls about 1 in in diameter with the dough. Place these balls 2 inches apart on a nonstick baking sheet or line a shallow sheet pan with aluminum foil and fill
Bake for 12-15 minutes or until medium brown.
Cool on rack and store in airtight container. Should last for 2 weeks

Do you make time for yourself in the morning or in the evening, or none of the above?!

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Living

Creating Fall Memories with Blurb

This post is a partnership between Blurb and Unlikely Martha. I take lots of pictures of my babies, and being compensated to share with you the importance of creating tangible memories of your life and family was a no brainer.

Fall is hands down my absolute favorite time of the year. As sacrilege as it sounds, please miss me with the pumpkin flavored everything rhetoric. Carving, patches and picking are the depth of my obsession with pumpkins. I like my fall crisp, cool, and earth toned. The soundtrack is that of leaves crunching underfoot and the smells render themselves to apple pies baking and Bath and Body Works Leaves scented candles.

Annually at the peak of leaf season, I grab my camera and my two reluctant muses and head out to the park for a fall photo shoot. This happens once a year and EVERY year they make me want to holler but I do it anyway because these years pass so swiftly and one day I know they will thank me for capturing these memories.

If I might be honest, those fall photos from the past few years live in my Dropbox and online. Not a print to be had.

Not. One.

In an effort to do better I was thrilled to be contacted to partner with Blurb to create a fun memorable photo book. I knew exactly what I would put in mine and went to work on the Blurb site creating a book of my babies’ most recent fall shoot.

The platform is super easy to use. While it is compatible with some of the more technical design programs such as InDesign and Lightroom where integration is possible, I opted to use the desktop publishing software BookWright to create mine.

The hardest thing about creating my masterpiece was deciding on which photos to use and whether to go with the book or magazine option. Yes, you can make magazines with this software.

A variety of other options available within the software are:

Standard Portrait 8×10”

Standard Landscape 10×8”

Small Square 7×7

Large Square 12×12”

Large Landscape 13×11”

Any cover options (image wrap, dust jacket, soft cover) of your choosing.

Any paper options (Standard, Premium, ProLine) of your choosing.

Magazines: 8.5X11

Friends, let’s get out of the habit of letting our hard drives, clouds and phones be the only ones privy to the captured beauty of our everyday lives. Let’s create photo books and tangible prints that can be saved and passed down. These memories are important and creating memorable books to send to grandparents and loved ones can be a new tradition to start.

When you are ready head over to the Blurb website to get started creating your book. With the holidays on the horizon these would make great gifts.

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5 easy ways to get organized for back to school

The gift and the curse. The yin and the yang. The trial and the glory.

All of the things that that are opposite in reaction are all of the feels that I have about back to school time.

Trading in ease, simplicity and the love of my bed on Saturday mornings for homework, nightly cooking and early ballet lessons/baseball games is what I’m getting my mind right for.

Y’all know I’m all about planning, and when I hear people say they don’t have time to plan my response is always then you want to stay crazy. A few short minutes of planning is worth a week of peace. Trust and believe.

Heading back to school is a trying time for parents as we have to start switching our own schedules around to accommodate for the needs of our offspring along with many of the other responsibilities that we juggle.

I implore you to plan your days and think of ways to make your life a little easier. Just a few minutes of planning will afford you a little downtime in the evening before having to do it all over again the next day.

Here are 5 tips to help you get organized for back to school

Setup a Separate Email Address for School Correspondence

~~Yes. My inbox is ridiculous.~~

With school budgets getting cut and the increased adoption of technology more and more correspondence is being sent through email. I appreciate this because it keeps paper clutter in my house to a minimum and I don’t have to worry with physically keeping up with things. Before you go all don’t add another thing to my list just think about the fact that something important like 50’s dress up day may go unnoticed among your Gap sale email. I’m pretty sure this goes without saying but please make sure to check the email, like set it up to push to your phone OKAY.

Get Your Children Involved

For children that are old enough to take some responsibility in getting themselves ready for school post a fun check off printable they can use daily. This super cute morning printable from Baby Shopaholic makes sure your little one knows what to do daily. Create one for evening routines as well and maybe offer a fun reinforcement incentive for success in consistently completing the list. In addition to getting themselves ready, introduce age appropriate chores. If they are only old enough to put their shoes away introduce it, one less thing you have to do.

Meal Plan Based on Your Weekly Activities

Don’t just meal plan, meal plan with a purpose. Kids have activities on Wednesdays? Plan a crockpot meal for that day. Eating out is such an easy and expensive cop out. If you can get in a place to prepare ahead of time you can keep your coins in your pocket. Give yourself grace to not cook at least once a week but don’t make that the option because you didn’t plan.

Batch Activities on the Weekend

My kids like warmed over pancakes. So guess what? On Sunday evenings I’m going to make enough pancakes for the week and put them in the refrigerator for breakfast during the week, some weeks I’ll make these. Ironing/laying out clothing, combing hair, signing all paperwork in advance for the week when feasible, laundry, creating snack baskets, and creating chore lists are great activities to batch on a free day to save you time during the week.

Set Reminders on Your Phone

Don’t force yourself to have to remember all of the things. Set reminders on your phone to keep you on top of the little things. I am notorious for forgetting to make my son practice his piano. I have a reminder set for when he has to start and another for when he can finish. Set one for when it’s time to start homework, dinner, leave for practice or for that daily activity you have to do that constantly slips your mind. Over time you won’t need it but its great to not have to remember those things.

If you have any more helpful tips please drop them into the comments. Let’s all help each other make this a smooth transition!

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life updates | Disney. Boule. Back to School Edition

Every Summer I have lofty goals of continuing to update our Summer happenings here on a weekly basis and every year for the past 4 or 5 years I’ve consistently failed.

Between all of the madness in the world with these senseless killings, my rightful worries about the safety of my young son in this cruel world coupled with maintaining a business, traveling, attending a conference and just plain out keeping house and kids, this Summer has worn me slap out.

S L A P.

Two weeks from today, August 1 to be exact my children will board the school bus and my normal routine will resume as the wheels of the bus roll them right on to the school house.

So that means the next few weeks will be full of house purging, school shopping, meal planning, organizing and getting them back onto a sleep schedule.

Finish line, is that you? *hand over eyes, squinting into the future*

We have some catching up to do mostly regarding our trip to all of the Disney parks. I promise a detailed post of every park complete with pictures in the next week or so.

Just a little over a week after returning from Orlando, I spent a week downtown for the Historic 67th Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Boule.

The Boule is a biennial gathering of all members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. throughout the world. This year the event was hosted in Atlanta with nearly 22,000 members in attendance. To maintain my sanity and limit parking costs I opted to share an Air BnB with some of my sorority sisters downtown. It kind of felt like a staycation.

After learning about all of the amazing things the organization has in store for addressing more current issues plaguing African American communities as well as what has been done for communities across the world to include donating nearly 500K bookbags to students in need, 40K dresses for girls in Africa and being on target to restore more than 1,908 playgrounds in under served communities, I am feeling ready to get back to work after our Summer hiatus is over in a few weeks.

In the meantime I enjoyed the week of sisterhood, service and fun.

That’s what I’ve been doing. You do know the ‘Gram, and Snapchat mostly catch my daily moves when I feel like being bothered. Give me a follow. I’m UnlikelyMartha on both

How has your Summer been? Any fun trips or updates to tell me about?

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