I did something so stupid the other day. At the time I thought it was a GRAND and perfect plan, but it turned out to be one of my more stupid moments.

When we come home from a trip, I always book our flight to be later in the day so Brian and I can have a good morning of sleeping in, thus be ready for the kids when we get home. Well, I decided to try something different! Something cool! Why not just book a super early flight instead? We’ll get home earlier, have more time with the kids, and if we’re tired we can just sleep on the plane. Sounds great in theory, huh!

Unless you’re up till 1:30am with these bad boys, being interviewed and filmed for a new episode on their website. Goodness knows what Brian and I even said in the interview after midnight. We said stuff about these and these and then talked about how we work and why we work the way we do, but we also laughed a lot and oh boy…I hope Kurt takes his hand to doing some serious editing, otherwise, let’s just say Scary with a capital S!

So our alarm goes off the next morning at 5:30am–are you feeling me now (that’s four hours of sleep–me not so nice when I have four hours of sleep!). I try to sit up and can barely move, I’m so exhausted. But somehow we make it to the airport, only to miss the flight by ten minutes. I completely LOOSE it with the lady at the ticket counter b/c our flight isn’t leaving for another 30 minutes. AND, AND there is no one in line for security. But she smiles and says “no exceptions, sorry!”

I start to cry, curse and then stomp off and cry some more. We end up in the airport fighting, crying, fighting, Brian calling Roger for another counseling session for us (:)) and then finally falling asleep on the airport floor until the next flight comes–which is only 5 1/2 hours later. Am I doing a good job of showing this “un-glamorous” moment in our traveling?

We make it home that night and oh, the kids hugging us, they never felt so good. The next morning I wake up and feel totally depleted of all energy. I try to go to the gym and end up going back home (but if you kept up with me before, I did make it to the gym while I was in San Diego–yeah!)

I wake up with this horrible soar throat and go see my acupuncturist. She says I don’t have a cold, just plain exhausted. This is when I realize I need to give back to myself to fill up for our next trip coming up. Place of refuge? My kitchen.

In another life, I dream of being a chef of some kind and taking photos of all the things I cook. So in my efforts to fill up a bit and soak in “being at home” I make my own recipe. I loved it so much I had to share it with you!

This is what I call “My Fix for Feeling Depleted”, Homemade Salad Dressing

First mince up some fresh garlic cloves. And don’t do it with a knife, use one of these quick and easy handy things. They are only $30! I love garlic, so I mince up around 10 cloves.

Blaze likes to go a little crazy pushing the buttons. Whoever pushes the buttons, just make sure it’s finely minced.

Then pick out a fun mason type jar and fill it half way up with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Then add Balsamic Vinegar to your jar of oil. I usually add one third of the amount of oil I poured.

Add 1 big Tablespoon of Italian Seasoning (like Basil and Oregano type flavors). After this add your minced garlic.

Here’s my secret ingredient part for your eyes only! I add 2 BIG Tablespoons of honey!

This is my little honey jar. Isn’t that sweet? Blaze picked it out for me last Christmas.

Then I find a cute little lid for my jar and shake that puppy up.

It is so yummy! Give it a try and feel free to adjust the amount of ingredients in any way your palette prefers. I mix this dressing into my salad and add chopped walnuts, feta cheese, dried blueberries, red onion and fresh avocado. By the time I eat this, I’m feeling so much better and not so empty.

Now for the recipe to the images…

Every shot was taken with the Sony A300. This is the DSLR that the Mommy Bloggers received. I decided to play with mine because it has this great Live View feature on the back that I thought I would hate and actually love.

I used the 85 mm lens for every shot. For the shots I took on my cutting board of the Garlic Chopper Upper and the Olive Oil, my ISO was at 800 because my natural light isn’t ideal in that part of the kitchen. The aperture was at a 2.8 and the Shutter Speed was 1/250 of a second.

For the shots on my kitchen windowsill (i.e. the Tablespoon of seasoning, my honey holder, etc) my ISO was down at 100 for best color saturation. Since I have lots of good light I can have my ISO that low. My aperture was WIDE open at a 1.7 (f stop) to give the Tablespoon and the lid on the jar a fantastic blur effect. Remember the lower your aperture (or F stop) the better your blur. And the shutter speed for the windowsill shots were all at 1/80th of a second.

So your turn! What do you do when you are feeling depleted and need to rest up? I was given strict advice not to exercise this week and just rest. My acupuncturist advised me to take some naps, and I tried picturing that with two kids. The last time I did this Pascaline cut her hair and gave every other doll a hair cut…hmmmm…

But for the record, I thought we had the worst time getting home and after ready this story, I think Amy totally wins! You go girl!