As many of you know, we have a puppy. We don’t have a little puppy — we have a big puppy. Sunny, our yellow lab, is now 8 months old. As much as I enjoy having him, and don’t get me wrong — I am glad that we have him — he is very time consuming.

Sunny

He likes to eat socks, which if you know me and my children really well, you may know that we have a history of leaving socks around the house. So I am now much better about my sock habit, but he still finds other things to eat — like paper and cardboard and bay leaves. Go figure. Since we have had Sunny, I have not been able to spend as much time sewing, which is what I really enjoy doing in my non-work time.

So for Shake It Up Thursday, I decided that what I needed to do is to get back into my usual routine, and spend the evening sewing. I made sure the dog was well occupied, and I was able to sit and sew — what a nice evening.

My sewing room

It turns out that what I needed to do to shake things up was to find my way back to my usual routine.

I didn’t do a lot to Shake It Up today, but I did wear a really different outfit today — a far cry from my usual Eddie Bauer waffle shirt with a fleece vest. I wore a pair of boots with a skirt and sweater. It is pretty amazing that the outfit even worked out, because I just grabbed the various pieces of clothing before I left the house this morning to go to the Fitness Center to exercise before work.

Here is what I also did today to Shake It Up — I decided to make brownies after work this evening. I figured if they came out well, I would make another batch to bring on Sunday to our friends’ Super Bowl party. For anyone who knows me, the fact that I went home to bake is surprising, since I do not really cook a lot. What is not surprising though, is that these brownies are ridiculously healthy. They are made with sweet potato, almond flour, cocoa, and the frosting was made with dates and tahini, which is sesame butter, and more cocoa.

This is what the brownies should have looked like.

So here is the good news and the bad news. The good news is that the recipe was easy to follow and very healthy. The bad news is that they had no added sugar to them, so unfortunately tasted terrible. (We had to sprinkle sugar on top to eat them.) The good news for our friends we watch the Super Bowl with is that I will not be bringing them to the Super Bowl party this weekend!