Come out, Baby!

Supposedly, spicy foods help women pregnant women start going into labor. Probably has no grain of truth, but I was going to visit a days-away-from-due friend today and thought I would try a recipe I have been wanting to make for Jalapeño Pepperjack Scones. I got this recipe from Joy The Baker's Blog (good ideas, fun sense of humor). Check out her blog.

I’ve had a thing for jalapeños lately, I’m not sure why. It started with cream cheese stuffed, bacon wraped, jalapeño poppers. And trust me, you can’t go wrong with those. This recipe sounded delicious as well. Here’s the link to the actual recipe.

When the recipe includes a pile of butter and a pile of cheese……that’s a winner

Dough gets rolled out into a circle, and cut into 6 slices, then baked for 25 minutes (or 35 if you are my slow but dependable oven)

Please note that there are only 5 scones in this pan….that’s because I ate one. It was delicious. I did not go in to labor. But I’m also not pregnant, so that makes sense.

So we’ll see if baby Kolsen arrives soon. I’ll pat myself on the back if he does.  

Quilt No. 12, Done

Number 12 is just a guesstamite. Hm, not really sure how to spell guesstamite, and it doesn’t come up on spell check. Strange. Moving on. I saw this project, a little wall hanging, in a quilting magazine, and thought it would look good in the dining room.

Not in love with the colors that they used, but that is an easy thing to change. I wanted it to go with one of my favorite pieces of decor in our house, a painted barn door that used to belong to my grandma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have it hanging in the dining room, and I was thinking of putting the new hanging on the opposite wall. I went to my usual quilting shop down the road, picked out some fabrics and started cutting a week ago. From start to finish, it took me about a week and a half, I finished it on Sunday night. It was by far my fastest project, but it’s not that big; about 3.5 feet long and 1.5 feet tall.

 

I really like the colors, it goes perfect with the painting, and looks nice with the wood in that room (it’s on the table in the picture). The one thing I didn’t think of is how I was going to hang it. Usually I just use push-pins to put up hangings, but this one is long enough that it is saggy in the middle if you just use pins. I am going to have to make a sleeve on the back to put a dowel though. So I guess it is technically not done yet, but close enough.

He’s a Smart One!

Justin’s mom (a teacher) gave me a book about learning and development when Thad was born. It gives lots of ideas for different activities that teach important skills. We’ve been going through it, and the most recent activity was to learn to put wooden clothespins into a milk jug. It teaches fine motor skills and whatnot. We practiced it a little each day, for a while he just kinda threw the clothespins at the jug, but after about a week, he figured it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He is also very good at helping me put away groceries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up on the list: Level 7, Socialization and Imitative Behavior:

Mirroring Facial Expressions

Building a Tower

Making Cars Go

(From the book Infant/Toddler: Introducing Your Child to the Joy of Learning)

What’s for Dinner?

Shortly after getting married, I was already tired of making dinner. It was a pain. Figuring out what to make, what to have with it, whether or not we had all the ingredients…..and so on. It seemed like we would have the same things over and over and over. I wanted a way to make it easier, so that you don’t really have to put much thought into it, and so dinner could be made quickly. So, I compiled a list of all the dinners that we like, along with side dishes that go with them. This list started about 3 years ago and has gradually worked it’s way into this masterpiece:

This cookbook contains recipes for approximately 40 meals. The order is arranged to have some variation from night to night (i.e. tacos is not immediately after enchiladas). The nice thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about what you are going to have each night, you just make the next thing on the list (which is conveniently located on the spine of the notebook)

 

I would say that at least half of the recipes come from my mom and Justin’s mom, the others are things that I have found online.  The list is always changing too; things are added, things are taken off, sometimes I switch to a different recipe (I’m still looking for the right chicken pot pie recipe). Also, I don’t always make things in the order listed. If the next thing on the list is something that cooks all day in the crock pot and it is a day that I am at work, I go to the next one, and then come back to the one that I skipped.

The other part of this system that makes it work really well is my grocery list. Every single ingredient in any of the recipes is on my grocery list. That way, when I go shopping, I go through my list, highlight anything that I don’t have, and then I have everything I need to make ANY of the recipes.

(You’ll notice that this list is in order of our path through WinCo…this adds a touch of “crazy”, but really does make a shopping trip fast and easy). When I am looking for new recipes, if 75% of it’s ingredients aren’t already on this list, and are things that I wouldn’t normally get, I just toss it. No point in a recipe that has 8 ingredients that I am going to use only every 6 weeks or so.

The nightly recipes are only one section of my cook book. I also have a section for desserts (again, mostly stuff that our mom’s have made for us growing up)

Also, there is a section in the back of recipes that we use for things like football games, holidays, parties, etc.

All in all, this whole thing may seem a little OCD, but it really makes life easier.  

Monday Night Dinner

It seems like feeding a baby should be easy. You just give them a little bit of what you are eating. Yeah right. How much do you give them? What do you give them? When do you give it to them? Pureed fruit? Pureed veggies? Baby cereal? Puffs? Finger food? How many times a day? How many bottles should they still have? When do you do a bottle vs. real food? Do they need water? Heck if I know, to all of the above questions. At this point, we have a pretty set schedule of bottle, breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, bottle, but it doesn’t take much to throw me off track. Typically for dinner he gets a jar of baby food, some delicious pureed version of beef and veggies, or something of that nature. Yum. Tonight I had the great idea to just throw some of what we were having into my food processor. I had made a chicken dish that I really like, figured he would too…it has chicken, green and red peppers, onions, a little garlic and cheddar cheese, wrapped up in crescent roll dough. The consistency looked pretty good after I processed it, and I felt proud of myself for going out of the box of our regular routine.

Thaddeus, however, quickly burst my bubble. This is not the face of someone enjoying his dinner. It is the face of a child who thinks his mom is feeding him garbage.

 

A few more bites, and he becomes even more skeptical

When he started trying to hand me back the food I was feeding him, pulled off his bib and threw it on the floor, I took the hint

Bubble burst. At this point, I give up, my heart a little broken, I rip him up some bread chunks, and he is happy as a clam

Another parenting success!

Painting Project for Mom

For the last couple of years, my mom has wanted some pictures painted to go in the big entryway of their house. I was hesitant to do anything for her, because she wanted something that was abstract, which is not really my shtick. But, in efforts to make her happy, I decided to give it a whirl. The idea that I had in mind was to use the technique that David Bromstad does on the show Color Splash. It looked really easy, especially after watching his how-to video:

David Bromstad Painting How-To

Mom had all the supplies ready for me, so when Thad and I went for a visit, I busted 3 paintings out. The technique really is easy. One thing that I would add, is to mix water into your paint to make it a bit thinner, and to get it to really run. Overall though, I was happy with how they turned out. This picture shows all 3 paintings, side by side.

Here is a close up of the green one.

Buddies

Thad isn’t quite to the age where he has a toy preference, he’ll play with a potato masher from the kitchen drawer for just as long as an actual toy. But, he is starting to show signs of liking a couple of things in particular…Cookie Monster and Elmo. He carries them around in each hand and then plops down on top of them.

Walking with Shoes

Learning how to walk is difficult enough. Being forced to walk with shoes on you feet by your momma…that’s just downright mean. It is apparently also very sad…. note the tears. And ON TOP of this travesty, being forced to wear a hat, covering up a head full of hair…..unbearable.

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Numero Dos: Miracle Cookies

There are a handfull of blogs that I read on a regular basis, and I got this recipe from one of them; although I can’t remember which. Does that count as giving credit? The recipe is for Peanut Butter Cookies, which I love, but the awesome thing about it is that it has only 3 ingredients. Three? Whaaa? How can that be?, you ask? Answer: I don’t know. But it does work.

1 egg

1 cup sugar

1 cup peanut butter

The recipe can be doubled or tripled. I made a single batch, and I make big cookies, so I got under 2 dozen out of this recipe, maybe only about 14 actually….In the blog (of un-remembered title), it claims that these are just as good a regular peanut butter cookies. They are not. I am a picky cookie-eater. They must be soft, they must be delicious. These are decent. They’re good, but not delicious. However, they would come in handy as a last minute  I-need-to-bring-dessert idea. And you can’t beat 3 ingredients. Easy peasy lemon squeezie.

You don’t call….You don’t write.

I have been neglecting new posts for a while, and I have a whole LIST of things that I want to put on here. Numero Uno: Letter box!

My mom made one of these for us when we were kids. It is one of those box sets for nails and screws, with each drawer assigned a letter of the alphabet. You put objects into each drawer that start with the letter of that drawer. It’s supposed to help kids learn their sounds. (Insert home-school joke here). I have vivid memories of the letter box that my mom had made, I always thought it was really cool. Cause tiny things are cool, I guess.  Anyway, I decided to start putting one together for Thad. Obviously it’s a little beyond his learning capabilities right now, but it takes a long time to accumulate a hundred little tiny object, although my mom has already contributed quite a few things.

Example: The “H” drawer. H-h-h-hammer. H-h-h-hanger. H-h-h-house. H-h-h-hotdog. H-h-h-horse. Get it?

Well, I think it’s cool. And so will Thad. At least, he better. 

Project: 2011

The last 2 summers, year Justin and I (okay, mostly Justin) have put a TON of work into redoing our backyard. I won’t go into all of the details, but it was a huge improvement, and it really took the yard from gross and unusable to completely functional (although not NEARLY as big as Justin would like).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when I say a TON of work, I really mean a TON of work. Everything was basically taken down to the dirt, and yards and yards of dirt removed. A bulldozer was involved. Bricks were laid. Cement was poured. A sprinkler system was installed. Hot tub stairs were built. A trellis was constructed. When Justin does things, he does it real good.

This year, we’re on to a new project: the inside. Our house was built in 2000, and an addition put on in 2004. The carpet in the old part of the house is GROSS. Other people’s carpet is gross to begin with, but even regardless of their dead skin cells living deep down in there, stains are also all over the place. Especially disgusting for Thad, who spends a lot of time in close proximity to the grossness. In the next couple of months, some beautiful hardwood flooring will be put in, extending from the front door, through the living room, kitchen, dining room and into part of the family room, ending at the sliding door out to the back yard.

The previous owners also lacked some painting skills (among other lacking skills, don’t ask Justin about this…his blood pressure will go up because they also did not seem to own a level, or brains, for that matter). A lot of paint in the living space is just white; a grungy, dirty, faded white, which will be replaced with Relaxed Khaki throughout most of the living space, and an accent wall of Quiver Tan. The colors we are going with are the same colors in my parents house. They built their house and put extensive time and research into color choices, and have an awesome overall idea of the look they were going for.

Since we are redoing all of the basic finishes (floors, walls, window molding, baseboards, hardware, etc) it will also be a good time to do a better job with the other decorative details. I have a really hard time with the big picture look that my parents are so good at. I tend to be really matchy-matchy. (As Stacy and Clinton would tell me…”It doesn’t have to match, it has to GO”. For instance, right now the kitchen decor is red and roosters. Which means that everything is red. Or is a rooster. Kind of repetitive and boring. I feel like it needs a little more color and variety; an overall look where things go together.

While I was blog-browsing, I came across this kitchen redo:

Life In Grace: Kitchen Redo

I don’t plan on painting the cabinets, Justin is deeply opposed to painting cabinets, and I really don’t have a problem with ours anyway. But, I love the color that she used, and I love the other pops of colors throughout the whole kitchen. It doesn’t match, but everything goes. She has birds throughout, but not identical birds, not even the same kind of bird. Love it. Some of my red things will stay (not gonna replace a $200 KitchenAid, thanks), but will not be the sole color in the room.

Here’s where we’re starting from:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blah. Do you see anything besides beige, red and roosters? Not so much.

 

Red teapot, red towels, red canisters. Same rooster on the utensil holder and on the olive oil, and on the salt and pepper shaker. Really?

That’s an awesome red plastic soap dispense sitting behind the counter, but I think I am going to dump it and use one of these ($.99 at Goodwill):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make this:

Replace the towels with something like these:

   

Definitely want to replace the utensil holder and the salt and pepper shakers, but haven’t found anything I like. The red canisters will go, but the glass flour one will stay. So these are just some ideas, I haven’t bought anything yet (besides the Ball jars) My plan is to start collecting things in the next couple of months, so that when the new floors go in and new paint is on the walls, I have everything I need to complete the room.