Confession Thursday

Confession Thursday

I'm going to start having a "theme" for a post every day of the week. Thursday is officially Confession Thursday! Every Thursday I'll list a few confessions of mine. I'm going to warn you ahead of time, if you're not used to me, I'm brutally honest and I tend to over share...oops. Here we go!!!

- I don't wash my hair everyday (and sometimes I don't shower everyday).

- I can't stand to look at myself naked. To be honest with you it completely freaks me out.

- I spend approximately 12 hours a day on the computer...no lie, no exaggeration.

- Right now (12:16am) I'm sitting in front of the tv watching George Lopez, eating chips, and drinking a pop (the pop is diet and the chips are baked...that counts for something...right?)

- Easton's only 6 1/2 weeks old and I'm already trying to convince my husband that it's time to get pregnant with Baby #2. Crazy? Possibly.

- I feel extremely guilty asking my husband for help with Easton, especially in the middle of the night. He works so hard all day and usually doesn't get as much sleep as he needs...I can nap when Easton does...Chris doesn't get to.

- I get really bad anxiety and have a tendancy to freak out during those moments. Chris is usually the only person that can calm me down.

* I warned you...sometimes I overshare!

30 Day Blog - Day 17

Day 17 - An Art Piece

I'm not the biggest art nut, but I do enjoy a good piece of art every now and then. When I was in high school I had to write an essay on Vincent VanGogh and I fell in love with his story and his paintings. My favorite is the infamous "Starry Night" and Josh Groban actually sings a song about that painting.



30 Day Blog - Day 16

Day 16 - Song that makes you cry

 I'm a complete bawl bag, so a lot of songs make me cry, but the one song that comes to mind is "Anything Like Me" by Brad Paisley. I know...it's from the point of view of the Daddy-to-be, but this song came on the radio when I was pregnant with Easton and on my way to my doctor's office to find out the gender. As soon as it came on I immediately knew that we were having a boy. During that time Chris was deployed to Iraq, so as soon as I got home we got on Skype together but I refused to tell him the gender. Instead, I made him go to You Tube and listen to the song. Obviously he immediately knew that he was getting "his" boy, but we finished listening to the song together. Now, everytime I hear it, I tear up a little.

Easton's Excursions

Easton's Excursions

 I've decided to do a weekly post every Monday called Easton's Excursions. This will be everything Easton...his weekly milestones, adventures (not that a almost 2-month old has a lot of adventure's, but you get the idea. Obviously it's not Monday, but I'm going to go ahead and do a post for Easton's 6th week and then we'll continue on Week 7 on Monday!

Week 6

 We're still in Oklahoma on vacation...well Easton and I are, while Chris is an hour away at Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, TX for RFM school. The week has actually been a big week for Easton. He's now wearing Size 1 diapers! They're a little big on him, but not big enough to cause blowouts...eeek! I had him in Newborn diapers as long as possible. I thought since he has no booty that we would be good, but the size of his, ahem, daily duties (hehe), made up for the extra space. He's eating 6 ounces of formula every 4-5 hours. I actual think he's currently going through a growth spurt. Bless his heart, it seems like he just hasn't been able to stay full today which has made him a fussy, fussy boy. If you know my precious boy, you know that this is extremely uncharacteristic of him. But as soon as he has a full belly and Mommy's near by, he's good to go.

He went from this...

To this... 

a mere 10 minutes and 6 ounces later.

Which Mommy has desperately been drinking this...

 In addition to wearing bigger diapers and eating more formula, he's also outgrown ALL of his Newborn clothes and is now being swallowed alive by his 0-3 month clothes. I honestly thought that he would be in NB clothes a little while longer, so we don't have a lot of 0-3 month stuff which means, you guessed it, Mommy gets to go shopping!! YAY!! He's also discovered that if he doesn't have a binky in his mouth he can use his thumb in it's place, which isn't his favorite, but I guess he's come to the realization that it'll do. He's holding his head up perfectly now...well, as long as he's sitting straight up. He's still a little wobbly during tummy time, but he's definitely improving more and more everyday. I'm putting up some pictures below of Easton over the past week.

Easton & Mommy getting ready to head to the grocery store.

My precious boy and those drop dead baby blues.

 His new sunglasses from his Nana.

Photo Shoot with Mommy!

First night in 0-3 month jammies!

He had a rough day. :-)

 



Tasty Tuesdays

 So I've decided that I'm going to start doing a "Tasty Tuesday" blog post every week. Each week I will add a favorite recipe of mine (and hopefully a picture) that will range anywhere from cupcakes to chicken. Enjoy!

 For our starter week I'm going to include a recipe for Monkey Bread. I made this for the first time for our New Years morning breakfast and it turned out delicious! I took this recipe straight from the Pioneer Woman Cooks website (and have included the link). So all of the pictures, except for the final picture of my monkey bread, will be pulled straight from her website.

From left to right we have:
* Brown Sugar // 1/2cup will be needed
* 2 sticks of butter (1 cup)
* Bundt Cake Pan * Cinnamon // 2-3 teaspoons
* 3 cans of Buttermilk Biscuits (the non-flaky ones)
* Sugar // 1 cup

Now before you do anything…go ahead and preheat that oven to 350? You’ll need this in about 10 minutes.
* BWOP!! * — That was the sound of the biscuit can popping open. You didn’t know I was a sound effects master, did you? Now open up all three cans of biscuits and cut each biscuit into quarters.

At this time you’ll want to combine the 1 cup of regular sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of cinnamon. I use 3 teaspoons of cinnamon and this gives it a fairly strong cinnamon flavor. If you’re not so hot on cinnamon, cut it back to 2 teaspoons. Dump these into a 1 gallon zip bag and shake to mix evenly.

Drop all of the biscuit quarters into the cinnamon-sugar mix. Go ahead…all of them. Yes, they’re sticking together right now, but just trust me.

Once all the biscuit quarters are in the bag, seal it and give it a vigorous shake. This will get all those pieces unstuck from one another and nicely coated with the cinnamon-sugar. You might have some excess sugar left over and that’s okay.

Feel free to eat one of these now. I won't look.

Spread these nuggets out evenly in your bundt pan. I suppose you might want to grease this pan before doing this, but I’m pretty sure the gallon of butter we are about to add will keep it safe. Un-greased always works for me.

At this point, you’re going to want to melt those two sticks of butter together with 1/2cup of brown sugar. This can be light or dark brown sugar.

Stir together over a medium-high heat until the two become one. Sure, you could do this in the microwave, but it would be way less cool.

Once the brown sugar butter has become one color, you can pour it over the biscuits. Try to avoid sticking your finger under this heaven-sauce as it’s really, really hot. (*Knows from experience*)

At first…it’s going to look like too much. It’s okay though.

Did I mention that this is not a low-calorie snack?

Bake this @ 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes until the crust is a deep brown on top. It should like like this.

If you have the willpower, allow this to cool for about 15-30 minutes before turning it over onto a plate. If it doesn’t slide right down onto the plate, give it a few love-taps until it plops. It’ll hold.

So there's the Pioneer Woman's Monkey Bread recipe! I hope you enjoy it!

Here's a picture of how mine turned out...



Day 15 - Your Dream House

I didn't like Days 13 or 14 because we already covered books, so I'm moving on to Day 15.

Day 15 - Your Dream House

Family Room

Dining Room

Bathroom

Bedroom #1

Laundry Room

Bathroom #2

   

Front Porce

Dream House

New Years Resolutions

 Yes, I am aware that it is almost March, but better late than never...right? I've actually been meaning to post about some New Years Resolutions I plan to follow through with this year (unlike the past 23 years).

 1. Be a better "housewife" and stay-at-home-Mommy.

     - Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad housewife of SAHM...I'm just not necessarily the greatest, especially when it comes to the cleaning part of the housewife duties. I love to clean, but I have to be in the mood to really want to clean. Once I get in my cleaning mood, there's no stopping me, but it might be a day or a week in between my OCD-ness. I really want to start straightening up the house everyday (dishes, keeping everything picked up, occasional load of laundry or two, etc.) and the deep cleaning at least once a week (dusting, mopping, vacuuming, washing sheets, etc.)

 2. Get down to my goal-weight.

- Right before I found out I was pregnant I had actually met my goal weight of 125. By the time I had Easton I had gotten all the way up to 160, which was literally all belly, baby and butt. 3 days after I gave birth I had already lost 20 pounds and was down to 140, which is, to be blunt, kick ass, but I've been stuck at 140 for 6 weeks now. Okay, so maybe I haven't been doing everything anything I should be doing to really jumpstart my weightloss, but I took me 2 weeks to actually be able to do anything by myself after my c-section. I'm not supposed to do any type of physical activity (according to my doctor) until I have my 6-week checkup and am cleared. (Sidenote: I was 6-weeks yesterday, but since we are traveling I'm having difficulty getting TriCare to refer me to an OB here so I can actually have my checkup.) But I can promise you, as soon as I get the "all clear" I'm getting my booty in gear. Chris bought me an XBox 360 and Kinect for my birthday (yes, he really bought a gaming system for me, not him) and it has tons of fun games that come with it. Since the Kinect system uses your body as the controller, almost every game is (at least) a mini workout, but I plan on buying The Biggest Loser workout game as soon as we get back to North Carolina.

3. Start the process of getting my wedding and event planner certification.

- I've actually been wanting to get this for a little over a year now, but for one reason or another I haven't started it yet. I've done tons of research and found two really good programs where I can do it all online and at my own pace, and they're actually both decently priced.

4. Become better at saving money.

- I am TERRIBLE at saving money. I'm amazing at spending it, which is where the problem starts. I really want to start putting money into our savings, even if it's only $20 a month...everybody starts somewhere. I have actually started clipping coupons and love it. The joy I get at the checkout counter when my total goes down from simple pieces of paper is pretty sad, but hey, I'm saving money!

5. Quit eating out as much and actually cook healthy meals.

- Over the past year, Chris and I have both gained more weight than we wanted to. So I am going to try really hard to start looking up some yummy and healthy recipes to start cooking at home for dinner. If I can do this then it will end up knocking out two birds with one stone...we'll save some money from not eating out as often AND we'll lose some weight! (If anybody has any yummy healthy recipes, let me know!)

What's In My Diaper Bag

 So I've seen a lot of Mommy bloggers post about what's in their diaper bags, and of course I felt the need to join in! Sorry the pictures aren't the greatest...my camera battery was dead, so I had to take them with my phone.

My Kalencom diaper bag! I searched and searched for the perfect diaper bag and actually didn't find this one until about 2 weeks ago. I absolutely LOVE it and highly recommend any Kalencom products.

A view of the inside.

From top clockwise:

Diaper holder (bag was included with the diaper bag), wipes (Pampers Thick...usually I have Pampers Sensitive Thick, but I ran out the other day), Boogie Wipes Fresh Scent (these are incredible. Easton doesn't have a lot of boogies yet, but they're perfect for his precious little face after he spits up a little. Added bonus: they smell amazing!), changing pad (included with the diaper bag), Arm & Hammer odor blocking bags with holder (for those stinky dirty diapers).

Burp cloth (Gerber...these are my favorite...super absorbent and super soft), extra onesie (in case there's an accidental blowout...eeekkk), Peepee Teepee (these are amazing for little boys and their random "fountains").

Eco-friendly water bottle (I started using this after I heard that using plastic bottles for an extended amount of time can end up making children sick...I had no idea), Avent 9 oz bottle (my little man is up to a whopping 6 oz every 4-5 hours...tear), formula container with pre-measured out sections (Enfamil Infant formula).

From top clockwise:

Avent pacifier (the only ones Easton will take now), Buttpaste (a God-send), Aquaphor (I actually just buy this to use for Easton's little chapped lips...works wonders), Cetaphil (perfect for his dry skin patches...I actually got about 8 tubes of this from my pediatricin), Little Remedies Gripe Water for gassy tummy and hiccups (I use this for hiccups and it works almost instantly), Munchkin Pacifier wipes and Nursery wipes (Pacifier wipes for obviously, pacifiers and then I use the nursery wipes to wipe down any public changing stations even though I use the changing pad).

From top clockwise:

Sunglasses (Target), Trident Layers (Stawberry something or another lol), Neosporin Lips Terapy (ah-mazing), lipstick (a lighter, everyday color and a darker, special occasion color), coupons (I LOVE coupons!), wallet (Thirty-One gifts), rattle (super soft and made out of organic materials).

...and last, but not least

My Sassy notebook so I can write down notes for my blog! :-)