Wish List

These pretty, pretty books.

All of these, from Antro, of course...
(I can't find any of these on the anthropologie website. I think a lot of them are on clearance already!)











And last, but most wantedly, a beautiful Dutch bike. Add-ons would include a baby seat and a basket. :)

Thank You, St. Patrick

Well, seeing as how we're not the green-beer-swilling-type, I instead just finished eating a lot of food. Irish food. Or, what Americans think is Irish food, anyway. I don't know how accurate it is but I do know that it is delicious.

The feast was gobbled up before I was able to take any photos but it consisted of:

Corned Beef
Boiled Cabbage
Roasted Potatoes
Roasted Asparagus
Sparkling Limeade
Cupcakes

It was pretty incredible, if I do say so myself. Also, I think St. Patrick's Day may be my favorite holiday as the entire meal took about 15 minutes total of my actual time. The rest of the time it just tended to itself. That just doesn't happen with Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas foods. They are all so much more time consuming what with the grating, stirring, rising, rolling out, etc.



Also, a word about the cupcakes. This morning I woke up really wanting to bake. I love baking but can only do it occasionally -- only when I'm able to spread the calories around to other people rather than ingesting them all myself.

I found the cupcake recipe on a food blog I love, Whipped. They are POM Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. POM as in POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice. The POM juice actually replaces the butter and eggs that would normally be in a cupcake batter. Vegan! (Just don't mind the frosting -- definitely not vegan.) So I had to try them.

But, upon first taste out of the oven, I was pretty disappointed. They didn't seem very moist, the tops got hard/crispy and they did not want to come out of the cupcake liners without a struggle. However, I couldn't imagine throwing out 30 cupcakes. So, I frosted them with some green-tinted cream cheese icing, dressed them up with a peppermint leaf from the garden (woot!) and distributed them among our friends. Feeling just a little bit reluctant. I do not want to be known for dry cupcakes.



However, it seems that a combination of Refrigeration and Time worked some magic and by the time I tried another one after dinner -- moist! soft! no struggle! It was really pretty great. Mostly the cream cheese frosting could make anything edible, but they were pretty good after all.

I don't know that I'll make these particular cupcakes again -- they weren't the best ever -- but they were definitely worth eating. :) I don't know what I could have done to make them turn out differently. If you happen to try this recipe, please report back with your results!

So, Happy St. Patty's day everyone and HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY to my sister Bethany! (I ate a cupcake, or two, in your honor, Beth.)

Valentine's Day

We actually got to go out for V. Day since my mom was here. Yay! Thanks Mom!

Our day included the following:

Yum.



Loved it.



This guy made us dinner. It was delicious and exciting. We saw him in the kitchen. Hehe.



I had butternut squash ravioli and John had spaghetti bolognese. They were both amazingly tasty. Though the ravioli was basically dessert -- quite sweet. For dessert I had chai creme brulee. Um...incredible. John's flourless chocolate cake was really good, too. I can't wait to go back.

I'm so excited to find out who wins Top Chef. Fabio is in the top 4. Only a couple episodes to go!

P.S. I love you, John. Thanks for being my Valentine. :)

Thinking Out Loud About the Holidays

I was up until 2am last night. Thinking about Christmas. For the past week or so I've been trying to decide how we're going to "do" Christmas, now that we have started a family. The commercialization and buying frenzy that goes on around Christmas really makes me physically sick to my stomach and I want to make sure that within our little family, we never get caught up in that side of the holiday. I want it to be focused on family and traditions and the real reason for celebrating in the first place. Not "having" to buy gifts, stressing about wrapping/entertaining/cramming every possible holiday thing into a couple of weeks, etc.

What I decided to do with our kid(s) is to give 4 gifts from us -- something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read -- one Santa gift (something bigger) and a stocking with craft/hobby supplies or something to add to a collection along with an orange and a little treat. We will also focus on giving mostly handmade gifts.




I have been thwarted a bit in my goal to make/buy handmade as some last minute plans mean I won't even be home for the majority of the month. I've already been gone for two weeks and after one day at home, I'll be gone for another 3 weeks. This will leave me one week before Christmas to make a couple of handmade things (mostly William's). I have purchased a couple of handmade-by-others gifts, however. For the remaining gifts (besides a couple purchases from Amazon) I am going to buy local.

So anyway, exciting post, huh? This is just what has been keeping me up at night and I'm so happy to have it like, all figured out. Maybe I'm a freak to be so obsessively worried about it right now, or at all, but I like having a plan.

William and I are off to Utah for Thanksgiving on Sunday and will be there for 3 weeks. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all you kids, and I'll catch ya lata.

Sorry again for the lame, boring, picture-less post.

Hello December

Home.
Thank you all for your concern and love. The situation isn't something I can talk about now -- or hopefully ever -- but I do appreciate your messages. Truthfully, out of everyone affected by this, I'll be affected the least. I should be grateful for that even while I do hurt for the others. This will end up being a pretty long, drawn-out thing and all I can hope for is for us to make it through. It's completely out of any one's hands at this point. Thank you so much for your friendship though, all of you. You girls are the best. Please don't worry about me.

So, on to something else now. Thanksgiving. We spent 8 days in Utah with my whole family and we had a blast. We flew up and William did great -- he slept the entire time on all four flights we had up and back. My side of the family got to meet Will for the first time and everyone was stoked and loved him (of course).

So, I'm a huge procrastinator. I've been getting better in my old age, but I still do it from time to time. I planned on getting all these birthday presents done before baby showed up but kept putting some of them off and now they're late. I finally finished these two aprons that were supposed to get to Kelly and Christie last month. Oops! Forgive me, I have a new baby. At least now I have an excuse for procrastinating. :) Also forgive the bad photos. It was really bad lighting. The pattern is based pretty much on the Vintage Apron pattern in, of course, Bend-The-Rules.


(Pretend to be surprised when these get to you, girls. They're going in the mail today!)

Will and I took a walk today. It's pretty chilly and windy, but the sun and sky are beautiful. It was really nice and helped me clear my mind a bit. Though it was depressing to put on a sweatshirt that used to be too big, only to find out that it's pretty tight now. I've got some serious work to do on my fitness.

Happy December all!

Oh Goody.

Alright, so you realize that you'll have to put up with a gratuitous number of baby photos now, don't you?
William had his 1 month check-up yesterday and has gained exactly 2 pounds (9lb 14oz) and grown an inch (22in). He's getting so big already! What the heck?

Okay, Suzy tagged me, so that's why we're here (well, and cause I had to show off the above photo)...

A. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
B. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog, for these rules.

1) Giving birth has made me realize that I can do anything. Being in pain and working that hard for that long made any other possible task seem like a piece of cake! I feel so much more confident in myself now. It's amazing. I've never felt like this about myself before.

2) The holidays haven't even happened yet but I'm already starting to feel that let-down/post-holiday depression. Thanksgiving is next week! And Christmas will be here and gone so fast. The first couple weeks of January are always a bummer. Everything is just going too fast for me. Can't the holiday season last a couple more months please?

3) We've already discussed this at length here, but can I just express one more time how much I love anything with pumpkin in it? I mean really now. It's such a delicious squash (is it a squash? or what?). Kelly made a pumpkin soup while we were staying at her house and it was so so good. And I had a pumpkin scone from Starbucks today for "lunch". Give me more pumpkin stuff please.

4) Speaking of pumpkin scones, that's really the last thing I need to be eating right now. I have a large number of pounds to lose post-baby. The "oh, I'll lose the weight after I have the baby" mentality is just plain stupidity. It would have been much easier to have been anal about everything I ate WHILE pregnant so as to not gain the weight in the first place. But somehow the fact that I KNEW that even while doing the opposite didn't have much of an effect.

5) The loveliest golden glow is coming through the living room windows right now. I wish a photo could acurately capture the moment. Some things just have to be lived though.

6) I procrastinated (what?! me!? procrastinate?! that's un-heard of!) the making of two birthday presents and didn't get them done before William was born. And now it's taking me a million years to get them done cause I'm only able to work on them for 15 minutes at a time. So now one of them is going to be late. Dag yo!

Good thing I only had to think of six things -- I was struggling to think of that many AND William just woke up so it's time to go. Goodness I have the cutest baby in the world. If you need proof, please go back to the beginning of this post. See? Told ya.

I tag Christen, Alissa, Ruth, Lisa, Trevor and Adelyn!