I love the ultrasound lady!

The ultrasound lady at my OB's office is my new best friend! Sure, I'm a crazy freak who is planning a homebirth, but I love my ultrasounds. Today we went in for our 2nd ultrasound to recheck a few things that didn't look right last time and suddenly this beautiful picture appeared on the screen! We weren't planning a 3D ultrasound but when the tech saw him in this position she decided it was time for us to get a better pic and so she flipped a switch and this is what we saw! I almost cried!!! I got to see him opening his little eyes and move his little fingers and it was so SWEET!!!

For the record, I always thought these pictures were creepy and never really saw the need to spend $100 for the 3D scan but you know what? When it's your kid you are looking at, it's darn cute!!!!

What I want...

This is what I want right now. When I say right now I really do mean right now. It's a sandwich from Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh, PA. Hands down the best place to go after a night out and exactly what I'm craving right now in my 20th week of pregnancy. Too bad I'm nearly 800 miles from PA. Sure, it looks weird and gross but it's damn good! I'd do just about anything for one of these right now. If we had a primanti's within 2 hours of here I'd probably go every week. If you can't tell from the picture, I'll tell you what's on these famous sandwiches. You get your choice of meat or egg, or both (I usually get hot italian sausage or pastrami) topped with cheese, tomato, coleslaw and thick french fries fresh out of the fryer. All this between two thick slices of fresh italian bread and there you have it. Heaven on a plate :) Well, that's how I feel about it this week. Next week I'm sure it will be something else, hopefully something containing a decent amount of fresh veggies and a lot less fat!

Yes, I've made many posts about food. I'm realizing that now, but hey I'm pregnant so I have a good excuse, right?

New Recipes to try!

I'm back on Allrecipes.com again, looking for a meal for tonight and on the front page was this Carrot Muffin Recipe. Gotta try that if I have time. Great way to sneak in some carrots. I'll use half whole wheat flour and half the amount of brown sugar will be substituted for Agave nectar. Love that stuff. Hopefully the kids will love it!

No clue what we're having for dinner now!

It's a boy!

I'm late in posting this, but most of my friends and family already know we found out on Monday that this little one is a boy!!!! I love that each of my kids gets a brother and a sister and that they each have a sibling of the same gender to grow up with. Granted, the difference between my two girls is 8 years but they have such a special bond that the age difference barely matters.

Nicholas has been told that he'll need to share his room with the baby someday and he's fine with that, but he does not want to give up his crib. He tells me that the baby will sleep in the firetruck toddler bed that sits unused in his room. He's 27 months old right now and wants nothing to do with any sort of bed other than his crib. He calls it his "bootiful cib" We still have plenty of time to work on that, as the baby will probably cosleep for the first 6-8 months or so. Keeping him in his crib is nice since he can be a little too adventurous. It's nice to keep him confined and out of trouble til he gets a little more common sense!

Anyway, here is my baby boy! We didn't get a very good picture, but I need to go back in 4 weeks for another scan so maybe a better picture is coming.

Lollipop Slippers

A few weeks ago, Maddie asked me to knit a pair of lollipop slippers for her and chose this yarn from my stash. Unfortunately I don't know the type of yarn or name of the colorway since I bought this yarn from another mama who was purging her stash and I'm not experienced enough to know by sight and touch. I used the Little Turtle Knits Stripey Slipper pattern but I didn't do the stripes. I've made this pattern a few times and never tried stripes actually. I think it covers my mistakes better!

Keilbasa Apple Pasta Bake

This is yummy stuff! I've been making this for years every autumn and it's my husband's favorite. I made it for dinner last night and thought I'd share the recipe. As you can see, it's not organic or healthy in any way, but I bet you could use healthier ingredients like organic milk and cheese, whole wheat pasta, and organic turkey sausage. If you try it, please leave a comment and let me know what you think :)

Kielbasa Apple Pasta Bake

1 lb rigatoni
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 large onion, sliced
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 quart milk
3 Fuji apples, cut up into 1 inch cubes
3 cups extra sharp cheddar cheese
1 package fully cooked kielbasa, sliced

Heat oven to 350 and coat a 10 cup baking dish with cooking spray.

In a large deep pot, cook rigatoni.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan heat oil over med-high heat. Add onion, cook until soft. Stir in flour, cook 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil. Boil 1 minute.

Stir in 2 cups of cheese into milk. Stir until melted, then toss pasta, cheese sauce, kielbasa and apples. Spoon into baking dish and bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle 1 cup of cheese and bake an additional 10 minutes.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Yesterday we spent the morning at our local state park's observation farm. The weather was perfect, the animals were friendly and the kids had a blast!

Update on the recipe list!

I never did update about those recipes, huh? Well a few people asked so I'll give my reviews.

Rachael Rays Peanut butter and bacon on Banana Bread

This was good, though I like my banana bread recipe better so I'll use my own recipe next time. The bacon flavor didn't stand out as I expected. It seemed to be all bread and just a little pnut butter and bacon. My banana bread recipe can be sliced a little thinner than RRs without crumbling, so I'll use mine, cut the bread thin and use more bacon for more even flavoring.

Curried Hummus

This was okay. You'd think a curry lover like me would have been all over this recipe, but I made it, tried it and it sat in the fridge til my friend tossed it after realizing it had been in there for way too long. I'll stick to the hummus recipe I usually use. In fact I just made a batch yesterday and Nicholas ate a bowl of it with a spoon. The boy will have garlic breath forever now!

Bodacious Broccoli Salad

This was really good! I wouldn't change a thing. My teenager even ate it, so if she likes it anyone will like it!

Rachael Ray's cold ginger soy and honey noodles

I never got around to trying this one, but I will. Maybe today. This was planned for a lunch food for my teenager. Unfortunately she forgot her lunch container at school and until she brings it home, she's getting pb&j, apples and grapes for lunch in her brown bag. Hopefully soon she'll get sick of it and want some real food.

Wow! I'm really gonna have a baby!!!

I'm 18 weeks pregnant today. I tested positive before the 4 week mark, so you'd think by now I'd be used to it. I'm not though. I've seen this child on ultrasound at 7 weeks, listened to his/her heartbeat many times. I even borrowed a doppler from my wonderful midwife so that I could reassure myself when having moments of doubt. I don't feel pregnant and seem to forget all the time that certain things might not be a good idea, like having a glass of wine, or an extra cup of coffee. The other day I was working outside sealing our deck and a friend mentioned "Is that okay with the chemicals?" For about a half a second I had to think about what she was talking about. Oh yeah, there's a baby in there!

It's not that I totally forget completely every day, though. I do check my blood sugar from time to time since I had some blood sugar problems in the beginning that miraculously got better on their own. I'm slightly worried about developing gestational diabetes, so I'm careful about what I eat. I take my prenatal vitamins daily. Please don't think I'm just ignoring this pregnancy and living on the edge (though that would only mean that I'm eating sushi and drinking an extra cup of coffee every day!). It's just that many many times throughout the day I get this reality check that yes I am pregnant.

I think today it's finally hitting me. I'm 18 weeks exactly today. Three days ago I went to a prenatal with my midwife and her assistants. Monday we are going in for our big ultrasound with the OB. I hope this baby will reveal himself/herself because I think once we know the gender it will be easier to bond.

This morning I was reading a message board and someone a really cool ticker that said she was 18 weeks, so I had to go get one for myself.

I've been scrapping!

Would you believe I have over 3400 pictures on my pc?? That's insane! They date all the way back to 1999. The reason I have them all is because I have great intentions of making digital scrapbook pages with all of them, so I take out my old photo discs, load the photos onto the computer and forget about them in favor of more recent pictures. I will eventually catch up I hope, but in the meantime this is what I've done recently. I'm still learning photoshop, so these need some improvement, but I think they are pretty good.

The 2Cute and Oak Mountain pages are ploppers from the freebie gallery at Digital Scrapbook Place.

The Jiminy peak page elements came from the freebie download section at Scrapbook Bytes

Ice Princess

Madelyn is taking Ice Skating classes at our local skate school and I'm so proud of her. By the end of the very first class she was already able to skate on her own with no help from her instructor.

She's even signed up to be in the annual Christmas show, which occurs during our town's annual Tree Lighting Ceremony.

Recipes I'd like to try

Recipes I want to try….


Lately I’ve been on a quest to find healthy lunchbox foods that my family will love. Kayla doesn’t have the option of heating things so this is a little bit of a challenge for me.

I’ve been doing some searching and found a few things I’d like to try….

Rachael Rays Peanut butter and bacon on banana bread- sounds weird, but I like weird
http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipe/28031/

Rachael Ray’s cold ginger soy and honey noodles
http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipe/27794/

Curried Hummus
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Curried-Hummus/Detail.aspx

Bodacious Broccoli Salad
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bodacious-Broccoli-Salad/Detail.aspx

After I try these, I'll update with reviews :)

So everything really is made in China!

Like everyone else, I've read all the articles about recalls for items that were made in China. This scares me. Luckily we don't buy many Mattel toys, so I didn't have anything to worry about during the most recent round of Mattel recalls. I triple checked the list and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized we have none of the recalled toys in our home.

Then, a few weeks later, I read another article regarding pajamas made in China. That scares me too. I am assuming that these nasty chemicals don't wash out, since they are meant to make the clothing flame resistant and it would make sense to make them flame resistant after washing, right? Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to market them as flame resistant. Luckily we usually only buy 100% cotton clothing for the kids and none of that is flame resistant.

Of course since I like to sew when I have time, I have a pretty decent stash of fabric in my closet, most of which was probably milled in China. I know most new fabrics are finished with something to make them look nice in the store, but that washes away after a couple washes so I'm not so worried about that although I will be cautious when fabric shopping in the future.

Just to be on the safe side, I decided that whenever possible I will only buy products made in the US or at the very least NOT from China.

This is turning out to be very difficult. During this past week, I got sick and tired of shelling out $2 for lunch money every day for my 13 year old and I began thinking about things that I could pack for her that she will eat. I also dislike the cost and wastefulness of disposable food storage. Luckily, just as I started considering my alternatives, my friend Hayes sent an email asking if anyone would like to order some Laptop Lunches with her.

These Laptop lunches looked great to me, but being the bargain hunter that I am, I decided to look around at local stores to see if I could find something just as effective but cheaper locally. I went to Target, Walmart, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Would you believe that I only found one suitable alternative that was not made in China? This is insane!!! There were some really good products on the shelves, but all of them were made in China.

I managed to find on lunch box type container that was made in Mexico. It was cheap and barely held together but it wasn't made in China so I bought it and that is what she's been using for her lunch.

I decided that the Laptop Lunches were the only acceptable choice since they are made in the US and seem to be a reputable company.

This is turning out to be a really long post, huh? Anyway, my quest for decent food storage containers led me into the world of bento boxes, where I began reading about people who arrange their kids's food in elaborate ways to resemble hearts, stars, flowers, dolls and other objects. This looks like fun to me and I figured I'd give it a try so today I go out in search of a few things: mini muffin pans, party picks and cookie cutters to get me started

First I went to Bed Bath and Beyond. The selecton of mini muffin pans was small. I did find what I was looking for, but all were made in China. Walmart is next door, so I dragged the kids through the parking lot and we made our way into the superstore. I hate Walmart, but sometimes you just gotta go in there. I found one mini muffin pan that was made in Indonesia, so I bought it. Not sure if that is any better, but at least it didn't say made in China! I'm going to need to do a little online shopping for some other things I need to buy.

I think I'm going to make a post with a list of US made products that I buy, as I buy them so that others can take a look as well. Obviously it won't be a complete list, but at least it will be something.

A cake!

Today we celebrated Nick's 2nd Birthday!!!! I decided at the last minute to bake him a Blues Clues cake. Blues Clues (or coos coos as he says) is his most favorite show ever. The boy can spot a paw print anywhere and loves to let the world now he found "A Clue! A Clue!" about 5 thousand times a day!

So, at the 4pm, I decided to bake a cake from scratch, and make dinner at the same time. This is what I came up with....

I finally got to sew some things :)

As I said in a previous post I made up my first sewing pattern for my daughter. It's nothing special, but I'm pretty proud of myself for thinking up something that actually works. I based it on a dress we already have and changed it over and over again til I ended up with something I like. I finaly had the time to make a few dresses for Maddie. One of them has a coordinating stripe shirt and leggings to go underneath for some layering during colder weather.

Here she is modeling her new dresses :)

I'm so tired!

Whew, what a day! Kayla and I are the only people in this house who are not sick at the moment and my goodness we've had a day. Poor Nicholas looks like a different child, his eyes are so swollen and goopy. Madelyn's voice is hoarse and her chest hurts. Mike came home from work and went straight to bed at 4pm. He was lucky enough to sleep til 7:30 and went back to bed at 9. Lucky him. One thing I really wanna know is, why I can't sleep like that when I'm sick!

On a good note, I managed to make my first ever sewing pattern that actually works! I had this dress for Maddie that we just love on her but it is very well loved and getting to be kind of worn out so I decided to make a copy of it. I traced and sewed and revised over and over again til I came up with something I like enough. The funny thing is that it looks nothing like the original but I like my version even better so yay for me! It takes 30 minutes to sew up completely but I do assembly line sewing and I had no time today so I have three half finished sundresses that I cannot wait to photograph tomorrow.

I lost 2 pounds!!!

Okay this might not seem like a big deal to you, but for me this is huge. Do you know why? Because I didn't even really try. Sure, I go to the gym about 3 times a week and I've made a committment to not eat after 7:30 pm, but that is IT! That is all I've been doing and I lost 2 pounds!!!!

I like going to the gym, because it gives my little ones a chance to play with some other kids for 2 hours or so, I get a break and if I can get my oldest daughter to come with me, we get some bonding time...well, not really but that's what I'm hoping for. Usually she slowly pedals on the bike next to me saying "can we go yet?" but hey, a mom can dream right?

I started 2006 weighing about 195 (205 if you ask the scale at Curves, but whatever) and I joined Curves. The problem with Curves is that they close at 7 and they don't have childcare, and they only have one type of training. So, I got sick of not going because my husband wasn't getting home in time to watch the kids and I cancelled my membership there and joined a women's only fitness center that has childcare for almost the same cost monthly. They have lots of different classes, all types of machines, including a circuit that is just like what I was doing at Curves. Besides that they have 5 tvs and 4 stereos, so you can plug in your headphones to whatever machine you are using, choose a channel and listen to tv or a cd that you bring form home. They even have a tanning bed and sauna and steam room which I don't use but it's nice to know they are there. Childcare is offered for 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon, so I can go without having to leave the house the second my husband gets in the door. They are open til 9, so even if I don't go during the day with the kids, I have time after they go to bed at night. I love it!

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I started the year at 195, managed to get down to 179 at one point this fall but with Thanksgiving, then a cruise a week later, then after the vacation Christmas....I was back up to almost 194 (193.8 to be exact). I was soooooo upset by this but decided to just try to do better.

On a message board that I'm a part of, we were challenged to not eat after 7:30 pm. I decided to take part, half thinking it wouldn't make a bit of difference anyway because I don't really have my head together enough to strictly follow any real diet. Since then I haven't had anything to eat past 7:30 and I weighed myself today at lo and behold the scale actually said 191!!!!!

Can I lose 50 pounds or more by just not eating past 7:30 and exercising 3 times a week? Probably not, but until I'm ready to jump into the South Beach diet (which I love because it really is perfect), this will be a good start.

Hi!

Okay, my old blog was getting neglected so I decided to start a new one. I need a place to write and ramble on and on so here goes. I also need a place to share my pics and my new love, digital scrapbooking. Today my friends Hayes and Jennifer came over today to help me. My family is going through a tough time right now and today I was in need of major support. These two wonderful women came over early with lots of food and took care of my kids, cleaned my kitchen and play room, and kept me company so I didn't go crazy. I love these ladies and their children. Hayes has her own blog at www.mamaj.blogspot.com.

I wanted to do the 365 photo project and I probably took a photo a day since Jan 1, but never got around to posting them anywhere. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to pick some and post as many as I can from the past 15 days. Today I'm going to post some of my digital scrapbook pages.


These are my two daughters. Kayla is 12 and Madelyn is almost 4 years old. I made this layout using free downloads from www.shabbyprincess.com and www.digitalscrapbookplace.com.





This is my son Nicholas. He's 19 months old and plays in the sink almost every day so I decided to make a page with some recent pictures of him getting wet. The page was made with freebies from www.digitalscrapbookplace.com