Father's Day 2013

Happy Belated Father's Day to any dad-readers out there! I hope you had a wonderful day full of time with your kids, barbecue, and beer (isn't that what all Dads want?). We spent the afternoon at my brother and sister-in-law's house enjoying family, food, and some gorgeous weather. 

One night last week before Joe got home from work I took some updated pics for his "DAD" frame. Look how big my baby has gotten!

7 Months in 2012 and 19 months in 2013

Not my best photography work but I was on borrowed time and it is much harder getting decent shots of a very active 19 month old than it was with a not-yet-crawling 7 month old. 

I also put together a little beer-themed gift to give to the boys at my brothers. I found "Beer Cheese Dip Mix" from the Beer Bread Company at a local store and ran with the idea. While picking up the ingredients for the dip I brought (see below), I also found "Backyard Brew" marinade mix from McCormick Grill Mates and "Cheddar and Ale" pretzel nuggets by Pretzel Pete. 

I packaged them together and gifted them with a 6-pack of some seasonal summer beer. I have no pic with the actual beer because (as usual) I neglected to be prepared and pick the beer up ahead of time, but you get the idea.

Anyway, on to the food...back in December I had the opportunity to snack on a delicious Loaded Baked Potato Dip at a Christmas party my friend Michelle hosted. It was delicious and I have been thinking about it ever since. I knew this would be the perfect chance to attempt it. I googled around, found one that seemed simple, and pinned it last week:

Source: Comfy in the Kitchen, credited to Hormel

It was super easy to make - just gather your ingredients, mix, and bake!

I saved a little bit of the cheese, bacon, and onions to garnish the top. 

The Verdict: Delicious! I don't think it was quite the same version as what I had last year, but still tasty. It can definitely be addicting (especially when paired with salty chips) and its not healthy so you might want to avoid this if you are trying to watch what you eat.

Things to Consider: Not much to say - just that it takes about 45 minutes in the oven so give yourself time for that. And its best served a couple minutes out of the oven.

Loaded Baked Potato Chip Dip

Source: Comfy in the Kitchen

Author: Hormel 

Prep time:  5 mins

Cook time:  45 mins

Total time:  50 mins

Serves: 8

 

Ingredients

• 1 (16 oz) container sour cream
• 1 (3 oz) jar Hormel REAL Bacon bits
• 2 cups freshly shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 (8 oz) cream cheese
• 1 cup chopped green onions

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Mix all ingredients well with mixer.
3. Place in an oven safe casserole dish.
4. Bake for 30 mins covered, then an additional 15 mins uncovered.
5. Serve with potato chips!

Notes

Make sure to use REAL bacon bits/crumbles, or you may also make your own bacon bits. Do not use imitation.

Better Small Product Photography

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite bloggers –Katie Bower, posted a how-to on small product photography. I think her intended audience is for those who sell products online (like etsy). I don't sell anything but I figured some of the tips might be helpful for blog photos.

I immediately pinned the post so I could remember to go back and give her tips a try one day. Well that day was last Sunday.

BowerPowerBlog.com

Before I show you how it went, I have to say, Grace is the one with the nice camera and Photoshop. I just have a cheap point & shoot camera from Target. The small amount of editing I do (i.e. cropping) is done with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

I took two poster boards and set them up as Katie showed on her blog.

The poster board was sliding and not staying in place so I used some books to hold it in place.

To hold the vertical board up, I used a jar.

I used a starfish as my test subject. Here’s how it would look normally if I was taking a picture of it.

Look at that ugly rug! I've found a few new rugs that I like but haven't been able to bite the bullet and spend the money on one.

Unfortunately it was a cloudy day so I don’t think the pictures came out as great as they could have. Here’s how it looked on the poster board.

I made sure that any light was behind me.

I think they the all white background makes whatever you photographing look crispier.

You may have noticed that I used this technique when capturing my Oreo Truffle Brownies.

I see a small improvement but I am definitely going to keep trying to better my photography skills.  Katie provides a great deal of tips in her blog post – be sure to check it out!

Grace's Goals 1st Quarter Check In

As Shannon mentioned on Monday, we wanted to give a quick recap on the progress with our 2013 Goals. According to my very short google search, most people give up on their resolutions by January 9th (or at least the Brits do). While there are many things I haven't even started yet (like a 2012 Family Yearbook or even taking my sewing machine out of the closet), I don't want to dwell on that stuff. Instead I am going to focus on the stuff I am working on.

As far as keeping myself organized, I am slowly but surely going through our closets and purging and sorting. I am (for the most part) keeping them straightened up as well. To help out with that, I made some chalkboard labels for the coat closet:

I have some more plans for my bedroom closet (I am thinking something like this) and the pantry, but for the most part we are more organized than we were in 2012.

On the blog front, I have been keeping up with my at-least-once-a-week goal. I think I am above average at this point having a couple weeks with double posts. I am also slowly (very slowly) working on some Photoshop skills. This Valentine's Day card took entirely too long to figure out:

but I know its going to take some time. I am on a Photoshop hiatus though since we have started on another goal: working on the office. I came home from a couple hours out with JJ two weekend ago to this:

When Joe says "don't be alarmed when you go upstairs" you know he's working on something. This is what I came home to - I guess we are starting on the office!

The contents of the office (well some of the contents of our office) in the hallway. Joe started on the cabinet transformations kit and we are officially underway!

Lastly, the personal "Be More Active/Take Better Care of Myself" Goal. I feel like this is the one I have been working on the hardest. I am taking a multivitamin (and some additional calcium) everyday and getting salads for lunch instead of a sandwich or soup. I also cut snacks out from my weekdays and eat yogurt with low fat granola for breakfast daily. The hardest part has been working out. I started the P90x program 11 weeks ago. I am getting up at 5am every weekday to do my workout and have added in some extra cardio on a couple times a week as well. I average about 7 works-outs a week and all of the effort has netted a whopping 6 lb weight loss.

I posted this pic on my personal instagram a couple weeks ago so please forgive the quality. Each red mark is a work out in the month of February. Yes I realize its 2013 and no one uses a paper planner anymore, but I like seeing the visual of each workout written down.

6 pounds in 11 weeks. I feel like I could have lost that in the first month alone and I am starting to get a little frustrated. I realize the P90 program involves weight lifting and I am building muscles, but I don't feel that different - its not like I am down 2 pants sizes or anything. I am trying to remind myself that 6 pounds is still 6 pounds. And that losing slowly is better in the long run. And the days that I work out I do have a lot more energy throughout the day and sleep better at night. I am not ready to give up yet - but I might need to come to terms with the fact that I might not be bikini ready by the summer.

So I still have some work to do: try a sewing project, hang some stuff on my walls, take more progress pics, make some sensory boxes, and lose some more weight. But I feel like I am making some good progress and still have 8ish more months to work on it all. How about you guys? Anyone still working on their resolutions? Anyone struggling with losing weight too?

Stay tuned for our next Goals Check In sometime in June!

Easter Recap

This post might be a little shorter than I originally planned. Over the weekend Joe dismantled our office and therefore our computer in order to get started on finally making it look nice (see home-related goals.) As a result I am on the laptop now with limited access to pics and no photoshop. I am going to do the best that I can with the pics still on my memory card...

I got home from work a little early on Friday afternoon and had a little photoshoot with JJ. Here are some choice outtakes:



Yes, I bribe my son with water bottles.



"Ok, enough of this Mom"

I decided to use this one and add a cute message. I printed out a couple copies to give to family we would see, and emailed it out to those we would not:

Saturday I started baking. My intent was to create this adorable "Carrot Cake" as seen in this pin:


Source: The Partiologist

using some sugar free (and therefore diabetic friendly) cake mixes I searched for. My plan was to use this recipe for the carrots and this one for the chocolate cake. My first issue was that I couldn't find an extra long loaf pan anywhere. So I went for the deepest cake pan I could find at (where else?) Michaels and after some brainstorming with Joe we thought to make two rows of carrots and just cut the cake down the middle. I should have seen the disaster coming at this point. I made the orange cake Saturday, let it cool, then used a pennant cookie cutter I had some a sports pack to cut triangles:

It was very very messy and pretty frustrating. But I soldiered on and froze the little carrots and before I went to put froze them in the pan. In between, I whipped up some puffy sugar cookies knowing that I would have some sort of backup. They came out delish:

Sunday morning, after JJ explored his basket:

You like our "babyproofing" of the fireplace opening? "Use what you got" is the motto in this house!

I set out to make the chocolate cake. I mixed it up, boiling water, chocolate shavings and all...

and poured it over the carrots. I have no pictures of this because it was a mess. They didn't really "stick" to the pan so they floated up a bit when I poured. Also, the chocolate cake batter didn't cover the tops of them. Still, I cleaned it up best I could and threw it in the oven. It took almost an hour for it to cook completely. By then, the carrots that had floated up were hard and it was very misshapen. I took a break from the whole thing and let Joe try and save it. I then made this icing following the tips in the comments by warming up the milk to dissolve the pudding mix and I still ended up with lumpy icing. This, I am ashamed to say, is the final product:

I bought oreos to make a "dirt" topping and cute little fondant leaves, but after two days of baking and this was the best I could get, I gave up on making it pretty.

I will say, though, that when cut correctly, it did make a carrot (sort of):



Although my baking was a frustrating mess, overall our Easter was lovely. I took a vacation day on Monday and the family just recovered, relaxed and enjoyed some playground time. I will leave you with a pic of my little man rocking his sweater vest and bunny bib while playing with his new toothbrush (if only he actually liked getting his teeth brushed!):

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend! 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I know its a "Greeting Card Holiday" and very commercialized, but I can't help myself from getting into it. It probably goes back to my flowershop days (did Shannon and I ever mention we both worked at a local flowershop when we were in high school? Kelsey worked there too!). While sometimes it seemed like torture to be cleaning the thorns of literally thousands of roses, it always smelled sweet and the arrangements were so beautiful.

Anyway, another reason why I am into it? JJ is a stud. He has a couple girlfriends he likes to send Valentines to. He likes to send some to his cousins too. Last year he sent some little stuffed animals and generic "first valentine's day" cards but I wanted to do something a little more personalized this year. I saw adorable hand print valentines like this one:


Source: time2saveworkshops.com

but the thought of covering JJ's hands in paint made me twitch. I could just see red and pink paint all over his highchair, his hair, his face, and my kitchen. I did see a couple pins for edible finger paints (like this), but I didn't think it would make a good hand print. Then Shannon sent me this pin:


Source: We Heart It

A thumbprint seemed a lot more reasonable. So I gathered my supplies which included a red stamp pad and pack of blank Valentine's Day cards from the dollar spot at Target and got to work.

I tried occupying JJ with a crayon and some paper thinking I would be able to distract him from what I was doing with his other hand, but he didn't quite get that you have to move the crayon back and forth and not just bang it up and down. We are working on it.

 

Regardless, I managed to get him to surrender his thumb long enough to make a bunch of "hearts" on the bottom of each card. I use the term hearts loosely because they turned out nothing like the pin.

 

To help the recipients know its supposed to be a heart, I just drew a heart around each one and filled out the rest of the card.

I slipped each card in an envelope along with an Elmo Valentine's day book and sent them out to his friends Ella and Vanessa, his cousin Emma, and his Godmother Katie (hoping she will read the book to his cousin Sal). We hope everyone enjoys them!

Not only does JJ have a couple friends/cousins his around his age, he also has a bunch of older ladies in his life. Aunts, Great Aunts, Grandmas, etc. I wanted them to have a special valentine from JJ too. For this, I was sort of inspired by a combination of this pin:

I don't have the original source but I got the image from here.

 and what I did for Father's Day. I got the letters L, O, V, and E from Michaels and painted them red and pink. Then I set JJ up for a photoshoot. Much more difficult to get him to stay seated at 15 months than it was at 7 months. Here are some choice outtakes:

Yum.

I am just not interested.

What's down there??



Joe trying to snag Percy from his hands.

I then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to make a collage in Photoshop Elements. I thought I would just put together the 4 photos, but I realized the letters were a bit small and I wasn't sure I could get them all the same size and have JJ at the same proportion so I added a big shot in the middle with the word spelled out. I am getting better at adding text (can you tell from the pins Shannon and I have be making?) so I added the little message on the right. Here is my final product:

 

The red shirt/red letter combination wasn't a great idea and I probably should have put some shoes on the kid too, but I didn't want him to get excited and think we were going bye-byes. It could totally use some work, but I didn't think it was too bad for my first "project". I think his grandmas, aunts, and everyone else liked them.

We hope everyone has a wonderful, love filled Valentine's Day! <3

Grace's 2013 Goals

Resolutions - sounds so old school, doesn't it? Does anyone say "I resolve to organize more!"? Naturally the start of the new year brings promise of change: starting that diet, finally painting that room, cleaning out your closets (and keeping them clean), yada, yada, yada. I am guilty of setting myself up for failure every year with a huge list of things to get done. While I don't plan on giving up on that list idea entirely this year - I love making lists - I am going to try and be a bit more realistic. And maybe putting it out there for the world to see will make me a little more accountable. So without further ado, below are my 2013 (somewhat Pinterest related or inspired) goals:

Personal/Family Goals

Wipe Box Fun Source

Sensory Bin Source

Test out some Toddler Activity type Pins:
Because I work full time, I am usually exhausted by the time the weekend hits. And then I am trying to cram in all the things I need to do: meal planing, cooking, shopping, parties, etc. When we are home, I am guilty of sitting on the couch and watching JJ play. This year I need to put the Ipad down, and test out some of the amazing stuff I have seen out there for kids. Homemade playdough, painting crafts, sensory activities, - all this stuff looks like fun!

Family Yearbook Source

Take more pictures and make Family Yearbooks:
See below for my Photoshop goal, but I definitely want to get all my photos organized and make a nice book for the year. I think its a great idea to get the pics off the computer and out to enjoy. I have to work on the picture taking as well - we tend to take lots of pics of JJ, but not enough as a family and definitely not enough if we are hosting something (like Christmas or a party).

C25K Program

Be more active/Take better care of myself:
Here it is. My obligatory "lose weight resolution". I am to going to lie, I would love to lose 25 lbs. But throwing out that number and starting some crazy diet is only going to set me up for burnout and failure. I want to take this in slow steps and just try and be healthier. Somewhat related to the above, I have gotten super lazy. I mean I can get out of breath giving JJ a bath and putting his pjs on, and no one wants to hear a bedtime story full of huffing and puffing - unless its the Three Little Pigs. I know I get a lot less headaches/migraines when I take care of myself also. So to start, I am going to try and take a multivitamin everyday, drink a lot more water, brown bag my lunches, and stop buying junk (peanut m&m's - I'm looking at you). Once I get into the groove with that, I can set up some bigger plans. I also plan on attempting the Couch to 5k program again when it gets a little warmer. I started it at the end of last summer, but got stuck on week 5 for a couple weeks because I could never squeeze in more than 2 runs a week and then after Superstorm Sandy I never went out again.

Blog Related Goals

Post at least once a week (or on average 4 times a month):
I fall into the habit of trying out all these pins, taking pics, and uploading them to the computer, but then never typing up the post. Before I know it, I have 10 things to post about, and it seems so overwhelming. I think by setting aside one night a week, I can type up one post and take it at a nice slow pace.

Remember to take progress pics:
I don't want to keep typing the phrase "I forgot to take pics of that". I know its going to happen, but I want to make a conscience effort to remember to snap some pics as I go along.

Learn Photoshop Elements:
I was lucky enough to receive Photoshop Elements 11 for Christmas. Let's face it, my pics can use a lot of help. I thought I would be able to install the program, play around a little bit, and come out with these amazing pics and graphics for the blog. I thought that knowing Autocad would help me out and I would be able to use those skills. Boy was I wrong. I am sure its very user friendly, but I have no idea how to even start. I started googling online videos and looking around for some books, but I am not sure I want to drop more money on that right now.

Home Related Goals

Office Idea: Cabinet Refinishing Kit for Built in Desk

Office Idea Source: Paint bookshelves fun color

Work on the office:
I am currently typing this post from our "home office". It is the last room left in our house with the original yellow-oak moldings. We have never painted the walls, put up any window treatments, or done anything design related. Its honestly just a dumping ground for everything. There are piles of crafting stuff, the cards from JJ's birthday party, tons of books, misc video game stuff, etc. Joe and I bought a cabinet refinishing kit for the built in desk like a year ago, but its still sitting in the box. This year, I want to tackle this room and make it a nice office and maybe eventually mini play room. I have lots of ideas, I just need to bite the bullet and start working on the trim.

Organized Pantry Source

Organized Cabinet Source

Keep Closets organized:
I have been slowly cleaning out and organizing my cabinets and closets the last few weeks. I did the pantry, my baking cabinet, a storage cabinet where we keep platters and stuff, a closet in our family room, and the coat closet. They look great. The problem is, they will quickly creep back to their cluttered disorganized states. I hope to keep up with how nice they are now, so I don't have to repeat the whole process all over again in a year. I still need to work on my clothes closet and the office closets, but they are going to take a lot of work.

Hang up some stuff:
I have a gallery wall in my upstairs hallway that's about 60% finished. I need to bite the bullet and go buy the last of the Ikea frames I need. But aside from those pics, JJ's room, and maybe 8 things hung up in the whole downstairs, I have nothing on the walls. Nothing has been hung in our master bedroom in the 4 years we have been here. Nothing in the bathrooms upstairs, nothing in the guestroom. I need to work on getting some nice artwork or photos and get them up. It looks like we just moved in upstairs!

Take on at least 1 Sewing Project:

Book Sling Source

I have Shannon's old sewing machine in my craft closet. Its been here for about 3 years. I once tried to thread it, but every time I went to sew, the thread would snap so I am sure I did it wrong. I would love to make some book slings for the family room and JJ's room (his books are out of control), and know it only involves a straight line, so I just need to google around and figure out how to get this thing working.

So there you have it. Seems like a long list, but I don't think anything is too crazy. I am not looking to remodel our kitchen or build an outdoor dining table (although I would love both), just some things I should be able get too or keep up with over the next year. I have some other things I would like to do like work on the backyard and back porch, perhaps sew some other stuff, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don't get around to that stuff. I plan on "checking in" sometime in June and reevaluate the list. Of course I will wrap it up next January and see how I did overall.

Does anyone out there have any goals for 2013? Can anyone point me in the direction of some basic Photoshop Elements tutorials? How about Sewing 101: How to Thread Your Sewing Machine?

Update: Click here to see how I've been doing.