Farmer's Market Finds

Leeland and I met one of my friend's at the Farmer's Market yesterday morning. I was supposed to meet her there at 8am. I had the alarm set for 6am, and I had every intention of getting up early before Leeland woke up (he usually wakes around 730 or 8), getting my shower and spending some good quiet time just me, my Bible and a cup of coffee. That is what I intended, but instead I woke up to the sound of a text message on my phone from my friend at 8am that said "I'm here". I jumped out of bed, threw on shoes, grabbed a Starbucks doubleshot from the fridge, changed Leeland, made a bottle and ran out the door. I was so frazzled and so disappointed in myself for potentially upsetting my friend and also not getting that good time that I had planned with the Lord.

Once we got to the Market, all was well again. I went with the intentions of of buying goat cheese spread, I have been craving it for weeks (and NO, I am NOT pregnant, I just get crazy cravings sometimes). I not only got my delicious goat cheese but a few other things as well-- some fresh eggs, pork country sausage, chipotle pimento cheese, and a 1/2 gallon of chocolate milk.

When we got back from the Market, Leeland was getting fussy and ready for his morning nap. We're very lucky-- Leeland currently still takes 2 naps a day. Once I got him fed breakfast and down for his nap, I decided to cook myself some breakfast.

So with Leeland down for a nap I got to enjoy my delicious breakfast and get some good reading in and take my shower all after the Farmer's Market. Isn't it funny when we have plans and intentions that don't go as planned but work out for the better. I don't know that anythings better than reading God's Word with a side of fresh eggs and toast with goat cheese!


And I will leave you with a couple smiles from yesterday-- a beautiful weekend it has been, but it's back to work tomorrow.

A boy and his balloon

Floral cupcakes.

I spent my morning today decorating cupcakes for a cook-out that we're going to later this afternoon. I've been trying to do decorations that I have never done before just to get some ideas of what I can and can't do and also build a portfolio for others to check out. So without further a do, I decorated today's cupcakes to appear like hydrangeas!

They aren't bad for a first try-- tips to myself for next time is to do a better job at layering the flowers and petals, making the cupcakes look more full. Also I wonder what it would've looked like if I had alternated the colors and used blue and purple on the same cupcake. All in all, I am pleased with my floral cupcakes.

Friday, fun day.

Today was a rather interesting day-- a day of new things. I'm off work on Fridays which is FABULOUS! I get a nice 3 day weekend where I can solely focus on the house, Daniel and Leeland. This morning we woke up and Daniel had a doctor's appointment and then he had to go to work, so it was mostly just Leeland and I, though I did get to eat lunch with Daniel which was nice.

So back to the story, apparently today was a day for Leeland to show off and try new things. This morning I left him for maybe 2 minutes in the living room playing with his toys- I headed to the potty and to grab a bib for him to wear while eating breakfast. When I came back he had somehow managed to climb onto the couch and was walking around on the couch. As I mentioned the other day, he is walking now all by himself, well apparently he is also climbing. Praise the Lord he didn't fall from the couch. So I get him down from the couch and he proceeds to explore the living room.

The boy is spoiled rotten and has SO many toys and yet he chooses to play with other items around the house. So he also discovered today that drawers open, I guess it was bound to happen eventually. We have a desk in our living room and it has 3 drawers, those are the ones he was playing with. Luckily I was randomly in the cleaning and organizing mood last week so I cleaned out those desk drawers pretty well. He found my stretch bands for working out and he walked around the house with them ALL day long. It's the little things that amuse kids. People told me that it was "all downhill" once he started walking, but I didn't realize he was going to learn all of these things in the same week. The boy is on the move and into everything-- no more breaks for mommy for a while.

So after our eventful morning we had lunch with Daniel before he had to head to work. Chick-Fil-A of course.... Sadly we've become pretty predictable, we're a Chick-Fil-A obsessed family. When Daniel headed to work, Leeland and I headed to the grocery store because it's super-double coupon week.  Can I get a hallelujah! So once groceries were put away and the nap was over, it was time for Mommy to have some fun and try something new.... SALSA!

I got an email the other day about "Salsa Babies", it's a mommy and me style dancing class where the women wear their babies in a carrier and dance. The babies were given maracas to jiggle and enjoy while the mommies were taught the steps. We learned the basic steps to salsa, the meringa and the cha cha. It was a 45 minute class and it went by so quickly. I worked up a sweat and hopefully burned some serious calories and Leeland REALLY enjoyed the dancing and bouncing around. He's very into dancing and music right now. Such a neat idea to dance while wearing your baby! A lot of fun and I would definitely do it again. Happy to say that because I was very nervous going into it. Not sure when I became such an introvert. Daniel says that it has only been since Leeland was born and that it's probably just me trying to be protective of him-- I don't know if that's good or bad? Maybe more on that later.

That is all for now, we just had dinner (grilled chicken caesar salads) so it's time to spend some time with Daniel before he zooms off to his 2nd job. Another busy day in store for tomorrow- hitting the Farmer's Market in the morning (craving some goat cheese) and then I have a bridal shower to go to tomorrow afternoon.

Happy weekend all!!
By the way-- Praise be to God that Leeland and I are both 100% over our sicknesses!! YAY! It only took 2 1/2 weeks, but we feel great!

Toddler!

I have a toddler now! Your child is considered a toddler once they start walking supposedly and Leeland has been furniture walking FOREVER now, but just in the past couple weeks he has really started walking a ton. Each day he gets more and more confidence-- he started with just a few steps and now he's walking pretty much all the time. When he first started walking he had to pull up on a piece of furniture to get started and now he can stand up all by himself in the middle of the floor. It is the most adorable thing I have EVER seen! Each day he is growing more and more into a little man... or little boy. He's not my baby anymore, he's a toddler!! I'm just in shock, I can't believe that I have a toddler.

Pardon the snotty nose in the pictures, we've been sick as I said before-- but he's still SO cute! :0)

Rejected.

Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic with the title of this post, but I have some sad news. I was not accepted to be a vendor at the First Friday Indie Market :0(    I know, I know, I appreciate the virtual hugs and pats on the back. The Indie Market only has 32 spaces and they say that they received tons of applications and I was one of the rejected ones. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed-- I definitely was hopeful for at least the opportunity. But with that said, it's probably for the best for my sanity right now. Leeland and I have been sick for the past 2 weeks, so I have been playing catch up around the house and getting a lot of much needed rest. With all the resting, I haven't done much sewing-- I'm sure you noticed that I have done any recent crafty posts. I had high hopes to do tons of sewing for the market and so far I have only gotten 4 nursing covers done. And here's a peak....

2 nursing covers 

Adjustable neck strap with D rings.

pretty fabric!

So I made 2 nursing covers with the blue fabric and 2 nursing covers with the floral fabric. I'm really happy with them-- they are made of super cute fabric, they have adjustable neck straps and I even added in boning to the top so that the top sticks out and mommy can see baby, but no one else can.

I plan to continue crafting for the market through the next month and I'll apply for the May market. Maybe then I will be more prepared and I'll get accepted :D We'll see. I will definitely be attending the April market and supporting the local vendors and a friend I know who will be there.

Ikea meets the bedroom

So after I spontaneous trip to Ikea yesterday, I began our spring cleaning today and re-organizing a bedroom just a bit. We were having a lot of trouble with our dresser, it's quite old and was a hand-me-down from my sister's house-- we overstuffed it, and a couple of the drawers were refusing to cooperate with us. So what do you do when you need a new dresser? Head to Ikea of course!!

Here are a few before pictures of our bedroom...

Okay, so not only was our dresser falling apart but we were in desperate need of some new bedding. I like the green stripes, don't get me wrong but we let our long clawed dog sleep with us too many nights so there are holes in the bedspread. Sigh. Makes me so mad considering how much we paid for it. We bought it 2 years ago with our wedding money and I had to search REALLY hard for that one.  I know, I know, it's not the greatest (I'll admit that), but my struggle was finding a bedspread that wasn't floral. We were newly married and I wasn't sure how Daniel would feel sleeping in floral, and let me tell you that non-floral bedding is SO SO hard to find. I now feel the pain of all bachelors in America. And though it's quite bold colors, it was working for a while because we live in an apartment with such white walls.

And after....

My apologies for the poor lighting during the pictures, I had just the lamp on because I think that the overhead lighting is hideous. We also still need curtains, but it only took me 2 years to put curtains up in our living room, so we'll see how long it takes to get them up in the bedroom. Can't wait to sleep under our new "duvet"!! I feel fancy saying that.... and it has feathers in it.... real ones. And to answer your question, the dog will NOT be allowed to sleep on the duvet, tonight marks the night of kicking the dog out of our bed, she has hogged her spot for far too long.

Also note that the old dresser became my crafting station-- plenty of space to use the sewing machine and the drawers are still workable for craft supplies, just not everyday workable... unless you like to get frustrated with broken drawers. And now that the sewing machine has a home, I have cleared it from our kitchen table and we can resume dinners at the table as opposed to on the couch. YAY!

Hope everyone else has a productive weekend! We still have a couple closets to clean out and a Goodwill drop off to do before our spring cleaning is finished.

11 months!

Leeland will be 11 months old tomorrow!!!! Wahoo!!! Party planning is in full focus, I've already got the dinosaur plates and napkins along with the cake pan for the dinosaur cake. I will be ordering the dinosaur birthday invitations in the next week along with his birthday boy t-shirt. In the meantime, I took Leeland out for a little photo shoot today at the Bicentennial Gardens. It didn't go as well as I thought it would, 1. He's sick and is having a hard time breathing, and 2. He hasn't been outside much because it is just now starting to warm up so he was very distracted by the grass, mulch, rocks, trees, flowers.... and tried to eat it all.

--Leeland is walking somewhat now! He still does a lot of furniture walking, but walks some on his own taking anywhere from 5-10 steps. He still finds that crawling is faster so it just depends on what he's after and how quick he wants to get there.

--We are gradually weening him off of formula and off of his bottle. We are down to only 2 bottles of formula a day, one in the morning and one at night. The rest of the day, he is eating snacks or drinking organic whole milk from a sippy cup.
--Also should mention that after lots of hard work, he is getting the hang of the sippy cup. We found a sippy cup that he likes and has a good flow for him that he can keep up with. The package said that it was spill proof but we are finding that it's not entirely spill proof so that is the only struggle we are having at this time.

--Leeland is a GREAT eater and is doing really well with his solids. He really likes to eat all sorts of chopped up fruits and vegetables. He also tried chicken tenders for the first time this past month and fell in love with them. (Hence why his birthday party will be at Chick-Fil-A)

--He is such a little sponge these days and enjoys reading and learning. He repeats words after us, some sound clearer than others. Some words that he knows are.... doggy, cup, bottle, ball, bear, baby.


I say this a lot, but we truly are in awe of how fast he is growing, and he is becoming more and more adorable each day. Next month we will be celebrating his 1st birthday and I absolutely cannot wait! We are so in love with our baby boy and we are enjoying every minute, moment, and milestone.

Baby shower cake.

I would like to say congratulations to my cousin Brittany on the wee one that she has been carrying for 8 months now. She is due April 26th with her first son Jacob. Yesterday the family got together to celebrate with a baby shower, and of course I made the cake because that's what I do. Her cake was pound cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting.

My love of Bare Minerals.

My readers may recall my rant about buying cheap make-up in this blog post, at the time Daniel and I were broke and my Bare Minerals, though I am in love with it, and though in my personal opinion it is THE BEST, it can be expensive. Part of the reason it was going to be so expensive at that particular time was that I had ran out of my foundation, mineral veil and blush all at once. That has never happened before, typically it's just one item at a time.
Anyways, since I ranted on and on about my love for my make-up, I thought that I would show you guys exactly why I love my Bare Minerals. The picture you about to see is a bit frightening but here is my before make-up face....

Now, my make- up routine consists first with a little moisturizer. I typically use Aveeno, but this past time I was trying to save a little money and bought the Target brand version, and I actually really like it. You can't even tell a difference!

Next is all over Bare Minerals foundation. My shade is "fairly light" which is the second lightest shade that they make. I don't need anyone to tell me how fair skinned I am, I know I am, and all of my co-workers know how fair I am after I pulled out my skirts a few weeks ago when we had 60 degree weather. Moving on.... after I have done my all over coverage of foundation using the full-coverage brush I fill in a little with the concealer brush if I happen to have blemishes, because, though I am in my mid 20's, I still occasionally break out like I'm 13. Bare Minerals makes a great concealer brush and you just use your regular foundation to conceal. It works like a charm!
Once all of that is done it is time for blush. If you buy the basic Bare Minerals kit, the blush that you will get is called "Warmth" and it is pretty awesome! Anyone who has lived with me or knows me well will know about my love affair with warmth. However I decided to try something new this time when I made my Bare Minerals purchase. It was a risky move considering how much I truly love warmth but they had a new product out and I wanted to give it a try. It is called "Faux and Foxy" and it's supposed to give a summer glow. I would compare it to a bronzer and the color is called "faux tan." The kit came with a cute little full-coverage brush and also some lip gloss. I was hesitant because of my fair skin using a tone that seemed so dark but I just dabbed a little and I think it looks really good. It gives my fair skin a little color. I didn't use the brush that came with it to apply it though, because I didn't want to apply as much that would be considered full-coverage, too much would definitely look ridiculous with such fair skin. I decided to save that cute little brush for applying my foundation. And as far as the lip gloss goes, it feels really nice on and looks decent, I'm just not a lipstick gal so I feel like I look weird in any lip gloss.

So once that's all done, I add my eye liner if I am choosing to wear it that day. Sometimes I feel like it, sometimes I don't. It is also Bare Minerals, the color that I use is a dark brown called "Fashionista" and it came in a kit with 3 other brownish shades and the eye make-up brushes. Once that is done, I add eye shadow if I am wearing it that day, a lot of times I feel like I look better and more natural with out it. And then I do an all over coverage of mineral veil to set my make-up and take away any shine, and then my mascara. That is something that I go cheap on, any girl would recognize the hot pink and green mascara. And I use black of that.

And finally, here is my after picture. A little less scary than my before picture.

And that's it! It only takes me about 5 minutes to do my make-up which is great since we have a little one who doesn't give me much time to get ready. And I know that I said that the Bare Minerals is "expensive" but really if you are just starting out it isn't that bad. The starter kit sales for $60, and it comes with 2 shades of foundation, mineral veil, warmth and all of the brushes. All of that bought separately would cost you well over a $100. I would suggest if you plan to buy, to go into a store like Ulta so that you can get color matched for free. And then once you have used the products in the starter kit and are needing to refill, it's usually $20-25 for foundation, and mineral veil sold separately but you get larger containers of them. And also, like I said, this is the first time that I have ever run out of everything that I needed all at once, and I have been using Bare Minerals for at least 3 years. And I would like to also point out that my one foundation container will probably last me 2-3 months.

Party planning.

    We've got 1 month to go until our little man turns ONE!!! Can you believe it? Because I sure can't! The party planning officially began last week. We made reservations at Chick-Fila for his birthday party. Isn't that AWESOME!? Daniel and I absolutely love Chick-Fila and Leeland actually tried chicken tenders for the 1st time a couple weeks ago and loved them. Just FYI, he hasn't had them since, I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that we are in the habit of feeding our kid junk or anything. But when's a better time for him to eat junk than his birthday! Chicken nuggets and cake!!!
   So his party them is dinosaurs and I started gathering things for the party today. I ordered plates and napkins online that have cute dinosaurs on them and say "Roarrrrr!". Once they come in the mail we are going to head to party city to get matching utensils, balloons, table cloth and cups-- I'm thinking solid colors from the plates like bright blue, green and orange. Then I went to AC Moore today to pick up a 3-D teddy bear cake pan which I will transform into a dinosaur.... sounds weird but I found the directions online and it works. I've even picked up a few presents for him already, dinosaur PJ's, a dinosaur t-shirt. I'm SO excited, it is going to be such a good time!!


For those curious, here is the picture of the teddy bear and picture of the dinosaur--

pie.

So yesterday, my husband and I did a serious grocery stock up. If I am completely honest with myself, our cabinets and freezer were looking pretty pathetic.  We had been just buying here and there what's on sale and what I had coupons for to save some money but we were in need of a major stock up. With that said, we spent some time at Costco and then I went to Harris Teeter to fill in the gaps and use up some coupons.
One of the things I found at Costco yesterday was some frozen berries. We're trying to do better at eating healthier so I thought that berries would make a nice snack-- however when you buy berries at Costco, you get "costco size" berries so it was a huge bag. When I put them in the cart, Daniel said he isn't much of a berry eater, so at the thought of eating the whole bag by myself, the idea of making a pie came into my mind.
The berries were just a frozen mix of blueberries, raspberries and marionberries. I had never heard of marionberries but the other two sounded delicious! (Wikipedia told me that the marionberry is just a version of a blackberry... who knows!)

The pie tasted AMAZING!!!! I'm not just saying that because I baked it, I ate a piece at 11pm last night and thought it was one of the best things I had ever tasted. Even Daniel (not a berry guy) said it was one of the best pies he's had. Hoping I will be able to duplicate again sometime soon.
I just used the thawed berries, sugar, a little flour, a little butter, and a roll out pie crust. It was as easy as pie!