11.20.2011

[around the house]

The last few days I have been busy working around the house.
I had been holding myself a pity party and decided to take a good friend's advice and just build a bridge and get over it.
That starts with making my house a cleaner, more comfortable place to live.

So today I have been keeping busy. First, I cleaned my fridge. It was so disgusting that I won't bother to show you the before pic. Just embarrassing.



Please ignore the very bottom down there. I still need to clean that part.
Here is a closer look:



Lunchtime! Peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a craisin face, wheat crackers and veggie chips on the side. He is having one of his eat every 15 minutes days so he had just eaten yogurt and turkey right before this.



After that I had some bananas that were getting dark so it was banana muffin time!
Love these muffins, they have never done me wrong.



Recipe:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I use unbleached, you can use whatever. Wheat might even work as well.)
3/4 cup sugar [I'm so hardcore using regular old sugar! ;)]
3 bananas (I used 2 this time because it's what I had on hand)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup melted butter
1 egg

Makes about 12 large muffins.
Preheat oven to 350.
Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
In separate bowl combine bananas, sugar, egg, and melted butter. Sometimes I also add a hint of vanilla extract. Mix until it is as lumpy as you'd like. The more overripe your bananas, the creamier the texture.
Fold in flour mixture until well blended.
Pour into greased muffin pan or cupcake liners.
Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.

By the way, I tried to take pics of the muffins baked, but they were all eaten before I had the chance. Oops.

11.13.2011

[another crafty day]

I felt inspired to fix one of Rowan's wool soakers today.
I bought it for $10 and when I got it realized it was stretched out BIG time.
Here is a comparison of a normal sized s/m Luxe soaker and this super stretched one.



And here is what it looked like before altering it to fit Rowan:



The leg holes were humongous and would probably never have fit her properly.

Here it is after:



Fits her great in the legs so no worries about leaks.

And the bum!



Elephant applique made with upcycled wool sweater.

I also made a cute wool soaker with the same sweater earlier this week.
I actually made a pair of pants too but I don't have a pic of those yet.



This one is nothing special but it does the job!
I spent maybe $4 for the sweater a year ago and got a soaker, a pair of pants and probably enough left to make a smaller soaker to possibly sell. The Luxe cover cost me $10. So I paid $14 for 2+ soakers and a pair of pants. Not too shabby!

11.12.2011

[taking it easy]

It's pretty easy going over here these days.
Watching my baby girl is more of a relaxed, joyful process than it was with my son.
When Ethan was 3 1/2 months old I got excited to try and feed him rice cereal.
Yeah, disastrous idea. He had no interest whatsoever in eating it, and didn't even take much pride in playing with it.
Now Rowan will be 6 months old in less than a week and this week I have started giving her tastes of foods from my plate.
I really wanted to try baby led weaning this time around, not to up my crunch factor but because I am really, really lazy at heart. I have no desire to make her separate meals and go through the whole baby food making process. (Though this could change at any time and I will be eating my words. LOL.)
So the other night we had tacos and I put some of the avocado in a little bowl and pumped a tiny bit of milk to mix in it to make it a little easier on her. My first attempt was just giving her straight smooshed avocado but I think it was a little too thick because she gagged on it and got frustrated. Oops!




By the way, this little girl? She will not let me feed her. She has to hold the spoon herself or she gets pissed, quick. I really need to invest in a mesh feeder for her.

I am kind of trying to be casual about this food business. She still nurses, a lot. She is by no means having meals yet. Some days I am not giving her any solids at all. She doesn't seem bothered by it.