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31 weeks…lots to recap!

I’ll begin with a belly pic to get this out of the way :).

31 weeks and 5 days

This week has been filled with cleaning, writing thank you notes, putting new baby items away, and building furniture — ok, maybe Peter did all the furniture building.

Pile of Gifts 
More Gifts
Dresser Assembly
Crib Assembly
What Lennon did while I folded laundry…

Also, last weekend we went to the 2012 Wine Festival. I think everyone had a great time. We brought crackers, grapes, and cheese galore. I was obviously the DD, but it was nice to get out of the house and be among so many friends! The weather was gorgeous and couldn’t have been better for a wine festival. 
The Wine Tasters

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Baby Shower

Apparently Peter was in on the surprise this past weekend…
We got a phone call on Saturday from Peter’s mom telling us that she needed someone to come jump her car at church. We hopped in the car and drove over to meet her. Peter told me to get out and go find her inside the building, and I was thinking, “Oh my goodness…I’ve complained about how my hips hurt so bad all day, and now you want me to search the building?” 
I waddled my way to the door and noticed about 10 heads bobbing around inside, and then the lights went out. This made me laugh out loud because I knew what was happening at this point. There looked to be about 20-30 people, but it was hard to see them over the mountain of gifts! What an awesome group of family and friends we have! 
I really liked that Peter was able to be there for all of the fun. I sometimes feel bad, because everyone asks me how I am feeling and how I am doing, so it was nice to have Peter be a part of the attention. He got to socialize with family and friends, eat like a horse, and open baby gifts like a pro. He even participated in the wear-a-hat-out-of-ribbons tradition. What a good sport!

When we got home, it was slightly overwhelming to see everything in our dining room. Our dogs were going crazy sniffing inside each bag. Lennon quickly found the toys and made sure to pull them out of every bag she could find. We actually had to build the playpen so we would have a place to put all of the bags for safe-keeping.
Peter was excited that he got all of the tech-savvy things he put on the registry. He immediately went to town building things and playing with the technology.

Thank you to everyone who was a part of this special day for us! We had a great time and are looking forward to getting the baby’s room in order.
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30 Weeks Picture

Not in a big writing mood today, but I figured I would post this picture from last week.

30 weeks – not a flattering pic, but you get the idea 🙂

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Baked Lemon Garlic Brussel Sprouts

Months ago, I made these Brussel sprouts that have been popping up all over Pinterest. They were pretty good, and my husband even ate them — this says a lot because he hates Brussel sprouts! 🙂

Shaved Brussel Sprouts from Trader Joe’s
I decided to cook them again but use my own recipe this time. I was going for a more garlic-y/butter-y taste. I saw this bag of shaved Brussel sprouts at Trader Joe’s at thought it would be fun to try with these. 
Pre-Bake
So here’s what I did:
10 oz. of Brussel Sprouts
2 whole, already-roasted garlic bulbs (I made these the other night)
1/4 tsp of garlic powder
2 tbsp butter or butter substitute 
1/2 lemon
salt
pepper
Pam cooking spray
Ready to eat!
1.Preheat oven to 375.
2. Spray glass dish with Pam cooking spray.
3. Empty sprouts into dish.
4. Mix in garlic cloves from the bulbs.
5. Plop on your butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
6. Squeeze half a lemon on top.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

By the way…if I had some Parmesan cheese in the fridge, I would totally have sprinkled that on top after baking. YUM!

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Posters and Turnips

I made a post a while ago about some posters that I was thinking of printing. I decided to go ahead and get those puppies printed. I am pretty happy with the way they came out, too! Disregard the price tag stickers on the picture frames.
It was much cheaper to go to the local camera store and have these 11X14s printed as matte pictures rather than having them printed at Kinko’s as posters — $5 each versus $38.95 each. The picture frames were $7.99 from Garden Ridge, and we spray painted them white to match with the curtains and white trim. Yahoo! Still cheaper than similar things I’ve found online like this.
Turnips Fries – (before baking)
On the eating front, we always get turnips from our local Farmer’s Market and then have no idea what to do with them. Peter is always determined to take the vegetables I don’t like and turn them into something tasty. It just wasn’t happening with turnips…until I found a recipe for turnip fries! Yes, fries. When you eat them while they are hot, they are pretty convincing as French fries. I would highly recommend them if you are curious or needing something to do with turnips.

Turnip Fries Recipe:
4-5 turnips
2 tbsp of vegetable oil or olive oil
1/3 cup of parmesan cheese (the kind in the green can)
1 tsp of onion powder
1 tsp of garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chives (optional)
sprinkle of ground pepper (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Wash turnips and then cut into “steak fries.”
3. In a bowl, pour oil and mix with turnips. All fries should have a light covering.
4. Add in cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, chives, and pepper.
5. Toss all fries, so they are covered in the mixture from step 3.
6. Spray a sheet with cooking spray and spread fries onto sheet evenly.
7. Cook for 20 minutes.
8. Eat soon after (–I like them while they are still hot) and enjoy!

Turnips have less calories than potatoes.
Turnips have less carbohydrates than potatoes.
Turnips are higher in calcium.

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Bored

This is what I made today out of boredom. I have a fancy writing tablet for my computer, and this gave me a chance to play around with it.

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Pumpkin Mac and Cheese Recipe

We are members of a local Farmer’s Market, so we get lots of produce each week and then have to figure out what to do with it! Since it’s Fall, we are getting gourds like crazy, which I will not complain about because I LOVE them!
Here’s the latest thing we did with our weekly pumpkin: Pumpkin Mac and Cheese.
3 to 3.5 cups of uncooked small shells
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups skim milk
1 cup of pumpkin (We used real pumpkin because we had it.)
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup Fontina cheese
1/4 tsp sale
1/8 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1/8 tsp black pepper

  1. Preheat oven to 375F. 
  2. Cook pasta in boiling water. Drain.
  3. In a pot, melt butter. Whisk in flour and milk slowly until thick. Let cool.
  4. Add pumpkin puree and mix into pot.
  5. Add cheeses, salt, nutmeg, pepper into pot. 
  6. Combine the sauce with the pasta, then bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before enjoying!
It was pretty good stuff! I am thinking the canned pumpkin is probably going to make it more orange and give it more “pumpkin flavor,” because they use a combination of tasty gourds for canned pumpkin (–that’s right. It’s not actually pumpkin in the can!). 
I would make this again and play around next time with pumpkin pie spices to see if that increases the Fall flavor. 

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Freebies – Tack Set

Everyday at work, I have to make a little graphic here and there for something I’m working on. Sometimes it’s a post-it note or arrow or something, but I always think about the awesome resources that are online. Unfortunately for me, I can’t use a lot of the free stuff out there because my company is commercial, but it got me thinking…maybe I should make some little graphics for other people to use.

Maybe it will help others for websites, blogs, bulletins, etc. If you want to use these, that’s cool. If you want to credit me, that’s cool, too. Just send me a comment!

Tackset.zip

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Stuffed Animal Organizer

So maybe I’ve been Pinterest-ing a little…but what a good way to organize stuffed animals! They always seem to fall off shelves and take up space on flat surfaces. Tada! Thanks, Peter!

By the way…if I knew that blackout fabric was this cheap, I would have totally made my own blackout liners for the white curtains we just bought! Just wanted to write about this in case anyone is reading and doesn’t know this either :).