Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday

Dreaming of a tropical destination this morning, and wishing I could be there instead of work!  

(Photo taken in beautiful Jamaica for my beautiful best friend's wedding two summers ago!)

Did you feel the earth shift on its axis?

Because this girl actually cooked!

That being said I did not make the Pinterest recipe I shared last week...but a recipe I had printed forever ago and for some reason (the reason being that generally speaking I don't cook) never followed through on trying it out.

Growing up my Mom made Spaghetti Chicken and I loathed it.   Flat out refusal to eat the abomination my mother had put before me was the standard reaction, so when it popped into my head a while back I was a little surprised!  BUT it sounded GOOD and so the search for a recipe that didn't involve Velveeta began. Nothing against Velveeta, but "cheese product" just isn't something I'm interested in.

I found the recipe on a website called Six Sisters Stuff, and it was so simple that I thought I would share it here.

Source

Here are some pictures from the cooking adventure:

Gathering all my ingredients! I put the chicken in to bake while I handled all the other components...cooking the noodles, chopping the onion, opening all the cans ;)

All the ingredients ready to go in the oven! I almost didn't have a bowl big enough to combine all the ingredients, but basically you take all the ingredients, mix them as best you can, and dump them in a lightly greased glass dish to bake.

Proof that I don't do this often...cleaning up as you go? Not for this girl!  Maybe that's a habit you develop over time? Also, notice the baby monitor?  LO went down for a FOUR.HOUR.NAP yesterday!! The Angel Care Monitor  is another post by itself, but it ranks for sure on the list of baby must haves!

Finished Product!!  It turned out very tasty, and you'll see the little bit in the corner missing...that would be LO's dinner!  He dug right in and enjoyed it very much!  I got a message after lunch today that C liked it too!  So awesome to find a recipe to add to the rotation that the entire family liked!

AND proof that I didn't leave the kitchen a disaster!

Hope you all have a great Monday!

That's Pintastic

If anyone ever looked at my Pinterest page they would perhaps be woefully misguided as to the type of person I am in real life.  You see on Pinterest I've got amazing recipes, cute outfits, fun activities to do with my LO, the list could go on and on.

Reality however, is not even close to Pinterest!  My humor board is pretty lined up with me, but other than that it's mostly all aspirations.  Cooking those fabulous meals would be wonderful!  Talking my husband into cooking the fabulous recipes would be even better!  One of my main focuses in bringing my Pinterest page to life is to start using some of the decorating ideas to bring some life to my home!  In the upcoming weeks I'm hoping to start tackling some projects and if everything goes well I'll be here to share them.  In the even that things crash and burn I'll share that too...

Here are a couple of things I'm hoping will be coming down the pipeline:

For LO's Room, imagine with Orange and Blue 

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No Promises on the lattice topping, but an otherwise doable recipe

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Some sweet treats to give to our neighbors...maybe football themed ribbon?

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These three should be pretty easy to complete and will hopefully give me the confidence to really branch out and see if I like being the person that I am on Pinterest!

Fit Friday

Trying to lose weight after having LO (Little One for future reference) has been one of the hardest things I have EVER tackled!  It's harder to stay on track than it ever was before.  Grabbing quick meals where you can is not always conducive to healthy eating although I'm sure I could make better choices!

Thankfully I have a job with a gym downstairs, now if I get to the gym a couple times a week I count that a success.  Definite room for improvement there!  I'm hoping that putting this out there will encourage myself to be more accountable to myself!  At this point in the game it's not about a number on the scale, but more about feeling like myself again.  Prior to getting pregnant I wasn't really happy with myself and now with the added lingering baby weight it's easy to slip into a place where you can feel sorry for yourself.  Here are a couple of goals for the month of August (even though we're already about a week into the month)

1.  Make the Honor Roll at the Turner Athletic Club.  You have to go 12 times in the month to make the honor roll which boils down to a couple times a week.  At the very least it's a start!
2. No Soft Drinks.  No point in drinking my calories!
3. Find the nerve to put up a before picture so that at the end of this journey I can see how far I've come! 

Let's start off small so that I get some success!  Other Momma's - what did you find was successful in getting the last bit of baby weight off?

Trip to the Baby Factory

In Atlanta, the majority of babies are born at Northside Hospital.  C was born at Northside and so was our little one.  

Our little man had no intention of coming out though!  I went to my scheduled weekly appointment and FINALLY (the day before my due date)  the midwife said I was done and that we would schedule the induction for that night!  It was such a relief and I can honestly say that at that point I was beyond ready to meet our little boy.  The induction was set for me to check in to the hospital that night at 7 to get the show on the road and I left with instructions to get my bag together and eat a good lunch and dinner in case I didn't get to eat again for a while!  Much to my office's amusement, I went on in to work to set my Out Of Office on my email and to let my management team know I would be starting my maternity leave the next day.  My supervisor looked at my like I had three heads when I told her I was being induced that night!  She couldn't figure out why on earth I was sitting in her office, but I knew that I needed to tie up my loose ends in order to focus completely on the task at hand!  After a quick call to C to let him know the situation (after my work...he was a little less than pleased) I was on my way to meet him and his Dad for lunch/dinner at Outback before making our way to the hospital!

Once we got to the hospital and go all checked in I'm pleased to report that everything went as smoothly as it possibly could!  It was like clockwork and I absolutely love that I have a positive induction story.  I truly believe that a lot of the credit for that goes to my OB/GYN, we didn't rush into an induction we waited until 40 weeks and I had made NO progress.  I know there are probably some people out there that would suggest waiting till past your due date, but I'm so thankful I didn't!  After going through the typical drugs and procedures for induction the midwife broke my water around 12:15, I got my epidural shortly thereafter  (which is a long story, but the lesson is if they say you have low platelets get that stuff checked out!! Otherwise you could have to go the no drugs route), and after a productive hour and a half of pushing William Noah Ford entered the world at 3:35pm on May 2nd 2012.  Exactly on his due date and his Momma's birthday!   

He was a BIG GUY!  8 lbs 10 oz and 22 in. 

Phone dump

Here's a first attempt at a mobile post, so we'll see how this goes! Thought I would take a second and drop a couple of pictures from my phone. While we have a big nice camera I'm so guilty of always just whipping my phone out to small pictures of my little man. It's so convenient and my phone is set up to automatically set to back up all my pictures to a drop box account, how awesome is that?!

So What Wednesday

So What Wednesday

• So what that my idea of cooking dinner is stopping to grab a Publix deli sandwich and a bag of chips. One day maybe I'll learn to cook and it be edible, but until then at least I've got something up my sleeve!
• So what if I'm obsessed with shopping for little boy clothes.  Who said little girls have all the fun!  I've got these bad boys that would suggest otherwise...

Can you stand it?  Because I can't!  And LO loves them, he's constantly bringing them to me to put them on.

• So what that my husband has crossed over to the country side and is now deep in the throes of preparing for his first hunting season with his new compound bow!  If someone had told me that my Daddy and C would be texting and calling each other every day to discuss hunting, I would've just laughed and laughed...however, that's where we are.  Lots of game cam discussions, pictures of food plots, and arrow grouping bragging going on between the two of them!  Hopefully we'll have a productive season and get a freezer full!  

Hope everyone has an awesome Wednesday!!

  **We do not hunt for sport alone, any and all kills are eaten either by our family or our donated to families that can benefit from our donations. Nothing gets wasted so no one freak out**

Nine Months - One Post

Here goes my attempt to recap an entire pregnancy into one post!  Honestly it was a text book gestation, and a beautifully boring delivery and for that our family is extremely grateful.

1st Trimester- No morning sickness to speak of, unless the stomach got empty.  As long as I had something on my stomach I was good to go!  Once or twice we cut it close to the wire and sickness almost ensued but a little Green Machine Juice and all was well!  We waited until we were eight weeks to tell our parents and almost twelve weeks to celebrate with the rest of our family.  It was SO much fun to share the news with everyone, lots of happy tears via Skype since none of our family really lives around here :)

2nd Trimester-  Felt GREAT!  Energy bounded, the winter weather kept the pregnant lady comfortable, and Christmas was too much fun and we gathered with each facet of our family and celebrated with each group! Finding out that our little "BOB" (what we lovingly called the baby) was a BOY via a 3D ultrasound that was streamed live to our Moms was pretty fantastic.  Baby's First Images was such a great experience and they run great specials.  We're definitely planning on visiting them again with any additional bundles of joy!  It's so amazing to have all of those pictures and a DVD of Noah wiggling around in there when I was just starting to feel him!

3rd Trimester-  Apparently I lost my mind during my third trimester and decided would just go wild!  We went to a Red Hot Chili Pepper's concert when I was 37 weeks, a Braves game when I was 38 weeks, and picked strawberries with my Mom (in a field in the heat) when I was 39 weeks.  And that was just the end of my pregnancy!  I was so swollen it was scary, and while I felt pretty OK I most certainly did not look it!  Sending daily pictures of my hands and feet to my Mom was my norm there in the end...

 Right at 40 weeks!  

Say Hello!

I'm trying to figure out the direction I want to take this little space on the internet and I think I've decided I don't want this to be a super specific place!  I follow blogs that are specific to working out, people who craft, women who can decorate homes fabulously, and finally women who raise their children and share their joys and their failures.  Personally, I'm not a master of any of those things and don't think it would be prudent for me to focus on any one area!  

A come as it may approach is what I'm going to take a stab at and I hope that I get to meet some wonderful people along the way.  Who knows, maybe blogging myself will give me the courage to actually comment on some of the blogs that I read *lurk* and get to know some of these fabulous people!

Here's what you'll find around these parts:

*  Some adorable ginger kid posts as my Little One explores the world 

*  Recipes I try and whether or not my husband survives sampling them

*  Decorating Ideas and Pinterest inspiration for finally getting my house in order 

* Workout accountability as I try to lose those last 10-15 of baby (and then some) weight 

Plus anything else that speaks to me!  If you stop by please feel free to say hi! and introduce yourself!!

Wait, You had a Baby??

Hmmm...the Wednesday before we closed on our house way back in September 2011 a funny thing happened.

I woke up at about 5 a.m. and realized I was pregnant.  At this point in time I was about five or so hours "late"...kid you not!  That fateful morning, I sat straight up in the bed and just knew...strangest feeling ever.

C and I had kicked around the thought of starting our family, and since we were under contract for our home we thought no time would work out better.  Through all of our conversations we really did learn that if you wait till you're "ready" to have a baby no one would ever have one!  That August we decided that we would just let nature take it's course and that we would get pregnant when the Good Lord intended.  Little did we know that we wouldn't have to wait very long!

Back to that morning, I woke up and just knew that I needed to take a test.  Luckily thanks to another blogger (I had been reading any and every pregnant blog I could find...you know we all do it!) I had purchased some of the cheap-o tests off Amazon.  Without being to graphic, the tests were the kind that you had to dunk...so dunk I did.  Since I had SO MANY PREGNANCY TESTS...I dipped several and put them on the counter to wait and within about thirty seconds I had my answer!

I had searched for all the cute ways to tell C that we were going to have a baby, and thought that we would have plenty of time for me to pick one out and prepare. However, in that moment all I could do was cry and laugh!  I was just so full of joy and so very excited for the miracle I was going to be able to share with C.  Basically waiting went out the window!  Something to note here, is that my husband has terrible eye sight.  Without his glasses in the morning things need to be a couple of inches away in order for him to see them.  When he heard my ruckus in the bathroom he thought something was wrong and flew out of bed...and I had no words for him except for crying and pointing at the bathroom counter!  His face flew down to see what I was pointing at and immediately questioned why it smelled like urine...whoops.

Once we got C's face away from any and all bodily fluids we were just so.stinkin.excited!  Neither of us could believe that God had so richly blessed us with this wonderful addition to our family!  Now our little one is fifteen months and turning into a little more of a big boy every single day.  What a blessing returning to blogging is to get this documented so we can always remember the morning we found out we were going from a twosome to a threesome!!

First Time Home Owners

So way back in 2011, Christopher and I decided that it was time to maybe get out of the renting business and into the home ownership business.  Getting to this point was something that we really worked towards, we saved and saved and even took a roommate to help squirrel away money.  Being a married couple with a roommate isn't always the easiest situation and I am so thankful that we lived with a friend that I can STILL call a friend after living together for an entire year!  Justin really was a blessing to us because he allowed us to get our finances in order so that we could delve into the hunt for the house we would call home!

Without further ado, here is the house we now call home!

Just this summer we made a major home improvement and painted the house!  So take a second look at the above picture and imagine a navy front door and shutters and crisp white everywhere else.  I was never a fan of the "country" blue, but it was a pretty quick fix once we got a paint crew out to paint!  

This is the house while the paint crew was finished up!  If anyone in the North Atlanta area needs a recommendation for a painter, let me know.  We absolutely loved the company that we used and would recommend them to anyone.  They were quick and efficient and did a really good job.  We had one issue and they immediately came back and fixed the problem!  

The house was built in 1991, and there are a number of updates we would like to make.  Paint, new lighting fixtures (5 rooms, 5 different ceiling fans...need I say more?) working on eradicating the massive amounts of gold fixtures in the home...catching on?  It's a wonderful house with wonderful bones, it just needs a little love!  Hopefully with the help of Pinterest and the wonderful girls at work who talk design with me I can start showing off some of the progress.  You know, once I start making some! 

Trying it again?

Hello?  Anyone out there??? Probably not!  It's only been a couple years :)

I thought that I might be interested in getting back in the swing of things!

Quick Recap of things that have happened since I last blogged:

1. Bought a house

2. Had a BABY

3. Celebrated the baby's FIRST birthday!

4. Christopher got a new job

The list could go on and on, but maybe just maybe I can get back in the habit of blogging!  

Hopefully you'll see me around again sometime soon!