Friday Five: Children's Books

I'm a book nerd. Always have been, always will be. I'm not ashamed either. I 100% embrace my love of books, reading, and quoting obsure Harry Potter literary references. It's who I am and I'm proud of it! I figured I would celebrate this love today by featuring the five children's books I most enjoy reading to my little bug.

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar: We love reading this book! We have the small board book and it's in our regular bedtime rotation. After reading this literally hundreds of times, bug asked this week as the caterpillar was chowing through the "junk foods" - "Why doesn't he just eat the nice green leaf?! He's gonna get a tummyache!" - lesson learned.

 2. If You Give A Mouse A Cookie: This book has been one of the bug's favorites for as long as she could request books. She loves all the variations (If you give a cat a cupcake, If you give a dog a donut, etc), but I'm a traditionalist and prefer the original because the "flow" of the story feels like that of a child's trail of conscience - meandering here and there and finally back to the start all over again.

 3. Go, Dog, Go! This book has to make my top five because of my history with this book. Although it is definitely one of bug's favorites and she requests it on a regular basis, I have been reading and re-reading this book since my sister was bug's age. This was by far her favorite book (and she is NOT a book lover) and she used to ask me to read it to her over and over and over and over (you get the idea).

4. Ladybug Girl: I adore this feisty little protagonist. Although as Lulu she's "just a little girl", when she steps into the role of Ladybug Girl she "can do anything!" From overcoming scary obstacles (imaginary sharks), to making a difference in the world (picking up a rock to clear the way for some ants), to adding perspective to the situation (noting that her brother looks "little" from far away) there is a very empowering undertone and I love it!

5. The Lorax: I can't remember ever reading this book as a kid, but if I had I would have LOVED IT. I thought of myself as a little hippie-save-the-whales-recycling-club activist when I was younger and this book would have fit right in with that image. Now the bug loves this book and wants to be the Lorax for Halloween. Although she isn't quite big enough to really get what he stands for, it still makes me happy.

Trader Joe's Thursday

Unless you live under a rock, it's impossible that you could be in the capital district and not know that Trader Joe's (finally!) opened in Albany about a month ago. I have been hoping for this for the past 10+ years since I first experienced TJ's in Boston as a college student. Back then, the groceries I could buy were limited to what I was willing to carry back on the T and then lug across campus (one bag usually). For the past few years we have tried to bring home non-perishable items from the TJ's on Cape Cod (snacks and jarred products mostly), but nothing can compare to actually having a local TJ's to try the huge variety of foods they have available - especially the frozen goods, meats, and cheeses.

Now that it's here, I've decided to post a weekly product review of something new. So here's the inaugural review: Frozen Biryani Rice!

This is an amazingly easy and tasty side dish/main meal that we have already eaten at least twice. It is not the same type of biryani that I have had at the local Indian restaurants I frequent, but it's a very tasty at home meal. All you have to do is add a little bit of oil to your pan/wok and stir fry the rice until it is heated through. The dish is not spicy hot, but is spicy flavorful and smells delicious as it cooks. When we make it, we've cooked half a bag for two of us to eat as a side dish. 

I personally would eat this with a piece of naan and call it a night, but I have made it into more of a main meal for my husband by pairing with the TJ's marinated curry chicken tenders and TJ's vegetable samosas. 

Sunday Breakfast

With my work schedule (and love of breakfast foods), my little bug is lucky enough to have a full cooked breakfast most days of the week, but we tend to do it up a little fancier on Saturday or Sunday. I found this recipe on a favorite food blog (Picky Palate) and knew the bug would go CRAZY for it - what three year old (or pregnant thirty year old) doesn't want to have an excuse to eat marshmallows and chocolate chips for breakfast?!

See the link above for her original recipe, here are my modifications (based on what I had available in the house...)

Gooey Marshmallow Chocolate Chip Pancakes

2 Tablespoons melted butter
½ Cup fat free half and half
½ Cup 1% milk
2 eggs
1 ¼ Cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Cup 60% cacao chocolate chips
1 Cup mini marshmallows

Just about ready to be flipped...

Perfect golden crust on one side

On their way to the table!

I did serve with maple syrup on the side, but we all agreed they didn't need it! I also didn't sprinkle any extra chips or marshmallows on top. Accompaniments included fresh local eggs scrambled with a sprinkling of cheddar and fresh local slices of watermelon with chilled orange juice or organic milk.

DIY Flavored coffee

This may seem so simple it isn't worth making a post about, but I found this idea on a blog a few years ago and have been doing it ever since! This is especially handy right now as there are fewer flavored varieties of decaf coffee and I'm limiting my caffeine during pregnancy.

DIY Cinnamon Coffee

For Keurig single cup (what I use)

Fill brew cup as you normally would with coffee grounds. Sprinkle 1/8tsp (or generous dusting) of cinnamon over the top of the grounds. Brew as normal. Prepare with milk/sugar as you normally would. *I wanted mine iced today, so I chilled in the freezer for 30 minutes before pouring over ice to enjoy.*

For regular coffee maker

Fill coffee filter with grounds as you normally would. Add approximately 1tsp cinnamon for each 2-3 cups you plan to brew. Add less the first time and titrate up to get the spiciness you want. For example, if setting the pot to brew 10 cups, add just 3tsp spice the first time and increase up to 5tsp if you want it spicier.

This works really well with pumpkin pie spice or other spice combos to get a christmas-y gingerbread blend (think 1 part nutmeg, 1 part ginger, 2 parts cinnamon).

Friday Five Favs: Fall Firsts

One of my favorite recurring features on other blogs I follow is a weekly theme of some sort. I've decided to try out a weekly "Five Favs" that can be any five things I am into or thinking about that week (crafts, recipes, books, movies, etc!). I figured I'd go all out with the alliteration for my first installment and give you five things I love about the early fall...

1. Pumpkin coffee
Although Starbuck's pumpkin spice latte is my ABSOLUTE favorite, I have to admit that in the earliest days of fall when it's still warm/hot during the afternoon I do hit up DD for iced pumpkin coffee. DD's pumpkin latte is gross, but I like the syrup in their regular coffee.

2. Apple picking
I've heard rumors that it's going to be a bad year for apple picking due to all the strange weather we have had, but I am hoping to find at least one local orchard that we can visit for our yearly fix of this super fun upstate NY tradition.

3. Cooler weather!!

I am not a summer person and really can't stand humidity ever, but especially this year (as I am carrying around an extra 15lbs) I am thrilled that we are finally starting to have cooler mornings and evenings. Nothing makes me happier than crisp air and a warm sweater. Here's to dreaming I'd actually FIT in one of these cozy J Crew sweaters...

4. Halloween costumes

In my house, planning for Halloween starts early. My little bug (pictured below in her straight-from-Disney World Cinderella dress from last Halloween), has said for months that she wanted to be Ladybug Girl from the book series. Then, she saw the new Lorax movie and is insistent that she is going to be the Lorax because he, "speaks to the trees." With baby #2 due on Halloween and my belly getting larger by the moment, this crafty mamma needs to get working on the logistics of a Lorax costume ASAP...

5. School supplies

I understand that I am no longer a student and my bug is not yet old enough to require school supplies, but I love seeing them out in the stores anyway. I have a very dorky excitement and giddiness that is peaked each time I walk by boxes of crayons for 50 cents and see stacks of embroidered backpacks with matching lunch bags.

Goldfish Marshmallow Pops: Photo Tutorial

A few weeks ago I spotted this fun idea to make a goldfish marshmallow pop on Pinterest from a super cute goldfish themed birthday party. I saved the idea to make for my bug's preschool class for an end of the summer treat. **Please forgive the non-uniform nature of these photos, I tried using my i-phone and will stick with my actual camera from now on.**

Here are the step-by-step photos:

Everything you need: blue candy melts, goldfish crackers, large marshmallows, graham crackers, white pearl sprinkles, and lollipop sticks

Get your candy melts ready to go! I prefer to melt them in a glass bowl. I like to start the melting process in the microwave for 30 seconds and then switch to a slower melt in a simmering water bath

This is how they look after they start to melt in the microwave. Stir well and add to your water bath - this can be an electric frying pan or regular pan on the stove over low heat with about an inch of water in it

After the candy is melted, it will likely still be a bit thick (when you stir, you can see the peaks/swirls stay in the chocolate as above). You don't want to try dipping your marshmallows when it's still this thick as it will clump and be really heavy on your pop. You can thin the chocolate by adding a drizzle of vegetable or canola oil. This will not alter the flavor and will thin it out perfectly. Just add a tiny bit, stir thoroughly, then add more if needed

This is how you want your chocolate to look when you are ready to dip...thin and smooth

I used the bite sized graham crackers - about 1 cup - and finely ground them in my mini processor

You want it to be nice and "sandy" in consistency

Set up all your decorations - goldfish, pearls, and graham cracker crumbs

Dip the end of the lollipop sticks into the melted chocolate and then stick into the marshmallows. Let the chocolate harden to help stabilize the pops

Dip your pop into the melted chocolate and shake off all the excess so you have a thin, even coating

Coat the bottom of the pop with the graham cracker crumbs by gently tapping the bottom into the bowl and rolling the sides in the crumbs to coat the bottom third of the pop

Press a goldfish cracker into the melted chocolate - it should stick without difficulty

Add two pearl sprinkles to look like bubbles coming from the goldfish's mouth

Place the pops on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. You can place them in the fridge for 5-10 minutes to harden the chocolate faster if you want

Final product!

Party Inspiration: Red Sox Bridal Shower

As I was on a blogging hiatus, I never posted about the planning and execution of my little sister's bridal shower. For years (long before she ever got engaged!), I knew I wanted to honor her love of the Red Sox and throw her a baseball themed shower. Once the question was popped and she started planning the wedding, she decided on hot pink and yellow as the color scheme. Taking my idea and her colors, I worked tirelessly to create a shower with ideas and decorations essentially coming from scratch as nothing was readily available pre-made and I didn't want to spend a fortune hiring someone from Etsy to do the dirty work for me. I am putting these photos out there because I hope my ideas will help inspire someone else someday...

Details

My cricut machine and "Sure-Cuts-A-Lot" programs were working overtime creating these custom Boston Red Sox "B"s in various sizes to decorate the gift table and outdoor seating area. Tiny "B"s adorned photos of the happy couple (and family!) at Fenway - these were coupled with fresh flowers in inexpensive bowl vases as table centerpieces.

Cricut Boston Red Sox "B"s

Party set-up in the backyard. Paper lanterns from Hobby Lobby.

Simple Centerpieces.
Glass vases for less than $1 at AC Moore. Flowers from Sam's Club. Hot Pink pearls from Michael's. 

Menu

I created a baseball/Boston themed menu featuring snacks/appetizers you'd find in a ballpark and a dinner menu straight from the North End. I added a flare to the menu by stamping it with a baseball stamp (the same I used to seal the invites) and embossing it for extra sparkle.

Snacks: "Fenway Franks" (pigs in a blanket), jumbo soft pretzels, buttered popcorn (in handmade paper treat cones), peanuts, and Cracker Jacks

Dinner: Tossed Salad with Olive Garden style dressing, caprese salad, bread and butter, baked ziti, and eggplant parm

Handmade Menu

Paper treat cones

Dessert

For dessert, I ordered a custom cake from a local baker. Unfortunately, this did not turn out as I had hoped. The baker did not take the appropriate notes during our meeting and had to change the entire cake last minute which resulted in (almost) the right design, but with shoddy decorations that were airbrushed instead of actual frosting mixed to the right color. I have liked this bakery in the past, but will not be using them again as I was very particular in my requests, brought a photo of the cake I wanted, and pointed out other cakes in the store that were done in the colors I wanted for the cake. 

My mom made chocolate dipped marshmallow pops and I made baseball cake pops to fit the theme as well. I also made a beautiful fresh fruit salad served in a trifle dish (not pictured). 

Baseball Cake

Dipped marshmallow pops

Baseball cake pops

Living Decorations

As an added touch to carry through the baseball theme, I made custom "team" shirts for all the bridal party members. All t-shirts and iron-on decorations were from Hobby Lobby. 

I'm going to ignore how unflattering this photo is of me to show the shirts...front of the t-shirts featured our names and a rhinestone number.

The back of the shirts featured the "Team Bride" logo and the "title" of the bridal party member - my bug's had a rhinestone iron-on for "flowergirl".

So that's it! I hope my work and ideas help someone planning a girly baseball themed party out:-)

My Pinterest Love Affair

I admit it, I'm in love with Pinterest. I adore having a more organized way to save crafts and party inspirations - it is SO much easier to follow a link represented by a photo to retrieve an idea than looking through a list of obscure text links. Most of all, the OCD organization freak in me (she has REALLY surfaced since I finished residency and have more time to breathe) has been making the most of Pinterest to help with my recipe filing and weekly meal planning. I shuffle recipes between boards titled "Recipes to Try", "Favorite Recipes", and "This Week" to make the most of my tech savvy recipe box.

Any recipe I come across and want to try out gets dumped onto the "try it" board. After I've made the dish once I decide if it's a keeper (or not!) and either shuffle it to the favorites board or delete the pin (so I'm not tricked into making it again if it was a dud!). My favorite organizational use for Pinterest is my "This Week" board where I plan meals, snacks, lunches, breakfasts, etc that I plan to make the following week. It takes some time to put it together, but it gives me easy access to all the recipes for grocery lists and they are easy to find when I'm in the kitchen cooking.

Tonight I made this delicious salad I pinned from Iowa Girl Eats. This will be make it's way onto my favorites board:

Summer Fruit and Grain Salad 

with local fresh grown blueberries, tomatoes, basil, mint, and green leaf lettuce.

Catch-up

In the past 7 months my posting has been sporadic at best, so I'm going to try to very briefly turn personal for a few minutes and explain what's been going on. Oddly enough, just when I finished residency and thought I'd have more time to blog (something I really enjoy) things got messy. I couldn't put words to what I was going through and couldn't ignore it, so I just didn't say anything at all. Now, with some perspective I'm ready to let it all out. To force myself to keep the shortest format possible, here's my recap of the past 9 months:

November - First full month home as a "stay at home mom" between residency and my new job. The good was that I found out I was pregnant (very carefully planned and intended, right on schedule). The bad was that I was struggling with being home full time and found bug and I didn't know what to do with so much time together (she was becoming spoiled and bratty and I was becoming restless).

December - First month at my new job and bug's return to daycare. The good was that I LOVED going back to work and bug and I were much more appreciative of each other (plus the holidays and all those other fun December things). The bad was that I ended up in the ER (first time as a patient, not a doctor) and found out I was having a miscarriage. I handled it well at the time, but slowly decompensated over the following months.

January - The good was that I continued to be happy at my job, bug readjusted to daycare and things with my body were slowly returning to normal. The bad was that I became obsessed with trying to predict periods, ovulation, etc and started to put pressure on myself to get pregnant again.

February - The bad was the first half of the month when I took multiple pregnancy tests that came out negative and became irrationally MORE frustrated as I felt out of control of my body. Outside my little bubble, my mother-in-law was having health concerns as well which made me feel even worse that I was upset about something minor and "normal" with myself when she was going through a much scarier time. The good was that we took our first "just us" vacation to the Great Escape Lodge indoor waterpark and the end of the month I found out I was pregnant again! 

March - The bad was that I started having similar symptoms to the last time I miscarried and ended up as an emergency fit in at the OB office. On ultrasound they couldn't see the baby and presumed I had another miscarriage. For a week I was absolutely miserable, convinced we would never have another child and worried that something was wrong with me. The good was that when I went back for one week follow-up they DID see the heartbeat and things leveled out and normalized (no idea why I bled or why they didn't see the baby the first time). Other good things included my mother-in-law having a successful surgery with a good outcome, my wonderful husband turning 30, fun celebrations related to that, and a new baby being born in the family-)

April - The bad was that I was still a nervous wreck and worried that the pregnancy was going to "disappear" again. Unlike my first pregnancy when we talked about it all the time and started making baby name lists, we barely mentioned it as if our silence would somehow protect the little embryo as it grew. The good was that our big bug turned 3! and as I neared the end of the first trimester we finally became more confident that things were OK and told our family the news.

May and June - No big "bad" events for us (a close relative had a repeat of my December though which stunk). My practice was growing and growing, bug was happy and healthy, and bunny bunny (nickname given to the baby by our bug) has continued to grow. We finally started to feel confident that the baby is well after a handful of ultrasounds and lots of activity that I started being able to feel at 17 weeks.

July - A really great and busy month for us - family vacations and picnics and parties, taking bug to her first Phish show, I turned 30 (yikes!), and pregnancy is still treating me well as I near the third trimester.

So that's it! In retrospect it sounds a bit less dramatic than going through it was (which is good!). Now I can file all the "bad" away as life experience and am ready to go forward as a happier and stronger person... 

Recipe: Dessert Pizza

I haven't been on my blog in awhile (I'll talk about what's been up in a later post), but as there was interest in this recipe when I posted a picture on facebook I figured I'd throw up the details for anyone who wants to try it out.

The crust can be any of the following baked as a circle on a pizza pan or as a rectangle on a cookie sheet: brownie mix, crescent rolls, or sugar cookie.

Bake and cool the crust of your choice. While it's cooling, mix together 8oz light cream cheese at room temperature, 1tsp vanilla extract, and 1/4-1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar (add more or less depending on how sweet you want the spread to be).

Top with any sliced fruits of your choice. Some suggestions are:

1. "Crowd pleaser" as above - strawberries, bananas, kiwis, raspberries

2. "Ice cream sundae" - Strawberries, bananas, crushed pineapple, walnuts, and melted chocolate swirl

3. "Celebrate the 4th" - bake as a rectangle and use blueberries, bananas, and strawberries to replicate the stripes and stars of the American flag

Also try blackberries, mandarin oranges, peach slices, and/or halved grapes for a different twist!

Ugly cookies

I found this recipe on pinterest a few weeks ago and have tried everything to make them "look right", but nothing has worked. They are hideous, but delicious.

Comfort in a dish

This is my mother-in-law's ham and scalloped potatoes. Quite possibly one of the most comforting, rich, creamy meals to eat when it's cold outside or you need some cheering from the inside out. If I could eat this and my mom's chicken Kiev with mushroom sauce every night without gaining 100lbs I would...

Party Hat Cat

This is a rough prototype for my fabric party hats for bug's birthday party modeled by the lovely moe. the cat.

So far this is a cheap dollar store party hat wrapped in fabric (secured with hot glue) with ribbon ties. The Mickey head was cut with my Cricut machine. These will also have tulle pom poms when complete.

Snuggle time

Ignore the poor quality of the photo due to low lighting. What this photo shows is a moment that is becoming more and more rare as the days go by - a peaceful toddler and a mommy taking the time to enjoy it.

Ribbon topiary

These are still a work in progress as I haven't finished the bases they will be "planted" in yet, but they are fun enough to share.

These were a very cheap, but time consuming project:

2 styrofoam cones - $2.00 (dollar tree)
Assorted ribbon - $8.00 (various craft stores)
Pins - $1.00 (dollar tree)

Each took about 5 hours total to make, but it wasn't tedious as I worked about 1-2 hours at a time while watching tv or movies after the bug went to bed.

Snaaaaake!

From the Kid's Expo at the Empire State Plaza...

We've got ears....

...say cheers!

Handmade Mickey and Minnie ears for the bug's THIRD birthday party coming up in just over a month based on the tutorial found here

One a Day for March

I tried the blogger "one a day" post project last year and was (kinda) close to successful. As I have about a million projects I am working on right now (and finally have an i-phone which makes picture taking and uploading so much easier) I've decided to do one photo a day for March. Some photos will come with recipes or tutorials and others might just be for fun.

Enjoy!

Elmo cupcakes