March 7, 2013

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I’ve been in a pinning frenzy lately. With Spring just around the corner, soft yet saturated colors and light food is calling to me. Follow along with me on Pinterest to get a taste of what Spring means to me. And come say hi and connect on Facebook.
I spent the day making Hayden baby food now that he’s started solids. Something I’ve done with each kid so far, and something I love and find very therapeutic and comforting. I don’t make anything fancy, just simple one ingredient purees, and freeze them in ice cube trays. Simple but homemade, the way to go in my book.

It’s been a tough week. I felt very angry at the internet many times, and just sort of down. Tired too, so so tired. Hayden’s sleep is for crap. I haven’t felt grumpy like that in a while. Someone on the Facebook page for Disney Baby commented on a post of mine and said that Hayden looked like he was possessed. It was enough to cause me to spend the rest of the day angry at the online world and wonder if it’s all worth it (the kind people at DB promptly removed the comment after I brought it to the attention. You can mess with me but don’t you dare mess with my kids). We (bloggers) put ourselves out there, and in some ways by being open we inevitably bring out the assholes. But at the same time, I should feel safe and comfortable doing a job that allows me to contribute to my family, and write about my baby without people being jerks. Follow that up with a few weird altercations on my personal Facebook page, and it led me to taking a much needed break from my computer for the day. I’ve also deleted Facebook off my phone and am only planning to give updates on my For The Love Of page for a while. Me and Facebook are not friends right now. If I didn’t have to have a personal account to keep my FTLO page going, I’d probably delete it all together.

The week online wasn’t entirely a loss though, as I got a few very inspiring comments on my post Monday, on gallery walls. Comments that inspired me so much that I took action last night, and grabbed a coffee and spent almost 2 hours after bedtime just browsing Target and buying some frames so I can start printing up pictures and ordering prints. I’m on my way to that gallery wall. The one pictured above via Little Green Notebook is lovely, but it begs me to ask the question, how much longer will chalkboard walls be au curant?

There’s been quite a few times over the last few weeks where I didn’t feel like I was coming far enough in my goal to create more around my home, get projects started and finished. Too much time being spent working and not enough time creating. But spending a good portion of my day in the kitchen today reminded me that the year has not been a total loss. I’ve consistently tried at least one new recipe each and every week, sometimes even two, so today I thought I’d share a few of the recipes we’ve tried and loved (or didn’t love so much). I figure you can always use a good recommendation, especially after it’s been pinned and tried. I must be craving citrus flavors because half the food I’m pinning is lemon something or other, starting off with these lemon ricotta blackberry muffins from Two Peas And Their Pod. Light but still filling, they were an excellent breakfast treat along with some greek yogurt for a couple of mornings in a row. This lime soup from Williams Sonoma was incredible. I am drooling just thinking about it. One modification I made was to add 1 cup of wild rice during the last 10 minutes of cooking to make it a bit heartier and it was an excellent idea if I do say so myself. I very much look forward to making this again. This oatmeal casserole was quite honestly, a big fat fail. Virtually flavorless, the idea is wonderful in theory, but in reality it was mushy yet dry, a strange combination. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve made something and thrown it out because it was just no good; this was one of those times. So I completely modified these bacon egg toast cups because I only had half a dozen eggs but I wanted to make a dozen cups for my Moms group. I ended up scrambling the eggs instead of making them over easy, by cooking them scrambled in the pan for just a couple of minutes so they congealed together and were no longer completely runny. I then poured them into the cups and baked them for about 15 minutes and they were excellent! I would still like to try them sunny side up though. So I actually haven’t made this Lemon Fettuccine yet but have all the ingredients to make it tomorrow. It sounds so delicious and refreshing so I’ll let you know how it goes. And again, haven’t made this yet but will do so this weekend. This Lemonade Layer Cake is supposedly one of the best and most popular cakes on Pinterest. What does that really mean though? ha! I’ll give it a try though since eating the lemon cake my grandma used to make is one of my fondest childhood memories.

So now you know what I’ll be doing this weekend; cooking and figuring out pictures to print to fill up a gallery wall. What will you guys be up to?