A Couple Favorites

I used to be a diehard customer of a certain worldwide coffee shop conglomerate and was visiting a little too often for my bank account's taste while picking up a caramel frap or chai.  I tricked myself into thinking I wasn't really spending that much money there by adding money to my personalized gold card and just paying that way.  News flash...you're still spending money there, genius.  So I stopped going so frequently for awhile and in the meantime, found a cheaper, and somewhat better, alternative.  A new McDonald's opened up near us and we received a bunch of freebie coupons in the mail.  Yes McDonald's...don't shriek and run away.  There was one for a free small Frappe, which is McD's version of the conglomerate's frapuccino. So I decided on a caramel Frappe and let me just say, the golden arches wins over coffee conglomerate.  The caramel Frappe has more of a caramel-y flavor and price wise, it's much cheaper too!  Win win if you ask me.

 

Our neighborhood has a seriously awesome grocery store.  It's one of the largest in the state and has a home department, jewelry store and a natural health department.  It's almost as bad as Target when it comes to sucking your purse dry.  They have a great selection of organic and natural items which is great for those times when I want to step it up a little.  But let's be honest people, I just said I go to McDonald's so I'm not going nuts with the organic ;)  I was in dire need of a bottle of water during one trip so I hit up the refrigerated beverage section and saw this interesting little bottle.

 

I'm sure you've heard how chia seeds are the newest super food...added to the list of 'you're killing yourself slowly if you aren't taking these rightthisverysecond' foods.  They have a few flavors and I love pretty much cherry anything so I grabbed the Cherry Chia and gave it a try.  The flavor is more subtle real cherries; not eye crossing super sweet cherry Slurpee flavor.  The texture is...interesting, shall we say.  Apparently chia seeds make this gel when in liquid so if feels like you're swallowing little balls of gelatin.  If you're totally freaked out by weird textures, I might not recommend this stuff but I kinda like it and I'm getting a little dose of super foody goodness in this bottle.  Even if I am going to McDonald's.

Monthly Baby Gadgets

Baby gadgets.  There are 18 trillion different kinds of baby gadgets that promise to not only make your life better as a parent, but they also threaten for your (and your baby's) world to actually implode if you don't hop in your car, run over a few elderly pedestrians, and sprint through your nearest super store to purchase them.  I'll admit that in the first few weeks, I was both supremely naive and terrified that if I didn't buy said super life saving gadgets, something terrible would happen.  News flash: Selah is now 19 months old and so far, there have been no imploding worlds due to my negligence in buying these gadgets.  That being said, there are a few gadgets that I've bought that are complete life savers and do in fact make our lives a little easier and keep those pesky imploding worlds at bay.

1 :  2  :  3  :  4  :  5

1)  When it came time to give the bottles the heave ho, I spent a small fortune trying to find a sippy cup that Selah would actually drink out of.  There were a few that she actually gave eye rolls to.  Lady, please.  Of course there were the $20 sippy cups that in addition to curing cancer, they also hydrated your child.  $20 to hydrate my kid???  I'll take 5!  So on one of my what seemed like daily trips to our local grocery store, I decided to cruise down the kiddo aisle and found the aforementioned flip top straw cups.  I bought one and gave it a try the next morning and wouldntchaknow it...she loved it!  I went back and bought 2 more before God forbid, they discontinued them and I was back to square one.  I love that the straw just flips closed and is small enough to fit into the side pouch of the diaper bag.  And best part...you can buy 2 for under $10.  Double score.

2) We've been using these great kiddo utensils for months.  Right around Selah's 1st birthday, she and I ventured down to our local Ikea.  It's a good thing it's on the complete opposite end of the city as us, otherwise I'd be bankrupting us.  Love Ikea.  I was beginning to toy with the idea of getting her some big girl utensils when the Ikea fairies just happened to shine this glorious light on a huge bin of their Kalas flatwear set.  They're the perfect size, in cool vibrant colors and, hold onto your shorts, you get 18 pieces for $1.99.  You're welcome.  

3) If I had a dollar for every time I sang the praises of the NoseFrida, I'd be livin' large.  I remember calling Selah's pediatrician up in a cold sweat the first time she got a cold at 3 weeks and gagging at the thought of this 'snot sucker' he highly recommended.  Someone tells you you're going to be literally sucking the snot out of your kid's nose and you'll be gagging too.  But at that point, I didn't care.  I had tried the battery operated snot sucker (it did absolutely nothing and smelled like it was going to catch on fire at any second) and the blue hospital bulb gave her a bloody nose.  This thing arrived and any mama who's used one will tell you they've never been so excited to see snot.  I had to use it recently on Selah when she had a bad cold and hasn't quite mastered the nose blowing.  Lemme tell ya though, using this on a newborn and then on an 18 month old is a whole 'nother ball game.  Think greased pig wrestling.  Still awesome now though.

4) Piggybacking off the NoseFrida and cold gadgets is this Eucalyptus essential oil from Aura Cacia.  I originally bought this bottle for myself pre-kiddo for a nasty sinus infection I had.  Skip forward to Selah having a cold and this stuff works wonders in so many ways!  My favorite is to put drops of it in her humidifier whenever she was sleeping.  Awesome sauce.

5) I'm kinda anal when it comes to keeping my vehicle clean and I swore up and down that once I had a baby, I wouldn't have a car that looked like a garbage dump.  I didn't want to have trash and dried up months old food everywhere.  I'm sure moms everywhere were not-so-quietly laughing whenever I'd say this but guess what, I still keep a clean car.  That's just me and it makes me happier to have a clean vehicle.  I'm sure this pleases my OCD hubby to no end as well.  So when Selah got to snacking-in-the-car age, I was once again in my favorite bank account sucking store and found the Munchkin Snack Catcher.  I swear, that company has some of the coolest stuff for kids and they're super affordable.  We were given another snack catching gadget that you can supposedly fling around and nothing flies out; which it does what it says it will.  It does not, however, guarantee against small toddlers setting the gadget on the floor and emptying fist fulls of snacks out onto the floor.  Purpose defeated.

If you pick up at least one of these bad boys, I guarantee you'll smile just a little :)

*This post is not sponsored in any way.  These are just products I've purchased on my own that I love.*

What's for breakfast?

Pinterest is both a blessing and a curse in my house.  I've found some amazing ideas and recipes off there...and at the same time it can make any mom feel like a complete failing loser for not making every day for her kids look like it came straight from the 1000 times over re-pinned board of How To Be The Best Mom Ever.  That being said, I was on the hunt for some healthier breakfast ideas for Selah and looked to the ol' Pinterest for, at the very least, some inspiration.  This was partly due to the fact that after perusing our local grocery store's healthy/organic breakfast section, I discovered I have a small issue with paying $4 for a box of 6 frozen pancakes that half of which will more than likely end up flung on the floor or secretly fed to the dogs while I'm not looking. 

Pumpkin pancakes piqued my interest so I decided to give them a try and it ever so conveniently happened that I had all the ingredients, including the pumpkin puree.  That would be thanks to my attempt at making Pumpkin Pie Fudge last month for my husband's work Christmas party.  They turned out great but had so much freaking sugar in them (I swear it was like 10 cups powdered and granulated) that I dang near went into diabetic shock just sampling the pieces that fell off while trying to cut them into squares.  I decided my major organs couldn't handle anymore so one batch was enough which left me with an extra can of pumpkin puree and for some weird reason, 5 cans of evaporated milk.  Go figure.

So I busted out my box of pancake mix, Bisquick's Heart Smart, and measured based off the Pancake recipe on the side.  By the way, I fudged my way through most of the ingredients on this.    Or I believe the correct term is called, eyeballing it.  I used half a can of the pumpkin puree and to make it a little more festive, tossed in 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

 It never fails; I always make a huge mess when it comes to floury type mixes.

 

I made mini pancakes with my batter since Selah loved the frozen mini buttermilk ones we were buying previously and the little ones seem to interest her more.  With a little dab of Smart Balance butter and a very light dollop of syrup, she was a big fan of these. Woohoo...mommy success!

Sweeping the Dust Off

Needless to say, my personal blog was seriously neglected.  Like, if it were a dog, I'd be in jail serving a sentence for animal cruelty but not before making a cameo on Animal Cops as a dog neglector.  Looking back on my last post over there, I was pregnant with our daughter, Selah, and was reveling in all the pregnancy glory.  Not really.  I was a bit of a hot mess emotionally for a large chunk of the pregnancy due to losing my dad when I was about 4 months along.  I tried to keep it together as best as possible for the sake of the baby I was carrying but lemme tell ya, some days it was really hard.

So what's happened since the last time I posted on my personal blog?  Well, my daughter (in true form to this day) was tired of life on the inside and decided that she wasn't going to wait 5 more weeks and out she came after a very fast ohdearlordmakeitstop 2 hour labor; with me never making it to a room and having her on a stretcher in triage.  And no I didn't get a discount for that...I checked ;).  I adjusted to becoming a mom and thankfully God blessed me with a great baby who slept through the night early and to this day is a pretty great sleeper.  Mama loves you extra for that kiddo ;)  We bought a 5 bedroom house in east Denver (plenty of room for more kids the husband said with a smile when we bought it) and while I wasn't initially sure I'd like living where it's flat with very little trees, I've really enjoyed it.  It's quiet, we're surrounded by hardworking ranching families and for the most part, people are a little less hostile, shall we say ;).

While I've had my photography business since 2007, I was seriously considering putting it on hold indefinitely after a very slow year 2012 and early 2013; part of that was my own doing by not taking several bookings while I was on maternity leave.  But apparently God had other plans because the second half of 2013 has kept me more than busy with family portrait sessions and I finally realized that focusing on these types of sessions is where I'm happiest.  I'll still do a handful of weddings a year but I'm not going to focus on them like I had in years past.

So now I'm a work at home mom to a now 18 month old (holy cow where has the time gone?!?), working on DIY projects around the house and satiating my shopping appetite on eBay.  I'll be posting all sorts of things, lemme tell ya :)  Mama and baby fashion, must haves for parents (i.e. moms really), and whatever else strikes my fancy that day.  So with that, I bid you adieu!