Long weekend musings...

It's a long weekend here in Ontario, which means I'm parenting with my partner, my hubby, for an extra day on Monday. While it has always been awesome to spend extra time with my sweetie, it's extra awesome now with a baby. An extra set of hands!!! Woohoo!

We had some friends over for a BBQ yesterday and it was the first social event I've ever hosted that didn't feature at least one homemade dish. It's just one of the many things I used to love to do that has seemingly fallen by the wayside ever since a certain someone has entered my life! I know this exhausted feeling is just temporary, which is great because I'd really love to feel a tiny bit like my old self soon.

Even so, I've begun to really think about how motherhood changes you. Mentally, and also physically, I am almost a completely different person, and there is nothing wrong with that. Look what I (maybe I should be saying we?) did, I created a new life! And when I did I accepted that it meant that my role as mother would mean shaping my child's life and putting mine on the back burner for a little while. 

Interestingly, the things I miss from my old life are not the things I expected to miss. I expected to miss traveling on a whim, going out to nice restaurants, poker nights with friends. In reality, I mostly miss cooking, baking, and cleaning. Seriously. The level of grossness in our bathroom is horrifying to me. I should possibly be doing that right now instead of writing this blog post... Hmmm... Anyways..

The good news is that these things I miss will come back shortly. Madeline is taking better naps and I am starting to feel human again, it's at the point now where I don't feel like I need to be napping when she's napping, so there's a little room for cooking, baking, cleaning, and BLOGGING. There's also a career/professional task (paperwork to become a P. Eng) that I've been putting off for so long that needs to get done before I head back to work, so that needs to occupy some of my free time too. 

This was kind of a jumbled mix of thoughts, but after reading this post today, I think that's ok. 

25 and 26 Weeks!

The last 2 weeks were a whirlwind, with Christmas holidays, and our first baby shower! Christmas was pretty hectic. My in-laws spent the holidays with us in our hometown, which was cool. Christmas day my parents cooked dinner for 17 people. What a zoo that was. The food was delicious!! My dad is really the holiday dinner chef and he always does an awesome job. His stuffing is to die for. Best out there.

On to the shower, we have never felt so loved!!! My mom and sister planned a really beautiful shower for baby and me. Now I am working on the thank you notes :) I still need to get the pictures from my mom, so for now I'll leave you with my last 2 bump pictures.

23 Weeks!

It was a whirlwind of a week and weekend! As you know from my other posts, my parents are in town visiting. Blogging while they're here has been difficult, but I've still managed to post every day! We have accomplished so much this weekend, the nursery is looking awesome but still isn't fully completed. You guys will have to wait a little while longer before I share :) My mom is superwoman though, I swear. She completed every sewing project we planned for the whole space, we never thought it would all get done this soon!

I am off work today but my husband had to go in. This is a typical scene once he leaves for work if I am still in bed. The white bit is my husband's pillow. Leroy and I had some major snuggles this morning! He's so spoiled... he's probably in for quite a rude awakening once baby arrives and he's no longer the complete centre of attention...

This coming week is going to be brutal. It's back to work tomorrow, and we're having a big Christmas party at our house on Saturday, and I am so behind on the baking and planning for that! Every evening this week will probably be very busy. On top of that, my dad is here all week for work, so I'll probably see him some evenings too! Yikes. Oh, and did I mention I am also behind on Christmas shopping??? I am a big ball of stress right now...

And in other pregnancy news, I finally weighed myself. At 23 weeks I am up about 22 pounds. That's higher than I initially planned, but I am feeling pretty good about it. It seems to be evening out too. My weight gain seems to come in spurts, I am in a slow one now, probably about 0.5 pounds/week. With 17 weeks left, my new goal is to stay under a 40 pound gain.

Here's your photographic evidence of my pregnancy for this week! 1 more week to viability!

My amazing parents...

My parents are home renovation/decor SUPERSTARS! Seriously, I feel like they should have their own show. It could be called: How to completely transform a room in 8 hours or less!

Today we managed the following: made a crib skirt, and a roman shade, hung sheer curtains, painted the entire nursery, hung a new chandelier, and put together some wall shelves. All of that in about 6 hours.

I love my parents. They are definitely the best and I am so lucky to have them! Can't wait to show you guys once it all comes together :)

Giving thanks...

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends!! I am pretty jealous that you're all probably in a pretty awesome turkey coma right about now...

I thought I would take some time to reflect on what I am thankful for this holiday season:

- my amazing and supportive husband, who's strength I admire, and didn't even know the power of until this year.
- our comfortable home. I know we're so fortunate to live in such a great neighborhood and beautiful house at our age.
- our little doggie, he's been so much better behaved these days, and I am very thankful for less poop in the house!!!
- my wonderful family. I am so blessed to have 2 amazing and supportive parents, an awesome sister who is my best friend, and incredibly lucky to have amazing in-laws who make me feel loved every day.

And finally, I am so grateful for this little bean growing inside me. I already love her so much and I just pray that everything continues to go smoothly and we get to meet her in a few short months!

What are you thankful for this year?

A photo recap of our trip to Halifax!

My husband and I were able to go to Halifax to spend Thanksgiving with  my family this year, and it was so much fun! My parents had just bought a 27 foot boat, so we went on two trips around the harbour on that.

We also had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner filled with good food, and great company! I was so excited to have some of my mom's (best in the whole world if you ask me!) pumpkin pie. With fresh whipped cream. Yummmm.

All in all it was a great long weekend! Can't wait to go back at Christmas. I think the Christmas trip will be my last trip home before the baby comes, I'm planning on really savouring it. Too bad it won't exactly be boat weather... damn you winter!!!

I know American Thanksgiving is coming up soon, what are your plans? If you're Canadian, did you do anything special this year?

This is the box that my Papa built...

My Papa (my mom's dad) was an amazing, kind, caring, soft spoken, and supremely talented man. I have so many memories of him, and a lot of them involved some kind of project. See, he was an expert woodworker. He could build absolutely anything, and he was such a perfectionist that you knew it would be, well, perfect. We built a lot of bird houses together. By together, I of course mean that he cut out all of the wood and put the whole thing together while I watched wide-eyed. Then he would have me paint and decorate our creation. Trust me when I say, these were some very interesting "pieces". I was not very good with the paint... Anyway, I think my mom still has our "Eat at Sarah's" diner-inspired birdfeeder in her yard! Oh how I wish I had some pictures!

When I got a bit older, my Papa would build things for my sister and me, and we'd usually receive them as gifts. One year for Christmas, I got this box:

It's gorgeous. He didn't paint it any particular color, leaving it blank for me to one day create something hopefully nicer than any of the bird houses/feeders I created. I think he gave this to me about 10 years ago, and here it still sits, untouched in my entranceway. It houses many odds and ends, but mostly winter accessories, hats, mittens, scarves. Every single time I look at it I think of my Papa. It's been about 6.5 years since he passed away, and this is one tangible object I have to remember him by.

Finally, my husband and I spruced up the box a bit. We went back and forth on what color to paint it. Did I want a neutral that would go with anything? Did I want a bright bold color to brighten up our otherwise dull entranceway? I think the choice was pretty obvious. My Papa was a very bright spot in the lives of everyone he ever met, I had to go bright.

Our main floor has a lot of aqua blues, and lime greens. In the basement we have ton of reds and yellows, and other bright colors. Since this box resides on the main floor, I grabbed a few paint chips in various blues, greens, and yellows. I set them all out on top of the box, and stood back and imagined. It was a highly technical process which ended in me picking this one: Behr 490B-4 (Sea Life).

I'm actually planning on completing this project this weekend so I can post about it on Monday! Stay tuned to see how it turned out!!

Football Birthday Cake!

This year for my hubby’s birthday I decided to bake him a cake in the shape of a football. I’ve always wanted to try a character type cake, but since we have no kids, and really don’t know anyone with kids close enough to us for me to do this, my husband became the guinea pig. Whatever. Twenty-six year olds can have kid cakes too, right?

I’ve been into baking since I graduated university 3 years ago, and it stems from my mom being so awesome at it. She has a small wedding cake business, and I just thought it was so cool. I took the Wilton’s cake decorating class at Michael’s, and I really learned a lot. Before taking the class I baked very yummy cakes but had very little idea how to decorate them. I took this back in April, and this is really the first opportunity I am getting to put what I’ve learned to practice, even though character cakes were only a very small portion of the class on the very first day… Oh well, it’s fun!

Since a football is brown, I decided to decorate it with chocolate icing, instead of coloring the icing brown. Thus, I decided on a chocolate cake as well. I got this recipe a while ago from Wife From Scratch, it’s one of the best chocolate cake recipes I’ve tried! It filled the football pan and made 6 extra cupcakes. I have used it before to make a 2-layer cake and had some leftover for a couple of cupcakes.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch process
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup neutral vegetable oil, such as canola, soybean or vegetable blend
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray your pans with Pam for Baking. If you don't want to use the special Pam, you can grease and flour your pan(s)8-inch round cake pans. 

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine them well. Add the oil and sour cream and whisk to blend. Gradually beat in the water, vinegar and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs and beat until everything is well blended. Pour into your pan(s).

The football pan took a freakishly long time. I would say it was an hour before a toothpick came out clean. I think it was because it was so deep. Regular cake pans should take about 30-35 minutes. Let cool in the pans for about 20 minutes. Remove cake from pan and let cool on a wire rack.

The football pan was a little bit annoying in other ways too. I couldn’t get it to sit flat, so the cake ended up baking kind of lopsided. It didn’t really matter too much since it gets turned outside down on the plate anyways, so I wasn’t super concerned. After baking, I let the cake cool and then put it onto the “cake” plate, which was actually a turkey platter. Hey, it is oval, so it works! I wrapped it in the saran wrap and came back to decorate it 2 days later.

Here’s what I needed to decorate it:

• Wilton 10 inch featherweight icing bag (any icing bag would be fine)
• Wilton cake decorating tip #18 (for the brown portions) and #21 (for the white portions)
• Chocolate buttercream icing
• White buttercream icing
• Template that came with the football pan
• My awesome baking apron (made by my mom!! Here’s a plug to visit our Etsy shop – Tails & Toes)

Head on over to our Etsy store to see more cute stuff!

Here's the icing recipe:

• 1 cup solid vegetable shortening
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 9 teaspoons water
• 4 cups icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon meringue powder

Cream the shortening, vanilla, and water in a stand mixer, or with a hand held mixer. Add icing sugar and meringue powder and mix. I only add a bit of the dry mixture at once to make sure it doesn't poof up and fly everywhere. Add more water if the icing seems to thick to spread easily.  For chocolate icing I added 3/4 cup of cocoa powder!

And finally, here’s some pictures of how it turned out!

Leroy...

Bad bad Leroy Brown...

We certainly think our little guy is the baddest dog in the whole damn town!! He's got a serious attitude problem, but we love him anyways. I think it's because he's cute. If he were an ugly dog we would dislike him a lot more... Just joking of course. He has a ton of energy and personality though. He can be a handful.

I've mentioned him a lot already, but haven't really talked about him. He's 2 years old and he's a Welsh terrier! Here he is in all his glory...

And here's one of my favorites of me with him, celebrating Canada Day!! He was freshly groomed.

Annnnnnd finally, here's a few of him being super silly. Can't wait to share more amusing stories in the future!

Mother's Day Brunch

I made a brunch for my mother-in-law this past Sunday. It’s always tough not being around my own Mom and family for pretty much every holiday, or in this case, “holiday”. My in-laws are great though, so it works out ok.

Anyway, on the menu: whole-wheat waffles, pumpkin spice muffins, western frittata, and sausages.

The waffles were made exactly as in the recipe linked above. I did use 1% milk with a tablespoon of vinegar added to turn it into buttermilk.

The pumpkin spice muffin recipe was altered just a bit. I used a full cup of pumpkin puree, and instead of pumpkin spice I used 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/4 tsp ginger. I also didn't have any honey so I just omitted it and they turned out fantastic anyways!

All of the ingredients laid out and ready to go.

Ready to go in the oven!

For the frittata I cut up red and green pepper and white onion. I used about 1/2 of each pepper, and half a medium sized onion. I beat 6 eggs in a large bowl with 1/4 cup of milk. I poured the mixture into a pie plate and added 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese. I baked at 360 degrees for 40 minutes.

Why yes, I do own a pig shaped cutting board!

Everything was a hit! We had raspberries, strawberries, and fresh whipped cream to top the waffles, and classed it up a bit by drinking our orange juice in champagne flutes.

I set the table with a neutral table cloth, aqua napkins, and some fresh flowers that the husband picked up for me that morning. I think it looked pretty nice, but if I had more time (and money) I would have done something a lot fancier, since it's really fun for me to make everything pretty. All in all we had a lovely brunch! I can't wait for my next opportunity to entertain!