Anytime Salad

Being healthy is not super fun for me. I wish that I had a grown up palate, but I just don't. I think I only just started to enjoy eating broccoli and asparagus about 5 years ago, but I haven't even ventured into the world of quinoa and brown rice.

Okay, so I'm not super adventurous. That doesn't mean that I eat poorly and I try to fit vegetables in wherever I can in meals. I just don't go out of my way to cut out a nice piece of cake for dessert. In fact, I feel like I need to reward myself when I have an especially healthy meal with dessert. This is a problem.

I'm trying to kick this habit of needing something sweet, because heck, I'll admit that I'm addicted to sugar.

Enter salad and vegetables stage right.

The problem with salad is that having fresh toppings is pretty hard for me to always have on hand. I either use them for other recipes or I just don't have the energy to chop a million vegetables with a baby on one hip and a toddler constantly bringing a chair over to "help" me.

I have found that the best way to make salad interesting enough for me and keep me from my cookie cravings is to keep them fruity. It is also easier to have fruity salad toppings on hand. Canned fruit, dried fruit, and fresh fruit always seem to be on hand in our home. Whereas sometimes our only vegetables on hand are the frozen broccoli florets.

Here is a salad that I threw together with just things that I have on hand.

Anytime Salad
1 pkg. fresh baby spinach
1/4 cup candied walnuts (obviously if you are really serious about being healthy you can get naked nuts)
handful dried apricots quartered (about 10)
handful craisens
fresh parmesan or mozzarella

Dressing
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp mustard
2 tsp poppy seeds
3 TBL olive oil

Training for a Half...Again

Well, the time has come! It is officially swim suit season and I am a little more than officially un-pregnant, so it is time to get my booty back into gear. I have never been one to willingly work out, and I'm definitely not the type of person who would ever be caught saying, "I love to run!" But exercise is a necessary evil that is becoming just a little more necessary and a lot more evil as my metabolism is running to a halt.

I always hated it when teachers would say, "kids just think they are invincible." I always knew I was going to die one day and I always knew that I could die at any moment. However, one thing I did not predict was that I would actually have to work hard to keep my weight down. I've never been super skinny, but I figured that was because I didn't work hard at it. I thought if I stopped eating cookies then I'd be a lot thinner. Now I'm realizing how much work staying fit can be.

Baby weight is the worst, and not only because you have to watch what you eat and exercise regularly. The worst thing about it is that you have to break all these horrible habits you made when you were prego.

Like the ice cream. Every. Night.

I really tried to exercise with this last baby, but holy Hannah, it is SO hard to work out when you are so exhausted that you fall asleep right when you hit the pillow. (Typically it takes me at least half an hour to wind down and fall asleep.) Those days are gone. I don't even remember the last time I watched a movie from beginning to end. I'm becoming my mother! (Not a bad thing; love you, mom!)

Anyway, my sister, Jenn (who wrote this excellent guide to marathon running) has a goal to run a marathon between having babies. I have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon in my life, but I have done two half marathons with her so that is my goal: to run a half marathon between my kids. I did both of my half marathons in the first trimester of my babies so hopefully that pattern doesn't continue. I must be more fertile when I work out!

So for all my readers, here is an invitation to run with me. Not just because it's healthy, but because it's freaking cool to nonchalantly say, "Yeah, I ran a touch over 13 miles before. No big deal." (but it really is a pretty big deal)

I started last Monday, following this schedule and I've used Hal Higdon for both my other runs.

I will say this: training is so so so so so so SOOOOO important!

My first half marathon, I was inconsistent with training and only made it to the 7 mile long run, which is about 3 weeks short of the full training. That run, no joke, hurt worse than child birth (keep in mind, I'm an epidural girl). And it certainly was harder to recover from than child birth.

My second race, on the other hand, went great. I was so scared from my previous bad experience that I never missed a running day. And it paid off! I didn't even have to recover from it.

Me, my mom, and sister after my second half marathon. See how I'm smiling? That is because I trained! After the first one, my husband had to carry me to the car. 

So if you happen upon this blog, please run with me. Because being healthy is pretty great. And mostly misery loves company.

Special Occasion Stuffed French Toast

I have one meal that transports Evan to another planet.

I'm pretty easy as far as getting excited about food goes. I crave a million different things. For example, when I drink hot chocolate, I feel like every cell in my body dances. Since I've never tried drugs, this is the closest experience I'll ever have to a serious addiction.

Evan likes eating and he eats pretty well. He just doesn't get excited about food like I do. Except for this one thing I make: stuffed french toast. It's become a bit of a tradition that I make it for every special occasion; birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine's Day. I've tried different breakfast foods that I thought would be just as exciting, but it always ends up not measuring up to the stuffed french toast.

This recipe is by no means healthy, but it sure is tasty. If you want a blog that will give you recipes that help you drop a pant size, this is not the place for you.



So, here's the recipe:

Special Occasion Stuffed French Toast

French toast dip
1 loaf of French bread thickly sliced
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp cinnamon
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch cloves
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp rum extract (optional)

Cream Cheese Stuffing
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 to 2 Tbsp milk

Strawberry Topping
1 pint fresh strawberries sliced
1/3 cup sugar

Combine strawberries and sugar in a bowl and set aside.

In another bowl combine all of the stuffing ingredients and mix until smooth.

In an 8x8 casserole dish combine all dip ingredients except for bread and mix well with immersion blender.  Slice each piece of French bread halfway down the middle and stuff with cream cheese mixture and strawberries. Warm a pan on the stove or a griddle and grease generously with butter. Dip bread into the egg mixture and toast on both sides on pan or griddle. Top with remaining cream cheese and strawberries and drizzle maple syrup on top.

The Move Part II: Everything Else

I never, never, never want to move again! I don't mind packing so much as I really despise the unpacking. Going to a new place is fun and finding an apartment can be fun sometimes, but wow, I'm glad it's over.

Too bad we'll have to move in another two years. Maybe in one, depending if this place is too small for our growing family.

But the process wasn't for nothing! I felt like I learned a lot about packing and moving in general. Mostly I learned that it's expensive, and even if your husband is nice and does the drive across the country so you can fly with your baby, flying with babies is NOT fun!

But we are all here. And we're all safe. And the house is nearly unpacked with the exception of hanging pictures.

And here are some things that I learned that helped me a little bit with the packing:



Pack your hanger clothes in plastic bags.

Did I mention I hate unpacking? Because I do, but this made is SO easy! (at least the closet part) I just had to tie it up, throw it in a box, and then toss them back on the rack when we got to our apartment. And the best part is that I didn't have to reorganize my clothes in the way they were before we moved.

 Save your shoes with socks. 

I have some shoes that I really love and I really hate when my shoes get scuffed. But obviously I wasn't going to pack all my shoes in separate boxes. So luckily, I have a lot of old socks as well and just put them on the shoes to protect them. Not a (new) scuff in sight!

Use your drawers.

Breaking down our furniture would have been a real pain and it's likely that it would never come out looking the same, so we kept all of ours intact and used all the drawers. We put most of our fragile things like pictures and decorations in our sock drawers. Any and every drawer was used to its full potential. This saved us lots of time and money that we would have spent bubble wrapping everything.





There were some other things I learned that just can't be expressed in pictures:

• No matter how far in advance you plan, you will always be working until the last second.
• Making lists is the only way to remember to do everything
• Everything will go wrong (our sprinklers had issues, I packed my phone charger so couldn't use it, and the old tenants were dirty, so we had to deal with mice when we moved in...yikes!)
• Friends are priceless! We had so many people offering dinner, rides, use of their carpet cleaner, and babysitting. It was amazing. 

Last Minute Curtains

This post title may be a little misleading. These curtains are not something that only take a couple of minutes. In fact, they have taken me way too many baby nap times to finish. I call them last minute curtains because we found out that we are almost 100% moving to Maine (in July!) and I needed to finally finish them before we left the sewing machine forever.

These curtains actually don't take too much time, but I have very little patience with sewing and the ruffles can be a little tedious to do. But I think they turned out great, and I love them and I can't stop looking at them. I glow with pride every time I walk in the room.

If you want the same warm fuzzy feeling that I have, you can check out the tutorial that I followed here, which was pretty great and very easy to follow. They weren't even that expensive since I used coupons and I ended up getting an additional discount on two pieces of fabric because the bolt was already cut. (I would not suggest this. The colors were a little bit different, but you really can't notice now.)

The few things that I would point out after I've done the project is that her "unbleached" muslin looks a heck of a lot whiter than the unbleached ones I saw in the store. I went with an unbleached muslin and it turned out much more creamy colored than white. I thought maybe it was creamy colored because it was all together on the bolt, but I was wrong, and it kind of devastated me at first, but I think it turned out great in the end. 

Another thing is, if you have a ruffler foot for your sewing machine and you know how to use it, PLEASE use it. These curtains would have been done in a day or two if I didn't almost blow my brains out from ruffling all this fabric! It's a lot more than it looks like. 

Also, I used cafe rod clips from Walmart to hang the curtain. I left the tabs open on the ends so I could put it directly on the rod if I didn't like how it looked, but they turned out great. They were so cheap and they slide so nicely. It was a great decision. 

Overall, I'm really proud of myself for this project. I usually get really frustrated and cut lots of corners when I sew, but this time I decided that I would leave every time I got frustrated, and so it ended up actually looking great. It doesn't look exactly like the blog that I followed, but I was kind of going for my own look anyway. 

Even if you're a starter, this is a great project to do. When you're going through school, you can't really afford too many great accent pieces in your home, so this did the trick to add a little attention grabber. If anyone tries it, let me know!