I've moved...

...Blogs that is. I will no longer be updating this blog as I have started a brand new one! Please continue to follow me over at Ooh La Lovely Blog. Once you arrive, please follow via Bloglovin', Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest (icons at the top right of the page). Thank you!

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Playing catch up

Hello blog. I haven't seen you in months! So a little catch up...
Christmas...Christmas was different this year. We spent it away from family which was really sad but also kind of exciting. Being away from everyone gave us the opportunity to start some of our own family traditions which was so much fun. Some things that we started this year was making a homemade gingerbread house which was not as intimidating as I thought it would be. Another one I really enjoyed was setting up a Christmas Eve "sleepover." What it entailed was a blow up mattress and all of our pillows and blankets. We then had our Christmas jammies wrapped and waiting for us to change in to. Once we had our overly warm PJ's on (i was sweating in them) we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and then headed to bed. Christmas morning was filled with wrapping paper, bows and too many boxes that needed to be broken down. Mr. E was adorable and made all of that wrapping the night before worth it.

New years was uneventful... we downed a bottle of sparkling cider, and were in bed before 12. We're pretty exciting people.

Valentines day...we had a little kids party at the park with a few friends which turned out to be pretty fun. We had a little snack-y picnic and decorated bags for our valentines. No one cried and died, which makes for a pretty successful party. And we also really lucked out with having an amazing group of friends.

Hub made us crepes for breakfast. This is why he's my favorite.

Thanks for catching up with me. Hopefully it won't be another 2 months before my next update. 

DIY Bottle Brush Trees

Wow, I really am no good at updating my blog. Time just goes by way too fast and I just realized it's been almost 2 months since I've even looked at my blog. I'm awesome.
Moving on, it is now the end up of November which means...Christmas crafting is in full force. The past week I made a mini light up marquee sign which turned out being the biggest pain. Trying to string the lights was a disaster, hence why there are punched holes, and no lights poking through. So now I have uneven lights and open holes...whatever, I suppose it's still cute. And for $6, I can't complain.

 I've also made these adorable little bottle brush trees.  My color scheme is gold and cream and decided this year to add a little color. I'm head over heels in love with the pink vintage Christmas decor, so I thought why not dye some little trees pink? I'm super excited to start decorating on Friday, even though I'm going without a mantle this year :(  I did have big plans to construct a fake fireplace but somehow I've just not been motivated to follow through. Maybe after the new year.
Anyways, I had a few people ask me how I made them so I figured I'd just do a tutorial on the blog. The whole project cost me just under $15 and took about an hour from start to finish, minus drying and decorating. If you shop at Michaels make sure you use your 40% or 50% coupon to buy your Rit Dye. It might only save you $2, but hey, that pays for a large Diet Coke from Wendy's right there :) Although, it might end up costing a little more if you don't have any of the supplies on hand, but everything is pretty inexpensive to buy.:

Supplies:
1 pack of Lemax bottle brush trees (found mine at Michaels for 50% off)
Rit Dye in the color of your choice (I used fuchsia)
1 TBS salt
1 jug of bleach
Rubber Gloves
Plastic bin

Start by pulling out all of your trees from their plastic wrapping.

Now take you plastic bin and fill it with bleach. Someone said they only used 3 capfulls, I used half a bottle. I was doing 10 trees at a time and had zero amount of patience. I figured the more bleach I used, the faster the process? I also added enough warm water to almost submerge all of my trees (laying down). The trees will almost immediately start to lift color.

 Make sure you  flip the trees over so every spot gets bleached. While my trees were soaking, I put my rubber gloves on and start rubbing the trees, making sure the bleach was really getting in there. I was also rubbing off the fake snow that's on the trees. After my trees were pretty white (about 15-20 min) I rinsed my bin out and filled it with warm soapy water.  I added my bleached trees to it and gave them a good scrubbing.

Then rinsed them off really good and placed them on towels, use ones you don't care about. I then repeated that process with the rest of the trees.

Once all of your trees have been bleached, washed and set aside, you can start making your Rit dye concoction. Follow the directions on how to mix it and add a tbs of salt. Here is where you'll want to wear your gloves again so you don't dye your fingers. I dipped my tree in just long enough to make sure it was evenly covered, pulled it out and rinsed it under water. If the color was too light, I'd dip it again and rinse, and repeat until desired color is achieved. I really love the look of the lighter colored trees and wish I would have done the majority of my trees lighter rather than darker.

 None the less, they're still pretty cute. Once you're done dying your trees, place them on your towels to dry. It'll take about a day to dry completely, and once they're dry you can fluff them because they'll look all clumpy and sad. Now you can keep them as is, or you can spray a little glue on them and sprinkle them with glitter. Or you can buy some cute little pearls and glue them on to their branches. Or whatever else you fancy. And then you get to stare at them, fall in love with them and display them.

I still need to glitter mine, I'm just dreading it. Too much of a mess to handle at the moment. 

Hope this helps those who had questions. It's pretty easy. Basically just bleach, wash, dye, rinse, dry. Enjoy!

Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

I have this obsession with cinnamon...and cookies. So it was kind of obvious that I'd be a total lover of something that combined both. I used to have this totally killer recipe but lost it a few years ago while I was moving. So Kelli or Carly, if you're reading this, I need you to find it for me :) But in the mean time, I stumbled across this recipe and it definitely fulfills my cinnamon sugar cookie craving. The downside, or maybe good side, is that it makes 24 cookies or less. My son alone devours half of them, easily. I would simply tell him no more cookies, and what would he do? He'd go over to the counter and grab one from the cooling racks, bring it over to me, split it in half and give me the other half, all while having the cutest little innocent smile. How could one say "no" to that? It's not possible. We ate a lot of cookies :)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of butter, softened
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

Cinnamon sugar (for rolling)

• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

In a mixing bowl, combine butter and sugars. Add egg and vanilla, mix well.  Add dry ingredients and mix. Now, cover your bowl with some plastic wrap and stick your bowl of cookie dough in the fridge for 30-60min. Preheat your oven to 350 and make your cinnamon sugar. Line your cookie sheets with a silpat or parchment paper. Next scoop out 1" cookie dough balls and roll it in your hand to make a perfect round ball. Now roll it in your cinnamon sugar mixture and place on your prepared cookie sheet. Bake 10-14 minutes. Mine were perfect at 12 minutes. Cool for a few minutes before transferring your cookies onto a cooling rack...or in my case, my mouth.

Crock pot coconut curry chicken w/ lime

That's a long name and a whole lot of "C's." I've recently rekindled my love with the crock pot. I love how I can just throw everything in there and then forget about it until dinner time. It's awesome. I try to use it at least 3 times a week. And the husband has been loving it as well, he even told me, with a giant grin on his face..."I LOVE when you cook with the crock pot." So, with that positive re-enforcement, my crock pot and I have become the best of friends.
And this recipe totally won my husband and myself over. So if you're a coconut milk lover and curry lover, you'll be a lover of this.

Ingredients

• 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 3 tsp curry powder
• 3 tbs soy sauce (I use low sodium)
• 2 tbs sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• the zest of one lime
• Lime cut into wedges
• cilantro

Combine coconut milk, broth, cumin, coriander, curry powder, soy sauce, sugar, salt and lime zest in your crock pot. Whisk until smooth. Add (raw) chicken breasts, cover and cook on low for 4-5 hrs. 

Once your chicken is tender enough to shred, have at it and shred into whatever size pieces you prefer. Dump back into the crock pot and mix it around in your delicious sauce. Serve over rice of your choice, top with cilantro and fresh lime juice.

*Updated suggestion: Add cubed pieces of potato or the last 30 minutes of cooking, pinch about a half cup of the sauce from the crock pot and add a few tablespoons of flour and whisk together until all clumps are gone. Do one of these to help thicken the sauce a bit. 

My little fish

Mr. E loves the water. And lucky for him, we have 2 pools, a splash pad, and beach surrounding us in less than miles distance. After spending almost every day down at the pool, I finally decided I HAD to get him some floaties. All of his little buddies can either swim or have some sort of flotation device on them, while he had none. He screamed bloody murder for the first 5 minutes when I put them on, but once he got that out of his system he adjusted and loved them. After one day of me helping him swim with the floaties, he decided he was ready to go out on his own. With me still supervising, he leaped from the pool step and off he went. He kicked those little legs, swallowed a small amount of water, and never turned back...to me, his mom. He's just growing up so fast and becoming so independent. He would actually get mad at me if I tried to help him, even if I was trying to save him from swallowing mass amounts of water. Whatever, I'm just the mom that always gets in the way :)

Check out those little legs kick. Love it.

Don't worry, as soon as I noticed him struggling to keep his body vertical, I jumped in and saved him :)

And he loves to say "cheeeeeese" for the camera. But because he still can't really talk, he just says, "Deeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

4th of July

Now that we're half way through summer, thank goodness, I should probably post a picture or 2 of what we've been up to.
We've finally settled into our new area and are enjoying ourselves out here...quite a lot actually. Minus this disgusting humidity and heat that comes along with it, it's been great. We've made some really good friends and enjoy our park dates with them. The beach has been a little non-existent because of the bad weather we've been having. It seems every Saturday, it's cloudy, windy, and rainy. Which makes for a bad beach day. living 2 minutes from the beach, you'd think we were there almost every day, where in fact, we've been once in the past month and a half.
Our 4th of July was filled with friends, food and fireworks. We started off our morning at the beach, where it was partly sunny, partly cloudy, partly rainy. We had a few friends from the ward meet us there and turned out to be a lot of fun. Until, I got (bird) pooped on, and Conryd went swimming with his phone. That was totally awesome.

 After the beach we headed home for a few hours until we had to leave for our friend's pot luck party. I decided to make these cute little desserts my Aunt Carol made for my baby shower.

I think they're cute and show beautifully, and they're so easy which is a total bonus.
If I haven't said it before, my friends in the ward are awesome. They're all super down to earth, nice, and easy to talk to. I'm really enjoying actually getting to know people we go to church with. Complete opposite of our Utah ward.  It was great to have uninterrupted conversations, all of our kids were consumed with the mass amounts of toys this family has :) It was crowded, loud and wonderful. The plan was to go out with a few families to light fireworks but Mr.E hadn't napped and needed to go to bed. But before we sent him to bed, I insisted that our friends that live in our building, let us come up to their place to watch a few minutes of the city firework show. They live on the 21st level, and have a great view overlooking the golf course where the show takes place. They were so kind to let us bombard them and take over their balcony :) Don't worry, they watched with us, along with their son, Mr. E's BFF. The firework show was okay, but didn't really AMAZE any of us. But because we were so high we could see 5 or 6 different firework shows from all over. Some as far as 30-40 minutes away. Perks of living at the penthouse level.

As for now, not much is going on. We go to the park almost every day. Have play dates almost every day. Go to the pool a few times a week. And play with cars...all day, every day.

This little guy now likes the swings. He's hated them since the day he was born. He's a changed man.