Easter Weekend, Pt. 2

 Easter Basket.  People kept asking Cadence if the Easter Bunny had brought her anything and she was thoroughly confused.  Just for future reference, in our house, Mama makes the Easter basket and Daddy hides the eggs.  Her basket was really simple - a cute bunny I found in our Easter decorations, clearance sneaks and t-shirt from Target, and lollipops from Dassa.

 You can't tell, but there was a cute little bunny on the front of her hand-me-down dress.  She loved it.  She asked to wear it again on Monday.

 Egg hunt!  (At the dorm.  Cadie did an egg hunt with lots of other kids at the public library earlier last week.)

Bunny lollipop.  She couldn't seem to handle all the excitement because she only ate a little of this guy.

Easter Weekend Festivities, Pt. 1

Egg Decorating!  Matt was on duty in the dorm this weekend so we did this in the boys' kitchen.  I got a Paas Egg Decorating Kit for free at CVS last week, and it came with stickers which were a big hit.  The dying part was interesting because we used farm fresh eggs Matt's cousin gave us - they started out blue and brown, so the colors were less vibrant than if we had used supermarket white eggs. I liked them better this way - if only we could have fresh eggs all the time.

a little redecorating

With the weather being gorgeous and Easter tomorrow, it's truly feeling like spring and time to change up our bedding for something lighter.  I found this lightweight bright quilt with pink,orange, yellow,and green at Walmart for $24.  I also found the orange polka dot body pillow for $8 - I was really wanting a body pillow to help with the pregnant side sleeping. We already had all the green pillows.  It's hard to get a good picture in our dark room, but this matches perfectly with the green and keeps the crazy orange armchair (not pictured) that I love from looking crazy.

The cat is not part of the redecorating scheme, but apparently he approves.  :-)

First spinach harvest

I'm a really lazy gardener.*  I told my friend Lydia recently that if I can't just stick the seed in some dirt in the sun and occasionally water it, I really don't want to bother.  Also, I have a 2 year old helping me so things aren't going to be perfect.  Hence, our pot of spinach was looking like this:

A little crowded on the one side, eh?  This is where you're supposed to thin things out, so I picked some of the baby leaves the other day and put them in meatballs!

 I sort of fudged the recipe from my favorite turkey meatball recipe from Ellie Krieger.  (I loved to watch her back in the old days when we had TV.  Recently I discovered you could watch her on Hulu and that made me happy.) I added the chopped spinach and some ricotta cheese, because I had it in the fridge.

They were yummy.  We ate them for lunch today with some pasta, and Cadence noticed the suspicious green thing on her fork.  She quickly asked me what it was, and when I said it was spinach from our garden she was totally eager to eat it.  For a kid who's totally not a veggie fan - it's shameful, I know, especially when I will eat anything under the sun, and gladly - this just proved to me that all that stuff I've heard and read about how growing a garden will make kids want to eat vegetables might actually be true!

*I'm also a cheap gardener.  All our seeds this year are actually from last year (except the sugar snap peas, which I bought to do the old start-a-sprout-in-a-plastic-bag-with-a-damp-cottonball-on-a-window-trick with Cadence.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, clearly you have never been involved with preschool or children's Sunday School).  I didn't use all the seeds in the packets, so I put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge and, so far, they are growing fine.  I think the secret to saving seeds is making sure they are not exposed to moisture.  Hence the baggie&fridge storage method.

Deals of the Week: Sample Freebies

Two really nice samples arrived in the mail this weekend.  The first was this paint sample kit from valspar and Lowe's.  That's a pretty hefty sized sample of the paint color of my choice (kabuki clay) and a little mini roller kit.  Plus paint chips and a nice coupon.

Then some toiletries for Matt - deodorant and body wash.  Also came with nice coupons.



Bump Pics - 20 weeks

It took my friend Melissa calling me out on facebook for me to realize that I haven't taken any pictures of the belly this pregnancy.  Sorry kiddo #2.  Anyway, here's some - finally - taken today.

Today's Art Project

Making a special picture for Daddy to go with a care package to get him through a very busy work weekend.  (It's the humongous art/talent show at the school and involves him working pretty much all day today and tomorrow, with the rest of the arts faculty.  Included in the care package: two Cherry Coke Zeros, mints, gum, Advil, deodorant, and Snyder's Honey Mustard and Onion pretzel bites.  Yum.)

It's a Girl!

Cadence was right - she's been telling us our new baby was a girl and she certainly is.  Now, to pick a name...

Because Nutella is proof God loves us

These pics are from a few weeks ago when I decided snack time should include Nutella, which Cadie had never tried before.  She liked it, even if you can't tell from the pictures.  I'd like to think that's because she's thinking, Mommy, how can you stop eating this amazing stuff to take pictures?

End of Spring Break

Yesterday was the last day of Matt's spring break and it was bittersweet. We returned from Florida with a sick girl and Matt came down with it yesterday too, so he'll be home today but spending all his time in bed. He also spent all day yesterday working on our taxes which was extremely stressful as at one point it appeared we were going to owe close to $4000 (which made no sense as both of us were unemployed for at least 3 months last year). Anyway, the tax thing turned out fine.

What was fun was checking out how my little container garden was growing.  Have I mentioned we are moving again?  At the end of June, probably, we'll be packing up and heading down the road to...the next house, just on the other side of the cow pasture.  We'll be getting two bathrooms and a garage.  It's been gutted and is in the process of being totally renovated.  So, though I am desperate to grow us some veggies, I didn't want to put anything in the ground here. 

spinach

carrots

peas

tulip?  this was already in the yard

While Matt was taxing it up and guzzling Emergen-C and I was coaxing Cadence to drink some juice I found time to make totally homemade pizza and it was yum!  I used the recipe for the dough here, and topped it with ricotta, leftover spaghetti sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni.  We like our pizza crust pretty flat so this was a bit bready for us. Next time, I'll freeze some of the dough and make a thinner crust.