A Note on Foods
Some cravings I’ve had this time around have been salads, vegetables, and egg sandwiches (like egg and cheese biscuits).
Some aversions I’ve had this time around have been meat, coffee, and GARLIC.
Some things that have helped me get through bad morning sickness have been Red Baron breakfast pizzas, Pop Tarts, cinnamon gum (LOTS OF IT), Fruity Pebbles, Lucky Charms, milk, strawberry milk, cream soda, and Mylanta.
Holiday Parties
This year the holidays are kind of a crapshoot. We’re not really sure what is going to happen, so we’ve been taking every opportunity to have holiday celebrations.
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Since I am not sure if I will be pushing out a baby for Christmas, my mom and I took my grandmom out to holiday tea. I had to work Friday, so we squeezed a quick tea luncheon in. I had a delicious lobster bisque and egg salad sandwich. Yum!
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| Blurry but what a gut shot! 37 weeks and 5 days |
This weekend Peter decided to invite some people over (very spontaneously) for a holiday party. I love Christmas parties so much. I seriously look forward to them all year long. I think it’s so fun to get to the end of the year and have something fun to dress up for, eat yummy food, and have a great time with people. Our work party falls the day before our due date though, so we pretty much are thinking it’s a “no.”
We had a good showing for a last minute get-together, played games, ate food, and laughed a bunch. Perfect!
And today, Peter and my coworkers had a nice little surprise Christmas luncheon/baby shower for us. It was so nice and so unexpected! Everyone bought us a Christmas book and wrote a little message. Our child will be well-read :). Here are some of the awesome books we got:
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Thanks to everyone! We had a great time over the past few days. This rest of this week is now all about getting work done at work, seeing what happens at the ultrasound & physical appointment on Thursday, and getting a new freezer, so we can stock up on easy-to-make food before the baby comes.
31 weeks…lots to recap!
I’ll begin with a belly pic to get this out of the way :).
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| 31 weeks and 5 days |
This week has been filled with cleaning, writing thank you notes, putting new baby items away, and building furniture — ok, maybe Peter did all the furniture building.
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| Pile of Gifts |
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| More Gifts |
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| Dresser Assembly |
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| Crib Assembly |
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| What Lennon did while I folded laundry… |
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Also, last weekend we went to the 2012 Wine Festival. I think everyone had a great time. We brought crackers, grapes, and cheese galore. I was obviously the DD, but it was nice to get out of the house and be among so many friends! The weather was gorgeous and couldn’t have been better for a wine festival.
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| The Wine Tasters |
Baked Lemon Garlic Brussel Sprouts
Months ago, I made these Brussel sprouts that have been popping up all over Pinterest. They were pretty good, and my husband even ate them — this says a lot because he hates Brussel sprouts! 🙂
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| Shaved Brussel Sprouts from Trader Joe’s |
I decided to cook them again but use my own recipe this time. I was going for a more garlic-y/butter-y taste. I saw this bag of shaved Brussel sprouts at Trader Joe’s at thought it would be fun to try with these.
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| Pre-Bake |
So here’s what I did:
10 oz. of Brussel Sprouts
2 whole, already-roasted garlic bulbs (I made these the other night)
1/4 tsp of garlic powder
2 tbsp butter or butter substitute
1/2 lemon
salt
pepper
Pam cooking spray
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| Ready to eat! |
1.Preheat oven to 375.
2. Spray glass dish with Pam cooking spray.
3. Empty sprouts into dish.
4. Mix in garlic cloves from the bulbs.
5. Plop on your butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
6. Squeeze half a lemon on top.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
By the way…if I had some Parmesan cheese in the fridge, I would totally have sprinkled that on top after baking. YUM!
Posters and Turnips
I made a post a while ago about some posters that I was thinking of printing. I decided to go ahead and get those puppies printed. I am pretty happy with the way they came out, too! Disregard the price tag stickers on the picture frames.
It was much cheaper to go to the local camera store and have these 11X14s printed as matte pictures rather than having them printed at Kinko’s as posters — $5 each versus $38.95 each. The picture frames were $7.99 from Garden Ridge, and we spray painted them white to match with the curtains and white trim. Yahoo! Still cheaper than similar things I’ve found online like this.
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| Turnips Fries – (before baking) |
On the eating front, we always get turnips from our local Farmer’s Market and then have no idea what to do with them. Peter is always determined to take the vegetables I don’t like and turn them into something tasty. It just wasn’t happening with turnips…until I found a recipe for turnip fries! Yes, fries. When you eat them while they are hot, they are pretty convincing as French fries. I would highly recommend them if you are curious or needing something to do with turnips.
Turnip Fries Recipe:
4-5 turnips
2 tbsp of vegetable oil or olive oil
1/3 cup of parmesan cheese (the kind in the green can)
1 tsp of onion powder
1 tsp of garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chives (optional)
sprinkle of ground pepper (optional)
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Wash turnips and then cut into “steak fries.”
3. In a bowl, pour oil and mix with turnips. All fries should have a light covering.
4. Add in cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, chives, and pepper.
5. Toss all fries, so they are covered in the mixture from step 3.
6. Spray a sheet with cooking spray and spread fries onto sheet evenly.
7. Cook for 20 minutes.
8. Eat soon after (–I like them while they are still hot) and enjoy!
Turnips have less calories than potatoes.
Turnips have less carbohydrates than potatoes.
Turnips are higher in calcium.
Pumpkin Mac and Cheese Recipe
We are members of a local Farmer’s Market, so we get lots of produce each week and then have to figure out what to do with it! Since it’s Fall, we are getting gourds like crazy, which I will not complain about because I LOVE them!Here’s the latest thing we did with our weekly pumpkin: Pumpkin Mac and Cheese.
3 to 3.5 cups of uncooked small shells
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups skim milk
1 cup of pumpkin (We used real pumpkin because we had it.)
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup Fontina cheese
1/4 tsp sale
1/8 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1/8 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups skim milk
1 cup of pumpkin (We used real pumpkin because we had it.)
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup Fontina cheese
1/4 tsp sale
1/8 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1/8 tsp black pepper
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Cook pasta in boiling water. Drain.
- In a pot, melt butter. Whisk in flour and milk slowly until thick. Let cool.
- Add pumpkin puree and mix into pot.
- Add cheeses, salt, nutmeg, pepper into pot.
- Combine the sauce with the pasta, then bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before enjoying!
It was pretty good stuff! I am thinking the canned pumpkin is probably going to make it more orange and give it more “pumpkin flavor,” because they use a combination of tasty gourds for canned pumpkin (–that’s right. It’s not actually pumpkin in the can!).
I would make this again and play around next time with pumpkin pie spices to see if that increases the Fall flavor.
How Do You Do, Third Trimester?
Today marks the beginning of the third trimester. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. Everyone says the second trimester is the best, because your energy has returned, and you’re not that big that you can’t move or breathe. I’m starting to feel the weight of my belly lately. I know I may not look that big, but an extra 15 pounds can really make a lot of difference when it’s in the middle of your body!
My legs are still killing me in the middle of the night. It is really quite pathetic…. Trying to put pants on in the morning is probably comedic relief for Peter. Just lifting my leg high enough to put it into a pant leg is torture, so there is lots of moaning and groaning. Luckily the lower back pain has subsided (for now), so I am crossing my fingers that I might have a few weeks without this stupid leg pain, too.
Peter and I bought some white curtain’s for the baby’s room this weekend and hung them up with a new curtain rod. They look wrinkly for now, but I think I am going to put the word out there that I’d really like a fabric steamer for my birthday :).
If you are easily offended stop reading now! While we were hanging up the curtains, I sneezed and peed a little. It was the first time that happened, and it made me laugh really hard. Peter thought it was funny, too. I guess I should carry an extra pair of underwear with me now — especially if this becomes a daily occurrence. *Crossing fingers — please don’t let this be a daily occurrence.*
My little owl lamp arrived in the mail, and it is perfect for the room! It lets off just enough light that changing diapers will be fine, but it’s not too much light.
This weekend we went to visit some friends down in NC, and we had a great time. It’s so nice to see them being successful with their pizza business. The place seems really popular, and the food is delicious! If you are ever in the OBX, stop by Pizza Stop. Yum!
Also, my grand-mom and I went to Panera to pick up some pastries, and I grabbed a Pumpkin Spice Latte while we were there (decaf). It was pretty good!! I would rate it higher than 7-11 lattes and somewhere below the Starbucks ones…but totally good enough! I highly recommend trying it. They also have delicious pumpkin muffins if you are a pumpkin-lover, which I am.
Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops
I am a huge pumpkin spice fan, so I decided to experiment one day and see what happened with cake mix + can of pumpkin. Every time I bring these cakes/cupcakes/cake pops somewhere, people always tell me how great they are.
Since a bunch of people were asking for the cake pop recipe for the Pumpkin Spice cake pops I made for Rachel’s bridal shower, I figured I’d post it!
Pumpkin Spice Cake
- 1 box of Spice Cake mix
- Whatever amount of water the recipe calls for, add Libby’s Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix ***This is the key!
- Eggs as suggested by cake box mix
- Oil as suggested by cake box mix
Just follow the directions on the cake box but don’t use water. Use the can of Libby’s Pumpkin Pie Mix in its place. For example, if it calls for 1 cup of water, use 1 cup of Libby’s.
You may need to check on the cake a few times, because it slightly alters the cook time but not by a lot.
Once the cake has cooked, I took it out of the pan while it was hot, put it in a mixing bowl, used a spatula to chop the cake into little crumbs, and then let it cool.
Once cooled, I added half a tub of vanilla frosting to the mixing bowl of cake crumbs and rolled this mix into little cake balls.
Then I took the cake pop (lollipop) sticks, dipped them in melted chocolate, and quickly inserted them into the cake balls. You only need to dip them about 3/4 of an inch or so. The melted chocolate on the sticks helps “glue” the stick to the cake.
Next, it helps to freeze or cool the cake pops in the fridge to help them stiffen up a bit. After about 20 minutes of being in the fridge, dip the cake pops in melted chocolate, and sprinkle as needed. You may have to tap the cake pops on the side of the melted chocolate bowl to get the excess chocolate off.
Let cool in a styrofoam block.
Rachel’s Bridal Shower
My future sister-in-law’s bridal shower was today, so everyone was running around like crazy trying to get things in order. There was TONS of food (as usual), cute decorations, wonderful guests, and lots of laughter. I hope Rachel had a good time and enjoyed herself. Here are some of the details of the day:
