Making Christmas!

We've been busy making lots of sweet treats for the holidays! In an attempt to save some money this holdiday season in preparation for the arrival of our little one, we decided to make tubs of homemade goodies.
You might remember the marshmallows we made last year. They were so good & easy that we made two batches this year. The first batch was mint like last year but we scaled back from 1 1/2 tbsp of peppermint extract to just 3/4 tbsp. The results were a huge improvement! The second batch was vanilla for which I kept the original recommended 1 1/2 tbsp and, again, I think this is a little too much.
Paula Deen's Marshmallow Recipe

Next I made caramels. First and LAST time! They were delicious but a pain in the butt! I used this recipe from Taste of Home. Here's why I won't be making them again even though they were heavenly:

1. They took FOREVER! My aching preggo back stood at the stove for 2 hours before the caramel finally reached hard ball stage. It seemed the more I stirred, the more the molten sugar refused to get any hotter but if I paused in stirring it threatened to boil over and/or burn to the bottom. Maybe my stove just stinks. 
2. They took forever! Then I foolishly thought they would be firm enough to hold their own shape once cut. No such luck.After the caramel cooled I cut it up and piled it into my gift tubs. The next day I returned to find a giant gooey blob. So... cut again and the Mr and I spent the better part of an hour cutting little wax paper squares and individually wrapping each little caramel. 
3. They are pricey. Obviously this is also true of the marshmallows we made but the marshmallows have the virtues of being quick, easy, and infinitely better than store bought. Of these qualities, the caramels were only marginally better than store bought and so in my opinion, not worth the time and expense. 

The last item in our holiday goody bins were gingersnaps made with Mr's grandmother's recipe. They rock! Everyone we watched open a bin immediately went for one of the cookies first. 

It's a Girl?

As promised we're revealing the sex of little Rabbit. Well... sort of!
We didn't actually find out the sex at the ultrasound but we've searched the web for old wives tales to test out. Here are the results:

Cranberry Sauce

Growing up I hated cranberry sauce. Why? Because we always had that canned jelly stuff, gross. Now that I'm older I love cranberry! Cranberry juice, dried cranberries alone as a snack or baked into granola, bread, cookies, cereal... you name it! Two years ago I made cranberry sauce for the first time using Paula Deen's cranberry-clementine sauce recipe. It was so much better than the canned stuff but super powerful, I could only eat a little. My mom loved it though so I've made it every holiday since.
This year I branched out and I think I've perfected my own recipe. It has a much more mild taste than Paula's recipe which I found way too tart.


Orange Cranberry Sauce
Ingredients:
1 12 oz bag of fresh cranberries
2 large oranges
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 tsp anise seed
Directions:
In a small sauce pan add cranberries, the juice of one orange including pulp (at least 1/2 cup) plus water to equal 1 cup of liquid, sugar, anise, and 1/2 tsp orange zest. Bring to a boil at medium heat then reduce heat to low. Let simmer until the berries have burst and the sauce has thickened, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, peel the other orange and cut segments into 1" pieces. Remove sauce from heat, stir in the orange chunks and allow to chill before serving.

That's all! Easy, right? I don't know why more people don't make their own cranberry sauce, especially since its best made at least a day ahead of time to allow it to chill.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and enjoy!

19 Weeks!

Holy cow! Where has the time gone? Sorry to have not posted in so long!
In my defense, the past few weeks have been pretty busy. Yesterday the Mr, got home from school to find me asleep in bed, where he kindly left me until dinner was ready at 5. I feel like one spoiled gal!

Anyhoo, since my last post I've had both a midwife appointment and *drum-roll please!* ...our first sonogram! I think a picture says a thousand words so here you go:

Our little Rabbit is as cute as pie!

Lunch

Jealous? Don't be! Just make your own!

Cherry-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Recipe time! Mr. & I finally have a weekend to ourselves and we are preparing in case we need to bunker down for the upcoming "Frankenstorm" (the weather folks are saying that a cold front from the west is going to collide with hurricane Sandy from the east to bring us snow all next week). So of course cookies are a must. Hey, oatmeal and dried fruit are healthy right???
Here's the recipe based on Food Network Magazine's Mix & Match chocolate chip cookies.

Cherry-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients: 1/2 c softened butter or margarine
1/3 c white sugar
1/3 c light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla (I was going to try 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 almond extract but didn't have the almond on hand)
1 c flour
1 c oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix ins: 3/4 c chocolate chips
1/3 c chopped dried cherries

Directions 
Beat butter and sugars until fluffy, beat in egg and vanilla.
In a separate bowl stir together remaining ingredients up to mix ins then beat this dry mixture into the wet.
Stir in mix ins until combined.
Refrigerate batter for about 30 minutes until it's cold and a little more firm.
Scoop onto cookie sheets and bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes.

Boy or Girl?

There reaches a point in every pregnancy when the first question out of everyone's mouth (or sometimes the second after "When are you due?") is "Are you having a boy or a girl?" The Mr and I are decided on not finding out via ultrasound or any other medical test. But we think it would be fun to try out some old wive's tales, superstitions and other old fashioned way to determine the sex of a baby.

I'll be posting our results here on the blog.
So please comment with different "tests" for us to try out!

Mix & Match Meatloaf

Tonight I made meatloaf using this recipe from Food Network Magazine. It was so good!

14 Weeks

October has been a busy month and thank goodness the second trimester is here.

13 Weeks

This week: We had a visit from my parents (Rabbit's Babcia & Opa)! It was lovely. We went to visit a local Amish community and had a great time. Mom went crazy buying baby things and Dad and my Mr were no help in slowing her down. Rabbit is going to have an impressive book collection just like his/her mommy thanks to Babcia and that's nothing I can complain about! Mom also got me the sweetest circus theme baby book that matches our nursery colors.

3rd Month Check-up: I've been nervous since my last visit about gestational diabetes but my lab work confirmed that we're in the clear, for now at least. Whew! The midwife said everything looked perfect and my blood pressure was fine this time (last month it was really high because I was so nervous). Best of all, my parents were able to join Mr and I for the visit. They were proudly wearing their grandparent t-shirts and Dad (though he swears 4 witnesses are liars) cried when we got to hear the heart beat. Rabbit must have known how excited we all were to hear him/her because there was no hiding this time around! The midwife was able to find the little one right away and we heard a good strong heartbeat and lots of swishing around. Rabbit must have been dancing for us!

Coming up next: I got my paperwork to schedule my 18-20 week ultrasound. Technically my next midwife appointment is before that but this is pretty exciting stuff right?! I can't wait to get our first look at Rabbit!

Apple vs. Pumpkin: October update

Apple vs Pumpkin Fall 2012 is under way.

So far it's a close battle: 

Team Apple has 8 Pinners, 99 followers, and 29 Pins. 

Team Pumpkin has  10 Pinners, 105 followers, and 25 Pins.

Take sides:

• Check out the Boards on Pinterest. 
• Comment here to: share links, tell me about projects you tried on the boards
• And now add to the Linky below!

Add to Team Apple!

Add to Team Pumpkin!

12 Weeks

I can't get enough: Chocolate milk. Every time my supervisor asks me how the pregnancy is going she tells me about how she drank a gallon of chocolate milk every day while pregnant with her son. Well, this week chocolate milk started sounding really yummy. I don't drink in the extremes that my supervisor did but it's been my lunch time or snack time beverage of choice.

New stuff for Rabbit: We just picked up a wicker basket on sale at Micheal's for Rabbit's room. It's white with a yellow cloth lining and a yellow giraffe patch on the front. It matches a basket we got a few weeks ago with a blue lining and whale patch.

New stuff for Mommy (that's me!): I picked up a few more pairs of pants from Motherhood. Since my trip two weeks ago I've been pretty much wearing my two pairs of maternity pants on rotation. Today I got another pair of work pants and a pair of jeans. Hopefully that will see me through.
I also got some cocoa butter stretch mark lotion. I've read that stretch marks are a genetic thing and you can't prevent them with lotions but the lotion smells like chocolate and it's a nice excuse to get Mr. to rub my belly. ;-)

Looking forward to: my next midwife appointment in one week! This time my mom is coming up for the weekend and to go to the appointment with me. Since she lives far away and we're going with an unconventional maternity care/birthing choice I thought it would be nice for her to get to see where Rabbit & I are being cared for.

My biggest complaint: Still feeling pretty tired. I haven't really gotten sick from all my adorable yet sneezy kiddos at work but I think fighting off all their germies is contributing to Rabbit's drainage of my energy reserves.

Mr is reading: The Caveman's Pregnancy Companion: A Survival Guide for Expectant Fathers. From what I read/scanned in the book store it's pretty funny while informative. Mr is sitting on the other end of the couch reading highlights aloud to me as I type. I'm pretty fond of it already. It has a massage guide, a chapter on pregnancy nutrition and recipes (for him to make) and for some reason he just got very upset when I told him "yes, my feet are cold" and immediately grabbed them to warm them.

I'm reading: Ask A Midwife. This is another book I grabbed from my midwife's bookshelf. This one is a vast improvement upon The Girlfriend's Guide. It's broken into chapters then subsections and presented in a question and answer format. In this aspect, it's pretty easy to navigate and skip around to get exactly the information you're looking for. It's not dense and there are pictures which i guess is nice if that's what you want in a book. So if you want a quick, easy reference, this just might be the book for you. If, however, you are like me and also are reading multiple comprehensive pregnancy guides (What to Expect; Your Pregnancy Week by Week) and tracking through a couple (*cough* seven *cough  cough*) pregnancy apps on your phone, then this book doesn't have much new information and doesn't go into as much detail. It does get props though, for avoiding cutesy or cliche phrases (What to Expect; Your Pregnancy Week by Week) and stereotypes or offensive statements (Your Pregnancy Week by Week; The Girlfriend's Guide).

Apple vs. Pumpkin: Choose your side!

I don't know about all of you, but my Facebook and Pinterest feeds are being overwhelmed with pumpkin everything at the first sniffs of fall. Where are the apples?!?!
Don't get me wrong, you all know I can enjoy some pumpkin and tis the season, but Johnny Appleseed doesn't have his own holiday for nothing!
So I propose a friendly competition of sorts between the top two classic tastes of fall; Apple vs. Pumpkin!
How to participate:

1. Comment below with a link to your favorite pumpkin or apple recipe or craft.
2. If you Pin, follow me on Pinterest (if you don't already) and comment with a request to be added as a Pinner to one or both of my Pinterest boards. 
3. Share as many recipes/crafts as you like. Pick a team or support both sides! 
4. Share this blog post with as many people as you want. The more participants, the merrier! 

Happy Fall and let the competition begin!

Team Apple! Ham & Apple Pie

  

Team Pumpkin! Pumpkin Bottom Cupcakes

10 Weeks!

I can't get enough: orange juice

Last week we: had our first midwife appointment at The Midwife Center got to hear the baby's heartbeat through Doppler! It was pretty much the coolest experience ever! We were told we only had about a 50/50 chance of hearing it this early and there was no reason to worry if we didn't but I was really hoping we would. It took forever for the midwife to find our little one but I'm so glad she kept looking. I guess she heard it a few times before getting a good shot at it because she kept saying, "oh did you hear that?!" If you've never heard Doppler on a prego belly before, let me tell you, there's all kinds of whooshy sounds going on. I didn't know what she was listening for until she found it at last and then it was pure magic!

My biggest complaint: I'm so tired and thirsty!

I really miss: still lunch meat.

Mr is a shining star: I was so nervous at our first midwife appointment and Mr was amazing. Totally calm and supportive and exactly what I needed. So far everything looks good but we do have a few tests to get done based on family history and he definitely helped me stay level-headed about all of it.

What I'm reading: We borrowed this book from The Midwife Center. Seems pretty cute but I haven't gotten far in it yet. More on this later.
: 

9 Weeks

I can't get enough: baked potatoes! Try subbing plain Greek yogurt for sour cream.

Looking forward to: our first midwife appointment at The Midwife Center.

My biggest complaint: my back is killing me! Last week, I couldn't sleep through the night without waking up starving at 3 am. The Mr is surely happy that symptom is on hiatus.

I really miss: lunch meat. I could kill for a great big grinder (sub, hoagie...) these days. First take out after baby will definitely be a trip to 9th Street Deli, home of the 2 ft long sub!

Mr is a shining star: Rabbit's room is already half painted. He keeps asking about projects he can work on for the room. After a meltdown this week, I came home from work to find our room spotless! He bought me a bouquet of flowers in my favorite color (yellow) for no reason. And he made me breakfast twice this weekend. I keep telling him that he's spoiling me.

Products I love: Alba's Natural Acnedote. I use their scrub and cleanser daily to keep acne under control. I spent a few days at my sister's without it and noticed a difference right away. I love that the salicylic acid is naturally derived from willow bark.

Bun in the Oven!

Shh! I've got a surprise!

Fall is on the way!

Sage: one of the only survivors

Fall is by far my favorite season. I'm so excited to see the leaves changing color, feel the air getting cooler. Fall is also my opportunity for a second chance with my garden.

Let's Get Gardening!

The weather this weekend has been gorgeous and I have officially started gardening! I'm super excited if you couldn't tell, haha!

This is my first ever attempt at both solo gardening and container gardening. Last year, as part of an internship, I worked in a kitchen garden at Old Sturbridge Village and learned a TON about gardening! Seriously, if you are interested in agriculture & American history and are a college student look into applying for their intern program. It was a fantastic and education experience! but I digress... This year I will be on my own with my books and whatever advise you (my lovely readers) choose to grace me with. 

After a fabulous afternoon at the park, the Mr. & I scooted over to Walmart for some supplies and I spent the last few hours of daylight planting a few things on my porch (hopefully not too early but I have plenty of seed left if all else fails).

More Goodwill Finds

I love Goodwill!
Here are some of my new finds.

Windowsill Garden

I've started my windowsill garden!

Rustic Pizza

Remember all that rosemary dough from this weekend? Tonight I made some into crust for a couple of delicious pizzas.

Sitting Pretty

Here it is: our completed dining room! I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Painting

That's right, we've been painting! Well I've been painting. The Mr. Helped out with the tape where I couldn't reach.
I get very excited to do projects on the weekends and forget that he needs a break sometimes. Last week he was especially busy so I'm very grateful he helped me today. There are times I ask for help just for the sake of doing something together, and times when I just want to avoid a task (I hate washing dishes!). But this was one project I really could not have done with out my favorite fella's help because I am just too short. I hope that sugar cookies were a good "thank you!"

Sunday Night Baking

Tonight we've been baking up a storm! I found a recipe for Chai Spiced Sugar Cookies on Thurday that I've been dying to try ever since. Tonight I finally got around to making them and they are as yummy as I'd hoped!

Pork Chops With Caramelized Onion and Apples

This is one of my favorite dinners especially on a chilly night. It's not a heavy meal but the smells of the onion, apple and rosemary  cooking together warm up the whole house!

I originally found this recipe in an issue of Cooking with Paula Deen but over time I've tweaked it a bit.

New House Part 1

Here's the first little taste of our new house. We've been pretty busy lately so we haven't really finished unpacking so I'll be revealing it a bit at a time.

Thrifting!

Last weekend I did a little thriftig & I'm very excited to share my finds!

New Year, New Home!

We have moved! I'm so excited about our new place. It's bigger, quieter & in a better location. & best of all I have a little bit of a yard and a porch to do a bit of gardening. I'm looking up seeds but since it's still winter I'm mostly focusing on making the inside of my house look nice. We'll have plenty of garden posts starting in the spring! My New Year's resolution is to try to post more often even though I'm working now which keeps me pretty busy. Pictures of the new place soon!