I seem to be all over the place as of late. The upcoming birthdays of both my boys, Easter and the never ending pile of mail and bills I MUST go through NOW keeps me running around in circles. Oh, and keeping this house clean, or orderly, or tidy, or just clear of future piles is keeping me from my never-ending “to-do” list. (Hello, dermatologist, I am trying to call you, I just forget to remind myself to call you on many occasions throughout my days.)

The latest transition we are tackling is converting Hola to milk. Starting at 11 months, I began adding an oz. of milk to his bottles. Currently, we have 4 oz. of milk to 2 oz. of formula. I believe I just purchased my last can of formula. (WOO HOO!) AND, someone at my mom’s group gave me some formula coupons, so my last two cans were $8 and $11. Fabulous way to go out, I’d say. As I’ve mentioned before, purchasing formula can truly add up. (Gag.)

However, I don’t think I am going to be saving oodles of money off the bat. I have been using organic milk for Hola up to this point and plan on doing so until I reach my breaking point of spending way too much money on something I can get for so much cheaper. I can go to Safeway and buy TWO gallons of Lucerne (no Rbst hormone) for $4 TOTAL. I can buy ONE gallon of Organic milk at most places for the SALE price of $5.99. And at this stage of the game, drinking 4, 6 oz. bottles a day of organic milk is going to get pricey. But, yes, you are right. I will be saving money, somewhere in there….

You should see our refrigerator. One gallon of skim, for me and hubs. 1% for Rt. And a half gallon of whole milk for Hola. Just wait till he moves up to 1 gallon size. Good grief. We could migrate to 1%, like Rt, but we would still be buying the same amount of milk, and currently, Safeway allows you to buy different %’s of milk and still get the buyer’s discount. Confused yet? Sorry.

On another front, I have not been able to buy any decorations for Rt’s Mr. Men party still. They are not available online yet, and at this rate, buying anything from the UK would get here too late. So, what I have decided to do is get the guests a Mr. Book as their “thanks for coming” gift. Buying them on Amazon made them cheaper, buy 4-for-3 deal. I also bought Rt a Mr. Mischief t-shirt to wear to his party. I was looking for a Little Miss one for myself, but thought I needed to focus on other things besides my wardrobe.

Scanning the covers of the books, then printing them out on paper and gluing/taping them to the table cover may have to be the extent of our efforts. That and colored balloons should fit the bill. Oh, and I also have Mr. Men/Little Miss pins for the kids to wear when then show up. (I returned those cancer-causing tattoos to Target and got a full refund.)

(Total side note, but while searching for a link to show you the Mr. Men pins, I came across these darling outfits. woof!)

Rt’s school is on Spring Break all next week. Since it’s Christian school, they like to take this holiday around Easter. Since Rt’s actual birthday is this coming Monday, during break, I will be making cupcakes for his class this Friday instead. Top that with his family party Monday, his birthday party next Saturday, Easter on Sunday, then Hola’s birthday the following Wednesday, (tax day), we’ve got a lot going on right now. (can you tell why I am running in circles?)

Doesn’t look like I am going to be calling the dermatologist anytime soon. Hey, at least I put the 3 fuzzibuns diapers in the wash today. I’ve had these sitting right here next to my computer for 3 weeks now. Good freakin grief.

e

Ok, so clearly this is Saturday morning, but being gone this past Sunday and Monday skiing has thrown my whole week off. It’s not like I didn’t have anything to share, I have TWO recipes to post, but couldn’t decide which one to put up first until I ate the pasta again as leftovers last night.

Then, I knew. I had to share this yummy goodness. The original recipe is from the fantastic Pioneer Woman. Of course, I put my very own slight spin on it, due to an abundance of imagination on my part. ha.

No, really. We had my mom over for dinner last night and I was serving this leftover pasta dish. (It makes SO much.) I had a left over chicken breast from the quesadillas I made, (sharing those pups next week!) so I added it to the pasta and it was the BEST DECISION EVER. Well, it was good anyway. Really made a difference in the flavor. Also, added a little kick and I am always looking for some extra heat in my food. (Please bare with the color of the sauce below. Since using one yellow pepper along with the called-for red one, I got a lighter color sauce. Interesting, but VERY tasty.)

Chicken Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

• 2-3 red bell peppers (I used 2. 1 yellow/1 red. It’s all I had.)
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts (optional)
  1/2 medium onion, finely diced
  3 cloves garlic, minced
  1/2 cup heavy cream (had this left over from the brownie bites!)
•  Flat leaf parsley, finely minced (I tore mine last minute.)
• Fresh Parmesan, shaved or grated
  1/2 to 1 pound pasta: (I had fusilli on hand.)
• 2 chicken breasts
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt

Mix together the paprika, pepper, and cumin in a bowl with a teaspoon of salt. Dust the chicken breasts with the spice mixture and rub in. Grill on a medium hot grill, (or grill pan) turning occasionally until chicken is just cooked through. Depending on how thick the breasts are, about 5 to 6 minutes per side. Remove from grill and let rest. Cut the chicken into 1/2-inch slices.

Roast peppers, (I put mine on the gas stove directly turning every 3 minutes till each side was mostly black. It was my first roast. Good times!) then place in a bowl. Cover with a towel to allow to sweat. Peel the charred skins from the peppers, then remove seeds.

Lightly toast pine nuts in a skillet.

Puree peppers with pine nuts.

Cook pasta according to package directions.

In a skillet or pot over medium heat, drizzle in olive oil. Add diced onions and garlic and cook until soft. Pour in pepper puree and stir together. Add salt to taste.

Pour in cream and stir to combine. Add cooked pasta, then stir together. (needs more salt? add here.)

Place pasta into a bowl, add chicken, mix thoroughly, then top with chopped parsley and Parmesan.

Then, EAT!

We served our pasta with a side salad, and sourdough baguette. I was thinking maybe adding some sauteed mushrooms to the pasta would be a nice addition. Next time.

Enjoy!

e

Ok, people. This is big for me. Sharing my go-to dessert. The one that people request over and over and over again. The one that new mothers want when I bring them dinner. The one that I have been making with my mother since I was in middle school.

Now it’s in your hands. Please be gentle.

Mel’s Caramel Brownies

•  1 (14 ounce) package individually wrapped KRAFT caramels, unwrapped
• 1/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1 (18.25 ounce) package german chocolate cake mix
• 3/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/3 cup evaporated milk
• 3/4 cup to 1 cup of chopped pecans
• 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chocolate chips

Before you begin doing ANYTHING, unwrap every caramel in the bag. Do it in front of the tv, or have your 4 yr old do it. Oh, and Grease a 9×13 inch brownie pan/casserole dish.

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). In a heavy saucepan, combine caramels and 1/3 cup of evaporated milk. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth; set aside. (I nuke mine in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, but do what you got to do.)
• 
  
• In a large bowl, stir together the cake mix, melted butter, pecans and 1/3 cup of evaporated milk until dough holds together. Press half of the dough into the prepared pan, reserving the rest.
• 
  
• Bake for 6 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips over the crust, pour the caramel mixture evenly over the chips. Crumble the remaining dough over the caramel layer and return to the oven.
• 
  
• Bake for an additional 18 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven.(I prefer 18 minutes, but I LOVE gooey brownies.)

Now, I would recommend, if you have to take these anywhere, a bake sale, a friend’s house, OUT of the house, make these the night before. They are WAY too hard to cut and box and serve the day of, due to all the gooey-ness. Now, if you are just going to grab a spoon, start at the corner and dig your way out?, then make them any time you like.

If you are REALLY bold, you can serve a small scoop of ice cream on the side, but believe me, these guys are PLENTY on their own, but the addition does look nice, no?

Now……..once you have made these, you HAVE to come back and report your success.

Ok, now people. Get to it!

e

When I was a little girl, I had an entire collection (or close to it) of the Mr. Men and Little Miss Series books. I loved all the characters and their hidden morals of what can happen if you’re too nosey or too greedy, or just finding the good in being small or tall.

Once I had outgrown these books (which now I think I never have!) we loaned my collection to my younger 3 girl cousins. Basically, that means they 1) do not exist anymore, 2) were given away in some yard sale, or 3) were destroyed in regular child usage. I am truly saddened we let go of them in the first place. WHY? WHY?

Luckily, places like Amazon sell the entire series, so we’ve been adding to Rt’s collection since his birthday last year.

This year, for his birthday party, I wanted to do a theme that hasn’t been done before, (around these parts) or just had enough originality that I wasn’t buying the Backyardigan decorations on aisle 3 at Party America. (not that there is anything wrong with that. I assume I will be doing this for years to come, so the longer I can get away with what I want for his birthday theme, the better!)

I told Rt we were going to have a Mr. Men and Little Miss birthday party. He was excited! enough! to allow me to continue on with the party planning myself (woo hoo!) and get back to what’s really important to a soon-to-be 4 year old. His imagination. (lately, it’s been lots of cooking with many amazing items that all taste like CAKE!)

Late last fall I had come up with this brilliant Mr. Men plan, but found nowhere online to buy the party supplies. I just figured there weren’t any, and shelved my idea. I did some poking around again about a month ago and saw some online stores selling some decorations, (YES!) but they wouldn’t be in till mid-March. (NO!)

And here we are. Mid-March. Still nothing to order yet. “Coming Soon” they say. So here I wait.

And when they do come in, I have to order them from the UK. Since the brand was UK based to begin with, I guess the latest and greatest are starting there.

Sigh.

I found some random Mr. Men tattoos, stickers, and such at Target the other day. I picked up a few items for goodie bags. I pulled them out last night to show hubs and read the fine print on the tattoos. (some items inside the tattoos can cause Cancer, birth defects, etc. GREAT!

“Thanks for coming to our party, I’d like you to have a little bit of C A N C E R to rub on your kid when you get home. Just a little reminder of Rt and his 4th birthday party.”

TOTAL TAKING THOSE BACK.

I bought some regular invites and are trying to figure out a way to add some Mr. Men decor, so I can get these puppies in the mail. And I am hoping the UK stuff will be order-able S O O N.

Otherwise, I am going to have to go to aisle 3 and load up on some freakin back yard friends.

e

bullet points, that is. (ok, so not actual bullet points. Somehow mine don’t want to show up. Just imagine, ok?)

• DEBIT CARD HAS BEEN FOUND. Not by me. By my NEW house cleaner. Where was it? Underneath my “butcher cart” in the kitchen. I house my computer on top. (so basically I live there.) I must have put both cards on the cart, then somehow fell through the fold and landed underneath. They were there FOR A MONTH. Glad I have my new debit card now. Can’t wait to go pay my bills and change out the number at every. single. site. partay.
• Hola turned 11 months yesterday. He thought he would celebrate the occasion by saying his first word, “mamamama.” The kid has been a moving target since he was born, so saying anything besides yelling, we’ve been waiting for for quite sometime. And to say “mamamamma?” EVEN BETTER.
• Hola now has 4 teeth. 2 more are on the verge. He just might have the same space between his two teeth as Rt’s does and I couldn’t be more thrilled. My little beavers!
• We celebrated my mom’s birthday yesterday with a surprise party. We are going to be out of town this weekend (skiing ALONE) and were going to miss the actual day. (Bad timing.) So, we invited her up for an early Sunday night dinner. Rt and I went to the party store and bought a $10 balloon that has been entertaining both kids for the past 24 hours. My mom insisted I keep the damn thing and not take it home with her. I guess she does have a point. I made my fantastic caramel brownies and put a candle in it, along with some ice cream, to mark the occasion. Just listening to Rt sing Happy Birthday is such a joy. We had a blast. Happy Birthday Mom!! Thanks for all that you do for me and my boys!!
• I am sure there is more, but I can’t think of anything. Oh, I will be posting my caramel brownies recipe this Friday under my new Feed Me Fridays section. You don’t want to miss these. I have been making them with my mother since I was in middle school. People request them often. I even have Rt peeling all the caramels for me these days. Got to put those kids to good use! Nah. He’d so love to crack an egg, but these pups don’t call for eggs, so caramels had to do.

e

In the past few months, I have found some really fantabulous food blogs. I have tried quite a few things that I hope to share with you along my path to better baking, cooking and EATING!! Nothing is better than taking a recipe off a food blog. It beats out a recipe in a book any day. There is just something about it. The pictures, the personal story, the understandable directions, the modifications, and the comments. All make for a better dish AND a more enjoyable experience while making something new.

My latest effort was tonight. I made these:

Annie’s Eats is one of the food blogs I follow. She is a treat to read and has given me many spur of the moment delicious items to try.

The only things I changed from her recipe were the following:

I used whole wheat white flour, (cause that is all I had) milk chocolate instead of the bittersweet. (personal preference.) and I also added Reece’s Peanut Butter cups to a few of the brownies just to see how they tasted. (fabulous!) Rt had one for dinner. (hey, he cracked both eggs perfectly. He deserves a medal!) He ended up with a plain one, but he could have cared less. It was chocolate. He was licking his lips for minutes.

So, if you have a wild hair up your ass (like I did at 4p.m. on a Friday afternoon while the baby wandered the house crying like his mouth hurt or something lame like that. (I joke. I so feel for the fella. Come on tooth 5 and 6!!)), or a social occasion to bring a tasty treat, then I say, BRING THESE!!

e

So, we’ve upped the ante over here at “when are we not sleep training?” ville. It’s not that we have to sleep train him every night of his life, but we do have to stay the consistent course while we battle outside (annoying) influences like teething, stuffy nose, breathing issues etc.

Last week, hubs was out of town from Tuesday-Thursday, so I had two nights completely to myself to be in charge of Hola in the night. What we used to do, when he woke, was to place him back down, then hold our hand on his back, or pat his butt, or just sit there, until we could leave the room. It was working just fine, but it wasn’t progressing him on sleeping straight through the night. He was still waking up no matter how short the duration. Nothing horrible, just mostly annoying. FIGURE IT OUT ALREADY BABY!!

When Rt was around this age, we progressed our Baby Whisperer sleep training to the Walk In, Walk Out phase, which consists of going in, placing the baby back down, offering a comforting pat, then leave the room. If he begins to cry, AND stands up, we count to 5, then go back into the room and do it all over again. (this was our version that worked for us.)

So, when Hola woke in the night, the first night, the current program wasn’t working anymore. It seemed we were more of a hendrance being IN the room than not. SO, I just whipped the Walk In, Walk Out out of my butt and away we went. The resistance was there, at first. But, it didn’t take long, a few trips back in, or so and he was asleep.

After that, we never went back. And, it’s so much nicer. In the past 5 days, I believe from the time he is put down for the night, till morning, he has woken up once, none, and twice. And when he does wake up, he goes right back to sleep when we put him back down. We are all benefiting from the new program. And even if he has a night like he did last night, waking 3 times (which could account for teething, giving him his inhaler too close to bedtime, anything) BUT, as we know from having a previous child, by keeping to any system, will pay off in the end.

So, if I had any advice on this matter, it would be, STAY THE COURSE! Whichever course that is for your family. Keep to it. It may be a long road, but one that will pay off in spades! Someday….

e

p.s. We now have 4 TEETH! Just noticed the 2nd top tooth came through over night. No wonder!!!

o where o where could it be?

no, seriously. It’s been missing since Friday. Along with my Safeway club card.

I got gas and placed them both in my back jeans pocket, LIKE I ALWAYS DO, came home, parked into garage, decided to put plant food under three of my rose bushes while the kids hung out in the car, (hey, you gotta do it when the wild hair strikes) then made them lunch, (total chore) put Hola down for a nap, (score!) read Rt a story in bed, then left him for downtime in room (double score) and finally, sat down on the couch for the duration of nap time. (triple score)

So….

Places I have already looked.

Jean pockets. Even the ones I WASN’T wearing.

Car Seat. Behind Car Seat. Floor of garage.

Rose bushes. I was squatting down while digging, so they could have popped out there. NOPE.

Glider chair in Hola’s room.

Rt’s bed, down the backside of the bed. Nope. Nope.

Couch? A big, FAT no.

SO WHERE IS MY FREAKING DEBIT CARD??? (and no, as of today, no random charges to account. And the moment I call to report my missing card, I’ll find it and have to re-enter my new numbers into every bill I pay online.)

HALP!

e

p.s. If anyone has any bright ideas on how to get my baby to sleep past 5:45am, I would appreciate it. thanks. (and if you mention baby whisperer, I would tell you I HAVE HER BOOK, but CAN’T FIND THE DAMN THING.)

I now see a recurring theme going on here….