Thursday, June 30, 2011

Less than perfect

I'm on a lyric kick recently.

It is no secret that this past late winter and spring with Little G was very, VERY challenging for me. We were stuck inside most days and he was desperate to communicate and I was desperate to not have to entertain him constantly and I was exhausted and he was ornery and it was all a HUGE recipe for awfulness.

We have passed through that stage, finally, but for a while, I really thought I would be there for a long. long. time.

Then one day, I heard Pink's newest hit, Less Than Perfect. As I listened to the lyrics, it quickly became my warrior anthem. Bear with me, but when I listened to it, it sounded exactly like me...mistreating and doubting myself; failing at motherhood some days and picking myself up by the bootstraps and trying it again the next; second guessing myself at every turn.

And I could imagine that the chorus was what Little G would tell me if he could. He doesn't know any other mother, so to him, I AM perfect.

As Pink starts her newest chapter in her life with a new baby, I often think about how someday, no matter how many nannies she has, she is going to end up doubting herself as a mother. We all do. And I hope she can remember this song that has given me so much hope.

Pretty, Pretty Please by Pink

Made a wrong turn
once or twice.
Dug my way out,
blood and fire.
Bad decisions,
that's alright.
Welcome to my silly life.
Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood!
Miss "No way,It's all good", it didn't slow me down
Mistaken, always second guessing, underestimated!
Look, I'm still around...

Pretty pretty please!
Don't you ever ever feel
Like you're less than,
Less then Perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel like you're nothing
You are Perfect to me!

You're so mean
When you talk about yourself, you were wrong
Change the voices in your head
Make them like you instead
So complicated, look how happy you'll make it!
Filled with so much hatred... such a tired game
It's enough! I've done all I can think of
Chased down all my demons, I've seen you do the same.

Oh, pretty pretty please
Don't you ever ever feel

Like you're less than
Less then Perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel like you're nothing
You are Perfect to me

The whole world's scared so I swallow the fear
The only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer
So cool in line, and we try try try,
But we try too hard and it's a waste of my time
Done looking for the critics, cause they're everywhere
They dont like my jeans, they don't get my hair
Exchange ourselves, and we do it all the time
Why do we do that? Why do I do that?

Why do I do that?

Yeah, oh, oh baby, pretty please!
Pretty pretty please,
Don't you ever ever feel
Like you're less than
Less then perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel
Like you're nothing, you are Perfect to me Yeaaahhh...!
You are Perfect, you're Perfect!
Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel like you're nothing
You are Perfect to me.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Cooking up the box

Little G and I picked up our CSA yesterday. Here's a picture of all of our spoils.

From left to right: Snap peas, kale, beets, turnips, lettuce - and in the back, zucchini, summer squash and STRAWBERRIES!!

To be fair, the zucchini, summer squash and 1/2 of the strawberries were not in the box...I purchased them after the fact.

The first thing I thought as I was looking at all of this was "hmmm...maybe I just toss the beet greens THIS week". But I am proud to say, I didn't. Instead, I remembered my friend saying she makes all dark leafy veggies taste better by cooking them with pork so I decided to try my hand at that.

The best part of this recipe is that I was able to use my pot of boiling water twice - once to blanch the beet greens and again to cook my pasta.

So, first, I started a pot of water on the stove. Then I washed my beet greens in the sink with some salted water. The salt helps any critters to let go when the leaves are being washed so you don't miss one and end up sauteing an arachnid.

Once the water boiled, I blanched the greens for FOUR minutes. I really think the extra minute in the boiling water reeeeeeeaaallllly helped out my greens - instead of slightly rubbery, they were nice and soft. Very pleasant.

After the greens were done, I tossed them in a colander and rinsed them under cold water. Then I waited until the water came back to a boil and added my pasta.


In the meantime, I browned some sausage.

Once that was done browning, I drained it and poured the fat out of the pan. Then I used what little fat remained to saute some garlic.

I added the beet greens (that I chopped a bit to make them more bite sized) to the garlic.

Added the sausage back in.

Added in my pasta.

And Voila!! Yummy dinner!!

This dinner was super, SUPER, yummy. My friend was right...a little pork can fix any dark green. Maybe that's what I need to do with Kale Chips...hide them in a hot dog :)

Plans for the rest of the week include

- leftovers (since this dish ended up being enough for four adults) served with a salad with peas and radishes.
- copious amounts of strawberries on my morning cereal and just popped for the fun of it mid day
- some other main course with a side dish of sauteed zucchini and summer squash with onions
- And I think I will cook the beets and then blanch the kale and freeze them since we will be away for four days and it will be impractical to try to eat all of this before we leave.

How are you faring on your CSA boxes?

Monday, June 27, 2011

Birthday Weekend Fun


Today's my 36th birthday.

We went out to dinner with friends on Saturday which was exactly what I wanted. Just something low-key and fun with fun people.

Afterwards, we came home and had my favorite birthday staple, Carvel Ice Cream cake. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

Sadly, there aren't any Carvel's near us, so you have to settle for one from the grocery store. To me, that's like having to get your Krispy Kreme at the Mobil Gas station as opposed to being able to go into a store. But it was better than NO Carvel ice cream cake.

We had a hard time finding a babysitter since our go-to-neighborhood-babysitting-teenager is in Chile for a month. WHATEV'S!! Fortunately, one of our friends who came out to dinner with us had a friend visiting from out of town who was totally into babysitting for us, so we lucked out.

The funniest thing that happened over the weekend was that I ordered Pizza for the babysitter and Little G to have while we were out and my husband was supposed to pick it up. It was a 'Sardinia' from a local restaurant and it is covered in caramelized onions and is fan-FREAKING-tastic. But I failed to convey the order properly to my husband and he headed out to our normal pizza place to go pick it up. And strangely enough, when he said he was there to pick up a pizza for fill-in-last-name-here, the girl behind the counter said, 'ok' and handed him a pizza with onions on it so he left and brought it home. Of course the onions were raw, so I was annoyed at the restaurant for getting it wrong and was none the wiser until HOURS later when it came up that my husband had gone to the local pizza joint and not the local Italian restaurant to pick up the pizza.

Oops.

I did call the restaurant and apologize just to make sure we weren't going to be blacklisted or anything for stranding a pizza there and all is good. Phew. I know you were worried.

The other fun thing I did this weekend was traipse up to Beverly, MA to go look at and pick up a dresser I saw on Craigslist. Looks like this:

It is going to go in Little G's big-boy room once I'm all done making it more fun. The current plan is to do a reverse stencil on it of a big pirate ship so that the majority of the dresser is white, but the areas of the pirate ship show through with the wood grain. We'll see if I'm able to pull that off or not. In the meantime I need to figure out a way to make the drawers slide out a bit more easily since it IS going in a toddler's room.

Any ideas on how to make it easier to open? Or is that the big elephant in the room of all re-purposed furniture...you can make it look nice but functionally they all suck?

Friday, June 24, 2011

Kale kale kale-y kale kale

Well, I'm back. I know...so many posts in one week...what's a casual reader to do?

As I mentioned yesterday, my goal this summer is to use everything in my CSA every week. This week was our first and it has been challenging because I picked up what equals a whole share even though we usually only get half.

Last night's challenge, was Kale.

Now, I should point out for all you mom-type people who are wondering who the heck has time to do all this shit, that Little G has been gifting me with some awesome afternoon naps of late; the product of a growth spurt and being outside and running around all morning which wasn't an option during the winter. So I have been taking advantage of nap time to get all this cooking prep done. Believe me, the last thing I want is for a reader to inwardly hate me because I seem to have it together enough to not only figure out what is for dinner but actually take pictures of the process. Because I would totally hate that person and inwardly seethe at their cheery how-to-cook-everything-and-have-a-perfect-life posts.

Moving on.

All. That. Kale.

I've tried kale chips before, and have never liked them yet every time summer rolls around I hear about how great kale chips are. "Even better than potato chips", is what my favorite kid food blogger over at Weelicious says...seriously. Go over there and watch her kid devour them like they're candy...perhaps that's what she paid him with if he pretended to like them.

Anyway, I dutifully followed the basic instructions that I have seen all over the interwebs.

Wash and trim off stems of kale, cut into bite sized pieces and salad-spin the heck out of 'em:


Lay pieces out on a lined baking sheet, not too cluttered so they don't just steam, and preheat oven to 375:


Spray with oil - canola, olive oil, sesame...whatever floats your boat:


Sprinkle liberally with salt:


And bake for 15 - 20 minutes, taking care not to let them burn. Here's what they look like out of the oven at 15 minutes. They were perfect. Not burnt. Not steamed. Cooked to perfection.

And they sucked.


NEVER AGAIN will I be fooled into making these because they are awful, awful, awful. Even if you aren't trying to fool your taste buds into thinking they are an unhealthy snack, they are STILL awful. Horridly bitter and while crunchy at first, they quickly regain their softness in your mouth until you are chewing on bitter nastiness for days just trying to get them down. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong...I just think that kale chips are the Emperor's New Clothes of the what-to-do-with-kale options. Ick. Ick. Ick.

I threw them out. But I still consider it a semi-success as far as not tossing stuff from my CSA because 1) I didn't let them rot on my counter and then get thrown away while I sat in indecision over what to do with them and 2) Even after that experiment, I still had all. this. kale:


So, I turned to one of my various favorite what-to-do-with-stuff-from-your-CSA cookbooks. This one is called Clean Food by Terry Walters and I picked it up one day on a whim from my local Whole Foods. It has been a great resource for vegetarian dishes.


I like that the book is laid out by season...which you can see by the color coded pages.


My one drawback with this book is that it uses a lot of items that I don't usually have on hand like special vinegars and seaweeds or flours, etc.


Anyway, there was a simple kale recipe in it that worked out really well for us. After washing the rest of the kale, trimming the stems and cutting it down into bite sized pieces, I blanched the kale in boiling water for three minutes...


...and then put it in an ice water bath to stop the cooking. A quick spin in the salad spinner and I was able to put it aside until it was time to make dinner much later that day.


When it was time to make dinner, I sliced up a bazillion shallots (it called for six, but I only had three large ones):


I caramelized the shallots in some olive oil with a sprinkle of kosher salt for 6 minutes on medium-high:


Then added a tablespoon of lemon juice (note - do not squeeze your lemon over the hot pan like I did and consequently burn the heck out of your hand from the steam):


After a minute, I added the kale that I had blanched earlier in the day and tossed it around for a couple of minutes until it was nice an hot:


Now THIS was delicious. Seriously. Nary a bitter bite in the bunch. My husband loved it. My toddler refused to eat it (but he also refused the left over pasta with meat bake that he usually devours, so who knows what his dealio was). I found the the texture to be a bit rubbery, but without the bitterness that kale is soooooooo fond of lending to dishes, I was just pleased that it tasted so yummy.


Perhaps the best part of this recipe is that I was able to blanch the kale ahead of time, which means that theoretically, I could blanch it and then freeze it and make this yummy side dish over the winter.

So the only thing left this week to cook up is the chard, but I'm actually looking forward to 'doing the usual' with it since we haven't had it since last summer.

Which means that week one was a SUCCESS (except for those damn kale chips).

Please tell me...have you made kale chips and actually liked them? Tell the truth now. Am I doing something wrong or is my palate just not up to the bitter, chewy challenge?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Feeding the crowd

Our farm share FINALLY started yesterday. Little G and I had a fun morning. We took the bus to the train (really just the Orange Line T). Rode it for two stops, got off and headed to a playground that has sprinklers. Went back to watch the trains, headed to lunch, picked up our farm share and then headed back to the train and the bus to come home for a well deserved nap.

While Little G napped, I started at my share and wondered what the heck to make of all of it.

This is our third or fourth year doing the share and I have really enjoyed it. But, as will most people in this area of the country, the first few weeks are very heavy on the dark leafy veggies. Kale. Chard. Etc.

Usually I do a pretty good job of eating everything in our share, but with some exceptions. For instance, I might eat all the beets, but toss the beet greens.

Well, this summer, my goal is to cook or process everything we get. We'll see how successful I am.

We signed up for a 1/2 share...but friends of ours were unable to pick up yesterday, so I got their share too.

In EACH share was:

Chard - Perhaps my favorite thing to do with chard is saute the chopped up stems with an onion and garlic until soft and then add the leaves until cooked down. I can either serve it up that way, or add a roux (just flower, butter and cream) and then toss it into a baking dish and sprinkle bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese on it and roast it for 20 minutes. BUT after a summer, this option does get old, so I would love to find some other things to do with it.

Kale - everyone always suggests kale chips and I have never made them without them being the most disgusting thing I've ever attempted to eat in the name of fooling my taste buds into thinking they're unhealthy. I'll probably process all of this and freeze it so I can add it to soups in the winter.

Beets - I LOVE beets, but I've never been a fan of the greens


Lettuce - the hardest thing for me to finish in a week since Little G doesn't eat salad so I tend to make what he will eat for dinner and lunch so we can share.


STRAWBERRIES!!!!! - let me assure you, they have all been eaten


So in the name of not tossing out my perfectly usable beet greens, I decided to go for it. After removing the beets and tossing them in the oven to roast, I chopped up the stems and washed them. Then I chopped up the leaves and washed them.

Then I tossed a coarsely chopped onion around in a pan with the stems and some olive oil until they got soft (very similar to the chard preparation I already mentioned above)


Here there are all cooked down:

At the same time, I roasted a couple of chicken breasts which I then chopped up and added to the mix on the stove. (You can see my beets in the background all sliced into wedges and bathing in a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar).


Finally, I added the roasted beets to the mixture.


The result was pretty good. I ended up putting some Feta on top of mine, but Little G went to town on the beets and the chicken. He didn't care one way or the other about the greens. I didn't mind the greens as long as I had them with a bite of either Feta, chicken or beet.

We polished off the rest for lunch today, so I guess that was a success.

Now what to do with all that lettuce!

Are you farm-sharing this summer?

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Party People

The other day I was driving somewhere and heard the beginning of J Lo's newest song, On The Floor. The beginning starts out with her singing:

"It's a new generation
Of party people"

As I sat there, it dawned on me just how old I am.

I'm so old that the FIRST time J Lo had a hit, I was a party person.

Her hit was "If You Had My Love" and they used to play the video on the giant TVs behind the PI dancers on the street stage at Pleasure Island at Disney just before the midnight show.

I spent a lot of time at Pleasure Island in the summer of 1999. Cast members got in free on Thursdays, which was coincidentally the day we all got paid, and pretty much every one I knew was there.


(Can we pause for a moment to discuss how skinny I was? Also, I had a pager. With an 800 number. Because I needed to make sure it was easy to reach me and cell phones with batteries that lasted more than an hour hadn't been invented yet)

Of course, now I'm about to turn 36. I'm married. I have an almost-two year old and another on the way. And I live in a single family home in a residential neighborhood in Boston with a cat.

But J Lo...she's no spring chicken either, and she's married with two kids.

So how come she's out preaching to the new generation of party people in the clubs and I'm just hoping I can stay up past 9?

Sunday, June 19, 2011

For my dad on his day

So, recently, Real Simple advertised for their 4th Annual Life Lessons Essay Contest. Normally I just gloss over those things since I am never really good at writing for someone else's topic. However, the topic really resonated with me.

This year's topic is: "When did you first understand the meaning of love?"

I immediately thought of the story of my dad, comforting me, as I sat beside him in those days before he passed away.

I submitted my essay, but not because I think I will win or even be a runner up - they make it pretty clear they like essays that aren't about cliché topics, which mine totally is. I submitted it because when I saw the essay question I knew I had to write what I had to write; and it has been festering inside of me desperately needing to get out ever since. I can't claim it is good writing, I can only claim it is true.

In honor of Father's Day, I think it is only appropriate to post it here too.

----------------------------------


Real Simple Life Lessons Essay Contest – “When did you first understand the meaning of love?”


Cliché #1
by Coasting anon


The room was quiet except for the humming of the oxygen machine. My mother had taken my five month old son, out into the hallway so I could have some time alone with my dad. We’d had a great visit. Dad seemed lucid and talkative and in good spirits. It made me wonder why I was even there. Two days prior, my mom had called to tell me that dad’s health had turned for the worse and that it was time for me to come to Pennsylvania to be with him. I was starting to think it was really just a false alarm.

--

Dad was a great, big man with a heart to match. He was born at the height of the Great Depression in Brooklyn, NY to immigrant parents. He learned early on to work and work hard. But somewhere along the way, he learned to love fiercely and wholeheartedly. When my parents met in a San Jose poetry bar in the sixties, it was his never-failing love for my mother that crossed boundaries and opened the door for him – an older Jewish man who never graduated high school – to marry into a well off, Protestant family.

My father worked hard to rise up to the standards of his new family and provide for my mother and eventually my sister and I. He spent years toiling in hot, non-air-conditioned delivery trucks delivering meats to local restaurants; learning the nuances of the restaurant trade along the way. Eventually, when I was in fourth grade, he summoned up the courage, and enough investment money, to start his own restaurant. The work was as grueling and stressful and all consuming as it was gratifying and validating.

I am one of the lucky ones. There has never been any doubt in my mind how much my father loved my sister and I. He made it adamantly clear. Unfortunately for him, it was rarely appreciated while we were growing up. Many times his devotion to us was expressed by his fear in letting us go off and do our various teenager activities. My mom combated that by skillfully waiting to tell him we were on the youth group ski trips until after we had already boarded the bus. But most often, he expressed his love toward us openly and honestly. A declaration here or there, most often at the most embarrassing times for a teenager, that he and my mom loved us and would always support us and be there for us and how proud they were of us. It was nauseating; enough so that at one point, my sister declared he no longer had to say the whole thing, rather he could just say, “Cliché #1” and we would automatically know what that meant.

Through the years, he watched his daughters grow and mature and eventually move off to college and become their own persons. Through all of it, he always made it so very clear to us how proud he was of us. Eventually, as we started our careers and moved about the country we started to truly understand how special it was to grow up never doubting how loved we were; not that we ever stopped teasing him about it.

Life continued on for all of us and the classic events that are a part of most everyone’s lives filled our years; engagements, marriages, births, career successes, divorce, retirements, deaths. Through all of it, my father’s unfailing love for us shined like a beacon guiding us home.

My son was only a month old when my dad went in for scheduled knee surgery. The surgery went well; everything was routine. But the next day, his lungs failed him and he went into cardiac arrest. Over the next few months, his health would get markedly better and he would be transferred to a lower care facility where his health would spiral downward until the insurance company would finally agree to send him back to the higher care facility where he would rebound. It was a vicious circle and as he continued to spiral, his health continued to suffer.

And so it was that when my son was five months old, I found myself sitting with my dad in his nursing home room in the company of only the drone of the oxygen machine as I held his hand and prepared to say goodbye.

We’ve all seen this moment on TV or in a movie. A grieving family member is given a chance to say goodbye to a dying loved one and prophetic words of love and wisdom are shared over the swells of emotional music. But there was no music in the nursing home room - and I didn’t know what to say. This was a man that I loved dearly – no matter how much I protested that from my teenage years through my twenties. This was a man who loved me fiercely – no matter how many times from toddlerhood to adulthood I tested that love.

So there we were, together in silence. I held his hand as I sat beside him at the bed. There were so many things to say; too many – and yet nothing important enough for this moment. All I could do was fail at holding back my tears, bow my head down next to him and liberally sob, “Oh, dad.”

Dad placed his large, heavy hand on my head and whispered, “It’s ok. It’s ok.”

--

Dad died on Wednesday, December 15, 2009. Nine days prior to his 76th birthday. Four months after the knee surgery that was supposed to enhance his life. Five months after his second grandson, who looks a lot like him, was born.

As I’ve watched my son grow and learn and become a toddler over the last two years, I have started to understand the great love that my father had for my sister and I. It was more than keeping us safe from harm, more than being proud of our accomplishments, more than working tirelessly to provide for us. I look at my son and I think that I could never bear to see his heart broken; I wonder how I can possibly make that happen and I know that I can’t. I think of my father, as he lay on his death bed. I think about how scared he might have been and yet to the end, he was still comforting, loving, fathering me. I think about how he must have felt, knowing he was about to be the one to break my heart, and I realize the true meaning of love.


Friday, June 17, 2011

A few things

  • I'm so excited for our farm share to start. We pick up on Tuesdays because it is a fun thing to do with Little G and means I don't have to do it on the weekends. However, we seem to be the last people in the continental US to be starting their share! Our farm started its p/u schedule earlier this week...it just so happens that this Tuesday is the latest of the start dates. Anyway, in a week when I'm complaining about all the beet greens and lettuce you can smack me upside the head and remind me of how much I was looking forward to this.


  • Real Simple has an essay contest going on that I keep thinking I want to write something for. I have the perfect subject and story and everything and can't seem to get it together to write what I want to write. The dumb thing is that I would want to write this regardless of some contest, so you would think I would just get it out of me...but since it is a contest I am finding myself completely overwhelmed. Essay topic: When did you first understand the meaning of love?


  • I signed up to be a part of the BlogHer advertising network. I have no idea how it all works and I certainly have no expectations of any of you clicking on any of the links that will now appear on my blog, but if you do, thank you for helping to contribute to my blogging habit. Also, I think once I put the code into my website, I'm going to need to figure out a way to make my current blog a three column one, because I can't handle having advertising above even the 'about me' section. Also, I'm pretty sure I'll have some ugly blue bar across the top which makes me sad...but if it pays for my hosting fees, than I guess I can put up with the less-than-optimal addition to my carefully designed blog template


  • My birthday is next week and I was asked what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to go out to dinner with my friends. Except we can't even figure that out because our babysitter is out of the country visiting relatives for the month and we don't have a back-up. I'm giving up. I don't feel like working this hard just to be able to go out for my birthday. Just get me some Carvel ice cream cake and I'll move on with my life.


  • Little G has recently hit the "MINE" phase. Its pretty annoying, but sometimes funny. My six year old nephew was here last week visiting and it was humorous to watch Little G race around the house grabbing everything that Cousin W touched and shouting, "No, MY ___!" You can fill in that blank with any of the following: car, doll, turn, hat, couch, pillow, bed, kitty, snack, etc. Apparently he doesn't do this at daycare, but it was pretty silly to watch him try to declare the padding we were jumping on at the gym as his.


  • The house cleaners are here. Am I the only one who feels incredibly self conscious about being around when someone else is cleaning the house? I'm currently holed up in my office (which is not on the cleaning list) and hoping that I can seamlessly transfer myself downstairs once they head upstairs. I'd be out of the house completely, but I have work to do...which is why I'm blogging


  • Oh yeah...I sort of alluded to it in a couple of posts, but the new addition is most definitely a girl. I guess we should come up with some sort of nick name for her while we're waiting for her debut...any suggestions? Little G was the Kernel since I used to be Mrs Corn over at Weddingbee. But the Kernelette seems wrong. Maybe a Corn Muffin? Anyone? Bueller?

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

In this Moment

Well over a year ago, I wrote this post: Some insight into your future husband's mother. It was about how we hope to raise our son to be a strong, loving, independent, caring, emotionally available, conscientious individual. But it was also about how much I love and adore my son and recognize that someday, someone else other than his mom will light up his eyes. It is about being a mom to a boy.

I guess I am more prone to seeing how it is for mothers of boys since my own husband is one of two boys. I think of their mother, my Mother-in-Law, often and how as the mom of two boys she lost out on the secret world of awesome that is the bond between mothers and daughters. I try to keep this in mind and be respectful of how she must feel toward me...the woman who lights up her eldest son's eyes.

But now I am faced with the high probability that our next child is a girl. The ultrasound technician is pretty darn sure of it. Honestly, the thought of a girl scares the shit out of me. For one thing, she's gonna have my hair, and she's gonna hate me for the rest of her life for it. And let's not gloss over the fact that I'm legitimately frightened of girls between the ages of 7 (the beginning stages of tweendom) and 25 (the end stages of lashing out at one's upbringing by straying as far from the fold of morality as possible). But for some reason, now that there is going to be another girl in our family, I can't help but hope that means the promise of a great friend once she becomes an adult.

And I unfairly find myself thinking that my son's future spouse is now off the hook. No longer will they have to be entirely considerate of the fact that I don't have my own daughter to dote on, because I will have one.

It is an uncomfortable realization for me; the amount of pressure I was (and still am) putting on future relationships that may or may not ever materialize. I am well aware that the key is to stop racing ahead in my mind and to live in these moments of tantrums and sticky fingers and open-mouthed, joyful kissies and soon-to-be-again sleepless nights and bottles and cooing and dreamy baby snuggles. The adults my children will be someday are present right here in the minds and hearts of my beautiful son and soon-to-be-born daughter. I don't have to look any further than that right now.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Aaaaaahhhh...THAT was relaxing!!

Well, I'm back. What, you say? You never knew I was gone?

Yeah...I sort-of didn't mention it because I have a fear of someone ransacking my home in my absence...although it would have been fruitless since Grammy was here with Little G and they're both scrappy.

So where did we go?

My husband and I headed to Portugal for five days. It was our first vacation without Little G. I've been away without him. My husband has been away without him. But we had never left him without one of us, so it was a bit scary.

As previously mentioned, Grammy came to take care of Little G and he had an absolute blast so we needn't have worried.

The trip was amazing and beautiful and lovely and relaxing and soooooooooo needed. With another one on the way, who knows when we'll get a chance to go away together on our own again.

Below are some pics from our trip...with a slide show (with captions) at the end should you so choose...the slide show is little, but if you just click on it you'll end up on the actual Picasaweb site.









Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Yippee, yippee, yay!!

As some of you know, I own and run my own invitation design business, LimoncelloSTYLE. I try to keep my blogs separate because most people who are looking to purchase invitations and/or announcements just don't need to know how crazy-pants I really am.

But I'm super proud to announce that my business was featured on the Envelopments blog earlier this week...I hope you'll take a moment to go check it out here: http://blog.envelopments.com/2011/06/07/make-mine-unique-limoncello-style/