32 Weeks

Today I am 32 weeks pregnant with our little Henry. This picture is actually from last week but I'm too lazy to take a new one today, so it'll have to do. ;) Also, this is about the only picture I have of our Christmas decor this year. I had planned to leave it up for a little while longer, but since I never actually finished putting all the decorations out, I'm kind of in a hurry to get them packed away.

I'm pretty sure the little guy has been growing up a storm lately. I feel like my belly looks bigger every single day. My skin also feels stretched to the max, I hate to think what it's going to look/feel like in 8 weeks or so. There's one spot to the left of my belly button where the skin is so stretched it feels bruised and hurts to touch it. I'm just waiting for my belly to break out in a roadmap of stretch marks, I just know they're coming soon.

In addition to growing, Henry likes to spend his days, (and nights!), moving almost constantly. He moves so much it makes me nauseous sometimes. I've never really gotten motion sickness from riding boats, planes, trains, automobiles, or roller coasters, but I feel like that's what's going on. He moves around so much it makes my stomach feel like it's doing flips. It's worse if I'm hungry, I guess because he has more room to move??

I still don't have much appetite, (which unfortunately has not stopped me from scarfing down lots of mint M&Ms and Dove dark chocolates this week), and really don't have cravings either. But this morning I woke up wanting a turkey burger from Mooyah and it is all. I. can. think. about. I had planned on making baked chicken, wild rice pilaf, steamed broccoli, and cooked carrots for dinner, but I think that plan is about to fly out the window.

My parents, grandma, and older brother came over for Christmas Eve and a Christmas day last weekend. At the time I felt like I was doing a really good job of taking it pretty easy. Ok, honestly I felt like I was being a little lazy by taking frequent breaks on the couch, letting my mom do lots of work on dinner, and husband doing all the dishes, but I still think I overdid it somehow. I've been having lots of weird pains and braxton hicks contractions since Monday night which have pretty much forced me to spend most of the last couple of days lying down and drinking tons of water. I'm not so great at the whole lying down and doing nothing thing, I'm about to go crazy.

Speaking of Christmas, I'm pretty sure Henry racked up. ;) I honestly couldn't think of anything I wanted for Christmas, so I kept telling people just to get stuff for Henry instead. I should get all of his stuff out and take a picture, it's all just too cute.

I'm getting so excited for him to be born! It just dawned on me Monday that there are less than two months until his due date. Very exciting stuff! We're just so ready to meet him!

On the nursery front, the fabric for the nursery curtains came in the mail last week and I am in love! There were a couple more things I wanted to order for the nursery, but it's looking pretty good with just the stuff we have right now, so I may scale back a little bit. ;) I need to get the sewing machine out and work on his bedskirt, (which is SO close to being done I really have no excuse for it not being finished), and get the curtains done, (which shouldn't take any time at all really).

That's about all for now. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we should find out a little bit more about his stats and such. I think after this week I only have one more appointment before I start going every week, which means we're getting so much closer to his due date! :)

Jennifer

Merry Christmas!

Colorful Joy Christmas Card

To view our unique Christmas card designs, click here.

View the entire collection of cards.

Since I can't send you each a Christmas card, here is our's from this year! We did end up using a couple from our Christmas Card Rejects post because we ran out of time to take more, but I'm still pretty happy with the way the cards turned out.

I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful Christmas!!

Jennifer

Triple Chocolate Cake

Who's ready for a delicious, rich, chocolatey sugar rush? ;) I made this cake yesterday based off this recipe from AllRecipes.com, (but modified a little). It was so good, I had to share with y'all. In a season of way-too-complicated desserts, (I'm looking at you divinity), this one is super easy, super rich, and super yum.

Triple Chocolate Cake

1 box chocolate cake mix - (I used Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge)

1 (5 oz) package instant chocolate pudding*

1 cup sour cream

3/4 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup warm water

1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips

*I used a box of sugar-free chocolate pudding and light sour cream to cut down on fat/calories. The boxes of sugar-free pudding have different weights than the regular, if you want to use sugar-free pudding mix, just get the larger size box.*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, (I used my kitchen-aid mixer), mix together the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, beaten eggs, and water. Stir in the mini chocolate chips and pour batter into a well-greased bundt pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, (it took the full 60 minutes in my oven), or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool cake in pan for at least one hour, invert onto a cake plate and let cool for an additional 30 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar.

Enjoy! Preferably with a big glass of milk. ;)

Can you believe Christmas is in less than a week???

Jennifer

P.S. Again, sorry about the giant pictures! Stupid photobucket is being slow today, and I'm being impatient and didn't want to wait to post until the photos resized themselves correctly. I'm sure at some point the issue will correct itself, until then, I'm sorry for the super-sized photos.

30 Weeks

30 weeks down, 10 to go. I am 3/4 of the way through this pregnancy. How crazy is that?! I knew that once Thanksgiving hit the time would start to fly by, but I'm really amazed at how fast it's moving. I am expecting a slow down come mid-January though.

We have been working a lot on Henry's room this week, and by working I mostly mean ordering things off the internet. ;) The more things I put in there, the more I want every thing finished now!

So far this week his crib mattress arrived, we got a couple pieces of artwork for the walls ordered, and one print arrived in the mail, and his GORGEOUS quilt arrived. Seriously, I am so in love with it:

My friend Renee made it; didn't she do an amazing job? The back side of the quilt is a big game of I-spy:

Miss Kitty was upset that the quilt was not for her. She thought it was very comfortable and was not happy when I evicted her from laying on it shortly after this:

Now that the crib mattress is in I can finish the crib skirt that I started sewing a couple of weeks ago. I was making good progress on the skirt, but somehow it wasn't coming out exactly right. I thought it would be easier for me to figure out what was wrong with it when the crib mattress was in place. Thankfully I was right, and in about 5 minutes after putting in the crib mattress I'd figured out what I needed to do to fix the skirt, now I just have to get around to doing it! ;)

With the addition of the crib mattress, all of the "big" stuff for the nursery is in place, except the curtains. I had originally planned on making the curtains, but after months of searching for fabric I gave up. I found some on etsy that I think will work really well, so they just need to be ordered. In the meantime, it's fun to start in on some cute little decorative stuff. These two guys were added this week:

The little plate with the verse from 1 Samuel is from Mardel Christian stores and is definitely so, so true! The stegosaurus is a piggy bank from Target, (all their piggy banks are on sale this week!). His name is Spike. ;)

One of husband's co-workers gave us the cutest car seat cover ever:

I'd never seen one like it before, and cannot get over how adorable it is! Here's a view of it from the side on our car seat and stroller:

In addition to being cute it's also a thick fleece so it'll be nice to keep him toasty so we can go on walks. :) She also gave us a summery version that's green and white gingham fabric that's thin and protects against UV rays and the sides are white mesh to keep out bugs in the summer. Pretty sure we'll get quite a bit of use out of these!!

I feel like I've totally dropped the ball on all things Christmas this year. This is usually my favorite time of the year and I live and breathe Christmas, but I just feel a little preoccupied this year and Christmas is kind of at the back of my mind. I am in complete denial that it is only 10 days away. If you saw my house you would completely understand. ;)

I did finally get around to getting most of our Christmas shopping done this week. This is a good thing because I think every time I went some where/looked online I would get distracted and order something for Henry instead of Christmas presents for family. Whoops...

I am trying to make myself feel less guilty about not being as into Christmas this year, by convincing myself that I will do it up big again next year when we'll have our precious babe to enjoy it all with us. Of course, we'll see how much actually gets done then when we have a 9-10 month old! ;)

I think we're just to the point now where we're getting really excited and anxious to meet him. I know he needs to stay in there and bake for 10 more weeks, but it's so neat to think about who's actually in there and what he's going to look like. I'll try to do a post soon with some baby pictures of myself and the husband. We could not look more different, so we're very interested to see what Henry looks like!

At my doctor's appointment Monday my belly was measuring right at 30 weeks and Henry's heartbeat was 154. I think he went through a growth spurt the day before yesterday because my stomach felt so incredibly stretched all day long, the skin around my belly button looks like it's practically see through. I noticed the beginnings of a stretch mark on the left side of my belly last week, but so far it's just a little red dot. I fully expect to get stretch marks because from what I've read they're pretty much hereditary and there's not much you can do to prevent them, but I figure if I can slather myself in cocoa butter lotion and put them off as long as possible maybe they won't be so bad. Humor me and just agree with me on this one. haha

I think that's pretty much everything. Here we are today:

This is by far my least favorite belly shot so far. It's super dark and dreary today and therefore the lighting is crazy and makes me look like I have way too much eye makeup on. :-/

Here's to hoping the next 10 weeks go by smoothly and pretty quickly!

Jennifer

Pintrest Successes

Like most of the blogging world, I jumped on the pintrest bandwagon a few months ago and pretty much delved into an alternate universe believing I could make anything with a glue gun, vinegar, and burlap.

Despite my hours of perusing the gorgeous pictures I think I've cooked less and my house has been more of a mess than ever the past few months. Turns out staring at lots of pretty pictures doesn't actually make beautiful crafts and food magically appear in your house. Sad day...

In the past couple of weeks though, I actually got around to using a few of the recipes and tips I've had pinned forever.

Results: 5 successes! :)

The Friday night before last I was bored and had just gotten back the results that I'd passed my gestational diabetes testing, and decided I would bake something. Now, y'all have to understand that as much as I really do actually enjoy cooking, I am NOT a baker. I leave that realm of the cooking world to my momma and youngest brother. I think it has something to do being on a low-carb basically no sugar diet for the past couple of years thanks to PCOS, but I just do not bake, so deciding to bake something out of the blue is actually a big deal for me.

It was late Friday night and I wasn't in the mood to venture out to the grocery store, and decided to try and find something to make using ingredients we already had in the house. I was thinking chocolate chip bundt cake, but all the recipes I found called for pudding mix or sour cream that I didn't have. I finally found this recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip bundt cake. Umm... hello, I've mentioned my love of pumpkin before, (probably on more than one occasion), and pumpkin and chocolate in a cake? Sign me up!

The recipe was super easy and came out really well. The first piece I had on Friday night, (ok, around 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning after it came out of the oven), when it was still warm tasted like it had a little too much spice (maybe the cloves or allspice, I told y'all I don't bake enough to tell the difference), for my taste. But I swear this cake got progressively BETTER over the five days it took to finish it! It is absolutely delicious with a big glass of milk!

Recipe #2 for CrockPot French Dip Sandwiches was thrown in the crock-pot as I headed out the door for church last Sunday morning. I love recipes where you can just dump things in the crock-pot, turn it on and go about your day. My biggest complaint about it was that the delicious smell of roast beef woke me up early from my post-church Sunday afternoon nap. ;)

I did leave out the red wine in the recipe because we didn't have any in the house. My plan was originally to stop by the grocery store on the way home from church and get some to put in, but the 5 glasses of water I had at lunch and the baby bouncing on my bladder negated that plan real quick. Even sans red wine, husband and I really like the turn out. We had our sandwiches on some really delicious mini french bread rolls from the Super Target bakery, with provolone cheese and some horseradish mayo. Yum. Of course my pregnant self wanted some spice added to it and I think they would have been good with some pepperoncini peppers added to the sandwich, but wanting spicy/vinegary things added to normally delicious and well seasoned food is about par for the course around here lately, (pretty sure I was thiiis close to adding Tobasco sauce to some lentil soup the day before).

That night in attempt to further procrastinate decorating the Christmas tree I cleaned every. single. surface. of. the. entire. kitchen. No lie. Dishes, counters, appliances, cookbook stand, decorative plates and trays, canisters, every single thing was cleaned.

While cleaning the appliances I remembered something I'd seen on pintrest about heating up a bowl of vinegar water in the microwave to make it easier to clean. Y'all, seriously, do this!! It made cleaning the microwave so incredibly easy! Plus, I'm a big fan of anything that can save me from using extra chemical cleaners when I can. I love me some vinegar and baking soda!

And finally, last Friday night I needed a quick snack to make to take a Christmas party and found two pins using mini doughnuts to make snowmen and reindeer. I've been wanting to make them for months and thought party would be a good opportunity.

For the reindeer I used chocolate covered doughnuts, brown and red peanut M&Ms for the noses and just kind of pushed them into the middle of the doughnuts, (there weren't enough red in the package to make all Rudolphs), white pearly sprinkles for the

eyes, and pieces of pretzels for the antlers. Just a note, it's a little difficult to make pretzels break evenly and pretty than you might think. Take my word for it. ;)

For the snowmen I used powdered doughnuts, orange M&M's, and chocolate jimmies sprinkles that I pushed straight into the doughnuts. Getting the jimmies into the powdered doughnuts was probably the most frustrating part of the whole process because they were so small, but even still it wasn't too bad. I had originally planned to use chocolate icing, but a)that seemed like even more trouble and b)I read a review that said that the frosting didn't stick to the doughnuts too well.

So there are my pintrest successes for the past couple of weeks! I would like to say that I am usually not so productive on the weekends, but the first weekend we had two full days of glorious rain, (after months of NO rain and a crazy bad drought), and I didn't feel like leaving the house much. Maybe if it'd rain a little more this month I'd actually get the rest of my house clean and cook dinner more often. Oh, and finish putting out my Christmas decorations...

Hope you all had a great weekend! Do you have any recent Pintrest successes to share?

Jennifer

Christmas Card Rejects

A couple of days ago I mentioned our not so successful attempts at taking pictures of ourselves for our Christmas cards. Here are a few of the more decent ones that didn't make the card...

I saw a cute picture on pintrest of a girl holding boots over her belly, but mine didn't turn out as cute as hers.

Another pose that looked cute on pintrest..

My biggest irritation with this picture is the bottom of my shirt. I bought this shirt like two weeks ago and it was plenty long enough. When I put it on Monday, not so much. I had to borrow one of husband's undershirts so you wouldn't see the blue belly panel on my jeans. Most angles the undershirt wasn't very apparent, but from this angle it really was!

This picture was a test shot when husband was trying to get the camera on the tripod situated and I wasn't paying attention to him. He likes this one so I had to include it. haha

Some of the following pictures I actually really liked, but they all have on thing in common, a sun spot that comes up right over our faces! I didn't notice the spot when we were outside taking the pictures because it was hard to see on the little screen on my camera, and I actually thought we got a few good pictures. I was so bummed when I discovered the spot on every picture. wah-wah

The picture above is probably my favorite of the day and I really wish it didn't have the spot on it! The one below is probably a lot more representative of how we actually are! ;)

And of course we couldn't leave Henry out!

And finally, the next one is one of the only ones without the sun spot, and I don't really care for the picture, of course!

Have any of you ever had any luck taking pictures of yourself? Do you know how to photoshop sun spots out? haha

** A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my love for my new Erin Condren life planner, (the thing is seriously AMAZING), Doodle Deals is having a deal today where you pay $25 for a $50 voucher you can use to purchase Erin Condren products. You can go here to get yours. :) In addition to the Life Planner they have adorable stationery, holiday cards, notepads, and all kinds of other fun stuff. I got two of the vouchers today, one to order a Christmas gift and I think one for more goodies for myself. ;) **

Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Jennifer

I Heart the Muppets

Like any true child of the 80's I grew up watching The Muppets. When I was probably preschool/kindergarten age I remember watching Muppet Babies every afternoon...

I've seen several of the old Muppets movies, my all-time favorite being The Muppet Christmas Carol...

I've seen the Muppet Vision 3-D show at Disney World...

Suffice to say, I think I'm pretty well-versed on Muppets, and was pretty excited when I saw the previews for the NEW Muppet movie.

I think it looks adorable, and it makes me a little nostalgic for all the Muppets movies I haven't seen in AGES. I'm thinking husband and I may have to hit up the theater soon to see this one.

Like all big movies that come out around the holidays, I've seen lots of promo Muppet-themed items come out lately. I've got to say the ones I was most excited about though were OPI's new Muppet themed nail polish collection. Have you seen these??

They were pictured in the ULTA ad in the newspaper a few weeks ago and I fell in love with all the sparkles! My husband likes to tease me that I'm like a fish, I get distracted by anything shiny/glittery. ;) So, of course I had to head in to check them out!

I ended up just getting Gettin' Miss Piggy With It, (the first one on the left in the middle row). It's basically little red glitter with big pieces of silver and red glitter in it too. Beautiful!

I'm not usually much of a red person, but I thought it looked so festive for the holidays. Incidentally I also wore it last Friday to cheer on the Razorbacks, something I don't usually participate in, but our beloved Longhorns aren't doing so hot this year. I was really bummed the Hogs couldn't pull out a win over LSU.

Speaking of Razorback colors, I made a Christmas wreath for one of husband's co-workers who just so happens to be from Northwest Arkansas and loves the Hogs and wanted a red and white wreath. Here's what I came up with:

Of course after I took this picture I noticed a big bare spot on the right side. Isn't it funny how you can look at something right in front of you and not see anything wrong with it, but as soon as you take a picture it's incredibly obvious? I fixed the bare spot immediately, but then forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Go figure! ;)

Have any of you seen the new Muppet movie? Please tell me it's as cute as it looks!

Jennifer