Magazine Cover

So this is probably one of my favorite pictures of Evelyn.

So I decided to enter it in a contest for the cover of a magazine.

If you would please vote for her, I would really appreciate it!  

This would be a great addition to her college fund if she won!

I just entered my happy baby in the American Baby Cover Contest. Each week the photo with the most votes wins a prize!

Vote for Evee!

Happy Birthday

So yesterday was my little baby girls first birthday.

Unfortunately, we were all sick :(
but we still made the best we could out of it.

We had her party last Saturday, back in my home town.  This kid made out like a bandit!  My sister who works for the NIKE corporate office, got her, her first pair of baby Nike shoes!

How cute are these??!?!?!  Plus the box is so teeny!

She also got a bunch of musical and fun gifts :) Including her first two baby dolls ever.  

I can't forget that she got a big pile of books too, especially since we read 5 of them just yesterday hehehe :) my girl loves to read stories.  

She also got a ton of clothes, a froggy potty, some diapers, and a ton of cake :) 

She definitely smashed!

I decided we should have a birthday tradition for our little family, so here it is.  I set up two different cups, one with Joshua on it, the other Ashley.  Everyone was told ahead of time to bring their spare change with them, because whichever cup had more money in it at the time of the smash cake, would get cake smashed in their face.  All of the proceeds would go towards a savings fund for Evelyn to go to college.  Entertainment for a good cause :)

Since most of the people there (since it was in my home town) knew me more than Joshua, I expected to be the one with cake in the face... It didn't go that way however.  Instead :) Josh got the cake allllllll over his face... I may have been a little over excited.

The thing I love most about this picture, is that Evelyn is still just looking at the cake,
like "Hey that is mine, I want more." Silly little baby :)
This also amuses me because my petname for Josh, since we got together,
is facecake :) I call him my facecake, and here he is... with cake on his face.

Day 1 of school

Today Joshua starts at his new school.  We moved here from our old home, just for this.  Through a bunch of little problems and such we weren't sure if it would all work out, but now it looks like it will :) So proud of him!

Cabbage and Chicken Soup

So when I first started this blog, I was saying how I wanted to get back to the old me.

One of the things I said I would like to do again, was create my own recipes.

Tonight I did just that.  I looked in our fridge (it is getting close to that time where we go and get groceries! the fridge is looking bare) and saw that I still had cabbage.  I honestly didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I figured I should use it before it went bad.  So I made soup.  This was the very first time I ever created a soup recipe.  It was the first time I ever made soup without following someone elses instructions very carefully.  It was a little saltier than I liked, but still yummy.  We had it for lunch, and again for dinner.  When I went to reheat it for dinner, I added in more water and it mellowed the salt to a perfect flavor!

Cabbage and Chicken Soup

1/2 a head of cabbage, torn up into pieces
1 large potato, skinned and chopped into bite size pieces
6 cups of water
1 chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces
1 chicken bullion cube (I used 2... and it was waaaaaay too salty, so I am guessing 1 would be good, or more water)
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp black pepper

Put the torn up cabbage, potato pieces, water, bullion, oregano, and basil into a pot.  Turn on the burner on med-high heat until it starts to boil.  When it starts boiling, turn it down to low-med heat.  While it is heating up, cook the chicken breast pieces in a pan (or grill them, or whatever method you want to use to cook the pieces.  Or you could use cooked chicken and just tear it up).  Sprinkle the black pepper over the chicken while it is cooking.  Add to the pot when it is cooked almost all the way through.  It can finish cooking in the soup.  I let my soup cook for about 35-40 minutes.  My potatoes were tender, and my cabbage was perfect.

For fun I added some croutons to my soup, kind of like mushy dumplings lol.  I am weird like that, but I found them delicious!

The next time I make this, I think I will add a little garlic, some sliced carrots, and celery.  Maybe another potato as well.

It came out really great though, so for my first time, I am feeling very proud :D Josh had multiple helpings, and Evee stole some of mine :)

Seriously Vinegar

I love you vinegar... yes I do :)

Today I decided to try a foot soak I found on my pinterest.

I have left this link before, in my last post about vinegar, because I thought it was interesting.

I soaked my feet for a half hour in warm water, apple cider vinegar, and some peroxide.

My toes have never looked so great!  My feet are ridiculously soft too.  I keep touching them!  I was so amazed that I ran in to make Josh feel my feet also!  He is now soaking his feet in a fresh batch of the foot bath.  I highly recommend trying this!


Image from the Website

Cinnamon Butter Croissants

So this morning, I was thinking "I want to make my family homemade cinnamon rolls."

I was very disappointed to find that the only recipes that sounded really yummy, and not extremely time consuming, had to be made with all purpose flour.  I do not have any of that :( I buy wheat flour.  I have 3 different types of wheat flour, but no all purpose.  So I looked in my fridge.

What I did have, was croissants.  

So in a small mixing bowl I mixed the following

1/2 stick room temperature butter

4 dashes of ground cinnamon

1 tbsp of white sugar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Then I rolled our the croissants.  I wasn't sure what the most effective way to arrange them would be.  For the first couple, I pinched two croissant triangles together.  Then I put the butter mixture on them, rolled them up, and cut them in half.  They looked like cinnamon rolls.  For the next two I made them into little buns by just folding them up so there were no openings.  For the last of them, I just made them like a regular croissant.  On top of all of them, I put just a little more of the butter mixture on top.

I baked them at 375 for about 10 minutes until I liked the color they were.

They were delicious.  They did not taste like cinnamon rolls, but they were yummy.  They tasted like cinnamon toast, only softer.  I would eat and make them again.  I haven't decided which fold worked best.  They tasted the same to me, so it is all preference.  The ones that look like cinnamon rolls definitely took longer to make, so unless you are displaying them for someone, you might as well just roll them up like regular croissants.  

Yikes

So I expressed how I was feeling on Saturday, and why I decided to stop the diet.

I however did not have anything to say Sunday... because I was in the ER most of the day.

I woke up Sunday morning because of some cramping in my front right lower waist.  Below my stomach, near my pelvic region.

I thought maybe it was my IUD gone wrong or something, because I also had a little bleeding.

Turns out (after 2 cat scans, 1 vaginal ultrasound, 1 regular ultrasound, and over 6 hours laying in a bed on an IV) that it was an ovarian cyst, that had exceeded 5 cm and filled with blood until it burst. Leaving me very uncomfortable :/ but at least it was not my appendix.  Which is what we thought it was going to be.

I did have a lovely time on the pain medicine while I was there, and now I just take some motrin.  The thing that really bothers me though, is that after giving them a urine sample, they said "oh you are dehydrated."  Which shocked me.  But then, after getting some blood work done, they told me that I was EXTREMELY dehydrated.  I have 2 IV bags full, pumped into my body.

This upsets me because I love water.  I do.  I drink it all the time.  I even drank more than usual for this diet.  I don't drink soda, and I don't care for sugary drinks.  When I do drink iced tea, I have it unsweetened.  So what we think happened, was that during this diet, I didn't get enough salt.  I wrote about my diet on here everyday that I did it, and often I put a little salt on things.  But clearly not enough.  SO I urge anyone who tries this diet, to get some sodium!  It is very important.  I still can not believe that I can drink a gallon of water in a day, and still be told I am severely dehydrated the next day.  I did mention at the beginning that I was having to go to the bathroom more frequently, so it just was not staying in my system :( I am still getting over it all.  I will not be doing this diet again, just because I do not think my body can handle it.  If you do try it, I wish you luck!  Just please pay attention to your body, and make sure nothing is going wrong.