Forced to Pose with Little Sister...

... not sure why she is only wearing a hat and a diaper!

Menu of the Week

Cashew Chicken with White Rice & Edamame
BBQ Ranch Chicken Tostadas with Avocado-Corn Salsa
Turkey Burger with Basil Aoili
Pasta ai Quattro Formaggi
Tortilla Soup
Goldfish Crusted Chicken Nuggets
Cheater Italian Wedding Soup

photos courtesy Cooking With My Kid, A Year of Slow Cooking, Pioneer Woman, Meal Planning 101

Eight Weeks Old

I snapped a couple of pictures of Olivia at her doctor's appointment. Her first week of real smiles!

That's Daddy's smile!

Such a pretty girl!

Olivia Grace

Olivia Grace was born on February 1 at 8:12am. She was a whopping 9 pounds, 8 ounces and 21 inches long. This is the exact weight and height as her big brother Ozzie, kind of a fun coincidence. Life has been very busy since her arrival, which is why I this is my first blog post since January. We are over the moon in love with our little girl.

At the hospital right before she is born

Oscar ready for the c-section

Here she is!

Big brother Ozzie welcoming sissy.

My new favorite picture in the world!

One tired Mommy

Daddy's little girl

Nanay (my Mom) & Olivia

Pepa (my Dad) & Olivia. Ozzie showing her his new car.

Grandma (Oscar's Mom) & Olivia

Make It Wish List

In my current state of  nesting and organizing everything around me, I have decided to use my blog as a reminder of all of the wonderful things I want to make as seen on the internet.

So you will notice the new list on the right column of my blog titled, Make It Wish List. I know it is already quite a long list and I am expecting baby number two any day now but you can't blame me for wishing!

My goal is to make something, post it on my blog, delete it from my wish list and, of course, replace it with something new! Call me crazy but this is what I call fun (said the crazy housewife). I may just throw caution to the wind and make a recipe wish list too. Woot!

Menu of the Week

Next week's menu of the week is all about preparing for our baby girl's arrival. I really want to have several meals cooked, frozen and ready to reheat during those first few crucial weeks. Like last week, it seems I have been monopolized by one or two food blogs for this week's menu. Here is what I came up with.

Dinners:
Cheater Italian Wedding Soup
Crock Pot Braised Short Ribs
Goldfish Crusted Chicken Nuggets
Creamy Chicken Enchiladas
Ham Bone Soup- the Honey Baked Ham recipe from their bean mix.

Breakfast: typically I don't meal plan for breakfast but with Oscar home on paternity leave, I thought I'd try a few new ones.
Banana Oatmeal Bake- old wives tales say that oatmeal helps breast milk come in and this sounded super yummy.
Jocelyn's Chicken Sausage and Potatoes- my dear friend Jocelyn made this for the bambina's baby shower. Our CSA box included fingerling potatoes this week so I have to make these for Oscar. Recipe coming soon.

And, because I know myself all too well, desserts ready to pick me up from all those sleepless nights:
Crazy Good Chocolate Chip Bite Sizers
Triple Chocolate Banana Bread Muffins
Whole Wheat Banana Bread

I have already frozen a few dishes or left overs from previous weeks.
Slow Cooker Butter Chicken- from last week's menu. This was delicious and made plenty of left overs to freeze for later.
Red Beans and Rice
Turkey Spaghetti

photo credits HERE, HERE & HERE

Menu of the Week

After attending a meeting with my mom/playgroup where everyone discussed their meal planning strategies, I decided to add my weekly meal plan to my blog. So many of my favorite food bloggers do it I thought I should throw my hat in the ring. It just took me several months to get my first post up!

Meal planning is a great way to take the stress out of the age old question, "What's for dinner?". Now I know what I am going to cook every night and can prepare dinner while Ozzie naps. When I am super organized, I cook a lot of the meals on Sunday & freeze them until they are ready to be eaten. It also has saved us money because we are no longer wasting food. I buy exactly what I need and at the end of the week, the refrigerator is close to empty. I love that the most because I am not spending my entire Sunday throwing away old food that got lost in the refrigerator. It even saves me time in the grocery store because I have my handy dandy little list, which of course is organized by store aisle, and am no longer wondering the store aimlessly trying to figure out what to buy.

Another convenience that I love is our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box (the picture above is from one of our boxes- yummy local organic fruits and vegetables) that is delivered every Tuesday. If I am diligent about meal planning, I can adjust our fruits & vegetables accordingly prior to delivery. Another savings of time, money and food!

So one goal for my blog this year is to share my Menu of the Week. Of course I choose the week before my second child is born to take on this new task but fingers crossed I'll keep up most of the time. Oh and I am not organized enough to add side dishes every week. We usually eat a lot of salads but if I make a fancy vegetable side, I will try to include it.

With that said... drum roll please. Here is this week's Menu of the Week:

Slow Cooker Butter Chicken
Creamy Turkey Taquitos
Roasted Chicken with Baby Red Potatoes
Grown Up Mac and Cheese
Turkey Burger with Basil Aioli
Baked Chicken in Tomato Sauce with Olives

Can you tell I'm loving the blog Meal Planning 101? Happy Cooking!

Creamy Turkey Taquitos

Trying some Super Bowl recipes that are all over the blogs right now. Our little girl should arrive before the Super Bowl so I thought it would be fun to try out some recipes for us to eat on the big day since neither of us will be making any big game parties with a newborn.

Tonight I made these taquitos from Meal Planning 101 except I substituted the ground beef in her recipe with ground turkey. We are not huge beef eaters any more. They were delicious. If you are ever craving the famous crispy beef burrito from Taco Time and want a homemade, lower fat version, give these a try. They scream pot luck or Super Bowl party and will be an instant hit- guaranteed!

Click HERE for the recipe.

photo courtesy of Meal Planning 101

38 Weeks Pregnant

I was starting to feel guilty about the lack of pictures I have of myself during this pregnancy. It is so cliche but true when they say everything is documented with your first and every child thereafter gets cheated. So I forced Oscar to take a bunch of pictures of me before we ran some errands.

As you can see I am ready to burst! We breed big babies. Ozzie was 9.5 lbs at birth and my doctor thinks this little girl will be right up there. Luckily I have only gained 22 lbs myself. So I am hoping this baby weight comes off easily, like half of it with her after day one, because my thighs are gigantic!

Ozzie decided that he wanted to get in on a few shots too. I will always welcome him actually posing and smiling for the camera!

And this marks when he got bored and left, ending our little photo shoot.

Sewing 101: Learn to Spell Your Name Bean Bags

In my ongoing effort to teach myself how to sew, I decided to try Lil Blue Boo's bean bag tutorial. A friend's twin daughters turned three and I figured this would be a fun addition to their gift while helping me learn how to sew straight lines. Have I told you that I still can't sew a straight line? Another friend's daughter is close to the same age so I went ahead and made her one too. Along with my little guy. Practice makes perfect, right?

I did make one modification. Since I have no business using the fabric paint she used (I know my limits), I used my handy dandy cricut to cut the letters out on paper. Then I traced the letters onto felt that I treated with fabric stiff. I highly recommend fabric stiff for any of your fabric crafts. It helped with sewing the letters onto the bean bags as well.

That is A LOT of practice!

I thought this was funny because I was snapping picture after picture and didn't realize my pregnant belly was in the shot until after I uploaded the pictures onto my computer. Whoops!

Ozzie loves his bean bags and is constantly throwing them around and I gotta say it has worked. He only knew "O" for Ozzie but now he has "Z" down too! Not too bad for a little boy who refuses to learn his numbers and letters. Yay for learning how to sew!