Highlights

Thought I'd share a few highlights from this past week. From the menu department, this:

http://mynewroots.blogspot.com/2011/04/raw-brownie.html

The Raw Brownie

It's made with walnuts, dates, cocoa, sea salt and almonds. That's it. No flour, no eggs, no sugar, no oil. Just pure delicious chocolate goodness. Yum. My friend, Lisa, gave me the link to this recipe and it will be a regular in this household for sure!

...And this:

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/rice/greek-quinoa-and-avocados/

Greek Quinoa with Spinach and Avocados

This one was passed on by my friend, Sarah Ashlin, who is helping me with the whole monthly menu planning bit. It's easy, healthy, tasty. The perfect trifecta when it comes to making dinner, right? I thought some chickpeas tossed in wouldn't hurt. =)

There was also a highlight from the wish list department: I got my Storksak bag! Yay!

It is actually way more wonderful in real life. Nice and roomy, washable/wipeable with tons of pockets, and an extra across the body strap. I was really proud of myself for devising a plan to get it that stayed within our budget too. I used my Discover rewards to turn $60 "bucks back" into a $75 Bed Bath and Beyond gift card (which can be used at Buy Buy Baby). Then I went online and printed a 20% off coupon for Buy Buy Baby. So, by combining the coupon and gift cards and saving up my fun money for the month (I did miss a few of my vanilla lattes along the way), I was able to go ahead and "invest" in this new bag which I am really loving!

Two highlights on the JD front:

1. He went poo-poo in the potty! (Don't worry, no pictures of this to follow) It was only one time, completely at my suggestion (as opposed to his own initiative) and in no way really indicates any potty training readiness or inclinations... but still! It can't be a BAD thing right? He got some chocolate chips afterwards so he thought it was pretty cool!

2. He has started to eat supper with Jonathan and I. Or, rather, we've started to eat supper with him... Up til this past week we've been eating breakfast all together and I eat lunch with him, but then we would always feed him supper around 5:30, do his bath and get him in bed around 7 and then eat our own dinner - relaxing on the couch. I always thought that it was kind of nice to just get to eat dinner in peace after a long kid-filled day. By the time we were done eating though, I was pretty much done in for the day. As in, no energy to really clean up the kitchen, so that got left for in the morning (yucky). No energy to blog or fold laundry or work on any little projects. We would watch a couple shows and then drift off to the bedroom and sleep. Now, though, it's like I have this whole other chunk of the day that I never had before. It's called "evening"! Admittedly, dinner time all together is not quite as relaxing as it was by ourselves, but by 7:30 dinner and the house are cleaned up and JD is in bed. We can sit down and have a glass of wine or dessert,  read, blog, do a project, watch a show - whatever. It is actually really great! Not to mention, JD loves the time eating dinner with us and it is helping set the stage for family dinner time which is something we really want to put an emphasis on as the kids grow up... Anyway, here's a very small project that I've been putting off for awhile that I was able to get done in less than an hour after dinner one night.

Before: Plain white IKEA bedside lamps

After: More personalized/elegant with black ribbon trim

Finally, a highlight on the movie night scene. We've instigated weekly date nights. Two with a babysitter where we go out to dinner or whatever. And two at home where we just order take out and watch a movie. This week we watched 50/50. And while officially "recommending" movies makes me nervous (I definitely don't condone everything in the movies I "recommend"), we both really liked this one and in my opinion, it is hard to find a good movie these days.