Teeth

When Peanut was itty bitty, I used to love her gummy smile... there was just something about the simplicity and innocence of her toothlessness that I loved.

Now she's got two little razors in that mouth of hers, and I think I love it all the more... but at the same time, I'm nostalgic for the gums. Isn't that ridiculous? She's only 8 months old, but here I am mourning the loss of the baby that was. Testosterhome has a good post about that today... and when I was flipping channels while folding laundry earlier, I saw a mom on "How Do I Look?" crying about her empty nest, and it made me get all weepy about when Peanut will leave to go off to college... Which is a long, long ways away.

Gosh. You'd think I was pregnant with all these hormones! I'm definitely not, they're just still settling down after having her...

swooning

Have you seen the latest contest over at 5 Minutes for Mom? They are giving away a phenomenal TV, thanks to BestBuy! Go check it out. And if you win, enjoy! I know, I know, I was just talking about my 92" TV, but rest assured that if we win this, it won't be staying with us. It will be seriously regifted.

Come on now, who wouldn't mind a regift if it looked like this:

HELP!?

so I know that your 100th post is traditionally a list of 100 things about you... but you'll have to wait a little while for that, dear and patient reader(s). I'll save that for some day next week when I don't know what to blog about.

Today, though, I have a fabulous topic and I need your help! My Mister and I love movies. We just really have fun watching them and discussing them. In fact, he had a 92 inch projector / screen setup before I met him, and he's constantly tweaking his speaker setup. I have to say, 92 inches is great... but it spoils you for anything else!

We haven't watched a movie in well over a week - which is unusual for us. Heck, we haven't even watched TV! (Not that we usually do - but sometimes we'll flip for a few minutes.) I think half the fun of it is just cuddling on the couch with Peanut in between us...

We're a Netflixin' family, since we don't make it to the theater too often anymore with Peanut nursing and all. One of the movies we currently have from Netflix is Roll Bounce... which looks like fun.

My conundrum of the moment is this... I'd like to make a "Roll Bounce" themed supper. Here's some of my ideas, but if you have more, I'd love to hear them!! Please help make our Date Night just that much cooler...

Meatballs ('cause they roll)
Rotini pasta ('cause they look like springs and springs bounce)
Garlic bubble bread (because they look like little rolls)
Jello for dessert (because it bounces!)

my 99th post

My 99th post is to let you know the winner of the contest! Jennifer, over at Gabby Gwenhwyfar, is the lucky winner of my box of books! Since she has little ones, there may even be a book or two in there for them...

Check Shannon's blog for more prizes and winners!

for once in my life...

i feel super popular! i've never had 140 comments on a post before! maybe i should give away a box of books more often. although when i gave away starbucks, only you faithful few entered... shannon's really good for getting us to bounce around other blogs, isn't she?

although i have to say i breezed through most blogs, just looking at the one post. i did add a few to google reader, but it's nice to know that there's a post at shannon's that lists over 500 different blogs for me to check out one of these days!

now if you'll pardon me, Peanut just laid down for a nap. that sounds like such an excellent idea that i might go do the same. brilliant. a nap in the middle of the day. let's hope she keeps up this habit for... oh... the next eighteen years!

downtime

So after the craziness of this weekend and yesterday (I spent the day with my nieces and sister-in-law), I declared today to be a quiet day...

Peanut has slept most of the day (lucky her!) and I have alternated between entering contests through the Dog Days and reading Harry Potter. I had promised Mister I'd stay behind him, so I let him get 350 pages ahead of me, and snuggled down today with a cup of chocolate-raspberry coffee and the book... I'm now about 250 pages in, but am rationing it... 30 pages here, go enter a few more contests, clean something, then back to the book...

I'm having a GREAT day. Contests and an engrossing book? What more could a girl want?

Dog Days Giveaway

Hello all, and welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere called life as a mama...

If you stay for more than a few minutes, it might become obvious that I looove to read. I think most bloggers probably do, since we're all about words - our own, others, etc.

My giveaway for this is a box of books. All sorts of books. Some Christian fiction, some just regular fiction - but all sorts of things to tempt your reading palate. It so far includes six seven nine fourteen books, but that number will only grow!

Because books are so heavy, I'm afraid that this contest will only be open to citizens of the good ol' US of A, but I welcome all internationals to just leave me a comment anyway!

Have a great one, and I'll be stopping by your blog sometime this week! In case you're completely confused, click on the cute little puppy to take you to a whole lot of goodness....

Edited To Add: Seems like a lot of people have decided to make books their prize. If I win a book at another contest, it will be up to my winner if they want to receive their prize right away, or if they'd rather wait for the book I won to get here, and then have it included in their package... And of course, all of Shannon's guidelines are to be followed here...

EDITED AGAIN: Comments will close Friday morning at 8:00 Central Time. The drawing will be that morning - it'll take me a while to sort through all of these comments and get that done... I'll let you know by about 10:00 am.

bunch of randomness

So. I've been really absent from here lately. I've developed into a lazy-meme-oriented blogger. And here I am to pass along a couple of thoughts, and pretty much disappear for the rest of the weekend.

We are having a party on Sunday to welcome a friend to town - she got her undergrad / grad degrees with me while i was getting mine, and then went off to medical school while i worked and got married. now that she's beginning her residency, we are both thrilled that she ended up in the same town as i live! she's already just slipped easily into my group of friends, but we wanted to give her a formal welcome to town. but my brother and sister-in-law (who just moved from 9 hours away to 1 1/2 hours away!!!!!) are using it as an excuse to come down, and some friends from ohio decided to come back to town for it, too!!

So basically my place is the happening place for my group of friends this weekend. And thankfully it's going to be fairly cool and seasonable for the next few days, so the massive amounts of frisbee playing will at least not cause heatstroke.

Because the Mister and I are dorks, we decided to make the "official" reason for the party a celebration of National Ice Cream Appreciation Month. Welcoming my doctor-friend is just a bonus! So we're having a great big sundae bar for dessert! Mmmm.... Ice cream.

On an unrelated note, what do you think about Harry Potter? I didn't get into them until the first three books were written, but I have to say I've definitely enjoyed the rest, ordering books 6 and 7 from amazon.com so that I could read them on the first day they were in print. Mister doesn't read a lot of fiction, so he was content to watch the movies - until Goblet of Fire came out. At that point in time, he was convinced that these were really good stories and was sick of me saying "oh, but they left out so much good stuff!" and then between audio cds for the car and reading some in print, he polished off #s 3-6 in a very short time. Needless to say, we were looking forward to tomorrow as a "try to get stuff done while passing the book back and forth" day, but we're spending it with friends and family instead.

I read insanely quickly - I just re-read book 5 in probably about 4 or 5 hours. That's really fast. So it's not really fair to my normal-paced husband... because otherwise I'd be bursting with excitement wanting to tell him what happened a few hundred pages past where he is. Because of this, I promised him that I will only at any point read up to where he is. No further. I want to be able to share the discovery with him, and will hold myself back. This is gonna be tricky, but I love him more than I love these books, of COURSE!

I do have to say that I'm making these for snacks for the next few days, just so that we feel like a tiny bit connected to the Potterexcitement... but we're not going nuts!

When I come back from the weekend, look forward to the Dog Days of Summer! I have a fun giveaway for you - it's definitely something I've enjoyed and want to share with one of you...

WFMW - swim diapers for less

This tip may come late in the summer for you moms out there, but since swim diapers are so expensive, I thought I'd let you know that you have an option!

I use cloth diapers exclusively on my Peanut for a variety of reasons, but one of the most cost effective things about cloth diapering is the comparison between cloth and disposable swim diapers.

The purpose of a swim diaper is to let sterile urine pass into the pool, but contain poo. Cloth swim diapers are trim, cute, and easily washed... and for a one-time-up-front cost, you'll never have to think about them again!

Here's a link to see some options.

They work for me, but for more great tips, head over to Shannon's!

Menu Plan Monday / Tuesday

Menu Plan for Week of July 16:
Monday:
breakfast - french toast
dinner - fried rice with cilantro

Tuesday:
breakfast - veggie loaded scrambled eggs, applesauce
dinner - tuna burgers

Wednesday:
breakfast - oatmeal
dinner - shish kebobs (we'll finally get around to having these one of these days!)

Thursday:
breakfast - skinny omelette
dinner - popcorn chicken

Friday:
breakfast - fried eggs
dinner - taco salad

Saturday:
breakfast - quiche
dinner - who knows? it's the weekend!!

Sunday:
breakfast - pancakes
dinner - having a big party, so grilling out!

half baked

so the new banner is up, and the color scheme is in place, but now i get to play with the background - won't just be a solid color - and perhaps even some pretty decorations for the widgets on the right....

but thanks to heather for the colors!

life's been pretty slow here since we got home from vacation. i got pinkeye and a weird virus that's going around, then passed it off to Mister. just the virus. so far, i've managed to keep the pinkeye all to myself!! good for Peanut, who is 95% breastfed, and is receiving all the antibodies that i'm sending her - she hasn't even remotely acted sick lately. just teething. and that's bad enough! but she's so cute with her one little tooth on the bottom... although she started biting for fun today. little booger. :) i love her anyway... just need to train her out of this phase!

hope all is well with you...

woo hoo!

I have the windows open in the house right now. For the first time in WEEKS! Between Peanut and I, neither of us like to get hot and sticky, so we usually have the air running a little, and if it's really hot out, we'll live in the basement for a couple of days...

But there is sweet-smelling air blowing through the house right now - wahoo and thank you, LORD!!

Add that to our herb-infused eggs this morning, and I'm a happy woman. Yeah, I skipped the salsa eggs because we have sore throats and I opted for silky smooth herb eggs. So good. Just beat up eggs with a splash of milk (makes them softer) and finely cut up some herbs from your garden (I used sage, oregano, basil and thyme)... Scramble, and just before done, stir in a spoonful of cream cheese to add to the silkiness. Delicioso.

Okay. Now I just need to convince Peanut that she's really sleepy, so I can take a nap, too!

Menu Plan Monday for July 9

Menu Plan for Week of July 9:
Monday:
breakfast - brown sugar and raisin oatmeal
dinner - steaks on the grill, risi e bisi, broccoli

Tuesday:
breakfast - skinny omelettes, bacon and fruit
dinner - dinner out with my husband!!

Wednesday:
breakfast - salsa eggs
dinner - giant sandwich loaded with fresh veggies, pasta salad

Thursday:
breakfast - oatmeal
dinner - pasta carbonara

Friday:
breakfast - scrambled eggs
dinner - shish kebobs on the grill

Contest Results!

Well, readers of mine, we have a winner!

It's my swap-partner Heather, aka Top Hat! There were five entries, and the random number generator gave me #4 as a result, which was laam dark...


Isn't it cool? It's very fun... I'm really liking it. That splash of green makes it, in my opinion! Now I just have to play around with design ideas. Good dark colors to use for text and borders, but fun colors to use in the banner, etc!

Heather, I already have your address from the swap, so look for your gift card soon! Hope you enjoy Starbucks... (I just got home from vacation yesterday and your package came with my pile of mail today, and it's great, THANKS!)

BLOG DESIGN CONTEST

Hey! My readers know my deep love of bloggity-ville contests.

So I'm going to host my own. My very first. I want to redesign my blog, and you get to pick my colors. For real. Go to colr.org and play around with it for a while - you'll get hooked. Then save your best color scheme there with the tag "laam" and whatever you decide to name it. (When you get a good scheme, it will say "no tags" underneath - but click on the + to add some tags...) For example, you can go to colr.org and search for laam, and you'll find the one sample scheme that I made up.

So. Make up a scheme. Save it under laam and some other tag. Then come back here and let me know what the name of your scheme is in a comment.

How long should we run this? I'm not going to have time to do this before I get back, so we'll let it go until the end of Thursday, July 5th. You can enter as many times as you like... and go ahead and let your readers know about it. I will simply pick a random number and that # comment will win the prize - and I am committed to using those colors as the prominent part of my design. That's right. I have no control over what my next design colors will be. :o)

What's the prize? How about a $25 gift card to Starbucks!?!?!