A couple weeks ago I was searching Etsy.com for some ultra feminine aprons. I came across a shop called Simply Aprons. Looking through all the aprons she has posted, I instantly fell in love with her styles and creative patterns. I messaged her requesting a custom order of two aprons, a full apron and a half apron. I asked if she could use the styles from her Christmas Holly Berries and Poinsetti Hostess Apron and her Face 'n The Music Double Tiered Hostess Apron.
I told her I was interested in a paisley pattern, so she suggested I look through the supplies on Etsy and search for a cotton paisley pattern that I would like the aprons to be in. After searching through almost 50 pages of fabrics, I found a beautiful purple, green and gold paisley pattern that I absolutely loved!
After some Paypal issues, I finally got to pay for the special order and within a few days the aprons arrived! I was SOOO excited to see how they turned out!! They are more beautiful than I imagined, and I love the secondary pattern and trim she chose for the aprons. I cannot wait to cook and bake so I can sport my lovely aprons!
The quality is amazing too, it's almost like I bought these at a department store! I can feel that these are sturdy and will last me years and years.
This is a shop on Etsy that I plan on referring all my apron lovers to. I truly do adore her styles, so much that I cannot find the words to explain my initial reaction to seeing her aprons, other than I HAD to have my own!!! :)
I'm nearing the end of my 17th week, every Monday turns the ticker to another week, but I always seem to update my pregnancy at the end of each week - odd :)
This Monday I remembered I had a prenatal checkup appointment in the afternoon, and although I look forward to these because I get to hear my little Muffin's heartbeat, I really dread having to stuff the stroller into my little VW Beetle - you should see me in person, it's a true battle. The hospital is only 10mins from us, but I get ready to leave an hour early (that dam stroller takes forever to pack and unpack in my car).
The appointment went well, I gained half a pound and my blood pressure is great. I told my doctor that when I eat a meal (which is three times a day) I feel hungry again within two hours, hungry enough to eat another meal. I haven't been over eating, but the hunger is pretty annoying when it's that often. She advised I eat six small meals throughout the day to keep my blood sugar up. She also pointed out that I'm not gaining weight, so my body might be eating up all that I feed it pretty quick to fuel my lifestyle of caring for Madilyn, the natural fatigue of pregnancy, and all the walks we take. I told her I that although I've been feel tired, I have a lot of energy and have been feeling the urge to clean and reorganize MUCH more than usual.
With my first pregnancy I gained 50lbs (yikes! I know!), so I'm quite shocked that I have only lost a couple pounds (so far) with this second pregnancy. As long as I don't hit 200lbs again like last year, I'll be happy! Being so overweight last year really did a toll on my body, everything I did was different to make up for the extra pounds I was caring around - but that's a whole other story.
I had a few new mothers and mothers-to-be message me about how I stock and organize my almost 1yr old's diaper bag. So I decided to do a What's In My Diaper Bag video - toddler version. Next year when the next baby arrives, I will do another one for newborns because these bags are very different.
My diaper bag is an Eddie Bauer bag, but I'm not sure of the model - I received it as a gift and I cannot find it online anymore.
Pregnancy is a love/hate experience, lol! What? You say "hate" is a strong word?
The Loves
Being and feeling more feminine than ever
Confidently sporting love handles - it's totally acceptable when you're baking a baby inside
(And, if you're lucky like me...) Minimal pregnancy symptoms - I have yet to experience those mythical symptoms of odd cravings and unexplainable anger or just mood swings in general
The Hates
Being uncontrollably overweight - which you have to accept is out of your control, harder than it sounds - trust me
Insanely dependent on knowing there is a restroom nearby - for those spontaneous "I gotta piss like a race horse" moments
(My personal #1 Hate) Dry, flaking skin - on my face! :(
For me, one of the best ways to feel confident, fierce and sexy during this metamorphic period is to rock some bangin makeup! But if my skin is nasty dry and flaky - there's no way I can feel confident in full face of beauty.
Every night I massage this on my face, then in the morning I do the same thing. I only use this creme when I'm having dry times, if I use it everyday then my skin would get to hydrated and susceptible to break outs. It takes a couple hours to fully soak in, but once it has I can easily wear my makeup on top without any sliding off, splotchy wear off, or added shine.
This creme has literally saved my sanity, last year after my first pregnancy AND this year during my second pregnancy!
I'm nearing the end of my 15th week of pregnancy, and my body is expanding as if I'm 5mons along already! So, I decided to order a few maternity items from Forever 21. They released this line last year and I'm so glad they did. Last year I was pregnant with my first child, and because of my 6" torso, I had to invest in maternity clothes pretty early. Shopping for clothes is never fun for me - I have one of those awkwardly curvy bodies and it's always a stressful time when I need to buy clothes - that's right I wait till I need clothes to go shopping, I rarely buy clothes for fun! Anyways, last year I went to Macy's, Nordstrom, JC Penney, Motherhood Maternity, A Pea In The Pod; all of them had the type of maternity clothes that are designed to "hide" your belly - mu mu styled dresses and tops, baggy crotched jeans, it was scary! I was so sad that no one offered form fitting clothes, you know, for those of us who are proud to be pregnant, and not trying to hide our bodies. It's modern times, people! :)
I did end up finding decent clothes at Target, they actually have a better selection than the other stores I mentioned. I bought all of my maternity tank tops, t shirts, sun dresses, capris, leggings - everything I needed to look decent at work. Then my aunty told me she heard Forever 21 was bringing out a maternity line - at first it was only online and they offered just a few leggings and a couple tanks and a dress. It seemed like it was a trial to see how people reacted - I'm glad women jumped at the maternity line because now it is full of clothes, and YES! they are modern, form fitting and stylish!!!
After that long intro into my top places to shop for maternity clothes... now onto the HAUL! :)
I bought a couple of ($15.80ea) cap sleeved tops with ruching on the sides (in neutrals of course)
I found this maternity starter kit for only $15.80! It's a fabric bag that includes a tank top, a pair of leggings and a belly band. It came in white, black, and nude, but they only had a Large in black. This is an AWESOME kit to buy - If you are pregnant or know anyone who is, definitely pick one up while you can :)
I couldn't make a Forever 21 order without adding a few polishes to my cart ;)
Today I decided to bake some boxed brownies, mostly to help clean out my baking cupboard. I plan to make homemade brownies soon, but I thought I should use this box up before I go and buy more ingredients. I used one box of Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate Brownie mix.
I baked the brownies in a 13x9 glass Pyrex dish. I greased the bottom of the dish, then dusted a cinnamon sugar mix, that I make myself. I poured in the brownie mixture and then generously dusted more of the cinnamon sugar on top. After the brownies were done baking and cooled down, I cut them into 9 pieces, using the middle piece for my lovely main photo! (The brownie is sitting on a light dusting of cinnamon sugar)
I like to spruce up boxed brownies, either with nuts, chocolate chips or with a hint of seasoning. This time I went with cinnamon, but instead of mixing it into the brownies, I used it to create a cinnamon-ey crust on the top and bottom of the brownies.
This weekend BF bought a small box of strawberry's so I threw in a package of Hostess Shortcakes into the basket to make a dessert. Growing up, my mother would make this for us as a fresh dessert alternative to ice cream or cookies - which we ate a lot of because my Grampa was a HUGE ice cream and cookies fan. Last night I decided to make this dessert for Michael and I after Madilyn went to bed.
Ingredients:
Strawberry's - as many as you want, they more the merrier!
2 Shortcakes - I used Hostess individual shortcakes
Whipped Cream - I used canned whipped cream, but a tub of whipped cream works even better
(depending on how sweet the strawberry's are, you might need to sprinkle some super fine sugar over them)
I placed one shortcake on the bottom, sliced up three medium strawberry's and layered them on top of the shortcake. I added a light layer of whipped cream, then placed the second shortcake on top of the whipped cream. I sliced up three more medium strawberry's and layered them on top of the second shortcake. I added a generous amount of whipped cream on top, then I sliced about 6 various sized strawberry's and placed them all around the base of the dessert. I placed one of the largest slices of strawberry on the very top of the dessert - mostly for decoration because they looked like hearts :)
Confused by the title? Well, every time I visit my Grama, she always sends me home with food, gifts for Madilyn or cook/bake ware. Since I've had a cooking/baking fever lately, she gave me a few of her utensils. I was more than happy to take them off her hands, since I've been looking for these items for a couple years and couldn't find the ones that I wanted.
I mentioned to her that I was in the market for a manual hand mixer, but have been only finding the electronic ones - which are too fast sometimes and spray my ingredients all over the cupboards. So, she gave me her manual hand mixer! I'm so excited about this item because I've grown up using it all my life, and I would rather have good old tools that have been in many of my kitchen memories, than a brand new modern one - plus full metal tools are always sturdier!
I'm not sure of the brand, but based on the shield-like logo on the handle - no one online knows this brand/maker either. Sellers online just call it "vintage hand mixer" or "vintage egg beater" and they all assume it's from the 50's.
I also mentioned that I've been trying to find a good pasta spoon, but all the ones I find are those plastic, rounded spoons and I wanted a flat one like the one she used to use. Well, she pointed out that since she's almost 90 and doesn't cook anymore, I can have one of her 3 pasta spoons - AND she gave me my favorite one! It's a wooden, flat utensil with little teeth to grab the pasta or spaghetti. This one doesn't have a name either, but it says Italy on it - so I'm assuming it's from Italy.
She also gave me an extra Pyrex small bowl she had, I own two already so an extra one is always welcome in my cupboards.
Towards the end of the day, my Grama pulled out a 4 piece set of colored Pyrex glass bowls and asked me if I would like to have them. I had grown up using these bowls for desserts, dips, salads, etc. and I was so shocked that she was giving them to me! Again, these were the type of bowls I was looking for but didn't want to spend $100-$200 on Ebay for a set of them.
Here's what I found out about them on PyrexLove.com:
They are called Primary Color Mixing Bowls or Multi-Colored Mixing Bowls.
Item type: 400 Series Primary Color Mixing Bowls Set
Manufactured: 1940's
...there were some variations in the primary color set throughout the years, most notably that the oldest sets from the “1940s” were not numbered on the bottom. According to him, “The markings on the bottoms of the 1940s ‘non-numbered’ bowls are only ‘T.M. REG.’ in an arch above ‘PYREX’ horizontally in the middle, and ‘U.S. PAT. OFF’ below in an up-facing arch.”
After reading all that I checked my bowls and 3/4 of them are T.M. REG, but my Grama had two tiny bowls, an orange and a blue one. Next visit I'll ask her to switch with me the blue one for the orange one so I can proudly say I own a $100-$200 set of 40's Pyrex colored bowls :)
I also brought home a box of dishes because she is giving me her entire Mikasa Garden Club - Fresh Floral collection, which were produced from 1976 to 1983 (I'm not sure yet what year this collection is, but I'm working on finding out). Once I get all the pieces together, I'll do a separate post on that because it's a large collection.
I'm excited to own this collection, because on Ebay, people are selling individual pieces or odd sets - and no one seems to own the entire collection. Unfortunately, my Grama is missing one item from the collection because it broke a long time ago - but hey, I'm not upset - I never plan to sell these anyway! :)
This past week was very chill and very low maintenance in the kitchen. But late last week BF made yummy turkey burgers seasoned with gourmet burger seasoning, garlic mashed potatoes and sweet corn! YUMMY!
Even Madilyn had her hand in her daddy's dish!
Then this weekend we had some ground beef that had to be cooked ASAP, so my good friend, Nikki aka havemakeupwillblog.blogspot.com gave me an awesome recipe to use. It didn't have a name, but I'll just call it Beef & Cornbread Pie - it was super super delicious!! I ended up doubling the recipe because I had so much ground beef to cook - so we gave half of it to our friend for left overs.
I've finally made it to the second trimester of my pregnancy! I'm currently 14 weeks along now
Overall I feel much better, no more nausea! YAY!
Although I'm feeling healthier, I'm definitely beginning to feel more crowded in my short little torso. I've started to be very careful when playing with Madilyn because if I bend over too much, it hurts my pelvic area and that's not good - I can't be squishing up my little Muffin's home.
Madilyn's been using her walker a lot lately!
Since I still have my baby fat around my tummy from being pregnant with Madilyn last year, you can't tell that I'm showing yet - but I can say that my tummy used to be flabby and loose skin feeling (gross, I know, haha) but now it's feeling more solid and less jiggly, haha - I'm LOLing over my adjectives!
Dainty eater :)
Oh and I'll be posting some food photos and recipes soon because I'm the cooking/baking maternal type. I attempted to make chocolate peppermint bars using a broken recipe - sadly I knew it was a bad recipe halfway through the process but kept going anyway, and ended up with flat and dry, nasty chocolate peppermint slabs (yuck!). Last week, on my first back-to-normal-tummy-day, I made Pan Fried Chicken and Gravy from my FAVORITE Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (not sure which edition, but I will find out)- this book is AMAZING!!! :)
Madilyn's outfit on her trip to see Grama this weekend
Madilyn patiently waiting for her daddy to get ready so we can leave for Grama's - I was laying on the couch waiting for him too, haha :)
