Hadley has a.....

TOOTH!! Well the start of one! It's in the bottom right position and James noticed it last Wednesday. She's 5.5 months old! My sister and I had a tooth at this age so she must take after me! She's such a big girl. I kept saying it was ok for her to get a little bigger because I was looking forward to her doing more things. Well, she can stop now. She's getting too big too fast! We take trips to places now and she's great in her ergo carrier. She started eating a little bit of solid food, also. I love her so much :)

She may not sleep well but she is too cute!

Spicy Chicken Pasta Recipe

James' best friend Chris had posted this picture of these great looking pasta one day on facebook. I inquired and this is what he sent me! It's really delicious and according to James- one of his top dishes. You can use whatever meat you want, I've used just chicken and actually last night I used no meat and added vegetables instead. It's super easy and so delicious!! 

Ingredients
1-ounce olive oil
4 hot links, all beef, cut in 6 bias slices
20 (21/25 shrimp), deveined, shelled and butterflied
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup Chipotle Sauce, recipe follows
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pound cooked penne pasta
1/2 cup Parmesan, grated plus more for serving
1 tablespoon diced Roma tomato
1 tablespoon diced scallion

Directions
In saute pan over high heat, add olive oil and hot links. Sear links until browned. Add the shrimp and cook until pink. Lower heat to medium. Then add cream, 3/4 of the Chipotle Sauce, salt and pepper. Add cooked pasta and the cheese. Toss to combine.

Serve in pasta bowl and garnish with diced tomato, scallions, more sauce, if desired, and grated Parmesan.

Chipotle Sauce:

1 1/2 cups BBQ sauce

3/4 cup canola oil

1/3 cup lemon juice

3/4-ounce Dijon mustard

1 to 2 chipotle peppers in adobo

3/4-ounce red chili flakes

1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/3 teaspoon ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients in blender, puree, cover and refrigerate.

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guys-big-bite-/penne-with-cajun-hot-links-and-chipotle-shrimp-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback

Wordless Wednesday

Roman shades have arrived!

I love the fabric I picked out and I think it matches the yellowish walls pretty well. We are just about finished with the kitchen remodeling-touch up paint is happening Wednesday. I think we'll finish the master bath area after a while and take a break to just enjoy our weekends again.

I had an etsy shop make them and they do look perdy.

Happy Friday

Have a great weekend!

Spa

I had to redeem the last part of my gift certificate from Valentine's Day and mani, pedi, mini massage were left. I am only writing this post to show you this neat upstairs they had! It's a downtown shop but it was/is an apartment/loft upstairs. I didn't even know they had an upstairs until she brought me up there! My nail person (Stephanie) showed me out those doors to their outdoor pool! There was an outdoor kitchen there and a fountain, too. They rent it out for weddings and other events. The room I was in also was set up for a massage later that they eventually moved outdoors (how fun!) The owner of the salon lives in the apartment somewhere up there and then there's a little loft to rent out for the weekend. I really did not feel like I was in Columbus, MS.

upstairs Moroccan room where the nail area is set up

This is what is through those doors. Stephanie talked about how they were thinking about doing two pedicures pool side for friends, how cool is that?! I suggested a frozen drink as well! She said great idea but alcohol may not fly but you don't really need it.

All chemical free products.

Fun spring color!

Fun couple hours! Hadley was glad to see me but James had a fun afternoon with her. 

*ps I'm not compensated at all for this blog post (maybe I should be haha) 

Appliance finds-you wish you were this good

So if you have been following the blog you know we are renovating our kitchen. We have been pretty much from the first day we moved in.... We wanted to do it on a low budget so we wouldn't be putting so much money into the house in order to sell it for a realistic price. I SCOUR the internet for deals non-stop (every time I feed Hadley). I have been looking for stainless appliances because I didn't want to buy them new. I figured we'd spend about 1100 for a new refrigerator, 500 for stove, 500 for dishwasher and 100 for microwave brand new (and those were on the low end). I knew we could afford that but again I didn't want to put that much money into it if there was a deal to be found, and boy was there! We didn't plan to get them this weekend, but when there's a deal you can't ignore it!

I belong to several facebook groups for local swap meet pages. There was a lead on one of them that we passed on because we thought it wouldn't fit (turns out it would have) but it was craigslist where we really got our lead. *I would not have done any of this without James people so quit thinking it's dangerous*. I saw a stainless steel refrigerator first and I was interested. I googled the phone number and our local newspaper came up with an add saying "we buy and sell appliances" with the same phone number. I thought hmmmm that means they have a lot and maybe they have more than just the fridge. Well James called and he gets stainless all the time and said we could come by over the weekend, it's in a little tin building warehouse a little outside of town.

We were so busy (see yesterday's post) that we were going to pass on it and hope another one came up when we had more time. Well Saturday morning I saw a stove that was PERFECT for us. We needed a drop/slide in with no lip on it because of the peninsula. I thought we probably wouldn't find that used because it's not that common. I told James we need to go look because we can't pass it up! We get there and he has the matching dishwasher! Turns out we need that too! James worked a deal since we were getting 3 appliances and he took 75 off the total price. He also would deliver for 40 dollars. Since James didn't have a dolly nor did we want to make three trips, we took the deal. He was at our house within an hour with them, we didn't even have the refrigerator cleaned out! It all was happening so quick!

Since he buys AND sells appliances we sold him our old white ones and he hauled them off, man was that a good deal. Seriously, we rock. He gave us $340 for all three, James said 400 he said 300 so they sort of met in the middle (he said it would take care of delivery cost) works for us. The refrigerator was $450, the stove was $375 and dishwasher was $250 for a total of $1075 and then he took $75 off so it was $1000 plus $40 for delivery. NOT BAD for 1 year old appliances (he said a guy was going through a divorce and needed money for everything and anything in his house so that's how he ended up with them). Oh did I mention the stove is a convection oven?! I had to google it, but basically the temperature is the same all the way through so it cooks things evenly and faster.... it worked well for our ribs Sunday. It's very high tech and neat!

So basically with the sale of our old ones plus the new ones, we paid him $700. yeah. SERIOUSLY. and he said as he was pulling out to come to our house he got TWO phone calls for people wanting to come look at them, so DON'T SNOOZE OR YOU'LL LOSE! How nice do they look?! We have drywallers coming in today to patch up the electrical holes and then we'll need to touch up paint and we'll be DONE (well we need a microwave, I'm still looking for a deal on that or just going to buy the 75 dollar one from walmart).

I wanted one with a water/ice dispenser on the outside, but this one really looks elegant and snazzy. Since this isn't our forever home, I was able to say this would work for us. Plus we've been doing without it since we got here and there is an ice maker in the freezer.

When we get the paint done, I will do lots of before and after pictures. It's really hard to imagine what it was like before. Did you like the sneak peek of the white cabinets?!?

Hadley's room update and weekend recap

Happy Monday everyone. Hope your weekend was good. Ours flew by. We had James' flight over yesterday so we wanted to get the house in order. Well more like make it look like we actually lived there. We hung pictures! Actually James did, but with my direction of course. I still need to fill the tiny frames but you get the idea.

We also got a CRAZY deal on stainless appliances this weekend which wasn't really planned. That deserves a whole blog post by itself so stay tuned for that tomorrow or Wednesday. It pays to stalk the internet for sure.

I also slipped away for a couple of hours to redeem my spa services from my valentine's gift. It was so hectic because of the appliance situation but luckily I made it. That is going to be another blog post also.

Doesn't that all sound busy busy. We have to cram everything in on weekends because James works 12 hour odd hour days during the week.

I will close my recap with a picture of Hadley's mini gallery wall above her dresser. If it wasn't 5 am I would take more pictures of other rooms. (Updated-living room pic and dog door added).

Hadley's 5 month old!

Another month has passed, crazy. My pretty baby is becoming such a big girl! We are enjoying each others company throughout the day and look forward to taking some short car ride outings soon (more on that later)

Stats:
Unofficial stats- we don't go to the doctor until next month.
length- 26.5"
weight- we'll say upper 14s pounds but I'm not sure how accurate that is....

my happy baby

Eating:
Well the days of long nursing sessions are WAY over. I'm lucky if she eats more than 7 minutes on each side breastfeeding. I've been really watching her diaper output and everything seems to be ok, guess she's just real efficient now. She sometimes is fussy after and I get worried that she's not getting enough, but we'll see. She's still eating every 2.5-3 hours and that's mostly because of her napping or I should say, lack there of. We started a tablespoon of oatmeal cereal mixed with about an ounce breast milk once a day at 5pm. To say she loved it is an understatement. She attacks the spoon and can't get enough.

Sleeping:
like I said last time, if I would have wrote this post the other day, I would be writing completely different things. I guess I should fill in what's been happening since last post (4 month). Her sleep had already deteriorated at night and boy did it get BAD. We had some great nights once in a blue moon but then more regularly bad ones. At the peak of it last week, she was waking 5-6 times a night. A lot of the time I could get her to sleep right away and other times I just fed her because I was tired. I assumed she was hungry because she would eat maybe 10-15 minutes worth (she always nurses better last feeding and first feedings when she's not distracted or when she's tired). Then my sister said "she's eating every time because you're feeding her every time". I didn't really think about it that way. I decided something had to change because getting up so often was really wearing on me so I researched all about crying it out and pros and cons and all that jazz just to see what options were out there. Then three nights ago, I put her to bed close to 9 and didn't REALLY hear from her until 3ish. She stirred a bunch and even made noise but I ignored it and she went back to sleep (now keep in mind I never rush in and I usually wait a couple minutes anyway). Then when I went in I bounced and rocked her to see if I could calm her without feeding her, AND IT WORKED! I made sure she was sleeping and put her back in. If she woke again, I was going to feed her because then I'd know she was hungry. Fast forward to 7:15 AM and my baby woke up for the day!! No peeps..... and she did almost the same thing the night after that!! Now I know that as you're reading this, she's probably going to get crazy and never do this again. I wanted to document it for the record that she CAN DO IT.

She's too long for the chair now!! 

**newsflash** OH I forgot to mention something BIG while I was busy rambling. SHE'S NOT SWADDLED anymore either. We dropped the swaddle cold turkey pretty close to the 4 month mark. It's funny because I read my last month's post and I was all like "she's sleeping in a swaddle forever". haha things change quickly around here :) I figured since she was waking up so much that it couldn't get any worse, and I was right. It didn't and some nights it was better. She's lost the really bad startle reflex so the no swaddle thing is working great (we use a sleep sack for warmth) AND she's in the crib FULL time. I truly believe we were having a hard time a couple months back because she just wasn't ready. Just like when bedtime took over 2-3 hours, she goes down now with no fuss. I'm really not doing anything different and then it'll just click. So we're just on Hadley's time for when she's ready.

Likes and loves:
She still loves being on her back and playing on her play mat. I introduced some new toys that crinkle and make noise. She loves putting everything in her mouth. I borrowed an ergo baby carrier from my sister because the moby wrap I have has been given me some problems to put on alone (it just has SOOOO much material that it can be a hassle). We LOVE going out for walks in it and even through stores. I haven't ventured out alone yet because I was nervous if she'd not freak and I'd have to abandon cart! I made James act like he wasn't at Lowes with us over the weekend and I did everything, including wear her and push a cart. She did great. She loves looking at people and being out.

no big deal, I love tummy time now

Dislikes-
THE CAR/CARSEAT ugh. If someones back there to entertain her, she can handle a 20 minute drive... sometimes longer. I took her five minutes away to to the dog groomer and she did ok on the way there, but on the way home, we didn't even get out of the parking lot before screaming. THE. WHOLE. WAY. HOME. (luckily it was only five minutes). I really hope this gets better soon, we hardly leave the house!

Developments:
Hadley has rolled over a handful of times! Mostly she loves doing it when I walk out of the room for one second :). She did it on Easter for the first time (so 2 weeks shy of 5 months) from back to front. She's also done it from front to back, too. It's not a consistent development just yet, but she's trying. She loves standing up too (with our help and support). Except for in this picture, I leaned her on the chair snapped the pic and ran back to "spot".

BIG girl (bad lighting, I really stink at picture taking)

Sizes:

Pampers size 2 diapers

about to retire a lot of the 3 month clothes and some 3-6 (depends on brand). Haven't got down the 6 month bin, but it's just about time for SOME things.

oh maddie and her tongue

I just love her!

Living room updates

My curtains from West Elm arrived (don't worry I had a coupon)!! I love every part of them.

Going to fix the length 

open

other window 

Then I decided I had to paint the book case like I talked about before. I did it Saturday and it wasn't that fun :) But it's done and that's all there is to it! The color matches perfectly.

before

Finished product, what do you think!? I put the fabric by the curtains so you could see what a great match it's all going to be. Wohooo, the house really feels like a home now :)

Did I mention we are DONE with the kitchen cabinets, like for real this time :) We have a dry waller coming in to patch some electrical holes and fix the ceiling where the cabinets used to be next week. Then James will do some touch up paint (I am over the painting) and donesky! I've been searching local internet sites to find good deals on stainless appliances and haven't been tooooooo lucky due to the size of our town, got really close one time but our space was a half inch too small! I won't give up though! Stay tuned tomorrow or Friday for Hadley's 5 month update!

Evening out

For James' birthday, my sister and her husband offered to watch Hadley so we could enjoy a dinner out. She's been pretty difficult to take out because she gets restless and fussy. James received a gift card to the restaurant we were planning on going to from my Brother and his wife! Shout out! We haven't really left Hadley except for early on when family was here to run quick errands here and there. It's not that I don't trust people, I just know she can be a handful and only likes certain things etc. It's hard to get out too when she needs you to eat! I pumped enough for her to have a meal without me so Jen was covered. Hadley did great for them, no problemos!

It happened to be prom night in the city and we got to see lots of prommers out in their fancy gear. I wanted to go in and chaperone, but I wasn't dressed properly. We went real early to eat because we had  to sync with Hadley's schedule. The food came out fast and we had great service. We were done so early that we stopped at another place downtown for drinks in their bar area. We had a great time and it was nice to get out with just the two of us. We hope we can do that again, maybe in another 5 months :)

James had a nice steak with macncheese

I had a blurry cajun chicken pasta 

Happy 30th birthday James! I let him have his fave cheese cake all to himself

Easter Egg Hunt

Max loves being outside so we spent a lot of time exploring our backyard. We had him hunt for eggs and he liked to eat them or crack them open (there wasn't anything inside). 

Hadley even partook in the festivities

She's such a big girl that holds things on her own

 We got the kiddos all dressed up for Easter Sunday and Max loves giving kisses to baby Hadley. Sitting still for a picture... not so much.

best one we got :)

such a cutie

We have the cuties kids ever, just saying :) Hope everyone had a great weekend, we did! I'm looking forward to nice weather this upcoming weekend but will be missing our company. 

Also, happy birthday to Max's dad David! 

Trip to Premier Prints!

As I previously mentioned last blog post, we had my sister, her husband, and my nephew Max over for a visit this weekend. We had lots planned so we packed it all in. I decided to make this all one blog post because let's be honest, I've been slacking lately. We had this idea to go to this fabric store outlet (Premier Prints) because when my sister ordered came from there. She noticed that it came from Sherman, MS and googled it to find it just about an hour or so away from me!  They print their fabric right there and we just LOVE all of it. To say we were excited was an understatement! We stopped in Tupelo along the way to sorta break up the trip. We brought James along (he took off for our visitors and David had to work that day). We only brought him because we needed someone to regulate Hadley if she got out of hand and we bribed him with lunch. This was a pizza place that we saw a commercial for.

chicken and spinach Alfredo pizza

Hadley did great on the car ride there.... on the way back not so much (ok like real bad)

Max and Jen enjoying their pizza

Next stop... PREMIER PRINTS!

We were mainly going for odds and ends small projects. For example: I wanted fabric to make small pillows and fabric letters for Hadley's nursery (yes I'm still working on her room slowly but surely). *Disclaimer* Yes to those of you that know me, I do know that these projects are FAR from my ability level, but I can try right?! 

We wanted to get deals since we just wanted a little of this and a little of that. My sister was shopping for fabric to make her coffee table and bar stools into padded seats/ottomans. Plus, get some fabric for burp clothes and embroidery (more coming on that at a later time). They had ROWS of just fun fabric everywhere.

Me

jen shopping along

fun!

just look at it all!

Hadley was overcome with excitment she passed out.... too bad it was just for five minutes

Something we thought was strange was they give you scissors for you to cut your own swatches?! We first saw a lady cutting squares and we were like uhhh is she supposed to be doing that?! Then the workers asked if we wanted some so I guess it's normal.

We were looking around and then we hit the JACKPOT. Fabric Folds! They are what remains after they've cut a bunch for a project that wasn't quite long enough to leave on a roll. They varied from 1/2 a yard to I think the biggest was 3 yards. We went NUTS. They had just the best patterns, too. Here's bud bud helping. They were 5.00 a yard compared to about 10.99 per yard if we got it from the big rolls.

bud bud helping out

 Here is our final selections! The top five are mine for pillows for the living room and kitchen window seat. The bottom first four are for Hadley's letters and the last six are for Jen's projects. How fun right?! Now who would like to teach me how to sew or better yet, just make these pillows for me :)