sandr077

Okay, one of my favorite gifts for Christmas came from my very creative brother-in-law!  He found this cool website called Uncommon where you can make your own Iphone cases.  He made me the cutest case which is a photo of my husband holding our new baby.  I love it! The site is very cool.  You can upload a photo of your choice (who would not want to do this) or use their artwork.  I think this is such a cute personalized gift. They have options for all different phones so you can buy case for the particular phone that you have. Now I have a photo of the loves of my life as my sreensaver on my phone and also on the back! Go ahead.. get Uncommon !  Until next time...xoxo

Since on maternity leave, I have felt that I need to accomplish one thing each day that is semi-creative in order to maintain my sanity.  Now, I have VERY little time and must be practical in my creative endeavor.  So, creative and practical (we have to eat) has focused on cooking.  I mean really easy cooking.  I have been digging deep in my search for recipes.  What types of things do I want to cook these days?  I want easy recipes that take like 15 minutes to put together that I can make with one hand if I need to! :)     This recipe for "Chicken Packets" qualified.  I remembered seeing a recipe for Chicken Packets somewhere and googled around settling on this one from the blog Kevin and Amanda .  I know I know I do need to take better photos, but hey I am a busy mom! :)  Ingredients: 2 cups cooked, chopped chicken (I bought a rotisserie chicken) 1 (3 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened 2 tbsp milk 2 pkgs refrigerated crescent rolls 2 ...

Artist:  Seth Indigo Carnes When my husband and I first moved in together... our first "disagreement" was focused around art.  He had a bunch of posters from Prints Plus that he wanted to hang on our walls.  My least favorite of which was the lava flowing into the ocean poster.  ICK!  I was quick to tell him that if we were going to hang art of the wall it was going to be actual photos and paintings and not posters of such. Many people think that they cannot afford proper artwork, but my friends ... you can!  Affordable artwork is just a mouse click away.  I have spoken of Etsy a lot. You do have to kind of have an idea of what you want to search for, but there are so many options. Art We Love (featured on the Nate Burkus Show last week) is another great resource for original artwork at a variety of price points starting at $15.  Here are some of my favorites! Artist Midori Harima Artist:  Stefan Hengst Artist Tomoo Gokita Finally, 20X200 ...

Sorry I missed posting on Friday.  Avery would not allow it.   Speaking of the baby, my hair has looked like crap since I had her.  I have hair that needs to be maintained.... blow dried and I have been able to dry my hair all of 3 times.  My hair at this very moment is wavy and frizzy and puffy and out of control!  I am majorly craving soft and smooth hair!  How can I make this happen?  With a Keratin treatment of course! About a year and a half or so ago I got the Coppola Complex Keratin Smoothing treatment done to my hair.  It was a splurge at $300 but worth EVERY single penny.  What is this you ask?  It is a salon treatment that infuses keratin into your hair.  In addition to being pricey it takes some time as it involves a full blow dry and flat ironing of your hair.  Additionally, you cannot wash your hair or tuck it behind your ear or put it in a ponytail for three full days.  Yes, that is hard.... but again the re...

So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the generous folks at CSN offered me up another opportunity to have a giveaway or do a product review.  After several giveaways, I decided to be selfish this time and do a product review.  It was hard to decide what to get from their zillions of products, but I went with a baby product.  With a 5 week old, this was likely an obvious choice! I went with the Baby K'Tan Sling .  I have been incredibly lucky to date, Avery has been a very easy baby (currently knocking on wood). She sleeps for 4-5 hour stints, can usually be comforted pretty easily.  The only hard part is that she has a need to be held... all the time!  I can hold her till she falls asleep and very gently place her in the bassinet and boom... she wakes!  She will cry if in her swing or bassinet but as soon as I pick her up she is fine.  If I put her back down, boom... crying!  They say you should not let babies under 3 months cry it out, so this...

So, today is a long weekend.  Happy Martin Luther King day.  Today is a "half post".  Okay, you likely noticed the "look" of my blog background has changed.  This is not because I wanted to!  I used a free blog template from Shabby Blogs and got a notice that they were moving their server so I had to change the code on my blog (blog speak).  Well, they no longer had the background I used.... annoying.  So, I had to go looking for another option.  I found a similar yellow damask which will work for now.  I need some free time (yeah right) to work on my blog design- specifically the title banner which you will now notice is currently plain. Thanks for your patience.   Someday before Avery goes to pre-school I will find some time to play around with the design and come up with something great! Any suggestions?  Any html experts/designers out there want to offer me up something great?  Until next time...xoxo

So, I try not to focus too much on recipes, but every once in a while I find one worth sharing.  Sine I am on maternity I find myself watching a lot of cooking shows on TV.  This often then leads to me perusing the Food Network site.  I came across a recipe that I tried last week.  It was fairly easy to make and the husband enjoyed it!  I then ate the leftovers for lunch several days in a row.  What was it?  Rachel Ray's Mexican Lasagna .   My favorite thing about finding recipes online is reading the reviews.  When you read the reviews  you can often find improvements for the recipe.  So, based on the reviews I did make some adjustments!  Here is the recipe with my changes! Ingredients 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 pounds ground hamburg (this was an adjustment from ground chicken) 1 packet taco seasoning 1/2 red  onion , chopped 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained 1 cup medium heat taco sauce  1 cup f...