Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Wordless Wednesday (Kind of): HAPPI...

My birthday was on January 17th. This was my cake:


You may be thinking, Awww. How nice. Owen decorated a cake for his mommy!

And you would be wrong.

This lovely creation was (primarily) decorated by someone who does not plan ahead to make sure there are sufficient cake decorations in the pantry. In a word, Daddio.

(With some help from Owen).

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Mommy Doesn't Give it Away for Free

**Warning** This post contains references to my sex life, (or lack thereof*) so if you are a family member, you may choose not to read this; I will not hold it against you in the slightest.

Last night I partook in the following conversation on Facebook:

("M" is Daddio's brother; "J" is M's fiancee; "C" is a complete stranger)

Super proud of myself for figuring out how to do a screen cap!

I know what you're thinking, Wow, that Daddio sure has some class. Or maybe I was the only one thinking that? I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm a bit of a prude, so his comments here slightly disgusted me, but pretty much par for the course.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Festive Flashback II: My, What Big...Eyes? You Have?

Continuing with my "better late than never" theme...

To keep Owen busy (read: out of my hair) one day while I was decorating the house for Christmas, I cut out two gingerbread people for him to decorate. I was hoping that he would do a nice enough job that we could use them as ornaments for the tree. I explained to him that the one with legs was the man and the one with the skirt was the woman. He immediately said, "That can't be a woman. Where are her boobies?" Nice. 

I left him alone for a few minutes, and when I returned, this is what he had made:

You'd be grinning too if your woman had a rack like that.

He then explained to me that the man was him and the woman was his "girlfriend" Lilly. That's one well-developed four-year-old!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Festive Flashback I: Reindeer Cookies

I meant to write this post ages ago, as in last month, when it was still Christmastime, but like everything else I plan to do in my life, I forgot. Better late than never, I suppose!

I was very proud of these reindeer cookies that I made for a Christmas party and for work. I initially saw the idea in an article in Parents magazine. I decided to make them for Daddio's work Christmas party. There were going to be a lot of kids there, so it seemed like a cute idea. I made them using a cinnamon sugar cookie recipe that received rave reviews. I'm not going to even share a link to the recipe because they were awful! To me, sugar cookies are supposed to be soft and moist. These were anything but. I suppose that if you don't mind hard sugar cookies, they actually didn't taste awful, (considering that I mistakenly put in nutmeg instead of cinnamon; the similar containers were right next to each other and obviously I wasn't paying attention). But I could not get past the hardness of them.  The kids at the party, however, gobbled up most of them.

Coincidentally, the Princess of Sarcasm created her own reindeer cookies right before I had baked mine. She, intelligently, used a gingerbread cookie mix to make hers, and I loved the idea and how they looked. Now, even though I have previously expressed my thoughts on cookie mixes, I decided to use one for round two of the reindeer cookies. I made them again for a "food party" at work, this time with a gingerbread cookie mix. I think that, although both were cute, the gingerbread ones look much better (both shown below).

What do you think?

Culturally diverse cookie platter?

Gingerbread all the way!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

You May Be Eating Dog Food

A friend* of mine recently shared a link to this flowchart on Facebook. I thought that it was pretty funny, and also coincidental.

Source


During lunch time today, I was just thinking about our pantry and the meals that I have planned out for the week and how I can start reducing the number of boxed and canned food items that we use.

As a general rule, I try to stay away from most boxed and processed foods and make as many things from scratch as possible, with the obvious exceptions of pasta, cereal, sandwich bread, peanut butter, and crackers. Any baked goodies that we consume have to be from scratch, mainly because I feel as though I'm "cheating", or not using my full potential as a baker by using a mix from a box. Daddio often comes home from grocery shopping (yes, he does the grocery shopping, mainly because he is the one with the job, and therefore access to the money, and because I got sick of him complaining when I stick to my list and don't come home with any "treats" or "snacks"), with packaged mixes for brownies or peanut butter cookies (hint, hint). This drives me nuts because I hate using a mix to bake with. Although I fully understand the convenience of them, and admit to using them in a pinch, I hate doing it because I have brainwashed myself into believing that cakes, and cookies, and brownies etc. are no good unless you have poured every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears into producing them. But that's just me.

Getting back to my original topic, I try to avoid processed foods and would like to cut more out of our diet. I make my own from scratch chicken fingers, macaroni and cheese, soups, and meatballs. We don't buy hot dogs, Spaghetti-Os, or french fries, among other things. I think that the boys will be better off for it in the long run because they won't be trained to eat only processed foods. They will have a taste for the "real" thing, which will hopefully make them less picky eaters (fingers crossed).

The main culprits that I still use right now are just diced tomatoes, green enchilada sauce, chicken broth, instant oatmeal and spaghetti sauce. I have stopped using recipes that call for cream of ____ soup (unless it is a favorite recipe that I have to make). During the summer time I try to use fresh tomatoes in place of canned, and have started using recipes that use homemade sauces. I understand that it is going to be unavoidable to get away from ALL canned foods, (most homemade tomato sauce recipes call for canned tomato paste), but I'm trying to limit it as  much as possible. Ideally, I would like to use all fresh fruits and vegetables (I hate it when Daddio comes home from the store with canned fruit for the boys!), as opposed to frozen, but depending on the season, it does get rather expensive.

Part of my New Year's goals is to try to eat and cook healthier. Any tips or words of advice?


*I'm using the term 'friend' loosely here as it really came from a guy I went to high school with. He's a bit of an ass, but every now and then, he comes up with something actually worth listening to, which is surprising.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Brotherly Love

Owen and Ben are slowly starting to discover that they may actually love each other. I like to credit myself for inspiring this discovery.

Any time the boys have to serve a time out for doing something to one another, I always make them apologize for it with a hug and a kiss. They also (sometimes willingly) do goodnight hugs and kisses each night and before naps. It's bound to happen that when you are hugging and kissing someone this much, you are going to discover that you actually like, maybe even love them!

It is now a frequent occurrence for Owen to actually ask Ben for hugs at bedtime. Ben usually goes along with this and lays down on Owen's chest for hugs, then slobbery, boogie kisses. It's really quite sweet.





It really makes me happy to see this, especially since Owen used to complain any time Ben looked at him (when he was just 3 months old, mind you), and adamantly claimed that he did not love Ben.

I love my boys.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

...

Ah, the preschool years, when kids are still sweet and innocent and entirely clueless about the phrase "child labor", as they willingly help out Mommy and Daddy with the household chores.

I dread the moment when Owen stops thinking that bringing the laundry downstairs is fun, or a challenge to prove to Mommy that he really does have the muscles strong enough to carry his laundry basket (and Ben's, and the sheets, and blankets....) down the stairs. Or when he discovers that matching everyone's socks really isn't a very exciting game afterall.

And poor Daddio when Owen decides that he should be getting PAID to shovel the sidewalk. Right now, he's perfectly content with shoveling snow, as long as he is able to eat a few handfuls when he is finished. I don't exactly see that as still being the case when he is 12 or 13.

Sure I'll shovel. No problem.

The sidewalk next? Okay!

Can I stop now?

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Changes are Inevitable

And it's happening here as we speak. I'm hoping that 2011 will be the year of change for me, and I'm starting out small, with my blog. I have already changed my title ("Miss Mommy" was really only a temporary title until I came up with something else I liked better). You will notice that I am now "Mommy Doesn't Wrestle". I realized that I was saying this to the boys multiple times a day, so it seemed appropriate. I'm also trying to change the look of my blog. I'm in the transition process, so please let me know what you think or feel free to offer up advice for improvement (for anything, my header, my background, color choices, content, etc.)!

I'm hopeful that this will inspire me to post more regularly. Wish  me luck!


P.S. I want to change my blogspot adress to mommydoesntwrestle.blogspot.com instead of krissysue2. Does anyone know how I do this without blocking people from seeing my blog? (Those who were already subscribed to the old address, I mean).
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...