Last day to enter my giveaway

6/30/10

Enter HERE for the chance to win this bracelet I made at Mama's Fantabulous Giveaways. Today is the last day--winner is announced tomorrow! Good luck!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I CAN'T WAIT

6/29/10

November 17th can't come fast enough. This trailer gives me the chills! Makes me want to read book 7 again.

BBQ pork sandwiches

6/27/10

Last night, I couldn't find any recipes that I thought looked good for today's dinner, so I made my own. I keep country style pork ribs in my freezer and have several ways of cooking them, but after today, Mark says I need to forget all the other recipes and just make this one from now on. It just uses bottled BBQ sauce but I threw a few more ingredients in to kick it up a notch.

Slow cooker BBQ pork sandwiches
by Melissa Yoder

2-3 lbs. boneless country style pork ribs
3/4 cup BBQ sauce
2 cloves minced garlic
1/3 cup onion, finely diced
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cracked pepper

Combine sauce ingredients and pour over ribs in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low 6 hours, or 4 hours on high. Remove meat to cutting board and shred with two forks. Return to slow cooker and stir until coated in sauce. Serve on sandwich buns. Serves 6.

EASY, right? It was sooo good. I'm still full and we ate like, four hours ago.

Also, I meant to mention on Friday that it has been one year since we moved back to Cedar City and into this house!

I've got a couple more painting/decorating projects in the works. It's nice to have free reign to do whatever I want with the place. The back yard is still a mess, though. We're working on it. Sloooooowly.

One more thing:

Luke was having breakfast this morning (No judging about the pink flower bib! Haha. We only have four boy bibs and like, ten girl ones) and this is what sprang to mind:

Nachoooooooooooooooooo!

Hope you have a good week. I'm off to go force myself to work on some projects.

Baby Luke is 9 months old!

6/25/10
*Warning--lots 'o pictures

Man, that went by fast! A lot faster than the nine months I was pregnant with him...

Still army crawling

When you blow kisses at him, this is what he does.

Weight: 19 lbs (See how he's pinching his belly chub? I think he's proud of it.)

Length: 28.5 inches

**This is exactly how big he was last month. I guess he is crawling so much now that he didn't pack on the extra pound I was expecting. Yay! His clothes will fit a little longer!

Loves:
Eating: goldfish crackers, cheese, yogurt, all fruit baby food, most veggies (except peas and squash), Gerber cheese crunchies, rice cereal, drinking water from a cup or sippy cup

Moving: army crawling, playing with Madelyn, getting into stuff, walking while you hold his hands, pulling up onto the furniture, chuckling (he really cracks himself up), blowing raspberries, refusing to bend his knees when you're trying to sit him in his highchair, grabbing people's lips and chewing on daddy's ears, trashing magazines, shrieking, hissing.

Plus, he's figured out how to get off his belly and up into a sitting position when he's crawling around. That's been handy. Not so handy is that he wakes up 1-2 hours earlier now that the sun comes up at 6:30-7:00am. YAWN.

I'd like to look rested and refreshed in at least one of these pictures for a change (Oh wait. That would require me having a full time nanny...), with kempt, non-slobbered upon hair. Luke favorite pastime is grabbing/trying to eat my hair.

He's huge! He seems to have grown up a lot in this last month. He is so mobile now and scoots around the house into every corner, under every table and chair, and follows me and Madelyn around. He loves to chew on power cables and anything else he finds on the floor.

We hardly have to put drool bibs on him anymore. THANK GOODNESS. Of course, it's been a month since his last tooth, so I'd better not speak too soon...

I'm glad I'm not the only one in the house whose belly pudges over their waistband.

Don't you love that bib?! Luke's in touch with his feminine side.

He likes to strum the back of his hand on his lips to make that bub-bub-bub-bub-bub sound. It's fun! Try it. Bub-bub-bub-bub-bub...

I may have given him whipped cream on his tray. (Hey, it was after a healthy snack of strawberries...) And then I may have squirted myself a dollop or two....or three.....straight from the container. I can recommend the Reddi Whip Lite, by the way. It has a slight almondy flavor. Mmmmmm.

Then he needed a bath. That boy loves sucking on wet washcloths.

Heehee!! Couln't resist posting this picture! (Mark, don't kill me...) This is what Madelyn calls his "Linus" hair.

I think it may be time to switch car seats...

OH and I almost forgot! He can say "Mom-mom!" (Of course, ge's been saying "Dad-dad" for a month now. Not that I'm bitter...) I LOVE this little man!!!!!

Giveaway! (And it's my 300th post!)

6/24/10

Janice at Mama's Fantabulous Giveaways is featuring my etsy site this week and you can enter to win this bracelet! Look HERE to enter and see contest rules. The winner will be announced on July 1st, a week from now. Good luck!

P.S. I just posted nine new listings on there (etsy)....pickin's were slim after I took half the inventory over to the consignment shop.

Ambience Consign and Design

6/22/10

A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a gal who has opened up a new consignment shop here in downtown Cedar City to see if I wanted to sell my jewelry there. I figured I'd go for it since most of my inventory has been sitting in my closet for a couple years and anything would be better than the one sale a month (or less) I average on etsy. It's hard to get hits on an etsy site unless you're posting something new all the time, which I don't.

I had to get some price tag thingies and decide which items were going in the shop and which ones will stay listed on etsy. (I can't close down the shop entirely because I've got a giveaway soon on someone else's blog.)

Cat (the shop owner) said she will probably move my jewelry to a new spot so the emptiness doesn't seem so....empty. I need to make some more stuff.

Ambience Consign and Design used to be downstairs in Boomer's shopping center on the corner of Main Street and Center Street (a.k.a. University Boulevard), but they are in the process of moving to their new, bigger place on 60 W. Center Street. Now it's right next to The Pastry Pub! Eeeeek! (My favorite place to eat in Cedar City.♥)

It's a good location for pedestrian traffic since it's just a block up from the Shakespearean Festival and Main Street Park, where they've got Groovefest, the Renaissance Fair and a bunch of other things going on all summer long.

Then when Mark came home today, he mentioned that a friend of ours is selling her hair bows in a booth at the July Jamboree event coming up soon, and that maybe I could make some baby bracelets to sell with her.

It's funny how stuff happens. I don't really want to be making tons of jewelry right now because it's a huge undertaking and I'm crazy busy as it is. But I've got the beads, the know-how, and I could use the money. I'll let you know how it goes!

(Someone check in on me in a week or so and make sure the Project Monster hasn't eaten me alive yet....)

Happy first day of summer, Summer Solstice, Madelyn's half-birthday, Monday, whatever. We just wanted to party.

6/21/10

Madelyn's half-birthday is today, which was the real reason for spoiling her (as if she needed it---yeah, I know) with presents, treats, a balloon and fresh peach pie.

I hadn't planned anything, but Madelyn said, "Yay! Where's my presents and cake??" Uhhhhh.......(leave it to a kid to catch on to that). But luckily I have a gift stash and she doesn't mind random things from the grocery store, so I gave her this cute book I had in the closet and then while she was at ballet I got her a new sippy cup, pink hair elastics and Gummy Lifesavers. She was thrilled.

I made the pie last night as part of our Father's Day celebration, but it didn't get finished till around 10:00, so we hadn't dug into it yet. It was delish.

Normally I wouldn't bother with all this, but the poor girl's birthday is only four days before Christmas. And it's not every day that you turn 5 1/2! Happy half-birthday, my dear!

Happy Father's Day!

Mark and Madelyn, Aug. 2005

Mark and Luke, April 2010

6/20/10

Well, some things never change, right?

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband Mark, my dad and my father-in-law. I'm lucky to have such great guys in my life!

One more...

6/19/10

It's a good thing that Star Wars is so awesome because otherwise my son is really going to resent that we named him Luke.

(Thanks, Kevin for the lightsaber. We all love it.)

Outtakes

Luke, six months

6/17/10

Today I was scanning through my photo albums in Picasa and came across the shoot I did on Easter. And I was like, "My kids are soooo cuuuuuuuute! Eeeeeeee!"

Well, they are....

I put up about 30 of the shots on this post, but there were still oodles left over. I probably never showed them before because my upload speed was such that I wanted to gouge my eyeballs out every time I had a big batch of pictures to post. But we just switched internet providers and now instead of taking over a minute to get one picture on here, it only takes 12 seconds!

So here's round two of the 2010 Easter photo shoot. Sorry to overload you once again.

Doesn't Luke have killer baby blues? I want to do another shoot next week when he turns nine months, but the problem is that now he has the ability to turn and scuttle away from me. Any suggestions?? Now I know why there are professional baby wranglers.