That's Solid

Since Lila is able to sit up in her high chair now, we decided that it was time for her to try some rice cereal.

She loved it!  And by loved it I mean she loved the spoon I was using and tried to eat that instead of the actual cereal.

Here's some footage of our first attempt.  Yeah, yeah I know; I don't watch videos of other people's kids either.  Just smile and nod when I talk about it.

Beware the Dip

I will admit that one of my great weakness in life is chips and dip.  I particularly like a French Onion or Ranch dip with some Ruffle chips.  Mmm. That's the good stuff.  So last night when I was having my girl friends over, I wanted to make some kind of healthy dip to go with our other healthy snacks: brie, bleu cheese, chocolate covered caramels, and cupcakes.  Lucky for us, I had some Greek yogurt on hand and created a dip that would ward off the catatonic food coma just a little bit longer.



Greek Yogurt Ranch Dip (Fat Free!)
16 oz Plain Greek Yogurt (or a half-eaten 32oz tub)
1 package Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning
Bag of ruffley chips, veggies, etc.

1. Pour the Ranch package into the tub of yogurt.
2. Mix together in the tub (this saves you making your presentation bowl messy)
3. Spoon the dip into your chip 'n dip
4. Add your chips and veggies

This stuff is fabulous.  I will say, for plagiarization sake, that I thought up the dip and then looked online and it had already been done.  Sigh. Nothing new under the sun..

Hutson Hallway Before and After

We did it!  Well about 97% of it, but I'm very happy with how painting our hallway turned out.  Here are a few before and after shots.  (Wall color is "Repose" by Sherwin Williams, and trim color is "Snowbound" also by Sherwin Williams)

Before:



After:

 

Before:

After: You can still see up in the corner where we need to borrow a ladder to finish.  I came home to Johnny precariously balanced on a piece of 2x4 on top of a milk crate on top of a chair on top of the stairs.  Instead of telling him to get off, I spotted him.  Hey, I really wanted this painted.

Before:

After:

Before (yuck!):

After:



Before:

 

After:



And a few more after shots.  I'm very pleased with how the color looks with the living room color.  I originally thought the grey was going to be a little darker according to the samples I put on the wall, but it still turned out nicely.

 

  

 

 

Our two upcoming projects include putting a mantel on our fireplace, which absolutely MUST happen before Christmas this year, and stripping the wallpaper in the dining room and painting it.  If anyone enjoys stripping years and years of old wallpaper, come on down.

Five Months

I finally got around to taking Lila's five month photo.  This one is complete with her favorite toy of the moment.  I wonder who she gets her extremely white skin from.  Weird.



Weight: 17.0 lbs

At five months Lila has really started to get her own personality.  She absolutely loves open-mouth kissing people on the cheek, and if you're lucky she'll start licking your cheek too.  She sits up in her high chair and in the grocery cart as long as you stuff things on either side of her.  While in the grocery cart, she enjoys yelling at the top of her lungs up and down the aisles of the grocery store.  She reaches for my glass whenever I drink water, and when I let her have it, she gulps down a few glugs before spilling it all over herself.  Giddy Up Horsey is her favorite game, and she tenses up when you get to "Watch out Lila..." because she knows what's coming next.  Napping is still a bit of a battle, but we're getting better at it.  She's sleeping through the night from about 7:30pm to 7:30am, but if we put her to bed late, she will wake up around 3 or 4 demanding to be fed.  All in all, she's pretty easy going and very affectionate.  I think we'll keep her.

Aldi?

I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a bit of a snob; the problem is that I am also frugal cheap.  Now that I am in charge of a household, I'm looking here and there for ways to save money on things that I have to buy every week...like groceries.

Before Lila was born, I decided to figure out where to buy the cheapest groceries.  I compared Wal-Mart, Target, and Trader Joe's.  If you haven't checked out the results of The Great Grocery Experiment, click on over here.  Because of those findings, I pretty much primarily stick with Trader Joe's for all of my food purchases.  Sometimes, though, I still find myself spending more money than I want to on groceries each week. So a little while ago, with much prodding from Johnny, I decided to go to Aldi.  

Aldi has a little bit of a stigma here (and by "here" I mean in my brain) as being cheap, low quality, etc. etc.  But this is my second week of doing the majority of my grocery shopping at Aldi, and I have been pleasantly surprised.  The store is definitely bare bones with few name brands and fluctuating produce quality, but I have gotten some great deals on some great things.

I'm not going to do the Great Grocery comparison with this one because Lila only lasts so long in one location, but here are a few suggestions I have for shopping at Aldi:

1. Buy their meat.  I would say that I save 30-50% buying meat there.  I did some "research" online, and it seems that their meat is the same quality as local grocery stores, so nothing to fear.

2. Chocolate!  People rave about their chocolate because it's apparently a German owned company.  So go all out...it's only a few quarter after all.

3. I would normally say, "Buy their milk!" because it used to be $1.99, but now it's up to just under $3.  That is still cheaper than most places, so I will say, "Buy their milk" with no exclamation point.

4. Carbs...cereal, crackers, bread, sugar (unless you're a Costco bulk buyer like myself), go for it at Aldi.  

Besides those suggestions, make sure that you bring your own bags and a quarter for the shopping cart.  You have to put a quarter in the shopping cart to use it...they say it keeps the parking lot cleaner because people don't want to leave their quarter in the cart, so they put it back.  I will agree; I ALWAYS get my quarter back.

Chalkboard Paint

I finally got around to doing something I've been meaning to do for months: painting our pantry door with chalkboard paint.

It was so easy to do.  Just paint two coats, wait three days, and voila!  This picture also gives you a sneak peek of our newly painted hallway.  It's about 75% finished, so hopefully those pictures will be up soon.

Grrrrrr

Lately, when she is tired, Lila will growl at things, including her own image in the ipad.

Puttin' On the Ritz

You'll have to forgive me for this post.  I saw this skirt on Pinterest and decided to make a miniature one for Lila.

Then we just had to have a miniature photo shoot to go with the miniature skirt.

You might not want to borrow my pearls any time soon.

Book Club #10

I can't believe our little book club has made it this far!  Ten books done, and we have more members than ever!  These last two books have been clear favorites for everyone, so I wanted to make sure that I got our reviews of them posted.

This month's book was The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

goodreads.com

The Paris Wife is a historical fiction novel about Ernest Hemmingway's first wife, Hadley, and their life together in Paris.  The book is fiction, but the author used letters between the couple as well as Hemmingway's writing to make the book as true as possible.  Everyone loved the book and almost everyone jumped on wikipedia after finishing it to do more research on Hemmingway...it was THAT interesting!  A lot of the girls recommended watching Midnight in Paris after reading the book because it's in a similar vein, so that is now in our Netflix queue. 

July's book that I forgot to post was Room by Emma Donoghue

duolynoted.com

This one sounds a little creepy, but stick with me here.  Room takes place seven years after a woman has been kidnapped.  She's been hidden in a little shed in the guy's backyard and has had a five year old son by her captor.  The kid has never been outside of this little room.  Without giving anything away, I can tell you that a large chunk of the book deals with what life would be like if your entire universe was only a small shed, and you had virtually no knowledge of the outside world.  Because the story is told from the innocent kid's point of view, the story is less creepy than it could potentially be.  Some people found the five year old narrator to be annoying, but the majority of everyone liked the book.

For September, our book is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a murder mystery!

20:1

Last night during an fabulously unexpected visit from Johnny's cousin Shana and her husband Tommy, Shana and I were discussing how much time we spend on Pinterest.  I decided that for about every twenty things I pin, I actually do about one of them.  Here's the one for this week.

I saw this pin a few days ago and thought to myself, "Hey I have a bulletin board and some burlap left over from this Christmas tree skirt (another Pinterest pin).  I should make that!"  Well it turns out that I didn't have as much burlap as I thought, so I decided to use some other fabric instead.  And here is how it turned out:

The bulletin board was free because it was a cast off from Johnny's work.  All of the fabric was free because  it was just scraps from other projects, and the upholstery nails cost $3.  I love me some cheap projects.

I just pulled the fabric around the bulletin board, stapled it to the back, and hammered in the upholstery nails.  Those little suckers were the hardest part because they kept bending every time I tried to hammer them.  I believe it was an operator error, however, because my arm muscles and aim are seriously lacking.

I tacked and stapled two pieces of burlap to either side of the top, tied it in a bow, and hung it on a nail.

Add a few pictures, and baddabing baddaboom, instant bulletin board.