Categories
celebrate eat things to do

good food takes time

9/33

i was peeling a clementine for the babe the other day and she was getting whiny. she’s 1 so she gets whiny a lot, growing into a toddler is hard work! off the top of my head i told her to be patient because real food takes time. i’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. real food does take time! it’s a lesson i really want to teach my kids. there’s a place for fast food but i really want to stay in good habits and make fast food for unique occasions. i want them to learn how to cook and enjoy it, like i’m only beginning to do now in my 30s. today making the thanksgiving meal was awesome and everything was from scratch. i actually enjoyed it and a big reason is that i just felt good about how healthy it was, no shortcuts, no junk. it was a meal i could feel good about feeding my family, including the baby!

oh and my pomegranates all went rips so i spent the good portion of nap time seeding these. see, real food takes time!

Categories
celebrate eat things to do

holiday treats

not ready for the holidays to be over? me neither! so here’s a holiday treat to keep you festive, unless of course you are counting calories now…then this is definitely not for you! but then again, it’s still december…so you have another day to not worry about calories right?? 😉

i hosted a little dessert/drink party and i wanted to make something that would use the pomegranate seeds i had from my tree and found two lovely recipes, one dessert and one drink.

the dessert is a chocolate pomegranate tart, recipe here.

she calls for two household items that most people don’t have, a food processor and a double boiler. you don’t need either for this recipe. if you have a simple pastry cutter that will do the trick for the crust

and by far the easiest way to melt chocolate is to microwave it. i’m sure a double boiler is easy too, but when you are dealing with a lack of kitchen space, it’s just one item that isn’t worth taking up room in my opinion. you can also boil some water in a pan and put a bowl with chocolate over the pan…a makeshift double boiler! i’ve done this method before and it works great too, BUT you have to be careful not to get even a drop of water into the chocolate or it will ruin the chocolate. that’s why i use the microwave, super duper easy. i just do a minute at a time and stir in between 🙂

and voila! perfectly smooth, not burned, not seized chocolate…

i seriously love how this turned out!!! it’s beautiful and pretty tasty too! the crust and pomegranate glaze and seeds are just the right amount of plain and tart to balance the rich chocolate filling. and i love that it’s all natural and that i used my own fruit! it also really wasn’t that hard, i was able to make it during nap time, and the only thing i needed to buy from the store was pomegranate juice for the glaze! not too bad.

the drink i made was a rosemary pomegranate martini, recipe here. (and yes, that is a dharma initiative shot glass)

also a super easy recipe, and i only bought the pomegranate juice for this recipe as well! i used pomegranate arils, lemon juice (i actually had to substitute some limes because i only had one ripe lemon on the tree, it was still delicious), and rosemary from my backyard.

i infused the vodka with the rosemary for a few hours, then put it all together in festive glasses.
it’s amazing how easy it can be to make something so much fancier with a sprig of an herb! i want to grow more herbs than this past year. i only had mint, rosemary and basil…what should i grow next?

so if you ever have an abundance of pomegranates, there are two things you can do with them. i would have used my own juice too instead of buying it but i had eaten most, i only had three left and not enough to juice and use the arils. but next time i’ll probably juice some. and next time i’ll also try making my own grenadine! since going all natural, i’ve been so sad about things like grenadine because it’s basically high fructose corn syrup and red 40 so it’s definitely out. but then i learned that grenadine comes from the french word grenade, which means pomegranate and the original syrup is pomegranate syrup, so i’m totally making this next year, yum!!!

some other desserts at the gathering, yum! although i think i’m still coming down from a sugar high

well, hope you enjoyed the holidays…time to say goodbye to all the ornaments until next year…even the weird ones

 

Categories
celebrate reminisce things to do

patience

patience is a funny thing…

it’s all about perspective really

here i am, starting to get impatient that i’m a week overdue today, i’d really love to meet our daughter…but then i remind myself that it took us how long to get here? what’s a few more days?? i mean…seriously what’s wrong with me? i’ve said the whole pregnancy that i refused to complain because i wanted to enjoy every little bit of being pregnant, and i really do. i love all the little kicks reminding me that life has been created, but i also just want to meet that little person and find out who she’s going to be.

perspective… it only took us three years to get pregnant. i am well aware that there are people who have spent so much longer than that in their heartache, and my heart aches for those around me who are going through the same thing. when you’re in it, it feels like forever and then suddenly you’re about to have a child any day now and you wonder if all that pain was real.

so i’m trying to take advantage of this last minute free time. the baby room is done (blog post coming soon), the hospital bag is packed, the car seat is installed and i even made treats for the nurses. i’m getting lots of wedding films done and i’ve even been able to cross a bunch of things off my to do list that have been on there forever (you know all the annoying little things you just never get to). so i’m taking perspective and looking at this like a wonderful opportunity to finish some things i’ve started before i’m completely exhausted the rest of my life 😉 perspective…

and here are some photos from our 20’s themed maternity shoot with zelo photography! see their super sweet blog post on us here 🙂 shoot inspired by this movie, and hair and makeup done by this lovely lady! we wanted to do something a little different and i think the photos turned out great!

well i will have my baby in three days or less (since they will induce me if i’m too late) so literally any day now…woop!!!

Categories
celebrate nest things to do

Expanding our Family

 after two years of marriage, we thought it would be about time to start expanding our little family of 2. we were very excited and anxious about the unknown, but month after month, nothing happened. we watched as all of our friends had their first, second or third children while we still waited and longed for just one of our own. we had a lot people asking questions and making comments all along the way that were really tough to answer or respond to because we didn’t share this part of our life with many people. i was so shocked at what people were willing to say and ask and it was usually too sensitive in the moment for me to tell the truth. so i just always defaulted to ‘we hope to’ or ‘soon’. it can be a very long road full of sorrow…

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick…”

but when it takes three years to finally be blessed with the one thing that seemed so easy for everyone else you learn a few things and are blessed by things.

we learned to be patient even when we don’t, and probably never will, undersand why we went through what we did. we learned how to approach talking about children with others, not realizing how hard comments and questions can be to handle in the midst of grief.

we learned to really live this verse: Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7

even through the toughest times, I was still able to live my life, rejoice with friends who were having babies, and get through it.

though i have always had strong feelings about everyone having the human right to life, going through this experience has only deepened my feelings and beliefs about the issue. see below images for more.

i’ve always believed, but this has only reminded me that god really does provide. i deepened a friendship with someone going through the exact same thing, i’ve had a wonderful group of women there for me through the tears and praying for us all along the way, and i’ve gained new friendships. but god especially provided by giving me such a wonderful husband, i can’t imagine anyone else to live both good and bad times with than him.

we were blessed by growing together during the last 3 years, making our marriage stronger, crying together, traveling together and just learning to love each other more. as much as i would have given everything to have children when we first wanted them, i now wouldn’t trade anything for all this wonderful time we’ve invested in our marriage. this will make us better to handle our marriage in future trials and make us better parents.

“…but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

we finally had our prayers answered and the answer was yes. we are so thankful for this wonderful blessing of life. because we had some help to get where we are, we got to have a few more ultrasounds than the average person. it was incredible!!

the above is at 6 weeks. it’s basically a ‘diamond ring’ as the doctor said, and the ‘diamond’ is the heartbeat. yes, at 6 weeks, before most people even know they are pregnant, their miracles have a beating heart, drumming life through their bodies and capable of love.

the above is at 7 and a half weeks. just a week and a half later and there are visible arms and legs!

and again at 10 weeks, almost fully formed. we could see both hemispheres of the brain and when she moved the wand around we could see the shape of a little human 🙂

the above three images are from 19 1/2 weeks. these just amaze me and bring tears to my eyes. i was barely starting to show and there is a fully formed human in my womb! we found out that she’s a girl at this appointment and she even started sucking her thumb during the ultrasound (3rd image). look at her little hand in the second image! at this point she was only about 10 inches long but she has all her parts including finger prints which she had developed weeks ago. she has an identity and yet in california i would legally have until week 24 to terminate if i had wanted. it breaks my heart that little fully formed humans who can suck their little thumbs can be dumped into the garbage. she’s perfect and we’re already in love with her.

this is how we told our parents her gender on mother’s day (there’s a little slip of paper inside the eggs that says ‘it’s a granddaughter!’) our parents were so excited!

four generations of women!

our friends made us these when they found out we were pregnant…

…and they inspired this video which is how we shared the news with everyone else:

 thanks to everyone who was with us from the beginning. and don’t feel bad if you didn’t know what we were going through, we just emotionally couldn’t handle sharing with everyone. we appreciate everyone’s continued support, love and prayers until our little one is safe at home in our arms. we’re so incredibly happy and thankful! and we wish everyone we know going through the same thing will be able to share in their own joy soon 🙂

Categories
celebrate play things to do

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a wonderful and eventful 2012! I know we sure did, and we even survived another end of the world fake out, we’re still here:)Since we’re still here, you get the wonderful opportunity to see another masterpiece of ours. If you don’t know what you have happened upon, we do an annual Christmas card film. Here are all of our past years’ films if you haven’t seen them: 20112011 bloopers20102009 & 2008.

enjoy!!

Oh, and be sure to have your 3d glasses ready…

Categories
celebrate play things to do

Photo Friday #24, 25 & 26 – i’m a bit behind

So almost a month later, here are 3 weeks worth of photo Friday so I’m doubling the pics hah. We’ve been working on house stuff and wedding videos so I think we have a good excuse…plus there are only about 3 people who actually read this blog so I’m not too worried 🙂
First off, the Del Mar Fair – our yearly free wine tasting fun!

The gentleman making fun of the ginormous crap you can win

Next up, Bottle Peak…the highest point in Escondido where you can see all of Escondido. Here we are with the newly engaged Tony and Fei!!

A word of advice…don’t go when it’s boiling hot like we did and don’t go when there is poison oak EVERYWHERE! I don’t know how but none of us got it!

Last, our country’s Independence Day. We took it easy and chilled with the Paulsons and some awesome carne asada and a not so awesome dessert (a new recipe I tried that looked delicious but didn’t taste quite right, I’m still not sure what happened! So no photo/recipe of that!)

Then we headed over to Grape Day Park (I’ve always gone to the SM show) and Ryan picked us a wonderful spot! The entire show was behind those trees. HAHA lovely!