Remodeling Weekend

Not too many "after" pics at this point, but I thought I'd share some of the in-progress photos from last weekend.  Stay tuned for "after" photos - I may wait until after the granite is installed (hopefully this weekend!) before I officially do any. There has been a lot of chaos around here, so I have only put away a few of my kitchen items and we still have some odds and ends to finish up that we didn't quite get to over the weekend. All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and we would not have the start of a fantastic new kitchen without the help of our kick-butt families!

 

 There was lots of play-dough time in order to keep Miss Mia occupied and out of the way!

 What?  I'm just building stuff.

Did I mention that we're remodeling our kitchen?

It's officially started. The big kitchen remodel - we'll be replacing cabinets, counter top, sink, lights, painting the ceiling and the walls (over wallpaper, lord help us!), exposing a brick chimney (almost done with that already!), and eventually putting in new flooring. This weekend we have both sets of parents, plus my littlest brother and his girlfriend in town to help us swap out cabinets. In preparation, over the past couple of weeks, we've emptied out our cupboards, exposed the chimney (and cleaned up the plaster dust mess that went with that project!), and last night we removed the upper kitchen cabinets. We also patched some bad spots on the ceiling and are hoping to get the ceiling painted in the next 24 hours before the company shows up!  Wish us luck! More pictures to follow, but here are a few shots of the progress so far.

Miss Mia Update

 Learning at least 3 new words every day, occasionally telling us when she has to go pee-pee on the potty (and then usually actually going!), loving Minnie and Dora these days, hollering out random numbers and letters, singing and dancing, playing with play-doh, stickers (lots of stickers!), and crayons, making Valentines,

learning to pretend, changing P's (Piglet's) diaper when he's poopy, learning to make an "orange mouth" like mommy and daddy (see below), helping mommy in the kitchen,

blowing bubbles in the bath tub, sleeping in a 'big girl bed' (a toddler transitional bed at this point), learning to put on her own shoes, taking off her clothes (especially her zip-up footie pjs!), subsequently running around naked a lot, and listening to the audio version of "Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes" by Eric Litwin (a gift from cousins Huck and Will!). 

She loves this book...we have to play it for her 1-3 times a day (more on the weekends), so it's a good thing I loaded it onto my ipod! It's a pretty fun book, you can listen here.

Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches!?!

Found these on Pinterest...originally from My Kitchen Apron. You literally toss frozen chicken breasts into the crock pot, dump a bottle of Frank's Red Hot sauce on top, sprinkle a bag of dried Ranch dressing mix on top of that and cook on low for the day. Shred the breasts once they're tender enough to fall apart (mine took about 8 hours on low), let them soak up the buffalo sauce and serve!  The original recipe called for a couple Tbsp of butter to be added at this point, but since I was using up a partial bottle of Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Sauce (in addition to the normal Red Hot sauce), I skipped this step (I think the Buffalo Sauce has butter in it already so it's "pre-made").  I was a little skeptical for two reasons: 1) Frozen chicken breasts in the slow cooker?!? What's the likelihood of food poisoning with that?! and 2) would it be too much buffalo sauce?  The answers are: 1) The chicken cooked beautifully - I actually ended up home for most of the day, so I kept tabs on it. The breasts were fully cooked, and if you're like me and leave things in the cooker for much longer than the 8 hours of actual cooking time (on the "keep warm" setting), you can pretty much guarantee that the chicken will be fully cooked by the time you're eating it! and 2) the buffalo flavor was perfect - the chicken really soaks it up, but you still taste the chicken. I think the ranch mix helps tame the flavor down, too.

So, if you like buffalo flavored stuff, or just like a VERY quick and easy slow cooker meal, you must try this!!

Wordless Wednesday

Happy Kid!

PB, Pine Cones, and Birdseed

 A couple of weekends ago, when we were all still recovering from being sick all week, we spent a long weekend at home together. Normally this isn't an issue, but it had been COLD out so we couldn't play outside and we had already spent so much time in our home while being sick that everyone was a bit stir crazy!  I tried to come up with all sorts of ideas to keep Mia entertained. We played with just about every toy she owns (which is a LOT). We watched movies. We put up a tent and tunnel in our basement (she enjoyed that for about 5 minutes and then it was old news). We played with stickers and colored. We played with play-doh. We baked. We made I SPY jars out of old baby food jars, cous-cous, and random tiny objects we collected around the house (note: she enjoyed collecting the odd bits and ends more than actually playing with the jars, so evidently we need to just do some scavenging when we're bored). Finally, as a final straw, and since Sunday was actually much nicer outside, we made pine cone bird feeders. Luckily, last fall Mia and I collected a bunch of pine cones from the trees in our backyard and had put them into a container in the garage for safe keeping, so I could just hop outside and grab those instead of having to dig around in the backyard for some. So, we smothered them with peanut butter and dipped them into bird seed. We added a piece of yarn to tie them to the tree and viola! Pine cone bird feeders. Mia enjoyed eating the PB right out of the jar (or off of a pine cone), which was weird since she doesn't normally seem to like PB all that much (she's a nutella fan, though!). She also really enjoyed the mess of smearing PB and bird seed all over everything! Plus, she finally got to leave the house long enough to "help" hang the bird feeders in the front tree.  Turns out, the birds probably never even got to them as the squirrels hijacked them (pine cone and all) within a few days. Now we just have bright yellow yarn hanging from the tree.

 Mom said "Don't touch anything!"