Resolution and Goals Update

Back in December I blogged about some of my resolutions and goals for 2012. I figure the only way to stay on track is to revisit those goals and check on our progress. 

2012 Goals:

125 pounds

Run a 5km race

Run a 10 km race (Entered in one on March 11th) 

Run a half marathon

Run leg 1 of the Sinister 7

Do 3 consecutive chin ups

Meet my Baker family in Toronto

Donate Blood (along with a list of other good deeds)

Take more photography courses and start a small photography business (Finished my first course)

Update my AFLCA certification 

Take another AFLCA course

Start a mom group/ play date group

Take a trip to Vegas (without baby)

Start an RESP for Alexander

Save minimum $5000

Go for a psychic reading

Attend Church

Get Rid of my GDL
Learn more about investments

2012 Resolutions:

Floss my teeth everyday 

Brush Bensons teeth everyday

Cuss less

Walk Chevy more than once a week (really working on this one)

The purple is my progress and the cross-outs are my accomplishments. With only 2 months of 2012 under my belt I'd say we are progressing nicely!

The list of "good deeds" mentioned above with donate blood should probably be started as well:

Donate Blood

Pay for someone behind me at a drive thru

Deliver Coffee and Donuts to a working crew

Take baking to a fire department

Donate Formula to Mothers in need

Play with dogs at humane society and donate food

...

Sew cute!

The Inspiration

Alexander received a towel for one of his baby showers that was fleece on the outside and terrycloth on the inside. It has a hood and is super warm and snuggly! We use it every time we go swimming, and when he was a teeny tiny babe we used to use it to keep him warm while we would have a quick hot tub after our swims. It works great as 2-in-1 towel and blanket, the towel dries him off and the blanket with the hood keeps him warm! After receiving my first sewing machine for Christmas, and finding a super easy hooded towel pattern I decided to put my creative skills to work and try to make one of my own. The hooded towel pattern I found was a little more basic than what I wanted my final product to be so I just did a few modifications to the pattern and voila! 

I found the pattern on pinterest (duh, of course I did) and I used my own inspiration from the green towel above to turn it into a towel blanket. The pattern is from a blog that made it super simple to sew the hood! I started by purchasing terry cloth, fleece and a cotton accent fabric. I purchased double what I would need because I wanted to make one as a gift! The fabric turned out to be ALOT more expensive than I had anticipated and hindsight I could probably buy this darn towel cheaper than I made it for! But nevertheless this is a project for me to learn from. Another idea might be to go to walmart or some similar store and buy towels on clearance to save money on the terrycloth portion. Anyway back to my sewing, I then cut the fleece and terrycloth in the same measurements and sewed them together! Afterwards I followed the pattern on the blog I mentioned above to create the hood and simply attached the hood to my towel blanket! Im sure a pillow would have been more challenging than this project but I have a lot more use for this one so there you have it! Below is my finished product!

My hooded towel blanket

I think he likes it

Cupcake Party

On Saturday we had our first of many, ladies nights. We are going to have them once a month, each with a different theme and host. The point is to get together with some gals, share a good laugh and get out of our normal routine. For me that means I get to be Jami, not mommy or wife, for a few hours. And for the other girls this might mean they aren't, wife, girlfriend, receptionist, student, or whoever, they just get time to themselves! For our first ladies night we had a cupcake party. This whole title, cupcake party, created a lot of buzz with others as they were wondering what the heck a cupcake party is. Basically, the host pre-baked a ton of cupcakes and on the evening of our ladies night we sat around decorating and eating cupcakes! Don't worry we took a to-go box home, and didn't eat them all that night. We also each brought a an appetizer and had a potluck of items to start with before the cupcakes! 

Nom Nom

Our finished products

Decorated Cupcakes

Toppings

Pre-made cupcakes

It was a really fun night! And for the first time, I didn't worry about my boys at home. Since switching Alexander to the bottle he is so much better for his babysitters. Dad was on babysitting duty all day Saturday, including the evening when I went to the ladies night. They did great together the entire day, and it makes life so much easier for me when Im not anxiously worrying about them while I'm gone. 

If you don't follow me on pinterest, you really should! One of the great things about putting your babe down for a nap is an hour of alone time! And what do I do with my alone time other than cook, clean, plan, write lists, fold laundry... I craft! I love all of the things I find on interest and with my newest addition, the sewing mating, I'm hoping to work on a few new projects. Around Christmas time I posted about some of the DIY projects I had completed, inspired by pinterest. My midline photo wall, glitter shoes, christmas decorations, tons of baking recipes and the list goes on. Well in last few months I have worked on a few more and am inspired to start a few new projects in the coming months!

Post-Christmas a few things I have accomplished include:

tried out the no-bake energy bites, and I must say be careful they are truly addicting

baked some no-bake cookies (seems like an oxymoron)

whipped up a batch of slow-cooker baked potato soup!

decorated my own Toms

made my own scrapbook paper iPhone case

Made candy apples

New Pinterest-Inspired Projects:

Sew some hooded towels (with my own labels)

Sew an apron

Bleach Pen Art Onesie

Try a muffin tin recipe

Try the vanilla microwave cleaner recipe

Make a shelf frame for my bathroom

(post bathtub photo's in the bathroom)

Create a laundry station

I'd like to make something like this but
with a shelf instead of a blackboard
Where do I find a shelf?

I'd like to set up a laundry station just like this, outside our
laundry room for the when the kids (well Kid right now) are
older they can take their baskets with their clean clothes
and put them away. Simply Brilliant!

Candy Apples

How could I forget! Last Saturday we made some tasty creations, candy apples!

They were not hard at all and they turned out delicious! I'm not sure where the recipe came from but it was dummy-proof for sure! I think this would make a great birthday party idea for school-age kids.

We started with washed, crisp green apples and stuck in skewers for the stick. 

(We doubled up on skewers for extra support)

We placed them on a cookie sheet with tinfoil that was sprayed with cooking oil.

Next we microwaved caramel and dipped each apple into the caramel, coating it completley.

We then refrigerated the apples for 20 minutes to allow the caramel to harden around the apples

While waiting on the apples we melted milk chocolate

and cut up all of our toppings

Then it was time to decorate. We took our chilled caramel covered apples out of the fridge and dipped them in the melted chocolate, covering them completely in chocolate. We then topped them with our cut up candies, including sprinkles, smarties, skor and crispy crunch. 

After the apples were completely covered in toppings we put them back in the fridge to chill for another 20 minutes. And after that it was go time! They were delicious! 

They were pretty big apples so I think if you were to plan this for a birthday party or to do with smaller kids, I would try to find smaller apples (like the size of a crab apple). They would even be fun as part of a carnival style birthday party with cotton candy and popcorn! Anyway I will be planning a first birthday before I get too carried away with a carnival birthday so I will leave it at that! 

** one thing to help with the decorating. When you cover the apples in the milk chocolate, allow some of the chocolate to run off of the apple before you decorate. If the chocolate is too thick on the apple, your toppings will run and drip off, leaving you with a naked apple and a pile of chocolate and toppings. 

I am Sam, Sam I am

As mentioned in a previous post  I took part in a Tom's Style Your Sole Party. Although we had a bit of a rough start to the party (shoes didn't arrive in time so we had to postpone) we made things work the best we could! A couple of us had to break off from the party and do it on a separate night but it all worked out great! And here is a look at our finished creations!

My Dr. Seuss Toms

Elyse's Harry Potter, Mauraders Map Tom's

Gryffindor Tom's

Chantelle's Feather Tom's

We had lots of fun decorating but it was a lot of pressure putting the permanent ink to your crisp white new shoes! I think they turned out great and I can't wait to wear mine out and about!

I am also excited to see how everyone else's shoes turned out, since we weren't able to attend the party I will be watching for the Party Host's blog update! 

Anyway that will be all for tonight! We have a cupcake party coming up this weekend so I will share more soon!

Pre-Ink Toms

All fixed up

It's here! The desktop arrived on Valentines Day, along with Appletv (which Sandy loved). I took the laptop in that day and had her all fixed up! The computer man explained the fixing up to me in laymen's terms: the "car" can now fit more people (hard drive), go faster (RAM) and won't turn off unexpectedly (new battery). Delightful, now it can be passed off to Sandy and the big desktop is all mine! Hehehe The only thing I need to figure out now is how to transfer all my music and photo's. Speaking of which I installed lightroom on the desktop so now I have a new project to conquer. Add it to the list, along with figure out the sewing machine, baby book, photo books, figuring out what we need for our new trailer! Just so many fun and exciting things happening.


We purchased our trailer last weekend when the RV show was in town. Not that it was a hard decision, we basically already knew what we wanted, but now it's an official done deal. We get it in March or April and I can not wait to take our little family camping. Those are for sure the best memories of childhood: camping! 

I've been back to running, getting on track for my upcoming races (haha literally). I entered in a 10 km race in March to get my first race out of the way. I think I may be a bit nervous so I don't want it to be an important race like the one we have in July. I've also been busy getting ready for my two year observation for my fitness instructing! I can't believe it has been two years already. Never-the-less I've been reviewing, doing up class plans and booking my CPR course. 

We are starting to baby-proof the house as well, outlet covers, baby gates, and cupboard lockers. It's only a matter of time before our little monster will be on the go so I wanted to get the house safe and sound ahead of time. Anyway that is about all for now as I hear him waking up from his afternoon nap. 

Computer down

Sorry friends it's been a few weeks! We have a problem with the computer. It's if full, and I mean completely full! I need to have more ram and hard drive space put on it but before I can do that I have to back it up and before I can back it up I needed an external Hard drive,which apple was sold out of. So it finally arrived in the mail this week, I am backing it up tonight and will hopefully be taking it in next week to get more room on the old boy! For now I've been using the iPad which makes blogging a little challenging! And on top of all this I have orderd a desktop for our little family so we surely won't run out of room anytime soon! ( even with the amount of pictures I take) so now that I have explained myself I can tell you what we've been up to!

Our biggest change as of late is that we have switched to the bottle. I think it was harder on me than it was on Alexander but what's done is done! Despite a few very horrible attempts before this, it went pretty well! Otherwise we've been sitting, eating all kinds of food, and growing! Al gained a full pound in a week!

I have finally finished my photography course that I started last May/June. I am oping to take a class on my photoshop program and continue to work on my photography. I am also working in receritifying my fitness certification which will be all taken care of by e end of February. On top of that I hoping to figure out my new sewing maching. Busy busy. Still training for the ultra marathon in July and I have my first race (a 10km run) in March.

Sandy and I are off the RV show this weekend to pick out our trailer, merry Christmas to us! And then we will have our date night. First one since December, I'm really looking forward to it! Mother exciting weekend coming up is a Toms "style your sole party" next weekend. A fellow blogger posted about it and I decided to join in on the fun! I can't wait to see how they turn out!

Lastly I made a very delicious soup today that a few people have requested the recipe for so here goes:
Ingredients:
30 oz of shredded frozen Hash browns
3 cans of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion chopped
1/4tsp pepper
1pavkage of cream cheese ( don't use fat free it won't melt)

Garnishes:
Sour cream
Cheddar cheese
Bacons bits
Chives

In crockpot combine all ingredients except cream cheese. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. 1 hour before serving add cream cheese and cook on low until cream cheese is thoroughly dissolved. Serve with garnishes! It's really complicated I know! Enjoy!