Happy Easter

It's been quite the weekend!  We spent time with our family, relaxed, and got some projects done around the house (tutorials and posts on projects to come soon).  So, here goes a little picture rundown on our weekend...

After church this morning, we headed to my parents house for a delicious breakfast and play time with the boys!

First, the cutest lil guy after church rocking the Converse All-Stars

 The Easter Bunny brought Army men for the boys and they were having a good time playing with them all day!

 

At my parent's house, the Easter bunny brought the boys 'bubble guns'.  So here's how we spent a solid half hour this afternoon...

 This little boy knows how to pout :)

 They even blew bubbles in the window while Grandma Patty was doing dishes!

 Then it was time to come in and eat some dessert -- the boys enjoyed some Creme Brulee.  I made it yesterday and if you've never tried making it, it's super-easy.  I'll post sometime this week about how to put it all together.  Plus it looks super fancy and I promise people will be impressed! :)

 Here's a closeup that Mason snapped of the creme brulee!

 And one of the Grandmas -- my mom's mom Annie, my mom, and my dad's mom Eloise!

 To finish off our great Easter weekend, we took a stroll down by the waterfront with the Whit-bug.  Let's just start by saying that Whit LOVES to swim.  She's had her swim toy out for the past few months and is ready for the cottage and lots of swim time.  So we took her down to the water and let her splash around!

 We hope you all had a great Easter weekend and have a fantastic week!  Keep your eyes peeled for a few posts about our weekend projects and that creme brulee recipe!

Snow Day & Strawberry Pancakes.

Good Day to you!  We woke up to this...

A winter wonderland.  And a SNOW DAY!  Now being a teacher I love a snow day just as much as any student does...but I don't necessarily love 5" of snow on April 20th!  Just look at our poor patio.  I think hammock is about to have hypothermia!  And to think that just two weekends ago, we cooked dinner over the fire and had a great time eating outside with my brother's family...

But, I'm staying warm, don't you worry!  I couldn't fall back asleep after finding out we had a snow day, so I'm getting busy on cleaning up around the house so I can sneak a nap in later.  And as is tradition, I started the day with a yummy breakfast.  Today I tried a recipe from one of my Food Network magazines that I stumbled upon last night (and silently bookmarked in my head just in case).  

Gina Neely's Strawberry Pancakes 

You can find her recipe by clicking on the link above or you can cheat like I did!  Because we didn't have buttermilk on hand and I wasn't willing to scrape 5" of snow off my car just for that, I went with the easy route: complete pancake mix.  Do you use it and love it?  We do.  My dad (one of the best pancake makers I know) swears by it.  Now, on to the recipe...and a few pics of the steaming hotcakes to get you drooling :)

RECIPE:
Complete Pancake Mix (however much you need...depends on how many you plan to feed)

Water

Strawberries, sliced vertically

Pam or veg oil, for greasing 

Syrup

1) Just follow the recipe on the box for however many pancakes you plan on making and mix up the batter.

2) Make sure to grease your pan, grill, griddle and then pour some batter over top.

3) Plop the strawberries neatly around the pancakes.

4) ***IMPORTANT*** The strawberries tend to stick when you flip the pancakes.  I found that it was best to leave some room on the griddle, and then give it another spray of Pam before I flipped the pancakes.

5) Top with syrup and LOVE!

Speaking of syrup, I've been wanting to try some of the new agave strawberry syrup.  Have you guys seen this stuff?  But since I have a half gallon of agave syrup in the fridge in the garage, I thought I should probably try to make it myself.  I was searching for a recipe this morning and stumbled upon a few, but also on some recipes on how to make strawberry agave freezer jam.  So if strawberries are still on sale and I can make it to the store later, I'll let you know how it goes :)

Ooooooooh and I almost forgot, we're heading to our community college tonight to hear the Director of "Food, Inc." Robert Kenner.  I'm sure I'll have lots to report back on soon....let's just hope he can make it to Northern Michigan with all this snow!!

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Miscellany Monday & BBQ Chicken Pizza

We are blessed.  I mean, literally blessed.  Let me tell you a few reasons why...

1) On Friday night JW and I had massages and then we had our first 'overnight' with my precious nephews.  We started off frosting and eating cupcakes.  Braden was hilarious!  I think he figures why use his hands to eat the cupcakes when he can go straight to the frosting with his mouth.  He did the exact same thing yesterday morning after church with his donut!  Our night was great and we woke up to a few episodes of "Little Einsteins" and pancakes and apples!  So why does this make us blessed?  Well other than the obvious reason that we love hanging out with the boys, when we lived downstate we rarely got to see them so we truly relish in the fact that they live literally five houses down the street!

2) We had another great dinner with our friends in town on Saturday night.  We have come to meet and spend lots of time with an amazing group of friends in Petoskey and for that we are definitely blessed.  Maybe one of these days I'll actually take a picture of all of us together!

3) My after-school program kids were so absolutely awesome today!  Our homework session was productive and my homework group is doing great with their grades!  Then, in my computers class, we were working on fairy tales with a twist and they were super-creative!  I was smiling ear-to-ear.  Successful project planned!

4) My belly is growing a bit.  One of my students in the after-school program told me I looked "bigger".  Ha!  I double-checked that she meant that in a good way.  Here's a pic of the belly popping!  I'm a little tired as it was a long day, so please disregard the sleepy face...

5) I came home to the MOST delicious bbq chicken pizza made by my husband!  So, here's a recipe and a few quick pics...

Ingredients:

Frozen pizza dough (you can usually find these around the frozen pizza section)

BBQ Sauce

Cooked Chicken, cut into pieces

Bacon Bits

Red Peppers, cut into pieces

Mozzarella Cheese

1.  Make sure you take your pizza dough out of the freezer a day in advance.

2.  Roll out the pizza dough using some flour.

3.  Sprinkle some corn meal on the bottom of a pizza stone or cookie sheet.

4.  Top the crust with bbq sauce and then cheese and chicken, peppers, and bacon.

5.  Bake at 450 for about 13 minutes. 

6.  Start drooling when you see pizza come out of the oven...then EAT!

That's all that's going on in our neck of the woods...well except that it's snowing...again.  Our back patio is pretty classic with our hammock and patio furniture out and a light dusting of snow.  We're supposed to get some serious snow on Wednesday, so I'll be sure to snap a picture then!

A Wonderful Week!

Holy cow this week has flown by!  In addition to heading back to school, we did a 'few' small projects around the house.  JW added trim in the basement bedroom and we now have a toilet in our basement bathroom -- I know, novel idea!  Pictures of the basement bathroom from before and after coming soon!

Yesterday we had another appointment for the baby!  Although it was a quick appointment, we did learn that we get to find out more about Baby L in two weeks...like whether 'it' is a he or a she!!!  We cannot wait!  We're sooooooooooo excited to find out!  

As for our weekend?  No huge plans.  A little work on the house, hanging out with friends on Saturday night...and then playing Aunt E and Uncle JW tonight!  See JW and I bid on a package at a fundraiser that included two massages and a night's stay at a lovely local hotel known as The Inn at Bay Harbor.  The gift certificates just happen to expire tonight and don't you worry JW and I are both getting a massage this evening (CAN NOT WAIT!), but then we opted to let my bro and sis-in-law relax in the hotel room.  My SIL is an accountant and CRAZY busy, so we thought it might be nice for them to have some alone time and get a good night's rest, with no boys or pups to bug them!

Photo from here

So JW and I get to hang with the nephews and 3 pups: Mocha, Whit-bug and Pete.  It'll be a bit of a crazy night, but should be fun and we can't wait to play with those crazy kiddos!

Have a happy weekend! :)

Weekend Fun!

What a weekend!  We packed so much into a few days, but in doing so, my camera seemed to stay in one spot...my purse.  Bummer.  Anyway, here's a little bit about what we did...

On Friday we headed down to Mount Pleasant to meet up with our good buds, Ryan and Jessie.  We crashed at their place and our pups, Whit and Cubs got to hang out!  Then, Saturday morning Jessie and I headed to Alma to meet up with a bunch of our alumni buddies to play in the 2nd annual ACVB Alumni Tourney.  Like last year, it was a blast!  We played all day long and laughed about all our memories from our college years.  It's such an amazing opportunity for us to all get back together.  We had a blast.  But I think I can speak for all of us in saying that we are all still feeling it (2 days later, ha).  Well worth it though.

This is last year's pic, but it was all I could find!  Love you girls!

Sunday morning was filled with working around the house.  After all it was super rainy outside.  JW added some trim to the guest bedroom and bathroom downstairs, we put on outlet/light covers, and began to set up the bedroom downstairs.  Although it's not complete, we're ready for visitors!!!

Please ignore the naked box spring...I forgot our bedskirts are all light green.  Time to pick up one that matches our great duvet cover from Ikea!

Then, around noon we realized the rain had gone away and the sun was out and....it was WARM!  I mean, so warm, I busted out the sunscreen!  So I lounged on the back deck for a bit while JW did a little yard work and we made plans for dinner over our fire pit!  It was a success.  I wish I had pictures...but again I was slacking.  We even ate dinner outside with my bro and his fam and our good friend Court and her 'baby doggy' Brady.  We finished up and got inside just before the rain continued.  At which point, we had a few dance parties to "the King Louie song" and "Bare Necessities" and were entertained (as usual) by the nephews.  Then it was time to eat chocolate chip cookies.  Braden really liked them -- can you tell? :)

So that was our fantastic weekend.  Today is my last day of spring break before resuming to the normal life of teaching again.  But I just did the count and there are only 41.5 more days of school left till the end of the year -- WOOHOO!

I can't wait...

FOR SUMMER!  Or really, just some warmer weather.  It's been chilly up here.  I love reading the blogs of all those lovely ladies in the south, but I practically start drooling over their green grass and trees budding...not to mention sun dresses and no coats!  I mean, yesterday was supposed to be the best day this week at almost 50 degrees...and now it will probably snow.  Ok, not really, but we're just VERY ready for spring up here!

So today I'm daydreaming that it's a beautiful spring day and thinking about when it will officially be summer and our cottage will be open.  I've already decided I will be there pretty frequently as I'll be pretty preggo this summer!  Ready for this??

Cottage campfire!

Me &  JW

mmmmm...Shish kabobs...can't wait for our garden and the farm market down the road!

And I can't wait for these beauts to start popping up at the farm market!

Yep, this is my husband and the Whit bug in the kayak.  She LOVED it.  He didn't love it so much when I threw her water toy and she jumped out to swim after it ;)

This was the first weekend I ever brought Jon up north.  We'd only been dating for about a week and a half.  Then I introduced him to half my family.  Needless to say, he survived! :)

AAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  Happy Friday!   Enjoy the sunshine :)

Nursery Semi-Reveal

Well, the nursery is on its way!  We laughed the other day about how we were so not procrastinating with this project.  I always think of nursery completion pictures happening when the lovely preggo lady has quite the belly to show off.  I have a bump....barely.  When I was trying on a dress the other day, the salesperson did not even believe that I was 4 months pregnant.  Oh well...it'll get there I'm sure.

So anyway, JW did a lot painting on Sunday and Monday to change our guest room from this... 

 To this beautiful shade of blue.

We also got the crib and the dresser set up.  Although we are nowhere close to being done, we do have quite a few of the elements we love.  The Ikea floor lamp was actually something we bought for our wedding reception to add some lighting to the venue, but we love that it feels whimsical and not too bright in this space.  We also picked up two lime green buckets at Pottery Barn Outlet for half the price of what you can buy them for in the catalog! 

 Although the rocker won't stay there permanently, we thought it was a cute addition to the room and I just sewed up that pillow this morning with red tag home decor fabric samples from JoAnn Fabrics.  Add to that my teacher discount and I got the patterned side and a solid blue sample for $3.16.  

Like I said, we're certainly not done yet, but we're off to a good start.  We still have visions of adding shelves, finding a great chair, and putting up some prints I've been crafting in publisher.  In addition, while I was watching my nephews yesterday they both checked out the 'baby' room.   Therefore, it's been kid-approved! Braden, the 2 year old was searching for the baby.  Cutest thing ever.  He kind of gets the concept that the baby is in Aunt Erin's belly, but when you ask him where the baby is he points to his belly, ha!

So, what do you think?  We'd love to hear ideas or thoughts that you might have!

We have remodeling A.D.D.

Tonight while cleaning up the kitchen, I mentioned to JW that while we have been working on a lot of different projects around the house lately, we seem to be super-A.D.D. about getting any of them done.  Not that I mind...it's completely my style to do anything with an A.D.D. attitude.  In fact, I think I thrive in this style.  But what it means for the blog is we can't show you all these amazing reveals that we're so stinking excited about because we keep starting new projects!  So, rather than doing a super-dramatic reveal, let me give you an idea about where we are at with all of the projects we've decided to undertake.

Project List:
#1~ Turn awkward basement bedroom into ultimate guest suite.

Progress: So far JW tore out all the carpet, the weird built-in bed frame for the water bed, and painted the walls gray. 
Still to be done: We need to carpet this joint (obviously).  But the carpet is coming tomorrow -- hooray for making a quick decision over JW's lunch yesterday and getting it installed so quickly.  Once that's done we'll move some furniture back in and start decorating with a few of the goodies we picked up during our super-shopping trip this weekend!

#2~ Redo basement bathroom.

Progress: Major...like SO close to being done.  We painted it 'mint condition' a few months back and tore down the shower doors that nearly decapitated us when we used this shower when we first moved in this summer.  A few weekends ago JW ripped out the old laminate tile that was really holding this bathroom back from being pretty :)  Then he learned how to do tile, thanks to the guidance of my pops!

Still to be done: We need to seal the tile and caulk the screw holes from where the shower doors were, but we are WAY close to being done!  Oh, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to put the toilet back in as well, ha.

#3~ Stairs

Progress: The carpet and carpet pad are gone (which is good because they were nasty).

Still to be done: Carpet has been picked out and all we need is for the dudes to install it tomorrow!!  Oh, and after I painted close to the stair treads today I cleaned everything up...only to realize my lovely husband had done a little patching (the bright white spot on the left side of the pic)...so eventually it would be good to hit that with a roller too.

#4~ Nursery
(.....No picture here yet.....nursery semi-reveal to come later today)

Progress: Painting is done!  Old guest bedroom furniture has been removed and we've got the crib and dresser set up.  We also picked up a great white capiz mirror at Home Goods and a few other accessories during our shopping trip this weekend.

Still to be done: We need to find a rocker/recliner for this room.  We're on the hunt for a deal, but willing to spend a bit of cash considering we got a pretty good deal on the dresser and the crib was a hand-me-down from JW's sister.  Then we'll need to find some sort of rug for the wood floors.  My mom is crocheting one out of this beautiful, oh-so-cushy blue yarn so we're anxious to see what she creates when they get back from Spring Break.  

#5~ Office

Progress: Well, let's be honest.  This place is a DISASTER.  It's been a temporary place to house our furniture from the upstairs guest room that is tough to move downstairs with no carpet and old tac strips on the back of all the stairs.  

Still to be done: Ha, I don't even know if I can list everything -- major organizing, lots of cleaning, and hopefully a more polished, clean look when we're done.  At the same time, though, we have a hard time parting with the old ratty couch in there since it's the Whit bug's favorite and it seems to keep her off our newer furniture in the living room.

So there's an update.  I told you we have remodeling A.D.D.  Hopefully getting the carpet installed tomorrow will be a good jump start to feeling a little more finished.  But at the same time, we've placed an order for our mudroom cabinets and some cabinets that will look like a hutch in our breakfast nook, so the A.D.D. could continue...

As soon as we get one room complete, though, we'll be sure to show it off  :)

Spring Break 2011, oh baby!

While our big plans for our 'last trip before baby' fell through for spring break, we're ok with that.  Because we did some mad shopping downstate and now are starting to work on the nursery.  We have no clue whether it's a boy or a girl, but that's not stopping us!  JW is painting today while I was hanging out with Mason, our 4 year old nephew.  So while the semi-finished product will be ready for viewing eventually, here's a few sneak peaks for now...

Mason and Jon both painted their names on the wall -- and yes the walls are going to be blue (even though we both feel like we're going to have a girl)

 Mason was working really heard on doing the 'N' all by himself!

 But after the painting and hanging out with some family that stopped by, this lil man crashed on the couch.  We were all cuddling and watching Toy Story 3 when we looked over to find this...

So that's a sneak peak of the nursery...there's SO much more to come, but we have to get the paint done first.  There will definitely more picture updates this week so stay tuned :)

Ay Bab-ay

Because of popular request (and only because of that), we've finally gotten around to take pictures of this newly developing baby belly.  For a while, it went something like this...some days I look like Fat Tuesday was a week long occurrence and others you couldn't tell a thing. So, without further adieu, here are some baby belly pics.  Well, first one of me and our crazy pup (she is going stir-crazy with this cold weather again)!

14 weeks!

We've also started to scheme on what the baby's nursery will look like.  We will find out if it's a boy or a girl, but the room plans are moving along regardless. The winning scheme right now is a baby blue and navy and then we'll pick an accent color once we find out if it's a mini-me or mini-JW.  Here's a sneak peak on things we like...

Created with Olio Board (easy peasy if you don't have a Mac and want to create a moodboard)

But in order to create our nursery, our first step is transforming the basement bedroom from the weird built-in bed frame/platform thingy into a place where we'd be happy to have guests.  JW has been busting out work down there while I try to finish up my Master's classes this semester.  So far the carpet is torn out, the platform thing is gone, and we painted it a gray tone.  We were TOTALLY guessing on the paint color.  Before we decided on any color, we agreed to move out of our comfort zone (aka any shade of seafoam green and/or beige/cream).  The game plan for spring break is to get it carpeted and move in some furniture that's been hanging out down there for awhile.  More updates and before/after pictures to come soon!!

We're gonna have a baaaaaaaaaaaby :)

Yep, it's true.  Whitney is going to be a big sister.  This is what she looked like when I was trying to chat with her about it.  I think she figures she's too old for this.  Anyway, here's the story...we had known for awhile we were ready to be a family of 4 (including Whit).   So one morning in January, we decided to see if it had finally happened and... 

I literally whipped open the bathroom door and jumped into bed and said "it's positive".  JW gave me a big hug and I got a little teary.  We were trying to wait to tell my parents till Valentine's Day, but if you know anything about me I'm not exactly 'good' with surprises.  We told them and our friends a few days later.  Everyone was just as excited as we were.  It'll be the 3rd grandchild for my parents. 

Right now, I'm 13 weeks along.  Still suffering a little from the whole morning sickness thing -- mostly just a nasty taste in my mouth...all the time.  On a brighter note, we've got a couple names picked out and YES we will definitely find out if it's a boy or a girl.  I'm simply not that patient :)  So that's our happy news in a world where things aren't so happy lately.