...Annnd I Finished a Looming Project

I love pennant banners. I don't know why, I just think they add such a cute, fun touch to a room or a party. Ever since I started looking at nursery inspiration, I knew I would want one in Eleanor's room.

*Some inspiration*

Source: hisugarplum.blogspot.com via Allie on Pinterest

Source: dogpile.com via Lucy on Pinterest

Source: hogwash3.blogspot.com via Nicole on Pinterest

I made a pennant banner this summer for my friend's shower. I loved the way it turned out and vowed I would make one for my baby's room too. Well, a couple weeks went by. A month. Two. Finally I picked out some paper for my banner. Then a couple of weeks later I cut out the pennants. Then this past week I actually assembled the banner. 

To get my pennants to stay on the rick rack, I used these teeny, tiny multi-colored brads. For some reason when I think of brads, I think of those bright gold things that teachers used in elementary school. {Anybody else?} So I got these really cute ones and, let me tell you, there were a hundred other choices!

The assembly process.

Annd, the finished product. {I will do pictures of the whole nursery soon!}

There will be a personalized painting on this wall as well.

I hope everyone has a fun time shopping today. We may venture out just to have an outing but for the most part, our Christmas shopping will be done from the comfort of our living room. As well as putting up our Christmas tree. Happy Black Friday!

Thankful Thursday

Well Happy Thanksgiving.

I really cannot believe that it is this time of year again. I am taking the year off from hosting dinner partly because of the lil' fact that I am 9 1/2 months pregnant and the fact that it is easier for my grandma to stay home and for the family to come to her. 

I just wanted to take a moment and express just how thankful I am for the many blessings in my life.

I am thankful for:

...My husband. I know I yammer on and on about him all the time on my blog, but really I just can never praise him enough. He is my best friend and throughout this exciting time of our lives, he has been such a calm, support and can always manage to get me to smile.

...My baby growing inside of me. We are bursting at the seams to meet her. Any day now.

...Our family. Our families are so supportive and are always there to help out. They are so excited to welcome their first grandchild/niece!

...Our home. We absolutely love our house. We don't always love the location however, we have made it our own, cozy and happy and couldn't be more excited to have a home to bring our daughter into.

...Our jobs. I am obviously off work right now, however my job let us put some extra money away for my time off and Ben's job obviously provides us the constant support to live our everyday life. We are so thankful in this time to have his job.

...Friends. We have amazing friends. We may not always get to see them all the time but we know that we have such supportive and loving friends. We have friends who are in similar seasons of life as us and some that aren't but that's okay. All of them offer different strengths to our lives.

...The troops. I don't always express how thankful I am for the military service men and women but during the holidays it really hits home because while I am home enjoying a warm and cozy meal with my family, they are overseas fighting for us. Not getting to enjoy time with their families. For this I am beyond thankful.

I know these are a few generic things to be thankful for but I tend to think that the everyday aspects of life often get overlooked. I don't like to take anything for granted and know that we are blessed beyond measure.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful, relaxing holiday and don't forget to count your blessings!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

I love that tomorrow we will be feasting on this meal:

Source: Uploaded by user via Tajuana on Pinterest

I love that Ben has a 4 day weekend.

I am loving these cozies for some postpardum days.

Source: garnethill.com via Phoo-D on Pinterest

Source: victoriassecret.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Source: jessiesteele.com via Rhonda on Pinterest

I love that it's time for Christmas decor...so special this year to bring our bundle of joy home to a cozy Christmas house!

Source: sweetsomethingdesign.blogspot.com via Chantal on Pinterest

Source: trendytree.com via Chantal on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Jenny on Pinterest

{I am obsessed with old fashioned ornaments. I got to pick some out from a great aunt last year and they are beautiful and I luuurved them on our tree!}

What are you loving? 

Linking to:

Fall Maternity Pics

My husband's talents never cease to amaze me. *Sigh*
We took advantage of a frosty, sunny fall morning.
Here is what we came up with.

I Think You Should Try These

Since having my time off work, I have been cooking and baking more and loving it! I have also been trying to put some things in the freezer for when we are too busy with the lil' punkin to want to cook dinner. I have put away some spaghetti sauce, a chicken and sausage casserole and some soup. I made a double batch of these cookies last week in hopes to put some away put apparently they were too delicious and have been disappearing rather quickly.

The recipe for these Ranger Cookies came out of my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Yes, I use it a lot.

Ranger Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

1 cup coconut

1 cup raisins, dried cherries, dried cranberries or mixed dried fruit bits

{I used dried cranberries and a few white chocolate chips I had on hand as well}

1. Preheat oven to 375. Beat butter with electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add sugars, baking powder and baking soda beating until combined, scraping sides of bowl.

2. Beat in the egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much flour as possible with mixer and stir in any remaining. Stir in oats, coconut, dried fruit.

3. Drop by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges are light brown. Cool on cookie sheet 1 minute and then transfer to a wire rack and let cool.

{I ended up baking mine for about 12-13 minutes. I don't know if my spoonfuls were just too big or my oven is weird or what--so just a heads up.}

Also, last week, I realized we hadn't had pork in awhile so I took some pork chops out of the freezer from our "farm raised" pigs and put them in the frying pan, roasted some butternut squash in the oven and added it to some quinoa. 

I cooked the quinoa in the rice cooker with 1C of quinoa to 2C of water. That took about 20 minutes.

While the quinoa was cooking, I sauteed quite a bit of garlic and green onions in a little butter.

Once the squash was done, I let it cool a bit and cut it up into chunks.

I added the quinoa to the garlic and onion, added the squash, some salt, pepper and a touch of cumin and stirred it all together.

I love quinoa but I always forget about it. I think it has great nutritional value, is a grain with protein {which is very important for me right now} and is a nice change from plain rice. We then topped it with some green peppers and yellow onions that had been in the pan with the pork chops. Ben really liked the meal and it was definitely good when you could get most of the ingredients into one bite!

I know these are kind of random recipes to stick together but they were easy, delicious and I actually remembered to take pictures of them!

What have you been cookin' and bakin' lately? Any great quinoa recipes to share?

37 & 38 Weeks

We turned full term last week! Yay! It is really crazy to be this far along. This whole pregnancy I have thought she would arrive late, but now that we are so close to the due date, I can't get it out of my head that in reality she could come at anytime.

These past couple weeks have been really fun. We had a shower a couple of weeks ago, so we had goodies to wash, put away, and put together from that. We have been picking up odds and ends to make ourselves feel "ready," and we even packed the little girl's bag to take with us when the time comes. We are still both a little indifferent on packing our bags because it seems pretty straight forward and may even be a good activity for me when I am in early labor. We will see. Now that I have all this free time on my hands, I wouldn't be surprised if the pile for my bag started to grow.

BabyCenter tells us that she could be around 6 1/3 pounds and measures around 19 inches. Last week at our appointment, the midwife estimated about five pounds. We have an appointment tomorrow so we will again get to see what they think.

I have been getting more frequent Braxton Hicks--none painful. Overall I feel good bodywise, nothing too sore or achy. I get tired pretty quick and my heartburn is still in full force even though I think she is a little bit lower.

Eating is a little better now that I am home more and can stay on top of not getting too hungry. I can usually figure out something that sounds good. Frozen spinach always sounds good! The midwife isn't worried about my eating though or the fact that I still get sick sometimes because I am definitely gaining a healthy amount of weight.

It is so crazy how strongly I can feel her hiccups now and I love when she stretches and I can feel her on both sides of my stomach. As of last week they still think she is head down.

We finished our last birth class last night. We finished a little early since we were the only couple and each class went pretty quickly. It was nice to have the one on one time with the instructor and be able to ask whatever, whenever we wanted.

I am a little sad not to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year as I have the past two years, however, I'm pretty sure my 9 1/2 month pregnant body would be a little tired. It will be nice to just relax that day and enjoy Ben's 4 day weekend.

And a bare belly pic for ya!

My First Time at a "Mommy" Group

A few months ago a customer and I were talking about breastfeeding and she informed me of a group called La Leche League. Maybe some of you have heard of it but for those who haven't it is a support group for breastfeeding moms. I had sort of forgotten about it because the meetings were during my work hours. Well, the other day my friend who had her baby in September asked if I wanted to go with her to this week's meeting. Of course I said yes.

Source

We didn't really know what to expect. My friend told me that her vision was a bunch of women sitting around feeding their babies--which actually turned out to be pretty accurate, however, there was some really great discussion and all of the women were really nice. Everyone was really open and honest about answers and it never felt like anyone was being judged. The topic for the week was "Ideas for the Holidays" because for a few of the moms in the room it would be the first set of holidays with their babies so it was time to brainstorm how to handle certain situations--sticking to feeding and nap schedules, too much passing around of the baby, travelling with a baby, etc.

I found it really helpful as an expecting mom because even though I haven't dealt with any issues, breastfeeding or otherwise, it was nice to hear answers to some of the questions for anything I have to look forward to. My friend brought up the point that people say breastfeeding is "hard" but we may only think that because we may get sore or this or that, but there are so many other factors that can come into play so it is really nice to have a support system or else it can be really easy to give up.

This is kind of a random post, I guess, but I had a really good experience and wanted to share in case anyone out there wants to look up their La Leche League {<--link for the international website}.