baby's 1st birthday!

My world traveler's first birthday. He spent his actual birthday in Madrid and I was really in love with the idea. Maybe why his bedroom is traveled themed also. 

French Vanilla Cupcakes and Whipped Cream Frosting. Stickers from Hobby Lobby.

 Deliciousness. Fruit, Veggies, and Airplane food- Pretzels and Peanuts. 

 Barf Bags. Just kidding, so they have a little bag of pretzels, M&Ms, Passport Sticker Books, and Juice boxes. 

I found these Earth paper lanterns, so cute! On the table are little clothespin airplanes that the kids got to paint and take home. And of course little foam ornaments.

I am really glad I bought the flag banner too. 

The Pantry Panic~ what a relief.

I was going insane. The Pantry was driving me nuts. When we moved in- a little over a year ago. I just started stuffing things in... I kind of had a plan. Random small appliances on the right. Food on the left. Piece of cake. Then it started to look like this.

Food items were falling off the shelves. I couldn't find things. It was just chaos!



Sunday morning at 6:30am I was fighting off the cleaning bug. I was not ready to be awake. Or wake up my men.

With breakfast done, I started pulling stuff off the shelves. Breakfast items grouped together.
Canned goods together.
Pasta together.
You get the idea .
Then my table looked like this!

This mess stayed until I arrived home with some baskets from Michaels (50%off- cha-ching) Monday afternoon and got to work.

I lose things in these back corners. So the baskets were my solution. They were the closest to the perfect size for my corners!! Yes!
The top basket holds baking goods.
The second basket holds drinks- coffee, hot chocolate, tea, etc.
The third basket holds my leftover containers (and lids- sigh). 
The bottom basket holds snack stuff.

Finally it was done!

Sanity has returned. I can see into my pantry more then I have in the last  9  3 months.

I was giving my son a bath. I heard a "Whoa! Holy smokes!" The Hubby found my pantry. He said he'd hire me to do his office and the garage.

Dude, you can't afford me.

Pork Tenderloin (Bourbon Maple Sauce!)

This was a cheater recipe... but hey, we all have them! and we all have those days!
My hubby had decided we should have pork more since I keep cooking chicken even though he'd rather not have it as often as I cook it. So I was looking over the Pork selections at the store and the fresh meat seemed really fatty, so I took a closer look at the pre-packaged selection. There were a few different "flavors" and the Bourbon Maple caught my eye. This I can do! 

6 slices of bacon (8 depending on the size)
1-2 cups of Bourbon*
1/4 cup of maple syrup (keep the bottle handy)
1/4 brown sugar
1-2 cups of water*
salt
pepper

mushrooms
onions
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp flour

In a slow cooker mix bourbon, maple syrup, brown sugar and water Add a pinch of salt and pepper.
Wrap the bacon around the pork. (I overlapped them at an angle and then set the pork on them and then wrapped them around.) Place in slow cooker. Drizzle some syrup on top of the bacon. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6 hours.

Saute mushrooms and onions in oil on medium heat until they soften. Stir in flour and allow the flour to soak up the oil on low heat. Stir in the bourbon-maple mixture from the slow cooker. Simmer on low heat until the sauce thickens. Move pork onto serving plate and pour sauce on top. Serve!

*These depend on the size of your slow cooker/crockpot and the size of your tenderloin. I wanted the liquids to cover the bottom of the pot and come up the sides of the tenderloin a little. The water will evaporate a little and leave behind the taste anyway.

Beef Lo Mein

If I could have found some way to avoid my kitchen this week I would have. It's been a long week and I've run the dishwasher more times then I can count and I've swept under my son's highchair the same number of times... This turned out pretty good, although the sauce was lacking... I can tweak it for next time I suppose. Oh, and for the veggies I found a veggie mix in the freezer section with everything I needed for this recipe. Bingo!! 

1/2 pound angel hair pasta

3 tablespoons hoisin sauce

1/4 cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1 teaspoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger

1 medium onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced

4 to 5 shiitake mushroom caps, thinly sliced

1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots

1 cup broccoli florets

1 cup sugar snap pea pods, halved

1 (15-ounce) can Chinese baby corn, drained and cut in thirds

1 to 1 1/4 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-size strips (or beef in my case)

Cook the noodles according to the package directions until just tender. Drain out the water. Rinse the noodles with cold water, drain them well, and then set them aside.

In a small bowl, mix the hoisin sauce, chicken broth, soy sauce, sesame oil, and cornstarch. Then set the sauce aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil in a large wok or nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Stir-fry the ginger for 30 seconds. Then add the onion and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and carrots and stir-fry 2 minutes more. Finally, add the broccoli, pea pods, and corn. Stir-fry the vegetables for 2 more minutes, then transfer them to a plate.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in the pan. Add half of the chicken and stir-fry it until it's no longer pink, about 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer it to another plate. Stir-fry the remaining chicken, then return the first batch to the pan. Add the cooked noodles, vegetables, and sauce. Turn the heat down to medium.

Using two spatulas or wooden spoons, lightly toss the mixture until heated through, about 3 minutes. Serves 4 to 6. Or a 2 hungry adults and 1 hungry baby.

trying to plan a birthday party

I mean how cute are these?

Gut tells me to go with it. Practicality tells me to talk over every little detail with my hubby. And my hubby is not being helpful... at all. So many ideas floating around in my head and I am trying to decide how to execute a party for a 1 year old when all the other kids are going to be much older. Our budget is snug for this, as we have been traveling overseas, and paying out of pocket for most of it.
Want to guess the theme?
Travel!!!!

The party is going to be a month late anyways. I feel crazy for even attempting a party! Oh well, here goes something!

The second makeover- Kitchen Kerfuffle

These are probably the most familiar and the most embarrassing. Familiar because we've all been there, every. day. Embarrassing because we let it get that bad, though we would dare not let anyone see if possible. But alas, here it is!

So since this fateful day, 3 days ago, I've loaded up the dishwasher (named DW, ha ha!) and run it every evening, full or not. It feels good but kinda wasteful at the same time. Although if you knew the love/hate relationship I have with my dishwasher, it's not really that wasteful. It loves it, I hate it.

So the love/hate relationship is...

Soak dishes in the sink.
Load in DW.
Run the cycle. DW decides to:

turn itself off after I walk away,
not start at all,
run a partial cycle (though all the buttons are pushed),
run the cycle without opening the soap compartment,
get the spinners caught on something that's not in the way.

Re-run cycle in DW, which suddenly works fine.
Re-soak at least 25% of all dishes because they decided they didn't want to be clean.
Load pre-pre-pre-pre cleaned dishes and the start on the new pile that has accumulated during the previous 4 cleanings.

Annoying right? And it's a brand-new dishwasher. State-of-the-art. blah. I really want to go all paper and plastic. I recycle. no pun intended.

My ultimate finishing goal is:
1. to love everything above my cabinets. Its a smorgasbord of things I'm trying out to see what I like and what works for me.
2. Attack the pantry. It's scary.

Well, this is it. Makeover #2!

the start- Laundry - Drop your drawers here!

I was finally fed up. with everything.

Tripping over stuff every time I came in through the garage.
Shoes. Laundry. Boxes. Cords. Rugs. Brooms.
I was fed up with hearing my husband ask what I did today.
"here's dinner and your son hasn't been given up for adoption." What more could he want?!? 
My son isn't that bad, but I get 5-10 minutes in each station.
Each station being:
1. the highchair
2. the johnny jump-up
3. the dishwasher
4. the magnets on the fridge
5. the pool toys
etc.

So naturally whatever I could get done in each of those 5-10 minutes is all that really got done. I dedicated all of my son's naptimes plus folding the laundry during play time to accomplish this:

Minus sorting through my "fan" mail, which I never want to do. Shred, shred, shred, I don't need 20 credit card offers from the same place in 1 month!!!




Anyway, this is my start.

It can only get better from here, right?