Toddler eats. {giveaway}

If you haven’t already at one point in your life you’re going to wonder what’s the best child’s plate out there is. With a baby any simple bowl is all you may need but as that baby turns into a toddler and solids are introduced it gets a little tricky. A bowl for the mush, a plate for the solids, and what about keeping them from all running together? I introduce to you the plate to solve all your problems: Green Eats divided plates! 

It’s silly to say but I thought I had good toddler plates…until the day these came in the mail! They’re a good sturdy weight made from 100% recycled plastic milk containers and contain no BPA, melamine, or phthalates AND come in 4 great colors. My favorite part about the plates is the depth of the dividers; they’re slightly curved and so deep! Finally a place to put yogurt or applesauce without frustrating little hands trying to push a spoon around every corner for a good bite. 

The pictures below are a Saturday breakfast of eggs, chicken sausage link (sliced), hash browns, and homemade applesauce; it gives a good idea of how much you can fit on one plate while still keeping it separate. The dividers are also good for keeping dip contained or a place for a scope of homemade baby food next to slew of Puffs. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t used them for time to time!

 

 

The great people at The Green Nursery are offering a set of 2 Green Eats plates for one lucky US reader. The Green Nursery is a great earth friendly website offering an array of everything for your kiddos. It’s easy to navigate and the best part about the site is having the knowledge that anything you pick out has already been tested and chosen as a legitimate green product. There is no need to browse 10 different sites for toys, dinnerware, or strollers because it’s all right here at the Green Nursery! For all of you shopping for Christmas they have a free shipping promotion going on for orders over $49! 

Simply fan/like their Facebook page and then check out their site and tell me which color you like best in the comment section. Anonymous comments will be ignored so please make sure an email address is provided.

For extra entries tweet about the giveaway and make sure to mention @busylandb and a link so they can enter too!

I will announce the winner next week!

Good luck and special thanks to The Green Nursery for hosting this giveaway!

For the love of food {and family}.

Our Thanksgiving break was filled with family, food, family, shopping, and more family! It’s always a treat when my sister and her family are in town so we try to spend as much time as possible together. The kids played a lot of Wii sports and time outside jumping on Grammy’s trampoline. It’s adorable to see how grown up they all are now and how independent their playtimes are (well, until the fighting begins). The adults spent a lot of time playing wildly competitive games of volleyball now that my parents have a full size net in their backyard! 

 

 

Thanksgiving day itself was incredibly long for me; 24 hours of celebrating to be exact! I spent the night before prepping my 4 dishes to take to their respected homes for feasting which kept me on my feet for over four hours. The next morning was more cooking until our festivities began around 11:30am. We cooked, feasted, and played at my mom’s until close to 4:30pm when we packed up for round 2, Davy’s mom’s house. Is it terribly first world and glutinous of me to say we were still so full we couldn’t even eat a plate at dinner round 2? 

Love birds. Best picture I've ever taken of my parents...please note the knife positioning....purposefully.

The "twins" in our family.

 

By 8pm I was back at my mom’s gearing up for Black Friday. I wish they kept the 5am door busters like years past but since everything began at midnight so did we. We were at Wal-Mart by 9pm and didn’t stop until 6am Friday morning; you heard right, all night long. 

Our pre Black Friday faces! All smiles were gone at 6am!

My favorite moments were spending time with our families; we are so blessed to have a large happy family that enjoys each other enough to make the effort to be together. 

My other favorite moments were cooking. My grandmother is southern to her core and my entire childhood was spent sharing the Thanksgiving table with my dad’s family. Now that we no longer visit them my Grandma’s passed down handwritten recipe cards have become somewhat treasured. We’ve had her famous Potato Yeast Rolls recipe for 6 years and none of us have been brave enough to attempt, until now. I took all four pages and studied them before prepping. I loved reading her side note commentary such as instead of a baking time it says (underlined) “DON’T overcook, DON’T undercook” or “ALWAYS use real butter”.  It was tedious and exciting and slightly emotional but oh my goodness, it paid off. They cooked to perfection and I have never been more proud of something I baked.

 

All the leftovers are gone and we are going out tonight to purchase our Christmas tree…everything about the Holidays make me happy. It’s the most wonderful time of the year after all, right?

My very silly boys.

MishMosh.

I’ve been struggling with being sick since last week and finally Sunday morning it smacked me so hard I couldn’t get out of bed for hours. I literally bounced from the bed to the couch for 9 hours and then sent myself back to the couch yesterday afternoon in hopes I would feel better. Today, the color has returned, a smile is somewhat showing, and the faucet on my nose has finally turned off.

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. We can just pretend I wrote another mushy post like last year and call me Wife of The Year! Davy was a sweetie pie and brought me flowers, a card, and Monopoly Starbucks money for my crack Gold card. Seeing as I couldn’t even taste yesterday we figured there was no point in going out to a fancy restaurant or even going on a forced date and have postponed for another night. Thanks to everyone who wishes us well via Twitter or Facebook; we are so blessed to have so many wonderful people who support us!

While being a sick blob my girlfriend brought over a sack of chick flicks (because our movie collection still consists of every stupid guy comedy from Davy’s bachelor life) for my enjoyment. Yesterday I pulled out season 1 of Grey’s Anatomy and loved every minute of it. I have such fond memories of watching season after season every week with my girlfriends not to mention how awesome the show used to be back then. I love when a show or song or movie sparks those special memories treasured from years ago.

And one more mishmash to make you roll your eyes and smile. Yesterday in the car Moses asked if we were going home (as he recognized our house was located just 1 street away from the current road we were on)…when I told him no and that we were going to Grammy’s he looked at me and said “Are you telling the truth?”

Breaking Dawn broken down.

The Twilight Breaking Dawn buzz is in full effect and instead of writing 500 140 character tweets about it I thought I’d break it down for everyone who was not privileged to see it at midnight last night. I guess the real privileged were those who got to see the special 8pm showing that I was completely unaware of…but that’s a different story!


Cinematography/ Character appearance -9. I am proud to say they FINALLY got it together with the physical appearance of the characters and boy did it make a difference! No more awful wigs, bad coloring, and ridiculous mega glow. The cinematography was clear and crisp making everything look good!

Wedding- I won’t give away much but just want to say I was EXTREMELY happy with the song they chose!

Honeymoon- 8. For the first time in the entire series Bella and Edward finally act like they are in love. The laughing, the loving, the embracing; all good! For those who were worried about the bedroom scenes…calm down, it’s PG-13. If your child has ever seen a PG-13 movie then there is nothing to worry about because it’s a lot of hype followed by very little action. If you were disappointed by the very little action then you should be watching True Blood not Tweeny Twilight!

Baby/Birth- 8. When they say in the book that this “thing” is sucking the life out of her, they’re not kidding! They did a great job at making Bella look AWFUL and most of us had hands over mouths in shock at how she really looked like she was dying. It was pretty graphic when Bella’s life is literally slipping away however if you were worried the birth itself would be too instance, it’s not. There’s blood, there is a baby, there is a lot of cutting in and out, and there is a really sickly Bella lying on a table.

Overall- A quality 7. I say 7 because there was some extremely cheesy scenes that sucked the goodness out of the movie; it lost “cool points” so to speak. Once you see the movie you will know the exact scene I’m talking about and can I be the first one to say they all sound like Transformers during that scene! If you read the books and love the story line then you’re going to like to movie. If you’re being dragged along to see it out of the blue you’re going to hate it. If you are worried about taking your teenager daughter, don’t be. The morbid scene is more graphic then the love scene. The movies were made based off of the crazy fan base the books carry therefore don’t expect award winning moments. I personally liked it better than 2 and 3 because it’s been so long since I’ve read the book I didn’t remember in detail the plot line. They did a good job of making small references back to the other movies which for a fan is everything.

Will I see it again? Of course. After all I did leave a Twilight reading husband at home last night so eventually we will watch it together.

Will I see the next and final movie at midnight? You bet. It’s tradition. It’s the one night a year my girlfriends and I count down for and tweet non stop like teenagers about it and get giggly in the theater over inside jokes from high school.

If your reaching over to grab the nearest trash can then you should have stopped reading at the title! I'm a wife, mom, adult but I can still have my tween moment!

You can be my Punk Rock Princess {I'll be your Garage Band King}

No reason for the silence, just quiet lately. It seems I’ve been more in the mood to look forward to what’s to come (and happened) this week that I’ve been lacking on reflecting back to last week’s events. Last week’s biggest (and most frustrating) accomplishment was completing my second sewing project. I cannot believe I didn’t take any pictures of the finished products (even though I was reminded repeatedly by my sister!) so I have nothing to show for. They were two gifts for Moses’ two favorite lady friends. One was a Thomas the Train themed blue and red tutu with a red/white checked waistband that had a red tulle hair bow with a toy Thomas car in the center. The other was a pink and orange tutu with a beautiful printed fabric waistband and a long sleep white shirt with a matching fabric “T” placed on the front then cross-stitched down. At the end of the project I understood why it had been so frustrating; learning to sew (while sewing a present) requires extreme concentration and I wasn’t letting myself have any! I was coming over late at night or with the boys and it was too much to handle. Thankfully I did the Thomas tutu all by myself while my mom led by example with the first one. It wasn’t easy but I’m thankful I did it; next time I will make sure to practice on something personal that way it’s not so much pressure!

So what am I looking forward to? So much is going on in a 7 day time span but thankfully it’s nothing but fun. Last night, I got to take my little sister to her first [real] “rock show”. You know, the whole smoke filled college bar venue filled with Scene Beans, drunk girls, punk rock princesses, and oh those boys in the bands. I tried my hardest to make sure she was having a good time even if it meant shoving our way towards the front and jumping up and down with my muffin top falling out of my skinny jeans. I have incredibly fond memories of being in high school / early college and doing the band thing so this was so much fun to “chaperone” her living out these experiences.

I’ll share the rest of this week’s glory as it unfolds but I wanted to write in the moment because before I know it this moment will be over and we’ll be flying into the next one.

Ps. I have this totally wonderful giveaway to post and if I ever give myself time to sit down and write it I’ll post it this week! It’s one of those things you may not think twice about but once it’s in your arms you’re going to be all “oh my gosh this is won-der-ful!!”

{Messy} Baby memories.

I’m writing a little story based off the prompt: Spending time with friends and family can lead to fun and memorable moments, but also some very messy ones. Tell us about the messiest moments that you’ll always remember!

One of the messiest moments I can remember would have to involve my 2 year old son who was just a baby at the time. He was having an “off night” and kept waking up crying for us. We would go into his room, calm him, and lay him back down only to go in there 10 minutes later to do it all again. Frustration set in for these tired parents and finally we brought him into our bed as a last resort. I was sitting on the bed holding him when all the sudden his chest started to jump up and down. Before I know it he projectile vomited all over me; I quickly pull him away as he proceeds to launch the vomit on the comforter.  Moments later we are all three looking at each other in disbelief; we slowly got up and turned on the lights on to uncover the mess. It looked like someone turned on the blender filled with smoothie contents and forgot to put the lid on. Shortly after our sweet baby was fast asleep and we couldn’t help but smile as we laid on freshly washed sheets holding our nose from the leftover aroma.

I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls. To learn more about the messy moment program, check out www.BleachItAway.com.  Sharing your story on the Clorox fan page gets you entered for the chance to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can grab a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

Take back your life.

I have been seeing this quote in many different forms floating around lately and it’s stuck; “if you’re not satisfied with what you’re doing everyday then maybe you should be doing something different”.  So many times we put ourselves into these rigorous routines that at the end of the day we are already regretting how we spent our hours. I am the Queen of lists and planning and it feels incredible to cross something off the list however that feeling isn’t always what satisfies. How often do we write “take 30 minutes to snuggle with my husband” or “play ball outside until the grass starts itching like misquotes”? The truth is I have exactly two hours from the time I walk into the door after work to the time I’m walking out of a tucked in boy’s bedroom. After that it’s around two hours until I’m in bed; four hours each day to be living. Honestly, sometimes I get caught up in plans and lists and the next thing I know it’s 7:15 and I haven’t even playing with my son after work. Or it’s 11pm and I haven’t smooched Davy. I am not always happy with how I choose to spend my hours…so why haven’t I changed? Life should be more about laughing then a clean living room, more snuggling and less worrying. There are some things in our current circumstance that I can’t change (like being a working mom) however that doesn’t mean I can’t control the other hours in my day. It’s time to take back your free time and fill it with things you love.

This post was sparked by the time change and the legitimate sadness I felt when it was dark walking out of the office. Just because our 7pm front yard ball game is cancelled doesn’t mean we can’t turn 7:30am into field practice.

Take back your life.

Peter Rabbit Organics {winner}

It's Monday, I'm busy, so I will keep this short and sweet! 

The winner of the Peter Rabbit Organics giveaway is

Amber at Mom Stuff Blog! 

She was random #12, congrats! 

Shoot me an email at enilorac802 at gmail dot com so I can get your information!

If you didn't win today, DON'T WORRY, I have 3 more giveaways up my sleeve for the coming weeks!

You & Me, and Me & Brie.

You know those days you are craving something so bad no matter what you have to find and eat it? That was me Tuesday with Brie. Oh brie, you are so delicious. I blame the grocery store sample lady a couple weeks ago giving away slivers of brie on a French baguette because ever since then I’ve wanted more. It worked out nicely because I was feeling awfully sick and had no desire to eat anything but bread and cheese; enter grocery store and smell the fresh baked goodness of the bakery. After picking up a baguette I wondered over to the cheese to find a mini wedge to take home only to discover that stuff ain’t cheap! But it was a craving, a craving so strong I could not walk away; 2 minutes later the time it took for me to lift up every piece and check for a cheaper price a huge smile spread across and a $5.50 wheel of brie beautifully packaged in a wooden box was in my cart. What to do with so much brie you may ask? Let me break it down.

1. sit in my car…yes I have my own office however this little meal needed to be consumed as soon as possible Rip a chunk of baguette off, pull it apart with my hands, and use a plastic knife to cut a chunk of brie of the wheel. Smash the cheese between the bread and shove into mouth. Yes this is an extremely barbaric way to eat your lunch however time is of the essence and I needed it…now. Craving taken care of, crisis averted.

2. Introduce brie to the boys when I get home for work. Slice little sections of brie and place on little sections of bread as an appetizer to dinner. Have you ever seen a 2 year old eat brie? It was adorable. There was no proper bread and brie bite; it was pull the cheese off, pile into mouth, and work on the bread later.

3. The next day for lunch along with warming up leftovers in the oven I repeated the same steps in #2 and placed them in the over. Oh Rhonda. Crispy bread and melty brie? Heaven.

4. Still lots more brie so I needed to get creative. I wanted to make an autumn salad to go along with dinner last night so I cut up pears, walnuts, and lettuce but I still needed something else. Hey, why not little cubes of brie? All that combined with honey mustard/ balsamic vinegar dressing (desperate times, people) was in-credible. Fall was dancing around in my mouth so much so I made an autumn side salad for lunch today.

And that folks is how you consume a wheel of brie, 400 calories, 30g of fat, and avoiding using the bathroom for a week!

Growing up.

I'm choking back the tears. 

Growing up is a hard reality to face; epically when I know he won't want to squeeze my lips between his fingers and give me a big kiss forever.

Mr. Potato Head does Halloween.

I {almost} let the day slip by without posting about last night! I was determined to get these up as soon as possible otherwise knowing me they would be lost on the camera and posted next year.

The costume: I knew I didn’t want to pay $30 for a one time thing (I am a trained Heb after all) but at the same time I didn’t have anything in our closet I could throw together. I was browsing through Pinterest with Moses and he liked the Mr. Potato Head outfit so I figured that’s what I would make. Fast forward to last Thursday when I find out his class party is Friday (the next day) and they were supposed to wear costumes. Crap. For whatever reason I turn into Super Mom and think I can whip something up on the sewing machine in half an hour. Side note: I’ve never made a costume; I’ve never really sewn anything besides a Barbie pillows, blankets, and sleeping bags which were well over 15 years ago. At 7:30pm I left the house for Hobby Lobby, by 8:30pm I was in the craft room sketching on the back of the fabric, and by 11:30pm I was headed home with Mr. Potato Head. Call it cookie dough fuel and a little sister to help retread the machine when I messed up a miracle but I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome!

The best part was the feeling I got when he put it on; I made that, yep, his Mommy made that! The second best part was the entire thing cost me $5 and a fun night with my sister!

The night: we pregamed on Pizza and Chicken&Rice while everyone arrived, scrambled the kids together to take a few pictures, and the Walking Wagon Brigade was off. The kids ran fast to the doorbells and just as fast back to the road; about 4 houses down they were tired. About 6 houses down they were asking to be pushed from house to house. About 12 houses down someone turned into Mr. Grumpy pants and did a lot of riding on Dad’s shoulders. One thing Moses had down was his manners. He would say please &  thank you to every candy giver however he didn’t quiet master the Trick or Treat. That was fine with me because I have very mixed feels about the holiday in general but that’s an entirely different post.

Sour face in action

Happy to finally eat his candy! Please note the hot mess face action.

Overall: Awesome night. We laughed, took pictures, had fun, ate candy, ate more candy, and woke up with a stomach ache from eating candy. 

{please ignore the awful camera situation; I don't know if it was the lighting, the bright white shirt, or the photographers but they all turned out wonky!}