What is this sudden urge for traditions?!?!

  A few weeks ago I let pregnancy hormones get the best of me.  I started panicking to my husband that we had no traditions to pass on to our children.  No Christmas, Thanksgiving, weekly, or special traditions.  What will make our grown children love being a part of our family if we don't have anything that we do as a fun, special, or sacred tradition.  My husband pointed out to me in his calm, reassuring way that we don't have grown children yet, we've only been married for 4 months, and that we haven't even celebrated the holidays together yet...so I forgave myself for the failure of no traditions to this point, and hopefully my future children will remain unharmed and still love our family.  But you can be sure I have set out to establish some traditions.  Pretty much everything I do I think to myself, "ooohhh...should this be a tradition?!??!"  Every year 3 Mondays before Christmas we should have macaroni and cheese...my kids will love me then.  LOL.
   Okay, so like I said I think some of this is due to pregnancy hormones, especially seeing as my little avocado-sized baby is probably not feeling a great life-long loss because we are in the process of making traditions.  Needless to say, one thing we did start doing is making a big breakfast together on Saturday morning before or after visitation.  I LOVE the idea!!  I am finding out I am much more traditional than I realized.  I also realized our brand new tradition is going to bite the dust the next few weeks because of the Holidays.  Aaahh...I hope that doesn't make it un-traditional when we do get back to doing it.

Here is one of the weekly, traditional Saturday breakfasts in photos.  It was SOOOO good!!  :-)

I made these super quick and easy Mini Omeletes:

 Basically just spray your muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray.  

Beat together eggs (I did 8) and milk, as if you were making a regular pan omelet or scrambled eggs.

Pour the egg mixture into your muffin pan.  Sprinkle with cheese.

Add toppings of your choice.  

My choice was different than my husband's.  He has the pretty-looking ones with peppers, onions, mushrooms, and meat.  I had meat and cheese.  I was generous with myself and gave myself extra cheese.  I used a mixture of ham and breakfast sausage.  Yummmm.

 

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.  

These fluffy, tasty wonders come out looking beautiful!!!

 Next, I had made extra baked potatoes to make hash browns.  

I have been eating baked potatoes like they're going out of style since I started getting my appetite back. 

All I had to do was quickly shred the potatoes and season them.  And add cheese.

 At first I was going to give my husband like 2/3rds of the potatoes.  But as I stood at the frying pan I started reasoning to myself...first, he already got 6 of the omelets and I only made 3 for myself and second, I am pregnant and potatoes are like gold to me right now. The below picture was before all of my reasoning had concluded.  Reason was good to me this morning and I definitely ended up with at least 50%.  :-)

 Oooh....I wanted to add some fruit and I remembered a tradition my Mom used to do.  Write on our bananas and talk into them like they were a telephone.  This tradition had to be cut in half due to the economy (and it being our last one) but it was still fun to see my husband's face when he got his banana-gram. :-)

 I love this tradition!  :-)

Christmas in our home sweet together

 I had so much fun decorating our house for the first time this year! 

Our Montoro parents gave us our little tree- which was the perfect size for our living room.  

I had gotten a white artificial one for free, so I was going to use it and make the best out of it, but it was 6 feet and the inlaws couldn't bear the thought of a white tree gracing (disgracing) our decor.

So they got us a real one, and I decorated it immediately.  It's adorable!

 The stockings were hung from the sconces with care.... 

 Had to get me some mistletoe for my first Christmas!!!  

I almost got attacked when I first displayed it.  :-)  

My husband says it is the best. ornament. ever.  

 Pinterest came through for me with most of my decorations.  These were leftover ornaments from my wedding, bulbs I found at the Elba thrift store for 25 cents, and a beautiful vase that special friends gave us for our wedding. I love the Christmas re-make!

 Also ideas from Pinterest:

A frame that I used for my wedding and use as a photography prop, decorated with ornaments, ribbon, and garland.  

Our kitchen window even got a makeover to match the turquoise and black theme we had going. :-) 

 Cute ornament from a Pastor's wife that came over for dinner the first time we had company.  :-)

 

 The puppy I was working with took full advantage of the decorating festivities to help himself to his puppy food.  The audacity!!!

 Cute way to hang ornaments up- 

with ribbon and clothespins on the cupboard doors.  :-)

 Handmade ornament made for me by a friend over 10 years ago.  I carefully saved them for the day I'd decorate my own house. 

Flowers were compliments of my husband. :-) 

 All together now.  :-)  

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!!

And, a picture of me showing my little 14 week "bump." 

Easy Maternity Belly Band

The inevitable has started to happen.  Some of my skirts are getting hard to zip up all the way. I have been eye-ing material and patterns on pinterest on how to make a belly band so I can stay in my regular skirts as long as possible.  As I am just about to enter my 2nd trimester and my skirts are starting to risk falling off if I unzip them any more without some aid!! 
When my husband and I were in Manhattan I spotted a clearance rack for 50 cents at a store- that is my kind of clearance!  There wasn't a lot to choose from, just XL knit shorts.  Wait a minute...XL knit shorts could make a perfect belly band!  I checked them over and they seemed to have just what I needed, and for 50 cents, how could I at least not give it a try! 

I loved the results:  In about 10 minutes the material went from  shorts to belly band, and all for 50 cents!!

 Here are the shorts before they got transformed.  

I just cut the legs off, the part where they were sown together.

I planned to have the waist be the part that showed as the band, so I didn't have to make any changes to that because it fit perfectly.  But it left a lot of excess material with the part that I wanted around my belly.  So I just added darts- 

2 in the front and 3 in the back, was just what it needed to stay up but not be too snug, so it will fit a growing baby and belly.  The knit material makes it stretchy enough to grow with, but the darts made it so it wouldn't fall off.  I trimmed the material inside the dark so there wouldn't be any extra bulk. 

And...I was DONE!!!

I love how it turned out.  :-) 

This is the side where the zipper is and there is no bulk or bumps, even though the skirt is unzipped halfway.  Perfect!

Thanksgiving

     It was my first Holiday away from home, that coupled with I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep my food down or not made me wonder how my first Thanksgiving would be here.  It went great- I was overwhelmed all day at how much I have to be thankful for.  I am living my dream- married to a sweet, godly man, a baby on the way, our bills paid, a pretty house that the Lord provided us with, so much new to be thankful for- church, friends, family, and all the "old" that has stayed the same
- my family and friends back home.  I am so blessed! :-)  Add to that- I even kept my thanksgiving dinner down, (temporarily) and got to go Black Friday shopping with my sister-in-law and another sweet girl from church and we got some great deals at Kohls.   AND we even had a puppy in the house (I have missed having animals around) to celebrate Thanksgiving with us- he is here for training for 2 weeks. 

 So much hard work and good food!

 A full table- even though we missed the oldest

three who are in college. They will be home for a month at Christmas.

 My plate was full and overflowing. 

And this was my first round! :P

 

Standing in line for 1 1/2 hours at Kohls- but it was worth it!

The cashier was so nice to us and gave us a 30% off discount and scanned her $10 

off anything coupon for all 3 of us.  Plus getting $15 Kohls cash- we made out like bandits!!

It's true- the more you know the more you Kohls.  

 

 Thank you Lord for all your blessings!!

My absence

Well, I started this blog with great intentions, but I haven't been doing a lot of updating on here lately.
The reason????  It's been pretty crazy!  I traveled back home to Rochester two weeks ago for a long-time friend's wedding, and then I attended a huge photography expo with another friend this past week.  Before that I took 2 3-day seminars of marketing, branding, and posing and I have been working on moving my business here and all that entails. 

 
      Also, we are going to be making our home sweet together a little different, changing things up a little.
We found out we are going to be adding two feet to our home.  The actual addition won't be until next Summer, but a lot of the beginning preparation is being done now.  So, in essence we are:

Though the house isn't actually growing any bigger, 

it sure will be a lot sweeter with those two little feet around.  

That's right!! Our addition is 2 BABY feet!!!!  :-)

Coming in June, 2013. 

Thanks to these two little feet coming, 

I have been really sick and the smell of cooking food is NOT my friend now.

My husband has been more than gracious as he tries to scrounge up meals from here and there and he never complains, even though his preference is 3 hot meals a day.  I am blessed right now if I can make that many a week.  :P  

So my home-making efforts right now are all being poured into growing those two little feet inside me.  :-) 

Thus, my absence!  I can't even go on Pinterest right now- the thought of all or any of that food cooking grosses me out and sends me headed for the porcelain bowl.  Peter says they should hire me at the airport to sniff out bombs, because I can smell EVERYTHING right now.  A common conversation will be, "do you smell our neighbors making spaghetti and meatballs?"  "Did you put cayenne pepper on your food?" "Why do your hands smell like baby wipes- oh yeah, that's your lotion smell." 

Crazy times!! And I thought some pregnancy symptoms were stereo-typical...boy have I learned a lot!

 

"The pitter patter of tiny feet
leave behind something dear and sweet
a precious treasure for me to keep
the memories of your tiny feet"