Doctor Who's Fish Finger (cookies) and Custard

Tomorrow Doctor Who will be removed from Netflix. Sooooo, Gavin and I have been binge watching the show all weekend! In the Doctor's honor, we had Fish Fingers and Custard for dessert tonight. Fish fingers dipped in custard sounds disgusting, so we make cookies disguised to look like fish sticks but taste a little like shortbread cookies.

Chiropractic for Infant Reflux

Olivia was 9 pounds 1 ounce when she was born! Despite the fact that she was a big girl, she immediately had problems gaining weight. When we were leaving the hospital they told us that she had lost more than 10% of her birth weight, so we would have to drop into her pediatrician's office in 2 days for a weight check.

At that appointment, she had gained a little weight but not enough for them to feel comfortable. They scheduled us to come back in the next week for another weight check. Thus began a cycle of going to the doctor's office once a week for weight checks.

DIY Princess Room Decorations #TBT

Happy Thursday! I have so much fun looking back through pictures to find a throwback project or party to share every Thursday :) This week, I am sharing a project from almost 2 years ago! As you will come to find out, many of my projects are co-captained by my best friend Penni. Not only are we besties, she is also Paul's baby sister so she can't get rid of me even if she tries!

One of our close family friends decided to redecorate the room their daughters share as a birthday present for one of them. Our friends stayed up all night putting layers and layers of glitter paint on the walls, rearranging the furniture and the girls got all new bedding! Penni and I decided to go princess crazy to add some extra pizzazz to the room!

Holocaust Memorial Day 2016

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a time to remember the people who were lost during those dark days and to keep the horror fresh in our minds so as to never allow it to happen again. Growing up, we were reminded often throughout our Jewish education to never forget.

The terrifying details of the Holocaust are so evil that it is hard to believe that one human could do these things to another human, much less on such a large scale. My grandparents luckily never had to live in a concentration camp. Their parents and siblings never had to either. That being said, both sides of my family had many, many losses. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. People who were taken from them because of hate.

Ch-ch-changes Week 3

It has been a crazy couple of weeks and I'll be honest, I could be doing a lot better at making my weekly changes! I'm going to really focus on sticking to these goals this week! I have still been doing fairly well drinking my water, but I have not met my goal every day. The yoga has also been going pretty well but I have only managed to do either the morning or evening routines, but not both. Boo! I stink. This week I am going to make a change that doesn't require me to add anything extra to my day, just do something differently! That way, hopefully I can make the water and yoga higher priorities!

Blogging 102

Well, I officially have a week more experience than the last blogging post I wrote :) There is so much to learn and work on and fix! I am trying to take on all of the new things one at a time as they come up, while still trying to put myself out there by posting and networking at Link Parties.

This week I tried to take a critical eye to my current layout and theme. So far I am just working with a free theme, but I finally got around to doing small customization within the basic setup. I also rearranged my social media icons and created a whole sidebar of information to increase readability. In the interest of making posts as easy to find as possible, I added a search bar and tabs at the top to select various blog topics.

One of the ways I have been learning about how to set up each page is by visiting as many other blogs as I can. While browsing and navigating the layouts of other sites I am able to determine things that I like. I've also had times where the way an ad popped up was distracting or I had a hard time finding what I was looking for. Experiencing the positives and negatives helps to find what will work best for me!

Pepperoni Breadsticks

This weekend I decided to take a good thing and make it better! There is a local restaurant that makes amazing pepperoni breadsticks. Paul and I have been known to order only bread sticks as a meal occasionally.

So, I decided to modify my Olive Garden copycat breadsticks, which can be found here.

The World's BEST Cinnamon Rolls

Ahhhh! The weekend! One of my favorite things to do on Saturdays is make cinnamon rolls that we can snack all evening, then have for Sunday morning breakfast. I make them from scratch, so the process isn't quick but it is so worth the time and energy! These cinnamon rolls are ridiculously phenomenal! 

Gavin's Corner

Gavin has been hearing about this new blog I am working on. He is very proud of me and likes the idea that I get to write about things that are exciting for me, be them things I do, watch or make. This is going to be the spot where he shares his thoughts about whatever is on his mind. Tonight it is Doctor Who. Enjoy :)

Upcycle an Old Sweatshirt Into a Baby Wearing Cover

Our car is still in the shop. I have been very fortunate to have family that has been able to pick Gavin up from school every day for me. But, on Thursday all of my amazing peeps were busy. Luckily it was warmer than it had been earlier in the week but it was still pretty cold. Olivia has a nice, warm full body North Face coat but I always feel like the wind cuts through my Lillebaby Airflow baby carrier.

I decided to find an old sweatshirt and try to make it something that my carrier can "wear". I found a sweatshirt that I had gotten as a souvenir on a trip to Boston that never seemed to fit me right, then broke out my scissors and sewing machine!

How to Throw an AMAZING Tea Party! #TBT

Brrr! It is cold and snowy outside today! So, for today's Throwback Thursday post, I am going to reminisce about a warm spring day when we threw the best tea party ever. Granted that is a subjective opinion, but I'm fairly certain that any of the other people who attended would agree!

My father-in-laws were in town from Georgia to meet Olivia for the first time. Anytime they are in town we have fun planning a dinner party at my house for the whole family to attend. We decided a month or two in advance that we wanted to have a shabby chic, Wonderland style tea party.

It Takes A Village

It takes a village to raise a child. A saying we have all heard but no one knows exactly where it came from. Regardless of the origin, it is an accurate description of a typical American childhood. When you think about your own upbringing, remember the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, family, friends and acquaintances that have had an influence on your life and who you are as a person. Sometimes members of the village are needed for support and assistance, sometimes for advice, celebration and sometimes just for a hug.

Ch-ch-changes Week 2

It has been a week since making the change to drinking at least 64 ounces of water daily. Overall it has been going really well! One challenge that I did have was the change in my schedule over the weekend. Without the time constraint of getting Gavin to school and Paul leaving for work, I typically let our schedule go a little wonky. Both Saturday and Sunday I failed to meet my goal of drinking all 64 ounces. That being said, I am not one that lets a bad day get me down. I will just keep on keeping on and eventually it will be normal for me to drink that much water every day.

I have been brainstorming ideas for what change I wanted to introduce this week. I knew I wanted it to be some sort of exercise, but I couldn't decide what. There are so many options. YouTube videos, walking the neighborhood, using one of the many Pinterest pictorials, you name it! I finally decided to bring back something that used to make me feel really good in my body. A couple years ago, I had a yoga routine that I would do every night before bed. It didn't take a long time, but it did make me feel stretched out and helped me to get a better quality of sleep. Starting tonight, I will be doing the exact same bedtime yoga routine that I found at Pop Sugar Fitness.

Doctor Who Party

 

Today is a very very cold Martin Luther King Jr Day. No school but no way I'm leaving the house in this weather. So Gavin and I decided that it is a perfect Netflix day. And our absolute favorite thing to watch on Netflix is Doctor Who! Gavin has been going through the Classic Doctor Who episodes on his own, but whenever we have time to watch together, we watch the modern version. Well, both of us almost started crying today when we saw something new under the show description... Available until: 2/1/2016. WHAT? We only have access until the end of the month!

After I managed to pick my jaw up off the floor and wipe away the tears I got on the phone to Netflix and requested them to keep the show. Did you know that you can do that? It doesn't mean that it will work, but if they get enough requests for certain shows they try to keep or add them. So, if you are a fan of Doctor Who like we are, call Netflix and ask them to keep it!

In honor of our Doctor Who marathon and our hopeful positive energy that the show will stay on Netflix, I am featuring the Premiere Party we threw for the start of the 9th season. For now I will just show all of the highlights of our party, but I will be sharing the recipes for our delicious dinner sometime soon, so stay tuned!

Blogging 101

If you came to this post looking for expert advice, you may want to look elsewhere. I am not a seasoned blogger who has been doing this forever and a day. I just started this blog a little over a week ago and have been trying to learn as I go. What I do have going for me is that I have spent my entire life reading and writing and dreaming about the day I could make money writing. Hopefully that is the path this blog will take for me. 

Before starting Meeshie's World, I spent lots of time on Pinterest coming up with new projects and ways to make life more efficient and enjoyable. The only difference now is that I am documenting the things we do. The writing has gone quickly for me but it is surprising how much more time it takes when you are taking pictures of every step. I have also had several instances where I realized hours later that I forgot to take a picture of a crucial step or a final result. For example, I took pictures of the whole process I went through to make Crockpot Chicken Enchiladas the other day, then forgot to take a picture after it was done baking... Oops!

Easy Chili Cheese Party Dip

The Green Bay Packers are playing a play off game against the Arizona Cardinals tonight. Go Pack Go! We are not only fans, we are also stock holders :)

If you are anything like us, stocking up on snack foods makes watching the game even better! Here is an extremely easy Chili Cheese Dip that is bound to be a hit!

Ear Candling- Pros, Cons and Tips

Ear candling is a very old form of eastern medicine. I first heard about it while working as a massage therapist at a local spa. The owner decided to start offering it as a treatment that could be added on to any spa service. All of the staff got to try it so that we would be able to describe it to the clients. I was pretty amazed at how clear my ears felt after having it done. I liked it so much that I bought some to bring home and use on Paul. He also felt a big difference and was a really big fan. Over the years we have occasionally bought ear candles to use, typically whenever we found ourselves in health food stores. It has always been an enjoyable and helpful experience.

In doing some research to prepare myself to write this blog post, I was overwhelmed to find out that there is an extremely negative view of ear candles by the medical community. It is alleged that there is no benefit and it is basically just a danger because of the open flame. Then you have the positive websites that claim that ear candles not only clean out the ears but also balance the whole body and create overall good health. I've always thought it was somewhere in between. I have never felt that using an ear candle will solve whole body health problems, but I do feel a difference in my ears after using an ear candle. My ears typically produce a lot of wax and it really does seem a lot better every time I've done it.

So... With all that being said, Paul and I had a great time candling our ears the other night :) If you decided to go against all of the anti-ear candling rhetoric I found online, these are tips and instructions on how to do it!

#TBT Pregnancy Announcements and more

I've been doing fun projects for a lot longer than I've been blogging, so I decided that every Thursday I will do a Throwback Thursday post that recounts a pre-blog adventure.

This week, I am sharing the pictures we took that introduced the people we love to the news that we were expecting a new baby. It was so much fun that we did announcement pictures for our gender reveal and new baby photos.

Luckily for us, my dad is a fantastic photographer. He doesn't typically take pictures of people but he makes an exception for our family :) Feel free to check out his awesome photography gallery and blog.

We did the photo shoot in Gavin's playroom because one of the walls is a chalkboard. There were a couple different poses and setups.

Brownies 2.0: Box Brownies with a Peanut Butter Upgrade

The other night we were all wishing we had a sweet treat for dessert, but it was also a busy evening so I needed to find something easy and quick. I checked the cabinet and found a box of brownies. As good as those are sometimes, we were in the mood for something a little bit more. So, we decided to upgrade our brownies! Brownies 2.0 is a delicious mix of chocolate and peanut butter that only takes a few extra minutes.

Ch-ch-changes Week 1

Olivia is 8 months old! This time has absolutely flown by and we have been enjoying every second of it. That being said, I am still carrying around all of my baby weight. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who loses all of the weight from breastfeeding. I wish! In the past, I tried to make healthy changes in a big burst. I would change my eating habits, start trying to work in exercise and try to drink more water all at once, then burn myself out quickly. In the hopes that I can actually make some new good habits, I am going to make my changes using baby steps. Every Tuesday I am going to pick a new change or habit to start.

For the first week of my ch-ch-changes I am going to work on drinking more water. Some of the benefits of drinking plenty of water include weight loss, higher energy levels, healthier skin and less digestive issues, as well as keeping you hydrated for exercise. The average human body is made up of 75% water which is why it is so important to drink enough!

Monthly Baby Pictures

When it comes to baby pictures, Pinterest has an unlimited number of options. I only wish I had thought of any of the creative photo ideas when Gavin was a baby. While I was pregnant with Olivia, I spent hours trying to pick different ideas for cute baby pictures. Even though I am by no means a professional, I have always liked to dabble in photography. One of the things that I knew I wanted to do was to take monthly pictures of her.

Today is Olivia's 8 month birthday. Every month we take the same pictures using the same props so that we can see her growing up throughout her first year of life!

Star Wars Birthday Party

We are slightly obsessed with Star Wars! Okay, okay... TOTALLY obsessed! Our family has seen all of the movies more times than we can count. We love the new movie and I'm also secretly dating Han Solo. Don't tell Paul! Today at the store, Gavin brought along some money he got for Christmas and got an awesome new Bladebuilders Jedi Master Lightsaber set!

Since we have Star Wars on the brain, I decided to share the awesome Star Wars sleepover Gavin had for his 9th birthday.

Confessions of a Carboholic

Mmmmmm, carbs.

I just can't get enough! Healthy eating is in my near future, so I decided to make a carb lover's dream for dinner last night. We had tried an amazing copy-cat recipe for Olive Garden bread sticks that I've been waiting for an excuse to make again. I gave Gavin a list of a few different pasta dinners to go with them and he chose spaghetti and meatballs. I don't have a lot of experience with meatballs, so I searched Pinterest and found a delicious but easy looking recipe.

Here is the link to the bread stick recipe I used: http://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/2014/09/homemade-olive-garden-breadsticks.html . The original recipe was for 12 bread sticks. Two of my nephews were going to be joining us for dinner and 2/3 apiece just did not seem like it would be enough so I doubled the recipe. The instructions and recipe below is for 24 bread sticks. We only ended up eating about 12 during dinner, but throughout the evening, quite a few of the rest ended up being eaten. They are so tasty that I will probably always make 24 at a time and serve them for a couple dinners in a row!

Here is the link to the meatball recipe I used: http://hubpages.com/food/Easy-Meatball-Recipe-with-Tips . Many of the recipes I found for meatballs used a mixture of ground beef and Italian sausage. Paul said that he would enjoy whatever I made, but typically his preference was to not have the sausage mixed in. This recipe is all ground beef and seemed really simple. I did make a couple changes based on ingredients that I had at home, but I followed it pretty closely. The website includes three different ways to cook the meatballs. Because I had the time to start them early, I used the most time consuming technique, but these can definitely be done much faster!

PIZZA PIZZA!!!

We loooooove pizza at our house! Paul and Gavin prefer Papa John's, while I tend to favor Pizza Hut. Really I think that Papa John's tastes better, but Pizza Hut is the only local place that offers stuffed crust pizza. Whoever came up with the idea of filling pizza crust with cheese is a genius! Despite our preferences, we often just go get our pizza from Little Caesars, since it is fast, easy and CHEAP!

A couple months ago, I asked Paul to pick up some flour from the store. He came back with a twenty pound bag! I took one look at that giant bag of flour and decided to accept the challenge. I went on a baking spree! Breads, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, cookies! You name it, I baked it. One of my most exciting successes was pizza crust. Since the first time we ate this homemade pizza, my hubby cannot fathom getting pizza from anywhere else! He has been asking for it for a few weeks now, so I decided to reward him tonight :)

Hello 2016!

The new year is here and I am ready to make things happen. I am new to the Stay at Home Mom world and loving it so far! I continually find myself caught between wanting to do every project I've ever seen on Pinterest and feeling like there is no time to get anything done. So... why not add writing blog posts to the to-do list? :)

Since making the decision to stay home with my third grade son and 8 month old daughter, I have been playing with some amazing recipes that have gotten rave reviews from the fam, as well as experimenting with cleaning and organization techniques. I've even snuck a few baby photo shoots in! The thought that I should be documenting these challenges and accomplishments started swimming through my head.

This year I didn't make any resolutions, instead I am focusing on less specific improvements. My list of things to work on includes organization, budgeting, losing weight, eating healthier, doing more crafts, efficient cleaning routines and being the best mom I can be! It seems to me that most of these things are the same improvements that many people think of while trying to better themselves and their worlds. SOOOO, welcome to Meeshie's World, where I will share my improvement process!

See you soon!