Wonderful Wednesday + Dinner

I've been bad about doing my weekly "Wonderful Wednesday" post.  :(  To be honest our days off are jam packed with chores and to do lists.  I'm hoping things slow down a little bit so we get back to our lazy days off together.

Yesterday I got to meet my friend Anna's baby boy.  Talk about getting baby fever!  He was just the cutest thing and so tiny.  It's hard to believe W was 3 lbs smaller than him.  You really do forget how little bitty they are.  William went to daycare for a few hours while I visited Anna.  It's good for him to play with his friends and get some energy out.  I also figured my little snotty nose baby didn't need to be around precious little Jon Bradley.
 
That afternoon I picked up a few things from Pottery Barn and W and I went to the grocery store.  We did lots of playing when we got home and practiced reading from our "First Words" book.  We are proud to say that William can say banana and deer (I'm sure his papa is thrilled that one of his first words was deer....typical Hattenbach/Gooding)!!!

For dinner we had my version of taco salad.  Growing up my mom would mix ground meat with ranch style beans and put it over lettuce for taco salad night.  It was always one of my favorites!  Here's my version....

What you'll need:

Ground turkey or beef
Taco Seasoning
Black Beans
Chopped Green Chiles
Red Enchilada Sauce (comes in mild, medium and hot)
Jiffy Corn Bread (milk and 1 egg)
Shredded Cheese
Lettuce
Catalina Dressing and/or Salsa

Instructions:

• Make the jiffy cornbread as instructed on the box.  After mixing and spraying the pan with PAM I spread the corn bread mixture over the bottom of a pan.  It barely covers the bottom but as you can see in the picture below it works out great.  I cook the cornbreat at 400 degrees for 12 minutes.
• Brown ground turkey/beef until cooked. 
• Drain. 
• Mix in taco seasoning.
• After draining black beans add to meat along with green chilis and 3/4 of enchilada sauce (you can add more or less depending on how juicy you want it). 

Once your cornbread is ready spread the meat mixture on top and then add as much shredded cheese on top as you want!
Put back in the over at 350 until the cheese is melted.
You can eat this yumminess over lettuce or just by itself.  I like to put some catalina dressing on mine but salsa is also yummy.  If you want a lower carb option you don't have to eat the cornbread.  :)  It's a win win for everyone!

It's quick, easy, pretty healthy, tastes yummy and makes great leftovers.  Can't beat that!
 

Showering Perry

The last couple of weekends we've celebrated the upcoming arrival of baby Perry!  Gordon and I hosted a small couples shower at our house with some fajitas, margaritas and yummy sweet treats. 
Instead of the doing the typical pink I tried to coral!  To be honest, it's nearly impossible to match corals so we had a variety of pink/orange/coral. 

We had some yummy sugar cookies, strawberry cakeballs and chocolate cupcakes.  I made everything besides the cookies!
The cakeballs are pretty easy to make.  I just make a bake a cake, break up the cooked cake (I use hand blender), mix container of frosting with crumbs and refrigerate over night.  The next day I make the balls using a melon baller and put them in the freezer for 2 hours.  After that all you have to do is  dip them in either a chocolate or candy melts (chocolate is easiest to use).  I used the white candy melts this time and used Wilton peach coloring to make them coral/pink. 

 I love how the cookies turned out!  Monogram. Gray. Chevron. Precious!!

I made the banner with my Cricut and the white vases are beer bottles that I spray painted white a couple of years ago.  I've used them for several different parties...I just change out the ribbon that's around them!

I love getting to use all my Beatriz Ball stuff!  The tray on the right is actually a cheese platter....I just placed some left over coral paper over the marble.

I was happy with how the flowers turned out.  Just some orange roses with slices of orange and blueberries.  Instead of the normal food labels I cut out these circles, put Perry's monogram on them and just wrote in what was on the menu! Then, I just tied them onto different things in the kitchen. 

I found the gray chevron ribbon at Michael's (as well as the mason jar). 

Nursing friends...old and new!

 Here are a few pictures from Alison's shower out in Katy.

 

 

They had yummy fruit, pasta salad, vegetables/dip, small sandwiches and pink cakeballs from Starbucks.  I loved the umbrella theme! 

 



Cristin and Lindsey + baby boy

William and Parker

As you can see in the picture above William is in love with Parker.  He just laughs and smiles at her.  She is like a little momma and will be a fabulous big sister!  Hopefully she'll come over and help me with the little guy when we are neighbors.  :)

Birthday Party Details

I know this post about William's birthday details is a little delayed but I figured it's better late than never!  Having his party at the zoo was a bit difficult because we had to bring everything in, set up, take everything down and load it back up all in 2.5 hours.  I wasn't able to hang things where I really wanted....but by the time the party started I really didn't care.  As long as everyone was having fun!  I will say I'm looking forward to having W's party at our home next year.  :)

 

These adorable invitations came from Bering's.  You really can't go wrong shopping at Bering's!  If you live in Houston you must go. 

 

 

We had two long tables to work with so one of them was used for presents and the other for food.  My mom bought the white tablecloths online and I found the yellow chevron table runners on ETSY.  William's adorable birthday cake and smash cake were made by Elizabeth with Eggleston's Edibles (you can find her on Facebook).  One of the cake layers was strawberry and the other two vanilla.  It was delicious.  I made the fabric banner hanging behind the presents.  I had originally planned to use it as a photo backdrop but there wasn't a good place to hang it from.  I got the fabric at Wal-Mart, cut it into long strips and then tied it onto white rope.  William had fun helping with this project! 

 

 

One of my favorite things were the centerpieces on each of the tables...sweet William's hand prints on pots!  Half of the pots were yellow and the others white.  The white pots had giraffes on them (I don't have a very good picture of the final outcome) and the yellow had zebras.  My mom found the pots at hobby lobby and spray painted them all white.  I then spray painted 3 of those yellow (over the white).  The yellow turned out to be my favorite AND they held the hand print color better.    

 

Once the spray paint dried we did William's hand prints.  As you can imagine, this is no easy task with a squirmy little guy.  I found the ink pads for his hand prints at Michael's.  The giraffes were orange and the zebras were white.  To make the handprints into animal I used a Sharpie marker (black for zebra and brown for giraffe).  His thumb print made the head/neck and his pinkie the tail.  The chevron boxes that some of the pots sat on were just cardboard boxes wrapped in paper I found on Etsy.    

At our wedding instead of having a traditional sign in book I made a photo book for people to sign/write notes in.  I love this book because it has all of my favorite pictures and our closest friends/family wrote us sweet notes in it.  So, I decided to do the same thing for William's birthday party.  This is such a great way to get all of your pictures into one place and to help remember the people that celebrated a special day with you! 

Photo book from Snapfish

I had a mason jar with primary colored pens next to the photo book and pictures from William's one year photo session. 

 



The chalk board in the back of the above picture said "William is One".  I put all the things he loved at that time.  :)

 

I made William's birthday banner with my new Cricut.  I'm so glad I bought this...it's super easy to use and fast (two things that every mommy is looking for).  I was able to make the entire banner in less than an hour!  I can't wait to do another project and to have a little craft area in our next house for my fun gadgets.  For this banner I used 3 different layers of paper.  Blue, yellow chevron print paper and green.  I'm planning on doing primary colors again for his 2nd birthday since our labels didn't make it in time for this party so maybe I'll use the banner again too!  

 



The marshmallows were dipped in green candy melts (yummy) and put in a clear jar with banana runts on the bottom.  The water bottles were wrapped in green ribbon and had a zoo animal on them.  We also had chocolate cake balls with William's monogram on them.  They are Gordon's favorite! 

 

 

I got all the party favors at Oriental Trading Company.  Everything was zoo themed of course. :)  Each bag had bubbles, a note pad, an egg filled with m&ms, and a stamp.  I got William's initials (that are on the table in the picture above) at Wal-Mart too.  They are just wood letters that I painted green. 

 

If you're planning a party I'd highly suggest starting as far in advance as possible (less stressful that way).  It's nice to buy things a little at a time.  Hobby Lobby and Michael's are both great places to find party and craft supplies!  That's where I got my Cricut, all the paper used for the banner, the Wilton candy melts for the marshmallows, the cellophane bags for the party favors and much more.  Etsy is also great if you prefer to shop online.  I was able to find his monogrammed bib and birthday hat on Etsy as well as the other stuff I mentioned in this post.

 

 

Happy birthday planning to all you mommies out there!  

  

Pumpkin Bread

A few years ago I discovered a yummy pumpkin bread recipe that people are constantly asking me for.  So, I thought I'd share it with you!!  Gordon loves anything with pumpkin so this is definitely a hit in our home.  This past Thanksgiving I made William's friends and teachers pumpkin bread in these cute little dishes from Michael's.  You can see the Thanksgiving post here.  In the past I've just baked the bread in disposable pans, wrapped them in cute fall fabric and tied a bow around it for our neighbors and friends.  Either way it's delicious!!
I know it seems weird to talk about Thanksgiving now but let's be honest....it will be here before we know it so you might as well start planning.  :) 

Pumpkin Bread Recipe:

3 cups sugar
1 cup oil
4 eggs
16 oz pumpkin
2/3 cup water
3 1/2 cups flour
2 ts baking soda
2 ts salt
1 ts baking powder
1 ts nutmeg
1 ts allspice
1 ts cinnamon
1/2 ts ground cloves

-Mix sugar and oil.  Add eggs and pumpkin.  Mix well.  Add dry ingredients and water.
-Pour into well greased loaf pan
-Bake at 300 degrees for 1-1 1/2 hours (or until toothpick comes out clean)

*I don't always have allspice and ground cloves....when I don't I use a pumpkin spice mixture I found at Krogers. 
*If you're going to bake smaller portions like I did in the pictures above only plan to bake your pumpkin bread for 45-60 minutes (kinda depends on how full the pan is!). 

Our little pumpkin!!!

Easter Part 1

Well, as always things have been crazy busy around here!  Luckily, we had a long weekend to get a little R&R time in.  Since William got an ear infection he had been doing really bad at night.  Having a four day weekend really helped this mommy!  Before we left town on Thursday I was able to get ALL our normal weekend chores done.  I finished the laundry, washed our sheets, went grocery shopping, made baby food, vacuumed the house, went on a walk with W after we had lunch with Gordon, and I packed us all up for Easter weekend in Texarkana.  Coming home to a clean house is so much nicer (especially when you have to go back to work the next day). 

William did great on the drive....he just slept!  Friday morning we lounged around and showed his mimi all his new tricks (ex: standing up like a big boy).  We had some yummy catfish for lunch before heading to see the Easter Bunny at the mall.  To be honest, the bunny was pretty scary looking.  Luckily, William wasn't upset...he wasn't happy either.  He just kinda sat there like mom pick me up.  That night Gordon and I had a little date night.  We went to see Olympus Has Fallen and then met some friends for a cocktail.  We hadn't been to a movie since December!  I think that's the longest we've ever gone.  The movie was pretty good.  I will say that I'm hyper-emotional since I had William.  I cry about everything.  Fiction and Non-Fiction.  Every little boy is William.  Every family is us.  Every soldier in the movie I could see as my baby boy when he's all grown up.  Yep, I'm crazy.  Regardless of my craziness, it was great to get out with G!   

We had a super relaxing day on Saturday.  We slept until 8:00, took a couple of naps and went on a walk.  Gordon watched William while I napped in the morning and that afternoon he golfed and William and I napped together. :)  Naps are heaven!  That evening we all went to an engagement party.  William got to meet lots of people and we ate some yummy BBQ.  Gordon's parents put William to bed that night so we could met up with some of Gordon's buddies and their wives.  We had so much fun visiting with everyone.  It's so nice to talk to other mommies and Gordon had fun playing poker and catching up with the guys. 

 

Pictures from left to right (top to bottom): 

• Easter presents for William's friends at school (read below on how to make)
• Mommy and baby after one of our walks
• Emily and Me at JK's engagement party
• He loves to stand up!
• Napping with Daddy
• Hanging out with Mimi at the party
• Watching the rain
• Baby boy is ready for Easter!

William gave all his friends a light up chick and their parents some yummy chocolate pretzels.  The pretzels are so easy to make and super cute!  All you need are pretzels, hershey kisses, and M&Ms.  I like to use the Snyder square butter pretzels.  This time I used the kisses with white chocolate in them and peanut butter M&Ms.  You can also use rolos in the middle!  I line a baking sheet with foil, spread out the pretzels, put a kiss on top and pop them in the oven at 350 degrees for 2-3 minutes.  Once the chocolate is soft (but not melted) take them out of the oven and smooch a M&M on top.  Yep, that's all you have to do!!  At Halloween I used a candy corn on top.  You really can't beat the sweet and salt combo.