what's cookin'

As you know I have been trying some new recipes lately. We have had some fabulous things that we will definitely be trying again. Here are links to what we have tried.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

I made this last night. It was great. It cooked all day in the crock pot and made the house smell wonderful. I will definitely make this when I go back to work because it was easy and delicious!

Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff

This was DE-LICIOUS!! I served it over pasta, but I think it would be just as good over biscuits, in a bread bowl, in a pie crust, stuffed into dough and cooked as a calzone and served as a dip with corn chips. It's a keeper!

Apple Dumplings

I may have mentioned these before. So good. My mother substituted peaches for the apples and gave rave reviews! My friend Ruby said she makes it at Christmas time with cherries instead of apples.

Mini Meatball Sandwiches

These have been great too. The recipe made us enough for three meals.

Chicken Nachos

Quick and easy.

Tonight, we are trying....

Shrimp Quesadillas

**** update.... DE-LICIOUS!!!!

How we roll.............

Here is a video of Shelby showing off! Hard to believe she can do all this at 7 weeks!

scenes from the yard sale

As I mentioned before Karen and I stopped at a yard sale last weekend. Here are the treasures that we found......

A Christmas dress for Charlie... 12 months.... $2

I had hoped to find one for Shelby, but this one wasn't her size and then I thought.... Charlie! That's the good thing about Rylee, Charlie and Shelby being so close in age.

We also found these burp cloths ($4) and bibs ($3). The lady I met was my new neighbor and she makes them! They were a great deal!
And now for the best find EVER!!

This carrier of wooden trays... which you all know I love....

filled with all of these..........

for only ............................

SOLD!!! I love them!!

Fall.... the half hearted effort

If you read my sister-in-law and partner in crime Meredith's blog, you know that she put out less fall decor than normal this year. Well, here is a glimpse of what I am calling Fall.... the half hearted effort. My priorities are ever changing and decorating for fall is just not something that seems as important right now. Of course, once the ambassador of Halloween's (Mr. D.) mood kicks in, I am sure this house will look like Halloween threw up all over it. Right now, I just have "fall" stuff out and nothing Halloween specific .. except for the candy of course!

This cute memo board was a birthday present from my Mother. We have had SO much fun with it. I finally thought to purchase colored dry erase markers. It's from Willow House, which is the new Southern Living at Home. I paired it with my Southern Living at Home tray and it looks great there! The silver infant cups were Mr. D's when he was a baby. I thought they looked cute with the candy. They are left over from Shelby's open house party. The candy is candy corn taffy, which is delicious and already eaten by the time I got around to posting this.

This tray is an ensemble that my Mother-in-law Linda helped me to put together. The tray came from Walmart. They have some fabulous fall home items for a low price! We also picked up the fake acorns, and the pumpkin pie candle there. We got the ball and hour glass (or 42 minute glass) at Old Time Pottery. When I climbed up into my attic I found the fall potpourri which I put in the bell on my Southern Living at Home pedestal. And.... that's Fall folks!

remember when....

Remember when I said I was hoping to catch my blog up this weekend..... well, as you can see so far that has not been the case. I have actually been very busy taking care of some things in my house while Karen has cared for Shelby. One overwhelming task was sorting her clothes by size. I had already done this once, but with gifts and such it has all gotten jumbled again. This little lady has so many clothes!! I am not sure if I have mentioned that she is growing like a weed. She is already out of newborn sizes and is growing out of 0-3 month clothes especially on things that snap at the crotch or that have feet. She is LLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGG! She goes back to the Doctor in 2 weeks and I can't wait to see how much she weighs and how long she actually is.

We have had a great weekend so far. Karen arrived and visited with Shelby. Then we went to the potluck at my school. It was fun introducing Shelby to some of the families that had not met her yet. After the potluck, you know where I was too busy socializing to eat, we went to eat Mexican food. After dinner we played with Shelby and chatted. Karen got up with Shelby some in the night. I did the 2:30 and she did the 5:30 except Shelby was running an hour early on both occasions. We got up this morning and were going to get coffee for Karen when we spotted a yard sale. For some reason we stopped which I don't usually do. I am glad we did! But, dear readers, that is for a later blog entry! I can hardly wait to show our finds. When we got back a few of our college friends came by with doughnuts. We visited with them. After they left we just chilled out and then we went to the mall. After the mall, Mr. D. put baby back ribs on his smoker. They were delicious! Now we are just relaxing. Pictures and more later!

It works for us.......

Two night in the crib and everyone is happy! It works for us.

The first night I had to take her bumpers off of the crib for safety purposes. Then I thought....what am I supposed to do with this now? It's still folded up on the floor. Today the nursery is getting cleaned and organized so maybe I will find a place for it. Anyway... We got her settled and put her in the crib.

She fussed a little at first but then settled down in less than a minute and went to sleep. We got up at our usual 2:30am feeding. A quick bottle and change then back to sleep. At 5:30 I heard her making some noise and since we usually eat between 5:30-6:00 I just assumed she was waking up. I turned on the video part of the monitor and she was not there. My Mother was visiting so I thought maybe she had gotten up with Shelby. Being a high tech monitor, I was able to redirect the camera and look around the room. This little lady had scooted herself all the way to the bottom of the crib and had her little foot poking out through the slats.

So... when we were running errands today, we went and bought her....

The BREATHABLE bumper. This will keep all limbs in the crib and is much safer than her other bumper.

Last night was seamless. She went to sleep in the living room around 9:30. I put her in the crib and lights out until 2:30 and 5:30. I am so glad this transition has been a smooth one.

This little girl is growing so fast. Here is how big she looks in her car seat now.

We introduced her to the Bumbo seat yesterday.

She loves to sit up and since she is holding her head up so nicely, we decided to take the plunge. Baby steps- but she enjoyed it for a few minutes. She's still a little "bob and weave" like so this is the best picture I got. I am sure there will be more later!

She is smiling - A LOT! I haven't been able to blog this because she hadn't smiled at Mr. D. yet. I think the most respectful thing you can do for a parent is to let them discover things about their child for themselves. I wish and hope that other people will show us this respect. Anyway, I got my first smile (you know- purposeful and not just gas- but eye to eye smiling!) a few days ago. I have just been waiting for Mr. D. to get one. Last night he did! It was amazing seeing his excitement. Imagine if I had told him she already did that for me how he would have felt. Of course later we discussed that she's been practicing. Still, he had a great moment and I am glad!

She is about to move into 3-6 month clothes in anything with feet and most onesies. She is a long little girl. I had the prefect fall dress for her - but it is a 0-3 months... so as soon as I can get to Baby Gap, I will need to exchange it. I hope they still have the dress because I love it. I held it up to her yesterday and it looked like a shirt- not a dress.

Karen is coming today!!! Hopefully I can convince her to sit and love on Shelby for a little bit this weekend so I can catch up on my blogging!

SIX weeks

Last night, Mr. D. and I had a somewhat humorous conversations. It started with his telling me that tomorrow (today) Shelby would be 6 weeks old. Six weeks I said... are you sure? He then counted off the days of each Wednesday that has passed and held up fingers to correspond to each date. Then I said... are you sure that you have the date right because I think it's only been 5 weeks. I then had to look at the calendar and sure enough- she's now 6 weeks old. One reason I was just convinced that it was only 5 weeks is because several weeks ago I made a deal that she would move to her crib at 6 weeks. It just seemed like it was so far away at the time and then last night I was faced with it being the last night she was in the room with us. It was a lot to take in unexpectedly. It's really for the best because in 6 short weeks, we have gone from this....

to this....

As you can see we are outgrowing the Moses basket. So listen up family members on the Brown side.. it's almost up for grabs to the next baby in the family. Oh- and doesn't she have the most puzzled look on her face in the last picture. I think she was perplexed because I literally had to stand on my bed to be able to get a full body picture of her in the basket.

So, the plan is tonight. I am not sure how it will go. She will only be 20 steps away which isn't really THAT far. I counted this morning. We have practiced sleeping in our crib during our naps today. I am fortunate enough to have two great baby monitors.

This one...

and this one....