Happy First Birthday Baby Girl!

Sloane,

It's very cliche to say, but one year has gone so fast! You have grown so quickly, from crawling, to toddling, to flat out running! Your smile, your strawberry hair, your big blue eyes, your squeals, your screams, your chatter.... you melt our hearts over and over again, every single day. Daddy and I love you so much it truly does hurt! Sometimes you're like looking at the sun!

Love, 

Mom

April Showers Bring May Flowers, and A Few of Your Favorite Things!

Birthday Cake

Funfetti Cake with Strawberry Frosting

 Banana

Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting

 Spaghetti and Meatballs

Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Raspberry Sauce

 Blueberries

Blueberry Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

 Sweet Potatoes

Spice Cake with Marshmallow Frosting

 Your First Birthday Cake

 You were so dainty about touching the frosting. It was adorable, and SO out of character for you!

Opening Gifts.... or maybe just the cards!

 Can't wait for what this next year will bring!

House a Home: Guest Bathroom Update

I'm going to start by telling you, I already finished painting....and I love it! But you don't get to see it yet. I'm here to talk about painting stripes.

Hard as Hell! Use a laser measure if you have one, if don't, go buy one! 

Here's how it all went down.

Night one: I taped. I taped. and then I taped. took the tape off, then taped again. Okay I lied. I first measured the wall, the location of the bath tub, the floor trim, and the stripes on the shower curtain and then spent a fair amount of time drawing out my options for the widths of the stripes. That's a long and boring story filled with math so we'll skip to tape. I measured the height I wanted and drew a small tick about every foot all the way across the wall. Then I began pulling the tape following the ticks. Simple right? Wrong! First line, not straight, at all. Few more tries and I finally got in the groove. I used the ticks to layout the tape first but then went off of my eye for the final line. This is how it ended up.

These are my tips I've learned over time and in the last two days about painting straight and even stripes.

1. Measure Twice, Tape Once (figuratively) Consider the surrounding element and how the stripes will line up with details around them.

2. Once your tape is up, paint a very light coat of paint with a brush or sponge brush over the edges. The key is to do it lightly. This coat will dry and seal your tape so when you come over it with a heavier coat it will not seep behind the tape.

3. Hurry up and Wait. Have patience between coats and allow time for the paint to partially dry. But hurry up, the sooner you peel the tape off after painting, the crisper the line. Peel the tape back as soon as you can after your last coat. Like right away, when you put the roller down, take your tape off.

4. If you peel the tape back and a little got through, and it will, wet a q-tip and lightly rub away.

Lastly, when I introduced this project I talked about needing some accessory love in the corner of the counter top. This image from Pinterest was my inspiration...

... and this is what I came up with. I still might add a little raffia or twine around the neck of the jar and I have some scrap paper I might try on there as well. All in all though I'm very pleased with it. That blue gem of a jar, $2 Goodwill, okay, twist my arm.

Like I started with, I'm done painting and I love it! I ordered the artwork today, so unless you are lucky enough to be my family coming next weekend you are going to have to wait for the final reveal.

Big City Love

My mom and I headed into the big city a couple weekends ago. We went to shop our way through Chicago and instead we ate our way through Chicago!

We started our day out with a train ride into town. I love having this option available to us now that we live in the Chicagoland area. Parking downtown can be pretty expensive so the $7 weekend roundtrip ticket and $2 parking at the station is well worth the longer ride. 

After arriving at Union Station we hit the streets to shop our way over to The Magnificent Mile. After a little time up State St. we arrived at our first food destination. The Purple Pig. This is definitely not the first time you've heard about the Purple Pig on our blog. You first heard about it here... Mothers Day in Chicago ... on our first girls weekend. We usually like to try new places but all we could think about were the Roasted Goat Cheese Beets and there was no question we were going back for lunch this trip. 

We started with the Salt-Roasted Beets, Whipped Goat Cheese & Pistachio Vinaigrette... I don't care if you don't like beets or goat cheese, if you get to The Purple Pig...eat the beets!! We also had the Shaved Brussels Sprouts, Pecorino Noce & Parmigiano Reggiano. I haven't like brussels sprouts for years, and still don't make them on my own but for some reason I've been craving them. These were pretty tasty. You would never know they brussels sprouts, lots of parmigiano reggiano, lots of yummy.

As a palette cleanser we had a delicious Tuscan Kale and Romaine Caesar Salad with Soft-Boiled Quail Egg & House Cured Anchovies. The kale was a nice bitter twist for the classic salad and the anchovy was uber yum.

So as if this wasn't enough food yet we hadn't even got to the meal dish! By main dish I mean dishes. First the Mussels with Pancetta, Creme Fraiche & Marjoram in which we ate so fast we never caught a picture of them. But we had plenty of time to get our camera ready for this dinosaur of a turkey leg! 

Enter, the Turkey Leg Confit, Crispy Lentils, Treviso, Endive & Agrodolce.... to die for. Amazballs! Un-Flipping-Believable! Confit means this ginormous leg was seasoned, marinated, placed in a roasting pan and then covered in a layer of it's own melting fat and baked low and slow for 3-4 hours. This was the richest, most tender amazing turkey we have ever eaten in our entire lives! If we could "confit" an entire Turkey and not feel guilty about the fat Thanksgiving could be altered forever. 

So now when you go to the Purple Pig to try the beets..... eat the Turkey too!!

We decided after all that rich amazing food a walk up and down The Mile and up and down The Water Tower was in major need. But then we needed a break... and a snack... Where to go?!

Sea Salt Caramel and Mocha Hot Chocolate

We shopped some more... bought stuff... well I did anyway. My mom supervised. 

Lastly, dinner.... a short walk off the mile was a quite sushi bar called Bistro Pacific that came recommended by one of my co-workers. The place was damn near empty, which we feared was not a good sign for the dinner about to come but we had a lot of bags, walked all that way and if you can imagine, we were hungry again. We are so glad we stayed. With all our (aka my) shopping bags and being so exhausted from the day a loud bustling restaurant would have been too much. This place gave us a chance to wind down and stuff our faces some more!

Thank you Mommasita for a wonderful and fun weekend!

T-Minus One Month!

Here is Sloane's 11 month picture! Not much to say that I haven't written about already. Sloane is continually changing and growing. Seeing her smile and her face light up when Chris or I walk in the room is priceless. Her hair is getting pretty long and I refuse to cut it, so I have to figure out what to do with this in-between stage. It's all good, she's still as cute as ever. Love her baby blues!

Easter in Iowa

This year for Easter we went to visit our great friends Josh, Jen and their little man Eli.  We had a great time, this was our first time visiting Iowa and they have a wonderful house. Or I should say HAD a wonderful house. They were in the process of selling the house to build a new home in the area. They sold the house while we there! It was certainly a lot of work to help them have the house show ready, pack up two kiddos under one, two dogs and 4 adults and get out of the house for all the showings but timing was perfect. 

Before the weekend came Chris asked me if I would be interested in going to workout with Jen while we were there. I said sure, thinking no big deal, I'll hit the tread or elliptical or something. WRONG! No one told me it was a boot camp class! The kind that they promise you won't be able to sit down to go to the bathroom the next day. The class were tough and I kept looking at Jen and giving her the "I'm never coming to visit you again" look. 

Much love to you three, we had a great time and can't wait to see the new house!

Sloane and Eli getting their flirt on. Eli is 7 months old and miss Sloane 11 months. They are easily the same size. Eli even has Sloane by a pound or two. He's a big boy!

Ready to meet the Easter Bunny on Saturday at the Egg Hunt

Love this.... Sloane loved Santa and Mrs Claus. I can't help but think if she could talk right now she'd be saying "WTF!? What did you do with Santa?!"

I've got my eye on you rabbit!

It was raining outside so we grabbed a few eggs for the kiddos to find inside.

Future boyfriend ;)

Oh The Madness!

Every year for as long as I can remember we've been getting together with friends for opening weekend of March Madness. We all take vacation, rotate hosting houses and kick back and watch A LOT of basketball!  Sloane got to spend the weekend with Grandma & Grandpa Casey and Auntie J. We got tons of pictures, but not like we needed those to know she was having a great time too!

Lots of thanks and love to our great friends Steph and Josh for housing us this weekend. Not only for housing us but for also cooking a mucho delish breakfast when a little carb and grease was greatly needed, and mostly for being there to pick up our slightly over intoxicated selves from various locations. Here's a recap of our madness via pictures...

Watching the Badger game with the ladies...

Traci being out shot waitress

Love this lady!

While we partied, Grandma & Grandpa Casey were in heaven with all three grandkids, Kellan, Keegan and Sloane

After the long afternoon with the ladies I found myself texting Steph to come pick me up at 9:00p. I'm not quite sure she got the message...

Auntie J and Sloane looking gorgeous 

 Sharing is caring during craft time

 Sloane's finished Easter craft (aka. Kellan's finished Easter craft)