The science of a soft boiled egg.

This story begins when I was a child. My mother used to make me wonderful soft boiled eggs with toast many mornings for breakfast. I loved them. Fast forward to a couple days ago. I was at my parent's house and mom offered to make eggs and toast I took her up on it and was treated to a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg with toast made from home made bread. 

I told my mother how much I missed eating soft boiled eggs. It's such a science that I haven't been brave enough to tackle it in my nearly three years of married life. There are many variables. Pan size, water level, water temperature, burner size, burner heat, and of course cooking time. 

My brother's method is back left burner, medium pan, warm water, burner set to high for 10 minutes. Mom's method is front right burner, small pan, tepid water just covering eggs, for 9.5 minutes. (I do not exaggerate about the point 5 part.)

Today I decided, was the day! I woke up, put on my big girl panties, and set about to tackling this task. I used the back right burner, tepid water just covering the eggs, set the burner on high and set the timer for 10 minutes. I immediately submerged the egg in cool water after it finished cooking to prevent further cooking and anxiously waited for it to cool.

I made my toast (Not home made. Rome wasn't conquered in a day people!) and prepared for the worst outcome of my breakfast. I knew I would most likely be facing one of two options.

1. Toast and hard boiled egg

2. Toast. (The egg wasn't cooked and had to be thrown out.) 

Lo and behold I cracked open that baby and it was nearly perfect! Runny yoke and nearly cooked white. It was just a tad runny. I think I'll add point 5 tomorrow. 

End of egg story.

Thrift finds!

American Eagle polo- $2.50 Love the stripes!

Pretty cardi to wear over a black dress I have. $1.50

New with tags nursing tank. Love these! I already have 3. $3

close up of ruffles.

Photo book

For Father's Day I decided to use a $20 shutter fly gift card to make Matt a photo book. We had gotten the gift card from Target when we did our baby registry. 

It was so much fun to make! They have a totally custom path where you can choose your picture size, page layout, back round paper, stickers, text boxes, and borders. I love that it has the look of being scrap booked, but I don't have all the supplies to store. 

I snapped a few pictures to show what it's like. I got an 8x8 book with a hard cover. 

Love!

A productive day

My baby boy is sleeping. My kitchen is clean. I showered sometime in the last 4 days. My garden is somewhat weeded. I had a lovely day with my two favorite men. Life doesn't get much better.

One of the things I did today was run errands. We were very productive. One of the things we got was spray paint so I can finish a couple projects I've been working on; C.'s changing table and a dresser. I really am missing the changing table. The floor is just not the same. Hopefully I'll finish it soon so I can get pictures up but lately the weather has difficult. Either it's raining, we have winds at 50 mph, or the humidity is in the 90th percentile. None of these conditions are conducive to spray painting.

So my projects sit in the garage. And we trip over them getting into the house. They need to move soon.

I will leave you with this picture of my boy standing. By himself. ( I think walking is just around the corner.)

Happy Monday!

An outing.

We've been pretty busy this week, so we decided to have a relaxed day yesterday and went to a local town that is partly made up of an Amish community. It was fun to see the buggies on the roadside.

They have a downtown district with several cute shops, so we headed that way and did some window shopping. A few sweet ladies were kind enough to snap our picture:

 

We got lots of yummy food. We started out with the town's signature homemade ice cream bars dipped in chocolate and then graham cracker crumbs. Next we went to the bakery and got a humongous twist donut (Yum!) followed by a stop at the cheese house where they sell fresh cheese curds. I pretty much gained 8 pounds.

The sidewalks  had just been redone and had colored quilt block designs in them. Aren't they neat?

Caleb tried to eat this yesterday:

The splinter, not the quarter. He pulled that off a piece of furniture! I have to watch him like a hawk these days! He also likes to tear pieces out of a carpet pad I have under a rug and eat it. I don't know why he prefers wood and carpet pad to his toys. I really don't. Although, according to my mother I was the same way.

Even though he is a whirl wind when he's awake, he's an angel when he sleeps.

:)

This and That

I have realized it seems pretty impossible for me to post about just one thing. This post will not be an exception.

First, I ran 5 miles this morning with my sister-in-law. She is a fabulous athlete and does ridiculous 24hour plus kill-yourself-adventure racing. (Non-stop biking, running, climbing, kayaking, etc..) I was excited to be able to keep up with her today and not die. This could be because she is also doing P90x every day and was a little sore from yesterday. I haven't run since I found I was pregnant with C. (That would be 19 months ago) so I was really encouraged by today's run.

Last night I witnessed something adorable, and I was smart enough to catch it on camera.

Male bonding time: So it begins.....

 When I was growing up and had to suffer long hours in the hot summer weeding my mom's flower gardens, I decided I would NEVER have them when I had my own house. I told my mother that I would never like flowers or want to grow them and I would NEVER make my children do things they didn't want to. (In my shy, compliant way.) She looked at me with a smug look that said, "Just wait. You'll change your mind." Guess what? I did.

I now have a large front flower garden and beds in the making all around my house. I love flowers. They make me smile and make our home seem so much more welcoming.

This is a picture of one of my Stella De Oro day lilies that just started blooming.

 

Happy Wednesday!

Today is the day....

...that I'm am putting away our nativity. I know, pathetic. I just never seem to get around to 'extra' projects now that we have a little man. The basics, such as laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, and taking showers, keep me busy enough.

If you find it odd that I list taking a shower as part of my chore/to-do list you are most likely single. If you are a mother, you understand this. After having children showers become a luxury. That's what hats are for.

Anyways, today I put my nativity away and it felt so good to get that done! For 7 months now the top of my piano looked like this:

I love our nativity, but it was time for it to go. (Pardon the bad night lighting)

 

I bought some picture frames garage saling the other day that I want to put up there, as well as the things I had up there pre-Christmas. I'll post pictures when I get it finished. Don't hold your breath. It may take me another 6 months and by then it'll be time to put the nativity back up....

In other news, Father's Day was a huge success! Hubby had a fire right before shift change so he was a home a little late, but I think that just added to his day. :) We went to church in the morning and then off to a local small town for lunch. Fortunately we made reservations ahead of time because if we hadn't we would have waited for 3+ hours. The food was fabulous. I wish I would have gotten pictures, but I was busy feeding C. and trying to prevent him from grabbing said food and throwing it on the floor. I did snap a few pictures of my men though.

I brought several bright colored toys for C. to play with. Of course he wanted this spoon.

Having fun eating green beans.

I'm not really sure what this look means. Stop with the pictures already?

Off to weed my garden while the little man is down for a nap! I think the weeds are taller than my plants now, so I figured it's probably about time to get on that.

5 things

1. Solid food. 

Feeding C. solid foods has proven to be much more challenging than I thought it would be. I guess I thought he would think, "Wow! Look at all this cool colored and different tasting stuff!" and chow it all down. It hasn't quite worked that way. C. likes his bottle. Solid foods are really more of a game. C.'s attitude seems to be,"Ok, I'll eat this since this is what I have to do to get my milk." I discovered he does really like little oyster crackers. At first I would place 5-6 on his tray and he would methodically eat one at a time, but his current strategy involves stuffing all of them in his mouth till he chokes. Also because he is in such a hurry to cram all the crackers in his mouth he inadvertently drops several down in his high chair. I'll think he was such a good eater and then I'll take him out of his chair and realize he actually only ate 5 of the 30 crackers I gave him. That might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

2. Visit to the fire station.

Hubby was working today so C. and I went to have lunch with him. Hubby mentioned he was at a station where they had a ladder truck and did I want to go up it? (We've talked about this before, but have never done it.) He took all the necessary precautions; putting a harness and carabiner on me and standing behind me on the ladder. It isn't the department's largest ladder, but it was still super fun! I think we were about 60 ft. in the air. I love getting to experience all the different aspects of my husband's job! I'm do proud of what he does.

3. Cool stuff.

I've been eyeing a rosette bib necklace for a few weeks from Allora Handmade The hard part is that she has so many delicious colors to choose from! If you know me, you know I've always struggled with the issue of color choice. This is the only aspect of clothes shopping I do not like. But I think I'm pretty much decided on coral. Or mustard. No, maybe moss. Nope, for sure pacific. You see my problem?

I also think I'm going to buy this jewelry organizer from Bella Dangles. Since I make jewelry I have a lot lying around and this would be so nice!

4. Father's Day.

 I'm so excited to be celebrating Hubby's first 'out of the womb' Father's Day! We're planning to go out to lunch to one of his favorite places after church. Hopefully all goes well with little C. He's been teething lately and has been a bit cranky. As in following me around whining and hanging on me cranky. But I would be too if I was pushing razor sharp baby teeth through my gums.

5. Purging.

I am in a major purging mood lately. This is quite normal. I go for few couple months without throwing hardly anything away and then suddenly I can't take it any more and decided to go through obscure closets and out of the way places like the garage and basement. I think my husband has a love hate relationship with these moods. He loves when I pick things up and make things organized, but hates me pressuring him to go through/get rid of his things. He actually is a very tidy person and doesn't keep a lot of things, but there are a few areas he needs to go through. He's been pretty busy lately, so I've realized I need to take more initiative to find solutions rather than add something else to his plate. Right now I'm trying to figure out a filing system for some of his papers, then I can sort them into piles and have him go through one pile at once. That's one of the top things on my to-do list this week.

Have a great weekend!

Garage Sales

We live in a small town and they do city wide sales every year in June. I was so excited to get up and go find some good deals this morning! My Hubby thinks I'm slightly crazy when it comes to garage sales. This is a true statement. In the past Hubby hasn't been too excited about going garage saling together, but decided to give it a go this year, because he's great like that. He quickly became a fan after finding a brand new pair of Skechers shoes in his size and in black (he had been telling me he needed new black shoes.) and only $20! As we were walking to thee next sale he said, "Look! There's a motorcycle for sale! I could get used to this garage sale thing!"

Here's a few pictures of things we scored:

See-n-say. 5 cents.

Cute shoes for C.

Board books. .25 ea.

Picture frames. I actually got two of the one on the left ($2 ea.) and the one on the right was $1

 

Picture in frame (I'm too lazy to rotate it.) compliments of Pink Flower Photgraphy

Here's how it looks on the shelf in my living room.

This was marked  $.01 The woman said her kids marked their stuff themselves. I didn't have the heart to only pay a penny so I paid more. :) Apparently the kids marked this for a penny and other  board books for $8. 

 

 

 

 

 

Crawling and Climbing

C. started crawling a couple weeks ago and things have certainly changed around here. People told me how I would dream of the days when he didn't move anywhere after he started crawling, but I really don't. Sure, I end up chasing him quite a bit, but I love to watch him explore and discover. His frustration level is way down too because he can (for the most part) get to whatever it is he wants.

This hat only stays on his head for 1.375 seconds, but I'm quick with my camera.

Crawling quickly turned to climbing. On everything...chairs, benches, tables, gates, garbage cans, couches,.... you get the idea. Now he even knocks down things to climb on them. This hamper I don't mind so much. The garbage can full of decomposing banana peels, eggs shells, apple cores, and fish....I wasn't very excited about. Especially since I just cleaned the floor. But that's how these things work.

Bear crawling. On the table. Don't try this at home kids.

Well, I'm off to do laundry. It's rainy today so I probably won't get a chance to work on some spray paint projects I started a few days ago. I'll post some pics of them soon.

~Elyssa