Here comes the sun

Pulling into the driveway yesterday, I asked Preston, "Do you want to go outside?" His face lit up immediately. After a winter of being cooped up in the house, it was time to get into the sun and get the front of your shirt soaked in bubble solution. Each day holds its own little reminder that warmer days are ahead — the sun is a little brighter each morning, the birds are beginning to chirp, and slowly we can start to slip out of our big coats. The warm afternoon declared that we wouldn't be cold forever.

Squeals of "Bah-bools!" and "Pop!" echoed across the yard, and rocks were gathered and stored away by chubby little hands. The sun did us both some good, lightening our spirits and giving us a nice dose of vitamin D. I'm looking forward to more days like that.

Celebrating Valentine's Day

For most of our relationship, Scott and I have kept Valentine's day pretty simple — exchanging cards and maybe going out to dinner or giving a small gift. To me, Valentine's Day is kind of like New Year's Eve; it gets really hyped up and if it doesn't live up to those lofty expectations, then it's a failure. Not to sound all anti-establishment, "Valentine's Day is made up by the greeting card company" about it. I do appreciate a day dedicated to celebrating the ones you love, but I try not to build it up too much. Simplicity is best.

My friend Hannah and I were talking about Valentine's Day gifts for our spouses. She and I were both lamenting that the sweet, Pinterest-y ideas out there are completely impractical for husbands because 1) you take all that time, effort, and love to put together a year of dates package or 52 things I love about you book, building up this wonderful gift in your mind only to have 2) your husband smile, say thanks, and put it in a drawer. I'm not saying that Scott wouldn't appreciate the gesture, but these kind of gifts are made by girls with their own girl feelings in mind.

I was reminded of this principle when I told Scott that I had planned on making cinnamon rolls in the shape of hearts (per Pinterest, of course) for breakfast, but I was short on time. "That's OK," he said. "All of the icing would just fall through them onto the pan, and I'd just feel like it was a waste of icing. That's a girl thing anyway. 'Oh, how cute! Let me take a picture for my blog.'"

Yeah, he busted me. And there he summed up the two views on Valentine's Day: the man's ("a waste of icing") and the woman's ("How cute!/Blog!").

So, this year I got him a card from me, a card from Preston, and a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels (his favorite). Simple. There's really nothing on Pinterest that can match how much I love that guy, anyway. It would take all of the mason jars, burlap scraps and Valentine's puns around the world to even try to come close.

How do you celebrate Valentine's Day? Small scale or all out?

Image via Real Simple

Toddler-friendly DIY valentines

For Valentine's Day this year, I thought it would be sweet for Preston to send handmade cards to family and friends. While I think all of the ways Pinterest involves painted hand and footprints are cute and a sweet way to get the little one involved, I shuttered at the thought of a squirmy, paint-covered hand smearing on everything but the paper I was aiming for.

Since he loves stickers and tearing up any piece of paper his hands land on (books, magazines, mail, etc.), I thought this craft was the perfect marriage of his two favorite activities: tearing and sticking. Plus, it was a lot cleaner.

Together, he and I made these incredibly simple tissue paper hearts. I drew some hearts onto drawing paper and roughly cut them out to make each more manageable for Preston to work with. I smeared some glue onto each heart and showed Preston how to tear the tissue paper and stick a piece to where I had just put the glue.

He enjoyed the free license to rip something up and made lots of little tissue paper pieces. But, like he does with stickers, he wanted to peel the piece back off whenever he stuck it to the heart, which made the somewhat permanence of the glue frustrating. I helped him a little just to make sure the heart got completely covered, then I cut them out and wrote a little message on the back so they were ready to mail.

It also helped that the project could be spaced out over the course of several days so that, if he was soon over the whole process, we could abandon it to come back to it later. After one particular melt down (he wanted the glue stick, then was upset when the glue stick made him sticky), I may have just finished up the last two. It's the thought that counts, right? 

In the end, not only was it great motor skills practice, but he was able to see the process of making something on his own and sharing the finished product. I'd mark that in the "win" column.

Adventures in bread baking

(Just a note to start out with, I gave the ol' blog a little face lift over the weekend. I thought a new layout was in order — the side bar was too crowded and I was just ready for a change. I hope you like it!)

This weekend I was successful in making an edible object and not a fancy baked paperweight. You can start calling me Peeta now because I am a baker of bread.

I first started fiddling with the idea of baking my own bread when Scott, Preston and I went to Little Rock during the Christmas break. We went to Boulevard Bread for lunch and to get some bread to take back home. They had a delicious sourdough among the other equally enticing loaves, and maybe it's because we don't have an equivalent bakery here, but it felt so special to eat lunch there and then take home a piece of it to enjoy there. I wanted to capture that fun little family day in our ordinary lives.

So, enter Pinterest (of course). I started searching for easy bread recipes, and this one caught my attention. It was incredibly simple. Surprisingly simple. "I might be able to do this" simple, and that's pretty simple. It's not a sourdough, though, but I'm planning on tackling that next. For that, you need what they call in the bread baking biz a "starter," and apparently it's kind of like a goldfish or a plant in that you need to feed and take care of it. That's a lot of responsibility for a beginner like myself. And I never did that well with fish or plants.

The night before I planned to bake it, I mixed all the ingredients together into a dough like the recipe said, but I made two very big mistakes. One, I bought active dry yeast instead of instant, which is apparently what the girl sharing the recipe used. Apparently you have to "wake up" the active yeast, which I did not do the first time around, so it was just sleeping on the job. Two, I interjected "place the dough in the fridge overnight" into the original recipe, which wasn't anywhere in there, and the dough needs to be warm to rise like it should. So the next morning I woke up to exactly what I started with the night before. So that initial batch was tossed.

I remedied those first mistakes on my second attempt, and this time the dough did as it was supposed to. It went into the oven, and I was pretty excited when I pulled the finished product out. The house smelled great and the bread looked like bread. To my great happiness, it tasted like bread, too — crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, great to smear butter or jelly on or just eat plain. I even got a high-five of approval from Scott, who is — undoubtably — the cooking expert in the family. It might as well be a James Beard award in my eyes.

I'm looking forward to playing with the recipe now that I've figured out the basics. There are a lot of possibilities, like red onions and rosemary, garlic and cheddar, or cinnamon sugar and vanilla! I encourage you to try out this recipe if you're interested. Bread baking isn't as scary as I thought.

Super easy bread recipe

Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon yeast
- 1 1/2 cups water (I needed a bit more to moisten everything)

First, combine all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl. If you have dry active yeast like I did, activate it according to the package instructions rather than adding it here. Include the yeast and its water into the rest of the water and add to the dry ingredients, combining until there is no dryness.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave out for 12-18 hours. The dough will have grown a sizable amount in that time.

Remove the dough from the bowl onto a well-floured surface and form into a ball. Cover it once again with the plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes while the oven and the dish you plan to bake it in preheats to 450 degrees. I used my Le Creuset dutch oven.

Remove the baking dish from the oven and carefully place in the dough. Cover it with a lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until brown and toasted on top.

Take the loaf out of the baking dish and allow to cool on a wire rack or dive in and eat right then!

Weekend 1-2-3

1. Scott's mom and grandmother are coming to visit this weekend. We haven't seen them since Thanksgiving, and I know they're antsy to see Preston. It's incredible how much he learns just in a week, so he's got a lot more "tricks" than he did then, including saying "Hey, baby!" when he sees me (Scott taught him that one).

2. Lately, I've been wanting to attempt baking bread. As cold as it's been, there's something very comforting about the idea of filing the house with the smell of freshly baked bread and serving it up with a bowl of soup and a blanket. So, I'm going to try it this weekend. Maybe it won't go too poorly.

3. I finished Allegiant a few days ago (verdict: so-so), and the next book on my list is The Fault in our Stars. I've heard a lot about it, and it's hugely popular (a movie is in the works). Maybe it won't disappoint me like Allegiant did.

Have a family-filled, carb-loaded, novel-reading weekend!

I've got the (winter) blues

Allow me to explain my unintended two-week break.

After the holidays pass, I get a little blue. I can handle winter when there's Christmas to look forward to and all of the excitement it brings, but once the tree is put away and it's back to regularly scheduled programing, I'm ready for spring to arrive.

Luckily, this winter cloud of sadness has a silver lining this year: the Olympics. I have loved the Olympics since I was young, alternating between dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast or a figure skater every two years. I love the pride each country shows during the opening ceremonies and the amazement on the faces of the athletes marching into the stadium. It's like the whole world stops what its doing for a moment and celebrates each other and the spirit of competition.

I was especially thankful for the last summer Olympic games in London. They began right after I returned to work from maternity leave, and they gave me something to look forward to when I was upset about being away from my little guy for a good chunk of the day. After work, Scott, Preston and I would curl up on the couch and get in some snuggle time and watch beach volleyball and the high dive.

So, with the Olympics to buoy my spirits, here's to making it through these weeks of winter. Who knew bobsledding could be such a mood lifter?

(P.S. This winter blues thing gets me every year. Here's one post I did on how to beat the winter doldrums a couple of years ago.)

Best of 2013

Lots of things happened in 2013. Big, life-changing, exciting things along with stressful, hair-pulling, crying things, too. Our little guy turned one and started walking (video evidence below), we moved, I graduated with my master's and taught a class, and we traveled a little and laughed a lot. 2013 was a good year, indeed.

As for what 2014 holds, we'll just have to wait and see. I've given up on resolutions of the "Run a 5K" or "lose 10 pounds" variety. Instead, I'm swapping the R-word for goals, and my goals for this year are to do my best to daily reflect Christ in my life, embrace a positive outlook and not allow negativity to work itself into places it doesn't belong, and focus on making time for the truly important things and not let the unimportant ones take over. They're vague and unmeasurable — the hallmark of a terrible resolution, I know — but it's more about shaping myself into a better person than checking off a list, I think.

Happy 2014!