Harmony

Baked Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal

Feb 152012

So since I discovered baked oatmeal, I just can’t stop. I have been searching the internet, mostly Pintrest, high and low for awesome baked oatmeal recipes. So when I came across this fabulous recipe for Baked Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal I was really excited. I love pumpkin and I love baked oatmeal so what could go wrong.

NOTHING, is the answer. This is a great recipe but I would make a couple of edits.

Baked Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal

Ingredients:

2 Cups Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Unsweetened Pumpkin Puree
1 cups milk
1/2 Cup Egg Whites
4 tbsp brown sugar Splenda
1 tablespoon Pure Vanilla Extract
a bunch of pumpkin pie spices
Cooking Spray
1/4 chopped walnuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mix all wet ingredients into one bowl and dry ingredients, except the walnuts, into another bowl then add the dry to the wet.

Spray your 8×8 glass baking dish with cooking spray and sprinkle walnuts over bottom of pan.

Pour in ingredients, put in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Eat and enjoy.

Keeping your worlds seperate on Facebook.

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Feb 102012

So many people complain about how Facebook doesn’t respect the privacy of its users, but that isn’t really true. They give you the option to separate and parse who sees your data by the individual users. And whether to let search engines pull your data and what advertisers you want to see.

So I happen to have some very strong beliefes and ideas that are in direct opposition to many of my family members and to some of my friends. I also don’t want to share pictuers and the happenings of my daily life with all of the people I am friends with on facebook (since I don’t know what their settings are and who on their page are going to see the pictures if they comment on them) so to keep my life sane and to make sure it doesn’t appear that I’m posting on Facebook all day while I’m at work I have seperated all of my friends in to specific list.

Here is how my Facebook is set up.

In my privacy settings –> under Control your default privacy I have chosen Custom.
Once you have chosen Custom a pop up box appears that says Make this visible to these people or lists
I have chosen in the drop down box specific people
or lists…Real Friends/Mom Friends

Here are the list that I have dived up my friend/family between and why I have chosen each and what everyone can see.

List:

Family- This list is mostly for my husband’s family. I love them dearly but we generally don’t see eye to eye on many issues and things I want to post to my friends and other like minded individuals on Facebook. I don’t want to cause argument or fights between myself and my family so I g
enerally only allow these people view post about my kids and general life. Nothing even possibly controversial.
Mom Friends- Usually this is a default list for me. These are moms that I either know in real life or moms I am very close to in online life.
Real Friends- Also a default list for me. Real friends are people who I trust and I have a real relationship with these people. They genrealy agree with me in the religious area as well as politically or at least will have a respectable adult discussion about these items.
Limited Profile- These are people that I should probably delete from Facebook. They can’t comment on my page or see my wall. They can see limited photos and generally a very limited view of my profile. Mostly people I know from middle/high school.
Work- Pretty explanatory, my friends from work but I don’t let them view any post I make during work hours.

So go ahead and give it a try think about, what would you Facebook look like if you could post anything you want to without starting a fight or receiving judgement from your In Laws or those crazy Republican friends you might have. Make some list, or use the ones Facebook gives you and set up your privacy so only the ones you want to can see your profile, then post something really questionable and see what happens. Its awesome!

It's been a long time.

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Feb 022012

Its been a long time since I posted. I am for sure failing on my resolution to blog more. But in my defense, work has been crazy busy and so has regular life.

I have a couple of new awesome recipes that I need to get up as well as the rest of the Christmas Eve post I’m planning on doing several this weekend and queuing them to post throughout the week.

If this blog were on my blogfeed I would have booted it by now. So I don’t blame you if no one is reading.

More to come soon, I promise.

Christmas Eve 2012

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Jan 172012

Christmas eve tends to be a really busy day and holiday for us. My oldest son was born on Christmas eve, this year he celebrated his 3rd birthday. My husbands aunt has a wonderful tradition that we attend on Christmas eve eve that is full of family tradition and follows a very strict eastern European food tradition with no meat and no dairy. Christmas eve is also the time I have traditionally spent with my extended family that I don’t really get to see all year. Busy busy.

The day normally starts off with us suprising Xander with birthday presents. This year we got him a huge TRex poster framed and hanging in his room and a living room full of balloons and a smaller present.

That is usually followed by special breakfast and then everyone has to get dressed and out the door. This year I didn’t take any picutes at my family gathering but I did at Dave’s aunts house.

Let me just say that Dave’s aunt is an awesome party thrower. She always has the best house, the best food, the best drinks she always thinks of what other people want and she overall is an amazing woman on top of all the awesome party stuff. Well so is Dave’s like whole family but that’s a different post.

Here is the pre dinner spread

We have this wonderful dinner/tradition that is very similar to this one, http://www.ehow.com/how_2066812_serve-traditional-carpathorusyn-holy-supper.html?fb_ref=like&fb_source=email. Here are some great shots of aunt giving honey crossees (personally one of my favorite traditions).

Dave getting his honey cross and blessing. He loves it the best part is that you can’t wash it off so it makes your head and hair sticky with love honey for the next at least day.

Oliver getting his, he could really care less about it he didn’t protest or anything.

Xander didn’t want to get one this year and had to be held down to receive his blessing.

After dinner the real party starts with the worlds largest supply of presents. We are such a blessed family to be able to give and recieve the amount of gifts that we exchange on this night. I am always super greatful that the family that I have married into is so welcoming and gracious. Dave and I always end up only gifting one small gift each to our children because of the sheer amount of gifts we recieve for them.

This year was pretty good as far as time goes we were able to get the kids home around 10:30.

Resolutions Review 2011

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Dec 302011

Here is a round up of my 2011 resolutions, I was so so this year. I would place money on being better at resolutions than most people but I would have liked to lost more weight and saved more money.

So today is 1-1-2011 what an awesome day. I have been thinking about all the awesome things that are going to happen over the next year and I’m really excited. I loved the first year of life with Xander and I’m sure I’m going to love it with Oliver as well. Xander is the sweetest most awesome little boy ever and I’m sure this next year will just bring more awesomeness. I would like to set up some goals for myself and family for the 2011 year.

Personal Goals:
Lose 50lbs

Run the trail ends 5 mile in under an hour

Run one other race

Only trim my hair until Oliver’s first birthday

Starbucks only once a week

Family Goals:

Move

Save money

Only eat out twice a week including lunches

What I got done in 2011.

This year was awesome with Xander and Oliver they are so awesome and just a fun super age
This year I lost 25lbs! Yay me, I wanted to loose 50lbs but 25 isn’t anything to not be proud of.
I didn’t run the Trail Ends 5 mile, or any other races this year
I am still growing my hair and it’s getting super long, Dave loves it.
We did move

Resolutions 2012.

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Dec 272011

Can I just mention that I love new year; for me it’s not just a time to get new Calendars (BTW, I love new calendars as well). For me New Year is really a time to reflect on my daily life and decided what is important to me and to my family. What do I want to focus on how do I want to better myself?

2012 is going to be a great year for me. We are planning a trip for just Dave and I to celebrate my big 30 that is coming in July, we are going to be spending Thanksgiving with my Uncle in Colorado and hitting the ski hills and we are going to be living in once place and focusing on building a strong foundation for our family.

2012 Resolutions

Body/Weight loss

Loose 30lbs, end goal 145
Join YMCA, work out 4 days a week
Wash my face every day, I’m really bad at this

Financial

Save $100 per month, $1,200 for the year
Convert all of my 401Ks from previous jobs into IRAs
Pay off my credit cards

Home

Organize my desk/kitchen area

Blogging

Post one meal with pictures every week
One weekly post about weight loss/resolution check in

Christmas Gifts

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Dec 272011

Each year we like to do a handmade usually painted gift from the kids for all of the family. When Xander was one we did these cool glass ornaments with his hand prints on them. This year we got a great deal on canvases at JoAnn Ect and we did paintings.

We have an array of non toxic washable paints from Michael’s from holidays past that we used. We did the project in the kitchen and placed a drop cloth on the floor. Then we got the kids down to their underware/diapers and Dave stripped down to his non work clothes. Then we gave each of them a canvas and let them go at it for a little while.

That didn’t work to well, we ended up with a bunch of canvas that were solid green or with a little bit of paint on them. So we then decided to help the kids out a little bit and showed Xander how to do starts with the paint brush and flowers. We helped Oliver use the brush a little bit as well so they didn’t end up just blobs.

What is your favorite holiday project to do with your kids?

Santa Visit

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Dec 212011

Xander’s first Santa visit was last year. He didn’t really like it at all, Oliver had just been born like 3 weeks before that I wouldn’t let Santa hold Oliver and Xander was crying. But we did get one clean shot of him.

In this picture he doesn’t really look like he is crying, but that little Elmo he is crying was Santa’s and it was the one second that he wasn’t crying.

I haven’t really told him the story of Santa and I have just found out that there are many stories of Santa and what the origins of Santa are. I am going to be researching some more to figure out what I want to tell him.

So this year was awesome, both kids loved Santa and no one cried. I was horribly hung over but my awesome Mother in Law and husband were there to pick up the slack where I was lagging.

Oh and I LOVE the matching Bah Hum Bug shirts that I got for the boys from Sunday Rookery on Etsy she special made Xander’s to have a 3 on the back because he is turning 3 this year.

Weight Watchers Update

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Dec 212011

This year I have been doing Weight Watchers for almost the whole year. I took the summer off and tried to go back to

South Beach diet. So here are some stats for me for this year.

Since my start date December 27th started Weight Watchers Online: 197

Today I weight in at 175

Well let me tell you that loosing 22lbs for me takes a long time. I could have focused more during the summer as I didn’t lose anything all summer long. Between June/July/August I lost and gained the same 8lbs over and over again. So that is my fault.have lost more than 10% of my body weight and I’m right at 175 right now. For some people losing 22lbs might only take them three months and it just sweats off of them for cutting out the extra soda they drink on the weekends.

For the upcoming year I am trying to get my motivation up and aim to lose 30 plus pounds next year. If I lost 30lbs that would put me at 145, which is right on the highest end of a healthy weight range for my BMI.

I plan on continuing with Weight Watchers and focusing more on what I am eating because I am doing pretty good at staying withing my points and tracking. I seem to lose better and faster if I focus on eating not really low carb but low processed carbs and skipping carbs at dinner/after dinner. I am also going to focus on eating the majority of my food throughout the day and having only one snack at night.

I am also going to be increasing the exercise as well. I have been contemplating joining the local YMCA which is conveniently located right behind my work. That means that I could just walk there on lunch since I usually just sit at my desk and play on the internet/do banking/email catch up.

Happy Birthday OD

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Nov 222011

My baby and possibly my last child turned one a few weeks ago. It’s been kind of crazy so I haven’t gotten around to getting a birthday post up.

Oliver,

For your first birthday we had a party for just our family. We had chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese for dinner, some of your favorites. I brought home a HUGE cupcake from The Cupcake Station that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY and you got to eat it, but really you only ate the frosting. Afterward you and Xander played and played followed by some Sesame Street then bed time. We are so glad that you are part of our family, we love you very much.

The weekend after your birthday we hosted a great party. All of your family came and celebrated the year following your birth. You have such a wonderful family that loves you so much.