Baby Names

When Lily was just a little developing baby in my stomach, I loved playing around with different baby names. I would ramble off names liked to my husband and he would usually nod "no" or give me a "thumbs up."  Lily was just so natural to me, and beautiful.

I was recently looking at the most popular names of 2013 and it's hard for me to believe that people actually name their children after character they see in television, movies or pop culture.  Thor actually made the list.

Thor.

No matter how many times I try to justify, or make it sound nice, I can't.

Take a peek at a few other names that made the list of 2013 Top Baby Names

St. Patrick's Day Festivities

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe St. Patricks Day! We saw lots of people out and about with their green on and it always makes me happy.  My mother is 100% Irish so since we were young we were wearing green on March 17th.  Of course I dressed Lily up in green too!

Our holiday wouldn't have been complete without a little corn beef and cabbage- so naturally I whipped some up!  It turned out to be amazing and even Lily enjoyed it :)  My husband made a delicious horseradish cream sauce (recipe can be found here!)

The best part about corn beef is that we have leftovers for days.  The more I cook, the more I realize I'd love to explore my heritage more through cooking.  I know my mother is Irish and my father is Polish (give me a pierogie any day of the week.)  I'd love to dig up a great borscht recipe or maybe some Irish colcannon.  Any tips would be appreciated and welcomed!

A DIY Scrub for You

I feel bad.  I haven't put up a new post in a long time and for whatever reason I feel like I should give my readers (if there are any out there) a gift in order to make up for my absence.  I could list the reasons why I haven't been able to post, but they're boring and I won't bore you with that!

SO- what I have done is documented my latest beauty regimen that seems to work like a charm!  This winter has been terrible on my skin and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a product that may or may not work.  This led me to get creative in my kitchen and make my own facial scrub!

not mine..but you get the idea.

Take a look at my DIY Body Scrub:

What You'll Need

• a small mason jar or glass container for storing your scrub
• white sugar
• almond oil
• lavender essential oil (for scent- you can use mint, lemon, lavender or a scent of your preference!)

Instructions

• Combine (1) cup of white sugar with (1/2) cup of almond oil.  Make sure they are both combined well. 
• Add two to three drops of your essential oil and mix well. 
• Refrigerate overnight for best results.  It feels good to have the cold exfoliation clean your pores.

I wasn't able to take pictures as I really was just winging it.  I compare this scrub to others and found that I spent $5 while other facial scrubs can run upwards of $40!  

If you do end up making a scrub- send me a picture!  I'd be happy to post it here!

Photo Credit: Symbolic Imports via Compfight cc

So Cute!

Here's a mid-week pick me up! How adorable!

To Grain or Not to Grain?

Over the course of the holiday season and the combination of the colder weather, my eating habits have strayed a little off course.  It was easier for me to just order a pizza instead of making dinner.  I think we've all found ourselves guilty of this at one point or another (so I'll try not to feel TOO guilty about it.)

I need to get myself, and our family, back on track.  Lily has always been a vegetable lover and it's easy to incorporate them into meals.  Sometimes I'll blend spinach, a banana, an apple with a little almond milk as her "smoothie" and she loves it!

Of course I've been doing a lot of research online about making our diets even healthier and I came across the "paleo" diet.  Well, it's not necessarily a diet, but a way of eating. There's a wealth of information about it online and sometimes it gets to be too hard to process.

The main premise of paleo is to avoid processed grains, sugars, legumes and dairy. When I first stumbled upon it, I was a bit taken aback.  How could people eat this way?? WHAT do these people eat?

There is a method to the madness, and I'm certainly not able to explain why or how, but it did make me question our family's eating habits.  Here is a REALLY good explanation here.  A typical weekday dinner usually looks a lot like this:

yum?

I've started to question if all of the pasta and bread we consume on a regular basis is doing us any favors.  I try to stay away from foods high in fat and sugar, but could bread be as bad as people are saying?

I have started by adding more vegetables back into our diet.  I've always loved kale and made this awesome kale salad for a dinner side yesterday with chicken and a sweet potato.

Do you eat within the paleo guidelines?  I'd love feedback...or advice!

Photo Credit: the_babyladies via Compfight cc

Hamburger Cupcakes

My husband is a HUGE football fan.  His second favorite sport is hockey and then probably basketball.  If he's really bored he'll turn to the golf channel (but that's definitely a last resort.)

We were invited to our friend Deb and Ken's house this past weekend and I decided to make cheeseburgers.  Just not the type of cheeseburgers you're thinking of.

yum!

I had seen this hamburger cupcake recipe on DuncanHines.com and have been looking for a reason to try it for quite some time.  I knew as soon as Deb called and asked me to bake I had the perfect dessert!

adding the "cheese" and "lettuce"

they were a hit!

Family Vacation

For one of my Christmas gifts my husband surprised me with a gift that I NEVER would have expected- a vacation.  He was able to take time off from work and book our rental home without me knowing ANYTHING...which was kind of a shock!

This past week we made our way to the Bahamas.  It was so nice to be in the warm weather, bright sunshine and enjoying some downtime.  It's amazing with a little getaway will do to refresh your mind after the holidays.  Take a peek of the picture I snapped from one of our flights:

Just breathtaking!

This was also Lily's first time on a plane which was VERY exciting.  I'm not sure she understood what was going on, and we did have a little bit of trouble during take off (yes, we were those people with the screaming baby.)  But we did manage to calm her nerves and she was fine for the second flight.

Since we rented a house we didn't have childcare services which is what I preferred.  If we went out to dinner, it was with Lily.  This kept things pretty low-key and I wouldn't have asked for anything different.  We spent most of our time on the beach and exploring the little island of Green Turtle Cay.

Beautiful

It was wonderful to get away and spend some time with my husband and Lily.  We needed a little break from it all after the holidays and this really "hit the spot."