Growing up

My children are growing up!

We went to the Dr on Thursday and here are the reports:

Elijah is 26.4# and 32.5" tall-who said he could get so big, he is sadly starting to also look less and less like a baby and more like a toddler.  And I just wanted him to stay little forever.

Athaiah is 9# 1.5oz and is 20.75" tall.  Her newborn clothes fit her excellently now, except most are still a bit wide in the legs and rear region as she is a true Turley in these areas!  She is starting to be more and more alert every day.

These two children are pure joy! They are both so amazing in attitude, both very content and happy children.  We couldn't be more blessed and we look forward to continue watching them grow, although they are so snuggly when they are little sometimes I wish they would stay that way forever. But hey that's why you have more children right?!

Breakfast Mush

This is what my husband so lovingly named this dish-and since I threw everything in a pan it seemed to fit it perfectly so that is the name of this wonderful dish. Let's turn this unlucky Friday the 13th(I don't really believe in this but you know) into something wonderful by making this wonderful dish for breakfast!

Ingredients:
6 eggs
splash of milk
4 slices of bacon
1/2 lb of sausage
1 c shred cheese(I used cheddar)
2 c hash browns

Ok I don't like to do too many dishes so here is how we make this in one pan!

First you are going to cook your bacon and sausage, yep in the same pan.  Just brown the sausage on one side and cook the bacon to your liking on the other side.  Although it does work better if the bacon is a little crispy as we will crumble it up later.

When the bacon is done, remove from a pan and place on a paper towel to cool.  Keep cooking the sausage and while this is continuing to cook you can now throw in your hashbrowns.  All that bacon and sausage grease will make them cook nice with no extra oil needed!

While those are cooking, in a bowl mix together the eggs and milk.  Once the hashbrowns look most of the way cooked, add the egg mixture to the pan.  Now we are also going to put the bacon back into the pan, crumble the bacon as you put it in the pan.  When the eggs are about done add the cheese.  The cheese should be melty and guess what you are done.

I think this took about 30min from start to finish so not too terrible long.  The longest part is cooking the bacon and sausage because I always do that part on a low heat so they don't burn.

Asian Salmon

Ingredients:

4 Salmon Fillets

1/3 c olive oil

1/4 c soy sauce

1/4 c terryaki sauce

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp ginger powder

1/4 c brown sugar

Mix all the ingredients together. Place Salmon in a bowl and cover in the sauce.  Let it marinate for at least an hour. The longer it sits the better it tastes in my opinion.  Put on the grill.  We only cook it for 15min tops, we don't turn the salmon either.  Enjoy!

Rosemary Red Skin Potatos

Ingredients:
Red skin potatos
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 tsp rosemary
1 tsp parsley
2 TBSP olive oil

Preheat oven to 375.  Cut up your potatos.  Put into a 8X8 baking dish.  Drizzle with olive oil, and then sprinkle all of the spices over top of the potatos.  Bake in the oven for 30-40min-until done.  I like mine just a bit soft but not mushy.  ENJOY! This makes enough for 5 people. (I usually buy a small bag of the potatos and just use whatever is in that size bag if that helps any)

These are super easy and taste excellent!

Pizza Rolls

Ingredients:

2 cans jumbo biscuits

32 pepperoni

1 c Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

1 jar pizza sauce

2 cloves garlic-minced

4 TBSP butter-melted

1. Cut the biscuits in half, so you have 32 instead of 16

2. Layer the biscuits first with pepperoni, and then a bit of the cheese



3. Roll them up into a ball
4. Mix the butter and garlic together(I always like to melt my butter with the garlic in it, I feel like it gets more garlic flavor into the butter, but that is just me)
5. In a loaf pan, or bunt pan which ever you prefer, coat the pan with the butter mixture.
6. Add all the biscuits to the pan, and brush the biscuits with the remaining butter

7. Bake at 350 for 25-30 min.  Should be golden brown!
8. Warm up your pizza sauce and use to dip the rolls into!

9. Enjoy!!  These were really good and super easy to make.  Now you could always make these out of real pizza dough, but I was trying to do something a bit easier since I have a newborn baby and a 15month old running around.  I was going for simple and it ended up being really, really yummy.  My hubby said I could make them anytime!

Alternate Toy Box

I took another old diaper box and turned it into a toy box for our basement.  This time I did it with mod podge and fabric! 

Here is what it looks like:

It was really easy to do.  You can kind of see the huggies logo through it so next time I may spray paint the whole thing a solid color so you can't read anything through it, or just use a darker fabric!

I cut the fabric out to size.  I wanted it to go down into the inside of the box and under it so that it would lay nice on the sides.  Once it was cut to size, I put mod podge on one side at a time and attached the fabric.  Continued doing this all around the box.  Then I tucked in all the corners on the bottom of the box and put mod podge on those.  Once it was all dry I added a top layer of mod podge to the bottom of the box to ensure that it stuck well and held in place.

Not to hard and of course it matches the chair that I just refinished!

Dog Bed

I made this quite a while ago, but now that I know how much he liked it I decided to post it.
Our dog and our two cats used to all sleep in our bed.  Can you say a little too crowded?  We now shut the door at night to keep the cats out, but our dog cried all night long and caused us not to sleep so we let him sleep in the room.  We just needed to figure out a way to keep him off the bed.
Let me preface this by saying he had a dog bed when we first got him, and he was so scared all the time he was constantly peeing on it, so I threw it out figuring it was doing more harm than good in the long run.  With that said I didn't want to go and spend another $20 on a dog bed. (we have to get the big kind since we have a chocolate lab).
As I was making the bed one day I noticed how torn up our mattress pad was getting so I came up with this idea!

I cut all the elastic off the sides of the mattress cover and snipped all the corners so that it would lay flat.  I then found a fleece blanket of mine that I used in high school on my twin bed-which doesn't fit our queen now I just never threw it away because it was soo comfy and it was purple my favorite color.
I then folded the mattress pad so that it was 1/4 of the size(this because my stuffing for the dog bed).  Then I folded the fleece blanket in half around the mattress pad, tucking in all the edges so the seams were nice and neat.  Sew all this together(I had to sew slow as it was really thick).

Guess what you are done.  My dog sleeps on this every night! I never thought we would be able to get him out of the bed.  I think it helped that it had our smell on it from being an older blanket.  Now when we go downstairs he goes straight for his bed, and it hardly took any training at all! (by training I mean that it took us two days of telling him to get off the bed, and when he got off the bed he went straight for his new dog bed).  Made me feel like doggy mom of the year, that is since he likes it so much!

Life these days...

Where do I even begin, there are so many things happening it is unreal.

It has been a bit hectic here.  Not in a bad way at all, just a lot of people coming and going which makes the house seem a bit crazier than normal. 
Let me explain:

I can't lift anything over 10lbs since I had to have a C-section.  This means I can't life Elijah and he doesn't walk yet.  We have had some wonderful people coming over during the day to help me take care of him.  Which has been much needed and absolutely wonderful to have such caring and willing souls to help us out in a time of need.  Truly shows how much God always provides for our family. 

We have also had people bringing us meals.  Another wonderful blessing!  This is one less thing I have to think about during my crazy days.

Did I mention our dog is a nervous wreck??? He has been a nervous dog since we got him, so as you can imagine all these people coming and going and holding his babies seems to be eating at him a bit.  He does a lot of sighing.  He has also done some peeing when people walk in.  He is much better than he was 2 yrs ago when we got him, but I think it is all getting to be a bit much for him these days.  Poor dog!  He is still an excellent dog, but seems to need a bit more attention these days and after a stressful day he just lays there with this sad look on his face.

I am absolutely loving our new little addition.  She is such a wonderful blessing from God!  She is a good baby.  I didn't think we could get much better than Elijah since he was an amazing baby. Well I think we did!  She sleeps 3-4 hrs at a time at night already!! YEAH!  Elijah was up every 2 hrs all night long to eat until he was 6 months old.  She is very content just like big brother. Did I mention I was excited to have a little girl!  I have painted her toe nails already-hot pink of course!  She also wears a bow in her hair everyday!  I am having so much fun with her!

 I am amazed at how similar yet how different they are.  I know every child is unique it is just so cool to see it play out in our own lives!

Similarities:                                                                           
look identical
content babies
good eaters
easy to put to bed(good sleepers)

Differences:
She sleeps in longer chunks
Gender-obviously
She makes more noise(girl???)
Size-she is much smaller

Just to name a few- mainly as good as we can tell at this point since she is still so young! But as for what they both were like at 1 wk old that is how they are similar and different.

Elijah has been doing pretty good.  He takes some interest in his baby sister, but still isn't quite too sure about her as she takes up mommies time.  He has hit her a couple times-not too hard though so I think we are doing ok.  He has snuggled her a bit, and he loves to climb on the couch and peek at her sleeping in the bassinet!  He has a bit of a hard time with me not picking him up, but he has loved all the people coming to the house.  He is a very social being and gets sad when any of them leave! So sweet. He is also getting so big.  He has learned how to ride his ATV from Grandma and Grandpa.  He has gotten really good at standing himself up-only with something to hold onto though.  He is also started walking in the past few days.  He only creeps along the furniture, but I'm betting it won't be too long before he braves going off on his own.  He really seems to like being able to get around by himself.

Last, my husband! A wonderful man! He has been so amazing.  He has had to do pretty much everything with Elijah.  Before he can leave for work at 7am, he gets Elijah up.  Then he comes home for lunch and helps with him again, holds his baby girl, helps get lunch ready if it's not ready yet, pays attention to me, and the list could go on.  He then comes home after a long day, and plays with Elijah again and does everything he needs.  Helps take care of me, he waits on me since it takes me a bit longer to move around.  He pays attention to Athaiah too, and it is the sweetest thing to watch his face light up when he holds her or even just looks at her.  I couldn't have asked for a better man to take care of us all.  He has truly stepped up to the plate and he is wonderful!

Well, that has been our life the past 10days.  Getting used to running the house semi smooth with two children now! I can't believe we have 2!! What a wonderful blessing they both are, we couldn't be more excited!  Things should start to slow down here soon, given I can start to take care of more things around here to give Greg a break! Side note- I need to take some newborn pictures of Athaih, and we have yet to get a family picture.  I need to work on those two things this week!
What has your week been like??

Puff Pancakes

You can never have enough breakfast food in my opinion!  I used to love these pancakes growing up, although my family always called them puff puff pancakes, not sure why, although my mom or dad could tell you I'm sure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did growing up and still do, as it brings back so many good childhood memories.

Ingredients:
1/2 c Flour
1/2 c milk
2 eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla
pinch of nutmeg
4 TBSP butter

Turn your oven on to 425 degrees.  In a 9" pie pan slice the butter and put in the oven, you want the butter to melt but not turn brown.  While that is in the oven mix your other ingredients together.  Once butter is melted take the pan out of the oven and pour in the batter.  Place back in the oven(it should be preheated by now), and bake for 20 min.  It should be slightly brown and the sides and maybe portions of the middle should be all puffed up.  Hence the name puff pancake.

In my family my mom always pulled out some frozen fruits and defrosted them while this was cooking.  We always had a bowl of blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.  I added some peaches this past time just for kicks and giggles.  Once it is out of the oven, slice it and put whatever fruit of your choice you would like on top.  And of course everything tastes better with a bit of sugar so then we always added a spoonful of powder sugar on top! Yummy.

She's Here!

I'm a little late posting about this, but I have been trying to get some things moving at my house again.  Of course we are moving pretty slow these days!

Our new little addition is here! Athaiah Joy Turley.

She was born on 4-6-12(Good Friday- Can't get much better than that in my opinion) Weighing 7lbs 10oz and she was 20.75" long, via C-section at 7:53am. 

She looks a ton like her big brother-just a bit more petite.

Her big brother loves her, at least so far!

We are blessed to have such a wonderful addition to our family.

White Board-Homemade

Well now that this baby is finally here and I don't feel so exhausted I will catch up on a couple of my posts.  I was so busy trying to get them all done, I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked so I apologize for that.  I'm just excited to finally get them all on here for everyone to see.  So keep your eyes peeled for more of what has been going on in the kitchen and the basement!
I decided to put one of my old frames to use, since I was just going to throw it away. But it was still in good condition.

I have wanted a place in my house where I could write a different verse each week just to give us all a small reminder of God's promises to us, and all that He has done for us.
I took the back off the frame and cleaned both sides of the glass really well.

I then found a piece of scrapbook paper that I liked, and cut it to the size of the frame.  I also took some of my flower pieces and put two flowers on the paper just for kicks and giggles. The frame before just had a paper backing and that was torn up from me removing it and since I have a ton of cardboard boxes from cleaning out the storage room I decided to cut one of those to size and place in the back of the frame.  I cut it so that it would fit really snug and I wouldn't have to hold it in with anything else.

What do you think?  I love it and got right to work with writing on it.  I think it goes nicely in our newly finished basement and really adds a family element to the family room.  Since we want our family firmly based on God and His Word this is a perfect reminder!

Mod Podge

I also found this link on Pintrest and was really interested since you can use it on quite a few crafts, but it is very pricey.  I was having a hard time wanting to make those crafts to spend that much money on the "glue" for the craft. So I sent to work making it and it works great!

Here is the quick and simple recipe on how to make this marvolous mixture.
Mason Jar
Elmers Glue
Water


You are going to put half glue and half water in the jar, and shake it all up.  Guess what you are done.  Now that was really simple wasn't it.  And Elmers glue is a lot cheaper than a huge jar of mod podge. 







Have fun crafting I know I will!

Coffee Creamer

I found this link on Pintrest and was immediately inclined to try and make some, since I love my coffee and it has to have a lot of creamer in it.

I will say not as good as the store bought kind, but definitely easy to make and great in a pinch as I was on Saturday when I made this. I will keep this recipe handy for those times when I don't have a way to get to the store and buy some creamer before I run out.

What you are going to need:
Mason Jar
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14oz)
2 tsp vanilla flavoring
14 oz of milk (I think it might help the flavor a bit if you used half and half or heavy whipping cream, although worse for you, my taste buds are used to REAL creamer)

Put all of these in your mason jar, and shake it up until it is well mixed.  Store in the fridge.  Now wasn't that easy??

If you are a health nut or want to be a bit healthier you can always use skim milk and they have fat free sweetened condensed milk, but I'm not that kind of person-the more fat the better in my opinion!