377 Days/31w3d

MOVING DAY!!!

Finally! After all of the waiting, paperwork, cleaning up, de-cluttering, and organizing, we are finally packing up and headed to the home we will be in for at least the next three and a half years! We've done everything that we need to do and the rest is up to the movers who will be here soon. By the end of the day, everything will be packed up and ready to be delivered to the new place tomorrow.

I've got cookies, lemonade, and water set up for the movers in hopes that if I'm extra nice to them they'll be extra nice to my stuff, haha. This is my first experience with a military move and I hope it's a positive one. Thankfully, since it's a local move our stuff will go straight from the old house to the new one so we don't have to worry about anything sitting in storage or getting misplaced between here and there. I'm really just so excited I could burst!

Farewell, Knollwood Ct!

Our first look at the house

Pictures of the new house will be up as soon as we have internet again! I'm not sure when that will be so bear with me. We'll get cable and internet hooked up on the 6th, so I will be back then with lots of pictures!

376 Days/31w2d

As I was putting the finishing touches on the mad cleaning frenzy that I've been in for the past week and a half, I came across the box with Arianna's Halloween costume! We received it about two weeks ago, but she was napping when it was dropped off. I set it aside so that she could be there when I opened it and I completely forgot about it until now. I thought about just keeping it boxed up until we get to the new house, but I was really excited to see her reaction.

Berry Butterfly from Gymboree

Instead of the crown, we're getting a custom bow from my good friend Jennifer's company, All Tied Up Hairbows!


Wing detail

We're also not getting the wand that goes with it (I saw it in person and it's really flimsy, plus she'll have enough to carry with her candy bag) and I'll probably need to get a shirt for her to wear underneath since it's already starting to get chilly in the evenings out here. I think I'm going to find some red or black tights and some black shoes that will double as her Christmas shoes. I just love this costume! It's adorable!

372 Days/30w5d

It's been a while since I've done a recipe! Earlier, a friend posted on Facebook about making pumpkin bread and it sounded so good! It was also kind of funny because earlier I happened to stumble across a can of pumpkin puree in my pantry while I was looking for something else. I bought one too many cans last Thanksgiving when I was making desserts and never used the second one!

I've never made pumpkin bread before so I hope it turns out ok! It's in the oven as I type this. I always thought that pumpkin bread was a fairly healthy snack so I was a bit surprised to find that most of the recipes called for a full cup of oil and three cups of white sugar. I think next time I do this, I may try out this recipe which calls for brown sugar (and less of it) instead of white sugar and doesn't use any vegetable oil. Or I may try substituting the oil with applesauce. Here is the one that I used for tonight because I happened to have all of the ingredients:

Pumpkin Pie Bread
3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice***
1 teaspoon of salt
3 cups of white sugar
1 cup of oil
4 eggs
1 (15oz) can of pumpkin puree
1/2 cup of water

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, beat together sugar, oil, eggs, and pumpkin.


3. Stir in flour mixture alternately with water.

4. Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. For best flavor, store wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for a full day before serving.
Picture coming soon!

***I also didn't happen to have any pumpkin pie spice so I made my own using this recipe which makes 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I just tripled it for my recipe since it called for 3 teaspoons:

1. Measure 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon into a small bowl or cup.

2. Add 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger.

3. Add 1/8 teaspoon of ground allspice or ground cloves.

4. Add 1/8 teaspoon of ground nutmeg.

5. Stir to blend.

Edited to add: This turned out pretty good, but I had to make a few adjustments. Baking for 60 minutes at 350F had the top overdone and the middle completely raw. I lowered the temperature to 325F and baked it for another 15 minutes. The outside is a lot crispier than I would have liked (there was really no way to salvage that by then), but the inside is PERFECT! If I use this recipe again, I will start out at the lower temperature and bake for longer.

370 Days/30w3d

They say that once you upload an image to the internet (or post anything on the internet, really), it's there forever. Even if you one day go back and remove it, it's still backed up on a server somewhere and can be found if you dig deep enough.

If that's true, and I believe it probably is, Arianna might stumble across some not-so-flattering pictures of herself someday. Like these!

This is how she fell asleep two nights ago.

When she sleeps, she still looks exactly like she did as a newborn....with more hair.

Someday she'll be mad at me for taking these (and then posting them online on a PUBLIC blog!), but when I showed them to her the next day she thought it was the greatest and funniest thing in the world. Ah, toddlers.

366 Days/29w6d

Our first anniversary celebration was lovely!

We actually celebrated the gift part of it last Sunday because we were both too impatient to wait. I had bought Jon's gift while I was on vacation and was eager for him to open it. Plus he was scheduled to go on a trip and I wanted him to have it with him in case he went anywhere nice.

Our gifts

I went first. (Excuse my hair, I had just showered.)


I have been wanting to start a Tiffany's charm bracelet!


Jon's turn!

He bought a Tommy Bahama sport watch right after we got married, but he's been wanting a nicer one. Interesting tidbit that I just learned yesterday.....I knew that the "traditional" gift for a first anniversary is paper. I tried to think of something paper to get for Jon and I just couldn't come up with anything that I knew he really wanted so I decided to forgo tradition and just get him the watch. Out of curiosity though, I wanted to know what the traditional gifts for the second, third, fourth, etc anniversaries were. I found this table and saw that while the traditional first anniversary gift is paper, the modern first anniversary gift is clocks! So I still did ok with the watch, haha!

Someone else decided to follow the paper tradition though! Friday afternoon, this arrived from my parents:

New cookbook!

Another common tradition is to freeze the top tier of your wedding cake and eat it on your first anniversary. Our top tier survived for about eight months. We left it in Jon's parents' freezer after the wedding and dug into it while we were home in May. I thought it was still delicious, Jon thought it tasted like freezer burn. We just tossed it out after that since I'm not sure how much longer it would have lasted and either way, we're not in Arizona to enjoy it. I realized too late that I should have gone to a bakery and had a special top layer of a cake made for us to eat. By the time I thought about doing it, I don't know that any bakeries would have had time so I just picked up a cake from the store.

We exchanged some small gifts since we had already exchanged our "big" gifts.

My flowers from Jon

The card I got for Jon


Jon's gift

All week Jon had been telling me that he had another surprise for me that would be revealed on our anniversary. All he would tell me was that the purchase was technically for him, but that it would surprise me......

He bought a suit!

I loved the suit, but Arianna told him he looked "so weird." She also thought his dress shoes were tap shoes, haha.


You can't see it in my expression, but this is me thrilled that my dress from the 2008 Marine Corps still fits at almost eight months pregnant. Comfortably too!

Jon and I had arranged childcare with one of our neighbors so that we could enjoy a nice evening out at one of our favorite places. I mentioned in the last entry that our first date was at Ruth's Chris Steak House so what better way to celebrate our first year of marriage than to go back to where it all began!

Fresh bread and butter


Wine (for Jon)


Filet (Jon got a ribeye), garlic mashed potatoes, and fresh asparagus


and dessert!

Our meal was perfect and we just had a beautiful evening. I couldn't have asked for a better, more romantic anniversary and I can't wait to celebrate our second! I feel so blessed and fortunate to be with such a wonderful man :)