July 2011

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Emery Lin

Remember the Weldon Family? I wrote about them a few months ago asking all of you reader to reach out to their family. Well, they finally met their baby girl a few days ago in China!! Thank you all who contributed to helping this family bring home little Emery. They will be in China for 2 weeks and then travel home to their two boys who are awaiting their little sister (and boy do I mean little). This tiny girl is the most precious thing I have ever seen! Angie (her amazing mama) writes in a way that makes you feel as though you know Emery and the emotions of each day just as they experience them. I could not be happier for them. They have waited so patiently for 3 years and God blessed them with the most amazing daughter. Please take a minute and read their blog...I promise it will bring a smile to your face, but be prepared...some "happy tears" may come too :)

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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

"Love until it hurts, then love more."

I've been busy....

...busy traveling to PA. Busy missing my husband. Busy taking care of my pup. Busy spending time with my sister and preparing her nursery for her little baby coming in October. Busy caring for my sick Grandmother. Busy enjoying the little things in life. Busy meeting up with old friends. Busy eating dinners outside and frozen yogurt in cute little towns. Busy training for our marathon (9 miles on a treadmill due to 104 degree heat is NOT ideal). Busy making and eating too many gluten-free sugar cookies. Busy relaxing ;) Busy getting a tattoo...

This is my second tattoo. My first says "compassion" in Hebrew on my wrist. I've always wanted a second one and finally got it this past weekend. It says "love until it hurts, then love more" (my favorite Mother Teresa quote) in Ancient Greek. I love it!

What have you been busy doing?

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Blueberry Pancakes

Yesterday on Facebook I posted the status, "Why can't I ever stop eating blueberries once I start?" I ate a huge carton of berries and gave myself a belly ache. You would think after all of those blueberries that I would take a break for a while....nope, not me! I woke up this morning and made myself some blueberry pancakes :)

I used a great recipe from Smitten Kitchen to make these! I'm not going to post the ingredients and recipe because if you go here you can find everything you need.

Jeff likes blueberries but doesn't love them (crazy), so decided to just make regular boring old pancakes for himself. I still love him, though. He has class at 1:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays and I have loved being able to spend the first half of the day together this summer!

After about 5 minutes you have yourself some amazing pancakes-full of fresh berries! I topped mine with peanut butter and pure maple syrup.

I have lots to do today. In about an hour I'm heading to the gym for a 4 mile run. We are up to 9 miles on our long run and right on schedule to be ready to run 26.2 miles in November. Still seems impossible but each run we feel a little bit more confident runnnig. After the gym I'm off to Trader Joe's then visiting the family I nanny for tonight! Hope you have a great day :)

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Thursday, July 14, 2011

Zucchini Bread

Our landlord has an amazing garden. A few days ago she came to our door with two very large zucchinis. I just figured we would grill them like we always do, until I talked to my mom (who is always full of great ideas) who suggested I make zucchini bread! I thought about it for a few minutes, since I had never made this kind of bread before, and decide it indeed was a good idea. I googled "zucchini bread recipes" and combined two that I liked into one that I thought would be good. Except when the bread came out of the oven, instead of saying "yum" I thought "interesting." Now, interesting does necessarily mean the bread was horrible, just different than normal! From the pictures you can tell that this bread was much more like cake than bread. It was good, but not my favorite. I still thought I'd share it since it is something different and if you are sick of ordinary zucchini bread, give his unique cake-like recipe a try!

Ingredients (makes 1 loaf):

2 cups flour
3/4 cup Loosely packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup canola or vegatable oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
about 1 1/2 cups freshly grated zucchini (with skin)

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

-Grease a loaf pan with a little oil and butter and then bounce flour around in the pan to coat

-In large mixing bowl beat together the oil and sugar.

-Add vanilla and the eggs.

-In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture and beat until blended. Stir in zucchini until fully incorporated. Use spatula to pour evenly into pan.

-Bake for about 50 minutes. Test with a toothpick by sticking one in the top of the bread and making sure that it comes out dry.

Why oh why do I always make such a mess whenever I bake?

I could tell right away that this wasn't an ordinary bread recipe. The batter was super

thick and I was honestly curious as to how it would turn out! To my surprise, it was good...just different :)

Since our oven is ridiculously hot, this bread cooked in about 35 minutes! It definitely tasted the best warm, right out of the oven.

Here are some pictures Jeff and I took with our new lens! We bought a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 and could not be happier with our purchase.

I hope our future children have Jeff's beautiful blue eyes!

We have been trying to figure out the color of my eyes for a long time. I guess they are gold? But whenever I have to write my eye color I just put "hazel."

And finally, an updated picture from Ollie! He is growing by the day. Almost 14 pounds now. Can you believe he was only 3 pounds when we first got him?

Is anyone else having problems with blogger? It no longer lets me copy and paste pictures so it ends up taking me double the time to write a post-quite frustrating!

P. S. take a minute and check out our new and improved photography website HERE!

Labels: Bread |

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Blogger Problems

So I had 2 great posts to share with you today and I go to upload my picturs and it isn't working :/ I'm frustrated but I'm not going to stress about it or let it ruin my day. So, I have to wait until Jeff gets back from school to help me figure this problem out. I promise to have a post up by tonight :)

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Friday, July 8, 2011

Lately...

Oh my...I owe all of you an apology, huh? Blogging has officially taken a back seat in my life. I never imagined being so busy this summer considering I'm not even working for 2 months. But the past week has consisted of lots of traveling! Last Thursday I headed to OCNJ with

my mom and sister (who is an adorable 6 months pregnant) for some mother and sister bonding

time! The weather was perfect and it was probably the only time we could have done something like that this entire summer with our busy schedules. Ready to see the cutest baby bump of all time?...

I can't wait to be an aunt! Really, I think besides my wedding day this is the most excited I have ever been about anything :) My sister is already a great mom to her two pups and will be an even more amazing mama to her baby.

After the beach we headed back to PA for the weekend and met my grandmother at the campsite she was vacationing at for the week. Most people eat hot dogs and hamburgers while camping. Not us! My aunt is an amazing cook and whipped up some alfredo pasta with shrimp and asparagus and steak. I would bet any amount of money that no one else in the campground ate as well as us :)

My sister and I then traveled BACK to NY for 2 days to hang with Jeff's family and then BACK to PA last night for the weekend. UGH. As much as I love being home, I must admit that I am sick and tired of living out of my suitcase. Jeff and I will be heading back to NY Sunday night and I intend to stay there for a few weeks. Today we met my best friend, Rach, in West Chester to enjoy some frozen yogurt at Kiwi. It was amazing! My favorite place to get ice-cream/frozen yogurt in our area. We may or may not go there tomorrow night too ;)

My best friend and handsome husband...

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