More Adventures in Pinterest

There's a tip that I found on Pinterest that claims to make cleaning your fridge simple.

What you do is line the shelves and drawers with Glad Press & Seal wrap. Then whenever it's time to "clean" the fridge, you just have to pull off the plastic liner and replace it.

In theory, this is AWESOME!

So here is what one of my covered shelves looked like:

Obviously I didn't cover the wire shelves.

Practically though, this is what actually happened:
1. It was really hard to get the wrap to stick to my glass shelves. I pressed, and smoothed, and pressed again, but it wouldn't stick all over.

2. The wrap tore occasionally when I was placing items on the shelves.

3. Probably the worst and most condemning problem, there was a sticky residue that was almost impossible to remove left on my shelves when I "cleaned" the fridge a little more than a month later.

Here are the pictures of the goo left over AFTER I tried to scrape it off:

It's probably difficult to tell, but the blue smudges are from my sponge going across the sticky dots.

On this one there's just a line of dots left on the plastic edge. 

So I would NOT recommend using Press & Seal as a means of keeping your fridge clean. Unless of course you don't care if there is sticky residue on the fridge. This would also work if you continued using Press & Seal on your shelves forever more.

But of course, that's just my opinion and there's a good chance I did something wrong just because.

New Look!

While on vacation, I cut my hair!

Like seriously, CUT my hair.

At the longest point, I lost 6 or 7 inches.

I absolutely love the way it turned out. At first I was a little scared because it was a couple inches shorter than I had wanted, but it's turned out great.

Downside: I can no longer put my hair in a ponytail.
Upside: It takes me something like 1 minute to wash my hair and 10 minutes to air dry! AWESOME!

And my mom also gave me some highlights. I think they turned out pretty good. It's a little nerve-wracking for this naturally dark-headed brunette to go lighter in any degree, but I was fine after a few hours ;)

So now you'll be able to recognize me if you ever bump into me on the street.

Visiting Grandpa & Gigi!

It took a week, but Claire has finally warmed up to Grandpa & Gigi!

 She almost likes them more than me now!

Grandpa & Gigi play with her every time she looks at them. They throw her in the air, read books, sing songs, and tickle her until she finally crashes in the evening.

("Grandma says I'm purrrfect")

  Today we spent the whole day with Grandpa. There were no tears here!

("Grandpa & Me")

 


Grandpa's signature move: Superman! Claire flies around the room in Grandpa's arms giving hugs/kisses to everyone.

I'm so glad that Claire is getting this opportunity to bond with my parents. And it's nice to have a bit of a break from entertaining Claire all the time. She's happy all day long now. When she gets bored with mom, she gets passed along to Gigi and Grandpa. It's a pretty sweet arrangement!

Experiments from Pinterest

I love Pinterest.

My favorite things to pin are home craft projects, kid craft projects, sewing projects, organizing ideas, general tips, and recipes.

I've already shared some of my recent successes (and a failure) HERE from Claire's birthday party. But last night my mom and I tried THIS easy cobbler recipe found on Pinterest. We used fresh peaches, yellow cake mix, a bit of oatmeal, and regular sprite. We should have added sugar to the peaches because they weren't quite ripe yet. It turned out deliciously perfect.

I added about a cup of oatmeal to the cake mix to make it more like a made-from-scratch cobbler.

Tips:

• Mush the mix in the bag to break up all the clumps. You'll get more dry spots in the topping if it's clumpy.
• Spread the mix evenly. This goes along with #1. Even though it's a "dump cake," you have to arrange things nicely in order to get good results.
• Pour the soda VERY SLOWLY and methodically. Don't just dump. You want to get all of the mix wet and in order to do this, you have to spread the drink around. Slow and even.

To make:

1. Blanch peaches to make peeling easy. Immerse peaches in boiling water for 1-3 minutes to loosen the skin from the meat. Immediately set peaches in cold water. Then peel and slice the peaches. (Alternatively you could use berries, cherries, apples, (fresh or frozen) or pie filling) You may want to sprinkle sugar over them or stir it in with the fruit.
2. Mix about 1 cup of oatmeal (quick or otherwise) with the cake mix. Make sure to get rid of as many clumps as possible.
3. Evenly sprinkle the mix over the fruit. Use all of the mix.
4. Pour one can of sprite (any variety) over the top of the mix. Pour slowly trying to get every bit of cake mix wet.
5. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. You want the juices to be sticky and the crust to be browned.

Yeah, there were a few dry spots, but it tasted pretty much exactly like every other cobbler I've ever had. And it was super easy. No measuring or mixing. Yum. 

12 Months! (AKA 1 Year Old!!!)

Claire is now One Year Old!
We both made it through our first year of baby & motherhood! Haha!
But really!

So first off, her 12 month stats are:
Height: 29 3/4 inches         50-75%
Weight: 23 lbs. 4 oz.         75-90%
Head circ: 45.6 cm            50-75%

So overall, she's pretty average size. A sturdy little girl.

Claire is VERY active! She absolutely LOVES to run and play. She only sits still so you can put her shoes on or read to her. She thinks that if her shoes are on, we're going out! Haha! She's definitely happiest when she's on the move. Except for when she's tired. Then she only wants to be held by mom.

Last month I forgot one of her other most treasured books, Pat the Bunny

In the Amazon.com description, it says that this is a "board" book. This is a lie. It's not necessarily a paper book either though. It's like a shiny cardstock. She loves this book SO much. She has torn the cover off. Not necessarily a hard thing to do though. The book is spiral bound with a plastic ring. That perforation is not very child friendly. BUT Claire's absolute favorite part is when you're told to read Judy's book. She hurries through patting the bunny, playing peek-a-boo with Paul, looking in the mirror, smelling the flowers, and feeling daddy's scratchy face, so that she can open that little book and show how big bunny is...."sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo big!" She also hasn't figured out how to smell the flowers. They smell like sunscreen and she likes to put her face into the book and lick them. Big open mouth lick. We're working on it.

Not my picture, but pretty much exactly what our book looks like! That's what happens after 4 kids & 20+ years

When she finds a book that she wants to read, like Supper Time for Frieda Fuzzypaws, she picks it up, walks over to me and says "ugh." I tell her to "say please" and she hurriedly rubs her chest and starts to turn around so I can pick her up and set her on my lap. She settles in so cute and perfectly! It's just adorable!

We talk through pointing and grunting. She says "pictuh" and points to framed pictures on the wall expecting to be told who/what is in the photos. She also says "og" for dog and "buh" when she hears birds. She recognizes planes in the sky and makes a funny growling noise to mimic the roar of the engines. She also says "mama" and "dada," and she signs and says, "ah duh" (all done) when she's done eating.

Claire also LOVES music. She sings herself to sleep and will bounce and sway back and forth to any kind of rhythmic sound; commercials, toys, movies, radio, or just whatever you happen to hum or sing. She especially loves "If You're Happy and You Know It." 

Claire also loves to play "This Little Piggie." She always wants her shoes taken off so that she can show you how to wiggle her toes. When combined with a grunt, it means, "please play with my toes!"

She drinks a 5 oz. bottle before each nap and at bedtime. And our bedtime routine is back to singing and leaving. I only rock her as long as she's finishing her bottle. It's a nice relief. After we were able to train her to fall asleep on her own, she also stopped needing me when she woke up at 2 in the morning--again. She hadn't done that for months, but then she was teething, and I caved thinking that my baby was in pain. Claire got used to the mid-night company and kept it up. Then I had had enough and ignored her for a night or two. And that was the end of that. The initial sleep training also took place while Peter and I went out to a movie and our friend came to babysit! (Thanks Christine!) So she took the blunt of the crying. It made things SO much easier. It almost felt like cheating. Almost.

Claire also uses binkies. Mostly at night. I try to keep it to a bedtime thing, but sometimes she just needs some extra comfort.

Claire is still super curious about EVERYTHING. She loves to figure out how things work and how they go together. She likes to pull everything off of shelves or out of boxes by tossing things over her head and then tries to put them all back again, only to repeat moments later.

As you've probably noticed from these pictures, she is a lot more social. She's started being more free with her smiles. She loves to give hugs and kisses to mom and dad, and loves to play peek-a-boo.

She is so much fun to be with right now! I feel so lucky to be home with her every day!
Happy Birthday Claire!