Sleeping Boy

I'm amazed at all the different positions Benjamin gets into when he sleeps. I find it quite adorable when I find him with his little bum in the air. He loves snuggling close to his froggie pillow pet, which is comforting for him. I constantly check on him to make sure he's breathing since I let him have his stuffed animals next to him.

 

Awesome Granola

It's been a while since I posted anything, but that's because I have had some technical difficulty...blogger settings and being able to download pictures from my camera. I bit frustrating. Anyhow...I've always wanted to make granola and found a recipe that is awesome and very much to my taste. Check out the recipe for Megan's Granola.

I read several of the reviews and liked the comments. If you don't want the granola very sweet, you can reduce the amount of sweetener added. Also, another comment I found helpful was reducing the amount of sunflower seeds. I like them, but I don't care for it to overpower everything else, so I reduced the seeds to 1/2 cup, which suited me. Finally, I didn't add any walnuts and doubled the amount of pecans.

Since finding this recipe, I've made two batches. The first batch I added raisins; the second batch I used dried cranberries. Yum-yum! It makes a lot, but as long as you keep it in an air tight container it will last for a while.

Valentine Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day! We had a fun day celebrating with hearts. We got our heart pizza from Papa Murphy's.

I made chocolate cupcakes with blushing cream cheese frosting. I got the idea of the brownie hearts on top from Martha Stewart.

I didn't forget about baby. For his first Valentine's Day, I cut out graham cracker hearts, which he stuffed all the way into his mouth. So cute!

We also have an assortment of chocolates to eat. Plus, chocolate covered strawberries. Yummy!

Pavlova

I did not forget to mention that we had pavlova for dessert at the dinner group I attended. It was not included in my previous post because it was not a recipe from the cookbook for that dinner. The pavlova we ate at the dinner group was topped with black berries, where as I used strawberries.

I couldn't wait to make my own when I got the chance, which happened to be today. I used the recipe from allrecipes.com. It was a nice surprise that they aren't as difficult to make as I thought they would. I think that the dinner group was much better, but I still enjoyed making and eating mine.

Zuppa Toscana

I'm not the biggest fan of soup. However, there are a few soups out there that are quite exceptional for me. One of those is Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana. After the dinner party I ended up with left over kale that I wanted to use. The only other time I've ever had kale is in the Zuppa Toscana. I used the recipe found here: copycat zuppa. I think it turned out amazing!

A word of warning though, I found the instructions for the soup to be a little confusing. I felt like something was missing and had to muddle my way through it. The instructions indicate to cook the sausage in the pot. I would then remove the sausage and drain the grease. Then saute the garlic and onions add the potatoes and cook them for a while before adding the broth and water. After that you should be able to follow the rest of the instructions. However, there may other recipes out there with better instructions. I'll have to experiment a bit next time to make sure I can get it to an order I like.