Potty Training...in Progress

Elliott has been working on potty training and slowly, he's making progress :)

The first step was to convince him to use the potty.  We tried just taking him to the bathroom every 45 minutes to 2 hours.  We read him endless books and told him endless stories and songs just to get him to stay in the bathroom.  He basically never used the potty and just went in his diaper or pull-up as soon as he got off.

Not fun.

I tried switching him to underwear and just had to deal with constant messes.  Eventually, the only thing that worked was having him run around the house without underwear.  That was Gerrit's idea and it has worked extremely well! He earned his trip to Kangaroo Zoo very fast once that started.

Our next tactic has been to try to get him to have no accidents.  Again, it works really well if he's home, but not so much if we're going somewhere, and we go places all the time.  At this point, I've decided to just let this work for now and then work really hard on underwear once the school year is over and our schedule is a little bit calmer!

BLT Quinoa Bowls

I actually had two winners in this contest!  My BLT quinoa bowl got a runner-up prize:

Here's the process for this one:

*BLTs had also shown up on my brainstorming list of comfort foods.

*Grain bowls had honestly been the top choice on my list of food trends that I wanted to work with, and I thought that a sandwich could be a good option to transition well to that.

*I originally wanted to use farro as my grain for the grain bowl. I really like farro, but Taste of Home is a magazine where I know that they are more likely to publish things with slightly more common ingredients, so I went with quinoa.  You could really use any grain, though.  Bulgur or barley could totally work.

*The quinoa is dressed with a light homemade salad dressing with olive oil, fresh basil, vinegar, and lemon juice.  I chose ingredients that I might put in a sandwich spread to give the quinoa a little more flavor.

*I wanted to use the standard elements of a BLT, but with a little twist.  The bacon goes in in it's own.  I used cherry tomatoes because they're easier to eat in this context, and I did heat them because it tastes better that way.  They would also be AWESOME roasted, but that was too many steps for this recipe.  I used slightly wilted arugula instead of lettuce, because lettuce would be weird here, arugula goes with the modern twist theme, and it is also very yummy.  I added avocado because I grew up in California and put avocado on everything :)  There's also a poached egg on top to make it more filling.  A fried egg is also very good in this situation, and I'd imagine you could use hard-boiled, especially if you don't like runny egg yolk.  I personally always cook my own yolks to thickened, but not hard, but my husband and kids only like hard yolks so I just hard-fry theirs.

Chicken Potpie Galette

This is my very first grand prize winning recipe!

Say hello to my chicken potpie galette with cheddar-thyme crust :)  This one was a winner in the "Classics with a Twist" contest.  Basically, the idea was to look for classic dishes and give them a big update.  Here's how my process went:

*I first went through and brainstormed a list of very classic American dishes.  Chicken pot pie was one of the things on my list.

*I next made a list of current food trends from things that I'd either read about recently in magazines or had seen on restaurant menus.  Galettes popped up on this list and I knew that would be a match made in heaven because they are both pie variations.

*I wasn't exactly sure how to go about the filling at first because it needs to be thicker than some pot pie fillings to not make a giant mess in the oven.  I setled on a slightly thinner roux with broth instead of milk.  In terms of what to put into the filling, I knew that would need to change a little bit, too.  I was fine with the standard carrot (although I do keep them bigger for this), celery, and onion, but I hate peas.  Plus, it would be more of an update to do another vegetable, so I settled on mushrooms because I love mushrooms and swiss chard because it's also trendier.

*The crust on this is also special because why not :)  I'd read an article about different savory pie crusts a while earlier and had them on my mind.  The version of chicken pot pie I make already has shredded Cheddar in the crust, so I decided to use that again and then also add fresh thyme.

Spring Break 2018

Oh, spring break.  I tried really hard to make fun plans and have it be a good experience.  It did not quite work out that way.

We were originally planning to visit my sister for a long weekend.  I needed to be at church that Sunday, so we cut it back to two days.  Then my sister had her babies six weeks early so we ended up not going at all :)

This left us with two wide open days, both of which were very rainy.  Also, I put too many fun things at the start of the week and was completely worn out by Thursday.  It's hard to balance working from home with three kids wanting your attention all day!

Here are some of the things we were able to do when I was being fun, not when we were just sitting on the couch and watching lots of Netflix:

 Miles made several of his own escape rooms. For some reason, several of these pictures are backwards and upside down.  I don't know why...all of his clues were right side up!  He spent so much time and they were really detailed and interesting and honestly, pretty challenging.

A family magic show at the Provo library.  I can't tell you much about it because I spent most of the time chasing Elliott around the library but the older two kids had fun!


One of our favorite spring break activities is to give each kid $5 and hit the dollar spot at Target.

 Miles got these two squeezy balls and a shark tooth excavation kit.

 These balls were extremely well-loved and extremely short-lived.

 Elliott got a dinosaur magnet game, a dinosaur suncatcher, and some dinosaur finger flingers.  You may sense a theme...

 Molly got summery tattoos (she thought they were stickers), two suncatchers, a color-your-own-Shopkins stickers set, and a Trolls paint kit.  Seriously, this entertained her for hours and hours.

 Jordan River Temple open house!  I love being able to take the kids through the temples.

 We went to Leatherby's afterwards.  This was a LOT of ice cream!

We went to the All-Abilities Playground.  It was extremely crowded!

 Poor Elliott.  He loves this train area more than anything, and there was another little boy there who would not let him press the choo choo sound button.

 I thought the kids would have fun using cookie cutters.  They did not, and I ended up cutting out all of these pretzel linzer cookies.

 On one of the very rainy days we went to Fashion Place Mall.  It has a lot of different stores, but it was also the first time I've ever taken Molly into Claire's.  It is immediately her new favorite store.

 The one thing that Miles wanted to do was make empanadas.  We put it off four different times but we finally got them made and he did a great job!

All Dressed Up

Here's my two latest sewing projects!

First up is an Alina Design Co. Panama Tee Dress for myself.  This style of dress is pretty popular here right now, but I worry that they don't generally work well with my shape.  I picked a heavier-weight knit (a ponte de roma) so it wouldn't be so clingy, and then I added 4 inches to make sure it is definitely long enough.  I might size up in the hips if I make another one in the future.  This does fit, but also may be drafted for a straighter figure.

I also made Molly an Easter/birthday dress like I do every year.  I used the Building Block dress from Oliver + S to recreate a picture of a dress I saw last year at Mini Boden. I loved the idea of that cutaway back and have been waiting to make it ever since!  The fabric is a watercolor cotton from Cotton + Steel.  The rest of the dress has tulip sleeves, which came together so well and much more easily than I thought they might.  It's a gathered skirt and is fully lined with an invisible zipper.  Invisible zippers sound scary but they are honestly probably easier than normal zippers!

Photo Ops

It's well documented that my children love to take selfies on my phone.  Unfortunately, they have now learned how to edit and add effects to their selfies and my phone will never be safely mine ever again :)

On the Red Carpet

Our school does a big walkathon every spring as the major school fundraiser.  The top earners in each grade get to take a limousine to Chick-Fil-A.  That is DEFINITELY not us, but they also draw five kids at random who turned in any sort of pledge and Molly got to go this year!

She was so excited to take a limousine to her chicken nuggets and take the red carpet to the limo.