Turtle Power! {ninja turtle bath time }

I don't know when Rowen started liking Ninja Turtles but he loves everything about them. He's never seen the show or anything on tv about them. I think he might have discovered them at his Bebe's house...she has a couple ninja turtles costumes! When we saw Ninja Turtle body wash a few weeks ago at Target, we had to get it! The packaging is so cute and it smells great too not to mention, our( almost )3 year old had the biggest smile on his face when we found it. 

He loves "turtle bubble baths"!!

Just in case you have a Ninja Turtle lover yourself, besides the cute body wash, Target also has a bath robe, towel, and wash mitt for tub time! 

And for turtle teeth...

We only have one of the body washes but might add the toothbrush & paste when he needs it! 

Find all of these items at your nearest Target!! 

2 Family Fun Magazine Treats

I love getting Family Family magazine in the mail each month! It's filled with cute activities, crafts, and fun treats to do/make with your kids! Do you subscribe to it?! If you don't, now is a great time to sign up b/c you will receive 2 years of the magazine for only $7.99! I especially love the holiday issues like this months!

Here are 2 really cute foodie crafts that I'm planning on making for Rowen that are in this months issue...

How cute is this ghost milk?! I think I already have everything that I need to make it in our kitchen/garage! You only need a few things( see above ).

And these!...

What kid doesn't like donuts and chocolate?? Those are the 2 main ingredients for these rat bites. 

Just thought I would share a couple Halloween treats with y'all!

One Space at a Time...

Even though we have been in our house for a little over a year now, we hardly have any room in the house the way we would like it! We have very few decorations and we haven't bought all the furniture we would like to have. It takes time! And there are so many decisions to be made. A few weeks ago our entry way finally came together. 

We bought the table and mirror at a furniture liquidators place in town. They both were in excellent shape and just needed a paint job! So we made some chalk paint and gave each piece a coat. Even though it looks more grey in the picture, it's actually a light minty color. 

Everything in the pictures came from Home Goods except the blankets. The lamp base color is perfect. I love the hint of blue. I made a chalkboard print for the frame: Thankful and Blessed. 

I think we are going to tackle the living room next. We have really tall ceilings throughout our house and even though I love how open and airy that makes our house feel, the huge blank walls are giving us a challenge! We have an idea of what we are going to put on one of the living room walls so that should be coming up soon. Stay tuned! 

Semi-Homemade Chicken-n-Dumplings( recipe )

This is a simple recipe and the outcome is delicious! Chicken-n-dumplings is one of our favorite chilly weather meals! 

What you need: 6 chicken breasts( this serves 4-6 people )

2 qt of chicken stock

12-15 thawed Grands biscuits

1 cup of milk

salt and pepper to taste

* boil your chicken breasts in a pot- once cooked through, shred your chicken

*in the same pot( dump water out ), add your stock and milk

* while you wait for this to come to a boil, knead your biscuits all together into one ball( I divided mine into 2 balls so it would be a little easier to work with )

*flour your surface and roller and roll the dough out till it's pretty thin

*take a pizza cutter or knife and cut into small squares

*add your dough to the boiling stock

*when they are almost done, dump your chicken back into the pot and simmer for about 10 minutes

*add salt and pepper to taste( I think I added 1/2 tsp of each )

*check your dumplings to make sure they're not doughy and it's done! 

Enjoy!!

Rowen started preschool!!

Rowen started preschool on September 2nd. He loves it! Brent and I knew he would love it because he 1. loves being around other kids 2. loves learning 3. doesn't have separation anxiety 4. just loves playing in general. He has done great so far and talks about his "friends" in his class( which is everyone in the class! ). He goes 2 days a week and for 5 hours each day. 

I'm having fun making his lunches...not sure how long that will last but for now, it's fun! I've been using different cookie cutters for his sandwiches and always pack a fruit or veggie or both! He is not a picky eater so his lunches are easy. He actually loves fruits and veggies!

 I made a little chalkboard print sign for him to hold on his first day. He was so excited so I got some good pics. 

They had "red day" last Tuesday and were asked to wear something red and bring in a red something for show and tell! He picked his red heart light spinner. 

And I of course had to pack red food in his lunch that day! 

I'm glad that we picked the preschool that we did and I think that he is going to learn lots this year and I hope that he enjoys every single day! 

Brother/Sister Love

I pray everyday that Rowen and Isla will be the best of friends their entire life. Their relationship is blossoming more and more with the passing of each day. Time, please quit moving so fast! These 2 truly love each other. 

Rowen loves for Isla to play in his room with him, he loves to try and make her laugh( he's very successful at it ), he loves when she babbles to him while he talks to her, he loves helping feed her. I so very much enjoy stepping back and watching him interact with her.

 I forever want him to be the best brother he can be to her. 

Isla just loves to be wherever Rowen is. She loves laughing with him. His giggles set off her giggles which is one of the cutest things ever. She loves being in his room and playing with his toys( the safe ones for her age that is! ). She loves watching his every move. In the mornings when she wakes up, I swear she looks towards his door for him when we are walking out of hers. She already loves him so much!

I pray that she is the best little sister any big brother could want! 

God has blessed Brent and I with the most perfect children any couple could ask for. They are the best children and life would definitely not be half as fun without them. They are true blessings. 

DIY chalkboard prints { a tutorial )

I have always loved chalkboard prints! They are super cute and just plain fun. I like them so much that I decided a couple nights to try my hand at some! Listen, if I can make these so can you. I would call myself a pretty crafty gal. I have some talents in that area but this is just placing words and images on a chalkboard picture! It takes a little time...moving this here and moving that up there but if you play around with it for just a few minutes, you will get the hang of this website in no time. The website?...PicMonkey. I love this website!! It's a photo editing website but offers so so much more. This is where I created my Fall chalkboard prints. 

First off, I Googled "chalkboard prints" and flipped through images just to get an idea of some different looks and styles that I liked. I had a chalkboard picture already downloaded on my computer so I just uploaded that in Pic Monkey and cropped it down a bit. *When you first open the website, just hit the Edit tab at the top to get started. 

(Here is my chalkboard)

First, decide what kind of theme you want your print to be. I chose to create some Fall prints. You can do whatever you want! PicMonkey has 100's of fonts and 100's of designes and images you can choose from. Now just start playing around with fonts and checking out what kind of designs they have. 

(lots of fonts, lots of designs)

I picked out a saying: It's Fall Y'all. I had some ideas of the little designs that I wanted to use so I looked through the categories and found leaves, banners, labels etc..and just started placing them on my chalkboard picture. I played around with fonts and used a different one for each word. You can use the same font for every word or mix it up! The possibilities are really endless and it's just whatever you like and fits the look you are going for best! 

*Do make sure that you are changing the color of everything to white*

When I got done making them, I saved them to my computer and printed them out! 

Here's another one that I made:

If you have the time, give it a try! It was really easy and so much fun! If you have a question, leave a comment with your question and I'll help ya out. 

Follow: Instagram HERE

            Pinterest HERE

Chicago Trip!!

Chicago is probably my most favorite city...EVER! I'm so glad that my husband enjoys it as well. We try to go to Chicago at least once a year. There is so much to do and so many places to eat at that I don't think I will ever get bored of spending time there! We headed there a few weekends ago...just the 2 of us! The kids stayed in Nashville/Lebanon with Brent's parents for 2 days and my parents for 2 days. We love having family close by and are really appreciative that they offered to keep our kiddos while we were out of town. We left Thursday morning( August 14 ) around 10:45am and got to Chi-town around 12. Gotta love the hourish flight! 

First stop after checking into the hotel, Big Bowl! It's a yummy asian place that we love to grab lunch at. The entire front of the restaurant is open so we had to grab a spot out front by the street. Pretty much every restaurant there has patio seating/is open to the outside. I love that! 

After lunch, we walked to the river and did a bit of shopping. We headed back tot he hotel to rest our feet and then got ready for dinner. We had reservations at RPM. I was pretty excited to try it out and so was Brent. He loves Italian food. It was less than great! First off, the restaurant itself is boring inside...white walls with hardly anything on them, white tables, and dark ceilings. The tables are squished too close together. I literally had to squeeze everything in as I was sliding by a girl to get into my seat....and I'm not a big girl! Ok fine, let's eat! I was sure the food would be delicious. It sounded good! No. I got the kale and spinach salad to start with. It was heavy on the spinach, very light on the kale. I would have preferred it to be the other way around. Brent got the crispy ravioli. It was more like a soft tiny ball of dough filled with italian cheese and some sort of meat. He liked them. I did not. It wasn't crispy and it wasn't your typical ravioli. I really love crispy ravioli too. For our entrees: Brent got the spaghetti and meatball. It was decent. Wasn't amazing. I like Macaroni Grills much better. Ouch! I got the prosciutto tortelloni.  It was the tiniest portion I have ever been served. I feed my almost 3 year old more food than was on my plate! I am a grown girl and like food! I just kind of stared at it and wondered if they had accidentally given me the wrong plate of food. It was just ok. We actually left the restaurant hungry!!! When we got back to the hotel, we ordered a pizza! I would NOT recommend going to RPM to anyone. There is a truly AMAZING Italian restaurant in the city and I'll get to that in a moment!

Friday morning we slept in! I couldn't tell you the last time I slept till 9:00am or didn't get woken up by a baby! It was wonderful! After grabbing some breakfast at Starbucks, we decided to walk over to the bean and sit there while we ate.

 I could sit and stare at that thing for a while. It's just so cool. And it's a great people watching spot. We started walking toward the art museum and decided to hike it over to the Willis Tower and go up to the Sky Deck. It had only opened about an hour prior to us heading over there so I was hoping for a short line. Well, it could have been longer but it definitely wasn't short! We stuck it out anyways! When we were getting close to the ticket counter, we totally forgot that we could have gotten a city pass to jump to the front of the line. I don't know how much those are but they are worth the price for sure. From the time we got in line to the time we got up to the deck, I think it was about an hour and 10-15 minutes. But it was worth the wait! You could see for miles and miles! The deck is on the top floor of the Willlis Tower which is 1,353 feet up in the air. We really waited that long so that we could go out on the Ledge! It's a glass box that extends about 4 feet out from the tower. So all that separates you from the ground is a piece of glass!!

There's a side view of one of the ledges!

And here we are...

It was kind of freaky but totally awesome! If you are afraid of heights, this is not for you!! Looking out wasn't so bad but my heart rate picked up a few beats when I looked down! So glad we went up there!All the "walls" on that floor are windows. So no matter where you are standing, you can see a long long way. 

When we left, it was around 1 or 2 so we grabbed an Uber over to Tavern on Rush for a late lunch. It was yummy as always. I got the Bellevue salad. It had shrimp and avocado plus other yummy stuff. Brent got the veggie burger. After lunch, we hit up some shops and bought some things. Thank you Nordstrom Rack for having my favorite jeans (Joes) on sale for 40 bucks!! Couldn't pass that up.  *side note: locals, did you know a Nordstrom Rack is opening up in Brentwood in October?!?! You're welcome :) After some light shopping, we headed down to the lake and walked around for a bit before going back to the hotel and getting ready for dinner. 

Got this top at Norstrom Rack too!

We headed to Old Town for some sushi!

 Kamehachi is my fav sushi restaurant in the Windy City! We sat outside of course and noshed on gyoza( pork potstickers ), seaweed salad( I couldn't get Brent to try it! ), and lots of sushi and noodles! LOVE sushi! Needless to say, this night's dinner was far better than the night before.

We explored Old Town for a bit before calling it a night. ( look above Brent's head: it's a giant ice cream sandwich pillow! haha. It was in a shop that was filled with funny things. )

Saturday morning we mixed it up and had Einstein Bagels for breakfast. We did some shopping and then headed to the Lincoln Park Zoo. We wanted to be back down to the lake around 2 for the air show. The Lincoln Park Zoo is free which is pretty cool.

 It's really nice and has lots of animals that our Nashville Zoo doesn't have. Polar bears, rhinos, and lions to name a few. After the zoo, we headed back to our neck of the woods, grabbed some food and headed over to the lake to eat and watch the air show. The tricks those planes can do are crazy! I think at one point one of the Blue Angels was flying upside down and going backwards?! I might be wrong on the backwards part but it was definitely flying upside down! 

After the air show we walked around Michigan Ave for a bit before getting ready to go stuff our faces with the best Italian food in the city! 

Grabbed this shirt at Anthro to wear out that night.

We headed to Quartino. It is REAL Italian food. And really really delicious. We started with Salumeria Tasting which means we got to pick 2 meats, 2 cheeses, 2 types of olives, and 2 veggies( we got the beets and the artichoke salad ). 

This was a delicious spread! 

For our entrees we both got pasta. It is homemade right there in the restaurant. I got orecchiette with fennel and sausage ragu and Brent got the cavatelli and penne. We finished off the meal with tiramisu and hot italian donuts with dark chocolate and honey for dipping! 

Sunday morning we got up and it was chilly! I was glad that I packed a sweatshirt! We headed over to the Doughnut Vault to give those doughnuts a try! I'm going to go out on a limb and say these were the best doughnuts that I have ever had!! There is apparently always a line and once they sell out, they close for the day. We got there about an hour after they had opened and there was a line about 15-20 deep. It moved quickly because there were only a few things to choose from and you can buy coffee but that's it! It's a cute little hole in the wall( literally ). You walk in the door, turn to your left, and order right there. When we got up to the counter to order, about half of the doughnuts were gone. We chose 2 old fashioned, one vanilla bean glazed, and one chocolate glazed doughnut. Not only were these the best doughnuts I had ever tasted but they were the biggest ones I had ever seen!

See, it was almost as big as my face! When we left, the line had grown. How much would it stink to be that person that waited for awhile and they were all out when you got up to the counter?! haha. We kind of browsed through a few more stores on Michigan Ave before we headed to the airport to come home. It was a fabulous 4 days in a city we love!