monday gratitudes

Today I am grateful for...

• Another good Dr. appt today. Only18 more days to go...more or less!
• Beef stew in the oven.
• Working from home today writing grad school reccommendations for students.
• The baby's car seat being easy to install in my car.
• My mom
• A sunday date day with my husband for lunch and the movies to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.
• Orange Juice. I can't get enough.
• Knitting. Lots of projects going right now.
• Getting work done and things crossed off my to-do lists.
• A half-price sale on Troll Beads at the local Paper Store. Bought my sister this one

aquarius - photo from http://www.trollbeads.co.us

          for her birthday tomorrow. And this one for me!

green shadow - photo from http://www.trollbeads.co.uk

That's all for now! Happy Monday!

a new year

Ebelskiver - Danish round pancakes

So we enter a New Year! Last year marked a year of extreme ups and downs. More than any other year for me and my family. But this year is starting out a wonderfully exciting note. We are getting ready around here to welcome Baby Ellie.

Yesterday Cary and I celebrated our first married New Year quietly. Relaxing, cleaning, watching the Lion King, and enjoying a quiet day at home. My mom gave us an Ebelskiver pan from Williams & Sonoma for Christmas. They are little round pancakes. We filled ours with blueberries, rasberries, blackberries. We used defrosted frozen berries from Trader Joes and the Ebelskiver mix from Williams & Sonoma. They were heavenly! I would like to get the cookbook to get some more ideas. They were suprisingly easy to make...no harder than regular pancakes. I actually found them easier since I am not good at making normal sized pancakes that don't fall apart when I flip them!

Today I "killed" Christmas. That is how my Dad affectionately calls the New Year tradition of De-Christmasing the house. So I took down the tree. Vacuumed. Though sitting here I still see needles on the rug. And I will probably continue to see needles in the rug until next December! I can't wait for Cary to bring back the three large Christmas totes to my parent's storage shed so we can reclaim some of our space. We are going to stay in our 1-bedroom apartment until next October likely. So we are working to streamline things as we get ready for the baby. I have taken many bags to the Salvation Army and we have cleaned closets, reorganized. We are almost ready. In a few weeks we will order our crib. Just waiting to get my Rewards credit from Babies R' Us to put toward the cost. I need to wash all the baby clothes. My mom has been so helpful and generous. She has gotten so much for us...along with our other family and friends and my shower. I need to also bring an extra tote of larger clothes back to my parent's for storage until we need it. I think we are going to be able to easily make our space work for awhile without feeling overcrowded. I am definately in full Virgo nesting mode!

So with that in mind, I better log off for now and write more later!

Happy 2012!