Obsessed with... My Whirley Pop

If you don't have a Whirley Pop, you need to get one.  The first time I had popcorn from one was at a Ladies Night sleepover with my girlfriends from work and it immediately made me a popcorn snob.  I registered for a Whirley Pop and received it from the same group of girlfriends at my bridal shower.  All my microwave popcorn went in the garbage and I have never looked back!!

Here is my first batch of Whirley Pop popcorn from a few years ago.

It is so simple to use it.  I use canola oil, sea salt and popcorn kernels from the bulk section at Whole Foods to make mine.  I store them in the same mason jar that came as part of my popcorn basket at my bridal shower, such a cute idea.

I use this sea salt (that also came in the gift basket) and I think it makes a difference in the taste of popcorn!

Last night, during our Bachelorette girls night, Alise and I enjoyed popcorn and wine.  So fun!!  I really hope if I am ever pregnant again that I crave salty things instead of sweet.  I missed my Whirley Pop during those nine months, but I just wasn't into salty.

I am sure there are lots of other fun ways to make popcorn with it (my friend's dad made it using bacon grease as the oil) but I just like it plain.  I am a creature of habit.  Once I tried putting butter on it and regretted it after.  Anyway you want to make your popcorn, you need to be making it in a Whirley Pop.  Seriously, if you don't have a Whirley Pop, you need to go get one, now! 

Weekend Recap: Shopping and Swimming

For me the weekend began on Thursday night.  We celebrated my mom's birthday with dinner in our backyard.  This was really the only good picture that I took besides the one of the cupcakes that I posted on Friday.

Hannah with Uncle Justin

Friday I took off from work to have a girl's day for my mom's birthday.  Hannah made a special present for Grandma, but she was really just interested in eating the paper and the bow.  She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth!  More on the gift later this week.

Then we went to the mall for some lunch and shopping at the Nordstrom anniversary sale.  Hannah got some cute coats for fall and winter- here she is trying on her new vest and headband.  I can't wait for her to wear it!!  It is crazy how lately I don't care at all about shopping for myself.  All I want to do is buy clothes and accessories for Hannah!  I am obsessed!

We measured her tiny little foot and she tried on some Uggs for size.

We ended the night with a little Daddy and Hannah play time.  It was such a fun day!!  I love getting to be with my mom and sister!

Saturday we went to our nephew Aidan's baseball game, but unfortunately we missed a lot of the game.  It takes us forever and a day to get out of the house now.  I hate being late and then when I married Michael I had to adjust since he is late for everything.  Now that we have Hannah, forget it!!  We cannot get out the door to save our lives!!  It was nice to get to see a little of the game though!  (Sorry Aidan!)  After we went to lunch and then came home and had a low key night.  Michael took Hannah for a walk and I made some pea baby food.  

I am bummed, I didn't take any pictures on Saturday.  One of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was so that I would be better at taking pictures and documenting our lives.  We were really good about it when Hannah was first born and then as we got busier, it got harder.  So I am trying!

Sunday was a nice day at home.  We spent the morning in our jammies and Hannah watched some golf with Daddy.  Michael is hoping for a little golf partner as soon as she is able!  He has been watching the Golf Network with her almost every morning since we first brought her home from the hospital.  

After some cleaning and a short nap for Hannah, we headed outside to enjoy the nice weather!!  She loves her baby pool!  Hannah rocked one of her new headbands from Friday's shopping trip.  I currently have 3 other colors in my cart online and am debating whether or not to get them.  They are so soft and stay on really well.

After a spit up incident in the baby pool, it was time to test out the big pool.  At first she seemed interested and was kicking her feet in the water, but once she got in it was an entirely different story!!  She was not a big fan of the pool!!

She was much happier after we took her out!  We will have to try again once the pool is warmer.

Check out those lashes!!  Lucky girl!!

We ended the night with some ice cream and Big Brother.  It was so nice to enjoy a three day weekend!

Friday Favorites

Today I am linking up with three other blogs: Momfessionals, A Little Bit of Everything, and Grace and Love.  I read all three of these blogs and I really hope to have a sweet group of mom friends like they do one day!

Every Friday I am going to pick my "favorites" of the past week.  I am not going to pick a specific number of things to stick to, it will be different depending on the week.  Spoiler alert - a lot of them will probably have to do with Hannah.  :)

1.  Hannah discovering new food

I am so glad that I decided to make Hannah's baby food.  It is so cool to watch her discovering food and knowing that I made it for her.  I already shared the pictures of her having apples earlier this week.  Here she is having sweet potatoes for the first time on Wednesday.

She already loves to eat!  She stares at everything that we eat in front of her and seems so fascinated by it.  The other night I ate a mozzarella stick while I was holding her and I honestly felt so badly that I couldn't let her have any of it.  She stared at it moving from my hand to my mouth the entire time.  It was so funny.  

2.  Haagen-Dazs was on sale at A&P

We seriously stocked up! We have a Haagen-Dazs problem and aren't afraid to admit it.  If I were still pregnant, these would have lasted approximately three days before I would have had to send Michael back to the store to get more.  Eight pints is a totally normal amount of ice cream to have in your freezer, right?  :)

3.  McGrath Family Photos

About a month ago, we had professional photos taken of Michael's parents and all 10 of the grandchildren.  We got them back from the photographer this week and they are adorable!  I will share my favorite photo of Hannah from the shoot now, and then share more from the shoot next week.

Sugarshots Photography

4.  Hannah's Vera Bradley Outfit

How stinkin' cute is this!?  She may or may not also have a bathing suit and cover up in this print.  :)  

5.  Cupcakes

Do I even need to say anything?  Yum!!

6.  My mom

Although my mom is one of my favorite things every week, today is her birthday so I am going to put her on this week's list.  I feel so blessed and lucky every day to have her for a mom and have her as Hannah's grandma.  I know that I have only been a mom for a short time, but I feel like I can already appreciate so much more everything she has done for all of us.   I hope I can be half as great a mom to Hannah as she has been to me.

Happy Birthday Mom.  I love you!

Obsessed with....My Baby Monitor

I have a love/hate relationship with our baby monitor, but I think it is safe to say I couldn't live without it.  We have this Motorola video monitor.  Whenever Hannah is sleeping (napping or at night) the monitor is right by my side.

Reasons why I hate it:

It is not so much the monitor that I hate but the video aspect of it.  I imagine that it must be much simpler to have an old fashioned baby monitor with no video.  We are obsessed with watching her on it (we even wore out the button that you press to see the video screen when it isn't plugged in).  Every time she moves a muscle I get nervous that she is waking up...and Hannah is a very wiggly sleeper so I get nervous a lot!  Sometimes at night she only cries for a few seconds or I catch a glimpse of her trying to roll over and then I wake up and watch her on it even after she is sleeping again.  Hannah is a great sleeper at night but this monitor is causing her mommy to miss out on sleep!  Sometimes Hannah is up for two minutes and then I am up for an hour, but I just can't bring myself to shut the screen off at night and only use the sound!

Worn out button

The temperature feature also makes us crazy.  I honestly have no idea what is too warm or too cold for her to sleep but we are obsessed with knowing the temperature of her room!  Especially early when we first brought her home and when we bring the monitor with us when we visit family.  There was much discussion on Easter about how Claudia's room was 78 degrees. :)

Reasons why I love it:

We get to watch Hannah.  If it wasn't for the video feature we would miss out on seeing things like this.

Too cute!!  Sometimes I swear she knows we are watching her. 

I love that in this one it looks like she just surrendered to sleep.

We also would not get to see what she does when falling asleep at night.  It is so funny to watch.  She plays with and eats her hands, wiggles all over the crib (seriously, even before she could roll over she would do a 180 degree turn in the crib at night) and shakes her head like a crazy person.  I cannot watch the video of her doing it without hearing the "I whip my hair back and forth" song in my head.  

Is this even normal?! 

(You don't need to watch the entire minute, you can get the point after the first few seconds)

Hate it sometimes, love it sometimes, but definitely couldn't give it up.  We are obsessed with our monitor. 

Operation Baby Food

Making my own baby food was not something I always thought I would do.  I don't think I really ever gave baby food much thought while pregnant, it seemed so far off.  I didn't think Hannah would even have any food until she was 6 months old, which is still another month away, but at her 4 month check up her pediatrician encouraged starting food if we wanted to.  True to form, I immediately jumped into research mode.  I decided to give making my own food a try, and since I don't even eat  most of the foods that Hannah will be eating (therefore I don't normally cook them), there was a lot to learn.  I bought three books and read lots online about it.

I did a lot of reading on this site and some other blogs that I found.

These are the three books I bought on Amazon.  There were so many to choose from!

Like all other baby topics I have read about, practically every book and everything that I read says something different.  So frustrating!!  Different cooking methods, different rules about what to give babies when, different lengths of time you can keep the food frozen, etc, etc...I get so overwhelmed by all the information that is available.  My pediatrician just offered the advice to "have fun with it" and everyone that I talked to offered their own advice and methods.  Seriously, I get so overwhelmed!

I decided to just start off with something simple, while I did some more reading and ordered some gear that I needed for food making.  I wasn't going to make my own baby cereal so we decided to start there.  We started with Earth's Best Whole Grain Oatmeal Cereal.  We didn't go with rice cereal since Hannah already has issues with constipation.  The oatmeal cereal didn't quite agree with her little belly either so after a few days we decided to stop giving her that and move on to real food.

We started with a Whole Foods trip and then spent lots of hours in the kitchen.  I got out all three of my books and we started with sweet potatoes and apples. 

I roasted the six sweet potatoes in the oven at 350 degrees.  The recipes said they should take around 45 minutes to cook.  I honestly lost track of how long they took to cook but it was A LOT longer than 45 minutes. (I love my Williams-Sonoma baking sheets!!)  

We washed, peeled and cut up eight apples.  Then put them in a pot and covered them half way with water.  Once it was boiling I reduced the heat to medium and let it cook for 10 minutes.  

Once the apples were done cooking they went into the Vitamix.  (We got this one from QVC a few months ago and we love it.  Totally worth the investment.)  I didn't use all of the liquid that was left in the pot after boiling, just enough to make it the consistency I was looking for.

After blending I loaded it into silicone ice cube trays (I read online that these were best to use because they were easier to pop out then regular ice cube trays) so that I could freeze and store them.  Each cube is 1 oz. of food. 

Once the sweet potatoes were finally done roasting, I scooped them out, blended them and loaded them into the ice cube trays.  I used my jar scraper spatula to spread them in the trays and it was the perfect size.  They don't have my exact one at Williams-Sonoma anymore but this one is similar.  

Here is everything in the freezer.  I also cut up some avocado and froze them on a baking sheet before loading them into zip lock bags for storing in the freezer.  I wouldn't cover the ice cube trays with plastic wrap the next time I did it.

Once frozen, I popped out the food cubes and loaded them into labeled freezer zip lock bags.  The cubes are a perfect shape for stacking bags on top of each other in the freezer because they lay flat.

The sweet potatoes made about double the amount as the apples but I spelled potatoes wrong on the bad so decided not to post that picture.  :) 

Hours later, Hannah finally got to taste the fruits of our labor!  Apples were ready first so we decided to go with apples as her first (non-cereal) food.

After a few tastes, she realized that she loves apples!  She can't get enough!

Can't wait to see her reaction to the sweet potatoes and avocado.  I have also made peaches since.  Carrots, peas and butternut squash are on the agenda for this weekend.  Hope Hannah becomes a good little eater!