Friday, February 29, 2008

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Paninis



DELICIOUS!

I used some garlic sour dough bread, tomato basil pesto, munster cheese, smoked turkey, and a cold tomato.

First, butter the bread on the outside portion, then apply the tomato basil pesto, add the cheese and turkey, then put it on a pan. The trick to making paninis versus hot sandwiches (ie grilled cheese) is that you use a large pan/pot filled with water to set on top of the sandwiches to squish them down while you are grilling them. Keep the stove on a medium-high heat for munster cheese--if you have a harder cheese, you may need to use a lower temperature. Of course, you'll want to have the pan hot before you put your sandwich on so it'll get nice and crispy. This will give you the nice squished/crunchy effect. Flip once it's golden. Then cut them in half and put in a tomato slice. Awesome. We've eaten them the past few nights (I've been on a panini kick).

Even Bella loves these. (She also loves her sugar-free girl scout chocolate chip cookies. I think I need to stock up on those for the year--who knew girl scouts did sugar free cookies?)

Serve with the paninis with green tea and tomato soup or pirate's booty (Trader Joe's white cheese puffs).

Monday, February 25, 2008

A Few Pictures of Isabella from this Weekend





She looks so old, doesn't she? Isabella, come back here!

Easter Dress







Bella will model this dress for the first time on Easter, but I'll let you peek at the dress until then (a little appetizer). I heart the coat--the lining matches her dress. It's hard to see, but there's only two buttons on the top, so when she wears it, you'll see her little dress peaking through.
Also, if anyone is interested in a new idea that would make them a million dollars...no one carries little Easter hats for toddlers. The smallest size I could find at 4T, so I bought her this little floppy hat. Not that she really wears hats long anyway, but you can't have an Easter dress without an Easter hat.
I also picked up the shoes from Target. They match really well and I think they'll be very comfortable for her. I wanted to find some cute little sandals, but I looked at a couple of stores and they looked terribly uncomfortable--some even had heels! I'm very pleased with these shoes, though. Cute cute!

I'll Let You Know How It Goes


So I told Abel I thought we should start trying to potty train Bella at 18 months and he said "why not now?" So we picked up this potty chair from Babies R Us along with some cute little training panties and vinyl coverts (to protect my carpet). She is SO cute in her little undies.
However, she didn't quite get the idea. She would go poo-poo in the potty, but would not sprinkle. She would wait until I put her cute little undies back on and then go. We may wait another month and try again. At least she'll start getting used to it or pay more attention.
The potty chair we got actually converts to a potty seat on the big potty and the bottom part (not the pot) converts to a stool.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Orange Goodness



This week is especially busy in our household. Today at my office we had a potluck/baby showers for two pregnant women (both having boys) so last night we spent making homemade salsa. Abel traveled to Palmdale today, so I had to get up especially early to take Bella to Abel's parents before work so that they could drop her off at daycare (the daycare doesn't open until 6:30 when I open the office). That meant that I had to get up early enough to provide plenty of cuddle-time since I knew Bella would have a hard time waking up so early. To add to it, I have a business trip to Salt Lake tomorrow and have to be at the airport at 5:15 AM.




To make up for our early morning, I put Isabella in our favorite cuddly orange shirt. I love the squirrel with its swirly tail and the cute ruffled sleeves. The color is so cute against her red hair. Unfortunately, she was too busy to stand still for the photo, so here's an action shot:


Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Bath Time


I have to say by far, my favorite time of day is bath time. And by bath time, I don't mean for me (I'm doing good for getting a 5 minute shower every other day), but we're talking about mountains of bubbles and a little giggly Bella. You may notice that there's no water in her bath picture. That's because I have to convince her to come out of the bathtub--she likes to play around in the tub long after the water is gone.

On my "to do" list is a new bath stopper for our tub. We have one of the push-button-suction types and it's horrible. Ours has a sweet-spot that you have to find, otherwise it keeps popping back up like those little gophers at the arcade. Bella likes the join in one the fun and finds it humorious to push on it (and make it pop back up) once I finally get it situated. I hate to say it, but she has her mom's sense of humor.