Trial Separation - Not What You'd Think!

So this is a post basically asking for help. Ideas, remedies, products, what have you.

You know how some men have sympathy pains, morning sickness, mood swings, food cravings, whatever during their wife's pregnancy? Well, mine snores. Yes, you read that right. He snores only when I'm pregnant. It's the weirdest thing.

It's so loud that it woke Audrey up in-utero when I was pregnant with her, causing me to wake up due to the thrashing going on inside - all while he slept. It has become a joking matter in this family. And this pregnancy is no different. And he sleeps so soundly that he doesn't notice me trying to wake him up or move him to get him to stop.

We've tried him sleeping in every position possible, drinking lemon water right before bed, with the air conditioner on, with it off, and even the extra strength Breathe Right strips. I even tried to have him start off in the bed until he snores and kick him out... he just never wakes up no matter how many times I poke him and ask him to go. NOTHING HAS WORKED! I get 0 sleep lately.

So, last night I kicked him to the couch. It's the first night aside from any sickness or business travel that he hasn't been with me since we were married. But, I did sleep more than normal. It only amounted to 4 hours since I didn't finish editing until 1am, but it's something.

Here's my question, does anyone have ANY remedies for snoring?! We need some help here!

How to Make Homemade Cupcake Liners

I was inspired today by Bonnie at House of Grace's post on her date night in with her husband. She made an amazing cheese and cracker plate that was beautiful. Now, at this time I can't spare anything else than the 5 minutes to blog let alone a whole evening for a date night. But, I did show the post to my husband and we decided that once all of these wedding and portrait sessions are wrapped up and delivered to clients that we're going to duplicate her idea using some sparkling cider and have a (or a few ;) ) nice date nights in before Tony comes.

But, I felt kind of bad that I couldn't do something like that for my husband at this point. So, I decided to make him his favorite cupcakes today! And that brings us to the bulk of this post... how to make cupcake liners. Did you know that there is a difference between a cupcake liner and a cupcake wrapper, even though they're often used interchangeably? A liner is smaller and used just to prevent sticking and messy fingers. A wrapper is bigger and serves more of a decorative purpose. Now you know. I didn't have any of these on hand and didn't feel like running the store to buy some - especially since they were going to be thrown away anyway. So Audrey and I made some.

First things first, get an assistant. They may not do much help, but they look darn cute trying. Next, gather your tools.

You'll need paper (I made 12 cupcake liners, so I had three pages stacked here), a 1/4 cup measuring cup (it's the size of the bottom of the cupcake pan. Trust me... or go check... but, either way it is), a cup ( if I had to do it again, I'd pick a little bit bigger of a cup), scissors, and a bottle that fits perfectly into the 1/4 cup. I also used a pen, but my assistant was using it while this picture was taken.

Trace your cup into circles on the paper and cut them out.

You'll end up with a bunch of circles - almost there!

Have your assistant check them out.

Your assistant may or may not think that it is more helpful to put the circles back in their holes. My assistant lives for puzzles, so we took a brief almost-finished-cupcake-liner-puzzle break.

When your assistant is done with a couple of them, place the circle as evenly as you can on top of the measuring cup.

Use your perfectly fitting bottle and put it inside on top of the liner. I used the vitamin jar. Yes, I know that it's better for kids to get their nutrients from healthy foods, but these are really for me. lol The prenatal vitamins make me too sick to take them since I STILL have morning sickness. So Audrey and I share our organic whole food derived jungle animal vitamins between us every morning. She loves them so much, she kept trying to take the vitamin jar away and open it coz she wanted them. I figure that's not a bad problem to have. Anyway... back to the making...

It'll look like this when it's done.

Have your assistant check them out. You may need to repress them if your assistant is like mine and tried to make them flat circles again.

Put them in your cupcake tin. I never could get the store bought liners to stay straight, so I'm not all too concerned that they didn't lay evenly. Once you pour batter, they stay, and that's all that matters.

Ours had a hidden message on the bottoms for my husband to find.

That stand was a gift we received at our wedding shower. In all the years we've been married, it had never even been taken out of the box. I figured rather than just putting the cupcakes in Tupperware or on a plate, I'd arrange them on here to make it a little more special. It's no romantic tablescape, but I think it gives it a little something extra (said in my best Elle Woods voice).

Bake, ice and decorate as you normally would. The liners serve the same function. The only caveat is that they will take the color of the mix your baking. Mine were red velvet, which is my husband's favorite flavor. They're iced with cream cheese frosting and topped with sprinkles that Audrey picked out just for her Honey. I also wrote out a little poem and put blanks for him to put the letters into as he eats the cupcakes to figure out the message. A little food and a little fun all in one!

My husband was ecstatic when he came home and saw his special cupcakes. He was intrigued at the game and wrote his first letter - "o" - on the paper at the bottom. Once he gets all the letters he'll try to put them in their proper place. Then we hurried up and made dinner and rushed out to prayer meeting. But, he very much appreciated them and felt very loved. That's all I care about anyway.

I forgot to mention earlier that you might need to bribe your assistant with sprinkles to get them to not try and eat the cupcakes on the holder. This will only lead to a mild sugar rush and is temporary. :)

Happy baking!

The Pumpkin Patch

It's become an annual tradition for our family to go to the pumpkin patch near my mothers' house with them every fall to let Audrey pick out pumpkins. This pumpkin patch is seriously great! It's on an old man's farm where he grows and ships in TONS of pumpkins (he gets thousands of people each week), meets everyone at the front of the house, drives them out into the fields on his tractor and you get about 15-20 minutes to search all of his fields to find the perfect pumpkin. Once you find it, you write your name on it, load it in the back cart behind the tractor and ride back to his barn. He then dumps them all into a huge trough and you get to find yours, scrub it down and take it home.

It really is a lot of fun. He has been doing it for years and years and promises he will do it until the day he passes. And his son says that he'll pick it up from there. It's a great place to take the whole family. So, after we woke up this morning after the wedding last night and I delivered wedding photos, we set out to go with the grannies. Audrey was so excited! She just kept chanting "I want a pumpkin!" over and over and over. She wore herself out running around talking about pumpkins so much that once she was in her car seat, she fell asleep.

We arrived, and it was oddly quiet there, so he rounds us up everyone and tells us that he ran out of pumpkins and his pumpkin truck, which was supposed to be there at 4am wasn't going to be there until 4pm. Oh, no! Audrey was so excited that I couldn't let her go without finding pumpkins, so I told my mothers to find a Methodist church in the area since they always throw pumpkin patches in the fall. Sure enough, in the next town over there was a church having a pumpkin patch. Audrey slept through the initial stop and didn't wake up until we got to the church. Her first word when she woke up, half asleep, was "pumpkin?"

When we got there she first saw the pumpkins and screeched for joy. But, it didn't take her long to find the inflatable Elmo there. She ran over to say "Hi" and hug him and was thrilled that he was at the pumpkin patch with her. Every pumpkin she picked out had to be shown to Elmo before we could decide whether to get it or not.

Here she is hugging Elmo.

We had to take family photos with Elmo. My poor husband forgot his sunglasses and spent most of the time looking like this.

And the three of us. I look ginormous, but it's for the sake of posterity. Some day when I'm 90+ and saggy and wrinkly, I'll look back on this time when I was 5 months pregnant, swollen, tired and holding my beautiful toddler and think "Dang, I looked good!" At least, if I'm not senile I might.

Deciding which pumpkin to choose.

The look of determination. This was her first pumpkin decision. Yes, she was bringing it to show Elmo.

And picking one for Tony. They each ended up with two teeny tiny ones.

When we got home, I asked her to help me show off and arrange the pumpkins. I asked her to show me Tony's pumpkin. She brought it to me, sat it on my lap, and took off to go play.

Here's our little family's pumpkins. The white one is mine coz I wanted something different. They had a bunch of green, red and mixed pumpkins, but they were all damaged and I didn't want it to rot before fall was over. Around here, I leave pumpkins up until it's time to decorate for Christmas. :) The big orange one is my husband's. And the four little ones belong equally to Audrey and Tony.

Although it wasn't our initial plan for the pumpkin patch, I'd say it was a huge success. Audrey took one of her little ones in the car with her on the two hour trek across the state from grannies house to our house and sang in the back until she fell asleep "I love you, pumpkin." It was adorable.

Does anyone else make pumpkin patch trips a regular part of their fall?

Bread, Fall Decor Continued, and the Orchard

I'll start, as promised, with the recipe for my 1 Hour Sweet Bread.

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix your dry ingredients first:

3 cups flour (your choice wheat or white, I prefer wheat, my husband prefers white)

2 tsps. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

Mix 1 1/2 cups buttermilk second (if you have liquid buttermilk, never mind this, I use powdered buttermilk so that's why I have to mix it).

Mix your wet ingredients third:

1/4 cup honey

1/3 cup cane syrup

1/4 cup oil

Fold your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients until well mixed (I didn't take a shot of this step, but it's pretty self explanatory).

Grease loaf pan, pour dough in, and bake for 1 hour.

Let cool and enjoy!

Now I'll move on to the rest of our fall decor.

That's the fall swag hanging above our door. That's the original door to the house. If you look closely below the knob, you can see where the old door knob with the skeleton key was. That was too easy to get into, so we had to change it. The rest of the doors in the house still have the old knobs though.

This is what you walk into when you open the door. Please pardon the mess of mail on the table and the play kitchen in the background. I caught someone orange-handed (more on that later) making a mess. But, I live with a toddler, that's an everyday occurrence.

Close up of my cute scarecrow plate by the chair.

View to the right. Gymbo was not modeling today, but the monkey bean bag chair was.

View from the entertainment center featuring the evil Cheeto. He's on my bad list right now as he REFUSED to let Audrey nap today.

This goes back towards our door. Audrey had laid all her babies down for their nap that never happened. Thank you, Cheeto.

As to the orange-handed reference earlier...

We went to the orchard right down the road from us earlier 1) because they finally opened (I wait ALL YEAR for their fruit) and 2) Audrey identified 22 out of 26 letters of the alphabet and I figured she deserved it.

There's just acres and acres of fruit trees on the side of a little country highway. If you don't know where you're going, it's easy to pass up.

In front is this little tiny stand. It's cash only and there's no air in there. Thank goodness citrus grows in the winter or those poor people would melt to death!

Here's my little angel helping pick out our fruit.

She was obsessed with the kumquats coz they were small. But we ended up getting 5 lbs of oranges, 2 lbs of lemons, and the owner gave Audrey two satsumas - one for each hand. She actually couldn't wait to eat the satsumas, so she ate through the peel before I could peel it for her!

Here she is after I finally got the satsuma out of her hands. I think she has about 3 slices shoved in her mouth, hence the chipmunk look, and ate the whole thing. She loves fruit!

Isn't she the cutest little chipmunk satsuma eater ever?

Aw, Babies!

I promise to write a more substantial post later today since I won't be writing anything this weekend since I have a wedding to shoot, wedding pictures to deliver, a family trip to the pumpkin patch scheduled and family portraits to deliver. I promise to post pictures of the pumpkin patch - I can't wait to see Audrey run around and look for the perfect pumpkins for her and Tony.

But anyway, about the title - one of my best friends had her baby this morning! I'm so excited for her! I was supposed to photograph the birth, but that didn't quite happen as planned. She went into early labor at midnight and sent me a text as soon as she did. When she gave birth to her son, Audrey's boyfriend, she was in labor for well over a day and it went very slowly. She was over a week overdue and figured that the labor for her daughter would be the same way.

So we texted each other back and forth until a little after 1:00am about how she was doing, who would watch Audrey for me when I was over there at the hospital (she lives an hour away), and how excited I was. She said she didn't think anything was happening quickly enough, so she'd call me when it did. I was so excited and running through logistics in my head so much that I couldn't sleep.

My husband got me up for morning prayer, he actually let me sleep in an extra 15 minutes, and I hadn't gotten a call. I figured that she'd call soon and the moment she did, I'd be out the door. So we prayed and whatnot and still no call. I figured that since I was supposed to have a birth to photograph today, a night wedding tomorrow, pumpkin patch and photo delivery on Saturday and church and portrait delivery on Sunday that I would hop back in bed for just a second until she called so I could at least get some sleep before the weekend.

I was literally in bed for JUST a second before my phone rang. I figured it would be her telling me to get my behind over there pronto, but it wasn't. Baby girl had been born just 20 minutes earlier at home with the help of her doula! She called her doula a little after 3 and the doula arrived shortly after 4. A little before 5, my friend had to go to the restroom. There she was going about her business when her water broke and her little girl crowned! Baby girl was born at 5:15!

Her son didn't even wake up! All of her daughter's clothes were in the same room her son was sleeping in, so the baby was just wrapped up in a blanket with no diaper on happy as can be with Mommy and snuggling up tight. I'm just so thrilled thinking about it! So she called me about a half an hour later to tell me the good news and while I'm sad I wasn't there for her, I'm over the moon! As we were on the phone, the ambulance was arriving to take them to the hospital so she had to go wake her son up.

All of my friends are having babies right now, and being pregnant myself I darned near want to cry over every single labor update text message I get!

I'll try to write later and include more pictures of my fall decor and a full shot of my living room and also post a recipe to my 1 Hour Sweet Bread. This stuff will change your life... or at least taste REALLY good with a bunch of butter spread all over it!

Our Living Room in the Fall

Since all the blogs I look at show off their fabulous fall decor, I figured I would follow suit (all the cool kids are doing it!) and show off ours. Keep in mind that these pictures were taken right before nap time, so I couldn't do tons and we can't have that much decor because Audrey likes to get into EVERYTHING. I also forgot to show off a whole room view and the awesome woodwork in our circa 1900 house. But, I can always put that in another post later, right?

Anyway, here we go!

This is my collection of every rose that my husband has gotten me throughout our relationship. I love them so much. The small vase towards the left actually holds my wedding bouquet. Let me tell you that it was not easy moving all of these across the state from the bustling college city we lived in to the sleepy country town where we now live. They're actually up there all year round, but they look particularly fallish, so I'm showing them off here.

They sit on top of our entertainment center. The doors are usually open, so when Audrey saw they were closed, she decided to jump in the picture and open them. There she is in her too-short-but-it's-okay-coz-we're-not-going-anywhere-today dress that she picked out and HAD to wear. Still adorable if you ask me. But here you can see that they really match our wall color, my bright red curtains and the green and tan rug. The floors are the original cypress that just look gorgeous year-round. Never mind that tower fan (although it is awesome); when it gets 100+ degrees here, fans are our friends.

Here it is with the doors open. Yes, we were watching vintage Elmo rented from the library. There he is talking to Dorothy. Audrey figured that the blog post needed some Elmo. That's what it looks like 99% of the time. We're actually not big TV watchers here, it's just on in the background. However, when something changes - the show stops or the door closes, she comes running to check it out.

This is what it looks like on the inside. Up top is our non-working CD player that I've had since I was, like, 8. It serves as a good radio though. And in front are pictures of us on our wedding day - the last actual pictures of just the two of us since I'm always behind the camera and not in front of it. On the left side of the TV are our library movies, put up nice and high to avoid little hands. On the bottom is our VCR/DVD player and my husband's ministry books. They cover various historical and theological topics and are actually really interesting. On the right is my tiny little corner that I get to decorate.

Here it is up close and personal. The vase in the back is full of potpourri and was a gift from one of the firms my husband clerked for in his law school days. It's actually really pretty and I intend to get a long, thin glass vase to put in it so I can put a candle in it. All of the pieces of glass are different colors and would look great lit up. The cross was a wedding present from my grandmother across the country who flew in for our wedding and we've seen twice since then. We always have a candle burning coz, well, our house is 110 years old and smells like it is 110 years old. The topper actually fits the bigger jar candles but not that one too well. But, it's cute and fall-y, so it stays.

Here is my fall pumpkin that rests in the entry way between my living room and photography studio. Excuse the scale, suitcase and record player in the background... they're in the studio area. Our house has these really great architectural details that make the house. I promise I'll take a picture of the woodwork soon to show you how pretty it is.

That's our entry table to the left of the pumpkin. It actually was my dining room table in my undergrad/pre-married days. I haven't found a table that I like enough to replace it, so it stays there for now. It's kind of a hodge podge area. Our shoes are kept in the apple baskets on the floor (which are frequently emptied out and played with). Audrey's shoes are kept in the dark brown basket under my rarely used purse, our nick nacks are kept in the small basket next to it with my Lysol and hand sanitizer collection behind that, our to-be-filed stuff is in the black and white damask print on the right.

The two tin cans are our evening devotion stuff. The smaller can has a bunch of Popsicle sticks with verses written on it. Audrey gets to pick one each evening. The Bible and the previously done Popsicle sticks are kept in the large can. Once we read the verse, she gets to put the stick in. This way, she gets to participate in devotion and it makes it a fun time. We're on Psalms now, so the can on the left says "Sing a Psalm" and the can on the right says "What We've Learned."

Does anyone have any idea on how to tidy the area up? This is pretty much what it looks like all the time and while it's not messy, it's not visually appealing. I'd welcome any ideas to help make it look nicer.

We have a matching picture on the opposite wall hanging over our chair. It has a matching wood area on the side (like where the pumpkin and clock are) where a really cute scarecrow plate sits that I forgot to take a picture of. Audrey thought that Gymbo needed to be in the picture, so here he is modeling the chair that we reupholstered.

Here is our couch that matches. Our couch used to be the Napoleon Dynamite couch. It was hideous and brown and just ugly. My husband's best man's grandmother gave it to us as a wedding present since we didn't have any furniture when we first got married. We were poor college folk then. So, I told my husband if he wanted it, he had to cover it. I even let him pick the material, with my final approval, of course. Let me say that a white couch and chair with a toddler and one on the way is not the best idea. But, when we redid the couch we didn't know how soon God would place children into our lives. My pregnancy hormones get the best of me sometimes and I threaten to throw it out. My rational side, however, stops me from doing that. I'll be sure to take a picture of it when we redo it again though. It really isn't that hard to reupholster furniture, just time consuming.

So there it is, my fall decorating in the living room. Not too much, but we don't have much space to put stuff so I try to make do. Any ideas for improvement?

I WON!

I seriously never win anything, and I won!

And I won cleaning products from Shaklee!

And they're natural and safe!

I'm in hog heaven right now, seriously!

Thanks so much to Thrifty Decor Chick for hosting it and to House of Grace for giving away great Shaklee products!

I promise to post before and after pictures after I get to play with my new toys. :)

I Love Favors

Seriously, favors are absolutely great. And that is partly the reason for not writing anything in a couple of days. See, I have two computers. The one I'm on now dates back to my undergrad days, is slow as Moses, and is missing keys thanks to an energetic toddler. Then, in my office, is my love. My 21.5 Mac AIO. Love, love, LOVE.

But, see, there was an issue with it. I didn't want to have to pay for all of the transfer stuff to go from Windows to Mac, so I had the people at the horrible store I bought it from which shall not be named, set up a dual operating system for me. That means, I can run both Windows with all of its applications and Mac with all of its applications at the same time. But, surprise, surprise, the people at this store did not set it up right and the Windows side didn't work.

So, since I have work to do, and no computer to do it on, this became an issue coz all of my work was done on the Windows side. I swear it worked for a little bit and then died. Anyway, my husband has a cousin who runs an IT business. He visited my husband about a legal question of his mom being attacked by a neighbor's dog and my husband didn't charge him. When he heard about my issues (computer ones, not other ones!), he said he'd come over and fix it without charging us. So, I saved $90/hr. Holla!

My cousin-in-law came over last night and got the Windows side working and we got to chatting. He is interested in photography and has started getting into film after starting in digital. I started in film and transferred into digital (although I have every intention of getting back into film when life slows down). It was nice because while he was fixing my computer and backing up all of my images, which took forever because I have 5 weddings and 6 portrait sessions, not to mention personal photos on there, we got to talk about cameras, film, paper, exposure, composition, bodies, lenses, etc. All that means to the common point-and-shooter is how to make a picture pretty. :)

I had every intention of doing a blog post about how I decorated my living room all nice and fall-y, and will perhaps do it later this evening. Right now, I have a date to watch Beauty and the Beast - a daily occurrence here. My not even two-year-old calls it "Princess and Beast" and knows when they're going to sing, when they're going to dance, and when the beast comes out. It's her favorite movie and the only thing she'll actually sit down long enough to watch. She even points out the different animals and their noises, the furniture, objects and everything else she sees, so I'm choosing to look at it less than having a digital babysitter (since I'm sitting there with her) and more of an educational quiz opportunity. Full glasses and whatnot, right?

Boo at the Zoo!

We're not big on Halloween in our house, or at least not the ghouls and goblins aspect. I don't, however, see any issue with letting my girl dress up in a tutu (or, at least, have an excuse to do so in public) and go meet Elmo. That's right, we met the big E today! Audrey was so excited.

We had quite a busy weekend. Friday evening the husband and I went to his firm's yearly party where I took their pictures and socialized with the big lawyers. Then we left early Saturday morning for the two hour drive across state for a wedding. Audrey stayed with her grannies and went to go visit her great-grandmother for a little bit while I worked.

I was on my feet in all my pregnant mama glory from 1-10 and drove back to my mothers' house. We spent the evening there while my husband slept like a rock and I didn't get a wink between Audrey talking in her sleep and Tony practicing his football kicks. But, regardless of our sleep levels, we got up before the crack of dawn to head home. We got home with just enough time to shower, change and pack up Audrey's costume and church clothes. And off to the zoo we went!

Audrey's peacock tutu outfit! Isn't she precious?

Thank God we bought our tickets in advance, because the event was sold out and it was PACKED! I felt so sorry for the kids and their mommies who tried to get in without tickets and were turned away. There were over 5,000 tickets sold for today alone! Once we got in, we took a couple of pictures went straight to see the giraffe - Audrey's new favorite animal. And then we went on a hunt.

My little girl looking so big looking for Elmo!

An Elmo hunt. We asked one of the booths where he was, and they said he was just walking around the zoo, so off we set. The local college out here has red as their color, so all the football fans were wearing red, especially dads, - this was a hinderance in our search for a big red creature. At last, we spotted him by the Old World monkeys! I whispered to my husband where he was so we could get over there fast, and then Audrey saw him.

A little tickle while searching never hurt anyone. See the people in red back there?

She called his name and was oh so excited to see him! She wasn't fond at all of waiting her turn to see Elmo, but didn't have a total meltdown either. She LOVED him. I had hoped for that, but feared that she would be petrified (I still run away from characters when at parks, but I suck it up for her). Our mission had been accomplished. We set out to get a picture with Elmo, and got it we did.

My little family with Elmo.

So, we set off on the next venture of our Boo experience and came across a local gymnastics school. Audrey immediately drug us over to see what they were doing and even jumped on the mats! The teacher helped her do a flip and she was nothing but smiles and giggles she was so happy. And once she was done, she bounced and jumped all over the mats. If she had it her way, we would have spent the rest of the day there bouncing and flipping. I think we'll enroll her once Tony is born.

Audrey post flip. Doesn't she look born for gymnastics?

Once we peeled her away from the mats, we headed out because we had to drive over an hour to a joint church service with another church. We ate on the road and made it just in time. The gentleman who sat next to me had way too much cologne on, so Audrey and I went to the nursery and played until service was over.

Now, I'm starting the evening's work of editing, editing, editing, organizing, correspondence, ordering and the other joys of owning a business.

Has anyone ever gone to a Boo at the Zoo at their local zoo? I highly recommend it. It's fabulous and so much fun for little explorers to get to dress up and parents not worry about anything scary!