Pinterest Challenge and Hawaiian BBQ Chicken recipe

I love Pinterest.  If you are not familiar with it:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

It can be totally addicting so I only let myself browse & pin from my phone when I'm feeding Emery. I love all the creative ideas, DIY projects, home decorating inspirations, organizational tips, recipes and more that I've found through it.  However, if all I do is pin things and never actually follow through with any of them it would be a complete waste of time.

SO I'm challenging myself to complete at least 2 Pinterest items a month!  Hopefully I'll be able to do WAY more then that, but since I've been struggling to find the time to even blog, we'll keep it at 2! :)

So here is the first recipe I've tried... Delicious and SO easy!

Hawaiian BBQ Chicken in Crock Pot

Ingredients:

4-6 Boneless Chicken Breasts (can even use frozen if you want!)

1 Bottle Archer Farms Hawaiian Style Barbecue Sauce (from Target)

1 20 oz. can Pineapple Chunks, drained

Directions:

Spray the inside of your crock pot with cooking spray for an easy cleanup!  Place frozen chicken breasts in the crock pot and cover with sauce.  Empty can of drained pineapple chunks on top.  Cook on High for 2-3 hours or Low for 4-6 hours.  Shred chicken with two forks while still in the crock pot so the chicken will be well coated with sauce.  Serve over rice.

Emery Models!

It works out perfectly being employed for a Baby Company.  Instead of paying for models to come in the employees just schedule having babies around our photoshoots... haha just kidding :)  Although, the timing did work out perfectly for Emery to come in and model some of our new Baby Aspen products that are launching soon.  They put her in the new frog snuggle sack and a pair of the safari socks.  We are using a lot of these pictures in our new catalog.  So fun!

She was such a content baby during the whole shoot, I was so proud!  (Although I must admit I was a little nervous before hand... the whole toddler/tiara mom thing is NOT for me!)

Gunney's 1st Birthday Day

On August 15th, our little nephew turned 1!  Kyle and I brought pizza and an ice cream cake over to Rach & Mike's house to celebrate that night, since we missed the real party in Raleigh!

Happy Birthday Gunney-man, we love you!

Wordless Wednesday: Gooooo Appalachian!

Training starts!

Last November, when Kyle completed his first half marathon (click here to see that post) I was so inspired I agreed to run a 5K after Emery was born.  Well the time came and I am not going back on my word! We have signed up for The Firefly Run, October 1st, 2011! (Thanks to Lacey for letting us know about it!)

Even though I am not a runner, I really am enjoying training so far and excited to get in better shape and possibly even lose some of this pregnancy weight.  It's a run at night through Piedmont Park in Atlanta (a great way to beat the heat!) and you wear little LED lights... so you all look like little fireflies.  I'm pumped!

Kyle and I enjoyed running in Boone over at the greenway.  I wish so much that there would be beautiful parks like this in Atlanta, but no such luck.  Instead we get exhaust, police car sirens and scorching sun :)  OH if we could live in Boone...

My sweet hubby for being my "couch to 5K" coach and motivator:Emery almost fell asleep in the jogging stroller... sleepy girl!

After we were done running, we stopped in the creek for Tyson to cool off:

Emery loves it when we run.  She barely ever falls asleep, instead just loves to take it all in:

I hope I can do the October race without walking, we'll see!

Boonetown, just the 3 of us!

Two weekends ago we headed up to Boone, our first time being up there with just Emery!  It was so relaxing and exactly what we needed.  The weather was in the 60's every morning when we woke up, and we loved swinging on the porch when the rain showers came every afternoon.

Saturday, Emery and Kyle had some daddy-daughter time at the grocery store & coffee shop while I slept in.  What a treat!  I woke up to them making muffins for our breakfast!  We saved half of the batch and dropped them off to our neighbor up there, who's husband just passed away from cancer.

Emery has been giving Kyle THE BIGGEST smiles lately... a total daddy's girl already:

Went to Ky's favorite Mexican restaurant in Boone, Black Cat.  Emery loved it too!

We're goign to try to take swing pictures every time we go up there:

Sunday morning we headed to campus to take pictures in front of the Appalachian sign in our App gear that we bought on Saturday.  More of those to come on Wednesday!  We brought a picnic lunch to eat in the Gazebo, where Kyle proposed to me a little over 5 years ago!

And had to document our newest addition in the gazebo!

What a wonderful weekend, can't wait to go back up again soon.  There is just something about the mountains that makes our hearts so happy :)

Fudge Crinkle Cookie Recipe!

My mom introduced us to these cookies the week that she stayed at our house after Emery was born.  They are the best cookies I've probably ever eaten, and before you know it the entire batch has disappeared!  My pictures don't do them justice.. the insides are SO soft!! Enjoy!

Fudge Crinkle Cookies

Ingredients:  

1 (18 1/4 ounce) box devil's food cake mix (Betty Crocker Super Moist suggested) 

1/2 cup vegetable oil 

2 large eggs

Confectioners' sugar or granulated sugar, for rolling

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Stir (by hand) dry cake mix, oil and eggs in a large bowl until dough forms. Dust hands with confectioners' sugar and shape dough into 1" balls. Roll balls in confectioners' sugar and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until center is JUST SET.  Remove from pans after a minute or so and cool on wire racks.

Some extra tips (that I found online):

- Betty Crocker cake mix does come out the best.

- Another way to keep them nice and thick and to get the most "crinkled" or "crackled" look is to make them bigger. When I roll them at about 1.5 inches they look prettier. 

- My confectioners' sugar was consistently being absorbed by the dough. The last time I baked them, I rolled them into balls without rolling in the sugar and let them "dry" for a few minutes. Then I rolled them in sugar and baked. These came out with a nice coating of sugar that didn't disappear.

Walking trails at Red Top Mtn

Kyle has been dying to try out our jogging stroller so we decided to walk on some trails a couple weekends ago.  His boss, Tim, gave us his jogging stroller as a present when Emery was born, and Emery is starting to actually fit inside!  We decided to go up to Red Top Mountain and walk the 4 mile trail that goes along the water.  It was much bumpier than we had remembered so Emery was not super fond of the ride (only b/c she was trying to go to sleep!). Oh well it was still nice to get outside and enjoy some fresh air even if she did cry for the first part of the walk.

Here are some pics by the water:

And here's Emery once the trail got a little smoother!

Emery's first Flash Mob!

You read that right, Emery danced in her first flash mob at only 5 months old!  For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a flash mob is, here is the definition: A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire.  And click here to see an example of one of my favorite flash mobs that happened in Belgium.

SO Katie and I had learned the dance online and followed the directions of bringing canned food items (the whole reason for this was to support MUST ministries -- fighting hunger!), and a blanket to "picnic" before the music starts up. I just have to mention that Kyle was by far the most excited out of the group about this. He was cracking us up... couldn't contain his excitement and was completely giving us away.

There were definitely around 500 people on the square, we were pumped!  In this picture you can kind of tell how many people are there:

The music started playing and a group of 100 people start dancing and the other 400 people rushed around them and formed a WALL. They started video taping/watching/BEING IN THE WAY and it was almost impossible to even get through them to dance!

WHAT A BUMMER.

Emery and I squeezed in towards the end and did a couple movements, but still it was nothing like I hoped it would be.  Katie decided not to squeeze through and Kyle could barely find us to video tape.  Either way we did document!

I still hope to be in a real one someday, but either way I LOVE this trend :)  

And speaking of crazy trends, anyone heard of these?

PLANKING

OWLING

CONING (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WygNjMSllLQ)

People have too much time on their hands! haha

Baby food time!

One of the side effects of one of the acid reflux medicines that Emery is on, is constipation.  And I have to share a hilarious story about that...

Emery has always gone once a day, regular as can be.  Since starting this medicine for some reason it's been a little harder for her to be that regular.  She grunts even just to pass gas!  One day I realized that she hadn't gone in 2 and a half days, which for her is very odd.  Given that she already had anal fissures, the doctor told us that he would rather us give her a suppository then have her push and possibly create more fissures.  So Kyle picked up infant suppositories from the drug store one night on his way home from work.  We read the directions, then stuck the medicine half way up her bottom for a minute (it was a LONG minute with her screaming bloody murder-- Kyle actually was counting down the seconds on his watch for me).  When that was over, I quickly took out the suppository (what was left of it) and yelled "quick fasten up her diaper" because they say that stool will immediately follow the suppository.  Once we put her diaper back on, neither one of us could remember where the suppository went.  Being first time parents we didn't know if it would burn her skin if we had dropped it in the diaper. 

SO Kyle had the idea to open the diaper back up to search for it. The next 15 seconds were HILARIOUS.  Poop was flowing like a volcano and Kyle's first reaction was NOT to put the diaper back on, but instead to cover her bottom with his hand... HAHAHAHA. (Imagine going up to a fire hydrant and covering up the water with the palm of your hand... it goes EVERYWHERE).  At this point Kyle has poop up to his elbows and all over the changing table... AND he starts gagging. 

- Emery is screaming

- Kyle is gagging

- and I am crying I am laughing so hard.

Oh man that was a funny day.  But it worked so well for Emery and we were so glad we chose to give that to her.  Luckily we haven't had to give her anymore!

Okay back to baby food.  So most Pediatricians recommend starting rice cereal first, anywhere between 4 and 6 months of age.  Since we don't need her stool to become any more difficult to pass, he encouraged us to give her pears once a week for a month or so until we start rice cereal, since pears aid in digestion!  So that's what we decided to do.

One weekend we took out our magic bullet and I made a fresh batch of pears for Emery.  One of my co-workers, Christen, actually has a baby food website where she posts recipes and nutrition information.. click here to visit!  Baby food recipes are SO EASY, not to mention it's awesome to know there are no preservatives or pesticides in the food I'm giving her!

(Oh, on that note my cousin, Sarah, sent me two websites that are wonderful to read if you are considering making your own baby food and the pluses of organic for baby.  Click here and here to read)

I put in ice cube trays to freeze:

My co-worker, Brooke, just lent us more baby food containers and a recipe book!  Thank you so much Brooke!  And thank you Tara for giving us all your baby spoons!!

Emery was hilarious trying to eat the pears.  I still think she has a little bit of the tongue reflex where she pushes food out, but she did eat some of it.  She flared her nostrils the entire time and it was cracking us up.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

We are on round 2 of pears tonight, wish us luck!