Raegan is now two months old, so we met up the other day to get a few more shots.
It’s fun to see her getting bigger and stronger. She can lift her head some now.
And she can even smile!!
Isn’t her smile sweet? Love it. And she can focus a bit more on people’s faces now.
Love taking pictures during the week. Especially of sweet little friends like Raegan. So fun.
~Meghan
Well, seven and a half months ago I made my first batch of homemade laundry soap.
And last night I finally had to go ahead and make a new batch.
After almost 8 months of using it, I have to say that I really love it. I never have to buy laundry detergent at the store.
Our clothes still come out smelling fresh and clean.
More importantly, our clothes are fresh and clean.
I even gave away about 2 gallons of the stuff for people to try. So far, no complaints.
And Elizabeth is now making it for their family to use. This is a big deal because Austin and Will are like me- all of us have skin that can be irritated by harsher soaps, especially perfumed ones. For me it generally takes using dyed or perfumed soap for a while, but for them it is immediately irritating to their skin.
This soap is great because it is perfume and dye free, so it has no skin irritants. It just smells like clean soap. None of us have had any issues with it.
Tips I’ve learned:
-For loads that are a bit more soiled or smelly (like workout gear or something food was spilled onto) I will sprinkle a little bit of the Borax powder into the wash in addition to the cup of detergent. Sometimes I’ll add a little sprinkle of the super washing soda too. If that doesn’t seem like enough, I will do store-bought stain fighters.
-You need to shake up the bottle you keep the soap in before pouring it into the wash so the water and soap aren’t separated.
-The further into your supply you get, the less chunky it will seem and the more it will remind you of regular laundry detergent (which is smoother). But it will still be potent enough to clean your clothes.
If you haven’t tried it yet, and you’re interested, you really might love it. It costs you less than $5 to make a 5 gallon bucket, which then has to be diluted (so it’s really more like 10 gallons of laundry soap), and it has lasted me and Tom almost 8 months (more if we hadn’t shared).
Think of how much money you save!! Laundry detergent has to be one of the most marked up products for cleaning. So expensive.
Just wanted to give you some feedback after all this time of testing it out. I’m happy with it!
~Meghan
I just love all the pretty colors and outfits that emerge with spring weather. Easter always seems to kick it off.
Lots of pretty little girls in hairbows and sweet dresses, boys and men in suits and seersucker, women in corals and pinks, white pants, cool tank tops and flowy skirts…I love it.
We have such beautiful family members. And that isn’t even everybody!!
What are we going to do for the cousins picture when Puce arrives?
Just another thing to think about…
~Meghan
Saturday, my mom and dad hosted an Easter egg hunt/party/ lunch at their home for family and friends with young children. My nephew, Tyler was in attendance.
(Yes, the same one whose mama, Lisa, fell and broke her arm, and then he fell and skinned his face the same day, while I was the adult in charge. Go me.)
Let me tell you something about Tyler. He loves to catch things that gross out most people. Especially things that gross ME out. Frogs, lizards, bugs…he loves ‘em.
Exhibit A:
Doesn’t that frog look happy to have been caught? Poor frog.
Well, as I mentioned, Lisa has broken her arm. I’ve gotten accustomed to helping out with little things for her kids over the last couple of weeks- untying hair ribbons, putting hair in ponytails, opening things.
So when I was innocently taking pictures of a flower I liked, and I heard her mention my name, I thought nothing of it.
Tyler came to me and said, “Aunt Meghan, can you open this Easter egg for me?”
“Sure, ” I replied. I was thinking it must be stuck, and Lisa couldn’t get it open.
So when I opened it to see that toad staring at me in fear, can you blame me for screaming and throwing him- still in the egg- at the ground?
No. No you cannot.
Lisa and her daddy and Tyler all just about busted a gut laughing so hard at my freak-out. My husband might just have joined them too.
I should’ve known.
You can’t survive this family unless you can handle being the butt of a joke every now and then. After giving Lisa some (good-humored) grief over taking advantage of my willingness to help out with her broken arm, I had to laugh.
They got me. They got me good.
Heaven help his three little sisters.
~Meghan
Tomorrow I am attending an Easter Egg Hunt party, and I was asked to make some “egg” cookies for it. I turned to my handy-dandy fave sugar cookie recipe, but this time, I decided to do lemon flavoring instead of almond. Same goes for the royal icing flavoring.
When I made the cookies for Ella’s birthday party, a lot of people asked me how I got the icing to look marbled in the background. The cookies had this effect:
(source)
Since I was going to be making cookies again, I figured I would get Tom to take some pictures of me doing the marble effect to show you.
For these cookies, I stuck cookies sticks into them so that I could have cookie pops.
Yes, there was one ugly duckling cookie.
And then I made the royal icing. I use meringue powder instead of egg whites because it’s supposed to be safer for pregnant women and babies, but I don’t have a high end meringue powder as is suggested by the recipe I use.
I also use powdered sugar, clear corn syrup, flavoring (I used lemon this time), and a bit of glycerin, which is supposed to help with the icing colors.
After it’s made, I put some in different bowls so that I can color it.
And then, when it’s colored, I put some in a piping bag so I can do the stiffer piping, and then I use water to thin the icing in bowls to fill in the cookies. I use ice water because I read once that that’s helpful, but I don’t really know if that’s true.
After it’s thinned, you cover it with damp cloths (or paper towels) while you wait on it to have the air bubbles come to the top.
After several minutes, you take the cloths off and gently stir it to pop all the air bubbles. Then you transfer it to squeeze bottles. (I only have four.)
While you were waiting on the air bubbles to come up, you could go ahead and pipe the outline on your cookies. (Please excuse the blue cast of the next four photos.)
Don’t worry if your first one or two cookies look awful. Once you get going, you’ll improve. The difference is obvious. I find I am better at piping at a table if I am sitting. Standing only works for me at a counter height.
After piping, you can “flood” the cookie with thinned icing. You can use a toothpick to spread the icing to the edges if you need to.
Then take one of the other colors and put some straight lines going across the cookie.
Take a different color, and make more straight lines, now making it alternating colors with stripes.
Because all the icing is thinned, the striped colors will have sunk into the background color a bit.
And now for the marbling:
Take a toothpick, and starting below the lines on the left side, pull the toothpick up through the lines of colored icing.
Then go over a bit to the right and take the toothpick back down.
Then go back up and down.
When you get done, it looks like this:
Pretty, right?
So that’s marbling. With Ella’s cookies, I piped a thicker border around the edges when I was done to cover up the rough outline I had done with the first bit of piping.
But I was told “as simple as possible” with these egg cookies, so I decided not to do extra piping on fifty cookies. It would have looked prettier, but it would have taken much longer.
If you DO want to get that look though, just put a star tip on your piping bag, and pipe around the edges of the cookie in little spurts. It will get that little beaded pattern you see above.
As it was, I just bagged all of these cookie pops up and tied them off with pastel ribbons this morning. (You have to let the icing dry overnight.)
Then I cut some styrofoam to fit inside a basket I had and covered it with the little “grass” pieces sold for Easter baskets. I stuck the pops into the styrofoam, and I was happy with how it turned out!
Word to the wise: be careful doing this. The cookie sticks broke a few of my cookies when I tried to put them in the styrofoam.
I ended up taking a fondue stick and poking it through the styrofoam and wiggling it around in order make a place for the cookie stick to fit. That saved my cookies. And my sanity.
And my ugly duckling cookie? I made it a little chick’s hatching egg.
It didn’t make it into the basket. It did make it into Tom’s belly.
If you end up making cookies of your own, link up in the comments! I would love to see them!
~Meghan
If you have ever had a pet, or more than one pet at a time, you know how quickly it gets old having to open the door for them all the time so they can go out or come inside.
When Tom and I lived in an apartment, we used to have to leash our dogs and go outside with them every single time they asked to go out. Because they were puppies, we took them out pretty much whenever they asked in case they had to potty. (I couldn’t resist sharing a puppy picture. Look at those bellies bloated with food!)
But we couldn’t WAIT for the day that we had a fenced in backyard. In fact, when we bought our house, we fenced in the backyard before we thought of anything else- paint, a fridge, a lawnmower, anything.
“It will be SO nice not having to go out with them every time that they have to use the bathroom or just want to be outside, ” we would say to each other. And it was.
But guess what’s not fun? Having to get up to open the door five times during a meal. Or a tv show. Or in the bathroom (they just get ignored then).
Or when they whine at you to finish your workout so you can go let them out.
Or when they wake you up on a Saturday at 7AM so that they can pee.
Or when Liam feels the need to check on every family member every 5 minutes, even though we are inside and Samantha is asleep in the yard, creating a constant loop of door opening, shutting, whining, barking, opening, shutting…
Oh look! Here they are below. With Liam barking to come in. Have you noticed how dirty doors get with little wet noses rubbed on them throughout the day?
We could handle it. We did handle it. For two years, we have lived in our house and dealt with it.
But in December, Tom began to work for himself.
At home.
And the constant need to get up and let the dogs in or out of the backyard was interrupting his work. So, with much rejoicing on the inside (for me, anyway), we decided to get a pet door. I began looking at all kinds of sites online about it, but in the end, I picked a door from Lowes.
When I saw that door, it was like the heavens had parted and shown a light upon me. It answered every need and desire we had for our back door. See, for a year now, Tom and I have been talking about getting a screen door added to our backyard entrance because we love to leave the door open but hate for bugs to come in.
We have also been talking for a long time about needing a doggy door.
So we did neither.
The door we got is a storm door, so it’s sturdy, and because of the windows in our regular back door, this door is supposed to make our backyard entrance 40% more energy efficient.
The window in this storm door also can go up in the middle, where there is a screen. And it has a doggy door built in. YES!
I found it yesterday, and we went out to get it the same day.
It took us a few hours to assemble everything and get it hung on the door frame. Hanging doors is about as fun as hanging curtains. And by that I mean annoying, tedious work and no fun at all.
But we did it. This next picture is overblown; it’s not quite so blindingly white in reality.
We started to train them with it right away. Liam loved it.
Sam wasn’t quite so sure she wanted to stick her face against that flap, but eventually she was running indoors and outside right along with Liam. Sometimes they would run in and out at the same time. Can you believe they could both fit through that together?
And this morning, right before I left for work, I caught Sammy heading into the backyard all on her own. Despite the nasty weather. It made me smile.
Tom and I high-fived.
I have a feeling this is going to be one of our favorite purchases for the house.
~Meghan
Like I said, Tom and I took Tyler (almost 8 ) and Madeline (6) home with us on Sunday afternoon to alleviate some of the work of providing at Lisa and Jonathan’s house.
The plan was to keep them until Tuesday, but Jonathan ended up coming to get them on Monday night because Tom and I had to head out to Covington the next day and Lisa was ready to have all her babies together again.
During my time with them, I resorted to only taking pictures when I thought of it, and then only with my phone. It was a busy visit.
After we brought them home, they went to the dog park with us.
They were able to run around, and so were the dogs. Samantha even let Madeline walk her, which is pretty amazing because Sam is terrified of kids and usually just barks at them non-stop until we put her outside or upstairs where she feels they can’t get to her. The dogs do much better with kids outdoors.
When we got back from the park, we made pizza. Madeline said, “Is this pizza going to be square?” To which I said, “No, it’ll be a rectangle.” I knew that wasn’t her point, but I couldn’t resist.
Anyway, they enjoyed the pizza despite it not being round. While it baked, the kids got showers, then we all watched Tangled as we ate. I have now seen it three times. LOVE that movie.
The next morning, after breakfast, changing clothes, and brushing teeth, we took off for the Suwanee Town Center. The kiddos had the fountains all to themselves for most of the time we were there. We also had a picnic lunch while they sun-dried.
After that, we went across the street to Yogli Mogli so they could change into normal clothes and also get some yogurt. Tyler said, “Hey, this is actually a nice place!” when we went inside. I’m not sure exactly what kind of place he expected me to take them to, but I’m glad this passed inspection.
The yogurt was eaten in the car, because we needed to head out to pick up Will from Mother’s Morning Out.
Will was delighted to see some big kids had joined me for the day. He loves to play with other kids, and he spent pretty much the entire ride to Flowery Branch just staring at them and smiling. It was so cute.
After that I didn’t take any more pictures, but we kept busy. We played at Will’s house, went to Target, came back and ate dinner, they had bubble baths, watched Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and then Jonathan picked them up.
I know one thing- if you don’t have toys and books for kids at your house, you have to make much more effort to keep them entertained. And even though it was fun, it was exhausting.
All the same, I think there are plenty of sleepovers for nephews and nieces in our future! And maybe also a trip to get some discounted books and toys.
~Meghan
My sister-in-law, Lisa, fell down last Wednesday around 2:30 pm and broke her arm. Thankfully, she and my brother, Jonathan moved from Augusta to Decatur last year, which basically means they were within “get here fast” driving range for me.
Lisa was trying to dig up this stump when I guess she hit a root, making it difficult to maintain balance on the shovel.
Since there was a bush behind her, when she tried to step off the shovel, she lost her balance and fell down here:
…onto these cement blocks.
Ouch.
She broke her right arm directly under her elbow, and she did some nasty stuff to her wrist too. As she lay there on the ground, she called Jonathan and then me to come help out. Jonathan was her ride to the hospital, and I was the relative in closest driving distance who could come take care of their four kids.
Because I’m such an excellent (not to mention professional) child-care provider, I allowed my nephew to get out of sight on a scooter- after he took off his helmet- and take a spill. I was so excited for Jonathan and Lisa to come home from the hospital so I could show them his face. Not.
Or his knee.
Or his elbows. Sigh.
I called my mom to tell her what happened to Lisa, and I lamented what happened to Tyler to her as well. She and I just had to laugh at how this could only happen with me around. She said I was “worth every penny.”
Have I ever mentioned the going rate for watching my nephew and nieces? I’ll give you a hint: It’s less than a penny. And my mom knows it. I had to laugh.
Lisa came home with Jonathan around 8:45pm, and I stayed until the next night. Even though Lisa is not a complainer at all, I knew she was feeling the pain because she mostly wanted to lie down. Usually all she does is move around, doing things. She was never alone, though, even watching a movie and resting.
Since then, Lisa has had a rotating door of helpers including a neighbor, my mom, her mom and dad, and one of her best friends from college.
In order for us to help out a little more, Tom and I offered to take Tyler and Madeline home with us on Sunday after we had spent the morning and part of the afternoon helping out while Jonathan was on call.
They stayed with us until around 9pm Monday night, when Jonathan picked them up. But their visit deserves its own post.
~Meghan
When I was shooting the JLA the other day, we definitely got a few shots that were fun for me to come across later on my computer. Quite a few of my friends got the giggles when trying to produce a “serious” face for me.
Some of them were more than a little uncomfortable with the sun shining right into their eyes, but they looked in the direction I needed anyway.
And…uh..a few I thought looked cool, but then I was told they looked, well… “phallic.” Umm..not the look I was going for in my shoot.
And then there were just some silly shots. (And, oh yeah, Justin’s shirt was actually blue. Thank you, Photoshop. =) )
I always like seeing the “other side” of a photo shoot. It often shows the real story behind how the day went.
~Meghan
Just in case you haven’t looked at my blog all week, I’ve been rounding up some of my favorite comic book characters and bringing them to life in a less “costumed” way than they typically are portrayed. These include:
Most (all but one) of those characters are members of the JLA, or Justice League of America.
And so, we absolutely HAD to do a group shot. Typically, Superman is at the forefront of this group. Other strong leaders include Wonder Woman and Batman.
Obviously, we didn’t have all of the superheroes of the JLA in our picture. But we had some of my favorites.
And thanks to these awesome friends of mine, some of the best members of the Justice League were in Atlanta for a weekend.
I love it.
~Meghan
