Never underestimate a 2 year old...

Somehow, Mags has turned into quite the girly girl.  Definitely didn't get it from me.
She has been into everything lately, and insists on trying to do everything herself.  She goes into my bathroom drawer now to take out my make up brushes, she pretends to put powder all over, and then exclaims "I bootiful Mommy".  Yes Mags, yes you are lol.  I really don't know where she gets it from.

Well, Mags is obsessed with pedicures.  She honestly requests that I change her toe color about once a week!  Unbelievable.

We've had 2 incidents in 48 hours pertaining to toes... took everything in me to stay calm and remember I have a VERY precocious 2 year old...

Yesterday, we took off our toe polish so could do a new pedi for vacation.  I screwed the nail polish remover up tight and put it beside the lamp on the end table, where I thought it was out of reach.  I left the room for what seriously felt like 65 seconds.  Then I heard a loud "Mahhhh-Meeeee!" and went running back in.

Maggie reached the bottle.  She unscrewed the cap!!!!  She poured the entire bottle all over her skirt and the couch!  She had a look of pure panic and "oh no, I really messed up, huh".    Grrr, OMG, you've got to be kidding me.

I stripped her, grabbed the couch cushion and began furiously scrubbing it in the shower with dish soap.  It then spent the next 2 days outside.  

Lessons learned:  

1.  Maggie can now unscrew things

2.  There's no such thing as "out of reach"

Thank goodness it only went on the couch, I know it could have been much much worse.

Fast forward to the next day... I'm finally ready to paint Mag's naked toes.  She requested her favorite color... PINK  =)

She parked herself in her normal pedicure position on the edge of my bed, and I sit on the floor with her toes in my face lol.  Suddenly, she decides to chuck another polish bottle onto the floor, which hit the open pink bottle in my hand.  YUP, pink nail polish on our bedroom carpet.  and YUP, we are out of nail polish remover because of the couch incident.

Curse words ensued.  There was a lot of running around arms flailing, husband looking at me like I was losing it.  Then panicked strategizing.  I settled on rubbing alcohol, lots of paper towels, and wet washcloths.  It did pretty much come out, which is shocking.  Probably came off because the hysteria all happened within 30 seconds and I got to the polish right away.  Unbelievable.

Never a dull moment around here.  Needless to say, we are going to be A LOT more careful with our remover and polishes.

Beat back the beats....

Was going through old pics to put together a Shutterfly album for 2011 (yea, a little behind here)... and discovered this GEM!  This was taken last August... can't believe how baby-ish Magpies looks!!!  This video totally made my day =)

A new spin on the same old same old...

I've decided to make salad for dinner once a week.  We've had an abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce from the garden, and I needed a different way to put them together.  I hate when my salad is "boring", same ingredients, same style so to speak.  Salad is one of those things that's awesome when someone else puts it together for you with their own spin, and then it seems so fresh and new and yummy.

I'm going to try to make more FUN salads, and here's the first one... a classic Cobb!  I made a bed of loose leaf lettuce from the garden and added some organic baby spinach for a twist.  Then I place stripes of garden cucumbers, grilled chicken, fresh tomatoes, BACON, hard boiled eggs, avocado, and reduced fat blue cheese (which was pretty good for being "light").  This salad was awesome.  Even T liked it, probably because of all the toppings which made it more filling, and well... more FUN  =)

We might need an intervention...

T and I got a Netflix subscription as a gift this past Christmas and FINALLY activated that bad boy.  We kept hearing awesome things about "Breaking Bad", and got uber excited when we saw it on there.  Season 1, Episode 1.  Hello there.

That's when we took our first hit...



We've been watching incessantly ever since.  It might be a problem.  I'm talking 3 episodes  
in one night, a WORK night no less!  It's a bit dark, a bit funny, a bit messed up.  You should try it, you might just get HOOKED...

BEANS!!!!

YAY for fresh green beans in the garden!

Here's today's little harvest... enough for me and Mags to snack on while hanging out on the deck waiting for Daddy to get home...

Here's my girl chomping on some fresh beans!  

Look at the smile full of chewed up green beans lol...

Deelish!  I'm loving her excitement when we pick things right out of the garden in the yard.  I seriously doubt she'd eat raw beans if we had got them from the store.  Somehow, they are much more "fun" when we pick them ourselves ;)

Spice it up....

A long time ago, I ripped out this recipe from Rachel Ray and gave it a go... Deee-lish, as she would say.  Really, what made it so yummy was the relish/salsa/topping, which was very different than anything I'd ever had/made before...
Over time, I collected so many recipes that it became overwhelming.  I kept them in a binder that was literally overflowing and wouldn't close anymore.  So I began weeding through them.  Time consuming.

What happend was I chucked recipes I didn't think I'd ever honestly get around to trying, I kept "out of the box" recipes that intrigued me, and I moved recipes that I had tried and loved to a new binder that I named the "TRIED AND TRUE" binder.

This turkey burger and relish recipe made the cut.  Of course, I make some changes... So here's my version...

Turkey Burger
2 lbs ground turkey
a small handful of italian seasoned bread crumbs
1/3 cup of finely chopped parsley
Colby Jack cheese, or cheddar

Grill burgers (I used my griddler) until cooked through, then top with the colby jack.  Meanwhile, toast up some english muffins so they are ready when the burgers are done.

Relish
large zucchini, diced
red bell pepper, diced
1/2 medium sized red onion, diced
2 Tablespoons hot sauce (I used Franks)
juice of 1 1/2 limes
a few shakes of dried thyme

Combine all of the above, and give it a good stir.  Top the burgers with this yummy relish.

I served my burgers with a nice salad picked from our garden.  It made the perfect side.  You definitely need to try this!  I could even see eating the relish with tortilla chips in place of a standard salsa  :)

Happy 4th!

We went up to the lake for our annual family reunion.  Maggie had been amped up about fireworks and talking about them incessantly, so we figured we'd keep her up and give them a go for the first time.  She was sooo excited...

So we joined the extended fam on some cozy blankets in the yard and settled down for the annual show.  The first went off and Maggie's eyes lit up as she yelled "fireworks!"... then another went off and she said "I no like boom mommy"... as the third went off she was clinging to me like a wet pair of BVD's.  

She screamed "I go house, I no like boom!" so we sashayed our way indoors and parked our heiney's on the couch.  Luckily for me, I could still see the show through the sliders, but Maggie literally covered her entire head with her pink blankie and kept repeating "I hide, I no like boom, I hide, I no like boom".  Everytime there was a pause between fireworks, she would clap and say "All done mommy, all done", only to be sorely disappointed when she heard the next one rattle off.  In between all this hysteria, there was a little tinkling in the undies to top it all off...

So... it wasn't a success, but we survived, and I have high hopes that next year will be better (mostly because I can't imagine it being worse!).