Food finds & PSLs

These are rocking my socks off lately:

Flavored Kale Chips

Morgan loves them too.  If I could just find a way to keep her from crumbling them into dust and eating them FIRST.

I've made this recipe from Pinterest a few times now and it's SO good!

Parmesan Pork Roast

Recipe found here.

And another Pinterest find, from the website Budget Bytes, I made this for Morgan and myself for lunch last week:

Hummus & Grilled Veggie Pizza

Recipe found here.  It was incredibly good!  I used Naan bread that I toasted in the oven first (instead of pizza crust).  DEElish.


The weather had finally cooled down here a bit; especially in the mornings (hello 50 degree temps!) So of course with it being fall, and to stay with the mass cult following it has already garnered, I'm craving a PSL (Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks).

But I am attempting to watch what I eat, and the fat/calories/sugar are off the charts on these babies.  So I went to the interwebz to search out a cleaner option and came across this from The Gracious Pantry (check out her blog, lots of great clean eating recipes!):

My take on it?  Well....it's not QUITE the same.  But it was good.  And tasty.  I dirtied a lot of dishes making it, which in my book, sucks.  Because with two babies I don't want to be doing any more dishes than the bazillion bottles and sippy cups and toddler-fied sticky items I have to wash already.  But who knows, I might make it again?

Clean Eating Pumpkin Spice Latte
(Makes 2 lattes)

Ingredients
4 tbsp. ground coffee (decaf, if you want to be really clean!)
1 tbsp. pumpkin spice (no sugar added, just the spice mix)
2-1/2 cups water
2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk OR…
2 cups regular milk + 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. pure maple syrup

Directions

NOTE: I made this using a French press. So it was easy to get these specific measurements. If you use a coffee maker, you’ll need to adjust the amounts of all the ingredients based on the amount of coffee you use. You can double or triple or….

Step 1 – Combine the coffee and the pumpkin spice and brew as usual with the specified amount of water.

Step 2 – Pour the maple syrup in the bottom of your cup and pour half of the hot coffee over that.

Step 3 – Add 1 cup of milk and stir.

Step 4 – Repeat steps 2-3 for the second serving.

Sip and Enjoy!

Nutritional Content
1 serving = 1/2 the recipe

Calories: 100
Total Fat: 3 gm
Saturated Fats: 0 gm
Trans Fats: 0 gm
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 189 mg
Carbohydrates: 17 gm
Dietary fiber: 0 gm
Sugars: 12 gm
Protein: 2 gm
Estimated Glycemic Load: 9

STARBUCKS PUMPKIN LATTE NUTRITION DATA
16 oz. (small/grande)
No Whipped Cream
Using 2% milk

Calories 310
Calories from Fat 60
Total Fat 6g
Saturated Fat 4g
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 25mg
Sodium 210mg
Total Carbohydrate 49g
Dietary Fiber 0g
Sugars 47g
Protein 14g

Nutritional Information estimated at Nutritiondata.com. Data may not be accurate.

Is this what I think it is?

If you look closely, you can see those two little white spots on his gum....that CANNOT be a tooth coming through?!  He's only 2 1/2 months old!!  NOOOO!!!  I know their teeth can come in at varying times; Morgan's first tooth didn't come til right after she was 1 year old.  But this?  This is too early. #mommacanthandleit

The weekend went by fast - thankfully ; )  The Hubs was on call AGAIN so I was SoloMama.  To help keep my sanity, we had not one, but TWO date nights!  It was kind of an accident really; we had the date wrong, but my sitter was already on her way when we found out, so we took advantage of the mistake.

I indulged in this:

And I'm not sorry ; )  Friday night's date consisted of a loooong leisurely dinner outside on the patio at a restaurant down the street from our house.  (And of course the Watermelon Martini.)

Saturday night, we put the kids to bed, then went to a new pizza joint that recently opened up to hear The Hubs' uncle Steve play some Jazz.

Sunday afternoon, my MIL came over to hang out with her grandbabies so I could go catch a movie with some girlfriends and grab some MUCH needed groceries.

In between, we did the usual:  Read LOTS and LOTS of books, nursed the baby 100 times, and changed hundreds of diapers ; )  We also went outside for stroller walks and to explore in our front and back yard.  Morgan loves smelling things lately, so she's always picking leaves off the ground or the bushes to sniff them.

 This one did his usual of looking incredibly cute..needing to be held...eating whenever he's awake.  And sleeping through the night - Hallelujah!!

Swiffering my floors for me with her favorite blankie

 Morgan has a new favorite game:  We put her blankie over her head and she wanders around while we yell out "Where's Morgan?  Where did she go?"  And then she pulls the blanket off her head and we yell "OH THERE SHE IS!!!"  She gets the biggest kick out it!

Where's Morgan???

Just reading

Some pants-less reading

I can't believe how fast time is passing!!

Oh Hi September

• Annnnd summer's over.  Already?!
• Joey slept through the night two nights ago!!  Of course I was up 3 or 4 times to check on him.  Oh well, at least HE got some sleep ; )  He probably would've slept through the night long before that, but I always get him up and feed him when he starts fussing, thinking "surely he must be hungry, it's been x hours!"
• The Hubs and I enjoyed the Labor Day holiday weekend...mostly alone.  We had a babysitter/grandma pretty much every day for just a few hours so we could sneak away. IT. WAS. GLORIOUS.
• I talked my husband OUT of a practical vehicle and INTO a midlife-crisis car.  {I'm not sure how I managed that one.}  We don't have it yet, but hope to have it locked down middle of this week.  I'm not-so-secretly super excited for him; he hasn't had a new car in FIFTEEN YEARS!!  I'm not crazy about the fact we might have to order it and it could take 13 weeks to come in though....seriously??
• Morgan's vocab has exploded!  She's repeating EVERYTHING!  I knew this day would come and now potty-mouth Mommy has to really watch it!  It's like a little parrot living in my house, lol!  And I pretty much love it.
• It's my birthday month.  So I took advantage of the Labor Day sales this weekend and shopped for some fall pieces to add to my wardrobe.  Now that I got this MOMbody and all...meh.  The pregnancy weight is gone - hallelujah!  But I now have a bigger butt and mushy belly.  How is that fair?
• I am SO ready to start working out. (More than just pushing 2 babies in the double stroller around the hills in my hood)  But I just can't seem to get started....where to begin? So weak.  So flabby.  So out of shape!
• I got Mastitis for the first time in my life last week.  That was completely unfun.
• Morgan is going to start a little school program next week.  I went back and forth with this -- mostly because I can't get her into the school I want that's in our town until she turns 2 - and they only enroll in the fall, so it would be a whole year from now.  She really needs socialization with other kids and activities now.  The program she will start is a farther drive for us, but I think it will be worth it.  It's 2 half days per week and I'm so excited for her! 
• Joey had his 2-month well check today and he weighs 12 lbs, 7 ozs!  Pretty sure the Bengals might want him for a linebacker in another 18 years ; )  (And no wonder my back hurts!)  It's a good feeling knowing all that nursing is doing him good.  There's something really cool about knowing I am providing 100% of his nutritional needs.
• I have to take both kids to my dr. appt. later today for a recheck of my mastitis.  Let's just say I'd rather take a bullet than drag both of them along (my babysitter is sick and I've already rescheduled this appt. once)...I'm hoping it goes better than I'm fearing.  Because this morning at Joey's dr. appt. went as AWFUL as I dreaded it would.  Morgan had an EPIC MELTDOWN for reasons that are still not apparent to me.  It's not like she got shots!  Anyway, we left with me carrying my hunkychunk infant in his carseat + Morgan + the enormous diaper bag.  I wanted to cry.

Fall Finds

Fall Finds by nursetmj featuring hobo handbags

A few little goodies I snapped up over the weekend to update my fall wardrobe. (Except that Brompton Hobo...I'm hoping the Birthday Fairy brings that for my bday this month, lol! Hey, a girl can dream, right?) Because if I'm going to be covered in spitup and sticky unknown substances, I might as well try to look cute, right? You know, for the times I actually get out of my yoga pants and leave the house.

The lace top I found at the GAP outlet for way cheap -- but that picture was the closest thing to it I could dig up on Polyvore. And the black skinnies I got were also GAP. And my scarf is JCrew but it was no longer on their website.


I find in the midst of running on the never-ending hamster wheel of motherhood (diaper changes, feedings, cleaning, meltdowns, repeat), I enjoy the little escape that is Pinterest and Polyvore and Fashion. It makes me happy. Much like Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks ; )

I have also found I was getting into a bad habit of ordering stuff online from Old Navy, (because hello! Their stuff is SO cheap!) only to be disappointed by the fit and/or quality when it arrived. I think ON is great for maternity wear (stuff you won't wear for all that long), and also maybe for trendy items that you probably won't care about a year or two from now.... but for stuff you want to keep long-term, I'd rather get less and spend a little more.

Anyway, I'm by NO means a fashion expert, nor do I consider myself particularly trendy (not at all even!) but I think a few new things to freshen up the wardrobe makes this mama happy. And I like looking back through my blog to see what I thought was cool at the time ; )