Holidays

My Favorite Christmas Gifts

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I wanted to share a few of the awesome things we got for Christmas this year, in case you were thinking of some things to get people for birthday gifts (or wanted to add them to your list!).

AmazonBasics Micromink Sherpa Blanket

I got this blanket from my brother and absolutely LOVE it. It is SO soft and comfortable. I love being cozy under it on the couch watching Netflix with a glass of wine on the weekends! It’s the perfect winter blanket.

Electric Tea Kettle

I didn’t know how much I’d love this until my parents got it for me. I used to have a traditional kettle and never used it. I eventually got rid of it. Michael doesn’t drink coffee but he drinks green tea in the mornings so he uses it every day and I drink tea in the afternoon. It is so fast and easy and we love it!

Magnetic Block/Tile Set

My best friend got Logan this set of magnets that are so cool! He LOVES them and they are super fun building things with. Logan spends so much time building towers and “garages” for his matchbook cars with them. I even find them fun! 😉

Keurig Mini

This was actually something I bought with Amazon giftcards. I needed a new coffee solution for work and this turned out to be great! I absolutely loved how small and minimal this model was. In fact, when my home Keurig finally dies (we got it for our wedding), I will probably replace it with another mini. I just love that it doesn’t take up so much space–which is perfect for work.

Automatic Cat Feeder

This is another Amazon giftcard purchase. It’s something I should have done years ago, especially with Yggdrasil (Fat Kitty’s) food issues. It took about an hour to set it up, figure out the programming and make sure it worked. You can program it to automatically feed (and you can choose what amounts you want) at whatever time of day you want. There are 4 feeding options. I decided to try a breakfast, lunch “snack” and then dinner time feeding. I am playing with the portion sizes to get the settings right. It will be nice for when we go out of town. But I think it will be nice just to have day to day, too. I like that you can program it for certain times. So maybe now Stevie will stop whining at 6 am on the weekends to get fed. 😉

Bamboo Cheese Board

We got this for Michael’s mom. What I liked about it was that it had spots for crackers! (I kinda want one for myself!)

What are some of your favorite gifts?

This post has Amazon affiliate links.

2019 Goals & A Recipe

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I have a few goals for the new year. NOT resolutions. The usual, of course: lose the weight. Yadda Yadda Yadda. I am working on a post about that that I will share at a later date. But for sure:

  1. Drink more water.
  2. Read 165 books.
  3. Eat more vegetables in my diet.
  4. Practice patience. 
  5. Learn how to alleviate stress/anxiety (without medication).

I think the first three goals are definitely doable. The last goal, I do not know if I can do. That’s part of the weight loss post I am working.

Drink more water — when I was breastfeeding I was doing SO GOOD at drinking water. Seriously, I was a rockstar. I had to be. To keep my supply up. But then once that was over with, I kinda got lazy. I am good at drinking water at work and I am good at drinking water at the gym. But at home? On the weekends? Not so much. I don’t know why I am so bad at it but I need to be better. I am noticing the effects of not drinking it and I need to fix that asap.

Read 165 books — that’s how many I read in 2018! I think my goal last year was 120 and I exceeded it! I am already off to a decent start.

Eat more veggies — I love vegetables, so that’s not too bad of a goal for me. However, when I snack, I usually reach for fruit. I am going to make a sincere effort to try and incorporate more veggies as snacks, too.

Patience — Logan is a joy for sure but we are definitely in a time period in his development that is challenging for all of us. He is almost three years old (!!!!!) and strong willed, determined and wants to do EVERYTHING himself. Which often takes forever. It can sometimes be very frustrating for me. We get into power struggles and I need to really work on patience and stopping the power struggles. 

What are your goals for the new year?

Now on to the recipe…

In an effort to eat more veggies AND try and satisfy that pizza craving without all the carbs, I experimented with zucchini pizzas last night! It actually turned out really well! We both liked it a lot. With some tweaking, I will make it again.

But first, for the funny little story — I got ready to make dinner and realized I had bought cucumbers instead of zucchinis (are you kidding me?!?!). I went to the store near our house (THEY WERE OUT!!) and had to go to ANOTHER grocery store. Sheesh.

Ok, so back home, I cute the ends off the zucchini, cut them in half, and then scraped the insides out to create “boats”. Next time I would make a little cute on the bottom so they would stay more flat on the tray.

Then I filled the indentations with the pizza sauce, pizza seasoning, cheese, topped it with pepperoni, olives and onions and a little more cheese. I baked it at 375 for about 20 minutes. Michael had a good idea to bake the zucchini naked for some of that time before doing all the toppings and then baking it the rest of the time. I will try that next time.

It was delicious and sort of satisfied the pizza craving, but not the bread craving. I would definitely make this again though!