Off for Christmas

Sorry I forgot to tell you guys I was leaving for the holidays. I got an extra day off at work and really ran with it and forgot all of the things I was planning on telling you about. More to come after the holiday...

Merry Christmas to you all and I can't wait to see what the new year brings!!

Warehouse Syndrome

Me and E have always gone back and forth about whether we wanted to get a membership to Sam's or Costco or some other warehouse store of type. Well, last night was military appreciation night at Sam's so we thought we would take advantage of the invitiation and see if there were things there that we would actually use. While we did get 3 Christmas presents, all very small, we still walked out with 8 items and a $200 bill. However, we did get a GIANT box of newborn diapers and giant box of wipes too. But I think we both agree now that we don't "Need" a warehouse club membership. We will find too much crap that we can't live without!!

Christmas Gifts and a Casserole

I always like to cook during the holidays so I bought some small little bread pans and planned to make Cappuccino Bread and Pumpkin Bread for everyone. After finishing 10 loaves and nearly dropping dead in the kitchen, everyone is only getting one loaf of bread and some cookies. I baked like nobody's business today!! Feet...Sore!! Back ...Aches!!! I also made a casserole and a lasagna for later this week. I will not be stepping foot in that kitchen for the rest of the week. Mark my words!!

Here you can see the first 2 Cappuccino and pumpkin loaves that I made. As you can tell, the pumpkin loaves didn't turn out that well. I even think the raisins towards the top burnt. For the Cappuccino Bread, I used my recipe for Cappuccino Muffins. The batter made enough for 2 small loaves that need to be cooked for an extra 15 minutes. They are going to be delicious!

Here is the casserole that I made. My friend Chrisa made Zucchini Feta Casserole for a girls night we spent at her house and I thought I would make it at home. I bought the ingredients and put E up to the task about 2 months ago and he just didn't have the touch to make it what it "could have been." So Sunday, I took another crack at it and E didn't even recognize it when I put it on a plate for him. I started out a tasteless Cooking Light recipe but once I was done, it was a delicious meal that I would definitely recommend you try. Also, this would be great to serve company, make when the family comes over, take to someone's house if they are sick or just had a baby. It's just that kind of recipe. ...Well, at least it is now!!

(I made Paula Dean's The Lady and Sons Lasagna Sunday too and I will update you all on that too later on this week when I finally get around to cooking and eating it.)

Renovations and Nursery Finishes

I am trying hard to use things I already have or find things really cheap to outfit the nursery. However, the other night, E dragged me out to Hobby Lobby and I ended up finding this fabric and fell in love with it. Turns out, that it matches the crib bedding perfectly and softens the polka dots a little bit. Here is a picture of the 2 new peices of fabric with the bedding in the background.

I spent Saturday sanding and painting the baby's crib (not finished yet), I finished the dresser for the nursery and E put the hardware on for me...

and I got a chance to start using some of that new fabric when I repainted this chair...

and turned it into this chair.

I am so pleased with how it turned out. I have to touch up one or 2 places where I scuffed it up when I brought it into the house.

E worked hard this weekend too and had to make new door frames for the laundry room. He worked so hard trying to get everything measured and cut right. And we finally have a door up. Whoo Hoo!!

Never in a Million Years!

Never in a million years did I think that I would see snow here in southeast Texas!! Never!! Especially not enough to stick. Poor Maggie didn't even know what to think when we let her out this morning. She had never seen snow and wasn't about to step in it alone. E had to put on shoes and go out with her. We heard there was a winter weather advisory last night on the news and I completely ignored it. So this morning...Surprise!! If this doesn't put you in the Christmas spirit, you are a serious Scrooge!! (sorry about the pictures...of all of the days to leave the camera at work...so the camera phone will have to work)

Gift Tags

I think I am going to put these on all of the gifts I would want for myself this year...from Pretty Bitter. Aren't these funny!!

The Ban on Blogging

About a week ago, an event happened around the house that I was specifically told "Don't not blog about this!!" from my husband. Well, last night I recieved the green light.

While E is a genious around the house in my eyes, he doubts his ability to do certain projects. Electrical work is one of those abilities that he questions himself on. He reads up and the project, consults wise council, takes safety VERY seriously and then checks his work very carefully. Last weekend, he relocated the electrical outlet for the washer and installed a new outlet for my future desk. We checked the connection and all works.

Since I was behind on laundry because of the weekend project, I would do a load a day by throwing a dirty load into the washer as I was heading out to work and dry it when I got home. I did this Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning. E was coming home early on Wednesday so I left him a note to start a load of laundry when he got home. He just so happened to be walking by the laundry room when he saw flickering flames inside the washer!!!!! He quickly turned the washer off and began airing out the house from the black smoke that had taken over the house. (Thank God the fire didn't happen on one of the previous days and send out house up in flames)

Well, Robert, a friend who is an electrician came over last night to check E's work. We got the green light and he even fixed a few other problems for us. What an angel!! So now that E knows it wasn't his fault, I am allowed to blog about the fire! Here are the 2 boys taking apart and rewiring the washer, just what every woman wants to see...Men taking apart one of her most expensive appliances. And Robert's wet shirt isn't sweat...it's was just raining cats and dogs last night!!

P.S. Thanks Katie for allowing us to borrow your husband last night!!

Bailey Christmas Traditions

E and I talked the other night and he explained to me that he was really feeling blue this Christmas. He felt like we were both too busy with work and our lives to appreciate the season and all of the reasons behind it.


Well, I come home from work early on Sunday night (yes, I know, I did have to work this weekend) and made a big pot of wassail and hung ribbon on the tree. E came in, we checked out schedules and decided we had enough time to fit in our annual Christmas tradition of drinking wassail (or Egg nog), decorating the tree and watching The Elf. I love that movie!! If you haven't seen it, you are a fool for missing out on this awesome movie for so many years!!!



E put out the family nativity scene (which is a little cluttered for my taste but every year he insists that all of the camels and sheep have to be there...but hey, they will only be up for 3 more weeks anyway)



I was finally able to come up with a solution to our stocking problem. You see, last year, the stocking were so low that Maggie kept pulling them down. I thought about NOT putting them up this year and then regretted my decision and needed a solution. So I found one...they are hanging on the wall now behind the Christmas tree.



And I was super excited about finding our new Christmas ornament that I thought I lost. Our friend Justin went back to Key West a few weeks back and got me and E a Christmas ornament which has been something I have wanted to do in the future...have a special themed ornament from everywhere we lived and I had forgotten to get one from Key West.

So now, I present the famous (Ha) Bailey Christmas tree.

Belly Sneak Peek!

While I don't have any new pictures of my belly at 28 weeks, I have this accidental picture that found this morning while cleaning off the camera memory. And yes, I am getting super fat!!

Reason Number 2

The second reason I haven't been around lately is because I joined the Junior League here in town. I thought it would be a good way to volunteer around the community while meeting lots of new people. Especially, since we move around so much. So this has been my provisional semester and Saturday night was my last night of meetings and/or obligations before I officially become a member.

So this weekend was our Christmas fundraiser called Main Street Market. Santa was there, so was Tracy Byrd (the country singer who lives here in town), along with a beautiful red mercedes benz (that someone won with a raffle ticket) and about 50 vendors with the pretty and nicest stuff in each booth. I went to the Market on Thursday night for a meeting and then stayed to shop and got some cute stuff that I thought I would share with you!

I got this green bag with brown leather accents and a brown monogram the other night and I absolutely love it.

This is a cup I got for the baby. There was so much cute little girl stuff there. But I just have this deep feeling that as soon as I buy lots of "girly" stuff for her, then she will come out a boy. So I am fighting the urge right now but I wanted to monogram everything in sight the other night. So this was the compromise I made with myself. She won't be able to use it for a little while but it was still cute and something I could use in the future!


If you missed the market this year, I highly suggest going next year. It's a big deal!!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

I know I haven't been around much lately but trust me, there are good reasons.

First, let's start with work. The twelve hours days are catching up with me alot faster than they used to especially when we work through the weekend. Such a drain on my "good attitude" and my extremely pregnant body! All this working makes me sour, fast and that goes double for E who has been working strange hours lately too. All of this schedule shifting has left Maggie INSANE!!!!! She never knows whether we are coming or going and with all of the uncertainty, she has been destroying our house once again.

Let me give a few examples of what we have encountered this week alone:

-She ate a bag of assorted chocolate bars
-SHE UNWRAPPED ALL OF THE PRESENTS THAT WERE WRAPPED UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE!!!!! (Ironically, she unwrapped all of them but only ATE all of E's gifts from me)
-She ate and DESTROYED a roll of paper towels
-She ate and broke our heating pad
-She nosed through E's bag and ate a pack of gum
-She has eaten the craziest things outside and then gets sick in the middle of the night, 3 NIGHTS IN A ROW LAST WEEK. (Another reason I am tired, from cleaning dog vomit off of the floor at 3am)

I thought you would enjoy a picture or two of what we came home to the other night...





I am too tired to give any more excuses any picture today so I will leave the rest for tomorrow!

Renovation Updates

Slowly but surely...that's the team Bailey motto these days. Since I'm not much help to E with this giant watermelon in my shirt, he has been working hard by himself. Last weekend, he worked tireslessly for hours (longer than I would have had the patience for) to move the power for our dryer over a few feet. Last night, he ran the electrical sockets for my desk and for the washer while I unpacked our suitcase and started folding the laundry. The hope is....that the flooring will go into the laundry closet tonight, then the electrical work will be finished, we can put up the walls and install the washer and dryer by the weekend. Here is a picture of the work behind behind the washer and dryer.

In the meantime, I have put up our Christmas tree, wrapped all of the gifts, cleaned out the baby's room and continued with the painting projects I have in the garage.

Bailey Holiday Projects

We just got back from Thanksgiving vacation and after getting stuck in traffic for 4 hours, BOY were we glad to get home. The only problem is that time buffer that I always like between the time you get home and the time you have to go back to work. I missed that buffer and feel like my life is a little nuts with all of the home projects going on, no groceries, a filthy house and mounds of dirty laundry.

Maggie had a good time playing with E's parents puppy, Bob. Bob repeatedly tried to sexually assault Mag but he was lacking in size so she just thought he was playing. He pretty much just rode her tail around the house the whole time since that was all he could wrap he little paws around...if you get the picture. E thought it would be funny to get some VERY graphic pictures of all of the assaulting so I had to search hard for a pic that wasn't too dirty. They played for almost 3 days straight with E's brother (he really loves her and I think I may will her to him) and Mag had such a good time...so good that we had a hard time waking her up in the morning.

What else did we do? Well, my mom found a local thrift store that sells Target returns and rejects so we raided their store and spent a fortune but got so much.

Here is a picture of my biggest purchase. The seams have ripped on our comforter (I think Maggie's claws helped more than anything) so we were looking for a new silk quilt. And I found one at this store for 25 bucks!! All of the other ones I had been looking at were over 200 dollars!! I was thrilled.

We also picked up the bedding for the crib. I really like it and think it will turn out cute once I get the nursery finished. We also picked up several things my mom had started collecting for us...diapers, hangers, clothes, playpen, baby positioner, etc. We are sitting pretty so far.

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day!!

No, not that Turkey...this Turkey!!

Tomorrow we are on our way home. WooHoo!!! We haven't been home since Christmas of last year so we are anxious to get back and spend time with family. While it won't be exactly what we are used to, it will definately be a blend of what the days to come are going to look like.

With our first child on the way, we are going to have to rethink how we do holidays. I just don't think I will survive caring for an infant in the car for that long next year, Thanksgiving and then 3 weeks later, Christmas.

It takes about 12 or 13 hours to get home and so my husband is going to have alot of fun riding with an 80 pound dog and his wife who is 6 and a half months pregnant, ...this should be interesting!! I think Maggie will do better than me. Swollen feet, achy back and a full bladder....Ugh! This is going to be a long trip!!

Staying at Home??

Since I am now 13 weeks away from giving birth, ideally, (can you hear the panic in my voice?), I figured I would start researching my childcare options. Our first plan was to ask if I could bring the baby to work for a while. That got NIXXED pretty darn fast. Next was putting her into care here at the university where I work so she would be close by. Unfortunately, they don't accept infants. Then, I started asking around for someone to keep her in my house. But when I actually looked at the cost of having someone keep her, it wasn't even worth it.

So I talked to E the other night and laid out my options for him:

A) paying someone to keep the baby so that I could work through the summer and then quit in August (3 extra pay checks)
B) finally get a chance to use the short-term disability benefits through work (5 extra pay checks at 60%) and then quit afterwards

Work has been pulling money out of my check for a year and a half now in case I ever want to use my short term disability so why not take advantage of it? I don't know if he just really didn't care or was preoccupied by the magazine he was reading when I brought up the subject, the response was frightening.

Me: So what do you think?
E: I think you should just stay home!

Wow, I didn't even have to fight or discuss any of this. I had all of my points ready to make my case. Maybe he knew how stressed this was starting to make me or maybe that's really what he thought but his "matter-o-fact" answer caught me off guard.

All that to say...I am staying home ladies and gents!!

The Great Wall

We have had the floor tiles in our house for over a year with a purpose in mind. We have big plans for our laundry room/den/my office. These floor tiles were involved in the grand scheme of things and now that we finally have free time, we got around to putting up the tiles this weekend. It really didn't take that long but we were both really surprised at how much we like it once it got on the wall. On the left hand side, E is going to build me a shelf for storage baskets and then a built-in storage bench to go across the rest of the space. There will also be a hook for coats and other accessories. Now that I can finally see the difference, I am getting excited.

Brushing Maggie's Teeth

E decided Saturday morning that he was would brush Maggie's teeth. Normally we would let the vet or the groomers deal with that but not that day. He is a picture of the struggle. Maggie's wanted to eat the brush and chew on E's fingers...just a little bit...and E wanted to go ahead and get his done.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't sent me to get his own personal toothbrush for the task!! Luckily, he had just gotten back from the dentist and had received a new one.

Thanksgiving Social

This weekend was our annual Thanksgiving social which includes a meal, dessert, wonderful fellowship and of course, what would a Thanksgiving social be without a game of Thanksgiving themed pictionary. Very strange the games these people play but I am always up for a good time. Here are a few pictures from the event...sorry, there were so many.

I thought I would start off with this picture and the story that goes with it. I went home early from work on Friday to get the food cooked that I was supposed to bring. I made a sweet potato souflee' and 2 casserole dishes of apple dumplings (E's favorite). With an hour left before the party started and all three dishes needing to be cooked for about an hour, I opted to cook the souflee' and the biggest dish of apple dumplings. I figured that I would bring the extra dish of apple dumplings to the party and see if there was room in the oven to cook them during dinner. Once we got there, there wasn't room in the oven so I resigned to the fact that one large dish would have to suffice. I was eating dinner inside when Elizabeth came and whispered in my ear:

Elizabeth: Are those dumplings cooked all of the way?
Me: Yeah, why?
Elizabeth: Well, everyone on the porch is eating them and they don't taste like the last ones you made.

I looked into the kitchen and saw the dish they had been eating from was the dish of raw apple dumplings. But that's not the funny part. The funny part was that they were eating them and going back for seconds and ended up eating almost the WHOLE DISH of the RAW dumplings. I look on the porch where half of our group was eating and Renee' (who is also pregnant and due 3 weeks before me) is just sawing through the raw apples with her plastic knife. Here's what was left in the raw dish. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. Seriously, they were going back for seconds on the raw dumplings!!!

Good food!!!

Dave and Russell carving the turkey and the ham.

Erika decorated the porch SO BEAUTIFULLY!! I am super jealous of her front porch.

Everyone finally digging in to the food.

Everyone eating on the front porch.

The infamous game of pictionary...I started us out by drawing "giblet gravy." Just a small note, pictionary between the men and women gets VERY competitive as you will see in the next few pictures.

Dave looking up "turkey wattle" on his iphone to make sure he is submitting the right word. Lucky me, I picked that one.

Lindy was upset that he had picked Sam's entry "Uncle Benny's Hangover."
Erika relaxing on the front porch after cleaning house and cooking all day.
Me, Kristy and Matt focused intently on the board.
With all of the pregnant women in our class, let me rephrase that...With half of the women in our class being pregnant, this drawing in particular got us all a little scared before she drew the eyes. I was seriously starting to reconsider everything post childbirth.

But once she drew the eyes, we all immediately knew what she was drawing...Russell's snake vest.
And Matt couldn't resist...he had to try on the snake vest and bust a move!!

Hashbrown Casserole...OH MY!!!

Hash Brown Casserole...I first saw this on Paula Deen's website and decided to try it. But now...it's nothing like hers. The first time I made this,...ehh...I wasn't so impressed. Yeah, it was good enough to eat for breakfast but I didn't think I would ever make it again. The hashbrown crust was mushy, I didn't like the diced ham, there wasn't enough flavor...and the list goes on. This weekend, I had an epiphany. "I should add sausage and more veggies and make the hash brown crust CRISPY!!!" So Saturday night, I did just that. I thawed out the hashbrowns and cooked them much more than I was supposed to in a 9x13 dish instead of an pie plate. I chopped and seeded 2 tomatoes and 1 onion. I also went ahead and cooked a pound of sausage instead of adding diced ham and WOW! What a difference. I got lots of yummy sounds when I brought this to church Sunday morning. And everything was make ahead too so all I had to do when I got up was add eggs to the chopped veggies and the sausage I had chopped and cooked the night before and pour it over the crust. SO EASY!!

Try this! You will love it!!

(I forgot the pictures this morning...so I will post them later on when I get a hold of them!!)

E Revelations

Lately, I am noticing that everytime I turn around, E is building a backyard fire in the firepit. It doesn't matter that it's 85 degrees outside, evidently we are in desperate need for a fire every night of the week. This weekend was no different. After starting a fire on Friday and Saturday night, E came home from church on Sunday around lunch and immediately started throwing logs onto the fire. I will never understand men and the attraction to burn things!! We sat around the fire and reminisced about where we were 5 years ago and if we every thought we would be discussing house renovations around fire, in Texas, with a dog, and a baby on the way. Our life has completely turned out much different than I, personally, expected 5 years ago when we got engaged. In a good way though.




Other new things about E I am noticing is his need for a project. I honestly think that's why he got his master's degree. And once the program ended, he walked around the house for the first few days trying to find something to do. But, no worries, I have enough projects around the house that he is getting excited about and they will keep him quite busy for a few months. Hopefully, the renovation funds will keep up with him. And I think I overheard him talking with our Sunday School teacher about substitute teaching our class. I don't know if I will ever get him all figured out.

Hmmmm...Christmas Cookies???

I saw these advertised as Christmas cookies this morning and was a little confused ... but maybe it's just me!! However, I did like the tag line..."Now everyone can have a bun in the oven!" Fetus Cookies? I think I should definately take these to my Sunday School Christmas Social. Or maybe I will just forego the cookies all together.