5 Thoughts and a Recipe

1. Thanks to new granite countertops all my kitchen drawers have been purged and organized. Love all the order it brings to my life. The tile backsplash is going up in the kitchen in about 10 days so I will post pics of everything when it's all the way finished (sneak peek in the bath pic below). The granite looks awesome and I LOVE my huge, new kitchen sink aka Luke's bathtub for the next 18 months!

 2. Speaking of granite, our bathrooms were also refinished and turned out quite lovely. Did I mention that Joseph bought credit at a granite shop during an online auction in December? We were able to do our kitchen, 2 bathrooms and get 4 new sinks for more than 50% off.

 

main bathroom before

during

 and after

 master bathroom before

 during

 and after

3. Half of my family will be in Hawaii this weekend (and one of my sisters was just there in November—lucky!) They're going to enjoy the warm sun and gorgeous water and time together so much. I'm sad to miss out. But we're heading to SG fairly soon in search of a little fun, and maybe some sun, ourselves. Any vacation is a good vacation (swimsuits and I are not yet friends again anyway so it's good I'm not tempted by the beach...)

4. Best baby advice that we're using daily around here—putting Luke to bed when he's drowsy but awake so he learns to fall asleep on his own. He's brilliant at this during the night, returning to sleep after eating very easily, but we are still perfecting naps. I think I'm pretty rigid when it come to baby sleep methods but making baby learn to self-soothe has been the magic sleep trick for all my kids (there has been, and may continue to be, a lot of talk about sleep on this blog during the next while—typical of life with a new babe and me desiring to have more of it...)

5. I have been so unlike myself in the past week and tried 3 new recipes—3! I am amazed. This is not a normal thing for me. Turns out that we really liked all 3 of them too. I made crockpot chicken tacos, tried a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, and a first, I made the yummiest breadsticks. All recipes were found on family members' Pinterest pages and are going to become regularly used around here. I'm posting the easy-peasy breadsticks recipe below (thanks to Joe's cousin Catherine (breadsticks) and my sister Cecily (tacos & cookies):

EASY BREADSTICKS found on this blog via Pinterest:

1 1/2 c. warm water
1 T. yeast
2 T. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3 1/2 c. flour

1/2 C butter (I think 6 T works just fine too and seems a little healthier :)

Mix all ingredients and knead for 3 minutes. I did this in my kitchen aid with the dough hook. Cover and let the dough stand for 10 minutes. While the oven is heating to 375 put 1/2 cup butter on jelly roll pan (deep cookie sheet) and let it melt completely. Roll out dough on floured surface and cut into strips. Take your pan of melted butter out of the oven. I like to take my strips and basically dip both sides in the melted butter, fold in half, then twist. If you would rather just place the strips on the pan and not twist at all, that would be just fine too! Then sprinkle with fresh Parmesan cheese and a sprinkle of garlic salt. Cover with a towel and let them rise 30 minutes. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.