Hooray for a Home-Cooked Meal

My home ebbs and flows from complete disorder to tidiness and harmony. My linens do not come out of the laundry crisp. And my bed does not get made every day (though I am working on this habit). As Leo pointed out to me last night, however, I am pretty good at meal planning and preparation, or "throwing a meal together" in his words. It occurred to me tonight that this is something not all people are either good at or good about doing on a regular basis.

While Leo has done the bulk of the actual cooking lately via our new grill, I do prepare most of the meal ingredients by peeling, slicing, dicing, marinating, seasoning, etc. And perhaps most importantly, I shop for the ingredients.

I am becoming more and more fascinated with nutrition and our ever-expanding food choices, and I like to think that I purchase healthy foods for the most part. I have not bought packaged meals such as Hamburger Helper since we were first married. I check ingredients on products religiously, and if there is an artificial anything or an eight-syllable word, I put the item back 99.9% of the time.

Now that it's summertime, I am a devotee of my local farm stand. I was thrilled to find one just a couple miles down the road from us, and even more ecstatic when I saw the quality of their produce. The stuff is beautiful. And tasty.

I also have a share in a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I will explain this more in a future post, as I think it is an interesting idea that has had its ups and downs for me. For now, suffice it to say that I can count on getting nutritious produce from my CSA, and I have had fun trying varieties of fruits and vegetables that were previously unknown to me.

Tonight I'm giving myself a pat on the back, because nine dinners out of ten lately, we've had a balanced, home-cooked meal. I consider this no small feat with our hectic schedules and a baby in our midst, and I only hope that Daphne becomes as appreciative of my throwing a meal together as her daddy is.

Catching Up on My Digital Photo Printing

Over the last couple of weeks, I have made a serious dent in printing out my Daphne digital photos without making a dent in my wallet. I had barely printed out anything since she was born, but I finally decided that it was time to do something with her beautiful photos. Call it my latest spider in my freezer. :)

Since I was new to all of these online photo services, I was able to take advantage of some awesome free print deals. Here's a recap of what I've done so far and still plan to do, just in case you find yourself swimming in jpgs this summer, too.

Snapfish - By far the best deal I found, I used the instructions here to get 150 free prints and free shipping. The instructions worked perfectly for me. I am still awaiting the arrival of my prints, which I ordered about a week ago, but I guess I can't expect quick delivery AND a bunch of free prints.

Shutterfly - 50 free 4x6 prints and a free 11x14 collage poster that is very easy to create here. You do have to pay for shipping of these freebies, which was about $6 in my case. Shipping was quick, and the quality of the prints and poster is very nice. I probably wouldn't have messed around with creating a collage poster if it hadn't been free, but I am happy with the way it turned out.

CVS - 50 free 4x6 prints here if you have a CVS ExtraCare card. Upon registering, you will be emailed a code for this offer. It may end up in your spam folder, like it did for me. With this offer, you can choose to pick up your photos at a CVS or have them delivered (at an additional cost). I chose to pick them up. They were not ready when the system said they would be, but they were ready when I stopped back the next day. I will warn you, though, that I found the CVS photo center website to be a huge pain to use. I lost everything that I had in my cart at one point. I would never use this as my go-to digital print solution.

PictureWagon.com - I had not heard of this one until I came across their ad in Parents magazine. 50 free prints here. I have not used them yet but plan to upload photos and try them out this week.

PhotoWorks - 25 free prints here. This is another one I want to try this week.

Do you have any other tips for getting cheap or free prints? Which photo service is your favorite?

The Spider in My Freezer

As I reached for a Lean Cuisine in my freezer this afternoon, I noticed the same thing I've noticed a hundred times now -- just below the ice dispenser, there's a small Rubbermaid storage container holding a frozen spider.

It has been well over two months since Leo caught this creepy arachnid in our bedroom and decided to freeze it so that we could safely and scientifically determine through a google search that it's not a harmful variety. Over that two month period, this container:
1. has fallen out of the freezer
2. has been taken out of the freezer so that I could look at (admire?) the spider
3. has been taken out of the freezer so that I could show the spider to my parents, the entomologists that they are.

But not once have I taken the spider container with me to the computer so that I could complete my google search. Until today.

Why is it sometimes so difficult to do a task that is staring me in the face? Is it because there are so many tasks staring back at me?

I'm sure that's part of it. When Daphne's napping or otherwise well occupied, I sometimes get too overwhelmed by the number of things I could/should be doing. I am trying to get better at this. I figure doing any thing is better than doing nothing (isn't that a variation of a famous quote?). I've stopped making to-do lists, because they end up being way too long. And it doesn't motivate me to cross off one thing from a lengthy list. Instead, I'm practicing focusing on one thing that needs attention. It feels good to get one thing accomplished at a time.

So this afternoon my accomplishment happened to be determining that our spider species most likely belonged to the Salticidae, or jumping spider, family. I suppose this is better than the spitting spider or fishing spider families, but I don't like the idea of a spider that is "known for its curiosity."

Do you have any tips for getting things done? Have you read the book by the same name, and does it translate well to family and home maintenance? I'd love to hear from you.

Welcome!

Let me start by admitting that I wasn't sure what I'd write about for my first post. I have a million ideas of things I want to cover in the future, but the first step always seems to be the toughest. So, I guess it only makes sense to start off with a brief introduction.

My husband and I have been married for seven wonderful years. We had an especially amazing year in 2007, though, when we had our first baby and, one month later, moved from a condo to a house. Our precious baby is now nine months old and is quickly developing into an adorable, intelligent little girl. Meanwhile, our new house is slowly developing into the perfect home for our family.

Much of my motivation for starting this blog is to share with you my journey as a new mother and home owner. Now that we've taken this first step together, I hope you'll continue to join me.