Woe to haircuts

Yeah, Sofia had a mullet. I couldn't deny it any longer. It was bad. I could throw in a bunch of jokes about trailer parks or Tennessee or country music but I won't. Or maybe I just did. I wasn't about to cut it myself because I'm not a hair stylist and I didn't want her to look homeless. So a trip to the salon was in order.

She hated it. Just hated it.

But it looked great in the end. :)

Feeble attempted at obligatory year in review

I've been extremely neglectful of my blog. It's not that I didn't have much to write about either. I don't know, I just haven't had the energy or motivation. I think my last entry was in May. Based on what I remember...

At the end of May, my parents moved across the state and we took their house. That's right, we STOLE it!!! But really, it was an excellent situation for both of us. Husband and I didn't want to rent a crappy townhouse anymore with baseboard heat and only a one-car garage among other things, and my parents didn't want to have to deal with officially putting their house on the market and riding that whole thing out. So everyone wins, for the most part.

Another thing Husband did was clean out the garage and organize it so we can officially fit both cars in the garage. This made me so happy. Not happy enough to take a picture though. Oh well.

Sofia turned 1 in July! We had a rainbow-themed birthday party for her.

Shortly after her birthday, she began sleeping through the night. It took some "sleep training" on our part and the first couple of nights were extremely difficult. But not so bad in comparison to what I hear from other people and their experiences. Now we have a happy, well rested little girl who sleeps from 6pm to 6am and it's amazing. Remarkable. Fantastic. And best of all? I have my evenings back. I do things, like take showers, work on a knitting project, sit in the hot tub with Husband, and eat pineapple sherbet while watching television. I could make a whole blog entry just about this if I wanted to. Maybe I will.

Sofia got to go to the swimming pool for the first time!

We played in the grass.

We found a sunflower field.

We played with pots and pans.

Tried to teach Husband how to make an omelet. Can you guess which one is his?

It got colder.

Drove a tractor at the apple orchard.

Made a new friend.

Visited Daddy at work. BTW, this happened before it got cold, hence Sofia's outfit. I'm just too lazy to go back and rearrange things.

 

Saw a tiger.

Fell asleep eating.

Had family photos taken!

Made a headband.

Cute skirt.

Played in the leaves!

Dressed up like an owl.

Thanksgiving dinner!

Picked out our first Christmas tree.

Bought first snowpants!

And good thing, because we got like 20 inches of snow.

I'm sure there were many other things. In fact, I know there were. But at the moment I just can't think of anything else that stands out. I baked a lot of different things that I plan on blogging about, including caramel apple cookies and yummy enchiladas. I'll be posting soon. This weekend is baking weekend, with soft molasses cookies and pumpkin cheesecake! For those of you who care, it's going to be totally exciting.



8 is great!

Let me just take a moment on behalf of my little bug. She's in a photo contest. If she wins, she gets a prize! So please go to this blog post and cast your vote for #8, the baby with the biggest brown eyes you'll ever see.

Plus, she's a bit under the weather right now with a flu bug. It'd really make her day.

Sofia thanks you for your vote. :)

Click below! All you have to do is go there and post a comment voting for #8. It's that simple. :)

VOTE FOR SOFIA!!

Shades of purple

Look. What. I. Made.

This is lavender ice cream. Lavender! Like the flower! I'm so excited to share this with you. I'm going to preface it by saying that my mom and dad were kind enough to purchase the ingredients because I stayed at their house with Baby for the weekend since Husband was gone for training. So, the only thing organic is the lavender (which mom already had) and the vanilla bean (because you can't skimp on vanilla bean).

I haven't done this in awhile. Blogged a recipe, that is. Thanks to my mom for taking a nap with baby!

I love purple. Really. I love all things purple. I took some pictures of things around the house that are purple.

Even the vacuum is better because it's purple.

Sofia's pretty shell mobile.

My water bottle.

A watering can.

Some lavender.

Mmmm, lavender. I made lavender iced tea the other day. Actually I made a lavender simple syrup and added it to a pitcher of double strength black tea before the ice was added in. You should try this. Right now.

1 part water, 1 part sugar (a cup each) and 1 tablespoon of organic lavender (dried, food grade).

Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer until reduced to 1 cup of syrup. Strain out the lavender and discard, and refrigerate the syrup until you are ready to use it, and then add it to things that need sweetener. Like iced tea. Or your life, in general. Yum. :)

We used to have a gelato shop here. But people are too cheap in this town to occasionally splurge on a $7 scoop of gelato, so the place tanked. They occasionally had lavender gelato. It was good. I liked it. And since I made lavender iced tea, I thought lavender ice cream sounded like fun.

So I made some. Today. And I'm blogging it. Right now.

Take advantage, folks. Who knows when I'll have the opportunity to do something like this again. Babies are demanding. Especially when you are inexperienced in the art of child rearing, like me. I don't know how to balance my time and find time for myself unless someone is here to help me. Maybe over time it will get easier. Of course it will. She'll get older. That's why.

I added food coloring. I had to. I wanted it purple. Sorry.

Lavender Ice Cream

• 1-1/2 cups sugar, divided
• 8 egg yolks
• 3 cups whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon dried lavender (organic, food grade)
• 1 good vanilla bean, split lengthwise

In a bowl, whisk together 1 cup sugar and yolks until blended and thick.

Set aside.

In a large saucepan, combine milk, cream, lavender, and 1/2 cup sugar.

Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean and also add the bean.

Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. But just until the sugar is dissolved.

Gradually whisk the warm milk into the egg yolk mixture. This part is really important. If you don't do it gradually so as to temper it, you'll end up with scrambled eggs from the hot milk mixture hitting the egg mixture. So I slowly whisked about half of the milk mixture into the egg mixture, then transferred the egg mixture to the pot of milk mixture. It was a back and forth thing, but it turned out correctly. So...be careful.

Return the mixture to the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until thickened, about 7 minutes (do not boil). This part is crucial. You do not want it to boil. Stir it slowly so the bottom doesn't get sticky, but don't whisk and make it frothy otherwise you won't be able to tell when it's "ready." You want to remove it from the heat when it reaches a thin pudding like consistency. You're making a custard, essentially. Don't screw it up.

Strain the mixture into a large bowl. That's cheesecloth over a strainer. I recommend it.

Twist and squeeze out the liquid and discard the cheesecloth with the solids.

Now you have this. Like I said, I had to make it purple, so I did. I couldn't tell you how many drops of pink and blue food coloring I used to get the right color, but it was more work than I thought it would be since the custard was yellow from the egg yolks. It looked green at first. That wouldn't have been good. But then the purple showed up.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, until cold. I know it will be tempting, but you can't rush this. I suggest doing this the night before you plan to freeze it. Look, see there? It's near the almond milk, chocolate milk, and skim milk. There's beer in the back. Fun times.

You're going to need an ice cream maker for the remainder of the process. I'm sure there are ways to do it without one, but that's too much work for me. So if that applies to you, you'll have to google that on your own.

I'm sorry I don't have pictures to post showing the process in which the ice cream machine was used. My mom and I almost broke it. I had never used it before, and she was half-asleep trying to show me how to use it. It really isn't that complicated. She has an attachment that utilizes a Kitchenaid stand mixer. Now that I know how to use it, I'll post pictures next time. But really, just follow your ice cream maker's instructions. You just wait until the custard is a thick custard consistency after chilling for a few hours, pour it in there, and turn the machine on. After about 20 minutes, transfer to a container and let it finish setting up.

Luckily, I had a container from my favorite gelato brand that I kept. I knew it would come in handy. Hooray! It's the perfect combination of floral and vanilla with a pretty purple hue. I'm so proud of myself.