Whatever Wednesday: I'm THAT Puppy-Mom

As long as my only child is a fuzzy one, this is happening.  And - honestly - probably after the less-fuzzy kids come, too. ;-)

This is last year's costume...

He seems to like the dragon better... probably because it doesn't have sleeves.  We didn't think to costume shop until the last minute when he was just a few months old... and the only thing we could find in his size was a "mounted moose" costume.  Nope, not for my adorable new baby!

I just found out that we probably won't have any trick-or-treaters this year.  I'm kinda surprised... I'd have thought, especially for the kids who live here, an apartment complex would be a great place to trick-or-treat... lots of homes REALLY close together.  Oh well.  I'll keep a couple of candy bars handy, and a dog dressed up just in case :-)  Fortunately, he's full grown, so these costumes should still fit when we're in a house again.

Always,

Katie

Shop Talk: Making Up for Lost Time

Sorry I missed last week's shop update!  I can WAY more than make up for it today, though, with a LOT of new jewelry for sale... and a COUPON CODE to celebrate the flood of new listings!

First up, one of my favorite things I've made in a while... the "Amalfi" bracelet.  I named it after a beautiful place we visited on our honeymoon. It's made up of a bunch of fun gemstones and tiny crystals, and I just adore it!

Next, the "Whirlpool" collection.  Or, what I've made of it so far.  In the future, expect some earrings with crystal drops and maybe even a whole bracelet!

Earrings:

Pendant:

Pendant with crystal drop: 

Here is the "old" addition to the etsy shop... a necklace I showed off here a long, long time ago, and finally made another just like mine to offer for sale :-)  It's classic and romantic... so I named it "Victoria."

I think this bracelet is fun and quirky and definitely a unique look!  It also features crystals in one of this autumn's hottest colors, Bright Chartreuse.  Hip to Be Square: 

This is another style I have made frequently in the past but am just now putting in the shop.  This one is SUPER-customizable, thanks to Swarovski's amazing range of colors.  Perfect for bridesmaids' earrings!  And, if Juliet Capulet had had access to Swarovski crystals... you KNOW she'd have fallen for these "Juliet" earrings.  :-)

 

Last for today... the "Dazzle" bracelet in clear and Siam crystal.  A spiffy Christmas gift for the sparkle lover in your life, right? 

And finally, as promised... a coupon code.  Good for 15% off your order from Always, Katie on etsy.com, through Sunday night, the 23rd.  

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Share with your friends... hubby... anybody who loves jewelry or who might be persuaded to buy some for you ;-)  My readership is kinda small, but y'all are great, and I appreciate you so very much!

Always,

Katie

Season's Greetings! (Autumn Recipe Roundup)

My Thursday feature is going to be "Season's Greetings."  I plan to do a few round-ups of recipes and crafts, as well as a few crafts of my own creation.  The fall season will be pretty short, since I'm wanting to start sharing CHRISTMAS stuff while it's still early enough to plan and implement some of what you'll read here.  

Today, I have rounded up 22 delicious-looking fall recipes, heavy on the apple and pumpkin, yummm... 

1. Pumpkin Spice No-Bake Cookies

2. Pumpkin Spice Fudge

3. Pumpkin Pie Dip (and I LOVE the idea of serving it in a little hollow pumpkin!)

4. Pumpkin Spice Oreo Cheesecake Bites (what a combo!)

5. Apple Cider Spice Doughnuts

6. Pumpkin-Shaped Cake (Two bundts iced together - CLEVER!)

7. Candy Corn Sugar Cookies (I've done these... easy and way cool!)

8. Bite-Sized Caramel Apples

9.   Apple Butter Cupcakes

10. Apple Ice Cream Cups

11. Apple Pie in an Apple

12. Pecan Pie Stuffed Cupcake

13. Funnel Cake (Done this, LOVE IT!  Totally comes out as yummy as anything at a fair!)

14. Layered Toffee Cheesecake and Pumpkin Pie (Made this for last Thanksgiving.  Also delish!)

15. Crescent Roll Apple Dumplings (I make this... oh... at least monthly.

16. Stove-Top Kettle Corn (Took me a couple batches to get this one figured out, but SO worth it.)

17. Apple Pancake Slices

18. Crockpot Applesauce

19. (Skinny) Pumpkin Frozen Yogurt

20. Sweet Potato Muffin with Toasted Marshmallow

21. (Low-Calorie) Cream Cheese Icing Stuffed Pumpkin Bread (do you not want to weep at the beauty that is this idea? And low-cal? BOOyah!)

22. (Skinny) Pumpkin Mousse

Next round-up, a bunch of crafty DIY-ish-ness!

Always,
Katie

Fertility Friday: Prayers for a Friend

Just a quick request...

A friend of mine is doing her first IUI today... please pray with me for her and her husband.  For a smooth procedure, peace for the two-week-wait, and - of course - good results! 

Always,

Katie

Very Pinteresting: Laundry Day!

I love Pinterest, and I've actually used several ideas I've found there.  Some of them worked out great, some notsomuch.  In my "Very Pinteresting" series, I'm going to share the good, the bad, and the ugly.  

I've been making my own laundry detergent for a couple of years, actually since before I got on Pinterest.  Well, to clarify, I made detergent once.  A LOT of detergent, for very little money.  I believe it was a triple batch, and it's still around!  It's a very basic powder recipe, and I keep it in these lovely glass jars from Hobby Lobby.  I love using it, and especially love that I haven't had to pay out the nose for store-bought detergent.  I reckon we've saved about $100 just in laundry detergent alone!

 

I use: 

2 bars of Ivory soap, grated

1C Borax  (in the laundry aisle)

1C Washing Soda (NOT baking soda... find this in the laundry aisle, too)

Grate the Ivory with the grater attachment of your food processor, if you have one.  If not, do it with a cheese grater. Toss it in the food processor, pour in the Borax and Washing Soda, and let it go for a nice, long spin.  Make as many full batches as you can with the materials on hand, pour the powder (it will be a little clumpy, no big deal) into a jar of some sort and toss in a tablespoon.  Use one TBS per load.  

The slight downside to this detergent is that it doesn't make your laundry smell (not bad... not good... not at ALL).  I was fine with this, but compensated with fabulous-smelling fabric softener and dryer sheets.  Until recently, when I started making my own fabric softener!!  

I got this recipe from a pin... and so far, I'm pleased with it. I keep it in a beverage thingy that I found on end-of-summer clearance at Walmart, the kind that has the little spout thing.  

6C water

3C white vinegar

2C hair conditioner (use something cheap, but awesome-smelling).  

I used V05 conditioner, I think it cost less than $1 per bottle, and I needed a whole bottle and a smidge from another.  Gently stir all of the ingredients in the bottle or tub you'll be using.  Fill the softener spot in your washer to the line - this isn't concentrated.  Your laundry will smell quite a bit better than just using the homemade detergent, but I still kinda love my wonderful dryer sheets. :-)  

These recipes are wonderful money-savers, and they do a great job.  I don't feel like I'm cutting corners, and I'm also proud to have made them myself.  I highly recommend these projects!

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One Pinterest project that that did NOT work out so well for us is the gnat-trap on this page.  I don't know where these stupid little things came from, but I left this gnat trap out for well over 24 hours and it didn't catch a single.little.gnat.  :-(

Always,

Katie

Fertility Fridays: Back to School Blues

I've set up a schedule for myself for blogging, so that I don't focus too much on any one thing and neglect other stuff I truly want to blog about.  While I will probably treat the schedule as more of a guideline than a set-in-stone pattern, I do want to limit myself to only talking fertility woes once a week (at most).  While fertility and IVF are pretty dominant in my mind right now, there is much more to my life, and our life together, than this pain.  However, Friday is my day to let it out.  So here goes.

I've been googling a phrase over and over this week to see if any other infertiles out there were going through the same struggle this week that I am... I'm sure I'm not alone, but I couldn't find any other mentions of it.  

http://www.howeisd.net/domain/130

Back to school STINKS! It stinks right up there with Mother's Day and Christmas!

As a professor's wife, it stinks because my summer of not sharing my husband with the university is over.  As an infertile woman, it stinks to log on to facebook and see all of the pictures of cute little kids with backpacks and excited faces, all of the moms talking about how much they miss their little ones during the days now, and especially the moms who CAN'T WAIT to send their darlings back to school.  For people our age, facebook has been overtaken by back to school!!

It's hard to feel left out of the loop, to not get to participate in the excitement, to not even be able to rock our baby and say, "At least we have a few more years until this one starts."  It's hard to realize that not only do our friends have kids and we don't, many of them have had kids long enough for them to be starting school.  Not only preschool, older grades with homework and multiple teachers!  Will we ever get to stand in a school supply aisle and debate the merits of purple glue sticks vs. plain white ones?  Will I ever get to respond to a homework question with, "I have no idea, ask your dad"? When am I going to get to use all of the awesome "pack your kids' lunch" pins I've pinned on Pinterest?!

It's especially hard when parents are griping that they cannot wait to send their kids back to school.  I want to slap them and tell them to CHERISH the summers -- and every minute -- with their kids, because people like us would do anything to be in their shoes! 

Don't get me wrong.. I love my friends' kids.  Several of them, I've even "adopted" as extra nieces and nephews.  I love watching them grow up, and absolutely expect that their parents will post pictures of their milestones, as they should, and as I will no doubt do if/when we're blessed with babies.  It's just sad.  

Anybody out there?  Can I get an "AMEN"?

Always,

Katie

PS: Next up is "Shop Talk" on Monday... I'll show off some new jewelry and etsy listings. :-)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This has been one WILD and CRAZY summer, y'all!!  We made (we think) 4 or 5 round trips between South Carolina and Ohio, trying to clean out, pack up and sell our house.  We thought we had buyers for it once... we rushed back to show it to them, after less than a week back home in SC... it fell through, so we called a realtor and have it officially listed.  And someone else gets to mess with showing the darn thing, haha!  

During one of our trips back to OH, one of my best friends got married!  She was one of my bridesmaids AND caught my bouquet.  And WAS the next to get married.  How cool is that?  I'm soooo excited for her!  She was a beautiful bride, and is going to be an amazing, Godly wife.

I also finished two grad classes... one required for my degree (Career Counseling) and the other because it's an interest and passion of mine (Crisis Counseling).  Turns out, the required one was easier and the "fun" one was super-stressful.  And I get a whole NIGHT off before fall semester starts in the morning!  I have enough credits to get the degree, but I'm still needing a couple more classes and an internship.  Still, I can't believe I have over 50 hours of graduate work completed.  To think I swore up and down in May 2009 that I would NEVER set foot in a classroom again!

I had a birthday... I'm now 25.  Which is weird, because I never quite got used to saying I'm 24.  But I was spoiled, and loved, and it was wonderful.

I did a BUNCH of teaching, which I'm super-excited about.  My job is ridiculously awesome, as are my students.  So fun to be in such a creative environment, and to see the really pretty ideas my students come up with... I love that the skills I teach can make such wildly different jewelry, depending on the personality and tastes of the artist!  It keeps me inspired and humbled.

We've had some big emotional ups and downs, with the house and our continued battle with infertility and diabetes.  My blood sugars have been pretty good - FABULOUS for me, actually - but my endocrinologist is very discouraging and demanding.  No amount of improvement is perfect, so it's not good enough.  But, I'm still hovering within a reasonable range to attempt advanced reproductive technology (ART).  For us, this means in vitro fertilization (IVF).  Our infertility specialist has told us that this is the only way I will be able to carry our baby, so we're in a holding pattern until we are ready to start the lovely hormone and medication cocktails.  We are looking at ways of financing these efforts right now, but that's another blog post :-) 

Now that the house is on the market, and we're planning on staying put for a few months, I will hopefully be able to post a few pieces of jewelry and some "Nailed It" Pinterest posts from time-to-time.  I stole any chance I got to try new things this summer, so I have some interesting stuff just waiting to be written about!!

Always,

Katie

Crave-Worthy Apple Spread

We've both been trying to eat more fresh fruit and veggies, fewer carbohydrates (and preferably more measurable ones -- makes it easier to counter food with insulin), and more protein. 

One of our favorite fruits, and one that is lower on the glycemic index, is apples.  We bought a bunch the last time we went to the grocery, and have both been eating about one a day.  I have always LOVED peanut butter on my apples, and went through a phase in college of adding sunflower kernels to the mix.  Sunflower seeds are pretty high in protein, and I recently discovered they're folate-rich, too, so we grabbed a jar of those, too.

Which brings me to my little recipe.  Ordinarily, I would've just mixed some stuff randomly, but since I'm trying to be MILITANT about counting my carbs, I measured everything and ran it through an online calculator.  Here goes:

1C      Peanut Butter

1/4 C  Dry Roasted Sunflower Kernels

3T      Honey

Toss all of it in a food processor and send it for a good long spin.  It comes out looking a little unappetizing, but the smell and the TASTE more than make up for it :-)

I figure a serving is about 1/10 of the whole recipe, and it has: 

8g   carbohydrate

2g   dietary fiber

6g   protein

Enjoy! 

Always,

Katie

Review: Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition Shampoo and Conditioner

It's been a while, but I have posted reviews of products that I have been able to try (free!) as a BzzAgent.  My most recent campaign was for Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition Shampoo AND conditioner. Garnier sent me a full-sized sample of each, with the only string attached being that I have to share my honest experience.  So... here goes!

I've used Garnier Fructis products before - usually alternating between it and whichever Herbal Essences product tickles my fancy.  Up until I received my BzzKit, I was using an Herbal Essences set, and was pretty pleased.  I've been using Triple Nutrition for about a month now, and DO notice some improvement, though.

Triple Nutrition is for "dry, damaged hair."  I don't consider my hair especially dry OR damaged, although I do tend to get split ends... that's mostly from my bad habit of NEVER getting it trimmed, though, I think  ;c)  I use a blow dryer and curling/flat iron maybe 3-4 times a week...  If I wash my hair in the morning, I obviously HAVE to blow dry it.  Before Triple Nutrition, my freshly blow-dried hair had some major, ugly, flighty volume... which I HAD to use an iron to tame.  The ONE big difference since switching shampoo/conditioner is that this doesn't happen!  I LOVE LOVE LOVE that I can use fewer damaging heat products on my hair!!!  In this way, Triple Nutrition seems like a double-whammy: makes my hair healthier, so that I can damage it less!  Totally awesome!  

Something Garnier is very proud of right now is their new eco-friendly packaging.  From their website: "We're getting greener! New designed bottle made of PET, the most widely recycled plastic contains 30% recycled material." In addition to the formula of the contents, I'm also supposed to review the packaging, sooo... 

Guys, it's a bottle.  I like the earth... it's been good to me, you know?  But when it comes to picking a shampoo, the plastic content of the bottle is pretty low on my list of considerations.  All other things being equal, I'll pick the eco-friendly bottle, but I'm not going out of my way or paying major extra money just to get a greener bottle.  I know there are people for whom this is a big deal, but there are sooo many really important causes.  I choose to devote my time, energy and money to others.  The cap of my condition bottle broke off pretty quickly... it may or may not be a function of the kind of plastic used, but again... whatever.  It's a bottle.

I'm not going to tell you that Triple Nutrition is going to change your life.  But it's a good, reasonably inexpensive shampoo and conditioner.  Next time you're looking to change it up a bit (that's healthy for hair, right?), and you have a Garnier coupon, go for it! 

Always,

Katie

I Love My Marble Rolling Pin

This will not be nearly as long a review as my paring knife review... just wanted to say that I LOVE my marble rolling pin!  

I've been making sugar cookies all the time now, because it's just not NEARLY as big a pain in the tushy as it used to be!  This thing weighs a ton, and it does all the work of rolling... I just have to direct it. :c)  Then, clean up is a piece of cake (or cookie, lol)... just some water and a wipedown.  It doesn't splinter or get all funky like a wooden pin, or get mildewy like the plastic, water-filled kind.  And I really can't over-emphasize how much easier the weight makes rolling stuff!  

And it wasn't expensive AT ALL!  If you like to bake, and hate rolling dough... you should totally treat yourself to one of these!  

Always,

Katie