a blessed mommy.

My how things change

2010-08-31T18:05:00.008-05:00

Hello Blog world! It's been very busy over here since I last posted so I thought I'd give everyone an update on what's been going on in the Williams' world! We had baby #3 on June 15, 2010. He is a precious baby boy that came into this world weighing 9 lbs 2 oz and 22 in long! He was a big boy! May I present Josiah Taylor Williams!

He is such a good baby. Very laid back which I need to keep up with my energetic 2-year-old!

Elijah loves his little baby brother so much! He gives him kisses all the time.

Gabriel started third grade and so far loves it. He really likes his new teacher Ms. Martin.

Well I guess that's it so far. I am definitely still one blessed mommy! :)

Baby #3!!

2009-10-19T00:57:00.004-05:00

Sorry this picture is a little blurry, but I think it's clear enough to tell what it is!!! We just found out we were pregnant!!! Baby #3 and we're so excited. I think I'm about 4 weeks along and am going to be due somewhere around June 23. Baby #2 will be 2 at that point. Yikes. Were we crazy to have them that close together? Lol! When we had baby #2, my oldest was 6 so I didn't have to worry about having 2 little ones like I will now. But I still am so excited for this new little miracle that God has given us!!! :) Now to figure out how to potty train my 15 month old......

Fall here we come!

2009-09-03T00:40:00.004-05:00

I'm so sad summer is over, but I am very excited about fall!! I love this time of year. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving. I love pumpkin pie! I love the way your house smells when your making pumpkin pie! I love walking outside on a crisp fall day and smelling the smoke of a fireplace burning. I love going to the pumpkin patch with my family. I love fall!!!

Here's a picture of me and my family at the pumpkin patch last year. I'll post a picture after we go this year. It will be fun to see how fast the little guys grow up!

Giveaway Time!

2009-06-22T21:20:00.004-05:00

Mamma's Review is having an awesome giveaway here! She is giving away some really cool food boxes.

Check it out!

Cookbook Giveaway!

2009-06-03T22:37:00.004-05:00

Check out the awesome giveaway over at My New 30! I just love her blog. It takes me to my Southern roots!

And here's a picture for you....

It's me and my boys at the park!

Some great giveaways!

2009-05-11T15:05:00.006-05:00

Eighty MPH Mom is having another great giveaway! A FLOR rug! Head on over to see what it's all about!

Momma's Review has some great giveaways going on. Simple green products, Evolve showerhead, Velocity Iron, and a sit and store seat! Go check it out! She also is now giving away a blender!!

And here's a picture for your enjoyment! :)

This is at my baby shower. So cute!

You deserve it!

2009-04-30T15:56:00.002-05:00

Eighty MPH Mom is hosting a week of giveaways for all you moms out there that deserve a little bit of something for you! I'm so excited about these giveaways. Head on over to her site to check it out. The link is above or you can find it on the side...look to the left...yeah, right there...you see it!

And because I really can't post without showing off my wonderful family, here is the three men in my life spending a little QT together....

Eight Things....

2009-04-29T15:21:00.004-05:00

Books N Boys tagged me in a meme. This should be fun!

Eight Things I'm Looking Forward To:

Me and my husband's birthday next month (mine on the 24th and his on the 29th)
Going back to the cabin we went to on our honeymoon
My 9 month old to quit teething. Ah!
My laundry to be done...oh wait, that will never happen. Lol!
The pool to be open!
My 9 month old to start talking and to say "I love you Mama"
Our family vacation this summer!
Spending forever with my Jesus! :)

Eight Things I Did Yesterday:

I typed my medical transcription work
I nursed my baby and changed his diaper
I did laundry (the neverending battle)
I gave my teething baby some Orajel which he did not like at all!
I nursed my baby and changed his diaper
I helped my 7 year old with his homework.
I made dinner for all of our friends that came over to hang out.
I nursed my baby and changed his diaper. Lol! (that's all I do all day)

Eight Things I Wish I Could Do:

Sleep all night long!!!! (I think I've forgotten what that feels like)
Clap my hands and my house be clean
And then wiggle my nose and the laundry be done. Ha!
Buy a new(er) car.
Learn how to sew and make bread from scratch
Get a horse.
Live at the beach.
Be fit and lose weight without actually working out!

Eight Shows I Watch: (occasionally)

The Biggest Loser (We love this show!)
Lost (This is one of my favorites!)
Clean House
The Office
Reba
Design on A Dime (and all those home decorating shows)
Friends
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (I cry everytime I watch this show)

Here is a picture of me and my 9 month old the day he was born. This was an awesome moment!

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

2009-04-22T18:11:00.005-05:00

Baseball season has officially begun. This is my 7 year old son, Gabriel's, second year playing. He is a natural athlete and is good at pretty much any sport he tries, but he LOVES baseball. He actually started loving baseball when he was about 2 after he watched the movie Angels in the Outfield. Do you remember that one? Well now all my free time is spent at the ball park trying to keep my 9 month old from eating dirt. LOL!

Speaking of my 9 month old, this is what he is good at....

....making messes!

My baby is growing!

2009-03-12T20:40:00.005-05:00

It just seems like yesterday that I was like this.....

And now my little baby is doing this.....

Where does the time go?

For my valentine....

2009-02-15T23:19:00.001-06:00

I just wanted to take a minute and say how much I love my husband. He is such a blessing to me and to the boys. He is always there for us, no matter how tired he is after working all day. He makes me laugh and makes me feel beautiful. I am so glad that God brought him into my life. I love you baby and I can't wait to spend 50 more Valentines Days with you!

Cookie Cake

2009-01-23T17:58:00.004-06:00

I love, love the cookie cake you get from the Great American Cookie Company, but my it is so expensive. So imagine how thrilled I was when I found a copycat recipe on Southern Plate. And to me it tasted even better than the Great American Cookie. I made it for my sons 7 year old birthday and he loved it! I cooked it on a pizza pan that didn't have holes in the bottom. Ha! Could you imagine cooking it with the holes in it. You'd have little burnt cookie balls in the bottom of your oven.

Anyway. Sorry I get sidetracked easily.

I also had to wet my hands when I spread it on the pan because it is very sticky. And I didn't think that when you bake cookies, they spread out. So I just put my dough all the way to the end of the pan and when I checked on it, I had a little cookie spillage. But it actually turned out okay. I just used a pizza cutter and cut off the edges to make it even (which I will actually do every time now since it made it more uniform looking).

If you like cookie cakes, you have to try this recipe! I'm serious...go now and make this! Your family will love you forever because of it. :)

As you can see, I didn't have room to right Happy Birthday Gabriel, so I shortened it. He didn't seem to notice as he was eating half the cake as soon as we blew out the candles! Oh, when I made this cake I used white icing, but then I made another one and had vanilla icing on hand and I actually liked the taste of the vanilla icing better than the white. It wasn't as white, but I thought it still looked good. And I used just the classic chocolate icing.

The link to the recipe on Southern Plate's blog is here. She has good tips on there and the comments people left were helpful too.

Now go and impress somebody!

Taco Soup with a little side of Cheesy Goodness!

2009-01-13T15:22:00.006-06:00

In the idea of emptying out my pantry, I went to this recipe for Taco Soup from Southern Plate. I love Southern Plate. Before I knew of the food blog world, I googled the Butterfinger Cake recipe and found her blog that way. And I was hooked! Then I saw the links for the other food blogs that were her friends and the addiction began. I spent hours looking through blog after blog. I was in heaven! Anyway, ya'll seriously need to go check her blog out.

This soup is perfect because it is so easy and so good! It uses canned ingredients that you can easily by generic. Like Christy says at Southern Plate, Only the cheapest for my family! Ha! So if you have lots of canned things in your pantry you need to get rid of this is the perfect recipe. Now I made a few minor adjustments. I don't like the hard texture of the kidney beans, so I substitute them for chili beans and it was perfect. And me and my husband love tomatoes, so I added a can of whole tomatoes that I chopped up.

Taco Soup by Southern Plate

1 lb ground beef
1 large onion chopped and cooked with beef
2 cans chili beans or kidney beans
1 can corn
1 can whole tomatoes, chopped up, optional
1-15 oz can Rotel
1-15 oz can Tomato Sauce
1 packet taco seasoning mix
1 packet ranch dressing mix
1 1/2 cups water

Brown the beef with the onions and then dump everything in the pot, liquid and all. Don't drain anything. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. I c ook mine in the crockpot. You just throw everything in the crockpot and cook all day on low. I love the crockpot, it's my best friend. :)

Then to go along with this wonderful soup, I made Yellow Jeep Blonde's Sausage and Cheese Muffins. Oh my. These were a hit with my family. They are similar to sausage balls, but better! And when I made them I messed up, but in a good way. I thought the recipe called for 3 cups of cheddar cheese, but it actually just called for 1 1/2 cups. But it actually made it very good and very cheesy. We are definitely going to make these again!

Sausage and Cheese Muffins

1 lb. ground pork sausage
3 cups all-purpose baking mix (Bisquick)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (or 3 cups if you like things cheesy)
1 can cheddar cheese soup
3/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook sausage in a large skillet, stirring until it crumbles and is no longer pink. Drain and cool.
Combine sausage, baking mix and shredded cheese in a large bowl; make a well in the center of mixture.
Whisk together soup and water and add to sausage mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Spoon into lightly greased muffin tins, filling to the top of the cups.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.**

**For mini muffins, bake for 15 - 20 minutes.

Yummy! Look at all that cheesy goodness! :)

Pantry Challenge

2009-01-11T22:18:00.004-06:00

I was just talking to my husband last week about our pantry. Yikes. I thought I needed to tackle the impossible, actually using up everything that is in the pantry. And as I was going through my blogs that I follow, I found this challenge at Sunday Baker. The Pantry Challenge. So I decided this was perfect. That way I will be disciplined and actually do it. So here's to cleaning out the pantry and saving money!

Our pantry before the challenge.

Our fridge before the challenge.

I will post some after pictures once I have conquered the dreaded land known as our pantry and fridge. :)

Giant Oval Mutant Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

2009-01-09T17:36:00.009-06:00

I found a blog dedicated to Barefoot Contessa. They have a group that you can join and they test Ina Garten's (The Barefoot Contessa) recipes as a group and blog about them on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month. Well being on a budget, I wasn't able to join the groups because some of the recipes they choose can come out sort of pricey. But I loved the idea of trying new recipes. So I'm going to join them when I can afford to and blog about it. I might make some adjustments to ingredients I already have on hand or cheaper ingredients. If you want to check them out, their blog is Barefoot Bloggers. So here it goes.

The first one that was picked for January was Banana Sour Cream pancakes. Doesn't that just sound awesome! I knew I had to make these. So for dinner tonight we had breakfast. I love eating breakfast foods, but am not a big eater in the mornings. So the perfect answer is having breakfast for dinner! We had sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy and of course...banana pancakes.

Oh these turned out so good! I made just a few adjustments to mine. I try to eat healthy when I can, so I made these with the neatest flour I found. It was King Arthur's White Whole Wheat flour. It is 100% whole wheat, but it is not heavy like whole wheat flour can be. And anyone who has baked with whole wheat flour will know what I'm talking about. So you get the benefits of whole wheat without the outcome of a brick. :) And I made mine with light sour cream. I also mashed up the banana and mixed it in with the batter. That way every bite I took tasted like bananas. Yummy! I also had some dried cranberries that I am trying to use up. So I added those to one of the pancakes to see how it would taste. I ended up not liking the cranberries in them. I think that they overpowered the banana flavor.

My husband was still at work when I made these, so I halved the recipe and they made three pancakes. Now my scooping and shaping the pancakes in a perfect circle ability is not very good. So mine are more like giant oval mutant pancakes, but hey, they're still edible right? So here is the recipe and some pictures. I definitely will be trying out more Barefoot Contessa's recipes...when I can.

Here are the mutants cooking. :) Check out my cranberry one on the right.

And there is my mutant cranberry one up front. heehee

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
2 extra-large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Unsalted butter
2 ripe bananas, diced, plus extra for serving
Pure maple syrup

Directions

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sour cream, milk, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, mixing only until combined.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat until it bubbles. Ladle the pancake batter into the pan to make 3 or 4 pancakes. Distribute a rounded tablespoon of bananas on each pancake. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until bubbles appear on top and the underside is nicely browned. Flip the pancakes and then cook for another minute until browned. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, add more butter to the pan, and continue cooking pancakes until all the batter is used. Serve with sliced bananas, butter and maple syrup.

Meme

2009-01-07T13:58:00.003-06:00

I was looking through someone's blog the other day and I saw this. I thought it looked fun. So I'm going to do it! I'm not exactly sure what a meme is, but hey let's go for it!

This is a meme with picture answers. The plan is to google (image) your answer and then pick one of the pictures from the first page of results. After you read/see mine, do your own and let me know so I can check it out!

1. What age will you be at your next birthday?

2. Where would you like to travel?

3. Where is your favorite place to be?

4. What are your favorite pasttimes?

5. What is your favorite food?

6. What is your favorite animal?

7. What is your favorite color?

8. In what town were you born?

9. In what town do you live now?

10. What is your best friend’s nickname?

11. What is your nickname?

12. What is your first name?

13. What is a bad habit you have?

14. What was your first job?

15. What is your grandmother’s name?

My First Blog

2009-01-06T14:34:00.012-06:00

Well, I finally did it. I have been following other blogs, mostly food blogs, for a couple of months now and I got sucked in to the world of blogging. I am not sure what my "theme" is going to be about. I guess a little of everything....my family(my first love), being a mommy to a new baby, cooking (my second love), trying to balance working at home, keeping my house organized, working out and fulfilling all my "wife and mommy" duties.

I am going to be participating in the cookie carnival from the clean plate club's blog. Basically she posts a recipe for everyone to try every month and then you post about how the cookies turned out, etc. I guess that's one of the main reasons I finally broke down and started my blog. I love trying new recipes and this seemed like so much fun to me!

So that's about it. My addiction to blogging has now officially begun!

This is the day my precious little Elijah came into the world! 7.29.08

Our trip to the pumpkin patch

Our 2008 Christmas picture