the modification of me

i will tell you now, i am not a great writer. i very rarely use capitalization or correct punctuation...so deal with that.

my life was "modified" on may 30th of last year. suddenly, everything changed. for the better of course. i really do believe my son was and IS my saving grace.

today i found myself looking up good deals on clothes, home made baby food recipes, cloth diapering tips, and a time line on baby's first's. i watched sprout, crawled all over the floor, cleaned up puke that i still don't really know if it was christian or the dog, had my hair ripped out, my scar picked at, and i was bit..not by the dog. the best part was all of this was before noon.

if we go back before i was pregnant. i wouldn't be awake yet, i'm most likely hungover, i'll wake up and a have "breakfast" around 4pm and most likely that will include an alcoholic beverage of some sort. how my husband ever put up with me, i'll never know. just thinking on it makes me so grateful for the love he has for me.

i do not miss who i used to be but, i do not regret who i was either. i love the "modified me". i'm still stacie, eccentric, bossy, blatantly honest borderline brutal sometimes, spontaneous, caring...all the good stuff. the bad stuff was all gone the second i heard that cry. i know my limits in life now.

fun things that have come with motherhood: i cry more often, i want to be better, i appreciate more, i have learned to love deeper than i ever have, i smile daily, i have no problem knowing that there is some sort of baby gross on me at all times, all in all..my heart is full.

"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." ~Rajneesh

Goals

I have several. Some I feel are fairly attainable. Big, small, silly, important, and of course life changing.

Here is my list

1. Weight loss
2. Healthy Eating
3. Being green
4. Recycling/upcycling
5. Loving deeply
6. Smiling every day
7. Keeping a blog up to date
8. Volunteering
9. Being selfless
10. Empathy
11. Reading more
12. CRAFTING
13. Teaching Christian anything I can
14. Patience
15. Run a 5K
15. Painting
16. Yoga
17. Dance
18. Stand up (taller/louder) about what I believe in
19. Get over my fears
20. Live

Jager Bomb Cupcake

I had a slight idea, googled...found recipes that i hated and didn't think would work before coming up with my own ideas that I liked a lot more =) Not the best picture, I know...
I can't seem to find my camera cord anywhere so this is from my cell phone.

First and foremost, the recipe I developed does not cook out the Jager, so these are definitely not kid friendly or non alcohol drinker friendly.

Another note, when coloring the cupcakes, be sure to use a gel food coloring and not the water based color. the batter will slightly separate and it's not pretty.

USE ACTUAL BUTTER!! I hate margarine and refuse to eat it so I couldn't tell you how it works in these but know that butter makes everything taste better, who cares about the calories and fat, you only live once =)

Line the cupcake pan before hand with the little paper holder guys.




Oven Temp: 350F

Bake Time: 20-25mins (check at 15 min the sugar in the redbull causes the tops to brown easily)

For the Batter:

12 tablespoons of butter softened
1-1 1/2 cups of sugar (depends on your sweet level, I used 1 cup with a sprinkle extra)
3 eggs room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups of flour
2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 tsp of salt
1/3 c of milk
6 ounces of Red Bull (you can use the whole can if you'd like, I did with one batch and those browned a lot faster)
1 ounce Food coloring of your choice, I used yellow.

1. Mix butter and sugar until fluffy
2. Add vanilla and mix
3. Add eggs one at a time and mix well
4. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.
5. Measure out the red bull and milk together in same cup, give it a little stir (this looks disgusting)
6. Add dry ingredients to the butter, sugar and egg mixture alternating with the red bull and milk until all is mixed together.
7. Bake and keep an eye on them!

For the Frosting

1/2 cup butterr
1 tsp vanilla
2-4 oz of Jager (depending on your taste level)
2-3 cups of powdered sugar
Food coloring of your choice (gel based)

1. In medium bowl, cream the butter and vanilla together
2. Add Jager, mix well
3. Add powdered sugar 1/2 c at at time. Mix well until you have a frosting consistency.
4. Add food coloring and mix well.

To Decorate Cupcakes-

I used two different colors of frosting and was going to attempt to make "flames" but with time constraints and I was seriously done standing I came up with a better idea.

I used the frosting that had more Jager in it to fill the cupcakes. To do this I used Wilton tip #230. You just stick the tip in the cupcake and squeeze some frosting in. I would imagine you could also cut a little hole in the cupcake and fill it that way. The frosting spilled over a bit leaving a dot in the center so I just went ahead and used a star tip and frosted the rest of the cupcake that way with the frosting that had less jager.

It's Been A Hot Minute!!

I haven't updated in forever! Partly because we were mega ghetto with no internet and laziness. Well, since the last entry Chris and I found out we were expecting! Finally after three years of trying and saying screw it, I finally got pregnant. I took a pregnancy test on September 9th, 2009 and it was positive. I was pretty shocked and a little in denial. I had had a false positive once and even then I'm honestly not sure that it was really negative and I was tricking myself into thinking there were two lines there. I went to a clinic about a week or two later and the test there was also positive so it was definitely time for a doctor appointment. I went in and lo and behold there was a navy bean in there with a heartbeat. Chris and I were ridiculously excited! I began taking all of these quizzes and signing up for tons of baby websites to learn about what was going on in there. Chris and I have always wanted a boy but from the beginning we were being told it was a girl by family members and a few friends. I even bought a $30 pee test that said it was a girl. Mid January we found out that the baby was a BOY!!! We're naming him Elias Preston. Elias is after my brother who passed away in 2008. Preston is Christopher's middle name. So hopefully now that I mostly caught people up who read this, I can actually update more and add pictures and all that mess.

A Healthy Lunch

I should have taken an actual picture of what we ate, but that thought occurred to me once we were already eating our lunch. I am set on making Chris and I eat healthier. Last year and some of this year, we went on a vegetarian diet and were vegan where we could afford it. It was really hard for Chris but I'm grateful he did it.

Anyway during a trip to Seattle, I went to the market to buy my favorite pasta from a stand there, who also sells some of the most amazing oils. ( http://www.pappardellespasta.com ). They had a pasta I was really interested in but I had no idea how to cook it. It's the Fanciful Fruit blend. Well today, since we're attempting to be a lot healthier than we are I finally had an idea.



I cooked the pasta to what looked right to me, rinsed it in cold water. I basically did it like I was going to make macaroni salad.

In a bowl I used a cup of yogurt and a pretty big squirt of avocado honey from the farmer's market here. I didn't add anything else, the only thing I would have added would have been a little lemon zest but since the pasta had some lemon noodles I didn't bother.

I tossed that all together and put it in bowls. On top I layered some kiwi fruit, nectarines, black plums, red plums and then topped it off with some pecans.

I was pretty impressed with it and tasted delicious. I was surprised that Chris pretty much ate his whole bowl and was full, or so he claimed.

My favorite part of lunch was, "Where in the hell did all this fruit come from?" Of course, he didn't know that there is always fruit in the refrigerator he just never bends down to take a look. =)

Christopher's 26th

We celebrated with just the two of us, as usual. I decorated the whole house with the help of my friend Megan.

I can't believe I've known Chris for 13 years! We were laughing because, we realized he's spent half of his life with me. I asked him if he was ready to spend a "lifetime" and he said he could stand it. We had sopa, chorizo and potatoes for dinner with tortillas of course. Jager bombs to finish. One thing I've learned is energy drinks shouldn't really had if you know you're going to need to sleep. I was up until 1:30a.m. and waking up every hour. I slept pretty terrible and I had to be at 6:00a.m. It was worth it though, my boy was happy and that's what counts! :)

my sailor

So, for fun, I thought I'd write a little about our lives in the Navy. Mostly his life, I'm just along for the ride. =)

This is a picture of Chris in France, he was participating in a memorial service there. This picture does a few things for me...

Chris is able to travel and see amazing things that without the Navy it would be hard for us to afford. Yes, I am incredibly jealous that I didn't get to see these things as well (i.e., The Louvre, the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower).

Mostly, it puts into perspective that death is real for him. Yes, my husband has a safe job here in America, but in Afghanistan, it's a different story. No, he is not out there fighting in the front lines, but that doesn't mean his base doesn't get bombed/attacked on a daily basis. I know that there are wives who are not as lucky as I was to get phone calls and emails every day that he was there. Those were quite possibly the longest three months of his deployment. There are many things he could not tell me over the phone and still should not tell me, but I could hear it in his voice. I know my husband.

I haven't been a military wife very long and so this is just the beginning. I hear it's supposed to get easier each deployment but I'm not sure it will for me. It's hard being away from someone you've been around for 13 years. I don't know how the other wives deal with it at all. Especially the fact that technically, they are in a war. There is no safe house in war.

p.s. he's the only person i've heard of gaining weight on a deployment too lol :P