Come out come out wherever you are!

I feel like I'm playing "hide and go seek" with my motivation lately. As I sit here and write this blog post, I am all too aware and bothered by a good many things that need to be done around the house. It's a long list really, and I'm feeling more and more heavy under it's growing shadow. Unfortunately, I seem to be at a loss for the motivation to get up and get things done. The guest room/sewing station/soon to be nursery is a disaster area. My floors desperately need to be swiffered and vacuumed, and our shoe closet needs to be organized yesterday. And don't even get me started on our master bath...Luckily I'm keeping up with the everyday things like dishes and laundry, but even these monotonous chores are tapping on my last nerve lately. I definitely need a fresh wave of motivation around here! Pregnancy + rainy days + cold, coughing and congestion + busy schedule = trouble getting off the couch. If only I could teach Piper to do these things, oh the life. -Insert picture of dog doing laundry here- ;) Eh, I guess I'll just have to keep counting down and maybe some motivation might just come and find me!

Adventures in Charleston, SC

Chris and I had a great two day get-a-way to Charleston, SC this past weekend. After a looonng drive down, our first stop was the historic district downtown. The houses there were just gorgeous! A ton of authentic old century architecture and colorful, southern plantation style homes, not to mention plenty of horse and carriage rides and cobblestone walkways set the scenery. After we had thoroughly worn our legs to jelly, we packed back into the car and headed to our hotel, the Sleep Inn Charleston. On Friday afternoon, re-energized by a Waffle House Vanilla Coke, we walked the Tanger outlets, ate dinner at McCallisters-a favorite of Chris', and headed to bed early for a rare and luxurious full night's sleep :)Charleston is a town with a rich historical background; here is Chris posing like the confederate statue above. So stately :)On Saturday we spent the afternoon at Folly Beach. Myself not expecting to find a "beach beach" in Charleston, I(and by default we) were completely unprepared. After touring some of the local surf shops and walking down the fishing pier, we decided to take a mid morning detour and get some appropriate beach gear and then come back for the afternoon. The weather was just amazing and made for the perfect afternoon on the beach! I had a wonderfully relaxing time reading and relaxing in the sand while Chris had fun building his skim boarding reportoire.
A last highlight of our trip, aside from some pretty neat shops we visited on the way out, was the one and only Popeyes! I just LOVE Popeyes and have wished on many a star that there was one in NC. No better biscuits exist. So whenever we see one while traveling we have to make a stop. After driving around the city for 2 days I decided that SC stole all of our Popeyes and Dunkin Donuts. ;)On the downside of things, the drive was a bit longer than I expected and twice as tiring. Chris had some sinus issues on Friday, and my until now dormant pregnant symptoms debuted in full force over the weekend! I'm sure it was a combination of the heat(who's heard of a 90 degree day in October?), the walking and the drive, but whew! After this trip I think we'll put any extensive traveling on the back burner for about 6 more months, lol. In any case, we managed to pack a lot of good stuff in our short Charleston stay and had a wonderful time just being together, which was really the whole point. Mission accomplished! :) After church on Sunday, the weekend ended on a great note with the perfect homemade chicken pastry dinner, accompanied by all of my favorite sides-strawberries and sister Schubert's rolls- complements of my mom the cook. Following the delicious meal and some routine mom-daughter "tjmaxing," we loaded up our pup and headed home to loads of laundry, a full DVR and a lots of yummy leftovers :) Now that's what I call a weekend!

Our Weekend and a 12 week lime

At 12 weeks, our baby is the size of a lime and measures just over 2 inches from crown to rump, weighing in at a grand ½ ounce. I’m glad to have graduated from fig to lime, and am eagerly looking forward to seeing what fruit our baby will grow into next, according babycenter.com that is. ;)
This past weekend was a busy one, full of babysitting, sewing projects, pizza, lounging and a trip to the movie theater (accompanied by the now highly regretted movie theater popcorn). I’ll post some pictures of my latest sewing projects soon, once I find the motivation and patience to complete those last few details. I’m working on a little skirt and corduroy jumper and drum roll please, learning how to sew in a zipper! My next post will undoubtedly be titled, “If you want to work on your patience, learn to sew.”

On my end of the baby front, aside from some headaches here and there, sprinkled with a nice helping of constant congestion, I’m feeling really good. In all seriousness, I’m so grateful for such a healthy start and hope, knock on wood, that all continues as such. After all, I hear it only gets better from here on out…that is until the very very end, but I’ll take that one day at a time ;) Our next appointment is at the end of October, and I’m eagerly anticipating the confirmation and excitement that hearing the little heartbeat will bring. In the meantime, I think our mini weekend getaway to Charleston and the state fair will fill our time very nicely. :)

First place best taste!

Last night our church held its first ever dessert contest, and I won for “best taste!” Whooo hooooo! There were several amazing desserts there-from yummy cookie cakes, home spun apple pies and petite peanut butter cheesecakes-all of them looked like wonderful, mouthwatering works of art! My winning treat was a “Cookies N Cream” cake garnished with decadent white chocolate butter cream icing and delicious Oreo cookies. Chris also made our oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chunk cookies to bring and they turned out great too!

I was so happy that my dessert was a prized crowd pleaser, considering this cake and I had a rocky afternoon. The first time I tried transferring cake to plate, half of it stuck to the pan and no amount of plastic surgery could save it. And thus I took a breath, cleaned up my mess and headed back out to the grocery store to buy all new ingredients. Thank goodness for an extra measure of patience and persistence because I’m confident that the cake turned out much better the second time around(not to mention I very much enjoyed the second round of extra cake batter licking)! The next obstacle I faced was perfecting the white chocolate icing, which was another first. Who knew there was such a delicate balance to be met when heating chocolate-it feels like it’s never quite melted enough, and yet how could you miss the bold “do not overheat” instructions! The texture was a bit harder to work with once mixed in with the butter cream, but I was up for the challenge! In the end, the long and sweet afternoon was all worth it and the cake was mmmmmm mmmmmm good! I'm already looking forward to next years!