baking

Duck Eggs and I Understand Now

When I was growing up, I never saw my mom buy anything for herself. She would take me back-to-school shopping and not even glance in the women’s department. I would always ask her why she didn’t buy herself clothes, or maybe a purse? A pretty necklace? Her response was always that she wanted her kids to have the new clothes, fun items, etc. rather than herself.

Since becoming a parent, I finally understand what my mom would always tell me. I would much rather buy Sadie a new shirt than myself. I think I can count on one half of a hand how many items of clothing I’ve purchased for myself since I’ve had Sadie, and most of them have been nursing bras. It’s just so much more fun to buy clothes for my child than myself!

Garanamals leopart toddler long sleeve shirt from Walmart

Like the above shirt. It was $4.50 at Walmart and Sader Tot is in need of fall clothing so I picked it up for her. While we were in the store, I didn’t even glance at the women’s department. I’m becoming my mom, haha. Not really, though, because I don’t have too much trouble using my spending money on books 😉

I just finished up Finding Zoe by Brandi Rarus and wow, what a (true!) story. It deals with adoption, deafness, and identity. It had so many twists and turns that I had a hard time putting it down. I’m also working my way through Hannah’s Song, which is a Bible study on the book of 1 Samuel. While I don’t agree on the author’s viewpoint oo salvation, the rest of the book has been very insightful.

Onto duck eggs.

My brother and his wife bought a few chickens and ducks this spring and they’ve been getting eggs lately and passing some on to me. They know they way to my egg-loving heart ❤

Duck eggs and chicken eggs

Can you guess which ones are the duck eggs?!

My brother said he heard duck eggs are excellent to bake with because the high fat content results in fluffier baked goods. I asked them if they wanted me to bake them anything with some of the eggs as a thank you and they requested challah. Can’t wait to make it 🙂

In other news, we had a normal day over here at the Zottola Zoo. Sadie learned about the color orange and did some painting.

Toddler painting with orange paint

I went on an organization spree while she went down for a nap. Our linen closet is one of the spaces in our home that slowly becomes a catchall over time and today was the day I decided to finally tackle it.

I ended up nailing baskets and old plastic containers to the door to add some extra storage and it helped clear up a lot of space inside the actual closet!

Closet organization with baskets on door

Time will tell if it all holds up 😉

Yesterday was Niva’s first birthday and tomorrow she is getting spayed. Poor girl. It was so hard to see Mavis struggle after she was spayed (I’m going to blame my crying on the pregnancy hormones in 2018, lol) and I’m hoping it’s a better experience for everyone involved this time!

Do you have any catchall spots in your home? Our linen closet, basement, and a few drawers in our living room are our places.

Do you like to buy clothes? I would much rather spend the day in a bookstore than clothing store, but enjoy getting Sadie clothes.

Less to clean, bacon-wrapped jalapeños, and gardening

I figured out what to do with the jalapeños we got from people in our neighborhood! I made bacon-wrapped, stuffed jalapeños thanks to Amy’s idea 🙂

Bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeñosStuffed bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers

I just sliced the fresh jalapeños in half, stuffed them with cream cheese, wrapped them in bacon, topped them with brown sugar, and baked them at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

Sadie and I had a sticker party the other day. Jimmy was out running an errand and I needed to do some cooking so I just pulled her chair and booster seat up to the kitchen counter and gave her some stickers while I chopped vegetables for a pot of bean soup.

She thought it was pretty neat to put stickers all over us.

Mom and daughter playing with stickers

While Jimmy was out running his errand, Niva decided to jump on our back storm door and break through the glass.

We have so many funny stories with that storm door, like when Jimmy accidentally punched through it because of Lola, Niva cracked the top pane recently, and then we just lost another to her jumping habit.

Husky broke glass door by jumping

My first thought? Well, that’s one less pane of glass to clean! 🙂

The garden has been giving us lots of yellow squash, zucchini, and arugula lately.

Zucchini, yellow squash, and arugula from vegetable garden

I got a cupcake order for our cousin Leia’s fourth birthday! I feel like I was just baking cupcakes for her first birthday. Crazy!

I had some cupcakes leftover, so I delivered a few boxes to our neighbors!

Cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles

I took Niva to the vet for her shots and they did curbside pick-up, so Sadie and I had to wait in the car while she was getting her shots and checkup.

Sadie got bored pretty fast, so I decided to take her outside to walk around and realized I didn’t put shoes on her before we left.

Barefoot toddler picking flowers

Oh well! Sometimes you just have to go barefoot and pick flowers while you wait for your dog to get shots because you can’t go into the vet’s office. This is 2020!

Have you had an “this is 2020” moments lately?