No matter where in his crib we lay him, he ends up here...

Baby's Room Decorating Tips

Here are 2 ideas we used for Carver's room:

For this one, all I did was spray paint letters (from Michael's) and hot-glue ribbon to the back. Or you can buy pre-made letters from Pottery Barn Kids at an absurd cost.

Instead of a store-bought mobile, I had Ethan hang these paper lanterns above the crib.

Tempeh Update

I made the Tempeh (using this recipe)! It was very delicious and will become a regular. Now if only I can rope Ethan and all his ideas in ("I wonder how hard it would be to make a tempeh incubator...").

Monday: Finally... A Weekend At Home

With all our recent weddings and weekend trips, it was so nice to be in Gainesville this weekend.

Friday: We busted out our electric fryer for the first time (it was a wedding gift we received 3 years ago) and celebrated our friend, Chris' birthday by frying some fish. We also turned our kitchen into a fry factory and acquired a blister or two (ok, I'm exaggerating), cutting pounds of potatoes -both white and sweet- to fry. Some of the guys slip & slid (is that the past tense for slip & slide?) and we discovered that Carver doesn't like the Happy Birthday song. Either that or he was over-tired and intimidated by the crowd.

That night I got 8 straight hours of sleep!!! The old me would not be so excited to wake up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, but after going to bed at 10:30 on Friday night, the momma me was thrilled to look at the clock and realize I had an uninterrupted night's sleep!

Saturday: I put the finishing touches on my summer cleaning frenzy by attempting to sell all our stuff that wasn't Craigslist material at a garage sale. We combined forces with the Rohans, Putnams and Dourtes. I would say they were a little more successful than us, in that we made only enough money to pay for our Cuban pastry breakfast. However, it was an overall great time and now my closet is only filled with overflow storage that we actually want.

Saturday night we went out for Megan's birthday dinner. Happy birthday, friend! Carver stole a little bit of the attention with his blueberry mustache.

Sunday: I freaking love our church. Even though I missed most of the sermon, trying to get Carver to sleep, I always feel like I'm in God's presence when I'm there. After church, we came home and had a relaxing lunch while Carver napped for over 2 hours! Ethan went to help the Putnams move into their new apartment while I took a look at our budget to prepare for Financial Peace University. This led me to call Verizon to see how they might be able to lower our monthly bill. Hey, its worth a try, right? Right! All I said was that we would like to pay less and the customer service guy offered us the "loyalty plan" that still provides well over the average number minutes of minutes we use every month and will save us about $20. Its not going to cover Carver's college tuition, but, hey it was worth the 15 minutes I spent on the phone.

FPU was great. Dave Ramsey is pretty funny for a good ole' boy and really got us excited about saving money! The first "baby step" is saving $1000 toward an emergency fund. After we picked Carver up from Natalie & Dan's, we all headed to Sweet Dreams for wild flavor night. My favorite was peanut butter with chocolate covered potato chips. Thanks for the ice cream, Putnams!

I'm looking forward to a mostly un-eventful week. Hope you have a great one, too!

"B" Sounds Make Him Laugh

Also, if you search "Carver laughing" on youtube, not only is there

another baby Carver, but a baby Ethan Carver!

Friday: Pool Time

Thanks for the float, Tampa Grands!

Thursday: Free Tea @ McAlister's!

Next Thursday, July 23rd is free tea at McAlister's deli. I know its a whole week from now, but I didn't want to post this next Thursday and risk being too late.