I always planned to just buy the pre-made baby food at the store. I'm all about easy around here. But when I noticed how much my child eats and how dang expensive that baby food is, I decided to try making it. I got lots of advice from my friend Brittany who also has a baby about Scotty's age and exclusively makes her own baby food. Enter two of my best friends these days:

With Spring/Summer in the air, it has been so fun to see what pops up in our yard. Since we bought the house in the winter, we had no clue what was previously planted. We have discovered an awesome grapevine, a loaded cherry tree and a hybrid apple tree that grows 4 different varieties of apples! We also have some beautiful mature trees and bulbs that add color to our yard. While we are super excited about all this stuff, we are a bit overwhelmed. We have a pretty unruly backyard and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed to say the least. I started two raised garden boxes (not pretty) loaded with veggies that I am really excited about.


 I share these (slightly embarrassing) photos with you to get your advice. I'm really excited about gardening but pretty much know nothing about it. We have kind of an ugly chain link fence that I feel like I want to mask. So what do I do?! Gardeners of the world, help a sister out.

A while back a friend and I were discussing blogging and how we feel like it may have taken a turn for the-"posting things to make money and not really because you care about them." We both really wanted to have these awesome, popular blogs but realized that the "popular" blogging has often (but not always) been about companies trying to sell their products through the blogger. 

I have been basil-happy these days because I am proud of my little plant I am growing so I have made many different forms of caprese in the past couple weeks. I found this recipe for Strawberry Balsamic Chicken on Pinterest and decided to make a few tweaks.

Well, not sure if you care but I thought I'd give you all an update on the Meltdown Challenge I joined. The first week was a joke. Whoops. I did exercise more but the eating thing was not the best. This week I began with a renewed determination to eat right and feel better.

Making the effort to cook and prepare meals has really helped. Here are a couple of the things I have been making:

 Tonight I kind of made up a recipe that I actually really liked. I made a little caprese-type salad without the mozzarella: cherry tomatoes (halved), fresh basil (I grew from seed!), garlic, olive oil and balsalmic vinegar. I then grilled halved chicken breasts with just some S and P on each side. I made a yummy sauce with lemon, chicken stock, garlic, a little bit of cream, salt and pepper. Dump all that on top of some fettuccine and it was really pretty tasty!

Scotty wanted to wish all the women in his life a Happy Mother's Day with this song.

I really just can't believe my baby is 6 months old. I know all moms say that but now I really understand the feeling! My sweet boy has seriously been my greatest joy, it has been so fun to watch him grow and change and I know we have a lot more growing ahead! Here is a little collage of his first 6 months.