Gettin' it done

We had another busy weekend full of (mostly) baby related stuff. Warning: This is another long weekend update post with lots of pictures and random baking tips thrown-in the middle.

Friday:

We went to a Dave Matthews concert at Nationals Stadium in Washington, DC with my brother and his lovely wife. It was awesome. HOT, but awesome. It was still in the 90s at 9:00 PM. Josh and I spent almost $30 on water alone. We got the tickets months and months ago, and weren't sure how it would go being 32 weeks pregnant. But it was a piece of cake. Really. And there were a handful of other preggos there.

Saturday:

I was WORTHLESS for much of the day due to a late bedtime Friday night and a still early rise Saturday morning (and the concert/heat themselves). But Husband, on the other hand, was productive. While I laid in bed/on the couch/lazily putzed around the house cleaning, Husband got to work on the magnetic chalkboard in L Bean's room. We've been planning this project for a while now. Remember that blue square on the wall from a picture in a previous post? It's more than a blue square now!

Husband put a few (okay, like six or seven) coats of magnetic paint down. And then he put two coats of chalkboard paint down. He cut, painted, and built the frame to look like our windows.

Magnetic paint

Painting the trim in the 100+ degree heat.

Doing something important that I asked about but don't remember his reason. BEST WIFE EVER!

He even cut-out a groove for the chalk!

I made the magnets months ago. I heart Michael's. We LOVE the finished product.

During the day, I baked more chocolate chip cookies. These cookies are my claim to fame. A guy Husband works with has offered to pay me to make him a full batch. What do I do that's special? These are the five cookie baking rules that I swear by (if you care):

(1) You're baking, so follow the directions EXACTLY. Measure and level-off everything. You can eyeball dinner, but you cannot eye ball cookies. If the recipe tells you to mix for three minutes on high, then set the micro timer and mix for three minutes on high. If it tells you to mix the dry ingredients then mix the wet ingredients, DO IT.

(2) Use a good cookie sheet. Don't even dream of using a dark, non-stick one. That's cookie suicide #1 (unless you prefer your cookies all around crispidy crunchidy). We got our cookie sheets from a restaurant supply store for $10 each. Crate and Barrel sells them for $30 each. The bottom has two layers and form a bubble in between.

(3) Use three cookie sheets. Cookie suicide #2 - putting raw cookie dough on an already hot cookie sheet and throwing it in the oven. The cookie sheets need to be room temperature each time you put the cookie dough down. I rotate three cookie sheets. That third sheet has plenty of time to cool-off by the time you need it (just don't leave it sitting on the stove, above the oven).

(4) Refrigerate your cookie dough in between batches.

(5) Bake for less time than the recipe calls for. And then set the timer for 30 second increments and keep an eye on the cookies for the last minute or so. Take the cookies out just BEFORE they've reached perfect doneness. They will continue to cook as they sit on the cookie sheet for a couple minutes before they're transferred to drying racks.

And what do you do with brown bananas?

Bake banana bread! I did banana bread muffins for ease of consumption. SO YUMMY.

Sunday:

I cleaned more. Did laundry. We cleared much of the furniture off the carpet and vacuumed. Husband rented a carpet cleaner from Lowe's and got to work on the carpets.

Fiona and Henrik watched-on from the stairs.

They NEEDED it. Renting the cleaner isn't very expensive, and it makes a huge difference. Especially when you have lots of pets. Add a kid to the mix? Yikes!

We went grocery shopping. Husband trimmed the front hedges

He also cut the grass and trimmed (Monday after work). I supplied the water and encouragement (two things I have gotten VERY good at these past few months).

The highlight of the weekend? I burned my stomach on a cookie sheet. 2nd degree burn. My standard at home pregnancy attire is a tank top and pj pants. It was warm in the kitchen, so I had the tank top pulled-up and my stomach out for ventilation (don't laugh. You've either (a) been pregnant before and done it yourself or (b) you'll do it when you're pregnant. Trust me). I momentarily forgot I had a protruding belly, and WHAM! SEAR! PANIC!

I ran outside to show Husband and complain about how much it hurt and how stupid I am. He loved on me and was a Sympathetic Super Husband. And then it dawned on him that we were having our maternity session with our wedding photographer in three days. He brought this to my attention, and then IMMEDIATELY regretted it. I made some sort of whining noise and then ran inside to commence Cry Fest. After cleaning the paint off his hands, he ran inside after me. There I was BAWLING while trying to spoon banana bread mixture into a muffin pan (which, btw, was very hard to do because I couldn't see ANYTHING through the tears). He coddled and loved on me, assuring me that Don could Photoshop the mark, and telling me not to cry. To which I replied, "I'M PREGNANT. CRYING IS WHAT I DOOOOO (sob, sniff, sob, snot bubble)." I eventually realized that he was right and stopped crying. But dude! That burn still HURT.

I accidently broke the blister right after it happened, which made the burn snot and goop. I'm wearing an awesome gigantic band-aid as I write this. As if I wasn't sexy enough already.

We only have one more nursery project to finish, and then we are DONE. Which is awesome and sad at the same time. We've had so much fun pulling the nursery together. We've bonded over the experience, and get this - we didn't fight. NOT ONCE. I mostly attribute this to being married to the nicest, most loving and understanding man on the PLANET. I'll post final pictures soon.

Oh, and we gave Fiona a bath. C-U-T-E.