Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

Ingredients
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (I used the bottled stuff)
2 cloves garlic, minced (I used more, but I love garlic)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

Place all ingrediants (minus the parseley) in the slow cooker. Cover, and cook on High for 3 hours, or Low for 6 hours. Add the parsley to the slow cooker 15 to 30 minutes before the end of the cook time.

Times may vary depend on how hot your slow cooker runs. Mine runs fast and was slightly overdone at 5.5 hours on low.

I served it with au gratin potatoes and peas.

Peeps T-shirt

I think I finally have my act together and will have time to start posting again. :) I plan on trying to catch up by doing several mini posts all this week.
First one of my nap time crafts this week. I was inspired by this adorable peeps t-shirt on http://gilliangreding.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/take_a_peek_at_.html . I adapted it a little bit and only did one bunny.


My little man was not the most willing model.

He did however enjoy the beautiful weather today.

Where have I been?

As usual, life with a toddler (and being pregnant) is never dull. Like most of retail, my hours for work have pretty much dried up for the month of February. After all of the craziness in Novemeber and December, it's nice to have the chance to rest and get caught up on things.

The list of projects we need to get done before baby comes just keeps getting longer. Tim is working on the finishing touches of tiling our basement bathroom and hallway. It is already a huge improvement from the ugly tiles and icky carpet that was there before. We are now working on picking out a new vanity top to complete the remodel.

Since Carter and the baby will be sharing a room, we have a lot of decluttering to do in the next couple months. Storage is very limited here, so we are having to be very creative with finding a place for everything. We're hoping to get a large shelving unit for the garage, so that much of what we have stored elsewhere can move out to the garage.

I had my 17wk doctor's appointment on Friday. My weight stayed steady at what it had been when I had been in 2 weeks earlier. Because of my much more extreme symptoms and the heartbeat is way faster than Carter's was, the doctor is guessing it's a girl. I guess we shall see in another two week when we have our ultrasound. Tim is worried that I'm too convinced that it's a girl and will be disappointed if it's a boy. The only thing I would be disappointed with was the lack of an excuse to buy little girl clothes. I'd be thrilled to have another little boy.

Cleaning SOS

I had been hearing about the Fly Lady cleaning program on the nest, so I decided to finally check it out today. I knew it was the right thing for me when on the welcome page I read, "Are YOU living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) like Franny in the pink sweats? Do you feel overwhelmed, overextended, and overdrawn? Hopeless and you don't know where to start? Don't worry friend, we've been there, too."
So I decided to sign up and check it out since it was free. The first day's assignment was to clean your kitchen sink. Pretty easy. And she actually gave some ideas to get them extra clean. (Not sure why I had never thought about using steel wool to clean our stainless steel sink, but it worked amazingly well.) I peeked at Day 2 and Day 3 and I think I'm pretty safe to skip ahead to Day 3. Day 2 just talks about getting up and dressed for the day. Since I've always done that, I don't think that's much of an issue.
I'll try to update on how I'm doing. My clean sink did inspire me to get my kitchen clean. So already I can say it's doing some positive things.

Relief!

Last Thursday I tripped while taking some laundry down ours stairs. Now I know better than to go down the stairs in my socks. Wood stairs are just too slippery for that. I luckily only fell own 3 stairs, hitting my butt and back. It definitely scared me. Since I wasn't having any cramping or bleeding there really wasn't any reason for me to go into the doctor.
I had just began to feel the baby fluttering in the last couple weeks. When I hadn't felt the baby flutter all weekend, I started to worry. So we decided, while I was probably worried over nothing, it was worth calling the doctor anyways this morning. They said I really didn't have anything to worry about, but if it would make me feel better I could come in and have them find the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler. Knowing that I would worry until my next appointment, I decided it was worth taking Carter out in the snow, to hear baby. The doctor found baby's heartbeat after just seconds of looking. I had worried over nothing.
I'm taking it easy today because I was up until 7am with Carter. I think he's getting his 2 years molars in which has made him clingy and miserable. He would only sleep in my arms. Every time I put him down , he would scream like crazy. As tired as I am today, I'm trying to remember to enjoy those moments snuggling with Carter because he's growing up so fast!

Pregnancy obsessions

So it's crazy to think that I'm already more than a third done with this pregnancy. I'm really hoping my energy will return soon. I'm pretty good at trying to avoid caffeine, but some days after my early morning shifts I'm not able to function without a diet coke. It is glorious!
I'm dying to shop for baby stuff with all the amazing clearance sales going on right.

Some of my favorites this time around are:
Bubble baths: I take one pretty much every night. It is the one thing that seems to help relieve my back pain.
S'mores: Microwave s'mores are my obsession. I make them all the time. For some reason they taste good pretty much all the time.
Mott's natural applesauce: I try to only only eat applesauce without added sugar to make it healthier. Mott's is the only natural one that tastes any good.
Yoga pants: Pretty much my uniform when I'm at home.
Oberweis Chocolate Milk: Simply amazing. I'm not a huge milk drinker, but it just tastes so good.

Finished Projects at Last!

One of my goals for the year is to get caught up on all of the half finished sewing/crafting projects I have going on. Today I successful finished a blanket for baby and a small baby quilt (if we end up having a girl I'll keep it, otherwise I'll sell it or gift it)

The Polka dot one is somewhat based off the baby bear tutorial on http://sew4home.com/projects/bed-linens/358-stylish-baby-nursery-the-three-blankets . I'm still learning how to do all the stitches on my new machine, so the spacing between some of the stiching aorund the edges is slighly goofy. But it will be a perfect lightweight summer blanket for baby.

It's been another somewhat crazy week that I really can't explain where all the time has gone. I worked three days this week, but since the work load is so light this time of year I got off really early. My Friday shift even got cancelled. While I am sure we will miss the money that I could have earned, it was nice to pretty much still be a SAHM this week.

This Carter's typical wild man face. He is so goofy these days!

Pregnancy-wise time has been flying. It's hard to believe I'm almost in the 2nd trimester already. I'm still feel somewhat icky most afternoons. The exhaustion is pretty much constant (and I assume will remain until I no longer have small children anymore).