potatoooooo...

So, I don't normally blog about recipes because I normally forget to take pictures or stuff doesn't turn out the way I want them too. I also don't bake much so sweet recipes are out; too much work and mess for something that will be gone in like 2 days. I'm getting better about it though. So today I thought I'd share one of the McKee families favorite recipes, it's actually one that I received at a wedding shower from my Aunt Marci. Thanks Aunt Marci!! We make this all the time.

Baked Potato Soup

So, this recipe is really easy but not for those on a diet. Lots of butter, sour cream, cheese and bacon.  You start out by baking the potatoes. We baked them straight in the oven (without foil) for 45 min.  Take them out and let them cool. This time made them the perfect consistency, when you cut them up they are firm enough to hold their form and soft enough to mash a bit too. 

Excuse the crappy pictures, not great lighting in my kitchen. I used 5 potatoes. Next you make a roux. This is where you add the large amount of butter, melt it and then add the flour, salt and pepper making a thick bubbly mixture to thicken your milk.

Add the milk to the roux mixture. I usually add a cup and make sure it's mixed and thickening before I add the next. I do that the first 3 cups or so then just add the rest. You bring that to a boil or until it starts to thicken. Next, you take the milk off the burner and add the sour cream, whisking it in. Then add the potatoes and cheese and bacon. That's it!! Enjoy!

There is the finished product. All ready for the fridge. This recipe is soooo delicious and so filling. Adelaide helped me out in the kitchen. That is to say, she rolled around and threw magnets off the fridge and ran into my heels with her roller and mushed up granola bar all over herself, all of this while yelling babble at the top of her lungs. At least she stayed occupied. 

There she is trying to get at the camera, granola all over her face. 

Cutie.

I do have to add, after my post of frustration over Adelaide's progression it was like she changed overnight and was going to prove me wrong. Within a few days she was sitting up all over the place and she just started crawling this week. She's also pulling up to get all of her books off her shelves. So exciting!! Our appt. at Children's was so reassuring and I'm so grateful for their input, especially our occupational therapist and prosthetist. They are so helpful and are very honest. They also love Adelaide. We also got to meet a new family at the clinic. Their first visit with their 3 month old. She had a little more arm then Addy but same side. I think it was reassuring to them to see a happy toddler bouncing around. 

I'll leave you with a another pic from Adelaide's birthday party. We're so blessed to capture pictures of Adelaide with her great-grandparents. 4 generations of women!!

5 little fingers, 10 little toes...

My sweet baby Adelaide turned 1 yesterday! It's hard to comprehend that it's been a year already. Tyler and I have had fun reminiscing over all of the crazy and fun and new and not so fun things that have happened since we found out our little bundle was on her way. It's been interesting to say the least but Adelaide has been such a blessing to our little family. She has taught us so much already, since the day that we found out that she would have 5 little fingers and 10 little toes. Those 5 little fingers love to feel my lips and face and love to point to say hello and wave goodbye. And that soft, chubby arm loves to stroke my cheek when I give her a bottle. 
Anyway, enough with my sentimental talk, it makes me sad at times to see her growing but I love the fun and talkative toddler she's becoming. She even managed to say a variation of "thank you" on her birthday and the whole family heard her do it!! So here's a few pictures from the festivities...

We went with Smallcakes cupcakes. Very tasty! This was Adelaide's personal cake. She demolished it as you'll see later. 

Part of the birthday table. The owl theme was a lot of fun! I know she'll never remember this party but everyone had fun and looking back at the pictures will be so worth it. Plus I made all of the decorations on the cheap. 

There she is demolishing. She loves chocolate and she almost ate the entire thing!! Notice that she even managed to get some in her hair. For some reason every time she eats she has to feel her head. That is the entire cupcake table. 

Present time!! She wouldn't even try to open the gifts, she just wanted mommy to open them quickly. 

Adelaide was definitely spoiled this birthday. But how can you resist this face! It just screams "buy me toys and cake" just to make her smile! Good things it's easy to get her to smile without those things. 

a $200 kitchen redo...

Tyler and I have finally finished our cheap kitchen reno! It took us 2 weeks, longer then we thought it would but it turned out pretty well for two people that have never really worked with cabinets. My dream is to eventually gut this kitchen, tear out a wall and all that kind of fun stuff but until we have the finances to do so, this will do. The kitchen wasn't that bad in the first place, just not our style. We needed a little more color or less color, however you want to look at it. So here is the before...

Again, not that bad, just not a fan of orange cabinets. We also were blessed to have my Grandma Sextro donate her oven to us, she got a brand new one and mine, the one pictured above, took about 20 min. to preheat. The new one doesn't match but it works well and some day we hope to get matching stainless appliances...we can dream. Although, as a side note, Tyler did find a free stainless dishwasher on craigslist that we picked up. Not sure if it works yet but the people giving it away just didn't want to deal with it and bought a new one...sillys. So, here is the after...

We put frames around the doors to give them a shaker look. It makes them look a little less homemade. These cabinets were literally built into the house in 1950, guess that's how they did it back then. We still have to get hardware but it feels nice and fresh. I'm working on getting some curtains made with the new sewing machine I got for Christmas! We're also stealing an idea from pinterest and making pendent lights above the sink with Ball glass jars. 

We are really enjoying the new look and are happy to have it pretty much finished. It felt like we were doing all of this for Adelaide's birthday party that's this Sat.!! Some day we also hope to add some cork floors maybe?? One project done and on to the next, that's how we work. Here's a look at some of the chaos that was our house while painting...

That's Adelaide scootin' down the hall, just saying hi! The vent that we uncovered was a mess, had to fix that one. And our dining room was turned into a kitchen. Happy to be back to normal. And I don't think I will ever paint this many cabinets again, it was horrible. But in total we've spent less then $200 and it was totally worth it. 

Need to post Christmas, guess I'll do things a little backwards! Our lives have been crazy lately.

Gifts...

So I'm reading this book called "Grace Based Parenting" (great book by the way, everyone should read it) and it was talking about how encouraging your children in the gifts that God has given them will make them stronger people. So as I was contimplating this I began to think about all of the times that I already screw up in this area as a parent, encouraging that is, even though my child is only 11 months old. I seem to catch myself comparing a lot lately. I know every parent probably does this at some point, at least I tell myself that to make myself feel better. I hate that I do this!! Adelaide isn't walking or crawling or even sitting herself up from a lying position at this point (except in her crib, which I'm not really sure how she does it cause she's always just sitting there, we've never actually seen her do it.) So I see all these other babies hitting all of these milestones and I find myself comparing Adelaide and wondering if we should be doing something different. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Adelaide and wouldn't change a thing about her, I just get frustrated I guess. I don't want to wish her life away but I'm excited for her to be able to explore more. She's getting bored just sitting. So we try to encourage and praise her when she gets close and we'll continue to do so. I know that she'll crawl and walk when she's ready and God has a plan for her, we just have to wait, even if it's agonizing to her parents. I shouldn't complain because I think most kids would be throwing a hissy fit by now every time they tried and didn't succeed but Adelaide just rolls over and finds something else to do. She is such a laid back child, I think that's why it's taking her so long, she's perfectly content doing what she's always done. We go to Children's in Jan. and I hope they'll be encouraging. Our friends and family are encouraging as well but you can only hear the same things so many times before you start to question them. Anyway, just something I've been struggling with and just need to keep praying about. So until she learns I'll just have to carry this adorable little poodle around myself. Life is hard. 

Christmas DIY...

So, the holidays leave this family a little tight in the financial area, as are most families I believe, so I did a little crafting this year. I got stuff for my mantle last year and this year wanted to decorate my dining room table, it was looking pretty "blah". So I got a little pinterest/BH&G inspiration and used my own growing crafty ideas and made this. I spent a total of about $16 at Hobby Lobby (I heart HL by the way). I did have some of this stuff sitting around in my growing craft basket but this was cheap people. C.H.E.A.P!!

So I started with the trees which I will be leaving up in my house all year round because they work. I already have ideas to use them in Adelaide's owl themed birthday party. All that these took was some green yarn and styrofoam cones. And you wrap. I was going to take step by step pictures but I don't want to undermine your intelligence, this is easy. The flowers are just strips of felt that are twisted and then wrapped around into a circle. This is also very easy and cute with extra fabric too. These are so versatile, you can make headbands and all sorts of things with them. I just used gold push pins to attach them. I wanted to be able to switch out colors when I liked. We then just spray painted pine cones to set around. I had extra burlap from another project so I stich witched it to make a runner. That piece of wood in the middle is something Tyler made for our fall decorations. It's just a piece of wood stained. Anyway, that is my dining room Christmas decorations and I love them. Tyler and I had fun making it. 

I'll also show you the first two presents wrapped this season. I love wrapping presents, it's one of my favorite parts of giving them. I took a little inspiration from the BH&G Christmas mag. again and used some of what I already had. I went with plain, brown packaging paper this year, found it at the Dollar Store. Woot Woot! Just playing around, we'll see what else I can some up with this year!

Merry Christmas!

it's been a while...

Wow! It's been a while since I've blogged. Tyler and I were trying to sell our desk top so we were trying to keep it clean and keep pictures off of it. Finally sold it!! Now typing from our new computer. Anyway, haven't been up to a whole lot. Getting ready for the holidays and Adelaide's approaching 1st birthday (I can't believe it!) Here's some pictures to get you caught up on our growing girl!

This one is just funny, she makes this face fairly often. My mom said I used to make the same face. We call it the froggy face. She's getting such a personality. She's kind of a ham. 

Here's Adelaide sitting in just some of the 40 bags of leaves Tyler and I have raked this year. (We aren't done by the way, if anyone has a strong desire to get a workout you are welcome to come and help!)

Playing outside in the nice weather. She's sooo photogenic. The top middle picture looks a lot like cousin Allison. Speaking of photogenic, as many of you know Adelaide was featured in a story done by KCTV5 about insurance for prosthetics. We were very proud to represent a great cause. Addy even had someone recognize her at Crown Center because of the show! They used her because no one can resist her. 

And just today Adelaide had her first visit to Crown Center for the lighting of the Mayor's Christmas Tree, something I've been attending every year since I was a baby. Happy to share a great tradition. Didn't see santa (the line was ridiculous as usual) but we'll come back another day when it isn't so busy. She did get an ornament from the Christmas store, another tradition. This is technically her second since she got one last year when she was in my tummy. You can see Grandpa and Grandma had lots of fun. Grandpa let Adelaide do a little shopping. Anyway, having a great time celebrating all of the "1st" holidays with a little one. 

Promise the next blog will have more substance, less pictures, trying to get back into the swing of things. Felt like there was a ton of stuff to blog about while I was "out" but we'll let those be and move on with our busy lives. Until next time...

our busy lives...

So we've been super busy lately, at least that's my excuse for not blogging in like forever. I started my new job and we've had family stuff almost every weekend lately so to say the least, we've been booked. Hoping things slow down a bit. So this is going to be a little all over the place, just kinda what we've been up to. I'm going to try and do this more often since I suck at updating Adelaide's baby book.

First of all, big changes in my side of the family...my little sister moved far, far away. Okay, not that far, not Italy far anyway but to Tucson, AZ and that is far for our family. Tyler and I had a little "Farewell" shindig for the Gish side of the family to see them off. It was also the first large party we've had since we moved into our house. Here's just a few snapshots...

This was the only part of the party that made it a "Farewell" party. Sorry Ash, time kind of ran out on me. 

Those are my 4 lovely cousins up top and Ashlyn, her husband Ryan and their adorable son Aaden below. Ryan is in the Air Force and his first official station is in AZ. The other pic is just some fam sitting on my sun porch which I love! The first time it got used for entertaining, and it's such an entertaining porch!

To preface this next event you must click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ3oHpup-pk

Not exactly the same but the video was funny, you have to admit, enjoy. Anyway, as I was saying...

The next weekend was one of Tyler and I's favorite of the year, close to the holidays I'd have to say. THE White Cloud Flea Market. Okay, actually we didn't go to white cloud cause it's further and the past few years haven't been fantastic so we stuck to Sparks which is an awesome unincorporated town close to the Nebraska/Iowa/Kansas border. Best shopping around. 

Tyler looks ready to shop. You can tell by the large amount of "junk" in the picture that this is all this town does. This flea market happens twice a year and some of the "shops" are permanently set up there. I'm standing on my purchase, an antique step stool for my kitchen. I was sick of my ugly metal one. Notice it matches my newly refinished hutch. Tyler will tell you that every time I look at that picture I regret not buying the cabinet behind me. $50! I could have sold that thing in the city for like $300 refinished. We've already decided to go back in the spring to buy things for profit. Although I always get attached. Oh, there's some greasy flea market food as well. 

And, as always, I can't leave without a few pictures of my growing girl. As much as she wanted to experience the flea market, a day in the hot, sweaty, dirtyness that is the flea market was not in the cards for her. 

She's growing fast, 8 1/2 months now, already planning her 1st birthday party. Tear. 

So, that was just funny. Not the best picture but Adelaide was sitting on our bed while we were folding laundry and she got ahold of Tyler's clean underwear and of course, like everything else, stuck it in her mouth. 

So, some better pictures, on a nice cool day we went out and sat on the front lawn to play. She likes to sit and watch trees in the wind. Loves to be outside, just like dad. Notice that she can't keep her sock on, it's pointless to try and stop her.