Starbucks good to drink AND good for the soul

I have worked for Starbucks for 6 years and loved almost every minute of it. While I love the day to day work of interacting with customers, I really enjoy the volunteer work we do. Recently the gig harbor store got together went to help out a wonderful facility right in our back yard. I was amazed to find out such a place even existed in gig harbor. It's name.....'A place called Hope' a foster and adoption office. About 12 of us got together, re-organized and cleaned 2 rooms, one being a classroom the other being a meeting room between a potential new family and child. We were so happy to be helping out our community. Here are a few pictures from the day.

Starbucks Barista's rock! On a sidenote, we had many other family member volunteers, including my wonderful husband!

Trying to sort through and organize thousands of clothes, shoes and other donations.

Trying to set up affective shelving for all of the tubs of clothing.

More organizing.

The tree one of our amazing barista's painted for the meeting room. Each volunteer put their hand prints on the tree, as a reminder that their our people out there that care.

Fellow barista and her son, putting his hand prints up on the tree.

My wonderful husband, making his mark.

Traci, my wonderful boss. It was a great day and we all had a wonderful time. I could not think of a better way to spend a day off. 

Busy Summer

Since February, we have been on the go and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. We have celebrated Aiden's first birthday, moved into our own house, shown a lot of dogs, Anthony was promoted and most importantly we have had a lot of fun. My next few posts will be all about catching up. I wont go crazy but I will spend sometime reflecting on things we have done and maybe somethings we will do next year instead. Hope everyone has had a great summer and as we head into fall, there will be plenty of baking, joy and all around excitement!

Baby Food!

When we found out we were having a baby, we immediately started talking about what type of diapers we wanted to use, whether I was going to breast feed or not, and what types of food we were going to expose the baby too. All of these conversations were long, thoughtful, and researched. We initially decided on cloth diapers, which we used for the first 6 months or so. They were fabulous and I have no complaints about them, however, when I went back to work it became very difficult keeping up with the washing, hanging to dry and so on. So onto disposables we went. Ok, enough about diapers onto whats really important FOOD! One thing Anthony and I both agreed on is that I would nurse Aiden as long as I could and then we would feed him the best possible things we could, whether it be formula or when the time came the best possible whole foods. So we set out on our journey and here we are, making huge batches of baby food about once a month. Here is Aiden investigating what I am doing in the kitchen!
Below are some pictures of what our process looks like when we make baby food. Aiden has consistently eaten homemade baby food from the beginning. The only time he has eaten jarred baby food was when we flew to Boston for a week and it was just plain easier when traveling. Other than that he has only ever eaten what we have made. Below is a picture of his food frozen into individual portions ready for use whenever needed! I believe these two bags are Yams (on the left) and Zucchini, Yellow Squash and Onion (on the right).
This is my handy-dandy food processor. My mom bought a magic baby bullet and while I love it for blending up small things, the food processor works better for large batches.
This is a bunch on the food put into containers waiting to be frozen. This food includes, bananas, acorn and butternut squash, eggplant, parsnips, turnips, and peas. I add herbs and spices to different vegetables to help develop his palate even more.
Here are some individual containers that I use to plan out meals for Aiden, these are kept in the fridge and can be used whenever. These are perfect serving sizes and Aiden eats about 2 at every meal.
Here are the freezer containers! I love these!! I wish I had more of these, but unfortunately you can't just order these. So I am stuck freezing food in batches, but I love it. I love knowing that what Aiden is getting is the best possible food I can give him.
I have learned I am very lucky as Aiden will eat and try anything when it comes to food. He loves pretty much everything and always wants to eat what we are eating. We continue to encourage this behavior and I am sure we will have our ups and downs but for now we are enjoying making his food and watching him explore new foods as we introduce them to him.

Happy Eating!

Happy Birthday to Me!

This year my birthday fell on a Monday, which meant everyone had to work including me. It was kinda sad as this was the first year that it seemed as though my birthday was just another day. I have had many special and wonderful birthdays, so I guess I really have nothing to complain about, and I am really not complaining at all. Spending the afternoon with Aiden and then having cake with my parents was plenty of a celebration for me. However, Anthony and I celebrated my birthday this past Thursday, by going to see Cavalia. It was truly amazing and I am so glad you went. We had already seen it when we lived in Georgia, but it was just as good the second time as it was the first. I am so glad we went and it was great to just spend the evening with my wonderful Hubby. Below is a picture of our cute little family before we left for the evening. Pretty soon we will be celebrating Aiden's 1st Birthday!


Here is the HUGE tent that the show is seen in as well as the housing for the horses. It is truly an amazing sight. So glad we went, I loved every minute of it.

Major Fail!

Ok, so it is January 31, 2012 and to date I have blogged twice! So I guess my New Year's resolution didn't even last a month!! So I guess, maybe I will try blogging twice a week and see how that goes. In meantime, I have done two weeks of dog shows, started my master gardeners class, and left my baby with my parents for 5 days. Busy, busy month, February is sure to be just as busy, but I am going to have a 'do-over' on blogging. So here's to a better February of blogging!

Already Failed

So as you can see no post yesterday, ugh, failure on the second day! Sad but true. Anyway, I had to work, then get home in time for Anthony to head off to work, Aiden was crabby as he is teething and then it was off to a 4-H leaders meeting 40 minutes away. By the time I got home there was no hope for blogging. Such is life I guess. I was hoping to be able to talk about all the fun things we are going to be doing in 4-H this year however the meeting was rather boring and there is nothing to exciting to report. I am hoping to have some pictures to post in the near future of my 4-H kids. They are a great group and have so much talent in all different areas I can't wait to see what they teach me! Well all for now, nothing on the agenda tonight, just dinner, playing with the baby and maybe some wine!!

Happy New Year's and then some!

Well, we made it. 2012 is going to be a good one, I can feel it! Last night I was curled up in bed long before the clock ever struck midnight, but just the same the new year rolled in, pretty eventful, I might add. Like that! :) Both Anthony and I had to work today, which is fine, all that was on was Football and if you know me, I am not a huge fan of that sport, so off I went to work. For the last few days I have been thinking about all the New Year's resolutions I could have, trust me there are many, but one of my co-workers said something today that I thought was something to think about. It was to give a little more thought to NEED vs. WANT, in our lives. Now I found this very interesting, since I probably don't ever think, 'do I need this?' Instead I just buy it without ever thinking twice. So along with the usual New Year's resolutions that we all make, I am going to make an effort to really think about my purchases, maybe I will spend the same, maybe I won't spend anything at all, I am not sure, but its definitely something to think about. In the mean time, I will be trying to loose those dreaded last few pounds, thank you Aiden and maybe work on a few other things too.