A New, Old-fashioned Favorite

I have a cookware curse. No, really, I do. It seems that no matter how much I spend on cookware, it just doesn't seem to last as long as I think it should. Maybe it's because of constant use? Anyway, when my skillet, my big super-family sized skillet, needed to be replaced - AGAIN - I decided to bite the bullet and buy another cast iron skillet.
I received a 10 inch skillet from my grandmother a couple years back, and have loved it. Since she's had hers for over 50 years, I have hopes that maybe I can hold on to mine for a while. So I decided to order this skillet from Amazon. Boy, is it BIG.
This is my new skillet next to an older 10 inch skillet, just to get an idea of the size of this thing. And it is heavy, too. But you know what? It cooks wonderfully! And, I can brown 5 pounds of ground beef at the same time in it! And relatively quickly, too, because of the great heat distribution. And it came pre-seasoned. Now I am thinking I need a 12 inch one to round out my collection. :-)

Story Time Felt Board

I wanted to share a really great item that Lauryn received for Christmas a couple months back. This is a felt board set - kinda like Sunday schools all over the nation use - but this one is all about fairy tales!
With a castle backdrop, the set comes with characters and sets to re-create many of the classic (non-Disney version) fairy tales. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, the Princess and the frog, the Princess and the Pea, and St. George and the Dragon all come to life. And of course, they can also use the characters to make up their own stories - which my girls certainly do!

Lauryn loves this and Hailey asks to play with it nearly as often. It is adorable (and is a great activity for them to do while the older girls are doing school work). I was going to order this, but a friend of mine was giving hers away (she'd never even cut the pieces out!) so I gratefully took it and cut the figures out. This is probably Lauryn's favorite gift from last Christmas. If you are interested in ordering from the place I was going to get mine it is here. (I have no affiliation with them beyond thinking that their products are super cute!)

Worth Its Weight in Gold

My grandmother came to my house when Ashlynn was just a few days old. While she was here, we got to talking about cooking. She mentioned that she had a "big" cast iron skillet that she couldn't lift anymore. Besides that, it is just my grandmother now, so she only needs the small 8 inch skillet. Would I be interested in the "big" one?

WOULD I???

She sent it home with my parents who brought it up to me the next time they came to visit. And I have been in love with this pan ever since. It's not quite a big as I thought it was from her description - one of those "eye of the beholder" things, I guess - but I love cooking in it.

I was explaining to the girls that this pan was probably 20-30 years old. They were stunned. When I called my grandmother to tell her how much I loved the pan, she informed me that it was older than that! My grandmother got married in 1943, and she said she had it most of her married life. This pan is so seasoned that glue wouldn't stick to it!

My "new" pan!

My (Exhausting) Weekend Project

When we bought this house I painted our master bedroom. Kelly loved it. It was a sponge painting treatment with two very different shades of green from the same family. With our brown carpet he said it reminded him of being in a forest.

After a while though, this forest feeling started grating on me. It felt dark, close, and busy. I hate clutter and my bedroom always felt cluttered and busy because of the paint combined with our floral comforter. Well I've been looking for two years for a new paint/bedding combo that would work, and this weekend I finally implemented it, much to my loving husband's chagrin.

Here's a few before shots.

Here's a close up of the paint treatment.

So I bought what I thought was a green color with a lot of blue in it. After priming the walls, I put one coat of this color. Oops! Too blue.
So I went back and got the next shade in the green palette for a second coat. Aah, much better! New bedding, new curtains, and next thing ya know, a new master bedroom.

Kelly still misses the forest and the flowers, but I feel like I can breathe when I go in our room now! Thank you, sweetie, for moving all that big heavy furniture so I could get rid of one of your favorite features of our house!

My Favorite Things: Soothies Gel Pads

I have a terrible secret. I hate nursing the first couple of weeks. Eventually I love it, but I have a really hard time getting started.

Not only do I make enough milk to feed the entire neighborhood, nursing hurts at first. I have talked to enough nursing moms to know that this is not the norm for all new mothers, but I have been through the same thing six times now. So it is the norm for me, as is being engorged for a week instead of the 24-48 hours the pregnancy books will tell you.

When I had Hailey, I had open, cracked, bleeding sores for eight weeks. I cried every time I nursed for most of that time. When I got pregnant again with Lauryn, I saw a lactation consultant both before and after she was born. And she became my new best friend because she gave me these:

Soothies Gel Pads

These are my all time favorite new baby item. You see, when I nurse with these sores, between feedings they will scab over. Then at the next feeding, my nursing pad has dried to the scab, and I have to rip it off. This of course exacerbates the problem. But these pads are coated with a gel like is used on burn patients. It doesn't stick to the wound!

I wear them between my skin and another regular nursing pad for more absorbency. I went through about 4 pair of these with Ashlynn. I love them. I use them until I am healed up enough to use just regular nursing pads alone. With Ashlynn this took about 4 weeks.

You can also put these in the fridge to get them good and cool before wearing them, but frankly they were never off of me long enough for me to do this. You can buy these at CVS and Walgreens, and I'm sure other places as well. They will seem a little steep (about $10 a pair) but they are totally worth every penny! So if you have soreness or crack open when nursing, you NEED SOOTHIES!

Picture from soothies.com