Baking Day!

Both *B* and I were home today for Easter weekend, so today became grocery and baking day.  Instead of driving the mile to meet our new pediatrician, *B* and I walked into town.  It was very nice to get outside and enjoy time together.  The pediatrician's office seemed really nice, though I didn't have many questions for them yet. 

We had a little extra money in the budget, so we splurged on a small lunch out.  We wandered down to our local garden center and picked up another suet feeder and some celery plants.  I'm really hoping to get celery to live year round just like Shirley did.  We then did a small marketing trip, and lugged the groceries all the way home, with little rest stops for me (we have a lot of big hills in our town).

I still can't really sit still for too long, so I got to baking.  I'm getting around to perfecting the technique of making whole wheat bagels.  They're finally turning out well:

I also tried adapting our wheat bread recipe into a cinnamon raisin swirl bread.  I rolled the dough out as wide as my cutting board.  It was still pretty thick, so that meant that I had very little swirl-action going on.  Next time I'll cut it into the two separate loaves, then roll it out.  I also swapped out sugar for honey.  It wasn't perfect, but it's still pretty tasty:

I'm still keeping up our food tracking and real food experiment.  I can't wait to share the results of our first week on Monday.  It's really been an eye opening experience!

Checking Off the List

I've had a hard time with stress about the baby for the last few weeks.  Finally *B* told me to write a list of all of the things that I worry about not having done.  This list was massive:

• Paint the ceiling in the nursery
• Fix the crack in the wall in the nursery
• Remove non-baby items from nursery
• Stain the deck
• Buy and install blinds
• Buy and install curtains
• Get crib mattress
• Get prefolds
• Stock diaper bag
• Paint baby's dresser
• Pick out homecoming outfit
• Pack hospital bag
• Hang plants in nursery
• Buy new vacuum
• Get hand-me-downs from *B*'s sister
• Fix carpet patches where cats did damage
• Fix doorjambs (not necessary but annoying)
• Paint trim in bathroom where mold had grown before new fan was installed
• Fix dining room chair whose supports had fallen out

So far, we're down to just this:

• Buy and install curtains
• Get crib mattress (we got one from SIL, but it's four inches too small!)
• Paint baby's dresser
• Pack hospital bag
• Hang plants in nursery
• Buy new vacuum
• Fix carpet patches where cats did damage
• Fix doorjamb

 *B* has been amazing about knocking out that list.  He took it on himself to clean, power wash, and stain our deck.  

 

 The deck mid-powerwash.  The left side is (mostly) cleaned and the right side is obviously still grungy.

 

 After the power washing, our deck looked really strange.  It seems the lack of stain for so many years did a lot of damage.

 

 *B* staining the deck.  It already looked better.

All finished!  You can see that the fencing behind the potting bench wasn't done.  *B* ran out of stain.  But it lets you see the difference in color between what the deck used to look like and how it does now!

While *B* did that, my mom and I did most of the nursery work:  painting the ceiling, patching the walls, and hanging blinds.  I mentioned the other day that our diaper bag was just about ready to go. Most of the things left on this list are either optional, or require funding that we don't have at the moment.