Mini Cheesecake Bites

83. Try a new recipe every month(19/33)

I am officially more than 40 weeks pregnant. Wow, my children sure are timely aren't they?! So, while I wait SO PATIENTLY for this child to come out why not make cheesecake bites? Seems like the only logical thing to do. Right?...

I chose the pink and blue cupcake liners for our team green baby. Come on baby!!! We are all waiting!!!

I used this recipe slightly modified from A Helicopter Mom.

Ingredients
For the Crust:

• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs 
• 6 Tbsp butter
• 6 Tbsp sugar

For the Filling:

• 2-8 ounce packages of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
• 3/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 can cherry pie filling

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F

1. To make the crust mix the graham cracker crumbs, butter and 6 Tbsp of sugar together in a bowl. Go ahead and mix it with your hands. Get dirty! The dirty method is way faster and more efficient. 

Side note: Did you know they sell Graham Cracker CRUMBS now so you can be super lazy and not crush up your own graham crackers?! 'Who is that lazy?', you may be asking. This girl sure is!

2. Press about a teaspoon of the crust mix into the bottom of a paper or foil lined mini-cupcake tin. 

Another side note: I actually lined my mini-cupcake tin (that makes 24 mini-cupcakes) with the little foil cupcake liners and lined 6 slots of my regular sized cupcake tin with paper liners and they both come out nice and clean when you try to take of the liners after baking. I still wound up with extra crust mix even after making the 6 full-size cupcakes. You could probably get another 12 mini-cupcakes if you wanted to stick with the bites.

3. Make the filling by beating the cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. You want it to be smooth and creamy with no lumps or chunks. Fill the cupcake liners with the mixture (pretty much to the top is fine).

4. Bake for about 15 minutes. 

Yes, this is yet another side note: Mine probably should have baked for a bit longer, maybe because I'm higher altitude? I also left the full sized cupcakes in for about 20 minutes. You can start to see the edges turning a nice golden color when they are ready to be taken out.

5. Let them cool completely then top them with some pie filling. 

64. Go swimming once a month (16/29)

I didn't get any pictures this time around, but E took C swimming Tuesday night while I was in my prenatal yoga class. C goes swimming every Tuesday and Thursday at daycare so this was actually his second time in the pool that day. The poor boy only lasted 45 minutes in the pool then came home and totally crashed. He couldn't even keep his eyes open while we were tucking him in for the night!

A Gourmet of Babies

24. Take a walking tour of Denver

Last year I bought a Groupon for Denver Gourmet Tours with this list item in mind. After procrastinating for a whole year and waiting until the Groupon was set to expire, I finally booked E and I our tour. At 9 months pregnant. And it was freezing and snowing and icy. Maybe that will teach me to procrastinate! We chose to do the Gourmet Taste of Denver tour (mostly because our options were limited due to me waiting too long to schedule us). That morning I realized I couldn't have picked a better one since I was sure to find new restaurants really close to work that I could tell my coworkers about. Naturally, I had been to 2 of the 5 places already, but I still got to try new menu items so I'm glad they were on the list.

You may remember that I did a blog post about a new and interesting food item that I tried at Biker Jim's Gourmet Hot Dogs: rattlesnake and pheasant hot dogs. Biker Jim's was the first stop on our tour. They brought out four different gourmet dogs for us to try so this was a great opportunity for me to try new flavors without committing to a whole dog and for E to finally see what all the fuss is about since I always talk about the place.

The second stop on our tour was Ignite Bar and Restaurant. We sampled their Jalapeno Deviled Eggs and their Man Candy. What is Man Candy? Man Candy is molasses and brown sugar glazed bacon that is spiced with cayenne and I'm sure other spicy seasonings. It really was like bacon candy. Except better. If you know me, you know that I don't like bacon and even I kind of liked the man candy.

We also visited Buenos Aires Pizzeria where we sampled their empanadas (E had a peppercorn steak empanada while I chose the Margherita emapanada) then went next door to their gelato shop. Mmmmmmmm, gelato.... E couldn't have the gelato, obviously, so he chose strawberry sorbet. That was by far the best sorbet I think I've ever had!

We finished our tour at Hi Rise Bakery. This was my favorite part of the tour because the owner was so freaking enthusiastic about what he does. Hi Rise serves breakfast and lunch but they mostly specialize in their bagels. The owner gave us a sampling of bagels, pesto chicken panini, and cookies. While we ate he talked about how they make their bagels, how they make their breads, what he loves about yeast ...and the list goes on. It was the way that he talked about bread rising and all of that that made it so fun to talk to him. You can tell he genuinely loves what he does and I really just wish more people could love what they do as much as he does.

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house (20/33)

I picked these up in an attempt to brighten my mood one day when I was throwing myself a pity party since all of my friends were having their January babies while I was very much NOT having mine.

Doesn't the baby's blanket just look lonely there sitting on the table with no baby to keep warm???

57. Give a gift a month (16/29)
61. Dinner/lunch date with friends once a month (16/29)

As I just mentioned above, we have several friends that were also having January babies. Our good friends S and J were one of those couples and they welcomed their little baby boy into the world on Friday bright and early in the morning. They invited us over to meet the little one so on Saturday we decided to pick up some lunch and treat them to sushi! Their little man is absolutely adorable and perfect and even let them enjoy the whole meal while he napped! What a good baby! :)

65. Go to the zoo once a month (19/33)

This morning we made our way to the zoo with our friend and her kiddos. It was a little bit busy for first thing in the morning since today is a holiday, but not actually too bad. The boys had a good time and only had a few meltdowns, mostly toward the end when they were getting tired. We actually made it about 3 hours, which may be a new record for us.

Curacao, Game Night, and a New Year's Resolution

This post will consist mostly of pictures since I am, once again, so very far behind. Maybe I will make it my New Year's Resolution to be better about my blog. Let's see how that goes once the baby arrives! Honestly though, starting today I will be SO much better about it.

6. Go on a tropical vacation

My fantastically wonderful parents got us a super early Christmas present many, many, months ago and booked us all a trip to Curacao! Curacao is one of three islands called the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) just north of Venezuela. Mid-November E, C, and I joined my parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law on our vacation and it could not have come at a better time. There is nothing better than a tropical vacation when it is nowhere near tropical outside. We rented a VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) for the seven of us with an infinity pool and the ocean right in our backyard.

Curacao is a great destination for scuba diving because the coral reefs are accessible by shore diving so you don't have to pay for transportation by boat to get to good dive spots. We are all scuba divers so naturally this was a scuba vacation. I, obviously, can not scuba dive in my current state so I missed out on that fun. However, C and I did not miss out on our water time. Every morning he woke up, drank his milk while looking at out the ocean from his beach chair on the patio, then changed into his swimsuit and went swimming. Some days we would make him get out of the pool so that he could go hang out at the beach and swim in the ocean. Other days he would just get out after an hour or so, maybe take a nap, and always get back in at least one more time that day. He was in heaven.

Therefore, I am going to say that we made up all of our missed swimming months and call us good for the rest of 2013! I mean seriously, some days he was in the water for like 6 whole hours! It was ridiculous.

61. Dinner/lunch date with friends once a month (15/29)

What is better than your friends calling you up around dinner time and spontaneously asking you to go grab dinner since they haven't seen you in a while? Not much. :) In November we had a nice dinner date with our friends and their boys at Chipotle. I really need to work on my spontaneity!

In December we made plans to go to Comedy Works (30. Go to a comedy club) with a couple E works with as a birthday celebration. We decided to go to Ted's Montana Grill for dinner beforehand. It was a wicked cold evening so we had to freeze our butts off walking downtown, but it was well worth it. The comedy club was a blast, too. I really liked the guy that we saw and had a very good time!

59. Host a board game night

I was selected by HouseParty to host a Party More with Hasbro House Party. They sent me a party kit with a bucket load of Cheetos Naturals, coupons, party crowns, and the games Funny or Die, Catch Phrase, Taboo,  and Draw Something.

Draw Something was a huge hit with kids (of course) and Catch Phrase was a favorite for the adults. They were actually all very fun games.

We all know how I love a theme party! Soooooo, the menu included Jenga cheese and crackers and some Domino brownies.

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house (18-19/33)

Sticking to the seasons....
November is full of fall colors:

What else would expect for December??

57. Give a gift a month (14-15/29)

My November gift was a gift to myself: a massage. Why? Because growing a baby is hard work and I say I deserve some pampering for it :)

December is full of gifts due to Christmas time. I really prefer making Christmas gifts if I can find something that I know someone would truly appreciate. Last year I made my mom a wine cork wreath and my cousin really liked it. This year, I decided to make her one as well! They are not difficult to make, but super time consuming. I love how it turned out! This was probably one of my favorite gifts to give this year.

65. Go to the zoo once a month (17-18/33)

Our November trip to the zoo was a date with D and Z. We thought, "Hey, let's go to the zoo on Black Friday because no one will be there because they will all be shopping!". Wrong. So wrong. It was busy first thing in the morning. Not miserably busy, but still. There should never be that many people at the zoo during the daytime in the winter. It was still fun though.

C tried swimming with the penguins

The hippo was actually out of the water!

Our December zoo trip was actually at the beginning of this week to zoo lights. We decided to go on a Monday night this year since last year we went on a weekend night and it was ridiculously packed (and seriously cold). This year was much better although it was definitely still busy.

A Post From a Slacker Blogger

Yikes... Talk about slacking off on the blogging. I swear I will get my rear end in gear and keep up with my posts a bit better. Soon. Very soon. Maybe after the baby comes...

Well, here we go:

93. Complete the 52 week home organization challenge/57. Give a gift a month

Are you ready to see something completely awesome??? As you all are aware, we are expecting our new bundle of joy at the end of January. Therefore, some big changes need to be made to our home to give us some more space. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to knock down a section of C's wall to fully open up his closet. As soon as that project was done, it was time to re-do C's room! Another fact you all should know by now is that my son is a bit of a Disney/Pixar junky. He loves all Pixar movies (and is getting into the Disney classics now) and regularly watches all of them. He obviously needed a Disney/Pixar room, right?! Welcome to C's new room!

The walls are painted a turquoise blue on the bottom to match the shelves we got at IKEA. We also got his giant big boy bed from IKEA and Monsters University bedding from BRU.

His walls are decorated with small posters from his favorite Pixar movies. My favorite is the poster of Mr. Fredrickson from Up. I made some yarn balloons to hang above the poster so it looks like he is hanging from the balloons. I am super happy with how they turned out. I am also super happy with the Wall-E curtains that I found on Amazon. I was a little worried that they wouldn't be thick enough to block out the light but the dark color does a great job of keeping the sunshine out. Plus, C loves his Wall-E and "Eva" curtains.

And, of course, the inspiration for his Pixar room: the canvas painting C's Grammy made for him for his second birthday! **We do not actually leave an electric screwdriver in C's room. I just took the picture right after E hung the painting up. :)

83. Try a new recipe every month

I have been having an awful, terrible, horrible time when it comes to food this pregnancy. More often than not, literally nothing sounds good to eat. I can spend hours and hours browsing pins on Pinterest and not find a single thing that I would even want to consider eating. That is truly heartbreaking because I really do typically love food. On that note, I hope you all appreciate these new recipes as they took a lot of good luck or motivation to try out!

The first recipe from October (I tried two new recipes in October since I missed one at the beginning of this pregnancy) was Beef Taco Pasta that I found on www.budgetbytes.com. It looked simple enough, edible, and I knew E would love this dish. I was correct on all counts. It was super easy and you can easily add different options to the dish like corn or add some sour cream to it.

The other October recipe that we tried was from Candice Kumai's Pretty Delicious cookbook. I'm sure you all missed me mentioning her in every single blog post... It is fall, and, therefore, it is Pumpkin season! So what better recipe to start fall off on the right note than Pumpkin Pie Pancakes with Apple Butter??? These were super delicious and nice and thick pancakes. The apple butter is a definite must have since the pancakes on their own are a bit dry. I highly recommend this recipe to all you pumpkin lovers out there.

And now, my favorite of the the three recipes: Caprese Garlic Bread from Two Peas and Their Pod. I was looking for something simple, light, but still full of flavor. Margherita pizza is one of my favorites and this is a pretty similar take on it. As a bonus, it was super easy to make. I failed to specify to E that I wanted him to pick up Mozzarella that I could slice so I actually used shredded Mozzarella. This recipe was a fantastic opportunity to use some of my fresh basil from my window herb garden, too! There's just something so exciting about using your home grown products in a meal. Of course, E could not enjoy the Caprese Garlic Bread with me being that he would have to leave off the cheese and he would pick off the tomatoes, so I just sliced the ciabatta bread in quarters and added pizza sauce and pepperoni, his toppings of choice (adventurous, isn't he?), and easily made a meal for him to enjoy as well.

64 . Go swimming once a month

Okay... So we are months behind with this whole monthly swimming goal. We tend to wait until the very last weekend of the month to take him and that is pretty much screwing us because he keeps getting sick... HOWEVER, I don't feel as terribly bad about it as I could since he goes swimming once a week at daycare so he is at least getting his swimming time with someone. We did manage to make it to the pool in October though and he had a lot of fun (of course he did!). He's a little fishy, going under water on his own and holding his breath.

67 . Take C to the circus

E and I took C to the Ringling Brothers Circus a few weeks ago at the Pepsi Center. C is all about animals lately and elephants are one of his favorites so we thought for sure he would love it. We were right! He had a lot of fun and it actually held his attention for pretty much the whole time. Things got a little boring for him when the acts did not involve animals, but overall he did a great job. His favorite act was the poodles jumping around and walking on their hind legs in a poodle train.

After the circus we pulled Dumbo off the movie shelf and showed it to him and we have literally watched it at least once a day every day since the circus.

61. Dinner/lunch date with friends once a month

D and I FINALLY made it up to see J's new house and to have lunch with her for her birthday! It took us entirely too long and we really need to do it WAY more often. C also had a very good time playing with his friend and all of his super cool toys. His favorite was the little ATV with a button to honk the horn that he pressed repeatedly the entire time we were there.

65. Go to the zoo once a month

~Hanging head in shame~ We are also a month behind on our zoo visits... We somehow managed to miss September so we will need to make up that trip with an extra trip one month. We also waited until the last weekend in October to make it to the zoo which just so happened to coincide with Boo at the Zoo. Bad. Idea. It was crazy busy first thing in the morning and we all know how much I love going to the zoo when it's crowded. It even started off on the right note before we even left the house. It was Boo at the Zoo so naturally we were hoping C was going to wear his Halloween costume for trick-or-treating.

Wrong. So very wrong. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with his costume. Luckily he has an entire closet of clothes that can double as costume pieces. He ended up wearing his Super Man jacket with a cape. Good enough for me. After we finally made it into the zoo after a ten minute wait at the elevator of the parking garage, we did end up having a pretty decent zoo trip. C got to see the zebras that he kept mentioning since finding out we were going to the zoo. And check out the hair on this little guy. LOVE IT.

We also got a good show at the tiger exhibit. C kept insisting that the tiger that was pacing along the edge was going to jump.

46 . Try 10 new and interesting foods

My company recently moved offices and we are now located downtown. Our very first downtown lunchtime dining experience was at Biker Jim's restaurant. Biker Jim's has an assortment of crazy flavored gourmet hot dogs. I chose this opportunity to try their Rattlesnake and Pheasant Hot Dog. The verdict? It was pretty good. It didn't really taste all that extreme, but now I can say that I've eaten rattlesnake. Plus, it really did photograph quite beautifully!

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house

Please do not fail to acknowledge my rock-star husband posing in the background for this picture.

Gołąbki, Gorillas, and a New Dresser

83. Try a new recipe every month

If you know me you know that I am Polish and grew up eating authentic Polish food made by my grandmother, my mom, and various aunts and uncles. Therefore, when I found this recipe for cabbage rolls (also known as Gołąbki in Polish) I absolutely had to make them.

The only hard part of this recipe was pulling the cabbage leaves off the head of cabbage without ripping them. I will be honest, I only managed to get two or three completely intact leaves out of twelve. But as you can see, even the ripped leaves held up very well.

Other than the cabbage leaf collecting, this recipe was super easy and pretty close to spot on with the cabbage rolls that my Polish family makes. I did use a head of regular green cabbage as opposed to the savoy cabbage that the recipe calls for. I don't know if that makes a difference in the intact cabbage leaf department. Next time I am going to have my mom teach me how to make them her way (in the oven).

Another recipe that I made was Johnsonville's Andouille Sausage Jambalaya. Many, many months ago I received a party pack from Johnsonville that contained coupons for free food items such as Johnsonville sausage, Uncle Ben's rice, canned tomato products from one of several companies, hot sauce, and so on. Basically, the box contained coupons for everything you would need to fix up a New Orleans style meal along with little recipe books for different recipes. E and my dad worked their back ends off putting up part of the privacy fence in our giant back yard a few weekends ago so I figured I might as well reward their hard work with a meal. The recipe I used is a variation of this recipe on Johnsonville's website. The recipe I used called for two jalapenos in addition to all of the ingredients in the recipe on their site. I only put one in because I was afraid it would be too hot and it was probably 100 degrees that weekend. I wish I would have put both in though because it was actually not very hot. I also did not use a dutch oven. I made the recipe in a large sauce pan on the stove. It was super easy to make and tasted great.

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house

79. Buy a new dresser

Let me start with a picture of our old dresser that E brought when he moved in with me from his parents' house.

Yes. That is the reason we needed a new dresser. The stickers kind of clashed with my room decor, ya know? So we finally got a new dresser and I really think it fits our room a lot better. :)

65. Go to the zoo once a month

C and I were lucky enough to have a zoo date with my friend R and his friend B. R and I actually met at prenatal yoga when we were pregnant with C and B. The boys also now go to day care together a few days a week. So they have been buddies since before birth! It was a lovely day and we had a fantastic time. The boys had so much fun playing the drums together and watching the bears eat and play.

61. Dinner/lunch date with friends once a month

August was a super fantastic month for catching up with family and friends. Our friends S and J are due with their first child two weeks before baby 2 is due and they decided to wait to find out the gender of their child until their gender reveal party. I was so grateful to be a part of such a happy occasion and I absolutely loved how they did it! They went to Build-A-Bear and made a bear then picked out a boy outfit and a girl outfit. They had the cashier take the bear in the back and dress it up in the correct outfit then they waited until the party that night to open the box and see whether they were having a boy or a girl. (It's a boy!!)

We also went to Ohio to attend and celebrate my cousin's wedding in August so we had an entire weekend of family time. The wedding was beautiful, the weather was surprisingly perfect and even a bit cool, and the company was better than you could ask for. I love my giant crazy family and wish we could visit even more than we do!

My September lunch date was a special girl's date with A. We went to one of my favorite restaurants: Jack's. If you are ever in Arvada or live around there you should definitely stop in for some sliders because they are absolutely fantabulous!! Yep, definitely worthy of a made up word. The Chicken Parmesan sliders are my personal favorite.

57. Give a gift a month

If you have a toddler and have ever flown with one, then you know that excessive amounts of entertainment for the flight are an absolute must. I spent weeks preparing for our flight to and from Ohio. I got several ideas from Pinterest (crazy, right?).

I made C this I-Spy Travel Game using the tutorial I found on STITCHED by Crystal and I could not be happier with how it turned out, especially considering I have never attempted any kind of quilting in my life.

The game is double sided and made up of 44 different squares of fabric including some of his favorite characters like Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Sully. The point of the game is to ask him to point to a dog or point to a letter and ask him what letter it is. He's at the age where his vocabulary is expanding daily and he loves showing off what he knows and challenging himself to learn new words. This game is great for helping him recognize letters, numbers, shapes, animals, etc.

The game also rolls up nice and tight and the strap has some velcro to keep it together so you can just throw it in your bag and go.

I also made him these fabric letters using this tutorial from Chez Beeper Bebe. They were really very easy to make.

My September gift of the month was breakfast burritos from Cafe Mexico for a group of people at work. We have a bit of a food sharing co-op going on at work between a few of us that started with a coworker bringing breakfast burritos from Sonic for a group of us. Another coworker brings in exotic Asian fruits all the time for us to try (remember my post on the Longan and Rambutan?). I contributed with breakfast burritos that were a bit more mexican style than the Sonic breakfast burritos.