Welcome Baby Olivia

Olivia Luanne Cornelius was born to John and Michelle Cornelius on February 1, 2012 at 10:35 AM weighing 7 lbs 14 oz and 19 inches long at UW Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington. 

Maternity Pictures January 2012

My amazing cousin Katie Karr was willing to take some photos of John and I to remember some of the joys of pregnancy with our first child. Here are what we considered the best, although there were so many to choose from!

 

 

Obviously we are partial to black and white photos, and I had fun using Photoshop to make them that way! We are very excited to meet our little bundle of joy in the next month or so. These pictures were taken when I was 36 weeks pregnant.

Wilton Cake Decorating

For the month of May 2011, each Tuesday I went to a cake decorating class: 

Wilton's Gumpaste and Fondant Course. 

It was super fun, and I went with my friend Emily Robison. We learned how to manipulate and handle fondant and gumpaste, make several different kinds of flowers and for our final class, we each made our very own cake covered in fondant! I was very excited and really enjoyed going to class each week. It's a skill that I know I'll use a lot in the future, since I LOVE the look of fondant and I wasn't so great at all of the buttercream flowers and such. Here are some pictures of my work.

These are the flowers we learned to make, a lily, carnation, daisy, rose and mum. My favorites were the lillies and the daisies. 

 

This was my final cake, which ended up being John's birthday cake since his birthday is this month, it was just a few weeks late!

Dinner Calendar

I've had some questions about what I use for a dinner calendar, and this is what mine looks like:

As you can see, I usually follow a template, a certain kind of food on a certain night. It's obvious we eat Mexican food A LOT (it's my favorite!), usually on Tuesdays, and Pasta Night is Thursdays. It just helps me pick recipes to make sure we're not eating the same thing ALL the time, although there are some favorites that come up pretty often. This is my no means set in stone, we certainly don't eat every single thing specified on every single day. You'll notice that there are no days that say "Eat Out" or something like that, and we usually eat out once a week or so. 

There is a lot of room for flexibility, and we always have leftovers, sometimes a meal will get knocked down simply because we don't feel like eating it that night. The only 2 consistent things on this calendar that are almost 100% of the time set in stone, are Sunday meals (I use the crock pot pretty much EVERY Sunday) and Monday night Soup Night. This is something that we put into place because a can of soup is less than a buck and in an effort to consistently save money (and to have enough money to eat out once a week) we eat canned soup. John LOVES this because he's a major soup eater, but me, not so much. Usually my soup is Top Ramen or a can of Chili. John has never turned a soup down, and when I don't feel like cooking he'll more often than not say "Soup Night?" with a hopeful little-kid expression on his face.

Anyway, most of our meals have several shelf-stable ingredients in them that I buy in bulk at case-lot sales or at Costco, so side dishes and special dinners get thrown in based on what's on sale that particular week at the grocery store. I usually get to Costco about once every 2-3 months and Winco once a month after I've made my calendar and have a basic list to shop for. Then we'll just stop by the local grocery store when we need a few fresh things, usually milk (I only cook with powdered milk, we don't actually drink it) and fresh fruit.

Taking half an hour once a month to plan ahead, then going to the store as few times as possible in a month definitely saves us time and money. One of my favorite things to do is grocery shop, and I LOVE a good sale... it's hard for me to say no. This way I'm comfortable going Costco with a list, and NOT dropping a small fortune on bulk items (we've all spent a good $300 at least once in our lives at the magical world of sample ladies...) , and gives me a game-plan each week (I don't spend 20 minutes every day trying to think about what we are going to eat, then having to run to the store to buy things we don't have to prepare it).

PS - John still wants another plug for Soup Night!

Recipe: Taco Soup

 Taco Soup

Ingredients:

2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 cans pinto beans (1 cup dry beans soaked overnight)

2 cans corn, un-drained

3 cans diced tomatoes with chilies, undrained

1 packet taco seasoning

1 packet ranch seasoning

1 pound ground beef or turkey, browned and drained

shredded cheese, green onions & sour cream for garnish

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in crockpot, cover and cook on low 8-10 hours, or high for 4-5. The longer the better!

The Verdict:

I didn't put enough water over my beans when they were soaking, so they took longer to cook the next day than they should have, but 9 hours in, they were perfect! Because my cans of tomatoes had really hot chilies in them, I only put in half of the taco seasoning, and it was perfectly spicy for my taste. This made a HUGE batch of soup, probably could feed 6-8 people with large portions. I ended up freezing 2/3 of it for another day. It was so yummy, and a great way for us to add some beans into our diets. The beef gave it a good flavor, but I could see using a can of chicken instead for a completely shelf-stable meal. I've made this several times before with just using canned beans and it's one of our favorite meals, especially on Sundays in the crock, ready for when guests come to eat after church! (PS it's hard to wait the whole time because it makes the house smell so delicious! but it really is like chili, the longer it cooks in the crock, the better it tastes!) Even people who don't like beans that much, have said they enjoyed this soup.

Food Storage Spotlight: Dry Pinto Beans

I was trying to find a good recipe that I knew we already liked that used canned beans, to try to use dry beans. I've had a #10 can of pinto beans in my pantry for over a year that I used once on a test-batch that failed miserably. I just don't know how to cook beans. After a lot of research online, I decided to give it another go, only using a little bit of dry beans, just in case it didn't turn out again, the meal would still be salvageable. Luckily, this one turned out great! 

It is recommended that you eat beans 3 times a week, and I have found it to be a great source of protein, especially combined with some rice or whole-wheat rolls. It makes sense to keep these on hand, especially when we can't always afford to have meat on the table, because it is SO inexpensive! It does take a little prep-work (which is why I use a dinner calendar as a rough outline each month of what we're going to eat-it helps with remembering what to thaw in the fridge and what to pull out the night before) but in my opinion it is totally worth it! Dry beans aren't so scary anymore, and with more practice I think we'll be eating them a lot more often now instead of canned beans. (Not that there's anything wrong with canned beans, I still keep them in my pantry!)

California Trip 2009 - Day 9

Friday July  31, 2009

Today John and I went to John's sister Jeanne's house in Redondo Beach, California.  There we met up with Jeanne and Tom Hansen, Alicia and Stephen Nielson, along with their son Ben, Heather Hansen, Michelle Hansen and her boyfriend Matt, and Bill Cornelius came up to have dinner with us! It was so fun to get to see everyone and hang out for a couple of hours. Alicia had to go to work so we only just saw her for a moment, but we had yummy hamburgers for dinner with deviled eggs (Michelle's favorite!) and root beer floats!

Jeanne's house was about 45 minutes away from our condo in Anaheim, and we didn't go to their house until the afternoon because everyone was working. Before we headed out, we went to Disneyland again for a couple of hours just to make sure we didn't miss anything!

Here is cute little Ben Nielson, Alicia and Stephen's oldest son. 

This is Bill Cornelius with Ben.

The siblings: John Cornelius, Jeanne Hansen, and Bill Cornelius

 Almost the whole gang, Bill, Michelle, Heather, Tom, 

Michelle, John and Jeanne.

John and Michelle at Bear Mountain in Disneyland

California Trip 2009 - Day 8

Thursday July 30th, 2009

Today we spend the day in San Diego, California. It was about an hour's drive from our condo in Anaheim, and we had to make a pit stop at a rest stop on the freeway south because I really had to go to the bathroom! I know, I couldn't even make it an hour, silly me! Anyway, we had two major activities today:

1 San Diego Wild Animal Park
2 Cozy Quilt Shop

My favorite animal in the park was the white goose that is standing like he thinks he's a flamingo in the lower left of this picture. I just thought it was so funny and decided he deserved to be my favorite!

Here are Doug and Carol King being silly at the entrance to the park.

While I was looking at the flamingos, Dad and John had fun hopping from lily pads, who knew kid's toys were so fun!

If you wanted to spend some extra money, you could buy a ticket to ride in this GIANT balloon thingy. There was no way you'd get me up that high, it takes you WAY up so you can see the whole park. Mind you there are acres and acres of land reserved for all of the animals.

We were waiting under a covered area that had misters (thank goodness because it was SO hot that day, it helped to keep us at least a little cool) and we studied the map of the park waiting for the tram to take us around the reserve and see all the animals... note to self, don't go in the heat of the day when all the animals are sleeping and make sure to bring a super zoom lens for your cameras! Mom was obviously not amused that I was taking their picture!

We got to see lots of animals on the tram ride, Mom and John's favorites were the giraffes. There were actually quite a few in the park! Dad's favorite animals were the lions right at the end of the tram ride, you couldn't see them from the walkway, only inside the tram because they were behind some trees. I wasn't quite quick enough to get a picture of them. Dad liked that they looked as though they were not caged, because there were trenches around them.

I always love a good petting zoo, and the park had a little area where there were some deer just hanging out in the shade. I got some food out of the little dispenser and got to hand-feed them some treats!

There was a new area in the park called DINO MOUNTAIN where they had these life-sized animatronic dinosaurs. They were pretty cool, they moved and made noises and everything. A lot of little kids were totally freaked out, but you could tell the older ones really enjoyed looking at them and seeing how big they all were.

This park is so beautiful and I could have spent several days there, but we only had half of a day. Next time I am definitely going to take 2 days to do the WHOLE park. There is a LOT of walking, nothing too tough, but in the heat of the day you definitely need to take ice water bottles with you. You can take in any food or drink into the park, but they had lots of good food inside too!

Like I said, lots of walking, and by about 2 we were all pretty hot and ready to head out to the next stop: Cozy Quilt Shop!

I didn't take a single picture of the store or anything, and I'm kicking myself for it! We actually met the owner of the store Daniela Stout and when she found out that we were from out of town, she gave us some free patterns for taking the time to come visit her store! She was so nice, this was the store that the 2 1/2 strips, or the Stripper's Club originally began. If you're into sewing and quilting, you know what that means! If you ever go to San Diego, make sure to stop by the Cozy Quilt Shop! They'll welcome you with open arms!