Our Spare Room/Future Nursery

I have been putting ideas away for our nursery for a few weeks now and trying to figure out how to transform this:

Apollo says Hi!

Into something more adorable and child friendly. Please ignore the hideous blue carpets - those will be replaced with something more neutral in the coming months.

I have a few things that I really like - for a boy I adore this set:

We're leaning towards getting dark wood furniture so I'm not really sure if this will work or not with that. We also won't have half white-half some other color wall - it'll be all one color but I'm not sure what color yet.

For a girl I'm a little torn because there are three sets that I really like, first this one:

I think it's adorable and it matches fantastically with the dark wood furniture we're thinking about. I doubt I'll paint the tree thing but I'll give it a shot first. Unless, of course, I can find a wall decal.

Then there are these 2 sets that my friend K found for me:

All are equally adorable for a girl. I wouldn't do a pink wall though - I generally dislike pink but it can be done tastefully. We'd emphasize the green or yellow in here to tone down the pink. But I can't decide which I like the best because they are all fantastic.

This is about as far as I've gotten on decorating our nursery for our hypothetical child. I haven't bought anything yet because well, that would be dumb and further fuel my baby fever. Also it doesn't make any sense to buy anything until we know if we are having a boy or a girl and we can't find that out until I'm well into a pregnancy. So obviously I need to get pregnant first.

So any ideas or suggestions for how to turn that ugly room into something adorable?

Cooking with Rachel

Last night I decided to make a new recipe that I stole from my friend Katie. You can find her blog here. She has some fantastic recipes that I plan to also steal but lets do one thing at a time shall we?

Okay so I made this glorious dish called Mustard Baked Chicken - I was a little nervous at first as usual when I try something new out. But I am glad to say that the end result turned out delicious.

For some reason this picture is rotated and I unfortunately don't know how to fix it but you get the idea anyway.


Mustard Baked Chicken
Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, skin and visible fat removed
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pasta shells or rotini
3 tbsp Promise Light spread (or other lowfat margarine/butter), melted
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 tbsp Splenda Brown Sugar Blend (or 1 1/2 tbsp regular brown sugar)
2/3 tsp paprika
Poppyseeds
Olive oil
Olive oil cooking spray
Fresh ground sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray bottom of 9x13 glass baking dish with olive oil cooking spray and set aside.

2. In a small mixing bowl, mix margarine, mustard, lemon juice, Splenda, and paprika until mixture is smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix.

3. Place chicken breasts in baking dish and brush marinade generously on top of each breast with a brush. Set aside marinade. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

4. After 15 minutes, remove dish from oven and flip chicken breasts. Brush other side generously with marinade and sprinkle each breast with poppyseeds. Set aside remaining marinade. Return to oven and bake for 15 more minutes.

5. Bring a pot of water seasoned with olive oil and sea salt to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Remove from heat and drain.

6. Spray bottom of skillet or stirfry pan with olive oil cooking spray and warm over medium heat. Add pasta and remaining marinade and mix well, until pasta is well-coated. Remove from heat and plate pasta evenly with chicken breasts. Top with shredded mozzerella (if so desired) and serve immediately. Serves 2.

Why, hello there!

Hi! You found me! Welcome.

My name is Rachel and I am brand spanking new to blogging. This seemed like an ideal way to get out my thoughts and ramblings without annoying my husband.

So a little about me - I am in my mid-twenties and newly married (OMG almost a year already!) and thinking about kids in the very near future. I live in Texas and I am a college graduate but am currently working a crappy retail job because of the economy and looking to go back to school. My husband is a fireman - he is quite sexy.

Here's a picture of us when we went to Niagara Falls

And if you couldn't tell already I have a really bad case of baby fever. There may be a lot of posts about planning my imaginary spawn's nursery or my fears about pregnancy and childbirth. If you don't want to read about that then perhaps this isn't the right blog for you. There will likely be a lot of posts with my opinions on certain matters or just general things going on in my life. And of my baking and cooking experiments. I want to venture out more and I plan to share this experience with the internet.

I hope that I can keep this blog up and running but I make no promises. It may be a great success. It may crash and burn but, gosh darnit I'm going to try!

I welcome any comments and recipes you think I should try.