what's for dinner tonight {brown butter gnocchi with spinach and pinenuts}.

my mom emailed me this recipe a couple of years ago from "cooking light" and i have to say it has become nick&i's fav. we have it allllll the time. it is SUPER easy, inexpensive and--hey--it's from cooking light. can't beat that! it's also my favorite go-to dish for when we have company for dinner. it seems like you've put waaaaay more work into than you really did and everyone always wants the recipe! you *have* to try this. it is really really delish.

brown butter gnocchi with spinach and pine nuts

* 1 (16-0z) pkg of vacuum packed gnocchi
* 2 T. butter
* 2 T. pinenuts (i add a little more for extra crunch)
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 (10-oz) pkg spinach, torn (i use baby spinach, then you can skip the ole tearing step)
* 1/4 t. salt
* 1/4 t. pepper
* 1/4 c. shredded parmesan cheese

- cook gnocchi according to instructions on package, omitting salt and fat.
-heat butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. add pinenuts to the pan and cook for 3 minutes, or until butter and nuts are lightly browned. stir constantly.
-add garlic to the pan, cook one minute.
-add gnocchi and spinach to the pan, cooking one minute or until the spinach wilts. stir constantly.
-stir in salt, pepper and parmesan cheese.

if you're serving this to company, you may want to double this recipe. i do. don't worry... it will all get eaten!

i serve this with a simple salad of greens and make my own dressing: 1 T. fresh lemon juice, 1 T. olive oil, 1 t. brown sugar, a splash of balsamic vinegar. season with salt and pepper. i also pair this meal with a bagette that i've warmed in the oven with a little plate of olive oil&balsamic vinegar sprinkled with garlic salt for dipping.

PERFECT. MEAL.
make it tonight.
the end.

in my daughter's eyes.

the house is quiet tonight. bella is sleeping and nick is at football practice. my feet are up on the coffee table. back aching. eyes tired. mind already thinking of tomorrow's "to do list". ahhh the life of a mom.

*

i can't think of a time in life where i was more thankful and more filled with joy than right. now. there's something about being a mom that is changing me at the core of who i am. things that used to matter so much in life don't seem to matter anymore. things that used to not matter as much are suddenly urgently brought to my attention. some plans fade. new dreams and desires take root. i am motivated for more. so. much. more.

*

more of jesus, first and foremost. i want him to be my number one love and i want to know him--intimately and fearlessly--in a way i have never known. not the angry-disappointed-in-me-watching-my-every-move-so-he-can-squash-me god i've known before... but the god who loves me. who really loves me. a fraction of the love i feel for my daughter. which is a whole lot. who truly wants to give me exceedingly and abundantly MORE than i could ask or imagine. may he be the song of my heart, the deepest joy of my soul. this is how i want god to be in bella's eyes.

*

more of my sweet husband, secondly. i want to build up nick to bella. i want her to know what an amazing *AMAZING* man her daddy is so that she will pick a man someday as wonderful as him. i want to always keep him first in my life (second to the lord) and not just put him on the back burner because i am busy caring for a new baby. or because i am too tired. i want him to know how proud of i am the man that he is and how incredibly blessed i am to be called his wife. i want him to know that i'm more in love with him today than the day we said "i do". a love that is deeper and more passionate than ever before. i want bella to know that marriage is important, that she is not the center of our world or our family. i want her to have a picture of a godly relationship that she can hopefully one day emulate. this is how i want nick and our marriage to be in bella's eyes.

*

and finally, my daughter. my sweet sweet bella grace. i want her to know--every single day--how much i love her. i want to continue to pray over her, to commit her back over to god, to raise her in a way that she will live out the meaning of her name... beautiful grace. i want her to see in me an example of the woman she wants to be. i want to love others well. i want to serve and take care of my family and those around me. i want to be someone that encourages and inspires others... that when people leave after spending time with me they feel blessed. i want to be confident and comfortable in my own skin. i want to not talk negatively about myself when other people compliment me. i want to trust god instead of give way to fear. i want my heart to be unwaveringly content. i want to find ways to use my gifts, and be corageous and bold enough to try creating new ones. i want anything that is beautiful about me to be the radiance of jesus.

*

this is how i want to be in my daughter's eyes.

maine...the way life should be.

if you've ever driven across the border into the state of maine, you are greeted with a sign that has one simple statement: maine...the way life should be. i would have to say (although i know i'm biased) that i agree wholeheartedly with this claim. i haven't lived there since i was eighteen, but go back every summer to it's rocky coastlines, dark blue lakes hidden among the thick pine forests and seafood..the best seafood you have ever tasted. it's been especially fun to bring nick up there to see where i grew up. maine has taken on such a special meaning for the two of us as well... we got engaged in acadia national park ontop of cadillac mountain at sunrise in september of 2007. we've spent christmases there. eaten meals late at night at the old truckstop down the street from the house where i grew up. gone sledding in the snow and walking along the beaches. we've eaten a lobster roll or two and on a beautiful spring day in may of 2008 we promised to love one another for a lifetime at an old inn on lucerne lake.

this summer we were able to bring our sweet bella up to maine for her first vacation... this is the first of many summers for her filled with ice cream cones & sticky fingers. sunny days spent on the seashore accompanied by buckets and sand. lighthouses. mornings on grammy&grampy's front porch. running through the lawn barefoot. though this summer did not include any of these activities since she is only two months old, so many precious memories were made. stepping off the plane, nick got to meet his nephew jude for this first time, and gret got to meet bella; something she's been waiting since may 19 to do! jude&bella got to "play" together, which consisted of us putting them in the crib together and taking pictures as they looked at each other (ok...jude more than bella), smiled and held hands. so. sweet. gret&brian, nick&i got to go to a wine tasting on a beautiful vineyard on the coast of maine... and good wine, too. the kind you would have to watch yourself as you drink it's that good. nick and brian got to climb mt katahdin, the tallest mountain in maine where the appalachian trail actually ends. let's just say gret and i were glad when our husbands were back on level ground with the rest of us. and then we had this crazy idea of us taking our kids to york beach, where we had vacationed every summer with mom&dad and our grandparents since i was twelve years old. sounds sentimental--and maybe someday it will be--today? not so much. it was fun to go back down memory lane, but somehow it seems more attractive maybe next year when we don't have to stop every five minutes to change someone's diaper or feed whichever baby is crying at the time. nevertheless, we will never forget it.

aside from all these memories, the best part of our trip was being with family. getting to watch my mom&dad as grammy and grampy to my precious daughter is so priceless. to see bella coo and smile at my sister...to get to make my nephew laugh and screech and watch him play with his big, bright eyes, laughter and chubbiness is joy beyond measure. i don't get to be with my family often, so when i do i savor every moment and capture them all in my mind so that i will always remember these times. showing nick all the places and people that are so special to me. drinking coffee with gret in rocking chairs on mom&dad's front porch in the rain. having family dinners on the back deck. holding hands with nick along the ocean's shore. going on double dates with gret and brian. seeing my mom and dad revel in being grandparents. these are all the things that make me love going back to maine. we don't get to go there often, i soak every minute in that i can when we do. these are the moments that i hope i never forget. moments that make life the way it should be. moments that are the reason for the name of this blog...my cup truly runneth over.

sweet dreams.

i loooove decorating our home, especially when i have ideas that i can do for not much cash. so i'll try to post them on here when i do. this entry: bel's nursery.

when we found out we were having a girl, i immediately started brainstorming on ideas for bella's room. i knew exactly what i wanted the look to be... whimsical, vintage, lots of pink (of course) and NO themes or baby-ish stuff. i was spending soooo much time looking at baby bedding, and ending up severely disappointed. and then; i found it. unfortunately for me, i found it from caden lane, a beautiful designer baby bedding line that is also amazingly expensive. i also wanted lettering above her crib... which i found was also going to cost quite a bit of cash. a rocking chair was also an essential, but yet again, i couldn't find anything that was under $100. geesh. and don't even get me started on baby furniture. quite ridiculous for such a small little person. soooo... i worked hard to be creative and find ways to save but still create the nursery i wanted for our little pumpkin. here are a few of my tips:

1. ebay, ebay, ebay!

the bedding i found on http://www.cadenlane.com/ was exactly what i wanted for bella's nursery... however, it was going to cost us over $500. this meant it was absolutely a no-go. so... i decided to check out ebay. it was my lucky day. there was the beautiful caden lane bedding at a HUGE discount. when i received it in the mail, it was in perfect condition... still in the package, never even used. http://www.etsy.com/ is another awesome place to go find handmade vintage goodies (i have found some of the CUTEST baby stuff there... and my sis and i are getting stuff ready to start a cute little botique there; so stay tuned!)

2. reuse old furniture.

ALL the furniture in bella's room was stuff we already had in our house, or was given to us. her dresser and nightstand was my old bedroom set that nick and i had been using (we replaced our bedroom furniture with a great, inexpensive set from ikea... LOVE. IT.) my in laws found an old rocking chair for us that nick refinished to match... as well as a beautiful crib someone blessed us with, which nick also refinshed with the help of our wonderful friends! here's a great tip: changing tables are SUPER expensive and you'll really never be able to reuse them after your baby is no longer a baby... SO... i used my old desk (that went with the dresser and nightstand set) as a changing table! it's perfect. just get a changing table pad and there's plenty of room in the drawers to store wipes, diapers and baskets of toiletries, hair accessories and first aid items!

3. baby's name.

as i mentioned, i really wanted to hang bella's name in letters above her crib. i'd seen this done a million times and i wanted to try to do something a little bit different. first, i had to find the letters. once i started researching, i realized these suckers were selling for as much as $20 PER LETTER! so, i found this amazing website: http://www.woodenletters.net/ where you can buy unfinished wooden letters for as little as $1.75 per letter. yes, please. there is a selection of fonts, and i liked getting the letters unfinished because then i could paint them with the leftover paint from bella's pink wall so they matched perfectly. for her letters, i also found frames at goodwill... you can scour through the pictures for any size frame you want (i felt a little embarrassed buying some of the pictures that the frames carried... u-g-l-y...) then you throw away everything but the frame, spraypaint them whatever color you want and voila... you've got a new piece of artwork. i hotglued pink ribbon on each of the frames and used those to make a creative border for the letters. i have to say, i was pretty satisfied with the idea... the hard part was hanging those little buggers!

4. repurpose old accessories.

i had some old accessories laying around that worked perfectly in bella's room. an old candleholder with crystals, a vase i spraypainted to match that held branches, an old picture frame, a mirror and a lamp i had bought years ago. these worked perfectly in bella's room... since nick and i had gotten married i hadn't used these things to decorate our room since they were a bit on the girly side :) and fyi: you can transform ANYTHING with spraypaint.

5. showcase special pieces.

one of my favorite things for bella's room is a sweet little pillow that my sister's mother in law had made for her! it's a quilted pillow with her name on it in the colors of her nursery. i LOVE it! and have it in the center of her room so it's something that people see first. maybe you have a blanket that someone knit, or a family heirloom, or whatever it might be... give that piece a special place in the room that shows it off!

6. organizational help.

i love these dark brown baskets that you can find at target: http://www.target.com/ I found a few there for 9.99 a piece (originally meant to store CDs and DVDs) and they make great storage for various items. i have one on her chaging table that holds lotion, diaper cream, her bath wash, medicines, etc and her wipes. i have one on a shelf that holds toys and rattles, and then two that hold extra diapers. they make everything neat and organized while still looking good and not busting your wallet.

bella's nursery was such a fun project for me, i just thought i'd share a few things i learned along the way. i also handmade wall vases for her room... i'll give directions on how to make those in my next home decor post :)

until then...

gratitude attitude.

i must admit the past couple of weeks have been a bit tough for this little family of three. as i mentioned in my last post, our plans for childcare fell through which means consequently our plans for the next year have kind of fallen through also. never easy especially for nick&i; two people who like to have our ducks lined up neatly in a row. we try to be so smart with our $, be wise in our decisions and always have our t's crossed and our i's dotted...

but we can't control everything.

i don't know what god is trying to teach us right now in the midst of the discouragement and frusteration we are facing. we have both had our turns of being mad at god and not understanding his timing, his plans, or his provision (or seemingly lack thereof). but i hold onto that tiny thread of hope that everything will be okay. i know that god is who he said he is... and that is FAITHFUL. i read this quote this morning and it just washed me over with peace at its gentle reminder:

*

"your petitions are heard, but it is your gratitude that clears the way to my heart. with the way between us wide open, my blessings fall upon you in rich abundance. the greatest blessing is nearness to me; abundant joy and peace in my presence. practice thanking me and praising me continually throughout this day."

*

i realize that gratitude comes from life's simple things. for me, anway. like the sound of falling rain. having my precious baby girl fall asleep on my chest. the cozy warmth of my cup of coffee in the morning. date nights with my husband just sitting on our balcony, holding hands and drinking glasses of wine. a beautiful sunset painting the sky. being near the heart of jesus and feeling his sweet, peaceful presence. these are the things that make me feel *rich*. not in an earthly sense. but in an eternal one. god has been SO. INCREDIBLY. GOOD to me, how can i doubt that he will continue to be? one of my favorite songs ever (it's an oldie! don't even like cindy morgan in the least... but i LOVE the words to this song of hers) describes how i feel about life right now, or am trying to feel, in the middle of this chaos and fear:

*

"there's nothing like the warmth of a summer afternoon

waking to the sunlight, being cradled by the moon

catching fireflies at night

building castles in the sand

kissing mama's face goodnight

and holding daddy's hand.

thank you, lord. how could i ask for more?

running barefoot through the grass

a little hide and go seek

being so in love that you can hardly eat

dancing in the dark when there's no one else around

being bundled 'neath the covers

watching snow fall to the ground

thank you, lord. how could i ask for more?

so many things i thought would bring me happiness

some dreams that are realities today

such an irony the things that mean the most to me

are the memories that i've made along the way

thank you, lord. how could i ask for more?"

*

tears fall as i write these words. this is the life i've been blessed to live and continue to. this is the life that i want my sweet bella to have, and our other kids to come. is it going to be okay? yes. will we have enough to get by? yes. will god be faithful? yes. he has been and he will continue to be. and i'm pretty content to be kind of poor right now. i live with nick&bella... and they are pretty much the coolest people i have ever known. so i think i will be okay.

*

thank you, jesus, for ALL you have given me. i am *beyond* blessed.

what's for dinner tonight {shrimp tacos}.

nick&i love to eat healthy and i always have to be creative to keep this something that is not only good for us, but enjoyable. we love eating seafood too, so i created this recipe for shrimp tacos... i took part of a recipe on allrecipes.com (my fav cooking companion) and then modified it for us. i don't usually really measure when i create things in the kitchen... i go by what tastes good and usually lose track of how much of what i put in... but here is my best "recipe" for this creation.

shrimp tacos

*20 raw medium size shrimp, peeled and devined

*1 t. + a few sprinkles cumin

*garlic salt

*cooking spray

*2 c. shredded cabbage or coleslaw mix

*2 T. honey

*1/3 c. fresh lime juice

*1/4 c. mayonnaise (i use the kraft reduced fat made with olive oil)

*1 avocado

*salsa

*salt and pepper to taste

*4 tortillas

- whisk together lime juice, honey, 1 t. cumin and mayo. add cabbage and coat with dressing.

- in a nonstick skillet, spray with cooking spray and put on medium to medium-high heat. sprinkle shrimp with cumin and garlic salt to taste and cook until shrimp are pink and cooked through (be careful to not overcook or else they will be chewy!)

- wet a paper towel and wrap the tortillas with paper towel. place in the microwave and cook on high for about 35 seconds, or until warmed through. place 5 shrimp in each tortilla, top with coleslaw, slices of avocado and salsa.

this is a very easy recipe and you'll have leftover coleslaw for more tacos... tilapia or other white fish works great in these as well. we buy big bags of shrimp when they are on sale at walmart. we can use them in these tacos, or with pasta and lemon and garlic, or just grilled with veggies. it's important when eating healthy to buy versatile ingredients that work well in many dishes. we serve these tacos with a green salad with tomatoes and bell peppers. but you can also serve with rice and black beans or any other healthy side dish of your choice.

enjoy!

a mustard seed.

so having a baby has taught me a lot lately about life. i've learned how to manage soothing a crying newborn while using my free hand to do laundry and dishes. i've figured out how to keep the bouncer seat, swing and swaddle in a constant rotation. i've even researched things like baby gas. who knew it would be so explosive? what i didn't know is how much i would learn on a daily basis about the lord as my provider, as nick&i have taken on that role for our sweet bella.

i tend to worry. it's not a secret. i don't try to hide it because it's me. i'm trying to work on it and the lord has given me some victory but i'm just going to lay that out there from the beginning. if you know me well, this is no surprise. i remember periods of sleeplessness when i was pregnant just wondering how everything would work out once this baby entered our lives. would we have everything we needed? what about bottles or carseats or the million little dresses that i had seen at target the other day that she just HAD to have? how would finances work? and what about childcare? and would i be able to stay home a few days a week to be with her and still be able to pursue what god was leading me to do? yes. this was the constant audio tape running through my mind between bathroom breaks at 4 am as i laid awake in bed, trying to get comfortable with a watermelon protruding out of my shirt. ahhhh, pregnancy.

one day i was in the kitchen thinking about all of these things when i leaned against the counter and propped up my filled-with-worries-little head on my elbows right infront of our spice rack. don't you just love it when the lord speaks to you? when *BAM* you know there's a little something that he gives you to speak into your craziness at that moment? well this particular evening it was the little jar of mustard seeds in our spice rack. crazy, i know but as my eye caught that container immediately i remembered the verse in matthew "if you have faith even as small as a mustard seed..."

there are many times when bella is crying and flailing away (you'd think i never feed my child by the looks of her sometimes) that i catch myself saying to her "bella... calm down, sweetie. do you think that mama's not going to feed you?" the first time i said that i did a mental double take. hmmm. i think the lord says that to me alot. "megan... calm down. do you think i'm not going to take care of you?"

right now so much seems to be up in the air in our lives. nick&i had the "perfect" little plan for once bella entered the scene. just a couple of weeks ago, that plan burst like a balloon when pricked by a needle. the daycare we were going to send bella to a couple days a week called nick to inform us that they were closing and thus not able to fulfill their role in our ever-so-thought-out strategy. now, we find ourselves at a loss and not quite sure what the next months hold for us financially or many other ways. it is scary especially for this worrisome girl, but i know somehow it will all be okay. i don't know how the picture will look, but i know god does. he's the photographer, actually. and i'm trying to make that enough for me.

as i look at my precious daughter, i can't help but *want* to provide for her. i love getting to meet her needs (okay, okay... i maybe don't love that 4 am diaper change but you get the picture). it's just second nature for my mama-heart. i know it's the same way with god. it's not always easy to trust him. it's not always fun. he doesn't always provide for our wants but he always provides for our NEEDS. i get discouraged sometimes when i don't know and can't see how everything will work out. but i guess that's trust. it's faith. faith that god will pull through. and it's a good thing to know that we only need to have faith the size of a mustard seed because sometimes that's just all we have. thanks, god, for taking it easy on us and for being so patient. because those little buggers are pretty tiny.