I am so sad. I was SO excited to get out in the yard this weekend to plant flowers, but according to the weather forecast it doesn’t look like that will be happening. We’ll probably spend our weekend on the couch being lazy.

As I’m sure lots of women who’ve experienced a c-section know, it really messes up your stomach. I don’t know the science behind it, but for some reason the area above my incision just didn’t bounce back. I don’t even know if reducing belly fat would help because it actually feels like loose skin.

It sucks, but it’s not something that truly gets me down on myself. Maybe in another year it will bother me more if I haven’t found some magical cure, but for now I’m wearing my prepregnancy jeans and feeling awesome about myself. Vernon thinks I’m just beautiful and when I speak negatively of myself (usually just joking) he makes sure I know he thinks differently.

I think I’ll look into some skin firming lotion and see if it helps.

A few weeks ago, my cousin introduced me to IMP. You can choose a package of your interest and they will send you a welcome kit containing a binder, cards to fill it with, and a free gift. It is completely free of charge. I chose the Great American Recipes collection because even though I’m not the best and I don’t cook ALL the time, I do love to cook and I love trying new recipes.

I was expecting the package to take at least 3 weeks to get to me so when it showed up a week later, I’d honestly forgotten all about it. The special gift was a set of kitchen knives that we were desperately in need of. How is it that steak knives disappear, anyway? I really have no clue how, but ours sure did!

Anyway, tonight I decided to try one of the recipes from my kit that I was dying to try, spinach stuffed shells. Because this is a published recipe and I honestly don’t know the rules of distributing such a thing, I’m not going to post the recipe. But I am going to share some photos, the pros and cons of the cooking process, and my honest opinion which is that these things are AMAZING.

Fresh out of the oven!

CONS: One of the biggest cons to this meal is that it takes quite a bit of preparation. I’m sure now that I’ve made it once I can time each step more appropriately, but from boiling the shells to stuffing them, it took at least 30 minutes to get everything set up and into the oven. I also forgot to thaw my spinach so I had to defrost it. Another very very big negative for me was the amount of dirty dishes afterwards. Our sink is literally full! (Good thing I work tomorrow, maybe Vernon will take care of it ;P)

PROS: I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to this recipe. Even though it requires a lot of preparation and plenty of pots, pans, and bowls this dish was EXTREMELY easy to make. If you can boil noodles and saute onions you are good to go. Secondly, I found this recipe to be pretty cheap to pull off. One of the things I dislike about trying something new is that usually I don’t have much of anything the recipe requires, resulting in a higher grocery bill due to one meal. The recipe only called for three ingredients I didn’t already have and probably totaled to be about six dollars. SCORE. Finally, Vernon gave my  Spinach Stuffed Shells 10 1/2 stars, 11 because he made the side salad (also delicious, although I love ranch dressing on a salad paired with tomato based pasta dishes. I try my best to avoid ranch dressing because it is so good and I tend to use too much as you will see). I really loved having this dinner because it was easy, different, and SO good.

This is not a sponsored post to promote IMP products. I have another recipe from the collection planned for this week that will determine whether or not I further my membership by purchasing more recipe cards.

Oh! And the knives are great! Definitely check this out if you are interested in treating yourself to something cheap and wonderful

We are slowly but surely making small changes here and there around the house to make it nicer each day. Our weekends have pretty much always been devoted to cleaning–Vernon and I work full time Monday through Friday and that doesn’t leave a lot of time to clean other than putting things away, doing a quick sweep of the floors, and doing the dishes. Since spring has arrived, we decided to change things up a bit, I’ll clean the inside while he mows the lawn and takes care of the weeds.

We don’t exactly have any money set aside for our new fascination with playing in the dirt or to buy anything crazy like home theater seating for our improvements. We’re doing small things that I think are making a huge difference. Today we made a trip down to the just-opened Walmart up the street. We bought a gorgeous pot for our Jade plant that hasn’t really grown much since I’ve had it. My ex-boyfriend was stupid and put it in a FISHBOWL. Needless to say, the plant isn’t gorgeous like the ones I see on the internet. I am hoping after being transfered into a bigger pot with fresh soil it will start to look better, especially with a little tender love and care from Vernon.

When I first began blogging, there weren’t many options when it came to blogging platforms or free sites that allow you to create and customize your own. Most bloggers from my generation coded everything by hand, and as a result I know HTML inside and out.

I think it’s important that even though anyone can start a blog, you can still do simple things like create a link that says “click here,” insert your own images, or even customize fonts using HTML.

To create a link, simply use (and more importantly–memorize!) this code:

<a href="url">link text</a>

Creating hyperlinks is a really easy… I hope if you didn’t already know how, you do now!

We are constantly trying to improve our home as it is the place we spend the most of our time, and it is the biggest investment in our life. Currently, our main focus is outdoors. I’ve owned the home for over three years now and this is the first time the yard is getting any attention other than routine weed eating and mowing. There is one thing I am just dying to have, though, that would improve our indoors environment… a Minka Aire ceiling fan. We have two very nice ceiling fans in our “den” that is now pretty much a laundry room with some (very neglected) work out equipment. They are great fans but are the ONLY ones in the house.

Growing up I had a ceiling fan in my bedroom and I had it on 24/7. There’s something about the white noise from a fan that helps me sleep better.