Southwestern Chopped Salad

I pinned this a couple weeks ago and this weekend decided to make it! Of course my original pin did not take me to anything (ugh!) but I just googled it and found the same version here! There are plenty other links if you google it but this one looked the most like the pin I pinned. I have since pinned this.

Anyway, onto the actual recipe itself!

Southwestern Chopped Salad
Serves a big serving bowl full.. probably 6-8 as a side salad
Salad Ingredients
2 red peppers, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
1 can of black beans, rinsed
1 can of sweet corn, drained
1 bunch of green onions, diced
1 head of iceberg lettuce (I did a mix of iceberg and romaine)
2 avocados, diced
1 cup cilantro, chopped (optional, I did not add this)

Dressing Ingredients
1/2 cup of Mayo
2/3 cup of Greek Yogurt
1 tbsp Ranch seasoning
1 tbsp Taco seasoning

Put all salad ingredients in a bowl. I omitted the avocado until serving time and since i've been bringing this for lunch, I cut the avocado right before eating and only use 1/2 per serving.

Stir together dressing ingredients and add to the salad if serving immediately. I keep it in a separate container in the fridge for individual serving type use. And I may just have to make it to completely replace ranch for salads.. taco ranch is way better! And I bought one of the small greek yogurt single serving containers, plain.. and I used half of it for this.

Anyway, it's delicious and i've had it for lunch the past two days and dinner last night so you know it must be good. I'm just hoping I don't wear it out because i'm too excited to have a salad that i love this much! And is healthy! (except for the dressing but the yogurt helps!!)

Playdate with Aunt Julia

Julia came down this past weekend (along with Jessica and Makayla, who only stayed for dinner) and we carved pumpkins, made chocolate chip cookies and played with Scarlett. Always a fun time! Here are some picture highlights!

Scarlett doesn't like to look for pictures anymore, so this was a good capture! She's probably mid-laugh!

We were going for fall themed since halloween is over. We toasted the pumpkin seeds afterward and they turned out the best I've ever made them. 400 degrees for 15ish minutes. mmm!

Scarlett :: 9 Months

Already I'm behind on these because Scarlett is 9 and a half months. The thing is, her doctor's appointment is this week, so I'll know her official weight and length. She is getting so big, I can barely take it.


Stats (approx)
Weight- 23 lbs
Height- 29"

Eats
Not much has changed since last month, still eating solids 3 times a day, still nursing a decent amount. We have let her self feed a couple of times with small chunks of stuff like avocado. This creates a mess so we don't do it too often but she's got the hang of it which is good.

Sleeps
Still the same.. she still wakes up twice. Honestly, i'd rather just feed her for five minutes than miss out on more sleep trying to train her. That may be selfish, but it's also what she wants. So it's kind of a win win. She does wake up pretty early though some mornings, so I grab her and pull her into my bed and we just roll around in bed for a while until I'm ready to get up. Going to bed is the same as well, sometimes she fights it and cries, sometimes she doesn't. At least she's consistent with being inconsistent?

Activities
She is practicing her walking more and more. She's probably a 35% of the time walker and 65% of the time crawler. She's getting better every day though and hopefully she'll be 50/50 soon. She has started to 'read' books to herself outloud and laugh at them. It is extremely adorable and if I can find the time to figure out how to upload a video of it, I will bc I take plenty of them! This month we went to a pumpkin patch with her best buddies, Harper and Tayden. They had a great time!

Other
Scarlett pushed another tooth through this month, so she now has her bottom two. She's right on track with how I teethed when I was a baby.

Christmas is coming up and i'm struggling with what to get her or what to suggest others get her (if we're asked). I keep looking at Toys R Us to see the toys and things appropriate for her age but we have so many toys already that were handed down and there's plenty more where that came from. I keep thinking about one big one but can't decide what that should be either. Not to mention her birthday is the following month. Would it be weird to just ask for money to put in her savings account? Christmas is going to be tight this year with me still working part time. We love giving gifts so cutting back on that is going to be hard.

I feel like I should have a lot more to write but my mind can't seem to think right now, so i'll just leave you with some pictures! :) And to say that Scarlett is amazing and we love her tons and tons!

I did it, i'm a consultant!

I signed up with Tastefully Simple and I am NOT looking back. I am going to take this opportunity and do as much as I can with it. For the first time, I feel like I have complete control over something and I plan to make it successful. It's obviously hard starting out, I don't want people to feel pressure to support this little business that I'm creating, but I do still want the support of my family and friends. I am getting it in some places which is great. Sometimes it's hard to see past myself and I'm working on that too.

I need to remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. I have a lot of ideas and I really need to put them to paper and get a strategy in place. This coming Saturday is my Tastefully Simple Grand Opening party! I hope more people will come out than have so far RSVP'd because I want it to be successful, but also because I want to introduce my friends and family to some delicious food and most importantly for people to have a nice time!

My husband said it best, what I want people to take away from this party is that they had a good time and think it could be easy to have a fun time like that with their friends too. I hope that can work. I want to get started with fundraisers and finding venues to sell product at and having an open house for my neighborhood and marketing to other neighborhoods/communities. I feel like I've been so busy lately that all I can do is think about it and not actually plan it out. Hopefully soon!

I'm nervous and excited about being a consultant. I'm confident that I can be successful because businesses like these are what you make them, and i'm going to make it as great as I can.

I'll be sure to post about how the launch goes! Wish me luck :)

It's November! and i'm already behind

I cannot believe it's November 1st. This year has flown by and soon it will be over.

I'm behind on a couple things already.. Scarlett's 9 month post and the background on my Tastefully Simple constultantship (i just made up that word, yes!) I will be writing posts on each of these things tonight hopefully.

This week has been filled with work it seems, despite Hurricane Sandy making it's way through on Monday and Tuesday and closing lots of businesses. I guess that's the beauty (and curse) of being able to access email from home. I am also working tomorrow, which is something I don't normally do, so I can try to get a handle on my to-do list, which is endless.. literally.

This weekend we don't have much going on, which will be very nice considering the week we just had and the upcoming week we're going to have. I do enjoy being busy though and it makes things exciting for Scarlett (and Alex too) I hope.

Maybe we'll get around to carving the pumpkins we bought a couple weeks ago! ha!!!

I will leave you with a couple of images of Scarlett's halloween costume from my iphone. The headband wouldn't stay on during the day but she was distracted enough by other things in the evening to keep it on for a couple pictures!!

Have a happy Thursday and look out for a couple more posts coming soon! Possibly a video of Scarlett laughing while reading, if I can figure out how to upload it!

Is it really Tastefully Simple??

Recently, my work life has me wondering what I'd have to do to stay home with my babe. Honestly, i've kind of always brushed off these types of direct sell businesses and never really thought i could ever possibly sell this type of stuff. But I feel like this could be an easy way to make some extra cash and potentially in the future, stay at home while still working.

This seems like an awesome company. Who doesn't like food? Who doesn't like getting together with friends... to eat food??

I've never actually been to a Tastefully Simple party so that is most definitely step one, but I wanted to get some thoughts from you all on how you feel about these types of companies, if you enjoy buying from them, what could make you want to buy more, do you feel pressure to attend these get togethers and pressure to buy something?

I want to hear it all so please let me know in the comments section!

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch

Sunday we did the first festive thing of the fall season, we hit up the local pumpkin patch with some friends! We took a hayride out to the patch, Tayden got stung by a bee on her tiny cheek (and i almost cried bc it was scary/sad) but luckily she was okay and we continued on our outing taking lots of pictures and choosing pumpkins! I wish I could've brought back lots more pumpkins from the patch but I only have so many arms so we chose a small one that Scarlett loves and rolls around the living room. :)

I mean, how cute are these kiddos? :)