DIY Raised Garden Bed

I've been pretty busy around here with various life events and I've, regrettably, neglected my posts here. Between work, a preschool graduation (ah!) and prep work for my first garden, I've become a tad behind in pretty much everything lately. Things have seemed like they've been in fast-forward around here and I just need to chill. But, when you're a stay at home/work-aholic, it's hard to take a breather...

So what do I do when I need some down time? Well, usually cook. But this time I decided the down time for yesterday (while my husband is still on vacation) would be setting up a garden. I've been wanting one for a few years now and have always just put it off. This year though, there is motivation. And I'm determined to make it awesome.

The Ultimate Holiday Entertaining Check List and Guide

This past week, I was working on a new holiday email newsletter for a client and I thought I'd share some of the content on here. I like to include tips and tricks in every email and this particular one was holiday-related. Since the rest of the email focused on renting equipment for holiday parties, I thought I'd include a check list for entertaining. After some research, I ended up with is probably the most ultimate list ever. I dare you to find one list that includes more than this one does! Well, I'd like to believe that I included everything anyone could possibly think of, but there may be something I missed. If so, let me know!

Please add your own hints, tips, experiences to the comments so this can be the absolute best source for holiday entertaining!

Time For A Limey Change

Pinch of Lime will be getting a makeover soon!

As time goes on, people change. I am one of those people. Being a designer brings out change in me in terms of the way I do things and the way I look at things. When I look at my blog, it just doesn't seem to reflect my style anymore. I am constantly changing how I design things so this blog as become one of my projects at the moment. I'm sure I'm stressing a bit too much about it, but that's what I do. It just needs to reflect me a little better and what I have now is a little to...out-dated. So I'm going to revamp my logo and blog to a sleeker format. I'll be keeping the same color theme since, well, that's my thing, but the rest will look completely different. New logo, new icon, new layout...yep, it will all be new. But rest assured that my style of cooking and the food you've been seeing will stay the same.

And as always, I'm happy to take suggestions for food to make or things to write about.

Got questions? Fire away!

Got any advice? Send it along!

Keep an eye out for the new look to be unveiled in the next couple weeks. And from the bottom of my heart, thanks for being there to read stories about my life and my food!

Holey Shirts!

I've recently made a discovery. And this is quite a big one that I'm happy to say made me feel a little better, but unfortunately didn't solved the problem. What's the discovery? I'm not alone when it comes to holes in my shirts. I'm not talking about a hole from a shirt that has been worn down over many, many years, I'm talking about these annoying, tiny holes that appear in the front of just about every shirt I own. The holes are right in the front, above my belly button. It's at least one hole but I have shirts that have five or six. The holes are really small and all centralized in the same area. It's really quite strange.

I came across the fact that I'm not the only woman suffering from this mystery by my Google search. I had finally had enough. I looked down at my shirt a few hours ago - my new Chicago Bears shirt that I had only worn once before - and saw a tiny little hole. I was livid. Why does this keep happening? And does it have to happen to my favorite shirts? Can't it just happen to the old ones that I don't care about?

The 3rd Birthday Bash

My son turned the big '3' a couple weeks ago and I still can't believe it. I'm also surprisingly taking it much better than I did when he turned 2. He was never your typical 2 year old so I'm wondering if the terrible twos are still coming. It's just one of the perks of being a parent, right? That and having a birthday party every year...or in our case two with a third that still hasn't happened yet.

The Work/Life Balance: Does It Exist?

My friend. My enemy.

I've been going a little crazy on the business side of life lately. My design business is picking up which is fantastic, but some of the other aspects in my life have been neglected a bit. I'm not a fan of that, but it just has to happen. Work has pretty much taken over this past month and it's been hard on my personal life as well as those around me...specifically my little guy.

Pinch Of Lime is on Facebook!

To spread the lime a little further, I set up a Facebook page. Stop by and check it out when you have a chance. I'll be talking about food, life, design and showcasing my Art Posters and Kid's Room Decor. You can see a thread of recent posts on the right side of each page of this blog or you can visit www.facebook.com/pinchoflime.

I'm looking forward to your comments!

Halloween and Pumpkin Seeds

We had a pretty good Halloween this year. The holiday started off by going to the local pumpkin patch and picking out a great pumpkin for carving. This happens to be one of my favorite parts about Halloween because I get to be artistic using a different medium than I'm used to. My son wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin this year (what 2 year old doesn't want to dig in a pumpkin!?) so I just took over the project and created a pretty nifty carving out of it.

My perfect pumpkin

Visiting the Apple Orchard

The beautiful scenery along the road.

A couple weeks ago, we made a visit to the apple orchard. This wasn't an ordinary, run-of-the-mill orchard though, it was an actual orchard owned by family. My mother-in-law's cousin has this amazingly, beautiful land in Michigan and every year, they invite the entire family for a day of picking.

Cookie Cookbook for Cancer

There are a few blogs I follow that inspire me in cooking and everyday life. I happened to check one of them out today and the post was one that needed to be shared.

The post from Recipegirl.com on September 30th was about chocolate chip bars from a bake sale cookbook. Now, this isn't just an ordinary bake sale cookbook, it's actually for a cause...for something more than your typical fundraiser events. These chocolate chip bars come from the cookbook titled, "Cookies For Kids Cancer: Best Bake Sale Cookbook."

Recipegirl's post brought me to her son's blog. Recipeboy.com featured another recipe from this cookbook called "Prince Liam's Peanut Butter Cookies." (This is the part that tugged at my heart strings) These cookies were made for a little boy named Liam who was diagnosed with pediatric cancer when he was just 2 1/2 years old. His mom held bake sales to raise money to find a cure.

When I became a mom, I started looking at the world differently and it will never look the same as it did before I had my son. When I hear of diseases, ailments, conditions, etc. that affect children, it breaks my heart. I have no idea why something like this would happen to such a little guy, but my heart goes out to his family and anyone who ever has to go through something like this.

If you're interested in checking out this cookbook or becoming involved in the cause, visit www.CookiesForKidsCancer.org.

(Recipegirl.com and Recipeboy.com will be giving away 3 of these cookbooks to raise awareness for this charity. If you'd like to be entered in their contest, visit each of their blogs for more information.)

Fantastically Fun Finger Paint

I made my very first batch of homemade finger paint this morning. It was pretty easy to make and it was even more fun to use! I first got the idea of making my own from a friend who makes her own for her 1 year old to use. It's easy on the budget and you don't have to worry about your kid having a little taste because it's all natural ingredients that are non-toxic and used in everyday cooking.

Before I planned on cooking up the mixture, I did a little research and looked at some recipes on some sites throughout the web. They were pretty standard with some calling for cornstarch and water while others called for flour and water. I wasn't keen on the mixtures that just had cornstarch and water because it seemed like it would be way too clear when all was finished. The flour/water combination, on the other hand, seemed like it would have too much of a glue consistency and be too opaque. I decided to come up with my own recipe using cornstarch AND flour so I could have the best of both worlds.

A Little Break From Technology

It's been a rough few days over here. There was a huge AT&T phone outage in our area and we lost our internet service Tuesday night. You may be thinking that this is really no big deal, but when you come to rely on something every day, it's hard to be without. This is especially true in my line of work. I work from home and spend about 75% of my day online for work. I've also been finishing up developing two websites and updating another so it was pretty much impossible for me to get anything done. I know I should have embraced this opportunity and taken some 'me' time to relax, but the stress of not having the internet made that very difficult.

What was a girl to do? Well, this girl had to improvise. Wednesday was spent in meetings and running around so it was an off-site work day. Yesterday, I tried that whole 'I can't work so I might as well take a vacation day' thing. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my son and I'm glad I did. I want to have that quality time before he grows up and wants nothing to do with me. There were moments of frustration and anxiety over not being able to meet deadlines, but I survived and had a pretty good day. We went to the park, played with trains, put together a puzzle, and went to visit his aunt and my parents. Today was a little different though. I couldn't go another day without getting some work done so I had to relocate to another location that did have internet. Back to the folks it was. Thank goodness they live nearby so I could mooch off their network! By the time I got home around 5, our internet was up and running again. I was able to finish up some things tonight and I think I'll be able to breathe and relax over the weekend now.

This whole outage fiasco got me thinking. I'm going to try to limit my time in front of and around technology. It will be hard because of work, but my son is only 2 and a half so I want to try to spend as much time with him as I can. When he's not with a sitter, I'll save most of my work and blogging for after he goes to bed. And I'll also try to take a night off here and there to spend some time with my husband. Yes, that might mean a movie night sometimes, but at least we'll be together without computers in front of our faces. And maybe we'll even whip out monopoly ever once in awhile. I think it's time to realize that life is too short to rely so much on the laptops and TVs of the world.

A Fluffy Piece of Inspiration

As an artist and designer, I find inspiration everywhere I look. I can appreciate the artistry and hard work that goes into pretty much any form of art. The piece of art can be anything from macaroni noodles stuck to a piece of paper with glue to an elaborate painting hanging in the finest museum. It can also be a hand-crafted wooden table or even something as simple as a cupcake.

The popular tiny cake was the highlight today's adventure. I was at a bridal shower and the sister of the bride-to-be made some of the cutest (and tastiest) cupcakes I've ever seen.

Doctor's Orders

I feel like I got in trouble today. My son had his 2 and a half year check-up earlier and everything was tip-top as usual. He's a great kid and we're so lucky that he's healthy and always gets the A+ from the doctor, but my husband and I were told that we need to do a couple things.

The first thing the doctor wants us to do involves milk. My son loves milk. No, that doesn't quite cut it...he LOVES it with a bazillion capital letters times a million. It's become his routine to have a little bit of chocolate milk when he wakes up, a little plain milk around naptime, and little more plain milk after dinner. Because he's been so picky with eating, the doctor wants us to cut milk down to 1 cup per day. I realize now, after it's been five hours since his appointment, that the doctor probably thinks we're giving him more than we actually are, but I'm willing to comply if it means he'll eat better. A kid can only eat so much pizza, waffles and fruit, right? The outcome of this little experiment remains to be seen, but I'm willing to bet that cutting out one glass of milk won't make much difference because, well, I do have a two year old after all!