Best Pan-Fried Pork Chops I Ever Did Have

Ingredients:
5 boneless pork chops (thicker cut is best)
1/2 Cup Bisquik
1 tsp Seasoning Salt
1 handful croutons (your favorite flavor of course), crushed
2 eggs and MAYBE 1/4 cup milk (maybe a little less even) to make an eggwash
3 tbsp vegetable oil


Directions:
Make eggwash in a shallow bowl. Mix dry ingredients in a separate shallow bowl sifting together with a fork.


Heat oil on medium-high heat in a 12-14 inch skillet on the stovetop.


Coat the pork chop in eggwash by dipping both sides in the shallow dish in which it was prepared. Then coat both sides with the dry batter by dipping each side before placeing it in the heated oil. Repeat for all chops.


Cook on medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes on each side to brown the coating. Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook, flipping frequently for another 10-15 minutes until juices run clear.


Serve immediately.

Baby Decker: Week 10!

It seems like we just found out we're being blessed with a baby of our very own and, now, we're 10 weeks in already! 10 weeks means we're 1/4 of the way to baby! We're only 10 more weeks from finding out if we get a Lily or a Tucker! And we're less than 7 months from tangible parenthood! :)

To date, I can't complain much! Fatigue has been the worst of it combined with sleeplessness. Sounds like a pretty good combo, right? I've yet to suffer from the dreaded "morning sickness" any time of day. I have my nauseous spells and food aversions but I combat it with frequent meals and healthy snacks that are appealing to me and the baby!

Mike is enjoying this relaxed version of his wife! I do more R&R and he sees more of my face than he has in our entire three years of marriage. (Not that my face is so fun to look at right now-Thank you Hormones!) Unfortunately, you'll be able to tell I've conceded to down time if you come to the house. There's dust lingering in places it never survived a weekend before! Priorities are aligning, I guess! We're enjoying making planstoo; well, some of them. Maternity leave, daycare, & the typical headaches still have kinks to work out.

Baby names are almost decided. First names are solid and we're settling on middle name combinations now. Pretty soon this kid will have a sex and a name to go along with it. I'll be twenty weeks the week of my birthday. I'm looking forward to fnding out boy or girl as an awesome 26th birthday present!

I'm gathering book recommendations, hand-me-down maternity clothes and advice from friends and family. It makes it a bit more realistic but a true bump will certainly be a reality check. None to share yet. I'm actually down from my pre-pregnancy weight so this kid must be taking in everything I shove down my throat every couple hours! I know that trend will change as clothes are starting to fit more tightly. We'll see if I post a picture or not. . .

Feel free to pass along any recommendations you have. :)

After: Baby Gifts

March was a packed month for our house. Besides beginning a major reno project which is limited to mostly weekends, I hosted TWO baby showers! They were great fun! For shower gifts, I, of course, wanted to make sentimental homemade gifts to pass on. I wanted to do some sort of collage for each nursery but wanted it to be more dimensional than a framed scrapbook page. My friend Lindsay posted a picture of a tray she had made as a Christmas gift and I knew trays would be just the ticket for this project! Pictured below are the final products!

These were purchased as empty "artist trays" with the handles already in place for hanging. I crafted inside each box with colors that would coordinated with each baby's nursery. They each hold child-like trinkets and personal touches. Both have a poem I wrote and individualized to fit the name of each baby-to-be! Both are boys and have a jungle animal theme going on in most of their gifts and nursery decor.

Creativity, scrapbooking paper, and glue dots made these projects into the end results you see here. The little metal name plates you see on the white one are menat to be filled with a piece of cardstock with baby's birthdate, weight, time, etcetera. There is also a spot on each for handprints to be added and wallet-size photos to be posted.The dangling pieces were attached by using a small drill to create a hole in the tray and insert an eye hook for hanging. Those, the crayon, and the puffy stickers add some dimension to an otherwise 2-D project.

The end result was a fun project resulting in gifts from the heart: my favorite kind!

Technological Intimacy

Describe ten ways in which technology helps benefit your romantic relationship. Give me five and I'll be surprised. I'm shocked at how technology both increases and decreases communication. It definitely has its advantages. 

Facebook: My husband started his first lengthy conversation with me via facebook messages. I'm able to keep up with people that aren't close in proximity through facebook. I can sometimes get the quickest responses via facebook because of some people's app to their cell phone. All great advantages.

Cell phones (specifically text messaging): I text much more often than I ever imagined. It can act as a great reminder. It's a quick way to communicate when you're actually working at work and can't chat any longer than it takes you to type and read a message. It certainly makes me feel that I have more constant and instant access in case of emergency or the need to share urgent news with any one of my contacts. It's amazing for the speed of Q and A that would otherwise require phone tag!

No objections on these two being great for increasing communication, though not often intimacy. Now, I know there are ways to send messages that some might consider more intimate than "Don't forgot to drop off the utility bill". I'm not going there. . . here. There is some technology that doesn't help my relationship or intimacy at all: TV & XBox!

The few times that we agree on watching the same program, sure we end up on the same couch. However, that's more of a rarity than I ever anticipated based on the adhesive that seemed to hold us together before marriage. More often, we rejoice in the fact that we have two tvs and living spaced to divide and conquer. A sad reality that I suppose some compromise would remedy. However, there's too much compromise required to address our other technological divider.

As we speak, my husband is in the basement playing some game that sounds like it may involve racing by the humming and whining constant noise I can hear as I watch American Idol on the upstairs television. A sad truth. I have taken a couple tries at playing his shoot 'em up pointless games while he needed a partner for a level that requires two players. Guaranteed, it took us longer than he imagined and left my thumbs cramping. Even after a couple evenings of these attempts, I was no more amused or enthused to jump into such activity again. 

I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: our technology purchases have their pros and cons as most things do and I'd love to hear how you make them work for the both of you, at the same time, in the same room. Go ahead-give me your best idea and I almost promise to try it at least once.

Before: The Unmasterly Master

So, I'm posting before pictures now. I'm also guessing I'll have to re-post them when I have afters because it's likely to be a long project. Tearing down plaster, knocking out a portion of a load-bearing wall, and (fingers crossed) adding patio doors to an exterior wall makes for pretty big reno! Our master bedroom has been less than masterly from the beginning. From a closet door with a hammer as a handle to sky blue walls with construction patterned border, it wasn't exactly decorated in a masterly style. Also, it's two rooms in one. Walking through one to get to the other, it was considered two bedrooms by the previous owner. Now, the two need to be combined and spiced up!

You'll certainly agree when you see this:

The closest we have to an after shot so far:

March: in like a lion!

March has gotten a slow start if you're going by my lack of blog posts. The truth is March came in like a lion in our household! Projects and celabrations are abundant this month leaving a plethora of activity pulling me away from blogging it all!

Last Saturday, I played hostess to the first of two March baby showers. I'll get photos posted of the Bun in the Oven themes shower yet this week! Congratulations again, Cory & Crystal Ford! In two weeks, I get to do it all again for Jeff and Amy Muller with a monkey theme! Can't wait!

Plus, after we finished the guest room featured last week, we moved all of our master bedroom furniture into other areas of the house to start on the much larger renovation project of the master. My husband has fallen in love with a sledge hammer and is taking down each and every wall in the room. It's the easiest way I've ever seen to get rid of wallpaper border! I'm hoping that it's done by my birthday in June. That would be a three-month project. . . he can do it. And, if he can't do it alone, he can definitely do it with a couple weekends worth of help from his dad. Have you seen these two in action? :) Wish us luck!