I realize that I try to start every post with the word ’so’. Bad habit. Trying to break it. I’m starting with this post. That means I started this post with ’so’ and went back and deleted it. Hm. Change number one.

I’m realizing how appropriate it is to post this post on New Years Eve since it’s an evening filled with the anticipation and celebration of what is to come. The start of a whole new year, and even more-so for this year, a whole new decade. Our lives are on the brink of some large changes once more. It seems that having a baby, moving and my becoming a SAHM isn’t enough change in our lives. To add to the major life change mix, Jason recently quit his job. Recently as in the Wednesday before Christmas. We both knew this was coming for a variety of reasons and were both on board with the decision, but it still was a nerve-racking and difficult decision nonetheless. We are still processing through what this will mean for us as a family and for Jason as the main provider for our family. It is a tough process and we are learning a lot about ourselves and our marriage in the process. It really is challenging us to examine our hearts and to prayerfully and thoughtfully look at our finances. It is good for us to have some strain placed on us in this area as we really haven’t experienced it much previously. It is good to be challenged again to live with less, this time it’s income. We’re not too worried about him being unemployed for too long as he already has two offers available to him. We’re just praying through what the best option is and what honors God the most.

Through this challenging time, I decided to look back on last year’s resolutions. I realize that I succeeded in pretty much all of them. Not a bad feeling. I mean, the praying and spirituality part of the resolution is an ongoing process for the rest of my life, so I can’t really say that it’s been completed, but I do feel that I have grown over the course of 2009. There is still a lot of growing to be had. I will say that this year’s list is a little more ambitious!

• Make a full size quilt for our family.
• Continue learning more about removing chemicals from our lives.
• Sew a garment.
• Fully enjoy the time I have with Jude.
• Build up the inventory in the etsy shop.
• Learn to live with even less and become more open-handed.
• Create a few more free patterns/tutorials (the Krista apron being one of them).
• Start a square foot garden in our backyard.
• Tap in to art again. I miss sketching, painting and linoleum printing. (Maybe add some prints to the etsy shop?)
• Learn how to jar foods.
• Begin consistently prayer journaling.
• Visit the farmer’s market more frequently.
• Become more active – maybe yoga, jogging, bicycling?
• Make it a priority to spend time outside everyday.
• Continue to cook healthy meals and make even more things from scratch. (Maybe learn how to make yogurt or cheese this year?)
• Cook meals in advance (and in season) and freeze them so I spend less time in the kitchen each night and more time with family. I think this is as simple as doubling things that I make that I know we like.
• Become better at clipping coupons/saving money (focusing on purchasing items that we actually use).
• Focus on having quality date nights with Jason (even if that’s at home).

What are your resolutions this year (and you can’t just say exercising – we all say that every year!)?

Our church recently rallied together to cook a hot, holiday breakfast for the homeless. Since I couldn’t be out there in the cold with the babe, I decided I would make a bunch of hot, sticky buns for those that were going to take with them. I’m pretty fascinated with no-knead bread doughs and I saw this recipe awhile back and knew I wanted to try it. It makes quite a bit of dough, so it seemed silly to make for just me and Jason, but it wasn’t silly to use to feed as many homeless people as we could.

I made two batches of the no-knead dough and let them rise in the fridge for several days. Talk about easy – all you do is mix all of the ingredients together, cover and refrigerate. Then whenever you’re ready for it, you pull of a pinch of the dough to bake off. Pretty awesome! I rolled out and cut the sticky buns and placed them in the aluminum trays then stuck them in the freezer so I could bake them off as close to the actual feeding time as possible. I mean, I wanted them to be super fresh. I took them out of the freezer after Jude’s 6am feeding and let them thaw before sticking them in the oven. The two batches made approximately 120 sticky buns and they were dang good (I snuck a bite to make sure they were tasty)!

You just flip them over to show their caramel goodness when you take them out of the oven. Delicious and very sticky! I’m pretty sure I will be returning to this recipe if I have to do a brunch anytime in the near future. Super easy as long as you allow for a couple of days of rising in the fridge.

Recipe for No Knead Pecan Caramel Sticky Buns

My sewing machine recently kicked the bucket beyond repair. Stinks, right? I just got her in February and she did some good sewing but she was a refurbished machine. I think I’ve learned that you should not buy a refurb. Thankfully the machine is still under warranty and we’ll be contacting the seller to get all of this straightened out.

Before she died, I did a little sewing, some of which is already in the shop, and some were presents. The first bit of present sewing was a nursing cover and sling for a friend at church. The fabric is Recipe for Friendship designed for Moda by Mary Englebreit. Here is the nursing cover:

Sadly, the photo of the sling disappeared in transfer between the camera and the computer, but it was the same fabric and you’ll just have to take my word that it was very cute.

In making those items, I decided I would indeed make ‘new mama sets’ for the shop. I have three ‘new mama sets’ cut out and ready to sew up and add to the shop (hopefully very soon). The sets will consist of a nursing cover, sling, two burp rags and a bib – all in the same fabric. What do you guys think that I should call the set? Is ‘New Mama Set’ a good name? ‘New Baby/Mama Set’? I’m kinda drawing a blank on naming this.

And the one and only gift that was sewn this Christmas was a Diana Hobo that I sewed for my sister-in-law. I modified my free pattern just a little bit by top stitching the bottom to create more of a flat base instead of a rounded one. I really like this simple modification.

I have one bag in each style in the shop right now – with the bottom rounded and the bottom squared off by top stitching. I’m not sure which I like more so I’ll do both for now!

For my birthday, Jason cooked me dinner. Now, if you know anything about Jason, you know he is not comfortable in the kitchen. I do the cooking, he does the cleaning. It works out well that way! For this special occasion, he researched recipes, trying to find something relatively ‘gourmet’ while also being easy enough for him to take on. He found this recipe from Bon Appetit that seemed well within his skill set but also had such good reviews that it was guaranteed to taste delicious.

I was honestly super impressed with this recipe – it’s simple but the flavors are great together. There is a subtle heat but a sweetness from the tomatoes. And, really, the green gazpacho and the red tomatoes are quite festive! Quick and fresh recipe!

Seared Mahi-Mahi with Green Gazpacho Sauce

Merry Christmas to you all! We are in Dallas enjoying Jude’s first Christmas with friends and family. Crazy to say, but it’s actually a WHITE Christmas here in DFW.

I am amazed at how many entries there were for the giveaway – it definitely got you lurkers out of the woodwork and commenting. Thank you! As promised, I am announcing the giveaway winner for the Diana Hobo purse.

So Kristen of Lullaby Lubbock is the winner! She said:

Love the new blog!!! Sooo cute!! And I loved your post about Christmas and consumerism. Really want to be better about putting the focus on Christ and others and not stuff. And once I learn how to use a pattern I will def be buying them from you!!

Congratulations Kristen! Look for an e-mail from me to get your address!

Regardless of what some of you may think, I do try to be somewhat healthy in our everyday normal meals. It may not seem that way with what I post on the blog because sometimes I get distracted by a great new recipe (like toffee, or butterscotch sauce – to be posted about later) and my plans for healthy veer a little off course. I have found a few tasty, healthy meals lately that are not covered in butter or cream. This one is a good example of that – still creamy and delicious, but it’s from cooking light! This is a great ‘take-out at home’ meal. It came together quickly and was so much better than what you get at a take out restaurant. I used 1/4c tahini (sesame seed paste, also used in hummus) and 1/4c of peanut butter instead of 1/2c of only peanut butter. I like tahini a lot. Do save a little bit of the pasta cooking water to thin the sauce because it thickens a bit after it starts to cools down. No need for a gloppy sauce!

I served this with the recommended side salad of cucumber, tomato, onion and cilantro tossed with rice wine vinegar and sesame oil (salt and pepper too) and it was a nice cool counterpart to the somewhat spicy chicken noodles. You can always use extra Sriracha to spice things up if the recipe isn’t spicy enough for you.

Recipe for Sesame Noodles with Chicken

Wow, I am so impressed with everyone that has commented on my last post! I’ll have to remember that giveaways bring out the lurkers to comment! If you haven’t entered the giveaway yet, you still can. Go do it! And if you referred someone, make sure to come back and comment again for your second entry!

Back to some normally scheduled blogging…

It’s finally chilly in Austin. This means it’s time to start on the winter recipes – things that are hardy, stick to your ribs, nice and warm. I saw this recipe while pursuing Cooking Light’s best recipes of 2009 and it appealed to me. It’s seems like a good counter part to the Coq au Vin that I love to make (also good for winter). I used Shiner Boch beer since I know very well what it tastes like (sweet and yeasty) and knew it wouldn’t be too bitter for a sauce. I used chicken breasts since that’s what I already had around but I think it would be great with any cut of chicken. It was flavorful, tasty and stick to your ribs – exactly what I was looking for. The chicken was falling apart as I pulled it out of the pan. Mmmm. I served mine with sour cream mashed potatoes, and next time I will have some French bread too – that sauce is yummy and needs to be sopped up!

Recipe for Chicken with Dark Beer (Coq à la Bière)

Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday dear Elizab…

Oh right, the REAL purpose of this post! Well, not only is today my 27th birthday, it is also the launch of my new blog and new etsy shop! elizabethcarroll.wordpress.com will now forward to www.thinkliz.com. Those of you that have a subscription to the blog need not worry, your rss feed will be exactly the same. You don’t need to change anything! But I would love for you to stop by the site and let me know what you think of the need blog design (and please excuse any weird quirks – it’s not showing up how it was on the test site).

And the etsy shop… I’m going to start off selling some of my free pattern items and some jewelry (remember the leaf earrings/necklace set? They got such a good response from you guys that I’m putting them in the shop!) and the hopefully expand to other things. This is for those of you who don’t sew! I’ll be adding one item every day or so for awhile to get maximum exposure on their ‘new items listed’ page so please check back regularly. I’m eventually thinking of putting together gift sets for new moms with slings, nursing covers, bibs and burp rags too! Someday I hope to learn how to screen print and knit so those items may join the shop later on. I also want to start thrifting more fabric and make some adaptive reuse items… I’d love to know what you would like to see in the shop – please let me know.

And on to the real point! To celebrate all of these new things (and my birthday!), I’m giving away a Diana hobo to someone who comments on this post! The giveaway will remain open until midnight on Christmas Eve and I’ll announce the winner on Christmas day using the random number generator. Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Those of you reading on facebook, please head over to www.thinkliz.com and comment on the blog post, NOT the facebook post. I won’t be able to count comments on the facebook post – sorry! And all you blog stalkers out there (yes I’m talking to you), I am expecting you guys to show up on this one! So comment away and let me know who you are! I’m sorry to say that I can’t ship outside of the US and Canada right now. Sorry international friends!

So here’s the bag:

Pretty, right? That’s Alexander Henry’s “mocca” fabric. It could be all yours if you leave a comment on this post! And here’s what I’m going to do, refer a friend to comment on this post and I’ll give you one extra entry – just have your friend say that you referred them and then you post an additional comment telling me who you referred.

Good luck everyone!

Jeez. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll continue saying it, this is going too fast.

I’m officially losing my hair. Yay. One more great side effect of pregnancy – during it, your hair doesn’t really fall out at the same rate as your un-pregnant hair, so you have this thick great hair. Post baby (for me around 5.5 months), a bunch falls out leaving you with super fine hair. I haven’t seen so much hair on the floor since my hair was really, really long. Supposedly it will grow back . . . but dang, this kid is already causing me to lose my hair!

Jude is over 20 pounds. And he’s in 9-12 month clothes. Check the title of this post. Yes. You read correctly, he’s 6 months old. This child is ginormous! He hasn’t even started solids yet! Although I do have 24 two ounce containers in the freezer of homemade sweet potatoes, peas, apples, pears, winter squash and brown rice cereal which I can’t wait to feed him! We get to start today! Looove making baby food!

We’re starting him on the guitar early. Hehe. He already has a fascination with all things musical, especially drums. I really want to get him these wooden drums once he’s old enough. I contemplated getting him those for Christmas but really, he’s too young. Instead he’s getting one toy from us for Christmas, Sophia the Giraffe. I keep hearing that it’s a favorite teether among many babies. And we are certainly teething now – everything (and I mean everything, including the cat if he ventures too close) goes in baby’s mouth.

Still no crawling or sitting up on his own, but he’s starting to try more in both those areas. I have no problem with him not crawling right away. . . once he’s mobile I know my whole life and routine is going to change. It will certainly be time to better baby-proof the house!

Jude sleeps really well – goes down at 7:30pm-ish and wakes up around 5am to eat and then goes back to sleep until 8:30am-ish. It’s pretty nice. I think he inherited my sleeping genes, which is a good thing if you know anything about Jason’s sleeping habits. He takes two super long naps during the day and I have lots of time to clean, sew, cook or nap. My life revolves around nap time now.

It seems each month brings about new struggles with a little one. In the beginning, you’re sleep deprived and struggling just to shower and feed yourself. Then you start getting more mobile as you get a routine down and things get better. . . and now nap time. I’ve said it in past posts but I struggle with feeling jealous of Jason’s freedom to go where he wants, when he wants (disclaimer: he helps me out and lets me get out frequently, so this feeling certainly has nothing to do with him and his actions, but more with my knowing that he has the option). I spend most of my days rushing around so that I can be home for nap time because Jude is too big to nap in the cradle position in the sling. Now that he wants to go to bed for the night around 7:30pm, it’s hard to go out and do things in the evenings during the week. It feels like everything happens at 7pm and I’m having to sit out most of those things now. What do you moms out there do? I’ve tried to put him to sleep at other people’s homes but it’s all new and exciting and he doesn’t seem to want to sleep as much as stay up and be cranky. I know it’s just a season, but I don’t want to stay home all the time during the week!

There are moments when I miss my old life, working in a professional career, having the freedom to go out, travel etc. But really, when I spend time with Jude, those things don’t matter anymore. It’s a difficult job, raising a child, thankless at times. There is no vacation time, time off or sick time. You’re on call 24/7 but somehow it’s all worth it. Somedays I feel it more than others, but on most days I know that it’s the job that has the most valuable investment of my life.

So really, this was an accidental Christmas photo. Our friends Claire and Chance launched their new company WholeNine at the relaunch of our friend’s restaurant Obee’s a couple weeks ago and our other friends, Elizabeth and James of Vignette Photography, were there with a photo booth. Whew. Lots of friends! Anyways, we stepped into the photo booth for a moment and ended up with a photo that we decided to use for our Christmas cards.

I love it.There were a couple other cute ones, like these:

Check out the rest of the photos here, if you’re interested!

We tried to get a Christmas photo at home but ended up with this, which is still cute but rather ‘deer in the headlights’ from baby. He didn’t understand why Jason wasn’t behind the camera.

‘Wait, why am I looking at that black thing that’s blinking? Daddy’s right here!’

I really like trying to make candy but the results are often disastrous, messy and not as tasty as I’d like. Don’t even get me started on tempering chocolate. Ugh. Well, Deb at Smitten Kitchen did it again. We seem to have the same taste buds because I adore toffee. Heath bar with ice cream? Yes please. Shoot, I’ll eat just the ice cream CONE dipped in chocolate and rolled in heath bar. But again, who the heck knows what is really in heath bar. I don’t know that I want to know. Well it turns out that toffee is so easy to make as long as you have a candy thermometer! So this batch turned out perfect. I subbed honey for the molasses since I was using ingredients I already had in the house . . . no need to buy molasses since I had honey. I also doubled the recipe. I couldn’t stop eating it – to the point that I gave my self a bit of a stomach ache while eating the pieces that ‘weren’t quite perfect’ while breaking up the big sheet of toffee. Hehe.

Recipe for Coffee Toffee

So after making all of this toffee, I decided this would be a great holiday sweet treat for our neighbors. I saw these pyramid gifts boxes (you can download the template and instructions here) and I thought they would be perfect for wrapping up a few pieces of candy and heading over to the neighbors.

Super easy to make and perfect for small sized gifts. I was kinda lazy so I didn’t decorate the card stock I used, but I was thinking the white is reminiscent of snow. Right?

I’m pretty sure I’ll be making this toffee and these little gift boxes many, many more times!

So the other day, I saw this free pattern for a half eaten gingerbread man ornament and I just loved it! I knew I had to make one since it seemed simple enough and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get around to making our personalized Christmas stockings until AFTER Christmas when the Christmas fabric I like goes on sale. And that Christmas tree skirt I want to make? It’ll have to wait until Christmas in July.

But this guy, he’s easy. I already had all of the things I needed to make him although I did substitute white buttons over the red buttons the tutorial shows and I used normal sized rick rack instead of mini, but I still think he’s cute.

So I’m thinking this ornament making should be a yearly tradition in our home. Once Jude is old enough, I think he should be the one that decides what the ornament should be and then we’ll figure out how to make it!

So here’s Jude’s ornament for 2009. Because goodness knows that this child likes to eat and if he was eating solid foods he certainly would take some chomps out of a gingerbread man.

This is looking promising. Should I go ahead and make him a little boy chef’s apron?

The past couple of years Jason and I have been pondering what we want our Christmas to look like as we grow as a family. Now that Jude is here, we want this time of celebration to be meaningful and to create traditions that are going to foster a sense of sacrifice and giving instead of consumerism and greed. We ultimately don’t believe Christ came and died for us to buy lots of things and go in debt to celebrate his birthday. We also think he could care less if we have lots of stuff. That being said, we certainly feel the societal pressure to buy the perfect toys (especially since I’m not fond of the cheap plastic toys and sustainable wood toys tend to be a bit more pricey, but hey, that forces us to live with less, right?), to rush around making appearances at friend’s Christmas events, family Christmas events, and while none of those things are bad, sometimes we feel like we get too wrapped up in those things instead of truly embracing what Christmas could be.

Just because we live in America and Jason has a job, we are among the wealthiest in the world. We make more than a $1 a day. That’s all it takes. America spends $480 billion each year from black Friday to Christmas. $480 billion. That is an absurd amount of money. That money would end world hunger. It could end certain diseases. Now again, I don’t think buying gifts for people is inherently a bad thing – I personally LOVE figuring out gifts for people. It’s part of how I show people that I care. I think back, though, to the message in What Would Jesus Buy and how it impacted me and then my post about voting with our money. In those moments, I am sold out to the idea of shopping locally and really paying attention to what I’m buying, but realistically speaking, as time passes I let these ideas slip and I’m back where I started. . .

I think, for us, it comes down to living with less, being ok with giving less and refocusing on what we are actually buying and where it came from. I am not good at this. For short periods of time, I am, but then I cave. There are moments where I am fully ok with not getting everything I want (or giving everything I want), and then there are moments that I feel like a two year old. ‘I want it! Give it to me!’ For example, last year, Jason and I asked our family to not give us gifts and to donate money instead to World Vision or Blood:Water Mission. This was received warmly by some and questioningly by others, but I get that. It’s kinda weird in our culture to not ask for anything (and I don’t share this to ‘toot my own horn’, believe me – I am no better than anyone). But this year I feel my heart desiring things. I don’t want to not receive gifts. I want new music, I want new books, new kitchen gadgets. Again, not inherently bad, but my heart turns it from something that could be blessing into greed.

Our church right now is going through the Advent Conspiracy, so these ideas are at the front of my mind again. Replacing consumerism with compassion. We are being challenged to buy less, give less, ask for less and to give out of our abundance to buy goats for developing nations. What appeals to me most about this is that we’re not just giving handouts to people in need, but providing them with a sustainable source of food and income. Goats provide milk, cheese and yogurt – much needed nutrition, but they also provide more than one family will need, allowing them to sell the excess. And once the goats breed, they’re providing more goats for the families to sell which in turn helps other families support themselves. All of that for $75 per goat. It’s pretty genius. We are praying in how to participate in this blessing that our church is helping to heap on these people that we will never meet in this lifetime.

I guess this blog post is my pondering of what is going on in my heart right now regarding consumerism and Christmas. Again. Every year I come back to this and must revisit what state my heart is in. I want this Christmas to about more than presents. I want to enjoy and invest time in my relationships with my family. That time is precious – we will never get it back. I want my heart to change so that it is softened to giving out of our abundance to people in desperate need and to desire less. I want an open heart, not a heart that hoards.

So all that being said, I want to hear about what you guys are doing this Christmas. It doesn’t have to relate to this post at all, or maybe this post will challenge what you currently have planned. I’d love to hear about it.

is updated! It is completely reformatted and much more usable. Please check it out here and let me know if there are any recipes you would like for me to try to find. I love a good recipe challenge!

Eight days left until the big surprise. I know you all are excited!