Happy Birthday Doodle Bug!!!

Doodle Bug turned ONE today!!!! I can't believe I have a one year old! Everyone said that once you have a child, your "fast forward" button on life gets pushed. Boy is that true! This year has flown by...well, the first 6 months, I was just sleep deprived, but the rest has flown by.

Since Doodle Bug has a milk allergy, I decided I would make his birthday cake. As the "yes" RSVP's kept rolling in, I realized quickly that I'd be making 2 cakes for the 65 people that were attending! I was a bit nervous that the cakes wouldn't turn out, but everyone said they were great! (hopefully they weren't telling a white lie so as to not hurt my feelings ;o) Here are his cakes.

The theme to Doodles first birthday bash was from the Disney movie, Cars. We had a bounce house in the backyard for the "bigger" kids. However, I did see some adults in there towards the end of the party. Hubby even took Doodle Bug inside to jump around. He squealed with excitement the entire time!

Doodle Bug was spoiled with tons of great gifts! He opened a few, then grew tired and moved on to the next room to find some more excitement! While the gifts were being opened, the adults played "Blogger Trivia". I asked questions that pertained to this blog. My friend, T, won the trivia game. After all of the gifts were opened, it was time for cake. Hubby and I helped him blow out his candle and cut his first piece of birthday cake. Of course, we got the classic "cake all over the place" picture. He ate only a few bites of birthday cake, but enjoyed smashing it in his fingers much better than eating it.

Thank you to all of our friends and family for helping us celebrate Doodle Bug's first birthday. He had a lot of fun and is still recovering from all the excitement, sugar, and lack of naps :o) Thank you to all the friends and family members who helped decorate, set up, and clean. And a BIG thank you to my hubby, for all of your help and support. We love you all!!

Healthy Cooking

My friend, T, introduced me to the book, Deceptively Delicious, by Jessica Seinfeld. It's a cookbook that has recipes which hide veggies inside the meal. I thought I'd try out some of the recipes on Hubby and Doodle Bug and see what they think. The first meal I made was chicken nuggets with pureed spinach hidden inside. Here is what it looked like...nothing fancy!

Below are my two boys enjoying their "hidden spinach" chicken nuggets. They both approved!

The next night I made Ground Turkey Meatloaf with pureed carrots hidden inside it and a healthy version of Mashed Potatoes. The mashed potatoes were really just mashed cauliflower with a little butter and sour cream. Here is what it looked like...

The Mashed "cauliflower" potatoes were good...Ground Turkey meatloaf...YUCK!!!!! If you haven't tried ground turkey, KEEP IT THAT WAY! We thought the texture and taste of the turkey was not appealing!!! I think the meatloaf recipe with ground beef would have been good. I'll give it one more shot and let you know;o)

The cookbook also has muffin and dessert recipes with hidden veggies. I've made chocolate chip cookies with pureed chick peas and rolled oats. I thought they were good...and they were milk free!

FREE Food!!!!!!

Yeah!!!!! I just got $65 of free restaurant gift certificates!!!! How you ask? Well, instead of using google to do my daily searches, I've been using swag. When you do a search on swag, you earn points (swag bucks). I accumulated 40 swag bucks and traded it in for a $25 GC to restaurants.com. If you're not familiar with restaurants.com, it's a website in which you can buy GC at a reducued rate (for example you can buy a $10 GC for only $4). So I purchased $65 worth of gift cards to my favorite restaurants and I used my FREE $25 GC to pay for it. Follow me?

If you want to do the same, look for the link on the top right side of this website, click on it and sign up for your FREE account and start earning swag bucks today!

Just havin' FUN!!!

Time is just flying by! I can't believe my little Doodle Bug is already 11 months old.

He loves picture time!

He's watching a dragon fly in this picture ;o)

Doodles loves to feed himself. We've been slowly introducing finger foods: cheerios, french fries, carrots, diced potato, finely sliced chicken... Today, he had Milk Free French Toast for breakfast!



He loved it so much that he just kept shoving more and more into his mouth! I was worried he'd choke, but he just laughed at me and stuck more in his mouth!