Monday, November 3, 2014

25 days of Christmas

For the last two years, I have come up with fun things to do for each day leading up to Christmas.  I put them on a cute card and label the envelopes 1-25. Each day there is an activity that we can do together to get in the Christmas Spirit.

Here are the ideas for this year:
-Ride around the neighborhood and look at Christmas lights while drinking a hot beverage (mine will probably be mother's milk tea...see last post)

-Go see Santa

- Make hand-made gifts for grandparents

- Go see the Nutcracker (we'll be leaving Benson at home for this one). http://www.gcsu.edu/theatre/docs/gcsuseasonbrochureposterfinalfortheatrewebsite201415_1_.pdf  This is the performance at Georgia College December 12, 13, 14.

- Watch Christmas movies (this is usually more than one day)

- Read Christmas books (I need to put some on hold at the library- suggestions welcome)

- Shop for someone we adopted for Christmas

- Make ornaments http://www.pinterest.com/pin/104497653825475064/ (all you do is fill a clear ornament with marshmallows and decorate the outside)

- Make Christmas trees out of paper rings http://www.pinterest.com/pin/104497653825554514/

- Callaway Gardens drive through lights- the groupon is over in 7 hours (http://www.groupon.com/deals/callaway-gardens-4?utm_source=rvs&utm_medium=afl&utm_campaign=3125087)

- Christmas parade in Jones County (December 9th)

- Bake / decorate cookies

- Deliver a special something to the neighbors
- Make reindeer hands 
- make a marshmallow snowman Marshmallow Snowman

- Lake Wildwood boat ride and Christmas lights (another one we may need to leave Benson at home for, but we'll see)- they have not released the information for this year, but here is the website for when they do post the dates http://www.lakewildwood.org/cotl/

- Gray UMC Drive-thru nativity (free hot chocolate- date is TBA)

- Make Gingerbread Houses

-breakfast with mommy and buy gifts for daddy.

- breakfast with daddy and buy gifts for mommy.

- chick-fil-a on Tom Hill to drive-thru lights

I only need 3 more, but they will probably either be a book, a movie or another craft!

What do you have planned for December?

Catching up...but this is really about lactation!

So I haven't posted in about three years, but now that I have two babies and have successfully completed my Master's degree, I'm back at it!

Today I'm going to post a few of my go-to recipes for helping with lactation.  These are three recipes that I have used in the last few weeks to try to boost my supply.  They have been somewhat successful.  My supply has been down for a few reasons, but these all seem to help.

The first, baked lactation cookies:
http://www.food.com/recipe/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-lactation-cookies-by-noel-trujillo-192346

These are pretty good.  The hubs thought they were good too.

Next, no-bake lactation cookies:
http://www.milkandbaby.com/blogs/milk-baby/15915915-no-bake-lactation-cookie-recipe

I only made 1/4 of this recipe and it lasted all week.  It was very rich since instead of nuts, I put chocolate chips!  I will say, they made me really thirsty, so that helped with drinking lots of water!

And the last, which is my breakfast all week, banana chocolate chip lactation muffins:
http://mylittlepoppyseed.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/a-recipe-chocolate-chip-banana-lactation-muffins/

They are very good, and quite satisfying.  According to my fitness pal there are 582 calories in 2 muffins.  I've been trying to reach around 2,500 calories each day, so that breakfast is good for me.