Drink Of The Month

Some good friends of ours (hi Gutsy family!) have instituted a drink of the month in their house.  Here in the Nystrom household, we think that's a pretty fantastic idea!  The idea is to try a fun drink recipe, preferably with ingredients that cost less than about $20 overall to make multiple drinks.  So after many months of thinking it's cool and zero months of actually doing anything about it, I present to you March's Drink Of The Month:

The Pina Colada!

Now I know you're thinking, "well that's pretty boring!"  Let me assure you, it most certainly is not.  We're not talking about a plain jane rum and colada mix drink here.  See, I recently was privy to a little pina colada secret that has changed my world as I know it and can be found in the canned goods aisle.  What makes the freshest, most delicious pina coladas on earth you ask? Canned crushed pineapple in it's own juices and a can of cream of coconut.  Best. Drink. Ever.  We didn't really measure, so I don't have specific amounts to give.  I'm sure you can just play with the amounts until you find what tastes good to you. 

Pina Colada
1 can cream of coconut
1 can crushed pineapple (use the juices it comes in too!)
1 banana (optional, though recommended)
dark/spiced rum
ice

We didn't use the whole can of either coconut or pineapple and we made 4 healthy sized pina coladas.  Blend together a good amount of ice, a few heaping spoonfuls of pineapple (with juice), a healthy amount of cream of coconut, some banana if you choose and a fair amount of dark/spiced rum.  Adjust accordingly.  If the cream of coconut has solidified a little, don't worry.  It does that anytime it's less than 80 degrees and you just have to set the can in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes.

Enjoy!

Thoughts on cloth diapering.

In short, I love it.  It makes me happy in my soul.  And it's so friggin EASY to do.  Gone are the days of pins and plastic pants and all that stuff.  Now there are a million different kinds of diapers that you can get to find the best fit for your child.  We mostly use BumGenius 4.0s and they've been an impressively dependable diaper.  I can stuff more or less inside them depending on how long she'll be wearing them.  They easily last 12-13 hours overnight with our heavy wetter.

I entered a contest to win a bunch of BumGenius diapers that includes posting on my blog about them for a chance to win, but I had honestly meant to start talking more about cloth diapers on this blog anyways.  And we really do love BumGenius (contest or not).  So if you're having a baby, considering having a baby, have a child in diapers, or just want to know about cloth diapering in general, hit me up! It's one of the choices I feel the best about making for our family.

And if you ARE interested in cloth diapering, you should really check the contest out.  Go to www.KellyWels.com (founder of Kellyscloset.com, a GREAT resource!) and check out the bumGenius 4.0 Sweepstakes! You can find more information about it here.  You can also access the sweepstakes entry form here.

13 months going on 3 years.

I've never been great at punctuality (but I'm improving), which explains why Abby's one year post is a month late.  Opps! It doesn't help that my once adorable and helpless baby is now an adorable, feisty, mischievous girl on the go.  She no longer sits in one place or takes a few steps here and there before falling.  She RUNS.  Quickly and with purpose.  Towards anything she shouldn't be running towards.  Some of her favorite things to get into right now are the dishwasher (magic box of intrigue!), the bathroom trashcan (fun new toys!), and her closet (coolest room EVER!).  Needless to say, baby gates and closed doors have become an important feature in our house.  She's not quite as good about eating anything we give her anymore, but she's still a champ when it comes to food.  Currently, she would do almost anything for a banana and often looks longingly at the fruit bowl on the counter while saying "na-na?" Don't let her fool you though, this is usually after she's had more than her fair share.  We're not starving her, though her past growth curve might have suggested that we were! She eats, I swear! She did finally start putting on weight though and now weighs in at a whopping 18.4 lbs at 13 months.  By "whopping," I mean she's finally on the growth scale at the 4th percentile!  She's 30 inches tall (about 55th percentile) and I forget her head size, but it was giant and measured in the 84th percentile.  It's a good thing she has that giant head to hold all those brains for that Ivy league education we're going to force upon her.  That's our retirement plan, right there! Which more than likely means that she'll either go through a lot of schooling and then work in the non-profit sector (see also: crappy pay sector).  On a completely unrelated sidenote, she has discovered tantrums.  My one year old child can throw a pretty mean tantrum when you tell her not to play in the dog water and remove from the situation.  Thusly, we're officially screwed.

Anyways, Korea is still as much of an adventure as ever.  Now it's just a bitterly cold adventure. We haven't had to much of a chance to explore beyond a lot of day trips to Seoul.  But Seoul... oh what a city! I truly love that place.  It's so alive and bustling and filled with the most ridiculous and fun things.  The street vendors there sell the most random things you would ever expect to find.  Ironically I've seen more Swedish Dala horse items than anywhere but Lindsborg, KS and that even includes a previous trip to Sweden.  The restaurants in Seoul are one of my favorite things though.  You can probably find just about any kind or ethnicity of food you can imagine.  Jared and I had dinner at a Bulgarian restaurant awhile ago that was indescribably delicious and impressively affordable as well.  But the very best type of food in Seoul, hands down, is the street food.  At night time, they line the shopping districts with their carts and cook some of the best and craziest looking food you've ever seen.  I'm not sure what a lot of it is, but so far everything has been delicious.  Think NYC hot dog carts but with freshly made dumplings and skewers of marinated beef and chicken grilled right in from of you.  This one was a local street food vendor, but delicious none the less: