Life as we go it

I made some homemade play-dough for Liam today.

I wanted to share a little something that I created last year around this time.

As I mentioned before, last year at this time we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Liam. I was on leave from work and in full nesting mode. I was doing crazy things around the house, like cleaning the refrigerator, organizing closets and vacuuming the basement. Pregnancy makes people do some crazy sh**!

Matt and I cook a lot, and I had come across a huge stack of recipes that had been ripped out of magazines, printed off of the web and copied onto little pieces of paper from cookbooks. I decided to cut the recipes out nicely, glue them onto recipe cards and make a filing system for them. Holy smokes was I motivated!

A while back I had bought an old wooden box for $10 at a local antique barn. And I had a stack of recipe cards sitting around that I had bought years prior. The recipe cards just so happened to fit perfectly inside the wooden box! So I went to Office Max and bought some sticky tags to write "Cookies" and "Soups" on.

If the recipe had a photo with it, I made sure to include it on the card

If there wasn't enough room for the photo on the front....

.....I glued it onto the back

There's plenty of room to add more recipes over the years DAILY SMILES Things that made me smile this week: 2.11.13 I enjoyed a hot bath and a People magazine 2.12.13 We went for a quick, cold, icy walk around our neighborhood 2.13.13 Liam had a play date with three of his friends 2.14.13 I ran into an old college friend/roommate at the library 2.15.13 I watched Liam giggle while swimming with Matt 2.16.13 We all had fun at a birthday party 2.17.13 I went shopping with my mom

Liam having a fun play date with his friends!

We are HUGE fans of eating soup in the wintertime. It's fairly easy to make, it warms your stomach on a cold night, and it warms your soul.

We made this soup a couple of weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's one of those recipes that makes my mouth water a little bit each time I think about it. 

In fact, we enjoyed it so much, I think we're going to make a big ol' pot of this for dinner at Liam's birthday party next month.

It has bacon in it. Need I say more?

I got this recipe off of a blog that I follow, so I need to give this lady props. The blog is The Gourmand Mom. Here's a link to the recipe: http://thegourmandmom.com. 

This soup is the perfect balance of salty, earthy, creamy, smoky goodness.

Here's a photo of the soup we made, and a 'Bremser' version of the recipe:

We made it in a dutch oven...

• 1 pound bacon, chopped
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
• 1 (15-ounce) can kidney beans, drained
• 1 (15-ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
• 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
• 1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained
• 2 (15-ounce) cans chicken broth (we used veggie broth and it turned out just fine)
• 1 bag (approximately 4 cups) baby spinach (we added extra spinach to make it healthier)
• Salt and pepper, to taste