TMae from Life v. 2.0 claims she’s going to use my shopping list from my iPhone photo post to buy all the ingredients to make these. Which you could, in theory. I’m just impressed anyone can READ that list.

1. Herb Cheese Crusted Salmon (recipe below) served with couscous
2. Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies – Tasty Kitchen (made with butterscotch chips)
3. Drip Beef Sandwiches – The Pioneer Woman
4. Pasta el Pomodoro – The Kitchn (I used canned tomatoes and stretched it to feed four with extra canned sauce)

5. Sour Cream Enchiladas – The Pioneer Woman  (I added shredded chicken)
6. Chicken Bacon Ranch Macaroni and Cheese – Tasty Kitchen (not as good as it sounds)
7. Chicken Crescent Rolls – Tasty Kitchen (DEFINITELY my favorite from the week)
8. Beer Braised Beef with Onions – Tasty Kitchen (also not as good as it sounds)

And on the 8th day, she rested:

Don't be fooled by the picture - this was just my first helping.

Takeout pizza from Engine 6 Pizza Company

It looks like 8 meals but was only 7 because one is cookies. But I also baked the Carrot Apple Muffins this week, so when you put it all together I did a LOT of cooking. I didn’t really have to, because every meal created leftovers that are currently still in the fridge (and will probably be fed to the dog)(Except for the enchilada, I ate those for lunch)(Oh and the spaghetti, we had people over for dinner so it fed 4 easily), so if we were a leftover-eating family we could have had those at least twice. What did you have for dinner this week?

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Herbed Cheese Crusted Salmon

4 6 to 8 oz salmon fillets (skin or no skin, it’s your preference)
2 tablespoon lemon zest
1 5.2 oz container semisoft cheese with garlic and herbs (I use Allouette)
Sea salt or salt
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup freshly shredded Parmesan cheese
¼ cup butter, melted
2 Tbsp. pine nuts, toasted

1. Rinse fish; pat dry. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  In a small bowl combine semisoft cheese and lemon peel. Cut each fillet almost in half to make a pocket, but be careful not to cut all the way through. Spoon cheese mixture into pockets. Season fish with salt. Place in a shallow baking pan.

2. In a small bowl combine bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, butter, and pine nuts; sprinkle over fillets, pressing lightly. Bake, uncovered, about 20 minutes or until salmon flakes when tested with a fork.

I’m currently deep in the throes of Trying To Do It All with a side of Why Yes, I Am Suzy Homemaker and a dash of Impossibly High Standards on top. I get like this every time I face a new year/life change/burst of energy and end up driving myself crazy in the process. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. It’s especially bad right now because I’ve combined the pressure of Starting Over In The New Year with the pressure to act like I have my act together as Mother of Two. And don’t get me started on how insane the constant barrage of DIET DIET DIET LOSE WEIGHT YOU’RE SO FAT JOIN A GYM DIET DIET EAT MORE FIBER EAT LESS FOOD GET YOUR BODY BACK from the television makes me. Someday maybe I’ll write a whole post on why exactly that kind of talk is so dangerous (not just in general but for me personally), but for now lets just say I’m enjoying my final 3 weeks of birth/labor recovery before I’m even ALLOWED to work out and not worrying about getting anything “back”. Besides my clean floors, clean bathrooms, clean fridge, clean pantry, organized closets, organized shelves, mopped kitchen, vacuumed floors, etc etc etcetcetcetc. ETC. I would like those back. Because despite the fact that what I really want to be doing is napping, I am instead framing artwork for a new grouping in our formal living room and making menu plans for hypothetical play dates. (NO REALLY, I WAS DOING THAT TODAY.)

Of course, as I write this my toddler is stomping on his lunch (and by lunch I mean pizza flavored Goldfish I threw in his general direction around 2 pm), I’m wearing yoga pants, dinner isn’t started and I’m on my fourth caffeinated beverage of the day.

So clearly, I’m not setting the bar TOO high.

What I mean is I’ve decided to become the kind of person who never lets laundry pile up, whose bathrooms are always clean, who makes dinner from scratch (or at least doesn’t order pizza) every night, who never raises her voice or gets frustrated with her children, who wears clothes that fit and loses all the baby weight within two months, thanks to 4 times a week workouts to which I am never late. I will change the very essence of my being and 28 years of habits and nevermind the fact that I have never not even once made this kind of commitment stick for more than just a few days. THIS TIME will be different.

Basically, really, I’ve decided to FAIL. I’m going to stay on top of things for exactly two days and then spend the next two months beating myself up about it. I am going to have exactly one person over for one play date where I provide healthy snacks and a clean carpet and charming conversation and wear real pants. But as soon as they go home I will collapse on the couch and change into pajamas and stuff my face with brownies and yell at my toddler and order pizza for dinner and leave the box on the floor.

Because honestly, that’s the kind of mother I am. Laid-back. Which is a nice way of saying lazy. Or maybe I’m just a little overwhelmed right now.

It would be so much better for everyone if I just tried to do SOME stuff instead of EVERYTHING. Set reasonable goals, like one load of laundry a day or loading the dishwasher every night or cooking 4 nights a week. Gee, that sounds so reasonable and do-able and normal. Clearly not something I am at ALL interested in being. Why would I possible want to avoid an opportunity to beat myself up about how I suck at motherhood?

ISSUES: I HAVE THEM.

p.s. My attempts at perfect have been thwarted EVEN SOONER than I could have predicted, thanks to what seems to be yet another kidney infection. Instead of making the dinners I planned and shopped for I’m forcing my family to forage for microwave popcorn and apples while I lie on the couch moaning through chills and a 102 fever. Which is why this post is super whiny – it’s hard to be funny when it feels like someone kicked you repeatedly in the back with steel toed boots.

p.p.s. I’m calling the doctor today. They were closed yesterday due to the snow and unless I am in so much pain I can’t function I’m trying to avoid the emergency room. Not super fun with a 3 week old.

Today is Carpet Day here in the bebeh-house, which is both extremely exciting and extremely awful, because I have to be here all day to…I don’t know. Supervise or something. Make sure they aren’t casing the joint (do people still say that?) Give them permission to take all the pictures off the walls so they can get the carpet roll up the stairs. I never know what to do with myself when we have people here working. Watch? Offer to help? Just stay out of the way? Do I need to feed them? Should I offer them drinks? Oh God, what if they need to pee? What if they need to pee and they notice how dirty the baseboards are in my bathroom? What if the need to pee and notice the dirty baseboards and then judge me?

And that is why I woke up in a panic at 7 am and spent an hour giving my upstairs bathroom the most thorough cleaning it’s had in months. Then I sprayed extra cleaner in the shower just so it would smell clean. I think this might be the first sign of a mental breakdown.

It’s also a cold, wet, miserable rainy kind of day so not only are Little Evan and I trapped AT the house, we’re trapped IN the house. I’m preparing myself for an exhausting, nap-free kind of day. Meltdown usually starts about 11:30 with full on screaming and hitting by noon on the days we don’t get out for Stroller Strides/playdates/shopping/ANYTHING. But I planned ahead and have not one but two new baking recipes to try and absolutely no qualms about bribing good toddler behavior with fresh from the oven pumpkin bread. If I don’t cover it in cream cheese and shove it all in my face first. NOM.

I’m also making the most bastardized version of crock-pot chili EVER, which will either come out incredibly delicious or totally inedible. I’m guessing the later. Because that’s what happens when you’ve already thrown half your ingredients in the crock-pot before you realize you don’t HAVE a 29 oz can of tomato puree. Or chili powder. Or kidney beans. So you use tomato sauce. And taco seasoning. And a packet of microwavable black beans. And I can’t run to the store because I have to be here for the carpet steam cleaning specialists guys. Totally inedible.

Also, here’s today’s brilliant idea: Someone should start a company that installs carpet/renovates kitchens/fixes plumbing/does all that other home repair and installation stuff but promises their employees are 100% NON-SMOKERS. Because seriously, carpet dude? You’re going to make my whole house stink like cigarettes and somehow think you’re NOT leaving that smell in my brand new carpeting? Not cool.

Tomorrow is “frantically put the house back together day because E invited his entire hockey team over for a cookout on Saturday” day, so I should have some after pictures of the renovation by the afternoon. I can’t wait to show you just how livable we managed to make the ugliest room ever!

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The winner of the $30 credit at Taradara is…

EMMIE BEE!!! Although I’ve entered literally every giveaway she’s ever done and never won anything, including the one where she was giving away a store credit because she was too lazy to drive to the mall and use it* so I’m not sure I WANT her to win my giveaway. But she’s having a bad week so I’m glad she did. Em, I’ve sent your contact info to Tara so she can set you up!

*For the record, by “lazy” I mean “has three kids under the age of 2″. So, not at all lazy.

The Best Lasagna Ever – The Pioneer Woman
Spicy Pulled Pork – The Pioneer Woman (apparently, this one’s cookbook exclusive – I can’t find it online)(it was not spicy)
Drip Beef Sandwiches – The Pioneer Woman
Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce – The Pioneer Woman (Yeah, I’m a fan. In case you didn’t already know. It doesn’t help that I just bought her cookbook.)

Not pictured (because it was after the fair and I was too tired to remember: Mini Meatball Sandwiches – The Pioneer Woman

Fish Tostadas with Chili-Lime Cream – Better Homes & Gardens
Gnocchi with Spinach and Goat Cheese – originally from Giada but I can’t find it, posted in the comments here by my friend Merin
Marinated Chicken with Cucumber Mint Salad – Martha Stewart
No-knead Lemon Rosemary Bread – Williams-Sonoma (mine is torn out of a catalog from Christmas 2 years ago)

And then we ate leftovers, leftovers, leftovers, LEFTOVERS.

What did you eat this week?

(P.S. If you’ve noticed a sudden spike in the number of photo collages here on ye olde blog, it’s because I just discovered Picasa & I’m OBSESSED. It does everything from little edits like removing red eye to cool effects to watermarking photos. Why did no one tell me about it before? <—- not a paid endorsement)

Pinky swear. I just can’t shut up until I share a few more stories, pictures and do a little name dropping *coughReecoughcoughLoraleecough*.

My flight out was…crowded. Apparently Hell now operates an airline from Hartford to Minneapolis. There’s no other way to explain sitting in a teeny tiny middle seat between snoring shoeless guy and plus-size over perfumed grandma for 2+ hours with so little room I could neither cross my legs or work on my knitting. But the flight was blessedly on time and once I found my chauffeured car (!!!!!!) at baggage claim I was mere minutes away from that delicious red velvet cake and a great Q&A with The Pioneer Woman herself.

The funny thing about a crafting conference instead of a blogging conference is that the attendees were split about 50/50 on whether or not they had ever even HEARD of Ree Drummond. The mind, it boggles. Although I bet someone somewhere is writing the exact same thing about idiots like me who hadn’t heard of Amy Butler before. (I have now and I love her the appropriate amount.)

High point: When Ree signed my book.

Low point: When I hit myself in the head with said book after telling her my palms were super sweaty and she was cute.

Yes, Ree is wearing 2 different shirts because that was 2 different days. Like I said, since so many people were unfamiliar with her blog she was without fawning masses 90% of the time.

After lunch I made it to a panel on Social Media and managed to accidentally find a seat next to an outlet (DEAD IPHONE ALERT CODE RED WEE OOOO WEE OOOO) and next to Nicole from Lark Crafts, my contact at the event. Afterward I hung around awkwardly hoping for a chance to talk to Loralee and thank her for the link that lead me to the conference in the first place. She ended up asking a group of us stragglers for business cards and when I passed her mine she looked at it…and looked again…and said “Waaaait a minute…” and then JUMPED UP and ran around the table and hugged me and hugged me and hugged me again. The other women who had been standing around all stared and one of the asked “Ok who is this famous person?” IT WAS AWESOME. Loralee is totally the same in real life as on her blog – funny and real and gorgeous and so so so nice.

I managed to check in, find my room and get changed for dinner with a few minutes to spare so I turned on the TV and was surprised to see Jeopardy! was on. Central time is weird. Anyways, this was the Final Jeopardy! question. None of the contestants knew the answer.

I totally got it though. Because I am a genius. Clearly. Do YOU know the answer?

Then it was time for the Keynote dinner.

Me & Loralee (with PW in the background showing someone her pretty earrings), Amy Butler speaking, Kerrie (one of the other winners) & Nicole from Lark Crafts & me, Mary Jane Butters speaking

And then I limped up to my room, ripped off my high heels (poor choices, Suzanne, poor choices) and passed out. For exactly two hours. Then I woke up and composed eight zillion blog posts in my head and worried about finding my way around the next day and worried Baby Evan missed me and worried everyone secretly hated me and worried some more. I didn’t sleep very much. The possessed alarm clock didn’t help.

On Friday I attended a panel about blogging that included Lisa Leonard, Heather Bullard, Brett Bara and Loralee Choate. FINALLY, something I know a little bit about. I almost broke my neck nodding along to all the advice (write often! good quality pictures are important! comment comment comment!) and loved hearing people’s different opinions on personal vs. professional blogging.

Then there was the box lunch with the Women Entrepreneurs panel. It was the only place I felt totally intimidated and out of my league – not a single person mentioned The Twitter or The Facebook for 2 1/2 hours. To be honest, the whole middle part of Friday is just a big blur. The schedule was so full I hardly had any time at all to catch my breath.

Which is something I definitely needed to do, since right after lunch I ducked back into the Handmade Market for this…

OH HAI THERE.

O My, isn’t Allison ADORABLE?

I’m not even gonna lie – it was totally weird meeting a bloggy friend in person for the first time. You already know so much about them that the basic hi-where-you-from-how-many-kids-do-you-have-what-do-you-do? small talk is pointless, but you can’t really just jump in with the super personal details. You end up standing around grinning like a crazy person but have nothing to say.

Of course, the initial awkwardness didn’t stop me for a SECOND and since she was foolish enough to give me her cell phone number I managed to invite myself along to dinner with Allison, her friend Cindy and Cindy’s blog friends Kim and Jenny and (another) Allison (who writes for Apartment Therapy). We started at Ikea, which makes sense when you’re hanging out with house bloggers, where I enjoyed crepes and lingonberry soda and bought an inspirational yard of fabric I’m going to plan the new nursery/play room around. Then we went over to the Mall of America (Which turned out just to be a big mall. I don’t know what I was expecting.) for some super cheap happy hour food and wine Diet Coke* lemonade.

This is the part where things could be really awkward if I say “Meeting Allison in person was like getting together with my best friend from high school who I haven’t seen in years but I already know I love” and she’s all “Uh, yeah, it was…nice. Please stop emailing me.” It was like a first date where one person thought they were totally Soul Mates and the other couldn’t wait for the night to be over. My social awkwardness, let me show you it. I think it’s a blogger thing. But IN MY HEAD, it was a super awesome night.

On Saturday I played with yarn with Kristen Nicholas…

Embroidering knitting with yarn was SO cool and surprisingly easy.

Attended one more panel – The Future of Retail: The Digital Marketplace…

Me & Lisa Leonard (I totally dorked out and begged for a pic), Amy Turn Sharp speaking on the panel

Amy writes a blog, has an incredibly successful wooden toy business (that once got Dooce-ified), and had her teeny weeny 3 week old baby boy Scout with her at the conference. She was all kinds of cool and nice. I talked to her about my horrible pregnancy pelvic pain and instead of giving me the side-eye and running away she was all “YES!! THE PAIN!! IN THE CROTCH!!” and made emphatic stabbing motions. I liked her.

And then…the weekend was over.

Nancy Soriano (one of the creators), Kerrie, Erin (winner of a local contest to attend), me, Jo Packham (creator and founder of Where Women Create Magazine) and Jennie (the third Lark Crafts scholarship winner)

It was fantastic. Amazing. Everything I had hoped for and more. It still feels more like a dream than something that actually happened to me and being back in my real life (oh boy am I back in my real life) makes it even more unbelievable.

Thank you again to Lark Crafts & Nicole & Jo & Debbie & Meaghan & everyone else who handled all the details to get me there and registered and made sure I always felt welcome and special. I promise to use everything I learned to do something beautiful.

P.S. I wanted to share this cookbook with you too:

How adorabe is this?!?

The author, Zac, was working as the event’s videographer and tried to give a copy to Nicole, since she’s all fancy and important and has tons of publishing connections, but I fawned all over it so much that she passed it to me. I feel sort of bad for stealing it from her (and I think he was pretty disappointed too) but I looooove it. I think I’ll throw a Halloween party just to make those cupcakes.

P.P.S. If you were at the event or want to write about the event, please feel free to use my pictures from this post or the other ones. All I ask for is an attribution and a link back. If you want unedited or larger copies just email me bebehblog at gmail dot com.

*There is NO DIET COKE in Minnesota. It was all Pepsi, all the time, and it SUCKED. I ended up drinking more coffee than I’ve had in years.

THE END