I found this picture here.

This morning I modified Tyler Florence’s Banana Pecan Pancake Recipe and made Belgian waffles with strawberries.

My recipe goes something like this:

2 cups flour

2 cups organic vanilla soy milk

3 tsp. butter (melted)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

3 eggs

4 tbs. sugar

pinch of salt

Mix eggs and milk together, slowly blend in dry ingredients, and add butter.  Stir until mixed.

We have a belgian waffle iron.  They are so easy to use, as long as you follow the directions before you use it for the first time.  The “seasoning” will wear off after time, so be sure to season your waffle iron every few uses.  You can usually tell when it looks too dry.  Plug it in, let it heat up, and add about 3/4 c. of your mix & cook for about 5-7 minutes.

For the strawberry topping…I mashed about 10 strawberries up and added a pinch of powdered sugar. YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY.

SO YUMMY.

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My favorite features of both Noel’s Advocate CS and Lennon’s Boulevard CS, is the True Side Impact Protection.  I’ve posted some statistics from the Britax site as to why this feature is so important:

Why does the seat need True Side Impact Protection?
Side impact crashes pose a serious threat to child safety and therefore make side impact protection a necessity for child seats. In fact:

1. 1 in 4 crashes occur from the side
2. Injuries are more severe in side impact crashes
3. 30% of fatalities are a result of side impact crashes
4. Vehicle side air curtains are designed to protect adults, not children

Our friends at ZRecs advocate the Britax line as well, and they are the safety experts!  The Britax line is on the expensive end of carseats, that’s true.  However, Britax offers several sales a year.  You can follow them on Twitter & become a Facebook fan to find out the inside scoop on these sales, and everything Britax.  When it comes to car safety, I truly feel like no expense can be spared.  Britax offers the safest carseats you can buy.  It’s a no-brainer!

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Thankfully, Tempur-Pedic offered to send me a couple of their fabulous pillows to test out. All of their pillows feature their proprietary Tempur material, a pressure-relieving foam that absorbs and distributes your body weight for maximum comfort and support. It conforms to your shape but immediately regains its original shape, eliminating pressure points. The invention of Tempur was inspired by the study of G-forces on astronauts and Tempur-Pedic is the only brand of mattresses and pillows recognized by NASA and certified by the Space Foundation. Literally, it is the science of sleep!

There are a wide variety of Tempur-Pedic Pillows to choose from, depending on your sleep style. I received the  NeckPillow and the ComfortPillow.

The NeckPillow is a sculpted pillow recommended for those who need a therapeutic sleep posture. Its dual-lobe shape ergonomically supports your head, shoulders and neck to align your posture and help you get a more restful sleep. It is a bit funky looking but it does a great job of cradling your head and neck as you lay on your back, ensuring proper posture and comfort. It really helps me to remember to sleep on my back. I even bought a travel-sized one for Jasper to use since he is a fitful sleeper and it has seemed to help. (There is a similar style meant for side sleepers, too: the SidePillow would have been a lifesaver during pregnancy!)

The ComfortPillow is a more traditional-looking pillow but still very supportive thanks to the Tempur material.
I love that it looks and feels like a standard firm pillow but it gives a little, thanks to its plush zip cover. My husband tried to steal it from me immediately! I didn’t let him.

I am sleeping much better these days and would love to try sleeping on a Tempur-Pedic mattress one of these days. If I win the lottery, I would even consider getting them for the kids’ beds. They’re that comfortable. And everyone is happier with a good night’s sleep.

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Yes, that is a bloody knife.
But look at what he has to put up with.

Share your own pictures this week at Wordless Wednesday HQ!

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Well, I have a five year old who thinks punk-rockers are the hippest people in the world.  Any time we are out and see crazy hair, tattoos and facial piercings, she nearly falls over with admiration.  Recently she began begging me to dye her hair pink.  Now, I’ve always said that I would give my children the freedom to become the people they will be, allow them to express themselves using fashion without interruption… no matter what my personal feelings are on their choices.  That said,  when I imagined myself as this embracing, awesome, i-love-you-you-love-me-we-all-hug mama, I was picturing my children at around 13 or 14 years old.  I was certainly not imagining myself walking my kindergartners to her first day of school with a purple Mohawk, winged heart tattoo and spiked dog collar around her neck.

That’s when a friend suggested Kool-Aid.

Because my daughter has very light hair, I was able to mix one packet of cherry Kool-Aid with half a cup of vinegar and apply it to her hair.  If your child has dark hair, this will not work.  Unfortunately, that’s when bleach needs to become involved and I don’t know about you… but if I don’t let my kids eat rice that’s been bleached, I’m certainly not going to pour it all over their heads (my head, now that’s a different story.) I applied the color by dipping her hair into a bowl of the Kool-Aid mixture and soaking it for about two minutes.  Then, I applied it to her roots with a paint brush.  I didn’t rinse it out, but rather blow-dried her hair with the vinegar/Kool-Aid still wet.

We decided to do just one streak, which was a happy, fun compromise.  The color was more orange than pink, but she was thrilled with the result.  I wash her hair just about every day and the color lasted for about three weeks.

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xoxo, Laura

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Ingredients:

2 lbs sea scallops

2 lbs deveined and cleaned shrimp

1 freshly squeezed lemon

1 tsp lemon zest

juice from half of an orange

1/2 cup white wine

3 sticks of salted butter

1 medium sized tomato cleaned and chopped

6 whole garlic cloves

2 garlic cloves minced

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 a sliced lemon for garnish

a few fresh basil leaves for garnish

Your favorite pasta!

How to do it:

After you’ve made it through the peeling, deveining and rinsing of two pounds of shrimp (IF you are WOMAN enough to make it through this challenge, mwah ha ha ha ha ha) the rest is a piece of cake!

Mix your shrimp and scallops together in a large mixing bowl with the lemon juice, lemon zest, orange juice, minced garlic, salt, pepper.  Let them chill and marinate for about an hour.

Melt the butter in a large pan.  Add the wine, tomato and garlic cloves.  Allow them to saute for about three minutes.  Add the seafood mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, uncovered until the shrimp are pink and the scallops are solid white in color.

Serve hot over your favorite pasta.

Serves 6 easily!

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I have called on my husband to write about the Panasonic DMC-FZ28.

Here’s what he has to say about his father’s day gift this year.

For father’s day I was given the gift of a new digital camera, specifically the Panasonic DMC-FZ28.  I’m not a professional photographer by any means, but I do take pride in the fact that I can take interesting and good looking pictures with even a dinky pocket camera.  The DMC-FZ28 takes things to a whole different level for my amateur photographer leanings.  One of the most important components in a camera is the lens, and this one doesn’t disappoint.  A wide angle Leica lens with 18x zoom makes taking good pictures easy.  The 10 megapixel  CCM sensor takes in light beautifully.  While this isn’t a full-on DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex), it’s about as good as it gets before you jump into the prosumer camera range.  The camera provides a wide range of options for adjusting aperture, ISO, f-stop, zoom, and focus.  There are several modes in which you can set one of these controls as manual and allow the camera’s intelligent image processing software to adjust the rest of these settings after analyzing the image previewed through the lens.  As an added bonus, this camera also shoots video.  It can do up to 1280×720 resolution at 30 fps (frames per second), taking excellent video for a digital camera.  The microphone can be a little weak, due to it’s placement, but the video is crisp and clear, and most impressive for this type of camera.  I was a little disappointed to see some graininess in the video that I shot outdoors on an overcast day, but it may be attributed to the lack of sunlight hitting the objects and people i was shooting.
Overall the build quality is very high, and this unit feels good in your hands.  There is no creaking or play in any of the components, and it is a joy to carry around in the hand.  When it comes time to shoot, the rubberized grip on the right side provides a comfortable feel.
The battery lasts for a very long time considering it’s size, and the layout of the buttons for selecting manual settings such as exposure makes it very simple to adjust in time to take that perfect shot.  In addition, the speed with which the camera writes data to the SD card and is ready for another picture can only be described as incredibly snappy.  I would say it takes less than half a second to be ready to take another shot, meaning you can rip off a bunch of shots and later edit out the ones that don’t make the cut.  I have yet to fully explore everything this camera can do, but I know it is something I will cherish for years to come as I continue to learn about all the different ways to adjust the settings in order to really make the best of every situation.

Here are a few pictures taken from with the Panasonic DMC-FZ28.

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I know my kids are cute, but it would be nice to have a break… if you have a chance, view my Whrrl story and click “I like it ♡” to help me win a trip to BlogHer ‘09. I would appreciate it! (I promise to bring back lots of swag and stories to share.)

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