I am loved!

Brent does a wonderful job of cheering me up, even if it something small he knows exactly how to make me smile!

Let me first go back a few weeks, when I was in the heat of my baking streak. I constantly complained that finding what I needed was impossible because I had acquired too many spices and baking materials. Seriously. This was my cabinet:


Whether he was tired of hearing me complain constantly, or because he loves me that much he went out and got me this:


I was ecstatic! :)

Fast forward to yesterday.
Wednesday was a terrible, terrible day. Lots of drama and stress, on top of the 3 hours I spent in the ER early that morning... and it only got worse from there. Let's not even talk about the pregnancy hormones and emotions thrown into it.. it was just a bad day.

Thursday, he had to work and knew I was still pretty upset about Wednesday. As I was sitting at my computer checking my daily sites (mostly blogs) he was being awfully secretive in the bedroom. I assumed he was just playing his video games and didn't think much of it. After awhile he came out and got on his computer and I went to take a shower.

I got in the bathroom and found a post-it stuck to the bathroom mirror. It said "you will ALWAYS be beautiful to me <3". I lost it, I started crying my eyes out and I went and gave him a huge hug! It meant so much to me to find that note, and he knew it would make me smile... I don't think he was expecting the tears though. :)

It also really made my heart melt that he does pay attention to what I do. I sit on my computer everyday and browse multiple healthy living blogs, following the lives and healthy stories of people who I have never even met. It is a great inspiration to me, not only because I love seeing that other people live happy, healthy lives but because they also make healthy living and healthy eating fun. Health food does not equate to bad food, and exercise does not equate to torture. It's nice to see others who feel the same way.

I've been reading these blogs for a few months now and I must admit that while I love reading all of them, there are a few that have really stuck out to me for various reasons and I love them. I love the girls that write them, their stories, and I love reading their daily posts. Two of these, in particular, really stood out to me.

One was Caitlin. She is always upbeat and positive, and she shares stories about her personal goals and life outside of what she eats and how she exercises. Plus, it's always fun to see pictures and read stories of other furbabies :). But really, it was her side project that drew me to read HTP everyday.. Operation Beautiful. I first noticed the link on the side of her blog, and then I started following the OB blog as well. It really hit home to me because I have never had a good body image of myself and I used to partake in lots of negative and fat talk. I had never left any notes on my own, but I talked about them all the time. I thought most of my talk was just random babbling to Brent, until yesterday.

He actually listened and knew that if he wanted to make me smile he knew just what he had to do. Throughout the day I found 9 post-it's, all with different happy positive thoughts scattered throughout the house, and apparently there are still a few hidden somewhere. With each new-found note came new tears of happiness. Brent means so much to me, and for him to do that.. just to make me smile.. shows me how much he really cares about me. It may have been small, he didn't go out and spend a lot of money on lavish gifts, but his heart poured out to me on those little green pieces of paper and that means more to me than any material possession ever could. <3

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo

While none of us in this house are Italian, pasta is definitely a favorite. In fact, I think Brent lived on pasta before we met. Unfortunately, his version was a box of noodles mixed with plain tomato sauce. ew.

Since then, we have spiced it up creating our own fun pasta dishes and recreating some of his favorites from childhood. It wasn't until last night that I decided to get real creative.

I was going through my cookbook, a main hobby of mine these days, and found a recipe for homemade pasta. Interesting. A quick glance at the ingredient list showed that I had everything I needed so I set out to make him a delicious dinner.

The noodles were actually a LOT easier than I had anticipated, I just wish I had a better set of kitchen knives or a pastry cutter because cutting the dough into noodles was the hardest part. However, after two hours they were done and ready to be eaten.




For the alfredo sauce I simply mixed butter, heavy whipping cream, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. I cooked a few chicken breasts on the skillet in EVOO and mixed it all together.


Brent claims that it was better than The Olive Garden, I'm not sure how much I believed this but I do have to agree that it was very good for my first attempt at a homemade pasta dish.

He also proved once more that he is the greatest boyfriend ever by buying me this the other day:

I had been complaining (probably more than necessary) that it was hard to use homemade dough with no rolling pin.. I had used various other items such as an applesauce jar, an old tea bottle, etc. in my baking prior to this, so while we were at the store one day he ventured into the kitchen gadgets and came back with this! I was so happy! It's the little things in life... :)

Note: I got the recipe for the pasta and the sauce in a general cookbook, but if you would like me to post them just leave a comment and let me know :)