Tag Archives: top mommy blogs

Blogs I Read – Mommy Blogs

Posted on September 22 by Jillian416 • 2 Comments

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am constantly on the lookout for new, quality blogs to read. AND since word of mouth is the best way to share great blogs, I thought I’d dedicate this post entirely to some of my favorite Mommy Blogs. Enjoy!

My Favorite Mommy Blogs

A Healthy Slice of Life – I think my favorite thing about Brittany and A Healthy Slice of life is her Munchkin Meals link-up. Every first Thursday of the month she shares what her daughter is eating and provides a link-up for other mommies to share what they’re feeding their children. She also shares so much about her daughter, meal prep, the foods she eats and the different products she likes.

Ain’t No Mom Jeans – One of my absolute favorites! Shana shares great fashion finds for the momma. Clothes that are flattering to the leftover baby pooch, bras for saggy boobs and so much more. Shana was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and is currently undergoing chemo. Stop in, read her blog and wish her well. She is an inspiration!

BuyModernBaby.com – A great site for all the new modern finds for babies and kids. Some of the room designs they feature, are items I’d love to buy and decorate my next child’s room with. They’re so beautiful!

Fitness Cheerleader – Janice’s blog is a new find to me, but I’m thrilled that I found it. She’s a working mom with three little girls who also manages to workout and stay in great shape. This blog is highly motivational for me because I’m always struggling with balancing work, exercise, being a wife and being a mom.

Healthy Tipping Point – A favorite and an old standby. I love Caitlin’s blog, always have, always will! She is currently training for a half Iron Man and seeing how much she works out and continues to be a great mom is so SO inspirational.

Kath Eats Real Food – Kath’s blog has so much food inspiration. She shares all the foods she feeds her family and since she is a Registered Dietitian everything is very healthy AND it looks so delicious.

The Alpha Parent – If you’re considering breastfeeding, bookmark this blog! It is pro-breastfeeding, and helps you believe in yourself and your ability as a mother to nurse your baby. There are weekly stories called Triumphant Tuesdays, where mothers share their birth stories and how outside forces tried to thwart their efforts to breastfeed. Reading this blog helped me to understand there is NO excuse not to breastfeed. Check it out!

The Art of Making a Baby – Another standby for me! I’ve been reading this blog since just after Emmett was born. Elena’s photos are stunning (and her daughter is so flippin’ adorable), her articles are always full of great information for new and old moms.

This Little Chickpea – A new find I found while reading A Healthy Slice of Life’s Munchkin Meals link-up. She’s also a working mom, with two kids and manages to keep things healthy in her house. There’s some great motivation to be found here!

There you have it, my current favorite Mommy Blogs.

Your turn!

What mommy blogs do you read that I haven’t mentioned?

Filed Under: Blogs

My Finds Friday

Posted on August 16 by Jillian416 • 0 Comments

Time for another addition of My Finds Friday.

I hope by now you’re all out of work or nearly out of work, on this wonderful day that should be considered a holiday (each and every week).

This was a very busy and tiring week and honestly I can barely remember what I did each day. Not because I did nothing but because the days flew by in a blink and before I knew it I was in bed and my alarm was going off to start the new day. Yikes! I’m not a big fan of how quickly life is passing by but I don’t see it slowly down any time soon.

Alright, onto My Finds Friday, I hope you like this week’s finds!

(These are in no particular order.)

I’m going to start tonight right off with a motivational post. Lauren, at closer to 30, wrote the post, “Running: it’s not for everyone, but it could be.” She has some great tips on how to get into running, even if you’ve always thought that it wasn’t the sport for you. I recommend you check it out if you’re looking for some seriously good inspiration.
Here’s a hilarious article on Daily Life, titled Things Your Yoga Teacher Won’t Tell You and like it’s title it talks about everything your yoga teacher might think, but won’t say out loud. I laughed at more than one!
As I was recently promoted to a supervisory position, I’m constantly Googling and searching for great tips to be a better manager. I came across this one on Twitter, it’s an infographic all about What Makes Up a Successful Manager? There is some great info and some great insight.
All of our mornings are crazy but there might just be a way that you can cut down on the time it takes you and your family to get ready. Daily Mom’s Article, 5 Time Saving Tips For Your Morning Routine, might have some ideas you’ve never thought of before. My son’s only 1 but I never even thought about choosing 5 outfits for him on Sunday so that I can just grab and go in the morning, I’m hoping this will shave off some time.

Mmmmm… This food is good!

My father-in-law sent us a flash drive of pictures of Emmett from his birthday party, I can’t wait to share them all with you!

Your turn!

Do you love Fridays as much as I do?

What fun websites and posts have you come across this week?

Filed Under: My Finds Friday

What I Ate Wednesday – # 5

Posted on August 14 by Jillian416 • 0 Comments

It’s that time of the week again, that time for What I Ate Wednesday.

It wasn’t an exciting day for eats but still yummy nonetheless. Let’s get started right off with breakfast, I had two slices of Wegmans 100% Whole Wheat bread, with eggs that were supposed to be overhard but both yolks burst as I was flipping them (boo!). On the bread was some Trader Joe’s Goat Cheese, avocado and some absolutely delicious locally grown, never been refridgerated, tomato. Yes, I’m being very descriptive because I love tomatoes, but more specifically those that are grown and picked in WNY that have never once seen the inside of a fridge.

Let’s take a step back for a second, when I was a little girl my grandma did canning, she’d make homemade BBQ sauce, tomato sauce and tomato juice. I loved being a part of it, we’d do all of the work in her basement and crank the tomatoes through the grinder by hand. She was always so cautious, worried that one of us might lose a finger in the grinder so we (mostly my sister and I) did the cranking and she’d push the tomatoes in. We’d also then help her scrape the screen where the skins and seeds got caught, some of that would be saved and used in some of her recipes. As I retell this story, I am putting myself right back in her basement, smelling the already ground tomatoes boiling down on the stove for one of the three recipes. But my favorite thing of all would be when she’d let us grab one of the tomatoes straight from the bushel and eat it like an apple, no washing or slicing. The taste was out of this world, I can still feel it hitting my taste buds today.

When I went to the Farmer’s market this past weekend and realized that it was fresh tomato season, I did a little cheer to myself. I bought a bunch of the larger ones for salads and just for eating (like an apple) but then also bought some cherry tomatoes. When I first threw one of those in my mouth, it took me right back to my grandma’s basement. Mmmmm

Alright time for some pics, here’s my breakfast.

As you can see I also had two yellow plums and that one has a bite out of it. Well, the external flash on our camera needs new batteries and we don’t currently have any in the house so when I need to use the flash, it takes forever to warm up and I was very hungry this morning. I couldn’t wait! 😀

I completely forgot to get a photo of my lunch. I had a luncheon at work, I had 2 slices of vegetable pizza, a bowl of salad and one too many brownies.

Dinner was one of my favorites! Pulled pork with a slice of American cheese with horseradish on a Marco Polo roll, so delicious. We do it pretty easily in the crock-pot, just throw half a pork shoulder in with some salt, pepper and BBQ seasoning for about 8 hours. Then, about a half hour before you want to eat, pour a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce in and let it cook on high for about 30 minutes. Finally… enjoy!

We also had some roasted broccoli, where, yes, I put a slice of American cheese on it. I couldn’t resist, I haven’t done it in ages and thought, what the hell!?

I also had some Polar Triple Berry Seltzer Water. I’ve been really into the setlzer lately, but my favorite flavor has to be the vanilla. It tastes almost like an Italian soda. Yummy!

And finally, I work from home on Wednesdays. I’m pretty fortunate in that Emmett does a great job of entertaining himself and leaving me to get work done. However, today, he wanted to be as near as possible while I was working.

He laid like that for quite some time, while I was just typing away. Such a sweetie!

Your turn!

What did you enjoy on this What I Ate Wednesday?

 As always, a huge thank you to Peas and Crayons for hosting!

Filed Under: What I Ate Wednesday

A Day in the Life

Posted on August 13 by Jillian416 • 2 Comments

A few blogs that I follow have been doing “day in the life” posts and I thought it would be fun if I did one too. If you want an example of another “day in the life” post, you can check out Healthy Tipping Point.

4:40 – 4:45 AM – My alarm goes off and I remark to myself that I think I’ll go sleep for a bit on the couch. I’d love to stay in bed and snooze a few times but Seamus has a hard time getting back to sleep after my alarm, so snoozing it repeatedly isn’t fair to him, so I get up.

Once I’m up I realize that I’m not actually as tired as I felt while still in bed and can use this time to get some things done.

5 AM – I’m wide awake now, and flipping through Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest or trying to catch up on reading some blogs. I’ll also occasionally write a blog post, but not this morning, a little too slow mentally.

5:20 AM – Hop in the shower. I always try to get in and out before I wake Seamus up at 6, that way once I’m in the bedroom again I can dry my hair right away. With it being shorter, it air dries quickly and if I don’t handle it right away it looks messed up.

6 AM – Head into the bedroom, wake Seamus up, blow dry hair.

6:10 AM – Do make- up and hear Emmett starting to stir on the monitor. I’ll usually let him roll around and sing to himself for a bit before getting him, unless he’s bawling, then I get him (or Seamus gets him) right away.

6:20 AM – This begins my whirlwind of dressing, styling hair, packing bags, brushing teeth, walking back and forth across our house about a million times, ensuring I haven’t forgotten anything and finally loading Emmett into his car seat and heading out the door.

7:15 AM – We are on our way to school. Typically Emmett falls asleep on the ride in, sometimes he’s mad and just shouts the whole way. This morning, he was nice and content and dozed within minutes of us driving away from our house.

7:50 AM – Arrive at day care. I drop him off, put his sippy cups of milk in the fridge, take him over to the younger baby room because his normal teacher his helping with breakfast. Get him buckled into his high chair, open a banana for him and chit chat with the teacher for a few minutes.

I realize I’m already running late (I have a meeting at 9 that I need to prepare for), I give Emmett about 20 more kisses and head out the door.

8 AM – Even though I’m running late, it’s Monday and what better way to start the workday than with a Venti Iced Coffee from Starbucks? So I stop and order just that with a shot of vanilla and 1 cream. Perfection!

8:15 AM – Pull into work and hustle in with all 4 bags I have. Normally I only have 3 but since I decided to workout during lunch today, I had a fourth one with my gym clothes in it.

8:20 AM – Begin the extensive login process to my computer and other necessary systems. Bunker down and get to concentrating on what needs to be covered in my 9 o’clock meeting.

9 AM – I have a series of morning meetings which all go smoothly and then I’m back at my desk trying to get through all the new work that I have since being promoted. All stuff I am enjoying doing, but I am trying to work on my time management since all of my old jobs had hard and fast deadlines that were a long distance out, and now my deadlines are ever changing.

11:30 AM – Emmett is still nursing and I’m still pumping once a day, I head down to the lactation room for my one pumping session.

12:15 PM – Get changed, go for a 5.88 mile bike ride. Come back and eat my delicious lunch, a salad with chicken, hard boiled egg, blue cheese crumbles and sunflower seeds and 2 locally grown plums.

2:30 PM – Another meeting and it also goes well. The rest of the work day is spent trying to get through everything, I do a pretty good job and knock some big things off the ‘to do’ list.

5:15 PM – Leave work, head to pick up Emmett.

5:35 PM – Get to day care, find out that he had tripped earlier in the day and has a big bump right above his eye. He’s fine, it looks worse than it is but I still feel bad for the poor boy.

6:20 PM – Get home, IMMEDIATELY change and head outside with Emmett while Seamus cooks our dinner, burgers and corn on the cob tonight.

6:45 PM – Sit down to eat. Seamus is an amazing cook and his burgers tonight are no exception, I savor every single little bit.. Yummy!

7:15 PM – Play time! We all hangout in Emmett’s new play room and play with his toys and every so often our sweet boy will climb up in our laps and cuddle. Such fun!

7:35 PM – Emmett’s bath time, then lotion, book, nursing and finally bed.

8:15 PM – I fill my water bottle and sit down to work on this post. Phew!!

9:15 PM – Seamus and I will usually watch something on TV. Currently we’re watching Dexter, starting from the very beginning. We are two episodes in, Micheal C. Hall plays such a good creep.

10:15 PM – In bed with my iPad, reading some blogs.

10:45 PM – Time to Crash! Zzzzz

Are you as exhausted from reading that as I am from living it?! Life is so so busy right now, but I would not change a single thing!

Your turn!

What does your “day in the life” look like? Are you a snoozer, or do you jump right out of bed?

Filed Under: All About Me, Daily Updates, Family