Livin' the Dream in Lima

Well, I've made it into the second trimester! Supposedly when all your energy comes back... however this is my busiest season for Sara's Sweets so I don't think I would notice any extra energy even if I had it! Ha. The past couple weeks have been pretty uneventful - just working a lot and living life. Poppyseed is now the size of an apple, which is crazy to me! I still can't really understand where he/she is taking up all that space.  Baby bump? Or did I just eat one too many cupcakes? I am still fitting into one  pair of jeans from before I was pregnant. And I'm deathly afraid to wash them, because I know they won' t fit once they shrink up in the dryer! (You know it... freshly washed jeans are the worst! Even not pregnant!) Luckily it's turned into summer in these parts and I can wear a couple pairs of shorts. Plus all my running shorts. Ahhhh, the joy of working from home most days. I'm still running along, although I've slowed down a ...

Well, that's cat's out of the bag... we're having a baby! I know it's been a hot minute (2+ months) since I last blogged, but I'd like to at least semi-regularly write about this pregnancy. So I can look back and see how crazy I was from all the hormones running through my body. Ha.  I credit my friend Lindsey with our pregnancy announcement. She is much more creative than I am. At least I baked the cupcakes?? I'll start with just a few details of the last 3 months. How we found out:  A pregnancy test. Duh. I had been tracking my cycles for awhile, and was a couple days late. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I forced myself to wait until I was at least 2 days late before taking a test. And there was a super faint  line! My Business Man told me not to get too excited but the next day, there was a much darker line. After confirming with a blood test by the doctor, it was official! And we were officially excited. I had my first appointment at 8 ...

A few weeks ago, I went to turn on my laptop, like I do every night, and nothing happened. It 'tried' to boot up for almost an hour. Uh oh. [Insert minor freak-out.] My Business Man attempted a few things via Apple support but we had no luck. I decided to take it to the only computer shop in the Bean Town that works on Macs... and waited a few days for them to call me back. I finally got a call back, and was told the computer hard drive was completely crashed. Womp womp. All   my recipes, GONE! My business plan, GONE! All my pictures,  GONE!  All my math teaching documents,   GONE! (Though I wasn't too upset about that...) Yes, I am the brilliant person that has been using the same laptop for 4 years without backing anything up at all. So, I did what any person would do. Decided the people here in Lima must not know what they're talking about, so I took it to the Apple store in Columbus. Of course they told me the same thing. (At least I coerced a friend to ...

So this has been quite the depressing winter. Cold, snow, extreme cold, more snow, thoughts of "Will the temps ever get back above freezing??!" I'm beginning to think the mountain of snow at the end of our driveway will soon be taller than our house. (It's sitting about 8-9 feet right now.) When it's this cold, all I want to do is sit on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and watch movies. And eat. Haha. I thought I'd share some new-to-us foods that we've been enjoying lately. Yes... a majority all of them might be junk food... but luckily I've been able to keep up the running to an extent so there hasn't been too  much damage. Lol. BBQ Chicken Nachos . I made these one night for dinner when we didn't really have anything else to eat. And I will make them again! They were fabulous. I just sauteed some chicken breast chunks in a bit of olive oil, then simmered them with BBQ sauce. (A thinner sauce works best.) Then spread tortilla chips out ...

So, I've got a pretty sweet gig. Working for myself, I get to set my hours... and I only have a couple days a week that are really jam-packed. (Unless it's close to a holiday, then it's pretty much 'work every moment I am awake'.) The weekly schedule is usually something like this: Monday - grocery store, bank, clean house/kitchen, test new recipes, chill out a little Tuesday - bake in preparation for cupcake counter on Wed Wednesday  - Sam's Club, finish up baking/prep work from Tues, sell cupcakes at counter from 3-6pm Thursday  - prepwork for weekend, grocery store (again), work on business plan/emails/marketing/etc Friday  - BAKE BAKE BAKE! This is my busiest baking day of the week. Saturday  - sell cupcakes at counter from 11am-3pm Sunday  - rest, hang out with my Business Man Everyday  - fill orders for pick-up at our house (pretty much a daily thing), update Facebook page, plan ahead for future holidays/specials So Mondays are a pre...

I haven't talked running much on the blog lately... heck I haven't talked much on the blog lately at all. The last big running thing I did was the Columbus Marathon back in October. I've taken the last several months very easy running-wise. Running what I want, when I want. If I don't feel like it, I don't worry about it. I've still been in the 30+ miles a week range, which might seem like a lot. (But back in the spring when I was training for Boston, I was putting in 55-60. So it's really been cut in half.) It's really kind of funny - I am way less  busy now than I was last spring. (When I was teaching + baking 80+ hours a week.) I had no problem getting motivated to run back then. I was up before 5:30am everyday of the week! Now that I'm working a much more normal amount (probably 35-45 hours, depending on the week), it's so much harder to get the runs in! I don't know if I've just come to appreciate sleep, or if it's being on...

After a busy, busy holiday season, I've decided I'd like to try to get back into blogging a little more regularly. I really miss having a place to write out my thoughts, musings, and whatever's on my mind. I also really enjoy being able to look back on different times of my life... and crazy shenanigans that have occurred. So, first post back - just a glimpse at the last month or so. 2013 was a great year, and we have so much to be thankful for. At the beginning of December, Sara's Sweets took part in the Downtown Lima Holiday Fest. We offered cupcake decorating for kids, and it was a huge success! About 250 kids came through, wowza. It was a crazy day, but lots of fun. The holiday season was NUTS (in a good way!) for Sara's Sweets. I baked closed to 5000 cupcakes in the month of December alone. It doesn't seem like that  many, but when I remember that I do all my baking out of my home kitchen with my one oven, it seems like a ton. Before ...