Ask Annie | Q & A Part II

Hooray for Friday!  I’m back at it again answering some of your questions from last week.  If you missed the first Q & A post, you can read it here.  I love hearing from you guys because besides being able to answer your questions, it also gives me an idea of things that you might be interested in reading on this blog.  So please, I’m an open book.  Feel free to ask questions anytime.  I love hearing from lots of you on Instagram as well.  Do you like hearing from me on Instastories?  I always feel like that is fun way to relate and get to know readers better.  I’m not the best at talking into the camera, but I do love sharing with each of you and hearing your responses.   Anyway, lets get to it!

I would love to know gift guides/ideas especially for Madelyn for Christmas since my daughter is the same age.

I’m definitely planning on sharing some gift guides with you guys this year. I always love compiling those and trying to help readers out.  It is interesting with the second child because Madelyn literally loves to just play with anything that her big brother, Brody, is playing with and then she loves her dolls!  So for her 2nd birthday, all she got were doll things. For Christmas, I’m really trying to get creative.  She’s been absolutely obsessed with this giant baby doll that I can’t rave about enough and both of my kids have loved this shopping cart so much which is on sale right now on Zulily.

I actually hadn’t shopped on Zulily in so long, but I had seen someone say that this most precious London Pram was on Zulily and I had to go buy it for Christmas.  It is still on their for another day or two.  If you have a baby lover like me, you need this ?. I die over all this precious baby doll stuff that you can get too.  They have lots of cute stuff for the dolls here if you have space in your house for all this stuff!! I’ve run out of space ?

I’m also looking for things that she can enjoy outside with Brody.  He is loving riding his bike these days and they still love to ride in their motorized jeep.  She’s pretty much ready for her own ride now too.  This one is so cute (ignore the price on this link, I think it’s around $99).  I love this precious bike and I bought them each one of these neat things on Zulily too.  They are called Joybays.  They are on major sale right now!

Do you have a light-up scooter recommendation for 5 year olds??

We don’t have a light-up, but my kids have always used the Razors which are nice.  I didn’t even know they made light up scooters, but this one looks really fun!

Favorite go-to recipes??

Eww. this is a good question. So, lately, I have been cooking a lot of new stuff from Skinnytaste.  I get on these kicks where I cook everything Ina Garden or everything Skinnytaste or I just get in a big slump.

Hubby is very much a meat and potatoes guys.  We do a lot of meat on the grill, starch and veggie.  But especially since it is Fall, it definitely gets me in the cooking mood.

This ranch chicken is so good and it is so simple. The kids even like it.   This spicy shrimp pasta has become a favorite and we love some good crab cakes if you get good seafood.  This truffled Mac, tomato pie and tomato, corn and mozzarella tart are some of our favorites to eat with a piece of chicken or steak on the grill.

We love Italian food too so we will make spaghetti (add a little cream cheese to your marinara ? or add these stuffed meatballs), chicken or veal parmesan, or chicken marsala or piccata.

At this stage, our kids do not eat dinner with us.  They eat dinner before us around 530pm and we eat our dinner later.  I would love to hear some of your ideas on kid friendly recipes that you use if you eat together as a family.

How did you and your hubby meet?

Hubby and I met because he worked for my Dad.  I know I’ve told this story at some point on this blog; but yes, he worked for my Dad.  I was living in Atlanta about 1 year post college and I came back to Pensacola for one of our company Christmas parties.  Matt and I just hit it off that night.  We had actually met several times before that when I was in college in Gainesville, FL and he lived in Orlando.  My brother was living in Orlando at the time and when I would go visit him, we would sometimes see Matt.  He was a lot older than me (even though I didn’t really know how much older he was at the time), so I never thought too much of it; but we definitely had chemistry.  After that Christmas party in 2007, we started talking long distance (I actually chased him ?) and he was convinced my Dad was going to kill him if he found out we were dating.  Thankfully, that was not the case at all and my Dad had always loved Matt.  This Christmas will be 10 years which is still hard to believe.

How do you set up your schedule, days, etc with kids, blogging, house stuff, chores, appts, etc?

I think like a lot of SAHM’s, no two days are the same.  This Fall has been really nice because both of the kids are in school from 9am-1pm  Monday to Thursday.  That seems like it would be pretty cut and dry, but sick kids happen or doctors appointments or whatever and often seem to disrupt the schedule.  But, when everything is going smoothly; that is the plan and I try to fit in a work out, blogging (at a coffee shop, I love being at the coffee shop), groceries and appointments into that time.

I’ve saved a lot of free time lately by using Instacart to have our groceries delivered and I’ve saved a lot of time with laundry by hiring someone that comes once every two weeks to help fold and put away laundry as well as change sheets and do a little light cleaning.  This is an absolute luxury for sure, but I can’t tell you how amazing it is.  Kids laundry is A LOT! I know lots of people that try to have a laundry schedule.  My schedule is to do laundry only once every two weeks.  Seriously, that’s all I do it.  I get all the laundry done the day before she comes and then she folds, hangs and puts away all of our clothes.  She will use the steamer sometimes too for clothes that need it.  This has been a big game changer for me.   I found her through my cleaning company.  It costs us about an extra $150 a month to have her and it’s worth every penny in my book! We have a cleaning company that comes once every other week also to do a full clean of the house.

Do you get ready and fully dressed before your kids get up??

Typically our morning looks like this: The kids come into our room about 7am and lay in bed with us with some TV for a few minutes.  Then my husband gets up to shower and get dressed while I go downstairs with the kids.  When he is done, he comes down stairs with the kids and I go up to get dressed for the day.  It works for us right now.  I can’t tell you how much I try to wake up around 6am before the kids and want to squeeze in a quick work out and shower before the kids wake up; but it never happens ? It’s been getting light out earlier here, so I’m hoping I can make it happen soon 🙂

What was your approach to keeping Brody busy when Madelyn was a baby??

Brody was 2 years and 3 months when Madelyn was born.  I’ve honestly already forgotten what the stage looked like! Brody has always been pretty good at playing independently.  I know he also loved Mickey Mouse Clubhouse A LOT.  So, we just made it through that stage the best we could.  Newborns sleep so much in the beginning, so I tried to take advantage of that time by giving him some one on one attention and he understood pretty quickly that Mommy had to breastfeed the baby and I couldn’t play.  He’s always been super tight with my hubby too, so at night that helped a lot.  It really becomes such a blur, but we get through it.  The newborn learns to sleep wherever and would be dragged to play dates or trampoline parks when needed.

This became a pretty long post again!! If you have any new questions that you would like me to answer, shoot me an email, leave a comment or send me a DM on Instagram.  I really love hearing from all of you!  I hope these help!

Have a great weekend ?