four paws & four years

Today we're celebrating Knox's fourth birthday.  Despite the fact that he stole the rest of Olive's hot dog off of the counter yesterday, we still decided to make him birthday treats today.  I scoured pinterest and found a recipe that looked simple (considering my sous chef was a toddler), gathered all the ingredients, and got to our morning baking project. 

  Quickly into mixing and mashing, it occurred to me that we needed more ingredients, if nothing else than for the sheer fact that mixing is fun!

Our final product was a combination of two different recipes I found online.  Olive had a blast putting it together and eventually playing with it, and Knox enjoyed eating them, so I'm deeming this a successful project.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups uncooked oats

1 banana

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup coconut oil

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

• In a large bowl, combine banana, coconut oil, oats, and peanut butter.

• Working on a lightly floured surface, kneed the dough until it's not so sticky.  *At this point, I would say to use a rolling pin, but that wasn't happening with Olive, so we just smashed the dough until it seemed flat and started cutting out shapes with cookie cutters.

• Place them onto the baking sheet, pop them in the oven, and cook for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.

• Let cool completely.

expectations vs. reality

Back in 2013, my (at the time) boyfriend, Paul, and I, had decided that we wanted to adult a little bit, and started house hunting.  One afternoon, I stumbled upon an amazing local realtor while Knox gallivanted around with his giant saint bernard puppy.  We had a formal sit-down meeting at fat belly's where Ryan (the super awesome realtor) pitched his awesomeness to us (while sweating profusely).  The genuine initial nervousness combined with how laid back he was at the beach sold us instantly, and just like that, we were off on a mission with him to find the perfect home.  Since Paul and I both work on the seacoast, we thought it'd be best to stay local, with the hopes of never, ever, ever crossing the bridge.  This plan was all fine and dandy until a little sea-monkey that we lovingly nicknamed "Cemita" came into our world.  We had an official deadline due date of July 5 - plenty of time to find the perfect home....

We stopped keeping up with this list, so I've honestly lost count on how many houses we've seen, however, I can tell you that we have tried to buy five-ish houses.

Five.... ish.

Which brings me to where I am today.  We had always intended on renovating an ugly/older home.  That was the plan.  Bring on the ugly wallpaper and outdated carpet!  I had binged enough HGTV in my day to think that I knew what I was doing.  Unfortunately, that fifth-ish house is still waiting in the gallows... and so are we.  Over the course of our house buying endeavors, we bit the bullet and moved across the bridge... to Dover.  After a year or so in Dover, and another close encounter with a prospective home, we opted to temporarily move in with Paul's parents.  The move was wonderful for a million different reasons.  Paul's mom is our current child care provider, so Olive is exactly where she needs to be when she wakes up - no more commute!  Knox is happy running free around the farm, and we have a little more support around us as we prepare to add another sea-monkey to the mix (no creative nickname this time though.. we just refer to it as "new baby" - oops).  But with the new arrival fast approaching, I still can't help but long for a space for the Kitzovich's to call their own.

And that's it.  In a nutshell.  I planned on creating this blog to keep track of our house renovations, but it's been over two years, and I've at least accomplished a handful of pinterest-worthy shares (and fails) that are worth mentioning... if nothing else.  

So... welcome!