Slow Cooker Asian Garlic Chicken

       Since the arrival of Hudson in our lives . . . I have been cooking with either the phone (i.e. takeout) or the slow cooker. :) I think instead of giving traditional baby gifts . . . I am going to start giving new moms a crock pot! (Somehow I don't think that will go over super well ;) haha

       This is a MUST TRY recipe. I only share recipes that we love on the blog and I would never recommend a recipe that we didn't think was amazing, this recipe is in a bit of a league of it's own. It's right up there with Lee's favorite Beef Bourguignon, and my favorite key lime pie.
But what makes this recipe extra amazing is that it is so fast and so easy, seriously 5 minutes of prep! We like to serve ours over rice, but it would be equally good over noodles, (maybe even better), and for a vegetable I just chopped up some red peppers on the side.

Asian Garlic Chicken 

      4 boneless skinless chicken breast (or substitute chicken thighs)
      1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
      5 cloves minced fresh garlic
      1  1/2 cups brown sugar
      3 tablespoons soy sauce
      1/2 cup gingerale (you can substitute sprite, 7 up)
      1/2 tsp - 1 tsp red pepper flakes (*optional, adjust to personal tolerance for spice)

      2 tbsp water
      1 tbsp cornstarch

1) Combine vinegar, garlic, sugar, soy, pepper flakes and gingerale in crock pot. Mix until sugar has dissolved (this doesn't take more than 1 minute).
2) Now, place chicken into crock pot with liquid.
3) Turn crock pot to high and cook for 4 hours! (You can also turn the crock pot to low and cook for 8 hours),
4) When the chicken in ready (after 4 hours on high) pull the chicken out and cut into chunks. Take the liquid from the crock pot and pour it into a small sauce pot on the stove. Bring liquid to a boil. Mix water and cornstarch together and pour into liquid. Heat until the sauce is thickened (feel free to add more cornstarch and water if you would like your sauce thicker).
5) Eat!
6) Come back and let us know if you loved it as much as we do!!!

Nursery Reveal

       Hudson's almost 9 weeks old now and we can finally call his room finished. I wanted to keep the main elements timeless and neutral . . . things like the wall color and the trim detail (you can read more about those choices here). I wanted them to be able to grow up with him. The trim and paint also happen to be my favorite part of the room, I would love to paint the entire house those two colors!

       I wanted to add some whimsy (or a lot of whimsy as the case may be) in the form of drapes. I am not much of a "theme" person but somehow his little nursery ended up with a bit of an elephant theme. What I like about the drapes is that while it's obviously elephants up close . . . from far away it almost looks just like a patterned black and white fabric (you can read more about the drapes here).
       I found this curtain rod at Lowes for less than $20. I thought it was perfect for a nursery. I love that it looks like a branch with some little leaves off the end. I even love the antique brass finish . . . a little warmer than nickle or chrome.

       The crib was more than a bit of a dilemma. We originally bought Ikea's Sniglar crib. I really loved the clean lines and how thin and delicate it was, I especially liked the price at $79.99. What I didn't like was that it was natural wood (I was just hoping for something painted). So we bought it anyway . . . and picked up some no voc paint. The plan was that we would paint the crib with a no voc paint, then seal it with a no voc sealer. We knew that we had about a month before he would be sleeping in it . . . so that should be more than enough time for it to cure and all the smell to leave. One month later . . . the paint was still tacky . . . the smell was stronger than ever and in the end I just didn't feel comfortable with him sleeping in his room  . . . with the door closed and that crib inside. So back to the drawing board, or back to Ikea I should say, for their Gulliver crib. It is really similar in its style, very simple clean lines. The four corner pieces are a little thicker than the sniglar crib but generally the same idea. A bonus is that it was already a warm cream color, and it didn't stink. ;)

       We had no debate over what crib mattress to get Hudson . . . we knew we wanted one that had an infant side and a toddler side (although I am pretty sure most of them do). But mostly we wanted to ensure that it was made of organic cotton. I researched tons of different mattresses to find one that was a reasonable price, we ended up with the Simmons "Natures Best" mattress.  We found it on sale at Sears for $159.

       Attached to the crib is a Cloud B sleep sheep. Hudson loves it, he loves it so much we ended up buying the travel sized sleep sheep that we can take with us in the car and on trips. The sheep has 4 white noises, rain and ocean are Hudson's favorite. We use Rain for bedtime and we use Ocean for nap times. It's awesome . . . as soon as he hears the rain sound you can actually see him getting sleepy.

       In the crib we chose a Muslin crib sheet made by Aden and Anais, it's their Up, Up and Away pattern. I have more than a small crush on Aden and Anais products right now, we have the swaddle blankets, the sleep sacks, the burp cloths and the bibs. They are beautiful and breathable, even Lee likes them and he is pretty much immune to baby stuff. He said he doesn't understand why I think baby shoes are so cute because "They are just like adult shoes but small". haha

       Beside the crib is our old craft cabinet. We were given so many adorable baby gifts and so many books, we wanted somewhere to keep all the cute baby gear. The drawer at the bottom is especially useful to store extra diapers and wipes.

       I found the sign above the cabinet at Homesense. I went in for pillows (more on the pillows in a second) and I saw the sign . . . I knew we had to have it for Hudson's room. I am sure he will get to be a certain age and not want that up in his room any more but for now it's perfect!

       The mobile above his bed was a bit of a struggle for me. I couldn't find a mobile that I loved. I could find ones that I liked . . . but even those ones were well over $50. So I set out to make my own, errr . . . kind of. I found the wire mobile harness on Amazon for less than $10. Then I found these little monkeys at the dollar store for a dollar ;). I just clipped them on the bum (ouch). Hudson loves it. When I find little elephants I will swap out the little monkeys but for now the colors are perfect and if Hudson is happy with it, then I'm happy.

       On the other side of his room is his dresser (aka. Change table) and a chair. The mirror is a huge hit with Hudson. The change pad is the Naturepedic Organic Change pad (while Hudson doesn't spend a lot of time on his change pad . . . we still chose to go organic because we didn't want it off gassing in his room). We covered it in the matching Muslin Aden and Anais cover! We keep his diapers and wipes in the top drawer of the dresser, that way we didn't need to try and squeeze in a BIG, long dresser or change table.

       You might recognize the chair, it's our old living room chair (originally our library chair). We are planning on adding a glider mechanism to the bottom but for right now it's as is. The pillows are from Homesense and they were the inspiration for the whole room.

       Lastly, above the chair we attached a picture ledge (an old one from Ikea) to the wall and hung a very calming piece of black and white art work (originally from Ikea as well).

I also keep his little elephant rattle and diaper cream up there, because I give him the rattle when I change him and if I need the diaper cream it's within easy reach.

We also added a ceiling fan where the old light fixture was before. Having a fan in the room reduces the risk of SIDS so it was the first thing we installed when we knew Hudson was coming home.

Whew, that was a long post . . . and I hope you like his little nursery as much as we do. It's my favorite room in the house now. Like hands down, no contest, my favorite room! It makes me want to install trim and do a two toned paint scheme for the whole house!

Make sure to pop back tomorrow, I have been using our crock pot a ton since Hudson's arrival and I made the BEST and Easiest chicken dish, recipe up on the blog tomorrow morning!

Our Adoption Story

I am so excited to write about Hudson's adoption story today. I will tell you everything I can tell you . . . but we won't be getting into the details about his birth mother. We discussed what we felt comfortable sharing on the blog and what we decided is that, just like everything else around this manor we are more than happy to share our lives and stories . . . but his birth mother has the right to keep her story for herself. So you will hear everything about our experience but again, not too much about his birth mother. What we can tell you about her is . . . that she is truly one of the most amazing people we have met and that we do plan on having on going contact with her throughout the years!

We were so very very lucky, our Homestudy was over in April but then it takes about a month to type up the final approval by our social worker. Then we had to decide on where we were going to adopted from. Programs open and close all over the world so we needed to decide on a plan. Haiti was an option for a while (but they required that we both be over 30 and I am still 29), Africa was an option but the wait list was a bit long for us, and USA was an option as well but the cost put it out of our reach. Because an adoption from the US to Canada is an international adoption we would have to pay our agency up here and an agency in the US so almost twice the cost of a local adoption from BC.  The only reason we didn't choose BC right away was because we were told the wait times can be very long. We took all of May to decide and by May 28th we had decided to pursue local adoption and submitted our local fee and our profile.

June 12th we were chosen! 

Hudson was born on a Wednesday night but we didn't find out about him until Thursday morning. On Wednesday night I was falling asleep (Lee was already well into a deep sleep as usual), and the name Hudson popped into my head. I have no idea why? Maybe I was thinking of a Canadian Store (The Hudson's Bay Company) I really have no idea, that had never been one of our hypothetical "baby names" before. I woke Lee up and asked what he thought of the name Hudson he said he liked it (half asleep still) and that was it. The very next morning, Thursday morning, around 10:00 am we got a call from our agency saying we had been chosen by a birth mom for a baby boy born last night! I KNEW it was Hudson!

I was told a bunch of info over the phone . . . all I could think of was Baby Hudson. As soon as I got off the phone with the agency I phoned Lee.
Tears streaming down my face, a frog so big in my throat I wondered if I could even get the words out . . . Lee picked up and I managed to get out "We were picked"  and what do I get in response from Lee "That's great!!! For What??" haha Still crying I was able to squeak out . . . "For a baby!"
Then it all clicked and I heard "Oh . . . Wow . . . seriously? . . . wow"

We thought we might have to pick him up that day and to be honest that's how we would have liked to have done it. But because this wasn't a long standing plan in place, the agency and Hudson's birth mother thought it was best to keep him in the Hospital for the weekend so that everyone was sure that this was the right thing to do.
So in the hospital he stayed until Monday. We hoped we would be able to take him home on Monday but the social worker wasn't sure that his Birth mother was 100% in her decision yet. So to protect us Hudson went into a care home.
I will always appreciate our social workers concern for our well being. In BC a birth mother has 30 days from the date of birth to revoke her consent, and everyone wants to avoid placing a baby with an adoptive family then removing the baby because consent has been revoked.
And so started the longest 3 days of my life.

On Wednesday we heard that everyone was comfortable with us taking him home and that Friday morning we were to go and pick up our son!!
One small problem . . . Friday was my sister's wedding day! So we asked if we could pick him up in the afternoon after her wedding and of course that was just fine. I will always be amazed by my sister's grace that day. I was a little afraid to tell her . . . but she was nothing but happy and excited to share her wedding day with Hudson!

This is a scanned version of a photograph given to us by the beautiful woman who took care of Hudson for those first 5 days out of the hospital. This is the very first time we saw him (keep in mind I am in a gown because we had just come from my sister's wedding).

So at this point 9 days after his birth, we still had 21 days to go. I want to be honest with you so I will tell you that while those 21 days were some of the best days of my life they were also some of the worst. Looking at those sweet cheeks and knowing that at any moment the call could come and he would no longer be ours was beyond scary. I experienced a type of anxiety that I didn't even know could exist. It was a pulse pounding, stomach turning, hole in your heart kind of anxiety. I still am not sure how we made it through . . . but we did.

Once we met Hudson's Birth mom in our first meet up I felt instantly at ease. So much of the fear fell away. I almost felt silly for worrying so much. Meeting her was truly one of the highlights of this entire experience.

In BC it takes 6 months after placement to fully "adopted" your child, so come December we will have an adoption party for Hudson and he will, in the legal sense, be apart of our family. But in every other sense he already is!

Seriously,  no one warned me of the tidal wave of emotions that comes from seeing your husband hold your son. It's amazing! 

So that's it . . . our whirlwind adventure. I wouldn't change a single moment. I might give my sister her wedding day but other than that it was all perfect. And a cool story "we picked you up on Auntie Kris's wedding day!"

We both wanted to thank everyone for their love and prayers and well wishes. We were amazed at the out pouring of support for us and our little family. Mini Manor readers really know how to make a couple feel loved! Thank you, sharing this journey with you has made it even more special.

I Heart Organizing: Baby Closet

Hi,
I am over on I Heart Organizing today talking about Hudson's new closet. Organizing a baby closet was a bit different than organizing a grown up closet I found out. For one . . . the clothes are much tinier. I worked out a very simple system for our little man's clothes.
If you have a second check it out on I heart Organizing!!