My bff Rachel surprised me with an amazing gift recently! Since she lives in Seattle and couldn’t bring us food when Logan was first born, she decided to gift us with a house cleaner instead! It was so sweet of her to think of doing something like that and I couldn’t have been more excited.
I was beyond ecstatic. I’ve been able to keep up with the minimal house cleaning since Logan arrived but it’s definitely not up to my usual standards and deep cleaning…? That hasn’t happened in awhile. A long while…
For local Portland people: I highly recommend the services of Double Duty Cleaning Services. Email: doubledutyclean@gmail.com. Phone: 503-933-1933.
DeNae and her assistant came over one day and cleaned our entire house from top to bottom. They even did stuff I never think of doing (and will try to keep up with in the future!) like dusting light bulbs and cleaning air vents. They even cleaned inside the microwave!
They were efficient and thorough. They used green products for most of it and then used heavy duty hospital-grade type cleaner (that kills stuff like MRSA) for certain areas. It was nice to know that the house was going to be super clean and sanitary. Especially considering our little guy is getting bigger and will be on the move soon.
Michael came home and said our house “sparkles”. It looked AMAZING. I was really happy with the results and hope to hire them again in the future when I need the deep cleaning again. 🙂
I just can’t get over how clean everything is!
In other news, we’ve been a bit more social lately. We went to a friend’s housewarming party and Logan was a little trooper. He slept through most of it. Their yard:
Love it!
We’ve been out to dinner with him a few times, which was nice. Logan did great and I think the ambient noise of restaurants helped him just sleep through most of it so we could catch up with friends.
This weekend we had some friends over for a BBQ.
Michael did up his awesome ribs, friends brought over spicy guacamole and some corn on the cob. I made coleslaw for the first time.
I used this recipe:
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:141]
Michael and I both prefer vinegar-based coleslaws over mayo. I tried to find a recipe to try for my first time and it was actually kind of hard to find vinegar slaws! I found a few that sounded good.
This recipe was really good and everyone was a fan. My one complaint was that it was a little on the sweet side (and holy cow, 1 cup of sugar?!?!). I made the dressing as is and then tasted it and it was way too sweet for my liking. In the end I added a little more vinegar, doubled the garlic, and add some more salt. Then it was pretty good!
In the bad news department: an hour before our guests arrived we discovered our air conditioner was broken. JUST IN TIME for the coming heat wave that will be in Portland soon. UGH! Hopefully we can survive the next few days before the guy comes out (and most likely replaces the entire thing…womp womp). But we sat outside for the BBQ so it wasn’t too bad.
In Logan news: twice last week he slept through the night! He went to sleep at 10pm and then I woke up at 4:45am like WTF IS HAPPENING?!? Completely dazed and confused, unsure of what time it was and kind of freaked out. Then I realized he was ok, he was just still asleep! So instead of getting up at 2am to feed him and pump, I was able to get a solid stretch of sleep! The first time it happened I figured it was a fluke. But when it happened again I started to wonder if maybe he was slowly growing into a “he might sleep all night” routine!
The only downside for me is going that long in between pumping or feeding is kind of a bad idea. But hopefully it will be okay and my body will get used to that and I won’t have issues. It sure would be nice to just sleep all night!
Sunday was book club. And as usual there was tons of really delicious food:
Greek Orzo salad, caprese, BBQ’d veggies, homemade bread and this asparagus tart:
The asparagus tart was amazing! I’ve seen this on pinterest a million times and have wanted to try doing it. Now that I’ve eaten one I know I can make it so I will be trying that soon.
Dessert:
Fruit tart with chocolate and Bavarian cream. Holy cow was this amazing! I seriously could have eaten so much of it (but didn’t). So delicious!
Lots of good food, hung out with friends, sort of talked about this month’s book (but really ended up just catching up on stuff!) and then it was time for me to head home to feed the baby. It was nice to get out of the house and be social solo, though.
Anyways, that was my weekend!
Biz
Wow, hooray for having two nights of him sleeping so long! I never had that problem because Hannah slept all.the.time. Like 20 out of 24 hours long – so crazy! Now at age 24 she’s still a great sleeper, and even schedules in nap times nearly every other day. 😛
I love vinegar based slaw too – can’t stand mayo
Lisa Eirene
That’s really good! Logan is more awake during the daytime. He’s more active and just doesn’t nap as much during the day. Thankfully though that hasn’t effected his nighttime sleep.
Lori
Glad you are getting out and about! I love a good fruit tart. Yum!
I would love a cleaning service, but that budget thing. We have a big house and have made a master cleaning list, so one room a week (or 2 small rooms) gets the deep cleaning of all the things you don’t do in a normal straightening up. It’s been so helpful to have this and John and I can bust out the room in an hour or so. The nice thing about that is the more times we go through the entire sequence, the less time overall is spent to be done each time because it’s only 6 weeks between each area – as opposed to a looong time if we don’t bother with it LOL.
Lisa Eirene
That’s a great idea. Doing one room deep cleans at a time sounds more manageable. Our house isn’t that big but it would definitely take too long to do the whole house at once.
christi in ma
hooray for cleaning ladies and sleeping through the night
I have a favorite slaw recipe. http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/05/broccoli-slaw/
I use greek yogurt instead of mayo and bump up the vinegar. It keeps in the fridge for days!
Lisa Eirene
Thanks for the link! I will check that out. I like using Greek yogurt in recipes.