Laundry

Homemade PopTarts

2012-02-01T07:17:00.001-05:00

This may be my lamest recipe ever.

Right now homemade PopTarts are going around on Pinterest (do you see my new Pinterest button over there on the right?) I thought they looked so cute! I liked the idea of making PopTarts without all the preservatives and stuff that make up the 25 ingredient list on the box. Also, since my kids do like PopTarts I figured they would think I was awesome for making some homemade ones!

But after I made these, I thought, “This may be the lamest thing I’ve ever made for them besides a bowl of cereal.” Because basically, I realized that PopTarts are just jam pies with sprinkles.

One recipe floating around called for making a homemade crust. Ha! That was a knee slapper! I went out and bought me a box of Pillsbury pie crusts.

Then I cut one into a square:

And then I cut that into a bunch of rectangles and put some pastry filling on half of them (the pastry filling was leftover from some thumbprint cookies I made at Christmas, but you can use any jam):

Then I put another rectangle on each of those and sealed them around the edges with a fork:

Bake those babies in a 425 degree oven for 7-8 minutes. While they’re baking, make a glaze for them using powdered sugar (about a 1/2 cup), a drizzle of milk, and a 1/4 t. of vanilla. It should be about the consistency of syrup. That’s not a lot of milk! Maybe only a few tablespoons! Add your food coloring. I decided to make mine pink, but I used a bit too much food coloring and they look almost radioactive. Less is more, people.

Drizzle on the glaze and give it a sprinkle of sprinkles. I think they look awful, but Maddie and Jack devoured them. Ben (my pickiest eater) took one look at them, wrinkled his nose slightly, and said, “I think I’ll just get one out of the box.” And then he did.

I tried taking pictures of Maddie and Jack eating them, but they were not cooperating. Do they not know I have a blog to write? I said, “Try to look like you’re enjoying them!” And this is what I got:

She’s really going to regret that photo someday.

This was the best he could do? After I slaved away in the kitchen on these PopTarts for 4 whole minutes? Hmph.

I think this would be a fun recipe to do with your children. But maybe I’ll just stick with pancakes on Saturday morning from now on.

January Book Review

2012-01-30T07:40:00.001-05:00

I am in such a reading slump. I have really struggled the past two months to get through my nightly books. Maybe it’s because it’s winter and I’m just so blah and tired by bedtime, or maybe I’ve just picked a lineup of stinkers to read, but I usually fall asleep 2-3 pages in. It might also be because I’ve been doing Words With Friends/Hanging With Friends/Scramble with Friends on my phone and have about 5 games going that I usually get caught up on before my nightly reading, and all that thinking is obviously not good for my tired brain.

So anyway, here are my last five books. I hope they keep you awake.

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O’Nan- Tara at Taradactyl said in her last book review that she is really loving Stewart O’Nan, especially his book, Emily Alone. Unfortunately, my library system didn’t have Emily Alone, but it did have this one, which apparently is the sequel to Emily Alone (though it can stand on its own). I can’t say I was crazy about Wish You Were Here, but I liked it enough that I will try to read Emily Alone when I can get my hands on a copy. It had all of the elements I usually like in a book: good character development, the story was told from multiple characters’ perspectives, an interesting premise and family dynamic, but since I fell asleep every 2-3 pages (darn that Words With Friends!) I really just felt like I never connected with it. By the way, it’s about an extended family’s last stay at their mountain cottage….Emily (title character in Emily Alone, remember this is a sequel) is going to sell the house after the family spends one last week there.

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner-Again, this had a great premise, but I just couldn’t connect! This is about four women who are all connected by a baby: the egg donor, the surrogate mother, the intended mother of the baby, and the stepdaughter of the intended mother. I have to say that I don’t think this one was all me. There was too much backstory (and I don’t usually mind that) and I really didn’t like the stepdaughter and found the intended mother’s whole background unbelievable. Bottom line: I wouldn’t recommend this one.

All is Vanity by Christina Schwartz- Finally, I got a good one! This novel follows two women, friends since elementary school. Margaret has always been the overachieving star, while Letty has always been the wind beneath Margaret’s wings, so to speak. This novel is a satirical look at vanity today. Satire, if you remember from high school English, is when an author makes fun of or exaggerates someone’s shortcomings in order to teach a lesson. In this case, Margaret displays vanity by wanting to be a famous author (and these are some of the funniest parts of the book, when she tries to write her novel) whereas Letty’s vanity is illustrated by her over-the-top need to “keep up with the Joneses” as she slowly works her credit cards up to an insane amount of debt, all the while obliviously making excuses for her choices. If you decide to read this, know that the first third of the book, as you are slowly introduced through flashbacks to both women’s formative years, is fairly slow reading, but things really pick up when Margaret makes a bad decision and Letty’s expenses start to go crazy. (By the way, this author also wrote Drowning Ruth, another good one you might want to try.)

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier-Have you read Cold Mountain by this author? That, my friends, is an excellent novel. It was made into a movie sometime in the last decade starring Nicole Kidman, which was also good, but read the novel, please. Anywho, Nightwoods takes place in the mountains of North Carolina and is a much quicker read than Cold Mountain. Luce inherits her sister Lily’s twin children after Lily is murdered by her husband (which the children witness). Bud, the husband/killer who is not convicted of his crime, tracks down Luce and the children, partly to make sure the kids don’t squeal, and partly because he’s certain that Lily has hidden a large amount of money with the children. The novel is somewhat suspenseful, but Frazier’s gorgeous writing is the reason to read this book. He’s the kind of author that doesn’t just tells a story, but puts it all together with vivid imagery, subtle, dry, sly occasional humor, and who, unfortunately, is not afraid to have bad things happen to his main characters. Having read Cold Mountain and knowing that both his good and bad characters are sometimes equally “punished”, I was not entirely certain that all would be well in the end. And I’m not going to tell you what happens either. So there. Nyah.

By the way, this one is not showing up on my Goodreads widget over there on the right, but I did read it! (Actually, no books are currently showing on the widget…I’m not sure what’s going on.)

Matched by Ally Condie-This is another one recommended to me by Tara. This young adult novel is set some unspecified time in the future, where society has become near perfect. Most cancers and diseases have been cured, and everyone lives long (at least until age 80) because “the society” makes all of your choices for you so that they are all healthy ones. You are matched with your spouse based on statistics, your food is delivered to you and based on your own dietary/caloric needs, every hour of your day is scheduled-- you know exactly what time your work and school hours are and even your leisure hours are programmed and the leisure choices presented for you. Unfortunately, the society has its downside, and that is what Cassia, the seventeen year old heroine of the novel is starting to see. In the beginning of the novel, Cassia is “matched” with her future husband, but she soon starts to fall for someone else. Also, her grandfather, whose 80th birthday occurs days after her matching ceremony, is euthanized by the society, as the society has determined that 80 is the best age to die (before you get too sick or useless, they think). This bothers Cassia too (but apparently doesn’t bother anyone else). So…the book really kept me reading, but I felt like the author could have told this novel in about 80 pages (and then killed it before it started to get old and useless…hahaha!) I found myself skimming occasionally as Cassia thought and thought and thought things through. Geez, figure it out already and do what you’re going to do! This book is the first of three, and I will definitely read the next one (Crossed) and the third is still being written, with publication due next fall. It’s the next Hunger Games, people! Get on board!

Instagram January

2012-01-27T08:20:00.001-05:00

I’ll begin this month’s stunningly riveting review with a peek at our New Year’s Eve. We started off the afternoon with a trip to see The Adventures of Tin Tin. It was excellent! There was action and adventure, humor, a mystery, and the animation was amazing. I can’t believe this movie wasn’t nominated for an Animation Oscar. It’s probably not in theaters anymore, but make sure you see it on DVD. After that we headed to our favorite Japanese restaurant where the kids drank Shirley Temples this time and we successfully kept our eyebrows from getting singed.

After a visit to my mother-in-law, whose birthday is on New Year’s Eve, we headed home and played The Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Game. This game is very fun, and the kids love it, but it gets hilariously out of control quickly. Which I may not have been entirely in the mood for at 10:30 pm.

After the game was mercifully put away, we watched Bedtime Stories (with Adam Sandler) and this guy started fading even faster than me:

Finally the ball dropped, we counted down to the New Year and drank our carbonated grape juice, hit some pots and pans outside (and Dave even set off some leftover fireworks from this summer) and headed to bed. Jack was so tired. He cried when I put him to bed, saying he was going to miss this year so much, and that next year couldn’t be as good as this year was. My sweet baby.

Then the kids went back to school (yay!), however, all three of them have had a turn of a day or two or three home sick this month (in fact, Maddie is home with me now as I write this). Here’s Ben, not feeling great early in the morning, but smiling because he’s not going to school!

We had family photos taken for my in-laws as a Christmas present this year. Here they are in one, posing with the grandkids:

I celebrated my birthday this month with my favorite dessert:

Oh, crème brulee, how I love you. You helped me turn 33 so much more easily.

Jack and I visited the police station with his Tiger Scouts. Oh my Lord, 17 first grade boys surrounded by handcuffs, scanners, weapons, and very nice police officers makes for some ultra-bouncy, hard-to-contain seven year olds. When our police officer/tour guide led the boys out to the garage and even lit up one of those traffic flares for them, joy burst forth in chaos and never-ending movement and chatter. When the police car was opened up, they all fought for seats inside, and each took turns in the driver’s seat. The photo on the left below is the Scoutmaster, pretending he’s being taken away by the police. The kids loved this! It was a really fun night!

We enjoyed a night out with friends at a craft brewery nearby which opened up recently. I’m not a huge fan of beer, but they have one called the Javasomething that I swear tastes like coffee! It was good! You can get these little sampler trays (flights) so you can taste all of their brews. We had a great time, and hope to make ourselves do it again (isn’t it sad when you get to the age [yes---33] where you have to make yourself go out? Or probably, that’s just me.)

I know I’ve shown you this before, but this just keeps getting weirder. Every time Maddie holds Herbie the guinea pig…

…he arches his head back and falls into an ultra-relaxed state, and even lets you pat his belly and tickle him under his chin. This is very unusual for guinea pigs as they are always afraid something is going to swoop down and pick them up and take them away to their nests as appetizers. They are always alert and ready to run and hide.

But when Maddie holds him he just gets all limp and happy. We call her the Guinea Pig Whisperer.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end. You can see it was all worth it, just for the Guinea Pig pictures alone. Happy January!

Swim Photo Fail

2012-01-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

Maddie’s on our local swim team and loves it. And you just know I’m at every meet with my camera in hand, trying my darnedest to zoom in and get that perfect shot of her popping out of the water for a breath. Unfortunately, I haven’t even come close, because winter swim meets all take place indoors with fluorescent lighting, so everything’s slightly blurry and a little dark.

And also, neither the camera nor the photographer is the greatest.

It’s kind of freaky the way it appears that she’s looking right at me!

Even set on the Sport Setting, everything was blurry, darnit!

Nice shot of her chin and nostrils.

Hey look! It’s Deb from Confessions of an Ugly Mom’s son, Mason! Still blurry but he’s looking good!

Do you see any familiar faces in the crowd??

Rude, dude.

But finally last week, we had a meet at a pool with a wall of windows!

Maddie’s the one at the top of the picture.

And that made all the difference!

By the way, did you know that when you win a swim meet, you get to throw your coaches in the pool?

Good thing they all know how to swim!

I Am Crafty AGAIN!

2012-01-23T07:46:00.001-05:00

The last time I was crafty was last fall when I made this.

And now, I have been crafty again! Traditionally, at Christmas time, I embellish my fresh wreath with red gingham ribbon and white snowflakes, and it usually lasts me through to Valentine’s Day, because it’s not too Christmas-y looking. But unfortunately, this year I went with a boxwood wreath instead of my usual pine wreath and the boxwood got dried out and brown way more quickly than the pine usually did. (Sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture). This spurred me into action.

I pulled out an old grapevine wreath and pulled all of the stuff off of it, and then gluegunned some felt flowers and hearts onto it that I picked up at Hobby Lobby. This craft took me about 32 seconds to complete, just the way I like it.

The red heart hanging in the middle is actually a Christmas ornament I bought at Target several years ago. I think the wreath would be totally cute covered in those red felt flowers, but there were only two packs of them at Hobby Lobby the day I was there. Maybe they’ve restocked, but I’m okay with it as it is.

I also decided to spruce up my mantle the day I was wandering the aisles at Hobby Lobby, which I normally don’t tend to do, as I am generally stuck in a decorating rut for most of the year. But I saw this cute rose covered wreath which was marked 50% off, and then I decided to make a little garland to go along with it:

Basically, I bought these felt heart ornaments, gluegunned the little felt heart into each center, then glued them each to the ribbon so they don’t slide. If you look at the picture above, you can see I’ve screwed little hooks under the wooden mantle. These are our Christmas stocking hooks, so I just pulled them out of the Christmas box.

The other things that are on the mantle are there year round, no change there. But I like it!

I think Maddie and her friend totally appreciate the wreath and garland, in fact, I’m pretty sure their Wii scores are higher, their blood pressures are lower, and they each have a warm feeling in their little hearts just knowing that lovely mantle is so near to them.

I’m totally sure of it.

How to Drive Your Mother Crazy

2012-01-19T12:13:00.001-05:00

If you recall, in my last post I asked for some help with my writer’s block, and you guys came through with flying colors! I requested that commenters give me any number from 0 to 8,092, and I would use those corresponding photos in my next post (this one) strung together into something of a story. I got eight responses on here and one response on Facebook, so now it is my job to produce some kind of blogpost, stringing those nine photos together.

If this blogpost stinks, I’m blaming you people for choosing such crappy photos. Just so you know that from the start.

So….

How to Drive Your Mother Crazy in Eight Simple Steps:

1. Squish your little selves onto a pig, and push and cajole for the best spot until everyone is crying and someone eventually falls off.

Photo chosen by Pam via Facebook, #2011, in honor of her son Vincent’s birth year. Thanks Pam!

2. When posing with your siblings and cousin after an egg hunt, shake your fist at the camera and say, “Why I oughta…” real menacing.

Photo chosen by Mary, #1979, in honor of the year she got married. Thanks Mary! And Happy 33rd Anniversary!

3. Massage your Cream of Wheat into your hair, and then cry when Mom attempts to clean you up.

Photo chosen by Tara, #2127. This number does not represent her pant size. Thanks Tara!

4. When Mom begs you to “please smile for the camera!”, put on your shades, suck on your lollipop, and look the other way. That’s right, my friends, do not make eye contact with your mother.

Photo chosen by Maria, #3,333. Thanks and hi Maria!

5. You’re at the beach, it’s family photo time, maybe even Christmas card photo time, but trust me…there’s never a wrong time to give a little shove to your brother.

Even when you’re thirty feet up on the railing of a walkway over a sand dune. Go for it!

Photo chosen by Kathryn, #1217, in honor of her daughter, Jemma’s birthday. Thanks, Kathryn!

6. Wear the kitchen table on your head.

Photo chosen by Jaime, #753. Thanks Jaime! (Doggone it, isn’t Jack cute in that picture? How could he have ever driven me crazy??)

7. Man I used to be thin. I mean, not thin-thin. But way thinner than now. Hmmm. If you really want to drive your mother crazy, show her pictures of herself when she was thinner, but thought she was fat, but really wasn’t, and then say something like, “Mom, do you have a baby in your belly?” or “I love how you’re so squishy, mom!”

Photo chosen by Sue, #1506. Thanks so much for the reminder, Sue. (I’m shaking my fist at you and saying “Why, I oughta…” right now).

8. Someday you will be too big to hold your stuffed kitty while sucking on your pacifier and reading books with your sister at bedtime. It will drive mom crazy when she sees you now, a big boy who prefers his xbox to her company, a big girl who no longer needs books with pictures, a reminder that those baby years, though challenging and fraught with frustration and boredom (on the part of the mother) are fleeting and precious. Sniff, sniff.

Photo chosen by Deb,"#40, in honor of her 40th birthday, just last week! Thanks, Deb!

Bonus Section--Ways to Make Your Mom Happy:

1. When it’s your turn to be in the Hairdresser’s Chair, not only should you allow the girls to fill your hair with barrettes, but you can even help them by combing it out for them and making suggestions like, “Anyone want to paint my toenails?” or “Wouldn’t I look awesome in a kickin’ beret?”

Photo chosen by Stephanie, #45. Thanks and hi, Stephanie!

Choose a Picture, Any Picture!

2012-01-17T08:53:00.001-05:00

Well, I’m stumped with a bad case of writer’s block again, so I’m going to do two things:

1. Tell you about my weekend.

2. Ask you to pick a number.

First, the weekend! Dude. It was booooring. That’s why I have writer’s block!

Next, to help spur a blogpost for me, pick any number between 0 and 8,092. Because apparently I have 8,092 photos stored on my computer. Yikes! Anyway, please pick and type a number down there in the comments and I will use the accompanying photo in the next post, linking all of them (please let there be more than one comment) to make a little story. Maybe I will mention your name too, and you will be famous! (In the event that you pick a number that is of a photo that has been deleted, I will go to the next photo up.)

Thanks for your help!

Beth

Friday the 13th

2012-01-13T12:03:00.001-05:00

…is today. Did you know that? My friend Jenny and I went to see Friday the 13th part 29 (or something close to that) in high school once. I’m really not sure why we even attempted that, because I have always hated those stupid horror movies. Anyway, during the “prologue” they showed clips of the earlier Friday the 13ths, so you’d be caught up on the “plot”, and it was so terrifyingly horrible that we left and went to the other theater which was showing Romancing the Stone and saw that instead.

vs.

photo source photo source

No contest, really: Jason vs. (early) Michael Douglas, horror vs. romance, gore vs. jungle love, bloody hockey mask vs. Danny DeVito in a sweaty undershirt. I really don’t know what we were thinking.

I’ve never really been afraid of Friday the 13th (the day, not the movie), nor was I ever really bothered by most superstitions (although I don’t walk under ladders, and I do knock on wood when I don’t want to ruin my good luck, and I don’t open umbrellas in the house, and I don’t step on sidewalk cracks, but those are not because I’m superstitious, but rather because I’m smart and caring. My mother has me to thank for that healthy back of hers, you know.)

I googled “superstitions” for you and found out some interesting information:

-When cows lift their tails, it is a sure sign that rain is coming. Hmmm. First of all, if you’ve lived in central Pennsylvania for most of your life as I have, you know that when cows lie down, that is a sure sign that rain is coming. According to my mother (the one with the healthy back), it is because they want to pick out a nice dry seat for the approaching rainstorm. Also, I’m pretty sure that cows lift their tails for a completely different reason. And I am too much of a lady to detail that for you.

(No I’m not! It’s for pooping, people!)

-A cricket in the house brings good luck. False. This one I know for sure. A cricket in the house brings chaos and terror. Not one child in my house can sleep with a cricket chirping somewhere (even Bug Boy). They are all sure that the cricket will eventually end up in their rooms on their pillows or will cozy up under their covers with them. Even a cricket in the garage must be found and returned to its outdoor home if it’s anywhere near bedtime.

-Seeing an ambulance is very unlucky unless you pinch your nose or hold your breath until you see a black or a brown dog. What? This seems complicated (what if it’s a dalmation?) and life threatening (no dog=no oxygen=passing out). At least there’s probably an ambulance in the immediate area to take you to the hospital to revive you. This particular superstition reminds me of when I was in high school. One of my friends had a bridge superstition. Whenever the school bus went over a bridge, she’d hold her breath and her nose and lift her feet off the bus floor until we made it to the other side. That was all very well and good until we headed to Virginia Beach on our band trip one year and went over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel. That was exhausting. Yet exciting, I will admit.

-Place a hand in front of your mouth when sneezing. Your soul may escape otherwise. The devil can enter your body when you sneeze. Having someone say, "God bless you," drives the devil away. I seriously thought this was all just good hygiene and manners! I have to say, this is quite a burden to realize that I am responsible for keeping that sneaky soul of mine from running off into the night and for keeping the devil away from a sneezing friend. On the other hand, it is good information to know for when I don’t like someone and want to call in the devil for a few favors.

-A spider is a repellent against plague when worn around the neck in a walnut shell. Ew. I think I will just stick with vaccines and immunizations, thankyouverymuch.

-First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest. This one is all the rage in my house right now, particularly with Jack. He refuses to enter any room, restaurant, the car, etc. first, and will push you out of his way so he won’t be third. Maddie and Ben used to fight him over this one, but have recently either matured or grown tired of always having to jostle around for the best order. Not Jack though. The other day he held out his arm and said, “You may go first, madam”, and I thought, “Oh, how cute and polite!” And then he yelled “First is the worst! Second is the best!” And I realized that he had just screwed my good luck for the day.

Here are some new superstitions I’m hoping to start:

-Three kisses for mom, bad dreams will be gone. Whining ‘bout bed? Bad dreams you will dread.

-A toy on the floor means bad luck at your door. Put the toy in its bin or you will sit on a pin.

-Eat your veggies, every last one, and then your homework will be magically done!

-Rub your mother’s feet with care and love, the angels will wink at you from above.

Happy Friday the 13th, People! And remember this very famous and cautionary superstition:

-Leave a comment below, or have a day full of woe.

Scary, but true.

Decisions, Decisions

2012-01-09T09:28:00.001-05:00

The shoelaces in Jack’s shoes take a beating. Even though he got new sneaks in August, the aglets (thank you, Phineas and Ferb) had long since broken off and the ends were all tattered and splayed out like those fuzzy little heads we used to put on the eraser ends of our pencils.

We headed to Wal-Mart to buy him a new pair. He was thinking he wanted blue, but when we got there, they only had baby blue, which he thought was too girly looking. They had pretty much every other color there except navy blue, and they also had the curly ones that don’t need tying, which added yet another candidate to his ballot.

Eventually he saw a pair with flames on them and he got really stumped. He thought they might make him run faster, so they not only looked cool, but served an actual purpose (besides the obvious shoe-tying purpose).

We stood there for 20 minutes while Jack went back and forth, making his final choice but then changing his mind, weighing his options, doing eenie-meenie-minie-mo, holding each pair up to his sneakers to see how they looked, and slowly, but surely, eating away at my patience. I really do try, at times like these, to appreciate that these are big decisions when you’re seven. It takes me a long time to choose a purse, or a scarf, or even a new kind of tea, so why shouldn’t I give him the chance to arrive at his own happy conclusion? But I was getting annoyed.

Finally I suggested holding two pair together and choosing the best of those two, then holding the winner up with another pair and choosing the best of those two, and so on, until we finally got our winner, which was the red pair of curly laces. We bought them, took them home, put them on his sneakers and…

He hated them. He cried. He didn’t know that they would stay so curly and would stick out so much. He wished he would have gone with the orange pair and felt such remorse that he hadn’t gone with his gut but was instead swayed by the glittery promise of not needing to tie his shoes ever again. I said we would go back to Wal-Mart and he could buy the orange pair (this time with his own money), and we did, and he loved them.

That was back in December, and I’m sad to say, here’s what they look like now:

Which means <sigh> that another trip to Wal-Mart for replacement laces is on the horizon. Dear Lord, give me strength and patience and please whisper in the Wal-Mart Shoe Buyer’s ear to order in some laces in navy, pronto. Amen.

Knee Deep in Playmobil

2012-01-06T07:25:00.001-05:00

About two weeks before his birthday back in October, Jack discovered Playmobil toys while on a playdate at a friend’s house. This was excellent timing, because usually my children discover a want or a need a week or two after their birthdays or Christmas (for instance, Ben’s iPod screen shattered only a few days before Christmas this year, and now he needs to wait until August to even think of replacing it…this is our usual timing with toys). Anyway, Jack asked for, and received, Playmobil toys from us and from many relatives. And then two months later, Santa brought him more Playmobil, and all of the relatives came through for him big time.

We are knee deep in Playmobil. Would you like to see a picture of my ~~dining room~~ Playmobil Room?

Tiny little spoons and flowers and juice cartons and veterinary instruments scattered underfoot, boxes torn open and strewn about, while the actual Playmobil table is filled to capacity and has overflowed onto my dining room table, and I see I’d better head into the dining room fast and rescue that laptop which is perched perilously at the edge of the table.

Playmobil is awesome though. Jack will play for hours on end with his Playmobil toys, the detail in these sets is amazing, and I love the creative play they foster.

They are a bugger to put together, however.

Santa brought Jack the Playmobil school. The box warns you that assembly is expected to be 120 minutes. One hundred twenty minutes, people! Unfortunately, the box, besides being delusionally optimistic, did not predict that the seven year old owner of the toy would dump all of the pieces out, open each bag of posts, floor sections, screws (oh yes, screws!), windows, and desks/books/people/paintbrushes/toilets/flowerpots/etc. and deposit them randomly throughout the first floor of the home.

My lovely, dear Maddie enjoyed putting Jack’s birthday Playmobils together so much, that I just assumed she’d put his Christmas ones together too. Of course, I didn’t take into consideration the fact that she would rather be trying out her new Harry Potter Years 5-7 Wii game instead of putting together hours and hours worth of Playmobil. At one point on Christmas day, she actually did start assembling the school but gave up after getting a small section finished, frustrated that the pieces were hard to find, and daunted by the hours that this project was taking her from Harry Potter.

After a day of whining from Jack, I gave in and said I’d put it together. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. After ten minutes into what I was beginning to call “Mission I Hate This”, I tried to bribe Maddie back to the job, but she was too smart. For the first hour of the job, I grumbled and complained, loudly and violently to anyone unfortunate enough to walk into the room. Completely clueless, Jack hovered nearby, singing songs, chattering incessantly, and occasionally pounding out “Rock Around the Clock” on the piano while asking me every ten minutes when I thought I’d be finished, until I finally barked at him and he left the room and told Dave he was afraid to go into the dining room for awhile. True story.

Here’s what the directions looked like:

That’s right. No words. And that’s only one page out of twenty. Twenty freakin’ pages!

After the first half hour though, I got into the groove of the whole thing and actually started to enjoy the whole process. Around Hour Four Maddie joined me and we finished the job together. I estimate that, including the time Maddie spent working on it the previous day, the school took about 7 hours to put together! That’s just a tad over 120 minutes, wouldn’t you say? And then we still had to do the Treehouse, the Gymnasium, the Merry-Go-Round, The Spy Center, The Pool and many, many more.

But look at that detail! (And try not to notice that fence section above…I obviously didn’t notice it when I took the picture.) Take note of the abacus blackboard to the right of the picture….this is a good example of the detail in this thing. Each of those abacus pegs needed to be found and then attached to the sliding part.)

The instructional booklet tells me I used 320 screws and 1,000+ parts to hold that sucker together, and I’m telling you, it had darn well better hold together until it’s time for my future grandchildren use it as well.

12!

2012-01-03T09:41:00.001-05:00

Twelve years ago today, Dave and I were guests at my in-laws’ house for supper. I was 9 months pregnant, but not due until January 20. During the delicious meal of homemade pot pie (with my mother-in-law’s homemade noodles) I began to notice that things weren’t exactly right with me. Things seemed moist where things should not necessarily be moist. I felt as though I may have even wet my pants!

I quietly checked things out in the bathroom, but I ruled out my water breaking, because I knew from watching television sitcoms that that would happen in a gush, at the most inopportune time, like when one was trying to convince the landlord that they weren’t pregnant or when one was taking a communion wafer from the priest. This was just a mere, occasional trickle.

I sat down again, but it kept on trickling.

I nudged Dave and whispered “I think my water broke. Or maybe not. Shh. Don’t tell anyone, they’ll think I’m a crazy woman. Also, can I have your noodles?”

I ate Dave’s noodles and then we excused ourselves, headed home, picked up the suitcase, and drove to the hospital, where they used some kind of litmus test-like paper to determine that I was indeed trickling amniotic fluid, that I must have a tiny tear, and that we were to stay the night, because the baby was on her way!

Nothing really happened. I just kept trickling and having the occasional light contractions. The doctor gave me pitocin the next morning which was no fun and only made the contractions hurt more with very little progress, as the baby seemed content to hang out with me for another couple of weeks. Gradually things did start moving along and my sweet Madeline Elizabeth was born that evening, January 4, 2000, at 6:45 p.m. I never knew a person could be so happy. I had no idea how much I would love her right from the start, how the world had entirely changed for me at 6:45 p.m., and how I could feel such outrageous joy and fear at the same time.

I cried on the way home from the hospital because I saw a school bus and knew I’d have to put her on one some day. I cried at night because she wasn’t safe inside me anymore, but out in the world which I now saw as a very dangerous place. I cried a lot and was a little bit crazy for a few weeks while my hormone levels sorted themselves out and I adjusted to very little sleep and to breastfeeding that wasn’t going so well, and loving and cuddling and swooning over my Maddie.

She is a joy. She’s smart, kind, caring, friendly, cute, creative, and now she’s almost as tall as me. Booo.

Just look at those thighs! Oh! She was so squeezy!

Happy 12th Birthday (tomorrow) to my best girl. I love you so much.

Year In Review: Loser Instagram Photos

2011-12-30T16:08:00.001-05:00

I showed you all of my good Instagram photos this year, didn’t I? But what about those that were left behind on my camera, the rejected, sad, blurry, boring, and subpar? Don’t you think they deserve a chance? If you believe in second rate photos, clap your hands! That’s it! Keep clapping! I think it’s working! OMG! YOU DID IT!

Nice treads, dude.

Here’s me, annoyed with the photographer and the wait, at the pediatrician’s office:

I believe this is a blanket.

Ben’s execution was excellent, but he just couldn’t stick the landing:

Nice boxers, dude.

Thomas Jefferson with a spray tan:

Surprise shot of me reading a book in bed:

Self-portrait:

He is a Greek god, I tell you!

Two surprise shots of me driving (I am not drinking beer, that’s a Diet A&W Root Beer!):

Another self-portrait, this one by Ben in the mirror:

Here is Jack trying out his glow bracelets. Two are hanging on his ears, and the other two are…hanging from…something else, I think:

Happy New Year!

Christmas Hangover

2011-12-27T09:15:00.001-05:00

Have you seen The Hangover? The first time I saw that movie was with friends, and we laughed the entire way through it, in fact, we laughed so much my stomach hurt afterwards. It must not have hurt too badly though because I went home and told Dave he had to see it too, and then I dragged him to it the next night. Even though I knew when the jokes were coming, I still laughed, in fact I laughed ahead of them in giddy anticipation.

The movie is not for the kiddos, or for those easily offended, because the humor is often crude, the language is generally salty, and the situations are definitely Adult.

On Christmas Eve, Dave told me about an idea he had for my blog. What if we were to take our Christmas pictures and make them into a montage similar to the one at the end of The Hangover (this montage, if you haven’t seen it, fills in the blanks of the movie in photo form…because the premise of the movie was that the characters couldn’t remember what they had done the night before).

Ours would definitely be G rated, and would include lots of staged photos. Remember that…the photos are staged! He and I had a lot of fun on Christmas thinking of things to photograph, and the kids were mostly good sports (we ignored their occasional eye rolls).

Dave was the one who put the whole thing together though, the day after Christmas, and I love it! Well done, honey!

Please enjoy this look at our (mostly not real) Christmas morning!

Of course, I’ve already thought of a bunch of picture ideas that it’s too late to use, like putting Herbie the guinea pig on the piano while Jack plays a song (like the chicken on the piano in the movie), so pretend there’s a photo like this in there.

I am currently knee deep putting together Playmobil toys. The language in my head is not so G rated at times, let me tell you. More on that in a future post.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T08:49:00.001-05:00

On Friday, Ben’s teacher showed the class a website where they could choose a card design, write a message, and email it to a loved one. The class was told to write a message to the recipient.

Sometimes your children send a message to you from their hearts, and you become filled with the joy of Christmas.

This is not one of those messages.

Because sometimes, instead of a heartwarming sentiment, they remind you how much they hate gnocchi (m’nyucky) and plan on never eating it again, ever, though I’m sure he typed it with love in his heart for his dear mama. He really is scarred over the few times I’ve made gnocchi for supper. He is a picky eater, and complains at many meals, but gnocchi brings him literally to tears.

I thought I’d end with a (blurry) photo of my Christmas card, since so many of you helped me make a decision.

I hope you are having a Merry, Gnocchi-Free Christmas, wherever you are!

Bangs and More

2011-12-22T06:19:00.001-05:00

I was going through some old photos looking for that lost parade photo of my dad and me in our giant bow ties, and found this cute one (of me, who else).

It was my kindergarten picture, however my mom had them do retakes because she was so embarrassed at how bad my bangs looked. (Go ahead, look up there again.) (I think she only had this particular photo because it was stapled to my kindergarten file folder.)

Apparently, my bangs grew out enough by picture retake time so that my mom was able to re-trim them to her liking.

There were a few more bad bang pictures:

Why was my hair always higher on the left side? It’s a mystery that may never be solved.

Eventually she just got rid of the bangs and the problem was solved.

And then there was the worst photo shoot ever. I have so many bad photos from this particular shoot, and it is another mystery why my mother bought any of them. Maybe for a good laugh? Here is the worst:

But at least we got this awesome one of my baby brother Jesse out of it:

There’s a nonexistent zucchini in it for the person who gives this photo the best caption down in the comments.

And since you’ve stuck with me this long, would you like to see a picture of me baring my midriff?

Oh yeah. I knew how to rock shorts that were pulled up to my ribcage.

Weekend Update

2011-12-19T11:07:00.001-05:00

source

‘Twas the weekend before Christmas and all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, not even the guinea pig.

(Photo below is of a relaxing guinea pig…not a dead one…just wanted to inform you before you scrolled down…because he looks kinda dead even though he isn’t.)

For some reason, whenever Maddie holds Herbie, she is able to get him to relax back into this position. No one else can do this with him. But the minute she picks him up he leans back and lets it all hang out. It’s actually a little weird.

Anywho, we had a busy weekend. It started out with Christmas Bunko on Friday night. I think I rocked my ugly Christmas sweater, and if prizes were given for the best yarn illustration of caroling, sequin-studded reindeer, I’d have totally won.

But prizes were not given. Boo.

On Saturday I made the cookies for my cookie exchange. This year I made Gingerbread Blossoms, which is like a Peanut Blossom, but is a soft gingerbread cookie and a Hershey Hug. They were good, but not great, so I won’t be sharing the recipe with you. You’re welcome. Anyway, Dave and the kids unwrapped about 120 Hershey Hugs and then Jack glued a whole bunch of the wrappers to a Pop-Tart box which kept him busy all afternoon (awesome!), and Maddie made this:

A Hershey Hug snowman. I thought it was pretty darn cute. But not as cute as this:

Yes. They put giant underwear on Eugene, Jack’s bear. I think Eugene is digging it though.

On Saturday night we were invited to a caroling party! There was a craft while the movie Elf played, then we walked around the neighborhood and caroled (using little light up candles from Oriental Trading that were adorable), and then we headed back to the host’s house for cookies and a Hot Cocoa Bar! It was such a fun night!

On Sunday, I raced around like a crazed madman cleaning the house and getting ready for my cookie exchange. Dave and the children cowered in fear.

Everyone brought food to share and of course cookies, and we had a gorgeous, delicious spread.

There was also a Hot Cocoa Bar, although I didn’t take a photo of it. I made homemade hot chocolate for the first time, and it was really delicious. In addition to the hot chocolate, there were three kinds of marshmallows, candy canes for stirring, Reddi Whip for giving it that fahncy Starbucks look, and some Smirnoff Fluffed Marshmallow vodka to make it extra happy hot chocolate. I had planned to keep the hot chocolate recipe secret, because I was afraid if my friends found out there was a can of sweetened condensed milk in there (130 calories per tablespoon-ack) no one would drink it. But I’ll share the recipe with you now because it was easy and very yummy and too late! All those skinny women who drank it are reading this and cursing me and shaking their fists at me and putting on their running shoes right now to make up for it.

Crockpot Hot Chocolate

1- 1/2 c. heavy cream (I used half and half)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk!)

1 bag of milk chocolate chips

6 c. milk (I used a little more to fill up my crockpot, maybe 2 additional cups)

1 t. vanilla

Put all of the ingredients in a crockpot, stir, cover, and cook on low for two hours, whisking frequently as chocolate chips melt.

I got this recipe from pinterest, which led me to this blog which had the original recipe. Thank you Mrs. Happy Homemaker!

And now the weekend is over, it’s the Monday before Christmas, and my Benjy is home sick with me today. There’s a stomach virus going around right now, but so far he’s just got a fever.

I’m just hoping I didn’t have a secret influenza ingredient in the hot chocolate… Sorry everyone.

Behind the Scenes

2011-12-15T06:34:00.001-05:00

Don’t you just love having insider information? Like for instance, while watching It’s a Wonderful Life the other weekend, Dave mentioned that in the scene where Uncle Billy walks drunkenly offscreen and you hear a loud clatter and then Uncle Billy yells, “I’m okay!”, and you assume he ran into some garbage cans or something…well, the loud clatter actually came from a clumsy stagehand and both Uncle Billy and Jimmy Stewart played along. The director liked it so much he decided to keep it in the movie. After Dave told me that little nugget, I googled the movie for more little facts and found out lots of other cool trivia, and if you’re interested, you can find it here.

It made me wonder if there might just be an audience out there interested in some “Dirty Laundry” trivia!

<sound of crickets chirping>

Well, here’s the thing. Too bad.

1. Did you know that people often arrive on my website because they have googled something? I am honestly still thrilled when I see that Google has pointed someone in my direction, like I’m an expert on Jimmy Stewart trivia or dirty laundry or something! I can see on my “Dashboard” (what Blogger calls my control panel) what a person has googled in order to come to me. And basically:

-people in Australia are looking for a Barbecue Chicken Pie recipe.

-people in the UK google “Angry Birds claw machine” an awful lot. I wish I knew why.

-people in the UK are also interested in willow tree root systems. They get directed to my chair post a lot.

-at Easter, I get tons of hits for the Bunny cake and at every holiday, people are looking for the M&M pretzel recipe and Mini Oreo Cheesecakes.

-I have had a lot of people looking for a “dirty house poem” which leads them to this, which makes me glad my name isn’t attached to it.

-the most searched for phrase is “mini oreo cheesecake bites” with 573 searches.

2. This particular blogpost is my 338th.

3. Goldfish crackers and Diet Coke keep me (non-nutritionally) fueled for (non)optimum written output.

4. Strangely, the keys on my keyboard occasionally make a happy crunching sound when I am furiously typing away. I wish I knew why.

5. There is another mystery going on that I haven’t been able to figure out. According to my Dashboard, I receive the most referrals from a website called “Happy Brown House”, in fact, I have had 1,516 people referred to me because of that site (which is even more than Google, which came in second place). I have gone to that site and searched for why that could be. Am I listed in the sidebar as a blog she follows? Did she link to one of my recipes? Maybe the blogger for that site is a stalker who checks out what my blog is doing ten times a day? No, no, and maybe. I have found no good reason for that blog to give me so many referrals though. Now I will be polite and refer you back.

6. Although you would expect the United States to be my largest audience, and it is, you wouldn’t expect South Korea to be my second largest, now would you? (They’ve given me 640 hits!)

7. Do you remember the original title for my blog? It was the very lame “Howls and Growls from the Wolfepack”. I hated that the minute I adopted it but couldn’t think of anything cute or clever. I’m not crazy about “Dirty Laundry” either, but I think it’s too late to change that now. If I were to change it though, I think I would possibly change it to “Guinea Pigz ‘n’ Stuff”.

8. Waiting in my blogpost queue are 8 unfinished blogposts. Posts I begin that I can’t finish for some reason, posts that seemed like a good idea at the time but fizzled out, and just some really bad stuff that I should probably delete, because what if they accidentally get published some day? That would be even more embarrassing than you knowing I pick up worms with my fingers.

9. Thanks to my blog, I am a published author!

Proof I am an author:

I spent much of November using Blurb to convert my blogposts into a book. I was trying to beat the November 28 deadline so I’d get 20% off the price, and I made it, by just a tiny bit. The kids knew what I was doing because I spent many, many, many, many, many, many hours at the computer, and they were all ~~annoyed~~ impressed. At one point, Jack asked me if lots of people would be buying my book and would we be rich, to which I answered, “My child, we are already rich in love.” And then he looked at me funny so I admitted that the book was just for us, and that’s when he lost interest and went off to play with his cars.

But I love it.

10. Contrary to popular opinion, this blog is not ghostwritten by the guinea pig. Just get that one right out of your head, people. He may give me ideas, keep me well supplied in goldfish, occasionally massage my tense shoulders, download and edit my photos, and take dictation, but he does not write this blog.

Well. He hardly ever writes my blog.

Parade Time

2011-12-12T07:01:00.001-05:00

Maddie and Jack were both in (separate) holiday parades this year!

First up is Maddie. My dad conducts one of those little community bands made up mainly of older men. He asked if Maddie might like to join his band for the parade, thinking it would be nice to give her a little experience with public playing. She was actually a little hesitant to come out of her comfort zone and be in a band with a bunch of old dudes she didn’t know (except Grandpa), but when he told her that the band members got paid, she agreed!

Here they are before the parade. It reminded me so much of another photo my mom took of me and my dad before a similar parade 30 years ago. We are both wearing white shirts and giant black bowties, and I am cringing with embarrassment,worrying who would see me in that parade wearing a giant black bowtie…but I can’t find it! I’m glad Maddie is more mature than I was and is not cringing at all.

Here she is going by us:

The darn parade donation truck was going by at the exact same time, so this is the only picture I got without a red truck in front of her!

Then last weekend, this fella was in our local holiday parade:

My Tiger Scout…don’t you just love a man in uniform?

Here he is, marching with Dave!

Bye, Handsome.

Ben and his friend Nathan did their parts as Spectators and Candy Gatherers:

And look! There’s my friend Kris!

What a great way to kick off the holiday season!

Peppermint Meringues

2011-12-08T09:02:00.001-05:00

Every Halloween I make my Boo Meringues for our neighborhood Halloween party, and this year I decided to try to adapt that recipe into a Christmas meringue.

I figured I’d add some crushed Starlight Mints, crushed by my Right Hand Man/Destroyer-of-All-Things-in-The-House-Guy who took to the task with relish.

photo source
No. Not that kind of relish.

In hindsight, some of those pieces are too big. They didn’t pipe through the bag very well. Crush yours finer than we did!

Then I made my regular meringue recipe, but substituted peppermint extract for the vanilla and mixed in the crushed mints and then added some green food coloring.

Bad picture….I took this at night in low light, and now they’ve all been eaten and I can’t take another. Boo.

However, I wish I had either added more green or just left them white. They look a little…sickly. But they do taste great!

Peppermint Meringues

3 large egg whites

1/2 t. cream of tartar

1/2 c. granulated sugar (I lowered the sugar from the original recipe because I count the sugar from the crushed mints)

1/2 t. peppermint extract

about 20 crushed Starlight Mints

green food coloring…maybe

-Line baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 200 degrees.
-In a metal bowl, with mixer at high speed, whip egg whites with cream of tartar to a thick foam. Continue to beat and add sugar 1 tablespoon every 30 seconds, then whip until meringue holds very stiff peaks.
-Beat in peppermint extract and crushed starlight mints (and maybe green food coloring!).
-Spoon meringue into a gallon sized ziploc bag and cut off a corner. Pipe meringue onto cookie sheets into “kiss” shapes, set fairly close together, they will not expand when they bake.
-Bake at 200 degrees for 1 1/4 hours, then turn off the oven, but leave meringues inside for an additional hour. Remove, allow to cool, then slide off with a spatula. Enjoy!

I'm linking this recipe with other great recipes at Foodie Friday. Check it out!

December Book Review

2011-12-06T09:47:00.001-05:00

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith- I have to say that I really, really, really loved this novel, but I only gave it 4/5 stars on Goodreads because I absolutely hated, despised, detested, loathed, and was totally ticked off at the ending. The book follows 17 year old Cassandra and her struggling family in what I think may have been mid-twentieth century England (I’m not sure that the author ever specified, but wanted the reader to feel the way one might feel when reading Austen or Bronte even though the time period was more modern). The novel is actually Cassandra’s journal. She is trying to “capture the castle” (she and her family lives in a ramshackle old castle), in other words, describe the castle, the people in it, and their struggles and journeys during the six months or so that she journals. I loved Cassandra and her lovely, descriptive journal entries, and it’s obvious that she grows and changes as the novel progresses, as her writing begins as sweetly naïve and optimistic, and eventually becomes resigned and somewhat bitter. I hope you read it, and I hope I haven’t spoiled it for you by telling you I hated the ending, but it’s worth the read…maybe just stop before the last chapter and let your imagination finish the story for you.)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan-I don’t even know where to being with this book. First of all, I think it was brilliant. That said, I had to force myself to read it, as the first third of the book was painfully slow, and I really just wasn’t getting it, but since it won last year’s Pulitzer Prize, I figured it must be worth plowing on through for. The novel is somewhat/kinda/sorta about Bennie and Sasha, written from the viewpoint of a different character in each chapter. The chapters seem completely unrelated to each other, and in fact, I think each could stand alone as short stories. Chapters were not told in time sequence, and sometimes at the end of the chapter I’d think, “What the heck did that have to do with Bennie or Sasha?”, because sometimes you had to really search to see any relationship. Basic theme: Time is a Goon. It sneaks up on you and bashes you over the head. Today’s stars are tomorrow’s has-beens. By the end of the book, I could look back over the novel and as a whole, I was able to see the big picture. I still didn’t feel like I knew a heck of a lot about Bennie and Sasha, but Egan’s message was clearly brilliant. (Sorry to use that word again, but it was!) By the way, one chapter was written entirely as a Power Point Presentation, and I was simply amazed at the truth, beauty, and depth of understanding Egan was able to portray with a power point. Seriously, I couldn’t stop thinking about this one for a long time!

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs-Can I just say that if I ever decide to become a man, I would like to have the name Ransom Riggs. Is that a great name or what? Anywho, I read this one after reading Taradactyl’s review, and you can read her review of it here. This novel is written for young adults, but can certainly be enjoyed by old adults. However, an adult won’t enjoy it like she enjoys excellent YA literature like Harry Potter, but rather as she enjoys entertainment YA literature like Twilight. The book is loosely based on old photographs of what I believe are circus freaks/turn of the century trick photographs that the author decided to string together to make a story. I enjoyed his book, was annoyed that he ended with such a huge cliffhanger (he’s definitely writing a sequel), and would recommend it to you for an easy, enjoyable read.

Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos- I love de los Santos’ other novels (Love Walked In and Belong to Me) so much, and was very excited when I saw she had written another novel. I was so disappointed though. I can’t help but think her publisher was breathing down her neck for another novel and she did the best she could to get him a (kind of boring, mediocre) book on time. De los Santos writes with her usual beautiful descriptions and has such a knack for getting her readers to understand every facet of her characters, from what they wear, what they eat for breakfast, who broke their heart in 8th grade, and which fraternity they pledged back in college. She still did that, but I found I just didn’t care. I didn’t like her premise, I didn’t like her characters, I could have cared less about where the book was going, and only finished it because I felt I owed her the chance. Bottom line? Read her other two novels. (Stephanie at Conversations from the Cul-de-Sac is a big fan of Marisa de los Santos too. I’d like to hear your opinion on the novel after you read it, Stephanie!)

The King’s Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi-I decided to read this one because I recently saw the movie “The King’s Speech”. (By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, please see it. It is absolutely gorgeous.) This biography was actually written after the movie was filmed (or possibly at the same time…the author wasn’t clear) but the movie was not based on this book. Both book and movie, however, were about King George VI, (father to the current Queen Elizabeth), and his struggle to overcome his speech defect, and about Lionel Logue, the nobody from Australia who finally helped the king conquer his stammering and fear of public speaking. I mainly read this because I wanted to understand the history behind the movie, and I was especially interested in the King Edward/Wallis Simpson affair, which the movie touched on and which I found fascinating. The book gave me a lot of information on that, and also Lionel and King George’s early years and then continued where the movie left off (the start of World War II) and continued to both of their deaths. There were also a lot of pictures, which I enjoyed. See the movie, and then read this if you want more information!

Happy Reading!

Instagram November

2011-12-04T16:41:00.001-05:00

We started the month by celebrating this guy’s 45th birthday:

He’s blowing out his candles on peanut butter cookies, one of his favorites.

There were a lot of beautiful skies this month, and here are two of them:

Sunrise over the field near our house. Sunset over the football field at the middle school.

I already showed you Maddie’s new braces, but she got glasses this month too! They are just for seeing the board at school or seeing a movie screen more easily, she doesn’t need to wear them full time. Jack went with us to pick out the glasses because Jack loves to go to the glasses store and try on frames. He would love to be told he needs to wear glasses.

We found the perfect pair for him to wear when he gets the go-ahead from the optometrist:

Doesn’t he look like the old dude in Up?

These lovely ladies are my mom (closest) and my Aunt Betty. We sat with them and with all of their Red Hat friends to watch the holiday parade (more on that in a future post).

After our Thanksgiving dinner we took a walk at one of our favorite walking spots behind Grandma W.’s house. The floods back in September knocked a tree in our path. Guess who decided to climb it?

We also saw The Muppet Movie over Thanksgiving break! I loved The Muppet Show when I was a kid, and this movie did not disappoint!

I’m happy to add we had only one bathroom break during the entire move which I consider either a miracle or a sign that the world is coming to an end.

We also went to Chocolate World and rode the Factory Ride twice and threw pennies in the pond and ate free chocolate and bought delicious chocolate chip cookies.

On the last day of Thanksgiving break we visited our neighborhood Santa and gave him our lists.

Hello December! I can’t believe Christmas is only a few weeks away. Enjoy your holiday season!

Worm Massacre

2011-11-30T22:46:00.001-05:00

My friend Jodi and I have been walking around our neighborhood most mornings. We chat. We laugh. We commiserate. But today? We saved lives.

From yesterday into the overnight last night, we had a very heavy rain. So heavy, in fact, that the rain flooded the worms from their earthy little homes and pushed them mercilessly onto the streets. There were thousands of worms on the streets. Some were smashed and some were already dried up, but many were waving their little heads at us, signaling, “Help us, kind ladies!” with their sweet little noggins.

First we walked carefully (and Jodi was pushing a stroller, so she drove carefully too). Then we gave up on that because the street was littered with them. After a few minutes, I admitted to Jodi that I really felt terrible about the worms, blindly writhing in agony on the macadam.

She felt bad too. We decided to save them.

That’s right. We picked up the worms and threw them back in the grass.

We are heroes, people.

Jodi wanted to name them. I drew the line there, and said we mustn’t get too attached to them.

But secretly, I named this one Mr. Longfellow.

Sometimes when you are busy saving lives, you become covered in gore and carnage.

Jodi’s sneaker Stroller wheel

Jodi sent me this one after she got home…seriously, how did the worms get up on her stroller?

I can’t help but think some of them leaped onto the stroller in a Hail Mary move to save their lives.

After our walk, Jodi and I headed to our own houses with mixed feelings. Happy that we had saved so many lives that day, but sad that so many lost souls were beyond help, and also maybe a little skeeved out at the slightly gummy, sticky feeling our fingers had taken on.

Farewell, good friend with the kind heart and gummy sticky fingers. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Christmas Card Rejects

2011-11-27T20:44:00.001-05:00

I had a whole year to come up with a Christmas card photo. A whole year! Why don’t we take a look at what happened…

Our first big photo opportunity was in Niagara Falls.

Usually someone is looking kind of funny, but I struck gold with this one…and it’s blurry. Bonus!

My hopes were probably way too high when I snapped this one after the Maid of the Mist.

During our trip to Lititz Park, I decided to take some pictures before we headed home. We should have just headed home.

Jack=eyes closed:

Ben= eyes closed:

Maddie= eyes closed:

I give up. Let’s go home.

The beach! Why, that’s the perfect location to get family photos!

Two eyes open out of six? Geez Louise.

I have about 50 more photos with somebody’s eyes closed. I promise I won’t show you another one, but trust me, I’ve got plenty.

The beach at Cape May was crowded. It was very hard to get a photo without another person… or shall I say family barging in.

This is a nice one. Except for the couple right on top of Ben’s head.

Let’s try something else.

Or maybe not.

In October, I decided to put sweaters on them and head to a nice leafy location at dusk. Good lighting, good background. What could go wrong?

Why is this so hard?

Sometimes I tell them to say funny things to make their smiles more real, like “Okay, everybody say,' ‘Uncle Dave has diarrhea!’” Unfortunately, sometimes it backfires.

About 130 pictures later, I had two photos that I liked. And one is not quite clear. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Last week I threw some Christmas lights on the floor and told the kids to lay on their stomachs in front of them (I saw this idea on Pinterest). First of all, I placed the kids at a bad angle and they all looked a little bit spooky. Second of all, Jack just couldn’t take his eyes off the lights:

Also I don’t like the look of the carpet.

So now it’s the end of November and crunch time for Christmas cards! Which do you think I should pick?

This:

Or this:

Or maybe a collage with these three:

Help! What do you think?

Midnight Madness

2011-11-25T10:57:00.001-05:00

I never had any intention of shopping at midnight. That is crazy talk! At midnight on any given night you can find me curled up in bed under my toasty electric blanket dreaming of carbs and sun-drenched beaches and being late for school and rushing to the bus stop only to notice I am in my underwear but hoping no one notices and getting on the bus anyway, and then realizing I can fly!

Anyway.

I do not do much at midnight besides sleep. However, yesterday the Black Friday circulars arrived at my door, and I made the supreme mistake of looking at them. The item Ben is asking for most was on sale at Best Buy for $100 cheaper than I’d find anywhere else. Also there were lots of great deals at Target, and since I find it hard to resist Target on an ordinary day, I decided to head there too.

Full of turkey and pumpkin pie, I mapped out my strategy. First I’d head to Best Buy, and although I knew there’d be a crowd at the door, I would be smart and sit in my car and watch those suckers standing in the cold, then when the workers open the doors allowing the crowd to push its way in, I’d unhurriedly exit my car and go get my bargains! After Best Buy, I’d head to Target and then possibly Kohl’s if I still had the energy.

My alarm went off at 11:15, I got dressed, kissed my sleeping family goodbye, and drove the 30 minute drive to Best Buy. On the way to Best Buy I passed the Target/Kohl’s shopping center. It was filled with cars. I saw no open spots at all. What? Who the heck shops at midnight? I continued on to Best Buy.

The first thing I saw was the Best Buy parking lot, which was filled. I needed to park at an adjacent parking lot for an LA Fitness Center, which was also filling up. Right about then was when I glanced toward the Best Buy door, hoping to gauge how long I’d need to sit in my car before joining the crowd.

I was flabbergasted. There was a line, 3-4 people deep, that extended from the door around all four sides of the extremely ginormous box of a store. It dawned on me that the line held way more people than the safe capacity of the store would hold. Which meant I’d need to wait possibly hours in line as a safe amount of people shopped, then eventually get in the store to find my Doorbuster Bargain sold out. I was the sucker.

I decided to wave goodbye to my $100 savings and move on to Target, although I didn’t have high hopes for Target having already scoped out that parking lot. And once I got there, I just did a drive-by, because the line into Target extended further than I could see, and the only parking spots available were somewhere in western Montana.

I drove home hanging my head in shame: mortified that I even joined the crazed shopping masses to begin with, and disgraced that I didn’t have the fortitude to stick with it and bag my bargains. And frankly, part of me is really ticked off that the merchants of the world made me do it. I realize they didn’t twist my arm or hold a gun to my head, but why, why, why does the shopping get earlier each year? We need to say NO to the MADNESS, people, and reclaim our Thanksgiving, our uninterrupted sleep, and our dignity!

Also, if anyone knows where I can find an xBox cheap, I’d appreciate it.

Lately

2011-11-21T12:21:00.001-05:00

I’ve been busy.

Using Blurb.com, I’ve been converting my blog into a book! I began this bog almost three years ago in order to scrapbook my photos and family stories. I took a Scrapbooking class once and was really very bad at it. I just didn’t have the artistic vision to make a page beautiful. However, my blog has helped me capture those photos and memories so well. But what happens if someday Blogger’s server crashes (I’m not sure those are the right terms…but you know what I mean.) My blog would be lost, like a scrapbook that turns to ash in a housefire. Hence the decision to make the blog into a book (that could also burn up in a housefire, whatever, shut up.)

I have to tell you though, that three years of blogging is a lot to organize. I’m having to rewrite some things, choose templates that fit the right number of photos and text for each blogpost, and on top of that, Blurb is really slow. I don’t think it’s my computer, because it’s usually pretty speedy, but when I ask Blurb to delete a page, for instance, it will do it…after about a two minute wait. I usually must wait 20-30 seconds after most moves (which seems crazy slow), but the Delete a Page move is the most annoying. I’m enjoying the whole process though, and it’s fun to take a walk down Memory Lane (it’s mostly fun…but I’m embarrassed at how bad my writing was in the beginning, middle, and sometimes even the end. Man, I use way too many exclamation marks!!!!)

So besides the blog business…

I found this ladybug inside my house, which I think means good luck. Except, doesn’t the ladybug’s house burn down in the little nursery rhyme? Maybe I should rethink the book. Anyway, I put her outside on a pumpkin for a nice little photo shoot, but she promptly fell off and scurried away, which I think means she’s taking her luck and/or housefire with her somewhere else.

Dave and I repainted the shutters on our house last month! He did the top floor, I did the bottom, and then I also painted the bench, front door, and storm door (I had to as I also changed our paint color from Faded Pukey Maroon to Sherwin William Tricorn Black. I think the house looks much better now as our old shutters were so faded from the sun.

Before:

After:

Also, I took the screens off the windows, hosed down the whole front porch, and then washed all of the windows until they were squeaky clean. It’s probably the last time I’ll do that until we paint the shutters again in 2021, just sayin’.

I’ve also had two photo shoots this month in an effort to get a Christmas card photo. For the first one, I took the kids to Founders Hall where the foliage was blazing away. For the second one, I threw some Christmas lights down on our living room floor and stuck the kids in front of them. I got some good results for both, but I also got some bombs. Here’s a sneak peek at some bombs (because I’m saving most of the bombs for my Annual Christmas Card Reject Post, click here to see 2009’s rejects and here to see 2010’s rejects):

School conferences were about a week ago, and they all went well. Jack’s teacher asked if I noticed the Community Helpers bulletin board in the hall, which I hadn’t. She thought I would be interested in seeing Jack’ s contribution to the bulletin board. Oh boy. Did I get a nervous feeling in my stomach.

The theme of the bulletin board was how community helpers help people. For instance, one child wrote “I would like to be a policeman so I can help children cross the street.” Another child wrote, “I would like to be a teacher so I can teach children how to read.” So admirable.

Jack wrote:

Hmmm. Maybe I need to whine about the orthodontist bills at a lower volume from now on.

Brace Face

2011-11-16T07:47:00.001-05:00

After wearing an expander for about two months (and for 5 more months), Maddie finally got her braces! She’s been so excited to get braces for years.

Here she is ready to get started:

What’s funny here, is that I quietly asked her, “Can I take a before picture?” And she looked to her left at all of the slightly older teens sitting in the other chairs and whispered, “Mom! No!” So I asked her, “How about from here? Just smile. No one will know!” But you can see she is feeling self-conscious.

During:

I have another photo of DURING that I won’t show you, but I took it to show her. They put these huge C-shaped plastic inserts into her mouth to hold her mouth open. Holy cow. She looked kind of…creepy. I almost couldn’t look at her. I definitely can’t publish that photo!

After about 45 minutes:

She’s thrilled, and suddenly looks like a teenager to me.

The next morning she was not so thrilled. Her poor mouth hurt all day. This morning it felt better, but only slightly. I told her it will all be worth it when they come off and she has a gorgeous new smile, but two years seems really far away to her right now.

Melancholy Metaphors*

2011-11-12T15:30:00.001-05:00

Maddie was as tiny as a daisy.

Ben was sleepier than his mother. (Who was chronically sleep-deprived from January 2000 until somewhere around 2007. So that’s saying a lot).

Jack was newer than a present under the tree.

Maddie was sweeter than an angel.

Ben was scarier than a dude who makes a mask out of the leg of his father’s old pants and writes “Sae Owt” (Stay Out) on his bedroom door.

See? Sleep deprived.

Jack was stickier than a baby covered in marshmallow crème. Mom was dumber than a post for keeping the marshmallow crème on a low shelf.

Goofier than…

…Santa’s elves, or possibly…

…Goofy himself.

Cheesier than the dairy aisle at Costco.

Also more romantic than the electric blanket aisle at Costco. You have to admit, it’s true.

*I realize these were mostly similes, but I couldn’t find a good word to be alliterative with Simile in the title. Here’s a bonus photo to soothe those of you offended by my poor literary usage:

Totally Tired, Easily Exhausted, Sincerely Sleepy, Utterly Unawake

Instagram October

2011-11-08T07:34:00.001-05:00

Another month has flown by. I’d like to figure out a way to make time go just a little bit slower. I love fall.

Leaves are a-changing, mums are a-blooming, the skies are crystal clear, and the grasshoppers are a-copulating.

BugBoy didn’t know that of course. But he loved how they were playing leapfrog!

I attended my first school dance as a chaperone instead of as an attendee!

Holy cow, that was so much fun! The music was a little loud, but the exuberant joy (and crazy drama) of youth? I loved it.

We got in a trip to Dutch Wonderland, which is a local theme park aimed at the younger set. Jack would have loved to ride everything, but Maddie and Ben were looking for roller coasters and excitement. I think this may be our last trip to DW. (I’m sticking out my bottom lip and pouting right now…they need to stop it with the growing, already!)

I’ve been waking the kids up in the morning with the guinea pig. They love cuddling with him first thing and they seem to wake up in a better mood as a result. Try it with your rodent tomorrow morning!

(In case you’re wondering, Herbie is sitting on the giant teddy bear Jack got for his birthday from Grandma and Papa).

And of course, we ended the month with Halloween!

Here’s Maddie with her good friend Ellie. They decided to be garden gnomes together!

And here’s my neighbor Sue (remember her last month with her new puppies, McGee and Tobey?) and her husband Jaime:

They rightfully won the costume contest for couples! Don’t you love it?

I got to help with Jack’s school Halloween party. It was a roomful of excited, sugarcoated, costumed first graders. God Bless first grade teachers.

Finally, a little story. At the end of October, when Maddie was getting on the school bus in the early morning darkness (pre-Daylight Saving’s Time) , I began driving her to the bus stop. I usually drove Dave’s car, because his garage door is the furthest away from the boys’ rooms and would be less likely to wake them up than with my garage door.

Dave’s car has a personalized radio/control center, and his name is programmed in there so that when he wants to choose a radio station, the screen says, “Dave’s Presets”, etc.

One morning, Maddie said, “You know, we should change Daddy’s name to ‘Poopypants’ for an April Fool’s joke next year.”

I said, “That is awesome! Why wait?”

Dave was leaving that morning for a trip for work. I told the boys about it on the way to their school bus and they laughed until they cried. Every time we pictured Dave getting into the car and seeing “Poopypants” on his screen?? Priceless. Unfortunately, Dave didn’t notice it right away. I began to get nervous that he would be transporting a client who would notice before he did.

But luckily that didn’t happen (whew!) and Dave was totally impressed with our technical knowledge and our acutely outrageous senses of humor (or is it sense of humors?)

However, we are certainly not plotting to do that again. No sir. Not at all. We did not enjoy calling Daddy a Poopypants on his car even one tiny bit.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Disclaimer

2011-11-06T18:45:00.001-05:00

My mother read my last post and wants you to know the following things:

1) My house is not as bad as I make it sound. It is never perfect. It is rarely close to perfect. I do clean and dust (occasionally) and pick up, and my children do have housework jobs, and the slave labor from them totally counts. But let me tell you, I can have the house looking pretty darn nice, and three minutes after the kids get home from school, I’m thinking, “What, the what?” Grrr.

2) I do not even consider cleaning my windows on a sunny day. That would be crazy, as my mom reminds me often (kind of like the willow tree story) that the windows will streak in sunshine. (To my mother-in-law…I totally only clean my windows when it’s sunny so I can see the streaks and wipe them away, I promise.)

3) I do brush my hair, I do put on makeup when I’m going out (usually), and I don’t always wear sweatpants (sometimes I wear jeans too).

4) I do not now, nor have I ever, had lice! (Although I did have worms once when I was a toddler! Sorry mom, the secret’s out.)

5) I really am very crafty, for instance, mom reminded me that I used to do cross stitch and I paint my own walls and…then she got kind of stumped, but remembered the awesome potholders I used to make from that potholder-making kit when I was 10, so you can see, I really am quite the DIY-er.

6) To Jen, the commenter on the last post who told me that that post made her feel better about her own house and self …that post was for you (I mean, it wasn’t just for you, it was for anyone, but you totally got it). I love reading blogs, but sometimes they make me feel incompetent, dumb, poorly groomed, and lacking in so many ways. Some bloggers’ families seem so perfect, their homes are sparkling, their children smiling away, and they did it all themselves. I think it’s good to remember that really, no one is perfect: one blogger’s two year old probably threw up on the beautiful wooden floor she just hand-stenciled twenty minutes after she took the photo for her blog, the kids of another blogger probably ate nuggets and fries for 4 nights in a row so she could finish painting the bedroom (nothing wrong with that mind you, she just won’t tell you that), and another one argued with her husband over the cute fabric skirt she attached to his desk so much that they aren’t speaking, and may not until said cute fabric skirt is removed. That part just won’t be included in the blog. Do I tell you everything? No! Of course not! My mother would kill me.

But I do try,occasionally, to keep it a little real, to remind all of us that it’s okay that some (not all) of us can cook, while some of us like shortcuts and easy suppers, and some of us love a clean house, while some have four children under the age of 5 and the state of the house is the last thing on our minds, and some of us are always on a diet, while some of us are trim and fit, and some of us can refinish furniture while some of us like to lay on the furniture in the afternoon watching DVR’d episodes of Modern Family and that’s okay! (And I’m glad Jen found some comfort in that!)

I’m also sorry that my post freaked my mother out so much.

Dave and Jack walking through the cornfield behind our house. This photo really doesn’t go with this post. I just like it.

Helpful Hints Just For You!

2011-11-03T11:26:00.001-04:00

I had such an overwhelming response to my A Project or Two post! It makes me feel truly humbled yet gratified to know that I have inspired so many of you to create your own Dust Communication Displays. Dave is super-duper proud of me too. He didn’t actually say so, but that faraway look in his eyes when he read “Mom Rocks!” on our bedroom television dust spoke volumes to me.

Honestly, I think it was the moment when someone told me, “Beth, your Junk Collection is beyond words,” that I knew that I was on to something. I’ve decided that maybe you, my dear readers, need more of my good advice and tips for helping make your home life run smoothly. As I say frequently to my family, “A rolling stone gathers no moss!” And then they say,”What?” And then I say, “Dude. Whatevs.”

Household Tips:

1. Beds really do not need to be made unless company is coming and will be sneaking around your house when you’re not watching.

2. Vinegar is great for lots of household things. Like salad dressing and…cleaning your coffee pot, and…salad dressing.

3. My mother tells me that you shouldn’t clean your windows in bright sun because it will make them streak. My mother-in-law tells me that you should clean your windows in bright sun so you can see the streaks and wipe them away. I don’t want to hurt either of their feelings, so I find it best to leave windows fingerprinty and filthy and in no danger of becoming streaky at all.

4. Don’t put celery down the garbage disposal. Trust me on this one.

5. Wearing socks around the house counts as sweeping the floors.

Marital Tips:

1. Men love it when you put your cold feet on them at night. It makes them feel loved and needed.

2. Men also love a messy house.

3. And also they love when you wear sweatpants and don’t wear makeup or brush your hair, AKA The Natural Look.

4. For God’s sake, don’t serve them baked beans and cole slaw in the same meal!

5. They also like football. That’s all I’ve got, people.

Childrearing Tips:

1. It appears that 10 may be the cutoff age for being able to sneak candy from their Halloween bags without them noticing.

2. White carpet? Are you nuts?

3. Children tend to throw up within 5 seconds of announcing they might be feeling sick. Be ready to catch it in your hands.

4. Someone will always have their eyes closed when you are trying to get the Christmas card picture.

5. I don’t care how old they are, if you put on Barney, they will watch it. They will whine about it to you and pretend they hate it, but they will watch it.

Beauty and Fashion Tips:

1. Brush your hair at least once a day (unless you’re going for The Natural Look for your husband).

2. Once I made a conditioning mask for my hair using mayonnaise and lemon juice! It was disgusting. Don’t ever do that.

3. A glass of wine a day keeps the wrinkles away! (not scientifically proven)

4. Baseball hats not only look cute but can hide unwashed hair, untouched up roots, dandruff, split ends, lice, and bald spots.

5. Black clothes are slimming, horizontal stripes are not slimming, and suspenders add a playful touch!

DIY Tips:

1. Save all of your tin can lids from all of your soup cans all year and attach strings to them with glue or something, and you will have a very shiny, sharp, and fragrant Christmas tree!

2. You can make cheap and sturdy shelving for your garage! Somehow!

3. Guinea pigs can create very unusual yet stunning artwork when non-toxic paint is applied to their feet and they are allowed to run around on a canvas. Not that I have ever done this, I am purely guessing.

4. Non-toxic paint is tricky to remove from the feet of a guinea pig, as they can be very wiggly and bitey when they are annoyed. I am still guessing.

5. Want to make a really cool wreath for your Thanksgiving door? Staple some turkey legs to both sides of the wreath, and using a glue gun, glue some green army guys with guns shooting at them. Hilarious and keeping with the Thanksgiving Theme of turkey and thankfulness (that you are not a turkey).

If my tips have helped you in any way, I will feel so happy. Now start saving those soup can lids! Christmas is only 7 weeks away!

Merry Halloween!

2011-10-31T15:19:00.001-04:00

Our first snow came a little early this year.

In fact, I read in our paper that the last time a measurable amount of snow hit our area in October was 1925. But then, this year we have had tornados, crazy flooding, and an earthquake, so really, who wouldn’t expect a nor’easter to hit in October?

Ben and his friend Nathan went into business and shoveled neighbors’ driveways. They didn’t set a fee, but most neighbors gave them a little something and they both earned over $30 by the end of the day! And Ben slept really really well Saturday night.

Maddie built a snowman and put her pumpkin to good use as the snowman’s head!

Maddie is trying to use the slide to roll the second ball up onto the first ball.

Daddy to the rescue!

Jack looked at snowflakes with his magnifying lens and basically went in and out of the house 53 times, requiring many pairs of gloves, hats, and socks, and multiple mugs of cocoa.

(Note that he put his hat and a pair of earmuffs on over his hood…)

By the next day some of the snow had melted enough that we were still able to enjoy our annual neighborhood Halloween party, and tonight we will be trick-or-treating!

But I still feel like Mother Nature decided to pull an October Fool’s Joke on us.

Pumpkin Pumpkin

2011-10-28T07:22:00.001-04:00

Even though we bought our pumpkins in late September, we waited until now to do the carving so we wouldn’t have a big slimy mess of rotten pumpkin seeds and decaying, blackened rinds decorating our front porch. Jack found this hard to understand and asked me at least twice a week, and more frequently as Halloween approached, When Just When Are We Going To Carve Our Pumpkins, Mom, Pleeeease!?

I surprised all of them after school on Wednesday, announcing that no after school activities + gorgeous weather + we are within a week of Halloween = PUMPKIN CARVING TIME!

Everyone was excited! (Except Ben who thinks carving pumpkins is icky. He likes to design his but leaves the cleaning and carving to us. He has always been this way, and I’ve learned to accept it. Mostly.)

We always roast our pumpkin seeds and snack on them all evening and this year was no exception. There were so many seeds we even have leftovers!

How we roast pumpkin seeds:

~separate the seeds from the pulp right away and soak the seeds in a bowl of salted water for a little bit (15 min.-an hour or so)

~pour the seeds/water through a strainer, pick out any additional pulp, then drizzle a little olive oil over the seeds and mix.

~spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam and sprinkle with salt (I like to use sea salt) and bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes (I tried using the convection oven this time and found 18 minutes was a good time for that).

~cool and eat!

Happy Halloween!

A Project or Two…

2011-10-26T11:34:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Wendy at Relatively Unique published a blogpost that made me really tired. Wendy, besides working full time, is renovating their home a little at a time, currently changing an existing stable into a playroom, making homemade suet cakes for the wild birds who visit to dine on, repainting and reupholstering chairs, making craft/décor items to sell in her craft shop, sewing a Halloween costume, hanging curtains, helping her kids with their own craft project, and running for president. (I made that last one up, but I think she if she can keep up with this schedule, she ought to be able to run the country).

After I read her post I took a nap. And then I looked around me and realized that I too am a busy person with lots of projects! Let me show you!

First of all, I have this pineapple to cut up. It’s actually a very tricky project because I need to time it just right. I don’t want the pineapple to be too ripe, but I also don’t want it to be not ripe enough. You can imagine the sleep I am losing over this one.

Also, I have three very ripe bananas that are just begging to be made into banana muffins. I am trying very hard to not make them into banana muffins because banana muffins are my favorite, and I am trying, as always, to cut down on the calorie consumption. Walking by those bananas every day and not making them into banana muffins is sapping a lot of my strength.

Next up is the guinea pig. He’s always been a bit shy. A guinea pig’s first line of defense is hiding, and Herbie must have some good Guinea Pig Genes, because he’s pretty much always hiding under something. I’ve been spending a lot of my free time with him, talking about how he is safe here, and loved, and how we have no hawks flying around our kitchen hoping to grab him and make him their lunch, and how we would love it if he would leave behind the boxes and tunnels and join us as an equal, as a loved and cherished family member. I ask him lots of questions about his childhood and his parents and I encourage him to try to think of the moment that he feels damaged him so much that he must hide away from his loved ones. We are still working on developing his trust.

I’ve also been working on my junk collection.

I like to keep my junk collection on my entryway table because I feel it gives guests that “Welcome Friend!” feeling. I think my collection is coming along nicely.

I also like to keep my junk collection in my “baking corner” (note the mixer) to discourage any baking of banana muffins.

Another project of mine that has been very time consuming lately are my Dust Communication Displays.

You would be surprised at how long it takes to accumulate an adequate amount of dust for these displays to work!

I’m sure you can see that waiting for the dust to collect, the junk to accumulate, the guinea pig to trust, the bananas to rot, and the pineapple to ripen are huge time investments and energy busters. Whew! Do you feel as tired now as I do? Feel free to take a nap. But please don’t visit me right now. I am really much too busy working on my projects to entertain you at the moment.

73

2011-10-24T16:05:00.001-04:00

We celebrated two birthdays over the weekend.

                                            (The furry one, not the blond one.)

Also, this guy:

                                                   (The handsome one holding the football.)

Really, we all got together to celebrate Dave’s dad’s 73rd birthday. At some point during the afternoon, someone asked how old Ozzie the pug was (he belongs to Uncle Mike and Nicole) and we found out he’s 10 1/2, which comes out to about 73 in dog years!

Ozzie’s a nice dog and we love him. But we love Dave’s dad even more. I could blab on about what a great man he is, how thankful I am to him for raising his son to be an excellent husband and father, how smart, funny, kind, caring, earnest, trustworthy, deliberate, and steadfastly there for his family he is. He says what he means, and he means what he says. More than anything, you can count on him. I love him like he was my own father, and I just count my blessings that when I married Dave I got to claim his dad and mom as (almost) my own as part of the deal.

We had a great afternoon. The autumn weather was perfect for some football and tree climbing and chatting in the backyard.

It was a good time to show off your muscles and look at old wedding photos!

And there were cupcakes galore!

Happy 73rd birthday to Al and Ozzie.

A man and a dog were never more loved by their family than they are.

October Book Review

2011-10-21T07:31:00.001-04:00

First of all, I’m sad to report that I won’t be reviewing this book for you:

Though the title and cover photo were intriguing, the pile of books next to my bed is piled too high. Maybe I will get to it for you someday. Ahem. Or maybe not.

So to begin:

Confessions of a Prairie B*tch by Alison Arngrim- Okay, I mostly loved this, but then, I am a sucker for celebrity autobiographies. (In case you’re wondering, my favorites are Julie Andrews’ book, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years; Carol Burnett’s This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection; and Melissa Gilbert’s A Prairie Tale.) Arngrim led an interesting life, the child of unorthodox parenting (little tidbit for you: her mother was the voice of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Gumby, and Polly Purebred), she was the victim of years of physical and sexual abuse by her older brother, and of course, she is best known as the evil Nellie on Little House on the Prairie. Arngrim gives us lots of LHOTP details, which was awesome, but even better, Arngrim can write pretty darn well! Many (most?) of these celebrity memoirs sound like the celebrity’s voice, you can almost imagine them telling the story into a recording device and then having some peon type it all up for them. I didn’t feel that way about this book. I highly recommend it, especially if you are a LHOTP fan.

The First Husband by Laura Dave- I was looking forward to reading this one, because it was recommended to me by Jen Lancaster herself! Well. She didn’t recommend it to me personally, but she did overwhelmingly recommend it to her readers, so same thing almost. I borrowed this one from my friend Maria who also really liked the book, so I felt kind of bad when I gave the book back to Maria and admitted I really didn’t like it. It wasn’t that it was poorly written, because I think it was very well written. I guess I found the plot both jaded and yet slightly unbelievable at the same time (newly dumped wife goes on journey to find herself…yet falls in love with cute restaurant owner after a single one night stand and they build a life together with slight wrinkles from first husband and her feelings of not quite knowing who she is yet). Eh.

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta- I mentioned to you in my last book review how much I was looking forward to this novel, as the premise really seemed to grab me: the title refers to the people left behind after the rapture, or as the leftover people in the book call it, “The Sudden Departure”. The reason they don’t refer to it as the rapture is that the leftovers are not who you think they should be. Sure, there are some criminals and miscreants left behind, but there are also children, and pastors, and preschool teachers, etc. They question if God really did take the good souls or if it was just some weird metaphysical thing that happened. The ones who vanished into thin air also left behind a bunch of people who had to figure out how to live without them. Was life still worth living if your husband and children vanish and you’re the only one left? Do you return to college and make your way through life knowing just how tenuous your hold on life really is? My only disappointment was that the novel started after The Sudden Departure. Although the characters in the book discuss it at times (kind of in a “where were you on 9/11” sort of way), I was really hoping that would be part of the novel. The ending makes up for it though. It isn’t fireworks and sparkles, but it is a cool, thought provoking way to end. I absolutely love a good ending and think it may be one of the hardest things to write. Perrotta aces it here.

Bossypants by Tina Fey- so here I go again with a celebrity memoir. I mostly liked Tina Fey’s book, though I think some of her jokes fall a bit flat without a studio audience to laugh at them. Her early years were funny and interesting enough, but I really zipped through her Second City/SNL/30 Rock chapters. Good, fairly quick read if you like Tina Fey. Tara at Taradactyl also read Bossypants. Click here to read her review and a bunch of other books she has reviewed (I am reading one of her recommendations right now --I Capture the Castle).

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley- This mystery was given to me by my friend Shelley (hi Shelley!) I didn’t realize when Shelley loaned it to me that it was a mystery. I must admit that I can take or leave mysteries. I went through a Mary Higgins Clark streak in my twenties and then read most of “The CatWho…” books (also in my twenties), but find I don’t have the patience for true mysteries as much anymore. The heroine of this book, set in the 1950’s in the countryside of England, is eleven year old Flavia de Luce. She is a smart, verbal child who hopes to solve the mystery of the almost dead man (he dies after saying his last words to her) she finds in her family’s cucumber patch before the police do. Flavia was very likeable, and I enjoyed the interactions between she and her sisters (she does not like them), but I will admit that this one took me a long time to read as I kept falling asleep every other page. If you are a mystery fan, though, you will probably love it. Thank you for thinking of me, Shelley!

Happy reading!

Super Serious Blogger Conference

2011-10-19T09:32:00.001-04:00

I am so lucky to live within a ten mile radius of four fantastic bloggers. Deb writes Confessions of an Ugly Mom, and she lives the closest to me, only about a half mile away. We discovered each other because of mutual friends who said to me, “You have to read Deb’s blog. She is so funny!” I believe they were also telling her, “You have to read Beth’s blog. It will make you feel even better about your blog.”

I was friends with Stephanie and Wendy before they became bloggers. Stephanie blogs on Conversations from the Cul-de-Sac and Wendy authors Relatively Unique. Although both write “Home” blogs, Wendy specializes in home décor and crafts, whereas Stephanie loves photographing architecture and whining about her sweet, innocent puppy. So she has to replace a carpet here or there. He’s adorable!

Tara writes Taradactyl. I met her because she left a nice comment on my blog once, which made me look up her blog, which I read and loved. She writes about stay-at-home life and is hilarious. She also writes about her scary mother. And strangely enough, she and Wendy are neighbors! (Now I’m singing “It’s a Small World After All” in my head. Are you? Sorry.) Tara is the “new girl” as the other four of us all knew each other before Tara started stalking us (her words, not mine).

We had all been communicating through Comments and Facebook and finally we decided it was time to meet and ~~make sure Tara was not a crazed axe murderer~~ discuss some Important Blogging Issues. So of course our Super Serious Blogger Conference met at ~~The Axe Murderer’s House~~ Tara’s house. Deb and I drove together and there was excitement in the car as we pulled up to her house. “I don’t see any dead bodies laying around,” said Deb. “I will park here for the fastest escape route and leave the doors unlocked just in case,” I said.

Kidding!

Did I mention Tara’s scary mother was going to be there? I almost peed my pants waiting for someone to answer the door. Crazed axe murderer or scary mother? Ack.

Kidding!

Tara answered the door, minus an axe, and shortly after that I met her mother who, in person, was not at all scary, and in fact, I think I may have liked her just a teensy bit more than Tara herself (shame on you Tara for making up stories about your lovely mother!)

We had a fantastic afternoon. It was so nice chatting face-to-face with four people I love to read. We enjoyed a delicious spread of food (Tara’s Stuffed Pepper Soup and Spinach Salad, Wendy’s Antipasto Platter, Deb’s Pumpkin Bread, Stephanie’s Breakfast Crack and I brought plain, boring bread), we laughed, we cried, we…well, we really didn’t cry. But we laughed and chatted the afternoon away until I realized that I was already going to be late to pick up Maddie after school!

You would think a blogger would have brought her camera. You would think wrong. Tara’s Not Scary Mother did take a picture of all of us with my phone, but Tara’s picture turned out better, so I will “borrow” that picture for you to see!

From l-r: me, Stephanie, Deb, Tara, Wendy.

It was probably the best (though admittedly only) Blogging Conference I’ve ever attended. Thanks so much to Tara for hosting a bunch of people she’d never met and trusting that we weren’t a bunch of Axe Murderers or Craig’s List Type Burglars or Meanies.

Bug Boy and the Scaredy Cat Sister

2011-10-17T07:21:00.001-04:00

It’s Praying Mantis time!

Jack found this guy over the weekend and played with him for a good ten minutes before letting him go.

It’s all fun and games until somebody decides to climb onto the camera lens.

Maddie grabbed my phone for me so I could show you how much he enjoyed hanging around on my camera.

Finally Maddie got brave enough to hold the little fella.

Until one of his legs poked through her sweater…

A good mother would have put down her camera and removed the praying mantis from her sleeve.

I am not that mother.

The end.

Easy Crockpot Stew

2011-10-12T09:02:00.001-04:00

After nearly a week of beautiful, gorgeous sunshine, we’ve got another day of rain here. That’s actually good because I don’t need to water the new grass over the old sinkhole, and I don’t have to put the second coat of paint on the shutters (my weekend project is stretching into so much more), and finally, I can put a yummy, easy, cozy stew in the crockpot for supper. I love soups and stews on rainy days.

The one I’m showing you today is adapted from a woman’s magazine (Good Housekeeping, Family Circle etc.), but it’s from so long ago that I can’t remember which one! (By the way, the magazine called it “Beef Boogie Woogie”, but we call it “Steak and Noodles” because everyone around here likes steak. Ha HA!) My kids generally do NOT like soups and stews or casseroles…or any meal where all the ingredients are mixed together. Which is frustrating. But they all like this one.

First spray your crockpot with Pam. Then, in the crockpot, mix together one can of Cream of Mushroom soup, a pack of Lipton’s dry Beefy Onion Soup mix (or any dry beefy soup mix), and either a 1/2 cup of dry red wine or water. Before the kids came along, I used wine. The kids do not like the flavor of the wine, however, so now I use water. Both are good.

When that’s all mixed together, throw in 1-1/2 - 2 lbs. of beef chunks, a bag of baby carrots, and a small or large package of washed and trimmed mushrooms. Note: this is the only way my kids will eat cooked carrots, they love them this way. Also note: the mushrooms are for Dave and me. I pick them out for the kids.

I’m not going to show you a picture, because at this point, it does not look so very appetizing.

Do all of that in the morning and then cook on low all day. Right before you’re ready to serve, cook some egg noodles and throw that into the crockpot with your stew. Then serve.

Beef Boogie Woogie

or Steak and Noodles

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 packet Lipton Beefy Onion Soup mix

1/2 c. dry red wine or water

1-1/2 – 2 lbs. beef for stew chunks

8 oz. bag of baby carrots

mushrooms, washed and trimmed

Whisk together soup, wine or water, and dry soup. Add remaining ingredients, stir until coated. Cook in the crockpot on low 8-10 hours. Add cooked egg noodles when ready to serve!

I am linking this recipe with Foodie Friday!

Blogaganza!

2011-10-10T10:50:00.001-04:00

If you read my blog with any regularity, and of course you don’t, you’ll recall that last week I ran out of post ideas. I appealed to the literally tens of you who read my blog to give me ideas, and an astounding 3 of you came through for me! Thanks Deb, Stephanie and Tara!

I could give you the link to go back and look at their suggestions, but since I know you lazy people won’t take the time to do that, I’ll remind you now that their ideas were to

Go to Wikipedia, look up “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” and get ideas from her.
Discuss the Guinea Pig Geico commercial.
Scan old pictures of me (Beth) and discuss them
Make things up.
Talk about Deb.
Write about a car show or find a weird car part and make up something funny about it (which reminds me of the old game show, The Liar’s Club…do you remember that show? That was seventies television at its finest).
Include a discourse on our local menace, the dreaded Stinkbug.
Do a sinkhole tour.

Now if I were smart, I’d stretch those ideas out into 8 separate blogposts. But I am not smart. In fact, some would say I walk around in a fog most of the time whistling “Oh Susanna”, looking for my car keys, and trying to remember the two things I wanted to get at Walmart. Two things! I can’t keep a list of two things in my head anymore!

What was I talking about?

So, here goes my stab at a blogpost with all of those things in them:

Deb Rancherd looked up from her cup of tea. The Guinea Pig Geico commercial was playing on her countertop television set, and Deb, a great fan of both Geico and the Guinea Pig, turned up the volume on the tv.

“OMG!”, she squealed to her husband, Mac, “Look at those darling little piggers rowing the boat! Also, too, I think we need to up our insurance. Have you heard about all of the sinkholes opening up in town?”

“No!” Mac exclaimed. “I wish you had some pictures to show me.”

“Well, lover, you are in luck. I took some while I was wheeling around town the other day in the car I bought at the car show. Here let me show you.”

“Also, too, you have to see this awesome picture of my friend Beth thinking she’s a Boat Show Model! ” [snort!]

Well, Deb and Mac had a good laugh at poor Beth’s expense and then Deb headed out to work as an exterminator. Deb liked her job, especially when it involved her old foe, the Brown Marmorated Stinkbug. The stinkbug, as we all know, originated in Japan and China, then headed to America, the land of opportunity, for greater things. Like apple pie, no healthcare, a failing economy, and Beth @ Dirty Laundry’s tomato plants.

photo source

While on the road to her first customer, Deb noticed an odd looking item laying on the passenger seat of her car.

photo source

“Wow! What a weird car part that is! It will be perfect for holding all of my lip balms! Or perhaps I can display dead stinkbugs in those holes. Or it could make a nice bracelet….Hmmm…I know! I’ll save it for April Fool’s Day, cover it with dough, fry it, and serve it up to Mac as a little ‘surprise!’”

Happy that she had already gotten her April Fool’s Day trick planned out, she headed to her first appointment, a woman with an exaggerated New York accent adorned with lots of gold jewelry, a Halloween sweater, large dark glasses, and big hair, which she constantly adjusted, named Linda Richman. Linda greeted her at the door.

“Deb! Come in for a cuppa coffee before you kill my stinkbugs, darling, no big whoop. Hurry up now, I’ve got a shpilkis in my genechtagazoink and I’ve gotta get off my feet.”

Deb joined Linda on her sofa and set her coffee on the coffee table. “How have you been, Linda?” she asked politely, for Deb was nothing if not polite.

“Oh, not good, honey. I’m a little verklempt. I just realized the chickpea is neither a chick nor a pea, Grape Nuts are neither grapes nor nuts, and Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Would you like to discuss that with me?”

Although Deb could have stayed all day chatting with Linda about how Ralph Fiennes was not spelled Rafe nor Fines, she gulped down her coffee and begged Linda’s forgiveness. “You are my first stop of many. Besides your stinkbugs, I’ve got to head to the Cul-de-Sac and take care of a nasty rodent problem they have there, then head to Dactyl Street and spray for bats. But before I go, look at this picture of my friend Beth and her bratty brother Dave. See her and her ragged Dorothy Hamill haircut pointing to her bean bag chair? Why, it is neither a bean, nor a bag, nor a chair. Odd, no?”

Then Deb thanked Linda for her coffee, and headed for the door and the stinkbugs waiting for her on the house’s siding. Which was when a swarm of angry Stinkbugs looked Deb over, declared her to be “like buttah” and sprayed her with their stinky spray.

And the moral of the story is… Don’t make fun of your friend Beth’s awkward middle school years

Jack Jack Attack

2011-10-07T06:49:00.001-04:00

Yellow JACKet

JACK-o-lantern

JACK Frost

JACKpot 1

JACKpot 2

JACK and Dill

JACK-uzzi

Pair of JACKS

Jumping JACK

Hungry JACK

JACK rabbit

JACK in the box

HiJACK

WOLFE-man JACK

Happy Birthday to my most favorite 7 year old in the world!

Blog Soup

2011-10-05T10:51:00.001-04:00

Thanks for all of your suggestions! In my last blogpost I ~~whined~~ kindly asked for your input on some topics for future blogposts. Wow. Did you guys come through for me!

Taradactyl suggested I discuss the Guinea Pig Geico commercial or go to Wikipedia and look up “Coffee Talk With Linda Richman” because Linda was always good at giving her audience topics to discuss, or, Taradactyl suggested, I could scan old pictures of me and talk about them, which was probably the best idea of the day, because who does not like to look at old pictures of me?

Stephanie at Conversations from the Cul-de-Sac suggested I make things up. Nice! I have a new appreciation of you, Stephanie!

Deb at Confessions of an Ugly Mom suggested I write about her (Deb), or stinkbugs, or the car show (I didn’t even know there was a car show in town…where is it, Deb?), or do a Sinkhole tour. The funny thing about her last suggestions is that Dave suggested I do the same thing after all that rain when our town became a giant piece of Swiss cheese, and I was totes going to do it, but couldn’t drive around freely (too many roadblocks) to get pictures, and then I kind of forgot about it. Doh.

So, thank you for the ideas! I think I’m going to combine them all to make one giant Blogaganza of a post! But I need time for that. I’ll need to sharpen my pencils, stock up on “thinkin’ snacks”, and spend the afternoon looking at old pictures of me. For research purposes.

I already have a post planned for Friday (Jack’s birthday) so I am going to post my Blogaganza on Monday the 10th. Mark your calendars and please tune in then, and for now, enjoy this old picture of me on Christmas morning in my Granny nightie wearing a new pair of bunny earmuffs!

And look! My dad is handing you a present! It’s your lucky day, yo!

The Well Has Done Gone Dry

2011-10-03T11:05:00.001-04:00

I am officially out of blogpost ideas. I have one for Friday, because it’s Jack’s birthday weekend, but until then, you are going to have to go somewhere else for your free entertainment. Like Walmart or your mailbox or Nickjr.com.

So instead of writing something witty and smart, I am going to just tell you about my weekend. Jane Doe did that over at Taradactyl, and if she can do it, then so can I. Of course, she has a great photo of she and her husband in matching sweatshirts. I can’t even come close to touching that awesomeness. Also, her weekend update was both witty and smart, and also a tad controversial since she bashed Wilbur Buds, so FINE! WHATEVER! Just go read her blog and forget about mine! I don’t even care! You fickle stupidheads!

So my weekend! Friday night was fun! We went to the high school football game because Maddie (and any other middle schooler who wanted to) got a chance to play her flute with the marching band for their pregame show!

Ahhhhh, Friday night football.

Dave used to play football. And I used to be in the band. I don’t think our high schools ever played each other because mine was bigger, but I bet if we had, I’d have felt a little chill, a gnawing subconscious feeling that my destiny was near.

Or maybe not.

Then on Saturday morning we bundled up and went to Ben’s flag football game. There was a lot of whining all the way around about how cold it was. The babies.

I was all, “Look at the players out there wearing shorts and sliding around in the mud! Stop yer complaining!”

They were all, “Can I have some hot chocolate? Please?”

And I was all, “Fine.”

Really, when you think about it, it wasn’t a very interesting conversation.

Then we went home and did some boring stuff like watch t.v. and cleanup a little bit and stare gloomily out the window at the rain. Luckily, Dave and I had dinner with friends to look forward to, so that was very fun!

Then on Sunday, we went to church where I swear Jack did not sit still for two minutes, as he was surrounded by first grade friends (somehow we all managed to sit close together…I will not make that mistake again) so for the first 10 minutes or so he waved openly to his friends, until I noticed and clamped down on that, then he waved discreetly at his friends until I noticed and clamped down on that, and then he held up his guinea pig book so his friends could also view the pictures until I clamped down on that and then I threatened that any further communication with the friends would result in lost snacks/desserts and then he stopped and just got wiggly. It was a long morning.

In the afternoon, Maddie and I headed out for a shopping trip together since she outgrew her nice pants from last year (and ended up wearing white capris to church that morning…both a fashion no-no and a comfort no-no as it was cold) so we got her nice pants and also a pair of shoes that look like slippers to me. See?

I even asked the salesgirl if they were shoes or slippers and she gave me a withering look and said, “They are shoes, ma’am, see?” And then she showed me her feet and she was wearing the same shoes/slippers and I think Maddie almost died of embarrassment so we got the shoes/slippers and I promised to never mention that moment again. Except for right now.

Then driving home,we were listening to NPR (the ultimate in cool), and they were interviewing a teenager and they asked her, “How should I, as an adult, talk in a way that would make my teenage daughter think I am cool?” The interviewer asked the question jokingly, but the teenager answered seriously: “Talk in abbrevs. Like… ‘She is totes jeal of you, yo’.” So now I’m all about talking in abbrevs, and ending sentences with yo, and I’m pretty sure Maddie thinks I’m totes cool.

We had tacos for sups, yo. We visited the ‘rents and ate soft pretz’s for a bedtime snack, then hit the sheets, yo.

And that was my weekend. Yo.

I’m begging you for post ideas. If you’ve got something you think I could write about, type it in the comments, yo.

Instagram September

2011-09-30T07:12:00.001-04:00

Can you believe today is the last day of September? This month just flew by. Here’s how we spent our month in Instagram:

We went to a family Labor Day picnic at my Aunt Betty’s house. It was nice seeing family. Here’s my baby brother Jesse and my dad. Isn’t it uncanny how they look alike? They were even wearing almost matching shirts.

Hmmm, I’m not sure this photo really does the resemblance justice, you will just have to trust me on this one.

The kids returned to school! Hooray! Here are the boys scootering to the school bus. I like when just one of them decides to scooter, because then I can scooter back home after they get on the bus. I think I probably look really young and cool and hip when I am scootering. Probably.

I’ve been able to go lots of places all by myself this month. One place I’ve been a lot is the library, and when I saw this book on the shelf I nearly peed my pants.

I had no idea there was an audience out there for pregnancy romance. What’s next? Premenstrual romance novels? Seven Days of Hell, Twenty-One Days of Heaven: join Brittany and her poolboy Paco as they ride the roller coaster of love that is the menstrual cycle. “Oh Paco, the things you can do with a pool skimmer, oooooh my…DUDE! MY BR**STS ARE TENDER-- DID I OR DID I NOT MENTION THAT??? Oh Paco, I’m sorry, I just don’t know what’s wrong with me…[crying] You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, baby. I’M GONNA PUT THAT POOL SKIMMER WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE MISTER IF YOU GIVE ME THAT LOOK AGAIN!”

Ahem.

Ben has decided to be a professional wrestler when he grows up. No, not the kind that gets pinned on high school gym mats, but the kind who dresses up in crazy outfits and throws his opponents into folding chairs. I’m so proud. He’s been working on his flips.

We had a little rain this month!

Neither of those places should have any water on them at all. The one on the left is the road to our development (see the houses on the hill) and the one on the right is IN our development. Crazy, crazy amount of rain.

Oh! Also, all of that rain gave our fair city its share of sinkholes! This one opened up right outside our development’s entrance, effectively cutting us off from the north side of town (the sinkhole extended under the road all the way across the street).

Jack started taking piano lessons and loves it!

My friend Sue got puppies and named them McGee and Tobey. Don’t you just wanna hug ‘em and kiss ‘em and tickle their bellies? (The puppies, not Sue, though she is mighty cute too).

It’s pumpkin time! We got our pumpkins a little bit early because someone started a vicious rumor that there is a pumpkin shortage out there and we were afraid we’d miss out if we waited too long.

My bratty brother Dave and the lovely Jamae moved into a beautiful new house this month! I helped them move (a little bit). While loading boxes into my minivan, I noticed these feet peeking out at me:

Disfigured Barbie feet? Muppet feet? I just had to open the box and snoop.

Troll feet! And a big old Garfield. Tee hee! It’s so cute that Jamae has kept her Trolls all these years! (Unless they are my brother’s, in which case…that’s kinda weird.)

We also watched Jamae’s sister Chelsea’s daughter one evening so they’d all have some time to paint without a two year old running around. Hailey was so good and sweet. We loved having her every minute.

Have a great weekend!

I am linking this post to Life Rearranged and Instagram Friday!

P.S. I can’t use words like br**sts because weird people might google something like “pumpkin br&&sts” and then because I have the words “pumpkin” and “br%%sts” in my post, google will offer it to the weirdo as a choice. I try to keep the weirdos away when I can.

Quiz

2011-09-28T11:29:00.001-04:00

Don’t you just love all of those quizzes in magazines? Where else can you get good advice for (almost) free?

Okay, besides there.

Back when I was a Seventeen reader, it was so useful when the quizzes helped me decided which celebrity crush would be my perfect match (Matt Dillon, Michael J.Fox, or Rick Springfield), which hairstyle flattered me the most (permed and big, permed and bigger, permed and biggest), or how to tell if he really liked me (he usually didn’t).

Then I matured. My gosh, when I started reading those Cosmo quizzes, I learned a whole new, frightening array of knowledge. In fact, if I had had this knowledge back when I read Seventeen, I’m betting I totally would have aced those “Does He Really Like You” quizzes. Now, of course, the occasional quiz comes from Good Housekeeping and is usually titled something like “Can You Get Out That Stain?” with questions like “Your son skinned his knee on the sidewalk and his pants are a bloody mess. Do you a) run it under hot water, b) run it under cold water, or c) buy new pants.”

Quizzes were totally more fun in my twenties.

Would you like to take a quiz on this gloomy, rainy, humid (at least here) day?

a) yes, I’m so excited, Beth you are the BEST!

b) no, why don’t you write a real blogpost one of these days?

c) maybe, after I get the blood out of my son’s pants

Correct answer: A…if you got that one correct, you may proceed to the quiz. If you answered B, go read “Clover Lane” and stop whining, if you answered C: To remove a blood stain: Immediately rinse under cold running water, then rub stain with bar soap and rinse. If it's still there, add 1/4 cup ammonia to one gallon of cold water and soak for 15 minutes. Launder with color-safe or chlorine bleach.
Read more: Stain Removal Tips Quiz - How to Remove Stains - Good Housekeeping (and you thought I was kidding about that.)

Beth’s Super Duper Rainy Day Friendly No Pressure Quiz

1. Your house looks like:

a) a tornado hit it

b) perfect in every way

c) a square, with a rectangle door and a triangle roof.

2. You drive a

a) disgusting, french fry infested, stained and stinky minivan

b) a cute little convertible Beetle

c) hard bargain

3. Your favorite pasttime is

a) Pinterest, reading blogs, Pinterest, Facebook, and Pinterest. Also conversing with your guinea pig.

b) organizing your lingerie

c) napping

4. Your Celebrity Crush

a) Ryan Reynolds

b) Michael Bolton

c) Justin Bieber

5. You would describe your physique as

a) comfortably soft, wobbly, and gooshy

b) cute and tiny like a cockroach

c) a head, torso, two arms, and two legs.

6. If no one in your house was allergic, and you could get a cat, which you would love and hug and snuggle soooo much you would name him

a) Mr. Fluffernutter Roberto McScratchy

b) Fido

c) Sweet Salmonella

7. Favorite way to eat an Oreo

a) open it, eat the cookie side that has no cream on it, break the other side in half, put those two sides together to make a Doublestuff, and eat.

b) you don’t eat Oreos.

c) bite into it and chew. Then swallow it.

8. Number of cars you have accidentally backed into with your car

a) 4 1/2*

b) 0

c) 12

9. Your plans for the day include

a) Pinterest, Facebook, cleaning the toilet

b) meditation and fasting

c) removing the bloodstains from your son’s pants

If you answered mostly A’s: YOU ARE PERFECT!

If You answered mostly B’s: I do not like you, but I will pretend to, because I am an adult.

If you answered mostly C’s: You seem like a nice enough person. Good luck with those pants.

*my bratty brother Dave’s car, the lovely Jamae’s car (yes…two seperate occasions), my friend Cindy’s car, my friend Jenny’s car, and the 1/2 is because Dave’s boss parked his Corvette (I kid you not) behind my car, and I backed out not expecting it (pretty much the case with all of the cars), but looked in the mirror inches before I came into contact with it.

Final Field Trip

2011-09-26T06:42:00.001-04:00

I’m a little late on this blogpost. I actually kind of forgot about this field trip and just stumbled across the pictures while looking for something else. As you can imagine, my photo filing system complements my steel trap of a brain very nicely.

Our last “field trip” before school began was to Lake Tobias, which is both a zoo and a safari ride. Lake Tobias also has a very nice souvenir shop, which may have been the highlight of the trip for the kids (unless it was possibly devouring the most gigantic Kool-Pops I’ve ever seen which I bought for them because I’m so nice). I didn’t get a picture of the Kool-Pops though, believe it or not. But let me tell you, they were about two entire feet of popsicle awesomeness wrapped in plastic.

The real reason we went to Lake Tobias was not for the souvenir shop or the popsicles or even for the zoo. We went for the Safari Ride, which is the best. After buying your tickets, you hop onto a school bus with the roof cut off of it.

With bonus camo paint!

The bus is driven by your tour guide who stops occasionally and tells you fun facts about the animals you’re seeing.

Since the roof is cut off, she doesn’t have that big overhead mirror to gaze menacingly at you with. So you can be naughty. Bwahahahaha.

Since we have done the safari ride before, we knew to stock up on crackers and popcorn for the animals. I don’t know why giant bulls would like a cracker, but they do.

See?

Yes. That is his tongue sticking out to get the cracker. I know! EWWW!

One happy fella even climbed up the bus steps!

This one is totally sticking his tongue out at us! Rude.

There were a lot more animals and birds on the safari ride (not just cattle), but I won’t bore you with all of the pictures I took.

After the safari ride, we went through the zoo. I took lots of pictures of ostriches and lions and prairie dogs and monkeys. Would you like to see my pictures? I didn’t think so.

Our second favorite at Lake Tobias is the petting zoo. Guess why Maddie is excited in this picture…

Herbie’s cousins! And did you ever see a pregnant guinea pig???

I bet she’s got some heartburn and sleeping issues.

We spent a good 3-4 hours there, on the safari ride, wandering among the animals, whining because mom never buys us anything at the souvenir shop, and petting goats before we headed back to our car. If you haven’t been to Lake Tobias, I highly suggest a visit, it’s one of our favorite places!

The End.

Please Excuse the Mess

2011-09-23T14:46:00.001-04:00

Have you discovered Pinterest yet? I love Pinterest. I can lose hours of my morning looking around on Pinterest. You know how you can stroll through all these blogs and see the coolest ideas, but then find it’s hard to print ideas from a blog page or it’s crazy to bookmark all those recipes or you think you’ll remember where you saw that craft and you go back, but can’t find it? Well, that’s what Pinterest is for. Once you figure it all out (and it took me awhile), you can “pin” the ideas you find on those blogs (or anywhere on the internet) onto your personal “boards”. I have a board called “Recipes I’d Like to Try” and one called “Stuff For the Kids” and more, and all those ideas, in the form of pictures linked back to the original text, are pinned right there for me. And, even better, you can scroll down through what everyone else in the world is “pinning” as their favorites and see a whole bunch of really cool ideas all in one spot (which you can repin onto your own boards).

One of my own blogposts was pinned onto Pinterest once, by someone I don’t even know. That’s how I discovered Pinterest (and I was very honored and walked around carrying a pen for weeks certain I’d be asked for autographs! I wasn’t.)

So, anyway this is actually not a blogpost about Pinterest, but about a quote I saw on there this morning (which I didn’t repin and should have, darnit!) It really spoke to me. It said, “Please excuse the mess, but my children are making memories.”

My house is a bit of a mess right now because Dave’s been out of town all week, and things get a little bit…crumbly… around here when I’m the lone adult. Dave’s mantra with the kids was always “Clean up what you’re playing with before you move on to the next thing.” And that’s a really good mantra. I wish it were my mantra. My mantra is more like “Someday it will get cleaned up, probably right before company comes.”

So I guess that little saying from Pinterest gives me a chance to blame the mess on the children’s memory making and creativity, and not my housekeeping, so sure, let’s go with that. And let me tell you, my kids make lots of memories…

It is amazing that no one has ever broken a bone going up and down our staircase. But if they did, I would just say to them, “Well, my kids are making memories! I think that is more important than your stupid femur.”

Pumpkin Muffins

2011-09-21T06:58:00.001-04:00

Made from two ingredients.

Yes, you read me right!

I think this recipe has been around for awhile, in fact I seem to remember it from my Weight Watcher’s days which were back when Maddie was born, so that’s a good 11 years ago.
Also, these are delicious. Words cannot describe how moist these muffins are, in fact, if I were to try a word, it would probably have to be “creamy”. I’m not sure how a muffin can be creamy, but these come pretty darn close.

Here are your two ingredients:

The original Weight Watcher’s recipe I used was a box of angel food cake mix and a can of pumpkin (because angel food cake is fairly low in fat and calories), and the recipe that’s traveling around blogs right now calls for any cake mix (red velvet, chocolate, yellow, etc.) and a can of pumpkin, but when I went to the grocery store to pick out my cake mix (I was thinking a spice cake would be good) I saw this muffin mix. First of all, it’s made with Cinnabon cinnamon which I just love. Second of all, it comes with a streusel topping, which just sounded better than a bare muffin. I was worried, however, that the recipe would only work with a cake mix, not a muffin mix, but I gave it a try anyway
.
ALSO, did you know that there’s a pumpkin shortage right now? The first two stores I went to had signs like these:

But I found some at Walmart. I bought six cans, and I may go back and buy more, because these muffins were such a hit with my kids, and with a whole can of pumpkin in there, I think they’re a little bit healthy too, right? By the way, Walmart’s pumpkin was only priced at $1.68 a can instead of Giant’s $2.19—BONUS!)

So basically, mix together your muffin or cake mix and your can of pumpkin (not canned pumpkin pie mix though…just plain pureed pumpkin), then dump it into your muffin tins. I found this box only made 11 nice sized muffins. I wonder if a cake mix would make more, because a cake mix usually makes 24 cupcakes.

This came with streusel topping, so I also patted that onto the top of each muffin. Bake the muffins in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Mine took about 22 minutes.

These were seriously delicious, made of two ingredients you can keep on hand (if you can find the pumpkin), and a little bit healthy (lots of pumpkin and no oil in there!)

I hope you like them as much as we did!

Pumpkin Muffins
1 – 15 oz. can pumpkin
1 muffin or cake mix (I used Betty Crocker Cinnamon Streusel Muffin Mix)

Mix together. Fill muffin tins almost to top. Bake for about 20 minutes until cake tester comes out clean. Allow to cool for a few minutes, and then remove muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

I am linking this recipe with Foodie Friday!

I Am Crafty!

2011-09-19T07:14:00.001-04:00

Well, no, in fact I am really very NOT crafty. I don’t even really like to read all of those craft blogs out there. I also have friends (mainly Wendy and Stephanie) who like to go to second hand stores in search of junk that they end up making into absolutely gorgeous things. I have tried doing the same thing, but usually leave the store empty handed…it all just looks like junk to me, and I just don’t have the creative vision necessary to make it nice.

However. I have noticed a lot of really cool crafts out there made with chalkboard spray paint, and I saw one project in particular, in multiple places, that I finally thought I could do (I wish I could tell you where, I don’t remember, although Wendy may have been my inspiration because she has done a lot with chalkboard paint).

Last week I hit the secondhand store again, with very low expectations, but I found this!

And I decided to try to be crafty.

I bought these:

I removed the painting from the frame and spray painted the frame (both sides).

Then I spray painted the painting with the chalkboard paint, following the directions on the can (at least 3 coats with 10 minutes of drying time between coats, painted with vertical then horizontal sweeps). I let it completely dry for 24 hours.

Then Maddie and I seasoned the chalkboard (also per the directions on the can). Look at the wall behind Maddie…that’s where this puppy is going!

After that it was ready to hang. Dave did this for me, and he attached it securely to the wall in multiple places, since we knew it wasn’t going to be just hanging there. And I love it!

I really am so happy with it, and am trying to figure out what I’ll use the remainder of that chalkboard spray paint on. Possibly my car hood (I could write “Hip Mama” on it!), my wine glasses (“I’m with ‘Stupid’”), empty Kleenex boxes (“Get Your Snot Out Here!”)

It’s possible I still need to work on my artistic vision. But it’s a start.

Technology

2011-09-16T14:09:00.001-04:00

I thought this was pretty funny…two of our neighborhood girls biking and texting…you get the feeling their moms said, “Put down the electronics and go outside and get some fresh air!” So they did. Kinda sorta maybe.

Wouldn’t it be even funnier if they were actually texting each other?

Things really haven’t changed that much since I was their age. When I was about 13, I was so excited because for Christmas I asked for—and got—a handheld gaming system:

It played games like BlackJack, Tic TacToe, and Echo, and I spent hours on my bed with my feet up on the wall and my Holly Hobbie dolls gathered around me playing that thing. So I can relate to the electronics-addicted biking/texting girls. Kinda sorta maybe.

My family was always on the cutting edge of technology. I was also the first one in my neighborhood to have one of these:

We also had a cordless phone! And I got an electric typewriter as a graduation gift! My college boasted telephones in each of our dorm rooms…no community phone in the hall! And when I wanted to talk to my parents on the phone every couple of weeks, I’d call home collect, they wouldn’t accept the charges and then they’d call me back.

I wrote papers on my typewriter and when I made a mistake, I put a little piece of white ink paper into the typewriter, hit the letter again and typed over it in white, then went back and typed the correct letter in black. When I needed to do research I went to the library, looked in the card catalog, worked my way through the stacks, and read books. I took a roll of film with my camera, mailed it off to the photo place, and received my 24 photos back in about two weeks. If I wanted extra prints, I had to take the negative to a photo duplicating place and wait another week. Which I never did because the photo quality on my Disc camera was so bad.

For entertainment, we played Trivial Pursuit, eating popcorn we popped with oil in a popcorn popper, surrounded by walls covered with Oneida/Snoopy/Michael J.Fox posters, our books stacked on genu-wine milk crates we “borrowed” from all of the local stores (one time a wild rumor circulated campus that the police were coming to check dorm rooms for “borrowed” milk crates and anyone that had them would be fined $50 a milk crate…crates were immediately ejected from all of the dorm rooms and littered stairways, lobbies, hallways, and front lawns of dorms!)

That’s me on the left in pink!

We cooked Ramen noodles in hotpots, and later a few fortunate girls got giant microwave ovens in their dorm rooms. We received real letters from people and we sent real letters back. We wrote notes in notebooks using pens and highlighters. When we wanted to see a movie, we went to a theatre (seriously…no one even had VCR’s then). When we wanted to see what our “friends” were up to, we headed down the hall and asked instead of checking out their Facebook status. We walked to class using our own feet, none of this fancy flying skateboard crap kids have nowadays.

Sorry. I think I got carried away and suddenly started channeling Back to the Future.

Anywho, I do like technology, and I really wish I would have had it to help me out with research and papers and socializing. I’m glad my kids will have access to so many more resources for entertainment and information. The eighties were a good decade, and I wouldn’t have had them be much different if I had a chance. Except for maybe cell phones. And Red Box. Ooh! And blogging! And Angry Birds, Instagram, Google, and iTunes. Also digital cameras. And no perms. Geez, I hated getting perms.

Dude, the eighties stank! We wore jelly shoes and our mixed cassette tapes were always getting ruined and our “digital” clocks clicked at us every time a minute changed and our eyeglasses were huge and there was only one flavor of Oreos!

How did we survive without mint Oreos?

The end.

September Book Review

2011-09-12T07:17:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the September edition of Beth’s Super Fab Book Review! I hope you find something you’d like to read.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova-Lisa Genova also wrote Still Alice, which I read in August and really liked (remember-- the links to my previous book reviews are over on the right). I was excited to read this novel, but was pretty disappointed. Left Neglected tells the story of a woman who is in a car accident and as a result, loses the ability to not only use the left side of her body, but to recognize anything on the left. So if there are two people standing in front of her, she only sees the person on the right. Supposedly this is an actual medical condition, but the whole story seemed far-fetched, and quite frankly, I was bored after awhile with all the ways the main character had no left…can only read the right half of a page, can only see half a picture, can’t read her watch if it’s on the left arm. It just got old fast. Additionally, the other storyline, that of her being a busy working mother before the accident and now coming to terms with her having to be content staying home with her family as she can no longer work seemed thrown in there and could have been developed better. It was an okay book, and you might definitely like it, it just wasn’t for me.

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay- This book has had a lot of buzz lately, and is even being made into a movie so I was excited to read it. The setting of the book is Paris during World War II. Sarah and her family are Jews who are forced to leave their home during a huge round up of Jews (the Vel’ d’Hiv’), however, Sarah, not realizing the seriousness of the round-up, and that she and her family would likely never return, locks her little brother into a hidden cabinet for safety, with the intentions of returning and letting him out. A really great yet awful premise, and the book generally was a page turner. Sarah and her parents are taken to a concentration camp and the conditions and storyline are truly heartbreaking. I won’t tell you anymore, you have to read it to see what becomes of the family and the brother. I only gave the book 3/5 stars however, because although that part of the novel is interesting, I didn’t enjoy the second storyline which is woven through Sarah’s story…Julia Jarmond, a reporter in modern days who is researching the Vel’ d’Hiv’, is a whiny American living with her French husband and daughter in Paris. She’s pregnant, her husband cheats on her, there’s a dying grandma…really? The author needed to add all that to this terrific story? Also, I hate to say this, but the author is not the best writer in the world. I think the Sarah/Vel’ d’Hiv’ story idea was great, but another author could have written this better. (I feel so mean saying that, and I hope the author never googles herself and finds her way here, because I’d feel bad. But I think you will probably agree with me.)

Smokin’ Seventeen by Janet Evanovich-If you haven’t read any of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books, go get one at your library! (Although, maybe not the first one, Evanovich hadn’t hit her groove yet with the characters.) The book titles are numbered (One For the Money, Two For the Dough) so as you can see, Evanovich has written 17 novels now about Stephanie and her sidekick Lula, Grandma Mazur, her two hot guys, and her hamster, Rex. Basically, Stephanie is a bounty hunter…she goes after the people who don’t show up in court after her cousin’s bonds business bails them out of jail. She is bad at this. Her car gets blown up or somehow destroyed, sometimes multiple times, in every book (and in very crazy, creative ways). Her sidekick Lula has the best lines of a sidekick, ever. She is constantly going back and forth between her two hunky guys…Ranger and Morelli (I’m pulling for Morelli, but I also enjoy when she’s with Ranger). The situations she gets herself into are usually hilarious (in this book for example, one of her captures is a self-proclaimed vampire, and three people are trying to kill her, which made for one of the best endings ever in the the Stephanie books this time!) Is this great literature? No! Definitely not! It’s very fun, light reading, and I can’t wait for number 18 to come out in November. As soon as I see it, I will get on the waiting list, and will probably be something insane like #39, because the books are popular: once you read a Stephanie book, you will be hooked! (Again, maybe not the first one.)

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson-Talk about your page turners! I read this one in a day and a half, I really couldn’t put it down. Christine, the main character, suffers from a tragedy induced disorder that makes her forget everything from day to day. So when she wakes up every morning, she doesn’t know where she is, who that dude is in the bed next to her, or why she is almost 50 years old (she thinks she’s in her twenties, her age before her accident). Her husband fills her in every morning on who she is, how she has this crazy amnesia, and assures her she is safe, and then he leaves her alone and heads to work. The only thing is, every day she gets a phone call from a doctor who tells her that he has been secretly working with her, and to look in the closet, where she will find a journal she is keeping there. When she looks for the journal and finds it (every single day) she reads what she’s been writing (which of course she forgets once she falls asleep at night) and discovers that maybe the story of her amnesia that her husband tell her isn’t quite right. In fact, on the cover of her journal she has written, “Don’t Trust Ben” (Ben is her husband). But can she trust the doctor? He also seems in on things, and why are they meeting in secret? I’m not telling you anything that’s not on the dust jacket, so don’t worry that you know what’s going to happen, because you don’t. This is a page turning thriller and I bet it’s made into a movie in the next year or so!

Election by Tom Perrotta-I ran across Election because I was trying to reserve Perrotta’s newest novel at the library. I’m very excited about his new one (The Leftovers), and am first on the list when the library gets it in. Election and one of Perrotta’s other novels, Little Children (also an excellent novel), were both made into movies. Election was made back in the 90’s starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, I remember seeing it years ago and it was an enjoyable movie. The book was good too. A very easy, quick read, the story revolves around a high school student presidential election and is told in turns by the three candidates and the social studies teacher who is the election advisor. It was a terrific story, very well told, the characters were spot on (high school angst and all), and the ending was a good satisfying wrap-up.

Sneak Peek: Now I’ve moved on to Confessions of a Prairie B*tch, Alison Arngrim’s autobiography. And shame on you if you don’t know that Alison Arngrim played Nellie in “Little House and the Prairie”. I am loving it, and will tell you about it next time!

Yes. I wear reading glasses. You got a problem with that?

Rain Rain Go Away

2011-09-09T08:30:00.001-04:00

We’ve been having a little rain around here. It started in mid-August with a soaker of a rainfall that reportedly gave us 2-5 inches of rain in just an hour. The rest of August gave us a slightly above normal amount of rain until Hurricane Irene, who soaked us again and gave all of us the chance to play Musical Lawn Chairs/Trampolines/Garbage Cans with our neighbors and knocked out power for many people I know for almost a week. But this week?

Has. Been. A. Doozy.

Picture a nice map of the northeastern United States. Now picture Tropical Depression Lee to the west of Pennsylvania and Hurricane Katia to the east, in the ocean. Those two weather systems funneled a crazy amount of hard, heavy rain right through central Pennsylvania for three days. Three days of crazy hard rain. I’ve made a technologically advanced illustration for you to help you visualize it!

Yes! Those are Twistables! The latest in crayon technology!

I’m thinking of buying one of these:

Or maybe just scuba gear.

School students were dismissed early on Wednesday (after the school decided that it wasn’t safe to transport them home in buses—huh??), and roads became covered in water so quickly, that some kids didn’t even make it home and spent the night at school. Since the start of this thing, some of us have had ruined basements galore, a boil water advisory, and no electricity, we’ve seen a submerged Pizza Hut, two dead bison at the local zoo, and plenty of newly opened sinkholes (we live in an area abundant in porous limestone) and Facebook has been alive with stunned gawkers, whiny reporters, and nosy lurkers as folks post devastating photos from around the area. Like these:

Thank you, Facebook Friends. You are totally better than any news report.

It’s not funny, and it’s not a joke, and I really feel for those (like my parents and in-laws, and many, many friends) who’ve had to bail the water out of their basements one bucket at a time (my father-in-law estimated it took him 150 trips up and down his stairs).

We’ve had it rough around here too.

I’m so glad that I’m kidding. We’ve watched the basement carefully but so far so good. We need to conserve our water, but not boil it, and our electricity outages have been fairly short. And since school was cancelled yet again today, the kids have decided to practice their sloth impressions. They’re getting mighty good at them too.

Oh! They did move at one point…

Boys. Maddie and I think they’re totally dumb.

There are also a bunch of really cool looking mushrooms around now.

And if we didn’t already have a pool, we could go swimming in our backyard…

I wish I could send some of this rain to Texas or Oklahoma since I know things are dry, dusty, and dire there. All I know is we are ready to say goodbye to Lee and Katia and send them on their happy, floody ways. Sunshine? What the heck is that? Even Herbie is getting depressed. I think.

To my local friends…stay safe and dry.

Applesauce for Dummies

2011-09-07T06:43:00.001-04:00

I am not implying anything with that title, I swear.

But applesauce is easy. If you’ve never made it, you are really missing out, if only for the amazing aroma of spicy sweet cinnamon apples that will lovingly settle into every room of your house on the day you make it. It really is worth it, if only for that.

But it’s not just that. Homemade applesauce made from just picked apples (either off the tree or from the grocery store apple display) tastes really good too, and you can make it with as much or as little sugar as you want, and you can make it as smooth or as chunky as you want. It also freezes well (which is good for me, because I don’t know how to can things).

Which apples are good for applesauce? Sweet apples are the best, like Red Delicious, Gala, Honeycrisp, Yellow Delicious, etc. (I didn’t know that…I googled it for you. You’re welcome). Today I am using Galas.

So here are the basics.

First you need to peel and cut up some apples, although I do it the other way (cut then peel)*. I use my apple slicer, slice (and core) the apple into its individual slices, and then I use a paring knife to remove the peel from each slice. That to me is easier than peeling a whole apple. But as my mother says to me (frequently) “You do what you want, you will anyway.”

*If you have a fancy sieve meant for grinding up apples, you do not need to peel the apples,the sieve will strain them out of the finished product and your applesauce may turn a lovely pink color if you use red apples.

After I remove the peel from the slice, I cut the slice into halves or thirds and then put it right in my crockpot. Today I had a helper who cut all of those apple slices for me. We have a safety knife that I think I got from Pampered Chef that he uses when he decides to play chef.

Cut up as many apples as it takes to fill up your crockpot, I think mine took about 20. Then add the following to your crockpot:

1/2 cup water

1 cup sugar (white or brown, I usually use 1/4 cup brown, and 3/4 c. white sugar), you can also use less sugar than this. The kids love it, but I’m starting to think it’s a bit too sweet in my old age. I might lower it to 3/4 c. next time.

1 T. cinnamon

Stir it up a bit and turn your crockpot on low. You can let it cook overnight if you want. My recipe tells me it needs to cook for 3-4 hours, but the apples don’t seem soft enough after that amount of time. 6-8 hours is how long I usually cook them. You can stir this occasionally if you want, but you don’t need to.

After you’ve cooked it long enough, stir it and smoosh it up with a spoon or some kind of smoosher (I believe that is the technical term. You can look it up. But I wouldn’t.) If you want a really smooth applesauce, you can put this in your food processor and quickly smooth it up that way!

We like ours pretty chunky. We ate some of it with dinner, but some of it I put in containers to freeze individually for school lunches.

See? Easy peasy.

By the way, if you leave it a little chunky, you can make these using crescent rolls and a teaspoon of applesauce…just pinch up the ends when you roll them up so the applesauce doesn’t leak out, and bake for the time the package says. Yum!

I thought I’d end this post with a nice apple quote, and I found some good ones like "Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits." -- Henry David Thoreau, but then I found this one:

"Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes." Robert Greene (1590)

…and I don’t know if Mr. Greene meant it to be a dig to his chubby wife or romantic, but it made me think I might just have to say this to Dave the next time he comes in for a kiss. Which led me to think of other cool things to tell him his breath is like:

Thy breath is like a stale mug o’ coffee.
Thy breath is like the starchy Pringle chip thou ate two minutes yon.
Thy breath is like a deadeth possum, go brush.
Thy breath is like the cool Arctic mint of the paste of the tooth… thou mayest proceed.

Anyway, may all your kisses be like the steame of apple-pyes and may thou be no dummy when making thine applesauce.

I am linking this recipe with Foodie Friday!

Creeped Out and a Little Bit Paranoid

2011-09-05T08:11:00.001-04:00

Can someone please tell me why there are so many spiders, building so many webs that stretch out in extremely annoying places in early September? Even bug boy doesn’t like spider time.

The other day I was doing this…

…and I had to keep dodging these…

Creepy.

At one point I mowed through a web that was stretched between two evergreens but I never saw the spider who made the web. As a result, I kept feeling a phantom spider crawling on me for the next half an hour or so. In my hair. On my leg. On my elbow. In my ear. Ugh. I’m feeling all itchy just thinking about it.

I don’t like rodents much either, but at least they know their proper place in our society and stay hidden away, unlike spiders who flaunt their creepy, sinister, hairy-legged beastliness to us. It’s just not right.

This is also giant grasshopper time. Our backyard borders a cornfield, and the area within about 6 feet from the fence is infested with thousands of giant grasshoppers. Bug Boy loves this, and I don’t usually mind so much, but the other day while I was mowing, the grasshoppers were hopping and flying away from me, while their less agile friends were cruelly mutilated by my lawn mower, which left me feeling really very guilty thinking about all the baby grasshoppers I had just orphaned. There was one giant grasshopper in particular who finally did me in. On my first sweep along the fence, I must have injured him, because as I was heading back again, I saw him hobbling frantically away from me. I passed him and he made it! Of course I came back again, and over and over he just narrowly missed my mower. I actually began to pull for him until I realized that the poor guy was heading triumphantly yet tragically straight to the pool and certain death, while surely (what was left of) his distraught family helplessly watched. This made me pretty sad.

But then I started to think, what if Mr. Giant Grasshopper was like the mafia boss of the grasshoppers, or maybe even the gentle, beloved grandpa of the grasshoppers, and all of his goombahs/grandchildren decided to seek revenge on the Grasshopper Hacker (their name for me).

And then I got this clear picture of me waking up one morning to the buzzing sound of thousands of jaws, opening my eyes to see grasshoppers galore sitting and waiting for me, on my dresser, on the ceiling fan blades, on my comforter, their vengeful eyes boring into me with the intense hatred only angry grasshoppers can feel when they witness their sweet grandpa mercilessly chased by a bloody lawn mower into a pool. Gah!

I think maybe I do a little too much thinking while I am mowing the lawn. Maybe I need to use my iPod more, or practice my states and capitals to perfection, or think of witty retorts for all the conversations I’ve stumbled through for the last twenty years or so.

So to recap:

Spiders = creepy

Grasshoppers = vengeful

Beth = paranoid, slow-witted, states/capitals expert

Instagram August

2011-09-02T08:20:00.001-04:00

We started off the month at the beach and the boardwalk (Ha! And you thought the beach posts were finished!)

It’s kind of cool when the colors in the pool match the colors in the sky…and not just boring, old blue. Now that the sun has been going down a little earlier, we did quite a bit more night swimming in August than we did earlier in the summer.

We visited a family with the best dog in the world.

Seriously? I may dognap him. They might want to lock him up at night.

We had the sinkhole in our front yard fixed and we weathered Hurricane Irene.

We discovered our new favorite place for ice cream! (Those are called Stuffed Snowballs…very creamy soft-serve atop a snowcone!)

We did our first round of apple picking. These are galas, which we used to make applesauce (you’ll see that one next week) and good old apple crisp, but the apple I really can’t wait for is the Crispin, due out on September 23. I just read in the paper yesterday, though, that a lot of the Crispin crop was lost due to Hurricane Irene. They are such a big heavy apple, I guess they’re easy to blow off a tree.

Apples + Irene= Bad Joke: Why didn't the two worms go into Noah's ark in an apple? Because everyone had to go in pairs ! Sorry.

Then everyone headed back to school. Here is my happy first grader eating lunch in the cafeteria for the first time!

Now August is over and September has begun. The weather has been crisp and perfect, with temperatures in the eighties and very low humidity. This week I actually wore my hair down (not in a ponytail) for the first time in months. I am sorry to see summer end, but at least I’ve got those Crispins to look forward to! Maybe.

I am linking this post with InstaFriday at Life Rearranged!