A Bit of Everything

As always I've had lots to blog about but I haven't been blogging. I'm just about bursting at the seams. This post will be a smorgasbord of different pictures, stories and alerts that I need to get off my chest.

Nerds

If a word were to describe my relationship with my best girlfriend, Holly, I think "spontaneity" would do it. We've known each other for most of our lives and you would be surprised to find out how many of our thousands of adventures together were planned only hours or minutes before they transpired.

The adventure I'm featuring here today is the "'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1' Opening Night Event." We had just so happened to schedule a pumpkin mousse date together the day before the opening of HP7. As we lingered over our afternoon dessert, we animatedly discussed various topics, including the upcoming release of the movie. We came up with the idea of searching for tickets for that night's midnight showing of the film and going to see it together. It took us about a half hour to find three tickets together on opening morning (one for Holly, one for Brent, and one for me), but when we finally did, we were ecstatic. Somewhere along the lines Holly came up with the idea of dressing up as Hogwarts pupils, and even though I made the disclaimer that Brent would not only NOT dress up with us, but that he would also be embarrassed to be seen with us, I readily agreed to the proposition. We spent about five minutes in each of our closets coming up with our outfits. I even had some wooden chopsticks from China that worked as our wands!

Quite a night to remember.

I don't think Holly or I should ever try out for acting...neither of our faces look very convincing here. I mean, do YOU sense that we're about to cast a spell on you?

I look more like a teacher reprimanding a student here than anything else.

Holls, I love you...but what kind of spell-casting form is that?

Uhoh.

Stews and Hungry Brothers

Last Friday night I made Boeuf Bourguignon Soup and Horseradish Chive Bread courtesy of the December 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The soup was tasty as stews go, but not good enough that I will ever make it again. Brent and I have discovered that we are simply not beef stew people.

The bread was different, as you can imagine, with horseradish as the main ingredient. It was not unpleasant, and in fact, it was very good, but all three people who ate it that night decided they much prefer good ol' buttery garlic french bread.

My brother was the third taster that evening. Half of the french bread I prepared with butter, and the other half of it I prepared with a dairyless spread that was safe for my brother to eat. Before we served up, I announced to him that the right half of the loaf was safe for him, thinking he might want to take some home.

Nope, that is not how my brother thinks.

When he hears that a certain amount of food was set aside and intended just for him, he sees no reason to not eat it all in one sitting. It was such a surprise to turn around and see an entire half loaf of french bread on his plate! It made me laugh out loud.

Oh, and he finished every bite. In one sitting. In case you were wondering.

And I'm pretty sure he actually woke up with a tinier tush the next morning. How I despise track stars.

Miss Georgie Eloise

As many of you know, my niece is living with my mom and dad this month, allowing my sister, Heather, to get an extended time of rest while battling Lyme disease. Even though it's heart-breaking that Georgie must be separated from her parents for these weeks, we are loving having her down here with us!

I want to share a story that I think Heather will get a kick out of, and perhaps a few of you might giggle through as well. It's one of those stories that MIGHT be a "you have to be there" tale, so please bear with me as I try to relate the hilarious events.

Further disclaimer...the situation I'm about to relate was experienced through turkey goggles by everyone involved; it occured on the evening of Thanksgiving, after consuming large amounts of turkey, and I don't believe I was the only slap-happy person in the room. Therefore, the story may not be as funny as I remember it to be.

But here goes.

I was sitting on the couch with a Georgie on my lap, playing and talking with me. All of the sudden, she very seriously asked me to open my mouth. I obliged. After looking deeply into my mouth, she further asked me to stick out my tongue. Again, I obliged. This produced a frown in the 3 1/2 year old face and these announcements: "Ewwww, your tongue is kind of dirty. Let me go get a wipe to clean it."

I laughed as she hopped off my lap and secretly hoped something would distract her along the way to getting a wipe. But nothing did. Less than a minute later she reappeared on my lap with a wipe.

"Would you please open your mouth?"

Laughter, then, "No, you can't clean my tongue with a wipe!"

"Please! It's really dirty!" (Starts prying my mouth open)

I'm giggling so hard that I'm having a hard time resisting the little hands that want to get inside my mouth. Eventually my mouth submits and falls open, but the thought of a wipe on my tongue is so revolting that my head instinctively backs away.

"Please! Hold still! I need to clean your tongue!"

More laughter. And more attention from around the room has started to point toward our corner.

Finally Georgie wins the battle and starts scrubbing my tongue. I'm having a hard time doing anything but laughing and making a sour face.

Georgie then backs off the tongue, and takes a comprehensive glance at the rest of my face. She sees my eyeshadow and decides it's dirty and needs to be washed off. She proceeds about her business in a manner that suggests she has never heard the word "gentle," much less knows the meaning of it, and occasionally pauses to get a better grip of my head and to exasperatingly command, "Please! Stop laughing! I need to clean your face! Stop laughing!"

By this time the tears have started flowing (I always cry when I laugh). Also, by this time the entire room is focused on the little girl and her intense obsession with my face's cleanliness.

My unhelpful family started suggesting other parts of my head that might be really dirty...my ears, my nose.

Oh, my nose. The little girl, with a serious face, had to crouch on my lap to peer up my nostrils, then took her wiped and scrubbed them out.

The whole room was roaring, and I was defenseless as a result of my giggling.

Georgie leaned back and took another comprehensive glance at my face, then declared, "You need to flow some water out of your eyes to wash away the tears."

I fell over into Brent laughing. When I sat back up, Georgie was trying to hide a smile. When the room's laughter had died down, she finished with, "Maybe not!" ???

I don't know. After writing all of this out, I'm realizing it's SO not a blogworthy story. But at least I'll have it forever recorded for my own sweet memory's sake.

Penny

We have officially named the kitten: Penny. Thank you for all of your suggestions...they were all super cute. Brent was determined that her name be short and easy to say, and when he thought of Penny, the name just stuck. We went through a few other options before discovering the winner.

BTW, even though she has an official name, she gets called "this little one" or "the kitten" more often than anything else. And she gets called "sweetness" a lot by me.

Penny and PDub are now officially friends...best friends at that. It took two days of PDub absolutely detesting the ground she walked on and three consequent days of PDub being pretty sure we got her as his girlfriend (thank goodness both cats are fixed) before they discovered that they are perfect pals to play and cuddle with. Penny absolutely adores PDub and loves to interact with him, standing up on her hind legs to hug him around the neck and bite his cheek many times a day. PDub seeks out the little one many times a day for a good wrestle, and often I will find them playing with the same toy.

Penny does have a few faults.

1) She's smelly. If you dig your nose into her fur, it's actually quite appalling. We plan on giving her a bath, but we want her to heal up completely from her surgery first. Her breath is putrid, and her farts are deadly. She graces everyone with a little S.B.D. just about every time they hold her.

But we love her anyway.

2) She loves walking on our faces at night, trying to wake us up to be interactive in our cuddling with her. We've had to banish her to the living room at night lately so that we can get good rest.

3) Any time she sees a plate with human food on it, she charges onto the lap of whoever is eating it, puts her little paws on it, and starts snacking. That is, if you let her. If you don't let her, then it's a constant exhausting battle during the entire meal to keep her away from your plate. Brent and I suspect that her foster mom allowed her to eat human food off the plate...this cat just does not get it. We're working on this characteristic. In the meantime, enjoy these videos.

Thanks for your time, folks!

A New Addition to Our Family

Meet the kitten. Brent's new favorite baby.

He's been hinting of his desire for his very own kitten for a while now, ever since he determined that my cat, P-Dub, will simply never have the kind of relationship with him that P-Dub has with me. Unless I'm not home, Brent's will never be P-Dub's first choice of lap to sit on, and even when I'm away it's iffy. P-Dub will never act happy when Brent picks him up and strokes him (even though his purring gives him away).

Brent wants a kitten, a GIRL kitten, that will fall in love with him and choose him FIRST as a snuggly bed. So I got one for him, for Christmas.

I know it's early for Christmas presents, even early Christmas presents, but the first day I did research on available kittens I found one that I thought might just be perfect. A visit to meet her the next day confirmed my suspicion, so I snatched her up as quickly as I could. The Burbank Animal Shelter and it's pet adoption program made everything so easy (and extremely easy on the wallet)!

Coming home from work last night to a new baby kitten was a bit of a surprise for Brent. Although he knew that I was getting him a kitten for Christmas, I had led him to believe that I was going to be a stickler to the old-fashioned notion of giving Christmas presents to their receivers on Christmas DAY (I usually am). But when God made this kitten available to me so early, I just couldn't wait. So after I picked her up from the animal shelter I took her home and sat with her in the bathroom until Brent got home about an hour and a half later.

The doll baby spent about ten minutes exploring every nook and cranny of our little bathroom before she climbed up onto my lap and got all cozy to fall asleep. Eventually I had to get up to prepare for Brent's arrival, and when I was finished I discovered P-Dub and the kitten having a very awkward moment of introduction from opposite sides of the bathroom door.

Then Brent came home.

Brent fell in love with her right away, and over the course of the evening melted away into nothingness. We spent the remainder of the evening crooning over our new baby girl and loving her easy going nature and her uninhibited habit of crawling into comfy looking and available laps.

P-Dub and the kitten did eventually meet face to face. We let P-Dub into the bathroom while the kitten was curled contentedly on Brent's lap. P-Dub charged right past Brent and the baby and spent about ten minutes "looking" for the kitten, even though we all knew HE knew exactly where she was. He played dumb, though, searching empty corners, mirrors and perfume bottles for her, and then finally ended up again next to Brent and the kitten. (Brent and I think he didn't WANT to find the kitten...he was SO in total denial.) When P-Dub finally allowed himself to lock eyes on our girlie, you could see the severe hatred in his eyes. He hissed gallons of tuna breath with all of the might of his body toward her, leaving Brent quite faint and kitty extremely dazed and confused. (Our kitty has spent all of her young life in the home of a nice woman who had two full-grown cats, a medium-sized dog and another foster kitten her age...all animals that loved our girl to pieces and probably never hissed at her once.) Not quite the introduction I was hoping for.

After that introduction, and a whack to the face from a livid P-Dub that sent her flying, our kitty didn't want to be anywhere in our house except for on one of our bodies or hidden away in some dark alcove. At least she feels safe in our arms. :) Nothing worse than a cat who stays away from people at all costs.

This is the most CUDDLY girl you have ever seen. She has a playful side, I know because it was the only side I saw of her the day that I visited her in her foster parent's home. But I think because of the trauma of yesterday, all she wants to do is stay safe and close to one of our warm bodies. As I write, she lies inside my zip-up sweatshirt in a deep sleep, making suckling noises; she's pooped after having a playful session of poking her head out of my sweatshirt at my neck and trying with all her might to snatch the string of my hoodie. Aw. :)

Can't wait for my love to get home from work tonight so that we can get back to enjoying her TOGETHER.

And in case you were wondering, a name is in the works.

I haven't been blogging about food lately.

You can blame Starbucks for that. Since I've been working I just haven't been cooking as much, and when I do get the chance to make a home cooked meal for Brent, we're not always eager to try a new recipe. I have been doing some experimenting, though, so here are some recipes that we've tried in the last several months.

Grilled Chicken with Lemon Basil Pasta

This is a Pioneer Woman recipe. Looks delicious, huh? It could have been extremely delicious, had my husband not bought me a juicer only a couple of days before I made this. The recipe calls for three whole lemons, juiced, and because of the novelty of my new toy I went a little juicer-happy and sent three whole lemons, rind, peel and all, through the juicing machine. The result was, I think, not what our dear friend Pioneer Woman had in mind when she asked for "3 whole lemons, juiced." I may as well have added a quarter cup of dishwashing detergent to my pasta sauce...it wasn't pleasant.

The chicken was good though!

So good in fact, that when Brent and I had managed as much of the sour pasta down our throats as we could, I dug around through the rest and salvaged the chicken to use in a later meal.

We will definitely be trying this dish again, with "3 whole lemons, juiced" with our hands...throwing away the rind, peel and seeds.

Pasta with Pancetta and Leeks

This was an extremely easy meal to prepare. It was satisfying but not too rich, and had that unique flavor of leeks sauteed in butter. I really like leeks. Unfortunately my Brent does not. So although I would recommend this recipe to those who like leeks, I will not be making this again.

Hmmm...except maybe I should try it with green onion. Oh my. Yes. That would be tasty.

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos with Cilantro-Lime Dressing

This is a recipe that my sis introduced to me when I was up helping her out earlier this Fall. She and Matt had already tried it and knew it was good, so she requested that I make it while I was up there. I did, fell in love, and made it for Brent soon after I returned home. He fell in love at first morsel as I did.

I love this recipe because not only is it incredibly easy (ESPECIALLY if you use a rotisserie chicken), but it also accommodates various food intolerance diets. It is, of course, gluten free, as the tortillas are made out of corn. The taquitos are also delicious when you omit the pepperjack and the cream cheese...I know, I made them for my brother who avoids dairy like the plague and he ate 12 in one sitting, plus or minus a couple.

The cilantro lime dressing is tricky if you're dairy free...I almost got away with dairy-less products until I double checked the ingredients list of the Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing packet and saw that it has buttermilk derivatives or something like that. My brother ended up eating the taquitos dry, dipping them in *gulp* Italian dressing when he wanted to (that sounds disgusting), guacamole or pico de gallo. And he loved 'em that way.

Avacado Tomato Salad

This is a recipe my grandparents stumbled upon in their town's newspaper. They tried it and instantly became addicted, making it two or three times a week. Eventually they decided to share their treasure with friends and family and emailed the recipe to us. I was wary of it at first because one of the main ingredients is cottage cheese...I'm pretty hit or miss with cottage cheese and I know plenty of people who gag at the thought of it.

But my intrigue won over my fright and we tried it. I LOVE it, I could eat it every day for the rest of my life and grow deeper every moment in my affections for it. Ok, so that's an overstatement. A huge one. But the point is, this is WAY better than you think it's going to be and is actually quite delicious! I'm serving it up again tonight!

Brent is one of those people who is not merely "hit or miss" with cottage cheese, he just plain doesn't like it. So, his judgement on whether or not he likes the salad is an undecided one...but it's not NO.

Try it..you never know. This may be your new afternoon snack.

The recipe: 4 large ripe avocados, cut into 1-inch cubes ,4 large tomatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces, 1-cup cottage cheese, 2-3 teaspoons of garlic salt. Combine all the ingredients, serve after refrigerating one hour.

Since you asked...

...here are the duds.

These are duds because the frosting isn't smooth enough, there's a smudge on the bat, and the spider web is discolored in some places. But this is basically what the cookies looked like.

Who Knew?

Minnie Mouse works at Starbucks!!!

At least she did last night.

That's right. I closed at Starbucks last night and all three of us closers wore costumes. Minnie Mouse, a basketball player and Mother Nature were all present.

By the way, Halloween was THE SLOWEST night at Starbucks I have ever seen. We went from 8:30 to 9 without a single customer in the store. I never want to work a Halloween again.

I really enjoyed playing my part. Can you tell?

Oh, and up until I left to go to work, Brent and I spent yesterday afternoon carving pumpkins. Brent's is the cannibalistic pumpkin, mine is the redneck one.

I heard a funny joke once: "You know you're redneck when your jack-o-lantern has more teeth than your wife does."

Happy (Belated) Halloween.

Mourning

This week I put in 19 hours of (fun) difficult labor to make 75 Halloween sugar cookies for a friend's party last night. I made 25 bats, 25 spider webs and 25 jack-o-lantern pumpkins. They were OH SO CUTE. I even did a photo shoot of them before I wrapped them up in their treat bags so I could add them to my cookie portfolio.

Then today, oh the sadness...I found that the pictures had been deleted from our camera. Oh Brent, I know it was an accident, but it pains me so.

My only consolation is that I have this picture of the sugar cookies I made for my niece's duck-themed one-year birthday party.

I do have quite a few leftover "duds." Bats, webs and pumpkins where the frosting job didn't turn out quite as I had hoped...I suppose I could take pictures of those. Anyone interested in seeing them?

By the way, I LOVE making sugar cookies. If I could, I would work in a bakery and decorate sugar cookies for a living. My problem is that as it stands now, mass producing cookies is a problem area for me. How in the WORLD to bakeries do it? I spent 13 hours alone frosting the darn things. I've GOT to come up with a better method for frosting.

This time I didn't charge for the labor, I just asked for reimbursement for the supplies. Comes down to $0.40 per cookie. That was $30 for this order. But imagine, if I had charged for my labor as well, at the rate I currently get paid at Starbucks, I would have gotten $190. $190 for 75 cookies? Who's gonna go for that? I MUST get faster before I start charging.

Thanks for listening. It means so much to me. :)

Surprise! I Chopped Off My Hair!

So last week my beloved Brent and I were separated while I served my sick sister and her kids in Seattle while HER husband was out of town. I left Brent looking like this...

...more or less. When I arrived home yesterday, I looked like this:

(I'm sure I could have found a better place in the airport to take a video of myself talking about my husband's coming reaction to my haircut, but after spending a week caring for two kiddos, my brain was in a fog. A bathroom stall seriously seemed like the best place at the time.)

Here is the video of my love's reaction. I spotted him from afar, so bear with the long video.

Yes, he loved it. He couldn't stop talking about it yesterday...how cute I looked...how different I looked...how much he was crazy about the new do.

And yes, he did arrive to pick me up at the airport with a dozen roses. Be jealous.

:)