docket, docket

I love the way they report items in our docket, so much unnecessary information :)

"A patron at Nino's Bar reportedly told employees he was going to come back and shoot everyone. He also said he was better at basketball than LeBron James, was a sniper and a black belt in Chinese Kenpo. This was reported Tuesday; the man was issued a trespass warning."

"A Marion Township woman said a former classmate of hers, whom she "had a drunken make out session" with once while in college 15 years ago, was harassing her over the Internet on Tuesday."

dashboard indicators

JJ whacked the back of his little head on the corner of my nightstand :(

I'm pretty sure he's fine, sure enough that we aren't going to the Dr's office or ER.

It occurred to me that it would just be so much easier if kids came with a little light-up panel, like the one in the dashboard of your car. Then his little engine light would light up and I'd know without a doubt what to do. There'd be no momentary panic, frantic phone dialing or calls to J (seriously - what was he going to do?).

And maybe there could also be an indicator light for plotting mischief... that one would definitely be handy.

yick

Did any of you have nosebleeds while you were pregnant?

I remember having a few during the winter while I was expecting JJ, but this time it's almost an everyday occurrence. It's really no good because I have been using a million kleenex everyday and it's annoying.

Other than that everything else is ducky.

I finished my Christmas cards (woohoo!) and I think I'm close to being done with shopping. The tree is up and is decorated a little bit, JJ is really interested in it, so I'm not adding any more ornaments for him to pull off and break. Now I just need to wrap the presents and do a lot of baking :)

white lies

At this very moment JJ is at Mom's Day Out (MDO).

Breathe a sigh of relief with me. ahhhhh. I needed that.

When I dropped him off I had to leave my contact info, etc, and there's also a line that asks what you will be doing. I assume that's so they don't try to call you while you're in the middle of a root canal. Every week I write "errands" just like all of the other moms.

Sometimes that's true.

Most of the time it's a lie.

Today I ran one errand. I took myself to Panera to grab breakfast (cheese pastry, thankyouverymuch). Then I came home and watched all of the episodes of Glee I have missed.

It was wonderful.

I was forced to run a load or two of laundry (I ran out of underwear again). And now I'm going to write some Christmas cards.

Maybe.

But there's an episode of Eastwick still on the DVR....and a french bread pizza in the freezer.



No one really cares if they receive a Christmas card from us, right?

hoarding

I love to watch the show Hoarders on A&E. It's like watching a train wreck. I find the fascinating, and extremely depressing.

I feel so bad for the people involved. It's such a complicated disease, I wonder if they are ever able to live a life that is free from the extra stuff (sometimes actual garbage)?

Not only is the show entertaining, but it provides real motivation for getting rid of the extra stuff that I tend to accumulate. After watching last night's episode I went through my closet and pulled out the clothes I no longer wish to wear (and I packed up everything that I won't be wearing for the next few months). A clean closet is such a fabulous thing!

Tomorrow I'm planning on going through my son's closet and drawers, and pack away/donate his outgrown items. I'm getting excited about dropping stuff off at Goodwill :)

Yeah, I'll probably go in the store and take a peek, too. If I get any great deals I'll let you know!

Does anyone else watch Hoarders?
Does it set you on a search and destroy mission of clutter in your own home?

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at my Mom and Dad's house.

For the past few years my Mom and I have taken turns hostessing, this should have been my year, but back in July when I asked her about Thanksgiving plans she responded with "Why would you want to do that? You have a toddler running around." So she took over, and it was especially wonderful because now I don't just have a toddler running around, I'm also expecting again in early June :)

What you need to understand is that Thanksgiving is serious business for my mom and me. I remember being about 8 years old, my Grandmother had finally allowed my mom to hostess Thanksgiving (I love my Grandma, she was amazing, but she wasn't the world's most amazing hostess) - my mom sat me down for a serious talk and told me that "We are going to out-Martha Martha Stewart, and I am going to need your help." I mixed pumpkin pie and mincemeat fillings,peeled potatoes and set the table.

We out-Martha'd Martha. And I loved it.

We both have our Thanksgiving "Bibles" - three-ring binders full of recipes, notes, and most important - the names of our turkeys (to make a wonderful Turkey, you need to bond with it, and you must name it). The turkey is key, we usually order an Amish turkey (Mom) or one that is locally raised (Me). We set the tables a week in advance, carefully plan the menu and pick appropriate serving pieces, and then work our butts off so that on Thanksgiving it looks effortless. We are exhausted by the end of the day, but so very happy to have served our loved ones.

I'm planning a few posts for Thanksgiving, so today I'll leave you with the meal, it was wonderful. I'm currently hounding Mom for the recipes, I'll share when she starts to co-operate ;)


Clockwise from the top:
Savory Bread Pudding
Mashed Potatoes and Mom's Amazing Gravy
Green Beans with Shallots and Bread Crumbs
Cold Cauliflower Salad
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
The Best Turkey Ever (we named him Thom) with more gravy (I could drink it, really)
center - Brussel Sprouts with Hazelnuts

I neglected to take a picture of the brioche and artisan breads (from Zingerman's) and yummy cranberry relish. I also forgot to take pictures of the pies (pumpkin, apple and pecan) - I blame that on food coma :)

so good

Guess who:

*ate his body weight in mashed potatoes?
*refused to eat crackers/cucumbers unless they were dipped in dill dip?
*loves to build with Duplos (leftover from me and my siblings, of course)?
*has Grandpa completely wrapped around his fingers?
*always has eight thousand kisses for his Grammy?
*is going to be a big brother in early June?

gobble gobble!

We drove back from Troy last night. We were planning on visiting baby Emily (and Stephie and Jay) this morning and then driving back, we were also planning on going out to after-party with Danielle after her (beautiful and delicious) wedding and reception.

This guy had other plans:

see my angry, white gums? it's molar time.
not as fun as miller time :(

After Danielle's reception we headed to my parent's house to check on the little man, change clothes and then meet up with everyone at the hotel.

What we found was the angriest little guy ever.

He actually had a great time (as usual) hanging out with Grammy and Grandpa - he adores them, it's really cute. But then he woke up halfway through his nap and was a complete mess. I could hardly get him to calm down (which is really out of character), he just wanted me to rock with him and sing (someone appreciates my amazing voice!). So we made the parental/executive decision to pack up our bags and head home. JJ just needed a night in his own bed, now he's a happy guy again.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was wonderful :)

fruit from the docket

This might not be super fabulous but...
"A man who appeared to be high while driving on Interstate 75 on Wednesday was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia for having 6.25 grams of marijuana in the car he was driving. He told police he and his friend were returning from a rock concert in Detroit."

Now, you need to understand that there was a Phish concert at Cobo Hall on Wed. night.

I know, who would have guessed that people at a Phish concert would smoke marijuana? Unthinkable!

Chocolate Ornaments

This is my first tutorial! And it is super-duper easy, hooray!

I wasn't really sure what to call these bites of chocolate and pretzel yumminess, but they are round and festive, so I figured calling them "ornaments" wasn't too far of a stretch.

These are ridiculously easy. So easy that someone taught me how to make them when I lived in the dorms, and I made a whole bunch of them in the shared, dorm kitchenette and proudly handed them out at Christmas.

Here are your ingredients:



a bag of pretzel rounds (sometimes they call them "beer pretzels" and they are generally not manufactured by a national brand, just look for them - I swear they are out there)
a bag of holiday M&M's
a bag of Hugs (because the stripes are more fun than plain old Kisses)

Step 1: unwrap the Hugs - this will be mind numbing and time consuming - I suggest doing this while watching TV.

Step 2: preheat your oven to 150 or 200 degrees (basically, as low as it will allow you to set it) and then turn it off. If you don't turn it off you will burn your Hugs, and no one wants a burnt Hug. Then lay out some pretzels on a foil lined cookie sheet, and slip a hug into the center of each pretzel.

yep, I forgot to use foil - it made ornament removal a little bit difficult

Step 3: put the pretzels and Hugs into the oven for 2 - 3 min. They will become nice and melty.

mmm...melty

Step 4: top each Hug with an M&M .I like to place mine upside down so you can't see the logo. I also try to place the M&M exactly over the pointy part of the Hug, just to knock it down.



Step 5: stick you tray of ornaments into the fridge until they are set (10 min. or less), pop them off of the foil (or pry them off with a spatula- seriously - use the foil) and enjoy!

nom, nom, nom!

I'm adding this post to The DIY Show Off's Holiday Highlights Party :)
Come join the fun!

On the Subject of Christmas Gifts

Thanksgiving is almost here!

And you know what comes after that... Christmas!

The season of giving, love, Christ, family and friends, and ridiculous spending. Yep, I said it, it seems that every year, no matter how hard I plan, I will go slightly overboard on gifts for a few people. Now, I've never gone so far as to have massive post-holiday debt (we buy most of our Christmas gifts with cash), but every once in a while I forget about someone, and then in my rush to get them a gift, spend more than I would have if I'd given it a little more thought.

This year we're downsizing our Christmas spending. I'm pretty sure my husband will only find socks and undershirts under the tree this year. We're pretty much in agreement that our $20K foundation repair (oh yeah, that totally happened while I was on hiatus, but I'll elaborate later) was easily our joint Christmas gift... for the next 30 years or so.



I've cut my list down this year, and cut back the amount of money we're spending as well. It was something I've been thinking about for awhile now, and the Advent Conspiracy videos really solidified that for me. I'll be Giving Water to a few of my friends, I know they'll appreciate that much more than another pair of Christmas socks, blank journal, or random set of bath products. And a few other very special people will be receiving goodies from my kitchen.


I'm still trying to decide exactly which goodies to put in my boxes, but I have a few front runners:
Chocolate Ornaments
Spiced Nuts
Pepparkakor
Christmas Spritz

Have you thought about giving homemade or charitable Christmas gifts this year?

i promise to do better

I've been super-duper busy lately.

You can read a little bit more here.

But I promise to do better, and to post pictures of my adorable gnome-boy! OK, that might take a while because the adorable-one keeps stealing the USB cords for the camera. But once I dig them out of the registers, toy box, and warming drawer in the oven, I'll try really hard to get a few pictures of gnome-yumminess up :)

Hope you all had a great weekend (the weather was awesome!)!

jumping back in

I've been busy.

Mostly I've been working on a Historic Homes Tour (it was yesterday), which is our bi-annual fundraiser for service league. The homes are decorated for the holidays by local florists, and this year we're pretty sure over 2000 people toured the homes. Our goal is always to raise at least $14,ooo, as that's pretty much our philanthropic budget for two years. The best part is that every single penny we raise goes directly to our community.

In a community this size $14,000 can make a huge difference. For example, our local food pantry is starting a milk money program. They were hoping to raise $1,400 to start the program and be able to give over 800 families a few vouchers for milk every month, unfortunately they were only able to raise $400. So they sent us a request and we were happy to assist them.

So that's why I've been absent from the blog.

And even though I missed doing little projects - and taking the time to take pictures of my food as I am cooking (although I never seem to write those posts!), and missed a bunch of fun blog parties and great posts that all of you have written - I'm happy to be able to give my time to my communtiy. I had a lot of fun working on this project, even though it didn't give me the immediate satisfaction that our service projects do. When I sit back and think about the impact of the money we raised, I have to say that it makes me tear up to think of little ones and pregnant women (who live right where I do) drinking milk instead of water because I was able to donate (sometimes begrudgingly) some of my time.

And now back to blogging :)

i'm hiding

Life's been both busy and boring.
And I just haven't felt like writing, or I haven't had the time.
(Or it could have something to do with all of the excellent tv shows that we DVR religiously...)

Give me a topic, then we'll discuss.

I'll bring the coffee :)

gardening for a cause

Tomorrow morning, rain or shine, I will be planting bulbs.

image from http://www.flower-garden-bulbs.com/

83 to be exact.

And nope, they won't be in my yard; because, once again, I procrastinated on ordering my bulbs.

I'm actually really excited to be helping with the landscaping of a local Habitat for Humanity home build! I'm in a local service sorority, and we are landscaping the home as our Make A Difference Day project for this year.

We threw an awesome Cinco de Mayo party last year to raise enough funds to landscape two homes (unfortunately they were only able to fund one home this year), and now our project days are here! I'll take my camera and share some pictures tomorrow.

Have you had the opportunity to serve your community lately?

window dressings

As I alluded to earlier, I now have a pretty firm plan of how I want to treat the windows in the great room.

Here's what I started with:

these curtains came with our home, I'm so over them

The walls are now a yummy butter yellow, and I've kept the crisp white trim.
I have decided not to use shears, I can add them later if I feel we need more privacy, but I honestly don't think I will. I was also super happy to see those flimsy rods go away (note to self - list them on Craigslist!).

For now I have hung up one set of "drapes" - I used drop cloths like I keep seeing everywhere in blogland, what can I say? I loved the idea!

drapes in progress
(it's really hard to take a picture of a window!)

I really like the new rods I picked - I found them at Lowe's, so the price was right and they have the feeling I was looking for. At first I was going to just go for the dark, round finials, but I ended up with fluted amber glass balls. They go really nicely with the wood tones in the ceiling and mantle.

I had to hang up a set of the drop cloth panels because we needed drapes at least on the front of the house for privacy (the neighbors don't need to see me before I've had my coffee!), and because my husband was less than excited by the idea of drop cloths as drapes.

I'm pretty sure he was picturing clear plastic sheets on the windows.

I'm not sure if he really likes these, or was just really happy with the price (I've been brainwashing him into believing that Potter barn is the only place to buy drapes - hee hee!)

I'm very happy with the texture of the drop cloths. I'm going to sew on (green) ribbons to tie the drapes to the rings, because I love these drapes from Potter Barn:

Pottery Barn

And I'm also going to do something to the bottom of the drapes.

At first I was thinking of sewing a chunk of green and white fabric (maybe a trellis pattern?) to the bottom of each panel, but now I'm thinking of stenciling the panels instead - I figure if I don't like the stencil I can always go back and sew on some fabric later.

So that's the direction I'm headed with the drapes.
I'm excited for the change!

back to the grind: goal time

I like posting my goals for the week. I find it helps me to stay focused, and I love hearing your goals! If I started a Monday Goal Party, would you join?

I am planning on going out of town for a few days this week, so I have just a few goals for this week (a few are repeats):

1. Start decorating the tops of the kitchen cabinets.
There are basically three chunks of cabinets, I'd like to decorate one, and round up all of my decorations.

2. Finish my spray paint project.
I need to do this - I really want to join Kimba's DIY Party (it's moving to Tuesday starting this week!), and I think this is going to be really cute when it's done (of course, it could also be huge disaster). Regardless of the outcome I need to be able to mark this project done.

3. Clean out the linen closet.
It's become a black hole.
I can't find the toilet paper or kleenex without a huge pile of fabric falling out, and I can't smash my sewing machine back in there.
The great news is my little sister is still here (just until tonight), so I'm going to let her distract my little man while I get this bad boy under control.

What projects will you be working on this week?

goals: a recap

I was a little ambitious in my goals last week.

1. Start decorating the tops of the kitchen cabinets.
I didn't do a thing with the cabinet tops, although I did find a Longaberger basket for $3 at Goodwill that will be very nice above my cabinets.

2. Cozy up the guest room/office.
I dusted and vacuumed, swapped out the nightstand and lamp and edited the shelf that runs around the room. I really wanted to clean off my desk - but I didn't touch it.

3. Finish my spray painted masterpiece.
I ran out of primer. This project is never ending.

4. Plan new drapes for the great room.
I have a plan! And I will post about it later :)

5. Continue to work on the front porch.
It's not done (not that anything is ever truly done), but I picked up some pumpkins, and some fall decor and it's really starting to come together. I'm sure it'll be great in time for Amanda's next Design Dilemma Party!

How did you do last week?

goals for this week

It's good to have goals.
Follow through is also important....we'll see how I do on that end ;)

I have five little goals for this week:
1. Start decorating the tops of the kitchen cabinets.
We are done painting! Now comes the fun part :)

2. Cozy up the guest room/office.
My little sister is coming to visit this weekend, and the guest room/office has seen better days. it just needs a little refreshing, and I already have some ideas.

3. Finish my spray painted masterpiece.
This piece is taking so much more time than I thought it would - I hope I'm happy with the results.

4. Plan new drapes for the great room.
We took all of the old ones down, and they are NOT going back up (in fact I'm listing them all on Craigslist today). Right now our house is rather open, and I need some privacy!

5. Continue to work on the front porch.
All of the ideas you gave me during the Decorating Dilemma's Party were great, and I've been working on a few of them, I just need to kick this project into overdrive so i can share my progress with you :)

What are some of your goals for this week?

i'm inspired

As I mentioned before, I'm participating in the Scavenger Hunt at The DIY Show Off - as part of my entry for the giveaway I needed to find a post that most inspires me.

It wasn't easy folks.

There was this.

And this.

Have you seen this?

I know. I need a drink.

So I figured it out! I am most inspired by Debra's Kitchen Island Transformation.

Right now we are redecorating our Great Room, a big part of that is our 5' x 5' kitchen island. The previous owners had stools around two sides of the island, we only have them at one side and I have been trying to decide what to do with the other, empty and boring, side. I think I would like to put bookshelves under the overhang to store my cookbooks. But that would probably require measuring. Plus, I have a very busy 1.5 year old - there's no way cookbooks would last 4 minutes placed within his reach.

But I still want something to pretty up the empty expanse of cabinets (have I mentioned that the cabinets are from Ikea? The sides are not pretty). I think the wallpaper that Debra used might be my solution!

So now I'm trying to imagine my kitchen with bead board wallpaper on the island.

And I think I like it :)

Want to be inspired?
Head over to The DIY Show Off.
There's so much goodness going on over there, it's crazy!