Not Millie's 1st Birthday

It's never, ever a good idea to drink a large glass of iced caffeinated coffee at 5pm.  Take it from me.  Learn from my mistakes.  Don't walk in my footsteps.  It's 1:20am and I'm starting a blog that is bound to be long and wordy.

First, a couple of things.

We went to see David's Gramma J last weekend.  She hasn't seen Amelia in months so it was fun to see her and catch up with her.  I tried to get a photo of everyone but Gramma wouldn't look at the camera in any of the photos so this is the best one I have of David and Amelia (to the right).

We bought a big, huge bag of Brookside dark chocolate covered acai with blueberry on the 11th of this month (last Sunday for those of you who don't feel like thumbing through a calendar).  It's gone.  David had 3, maybe.  Amelia had 3, maybe.  I'm not a math whiz or anything but I think that means I had more than 3.

Amelia has learned to say "Please" ("psss").  Up until this point we hadn't really pushed the manners thing since she was still learning how to say a lot of things (important things like "bird") and she looked lost when I asked her to say please.  Truthfully, she's probably insanely brilliant and realized that once she started with please she'd never be allowed to stop.  She's also got the head nodding for "yes" and the violent head shaking for "no" down, although both are just games and we are still trying to help her associate what they really mean.  Well, she knows what they mean but I don't think she knows that's what she's communicating when she nods or shakes her head.  Get it?  Okay, moving on.

She's been signing "More" for months now, but in the past few weeks has also picked up "All Done". 

I was going to make this post about her first birthday but I'm actually getting sleepy and we have plans to go to the park tomorrow morning.  Amelia is teething like crazy - I see about 5 teeth trying to pop their way through.  I put her down for her first nap today around 10:45 and got her up around 2pm.  Lest you think she slept for more than an hour, let me tell you that in that time was some crying, then some rocking, then some more crying in her crib, then me changing her stinky diaper, then some more crying in her crib, then me being a sucker and giving her more milk, then her finally crashing around 1pm and waking at 2pm.  I tried to put her back down to see if she'd take a cat nap around 3:15 but no dice. 

Am I crazy or does Amelia look a little like Emma, the guidance counselor from Glee, in this photo?

David and I went jogging today.  Maybe a 1 1/4 miles.  Definitely a mile - just not sure about the 1/4 part...could be more or less.  I say jogging but of course I mean I would jog in 30-60 second spurts then start walking and mumbling about how out of shape I am.  I tried several times to get David to go ahead of me and I'd catch up but he wouldn't - he wanted to wait.  Isn't that sweet?  At the end of our run we had circled the park and were about to go home but I convinced him to take another lap around the park and he did - a 7 1/2 minute mile was his pace.  When we was running with me it was a 12 minute mile.  Lame. 

I put Millie to bed at 8pm which is half an hour earlier than usual.  She zonked out and we haven't heard from her since.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  She squawked a few times but went right back out.  Usually by now she'll have woken up for a bottle or something.  Not that I'm complaining, it just means that she will probably be waking up around 7:30 or 8 instead of 9 like she usually does.  And here I sit at 1:40 writing a blog.  Stupid.  Stupid.

It's almost 2.  All of the photos with the exception of the Gramma J one were taken tonight while David grilled our steaks.  My baby is not such a baby anymore.

Happy whatever-day-it is.

I can't believe I have over 500 fans on Facebook.  I'm supposed to do a huge giveaway so if you have any ideas of what that could be, please let me know.

O'er the land of the fried and the home of the battered...

We used our deep fryer this weekend. We've used it a couple of times before but only for onion strings (YUM). On Saturday evening we thought we'd try to make a few things in our deep fryer since we had some time and have nothing else better to do on a Saturday night.

First, I made fried cheese. You know, mozarrella sticks? They were restaurant quality - very, very tasty. All it took was some egg, flour, breadcrumbs, cornstarch, garlic salt, and Italian seasoning to make the batter. We just bought a ton of string cheese at Costco so I cut about 8 of those in half then battered and deep fried them. I've got a picture for you...
Sorry that the picture is shadowy, but you get the idea. They were delicious. The next thing I fried I do not have a picture of because, for some reason, my camera decided to corrupt about 8 pictures on the SD card and the next item's pictures were some of them.

If you don't live in the south or didn't grow up anywhere near a Sonic Drive Thru, chances are you have never heard of a fried pickle. The very thought might disgust you. They are the very opposite of disgusting. Since I had so much mix left for the batter of the fried cheese, I decided to throw in some pickles and see how they turned out. I was pleasantly surprised. When I cut one in half, the pickle sat between a casing of breading, air, pickle, air, breading. I double-coated the cheese sticks and the pickles in the batter and they still turned out very good with a slightly crunchy outside and warm, tasty inside. Fry a pickle. You might like it. Next time I fry pickles I'll be sure to take pictures and not corrupt them.

If you don't like things on bones, turn away. If you're like me and love a hot wing every now and then, you may drool now. D and I have a good friend named John who used to host UW Husky football parties (I use the term "parties" loosely) at his condo in Fremont (a Seattle neighborhood). Every single time we'd go over there, John would be making hot wings: Teriyaki and HOT. As a matter of fact, John has been over in London for about 6 months but when he returned to the states for a visit and we hosted a "Good to see you, John" fiesta at our house, he brought hot wings. Bought at a wings place, yes, and not from John's personal deep fryer, but hot wings nonetheless. The hot wings John used to make were covered with a sauce that was amazing, so we asked what kind of sauce he used. Texas Pete's. Texas Pete's.

I didn't get a shot of the wings coated in Texas Pete's hot wing sauce, but I did get a picture of them on a break from frying in the deep fryer basket. I also, for your benefit, got a picture of the Texas Pete's wing sauce so you know where to go to get the sauce for your next batch of wings.

I'll be the first to admit that my intestines were not happy with my dinner choice on Saturday night. As a matter of fact, I think they're still mad at me. I'm attempting to swallow down some hot peppermint tea, but I can't get past the taste. It's just not very good!

I'll leave you with a sweet treat. On Saturday afternoon, while my good friend Shirley and I played a rousing game of Scrabble (rematch tonight - not that I think I can win!), D and his wonderful father (who, again, was taking time out of his busy Saturday) were in the garage - organizing. D got some peg board and a lot of really fancy organization gadgets from his parents for his birthday so he could clean it up a bit! He was really excited about these gadgets If you know my husband, you know he's very much a neat guy. And I don't just mean that he's pretty special and fascinating (although he is that, too!) - he likes everything to be in its place. I can't say that I blame him, but then I look at the conditions of that garage and I slap my hands to my face, let out a blood-curdling scream, and hit the road. It's really not that bad. The fact that I can pull my car into the garage and that D can make his way to his tool bench against the far wall must say something to attest to its non-hair-raising neatness. However, even though nothing in the garage is stacked so high that I can't see over it, the work bench was covered in miscellaneous tools and the shelves against the back wall are much the same - just littered with schtuff. Just having the new peg board up makes his garage look so much better...cleaner. So, thanks Papa B! Again, you helped us mucho!

Wow, I got off on a tangent. So, I was posting a recipe. These cookies are very, very good. What I love about them is that they stay VERY soft & chewy, even two days after baking if stored in an airtight container or freezer bag

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup quick cooking oats
Chocolate chips


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well blended. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in the oats and chocolate chips until just combined. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake for 10-12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until just light brown. Don't over-bake. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Enjoy! I was going to make my Maple Oat Nut scones tonight, but David's coworker's birthday is tomorrow so I need to make a sheet cake for David to take in to work. I'm afraid I won't have time for both tonight!

In other news, I finally got my act together and wrote down a few chapters every night on our calendar that D & I could read our Bibles. It's supposed to be in chronological order so I thought we could have some great discussions about what we read as we are reading. We do our weekly Bible class studies for Sunday morning class and Wednesday evening class, but we have not gotten into the habit of sitting down and just opening the Word and reading from it together. I think I get in my mind that I'm "too busy" to sit down and read anything but in reality God should take #1 priority in my life and if I say I am "too busy" to read His word then I push Him back on my priority list. Not only will "eating the meat" help D & I grow together spiritually, I think it can only do wonders for our marriage, as well. I'm excited to begin!

Is Monday over yet?

Happy 1st Day of Fall! I love this time of year!

Monday Monday

I would wish you a happy Monday, but it's Monday.

I wish you knew how long I sat here staring at the blank text box before writing this sentence. My brain just doesn't really know how to function on Monday mornings.

My sweet father-in-law came over Saturday night to help D move a bunch of furniture that was given to us by a wonderful friend of mine. FIL and D moved our current living room furniture downstairs (we have a split-level) to make room for the new living room furniture. This meant having to take our couch out the front door, into the backyard, and enter through the french doors in the entertainment room. So, you can imagine how terrible I felt when they brought the new chair into our living room and I realized it didn't match. Pretty terrible. Back came the old living room furniture and downstairs went the new living room furniture. Also moved: a mattress and box spring (for a guest bedroom), the headboard and bed rails for said mattress and box spring, a dresser, a nightstand, a bench, and I'm sure there's something else that I'm forgetting. Thank you, Papa B!

While that went down, I made banana chocolate chip muffins. When those were done baking, I pretty much hid in my bedroom reading Twilight. I didn't want to be in the way. Plus, I felt pretty useless just standing around.

I'm already excited for lunch and it's only 9am. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of waking up at 5:30am. Speaking of which, on Monday mornings I take the bus. The 6am bus. It's as painful as it sounds. I purposely wash and curl my hair on Sunday mornings before church so that when I don't wash it on Monday mornings, it at least looks nice when it's pulled into a sloppy bun. Some baby powder on my roots and voila!

I'm always in a hurry. I hate getting out of bed. Last night, D and I got to bed around 10:30. Since D falls sleeps with one leg under the covers and one leg out, I'm always worried that he's freezing but is unaware of the cold because he's asleep, so I try to cover him up. Last night at around 11pm when he was sleeping soundly and I was still awake, I gently started slipping the covers from between his legs so I could pull them over his body. I was amazed that I made it almost all the way to his foot before he woke up (he's an incredibly light sleeper - once, the sound of me quietly taking the cap off my deodorant woke him up). He shot straight up in bed, said "Duh", and pulled the covers around his waist. I didn't understand what he said until he told me this morning that he just remembers saying "duh" at some point. At midnight when I was barely drifting off to sleep, I saw D prop himself up in bed and reach toward the lamp. He kept reaching, reaching, until he was grasping for something on the wall above the lamp. I said "D, lay down" and he said "Okay" and fell back into bed. He does things like this every once in a while and I rarely catch him in the act. Usually he wakes himself up and goes back to bed then he'll tell me about it the next day. I'm a very heavy sleeper, so anything he does in the middle of the night goes largely unnoticed by me.

For some reason I woke up at 2:33am. I fell right back asleep, but still, how annoying to wake up in the middle of the night for no good reason!

I like to watch people on the bus. I like that, in the morning, I pretty much know who will be getting on the bus at which stop. The chatty riders sit in front where the seats face each other and they all seem to be good friends. If I didn't have a carpool partner who insisted on sitting next to me on the bus I'd probably like to sit by the chatty people once or twice. Not that I necessarily like to chat at 6am, but listening to them chat can be pretty fascinating. I'm sure I annoy my carpool partner. He wants to ask about my weekend and make small talk and I'm usually not a talker anyway, but especially not that early in the morning. I rode the bus by myself last week and it was so wonderful to sit by myself for half the ride then when a little Asian lady sat next to me it really still felt like I was sitting by myself. My carpool partner gets on around the same stop that I do and sits his 6'4" frame next to me for the entire ride. To and from work. I think he thinks that I need him to do that, bless his heart. I don't.

Rain is forecasted for later this week. Can I give a hearty "NOOOOOOOO!" to that? I've been enjoying our 70 degree, sunny weather so much. I hate to give it up. Rain. Blech.

And this is what you get for reading my post on a Monday.

Have a good one!

P.S. HA! I just wrote the subject line and as I did I remembered that I had a dream that I was in a commercial for Monday night football and a huge crowd of people in bleachers were singing the words "Monday, Monday" to the tune of "Mony, Mony" by Tommy James and the Shandells. I should pitch that idea to ESPN and see what they think.

P.P.S. Don't get me started on football. Huskies and Seahawks lost this weekend. BOO!

Pickling and Home Decor

Please go say hi to my twin, Carrie, if you get a minute. She's the mother of my cute nephew, Caleb, and she's in the process of growing another offspring.

I was going to post about my vintage books for "Vintage Thingies Thursday", too, but I realized that I don't have the publishing dates for the books here at work so that post will have to wait until tonight or tomorrow.

I do, however, have some pictures to share. The first is of the curtains in our living room. I was going to attempt to give you the full shot of our living room so you could see the entire picture, but I'm an absent-minded person and forgot about taking more pictures. When I was talking to my sister-in-law about the curtains, she asked where I got them. That's when I realized that they came from 3 different places. The shears are from Target (the ones I loved from the Sunday circular), the tab panels are from Lowe's, and the double curtain rod and hardware are from Fred Meyer.
We initially bought a double curtain rod from Target but when we got home we realized that the decorative end would be too big for the space. Meaning that the curtain would not cover the entire window because the decorative end would stop it from reaching all the way to the edge. We took that back, along with a chocolate brown colored tab panel that we bought at Lowe's so I could see what it would look like. Horrible, that's what. The curtains look better during the day when the light is shining through, but when I tried to take a picture it was too dark for you to really see anything.

D hung up the curtains, as he does everything else. He won't let me touch a nail and hammer. For this reason, every picture in our home is straight.

Last Saturday, as I mentioned, I drove to my in-laws' house to do some pickling with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I'll share with you how this all got started. Last June, my mother-in-law gave D & me a jar of her homemade pickles from August 2007. We literally consumed the entire jar in one sitting. That's the story of how we came to pickle last Saturday.

My MIL bought 37 pounds of cucumbers for SIL and I to pickle with. Initially, I think we just planned to stuff the baby cucumbers in the jars and have whole pickles. As it turned out, the baby cucumbers weren't so "baby" after all. So, SIL and I decided to cut them into chips and spears. The smaller whole pickles we stuffed into the jars, but for the most part we sliced them up. I imagined myself a few months from now with a jar of the pickle chips in my lap just eating away. I sliced them nice and thick for maximum flavor and crunch.

So, we pickled. I was over there by 10am and didn't leave until after 4pm. It was nice to have some girl time - all the guys were doing their own things. D was painting our deck at home, my father-in-law was at a woodworking show, and my SIL's husband was with my FIL.

I'll share the recipe with you because they really are the best pickles I've ever had. They're very zesty (2 dried red peppers) and flavorful.



I ended up taking home 19 jars which we are storing in our garage until they have "marinated" long enough to eat. My MIL told us "the longer the better", and that they'll probably need at least 3 months before they have "marinated" long enough to be tasty and crunchy.

Zesty Dill Pickles
4" pickling cucumbers

1/8 t powdered alum
1 garlic clove
2 heads fresh dill
1 (to 2, depending on how "zesty" you like them) dried hot red pepper

1 c coarse-med salt (i.e coarse Kosher salt)
3 qt water
1 qt cider vinegar

Wash cucumbers. Let stand in cold water overnight. Pack in hot sterilized jars.

To each quart add above spices.
Combine last 3 ingredients. Heat to boiling.
Fill jars with the brine and use a butter knife to push out the air inside the jar...move it around the inside of the jar between the cucumbers and the glass. Seal the jars with lid and ring. Immerse the sealed jars in water and when the water comes to a boil, count 15 minutes. Remove jars and let cool completely. Best to let them sit uninterrupted for 12-24 hours.

That's about it for today. I want to leave you with a few pictures of the trip we took to New England last year. I'd love to go back there again and spend more time in Boston and just leisurely driving around the countryside.

The first photo is of Louisa May Alcott's home in Concord, MA. The second photo is of the lake where the film On Golden Pond was shot. The third and final photo I took at one of our hotels - Grand Mountain Resort....it was beautiful.


P.S. When I make my first batch of Maple Oat Nut Scones for the season, I promise to post the recipe. Maybe.

If you want to follow my blog, you can click on "Follow this blog" at the top of the page under "Wonderful Readers".

Boston Cream Pie : The Saga

I made this for my mother-in-law's birthday last night.

It's a compilation of two recipes and it's EASY. I found complicated ones but I didn't have time for those.

INGREDIENTS

Cake & Filling
1 18.25 oz Butter Recipe Yellow cake mix (I used Betty Crocker)
1 5.1 oz JELLO Vanilla Pudding mix

Ganache
3 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup light cream (I used milk)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

DIRECTIONS

Prepare cake mix according to package instructions in two 9" rounds. Cool completely.

Prepare JELLO vanilla pudding mix according to package instructions and chill for at least a couple of hours.

Do not prepare this next step until you are ready to assemble the cake...the ganache needs to go on the cake immediately after prepared. In a heavy saucepan over low heat, stir the chocolate pieces and 2 tablespoons butter until they are completely melted. Remove from the heat and, stirring constantly, add the 1/4 cup light cream in a thin steady stream. When mixture is smooth, stir in the confectioners' sugar and beat vigorously. Stir in the 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

TO ASSEMBLE

Turn one 9" round cake upsidedown on serving plate. Spread the chilled filling on the flat surface of that bottom layer and place the second cake on top. Pour the chocolate frosting evenly over the top allowing it to spill down the sides.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On our way to my husband's sister's house for my MIL's birthday, David took a sharp corner at mach 5 and the entire top layer slid off. The (ugly) cake you see below is the result of me trying to piece it back together. I cried...I'll admit to that. I couldn't stop crying, either. I bawled. And when we got to my sister-in-law's house and David explained what happened, they all tried to console me and the waterworks started afresh. Being a woman is hard work sometimes...these hormones are out of control.

The cake was a hit. My MIL had two pieces and my sister-in-law's husband had 3 pieces and asked to keep the cake at the end of the night.

The cake reminded me of a boston cream donut (duh), but the "bread" part was better because the caked was almost the density of a pound cake.

My cute MIL acting like she's going to devour the cake whole.


At least it looked decent on the inside:


Here I am about to cut into the cake. See how awful it looks? It was SO pretty before we made the drive to Covington. Jake is the one in the green shirt who ate half the cake by himself.
Sorry about the picture quality - I think David had his finger on the flash or something.


Oh, and here are some Vegas pictures if you're interested...
Las Vegas Pictureswill open in a new window
I titled as many as I could...I didn't delete any except ones that were too blurry or that might have made my sister screaming mad at me ;)

By the way, I'm going to be an aunt again! My twin sis is expecting her second in mid April :)