Mass Murderer or Roll Maker?

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Shoes

After an active morning of splashing in puddles and drinking hot cocoa, Carter and I decided to make homemade rolls.  I use a recipe handed down to me from my mom; it is a recipe my mom got from her Aunt Syl.

I pour the yeast, a tablespoon and a half of sugar and a 1/4 cup warm water into a small bowl and give Carter a wooden spoon to stir it until it starts to dissolve.  As he is stirring, I explain to him that the yeast are alive and are happily eating the sugar and producing carbon dioxide to make our rolls rise up and be nice and fluffy.  He thinks about this for a minute, asks me a couple of time if the yeast are really alive, and then asks if they are little aliens.

Carter:  Hi little buddy aliens!  You happy eating, aliens?

Me:  Well, Carter they are not really aliens.  They are yeast.

Carter: Hi little buddy alien yeast!

I can’t win.  Right now the rolls are shaped and resting on their cookie sheets hopefully rising away.  Carter knows that we will be baking them, but he has not yet put it together that his “little buddy alien yeast” friends will also be going in the hot oven.  Will today be the day my three year old will raise up his little chubby finger, point it at me accusingly, and ask if I am going to kill several hundred of his new little friends?

Is that a mass murderer hiding under that chef hat?

Posted in Food Glorious Food, Little Feet | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Winter and My Inability to Stop Buying Spreadable Cheese

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Shoes
  1. This morning on our walk to the school bus stop the grass and fallen leaves were covered in frost.
  2. Last Saturday a good friend and I got together to plan our second annual Christmas Cocktail Party.  We drank some bubbly, hand made 35 invitations, and had fun laughing and generally caring on.  Part of our invitation reads: “Festive cocktail attire required.  Vesicles of merriment requested.  Old and small, big and tall, welcome.”  It is bound to be a good time!
  3. Carter is choosing his “puffy” blue winter jacket over his much loved “Cars the Movie” jacket more and more.
  4. I am using the crock pot 2-3 times a week.
  5. When I come home from running errands, I catch the dogs listening to this instead of their usual NPR or KEXP.
  6. I find myself listening to the dogs new favorite station and yes I know it is not even Thanksgiving yet.  I am not usually one of those people, but this year…
  7. I am rediscovering my sweaters and wool socks.
  8. The boys and I have madly started making cute and frameable artwork to give as presents for the grandparents.  Some of these I am pretty excited about and will share them with you as they get closer to being finished.
  9. Rosy and Dexter’s fur (as well as Delilah, our cat that is not really our cat, but insists on bringing us presents) has become thick and robust.
  10. I subject my family to random spreadable cheeses that fall into my shopping cart.  You know the kind: smoked, bacon flavored, sage infused, white, aged or sharp.  It matters not, for this time of year I buy them all and just can’t help myself.

I know it is not quite winter time yet but it feels like fall is already fading fast.  Want to share any random or quirky things you find yourself doing during this time of the year?  Does anyone else have a spreadable cheese fetish during the months of November and December or is it just me?

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Simple Sunday – Leaf Collections

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Shoes

Little boys with big maple leaves

Posted in Simple Sunday | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Day Has Finally Arrived

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Shoes

I have been dreading this day since I was ten years old.  I distinctly remember the conversation and have played it over and over in my head.  I don’t know why I found it so disturbing or why it has hung with me all this time, but it has.

We were driving in the family car, an early 1970’s green (I mean really green) Volkswagen Rabbit.

It looked like this car except my dad kept it in immaculate condition. Pretty sweet ride, right?

My mom was driving and my sister and I were in the backseat.  The pleather seats were a lovely shade of dark brown and had a small waffle texture that would imprint onto your legs if your shorts were short enough.  I can visualize the stretch of road we were on; Kennedy’s Lagoon was on our left and on our right was a grassy, sloping hill that gradually gave way to clusters of windblown evergreens.  My mom was about the same age that I am today and had just had a mammogram, one of her first, if not the first.

Perhaps it was because I was a rather naive child or maybe it was my tendency to be more of a tom boy or maybe kids those days didn’t know of such things, whatever the reason, I had never until that moment, heard of a mammogram.  I listened in growing horror as my mom told us about it, prodded for more and more details by my analytical older sister.  She told of cold metal plates that smooshed your breasts down into pancakes, first one and then the other.  She talked of how embarrassing it was and how painful.  She told us that we would one day have to have one.  I was appalled.  How could woman all over the country be subjected to such a barbaric sounding procedure?  Not to mention the embarrassment factor.  My ten year old mind was reeling.

Ever since that conversation I have hoped for great medical advances in the area of mammograms.  The time for such great advances has come and gone.  Due to the prevalence of breast cancer in my family, this year my OB recommended I get one to use “as a baseline.”  You think this would be no big deal for someone who has been through both an emergency c-section and a  natural, no drugs please, childbirth. But you would be wrong.  I am pretty freaked out about it.

So today is the day I will finally have to face this long held fear of mine.  It can’t be nearly as bad as I think it will be, right?  And I don’t even want to think of the possibility of receiving the test results no one wants to get…

Posted in Sniffles & Seizures | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

What, We Have to Eat Again?

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Shoes

Dinner time.  Didn’t we just do that yesterday?

Salsa Chicken (for lack of a better name)

Preheat oven to 375°

Mix 1 cup of salsa, ¼ cup Dijon mustard and 2 Tablespoons fresh
lime juice in a small bowl.

Place 2 frozen chicken breasts in a baking dish, top with salsa
mixture, cover with foil, and bake for 50 minutes.

Remove foil and bake another 15 minutes or until the chicken
reaches an internal temperature of 170°.
Serve with sour cream, lime segments and if you must, cilantro.  I like to serve this with refried beans and those delicious small corn tortillas.

I do not have a picture of this easy yet tasty chicken dish so instead, I will give you this.

This is a picture Husband took with his phone on his way to work and emailed to me with the subject line "Why did the... oh never mind". It had me laughing for days.

There you go.  You are welcome.

Oh, and if you happen to come up with a more clever name for this dish let me know; I will use it when I finally get around to handwriting it on a recipe card.

Posted in Food Glorious Food | Tagged , | 4 Comments

These Shoes Were Made (for walking) From Plastic Bottles

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Shoes

This momma just won herself a new pair of shoes.

Honestly I am not the type of person who enters online contests so, by default, that makes me a person who does not win online contests.  That is, until about three weeks ago, when I did enter a contest and actually won.  By the way, those cookies were darn good.

On Sunday I get an email from my neighbor with a link to a shoe promotion Dasani and New Balance are doing on these groovy sounding shoes that are made from recycled plastic bottles.  She explains that she does not usually enter such contests but a friend of hers did, won shoes, and nothing bad came of it.  Later that day I get a second email from my neighbor that is full of exclamation points, not my favorite mark in the punctuation family in case you were wondering, stating that she won.  Fine.  I decide to try to keep up with the Jones so I click on the site, enter the obligatory information, and click the big button to see if I am a winner.  I am not.

Life continues as normal and I have completely forgot about my status as a loser.  Monday morning madness of getting the boys dressed, fed, and out the door to school went well and I am home dinking around on the computer to avoid folding laundry and vacuuming the house.  I see an email from New Balance that I received yesterday telling me I can try again the next day.  Well, I think, today is another day.  This time since they have all my personal information that they will do God knows what with, I only have to enter my email address and push the magic “Did You Win?” button.  Yup – got myself a new pair of shoes.

Mine will look like the ones on the left. Not the sexiest shoes I have ever owned, but I don't often stop what I am doing (chasing my boys around or serving up some mac and cheese) and think, dang it, why didn't I put on my sexy shoes this morning?

Would you like to try?  Click here.  Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, no one is paying me to promote this site or these companies, blah, blah, blah.

Unless anyone has anymore contests for me to enter and win, I guess I will go fold that laundry now.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Simple Sunday – Perspectives

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Shoes

Looking down into the water

Looking up from the water

We released our jack-o'-lanters out into the wild this weekend - be free, little buddies, be free!

The forest on the forest floor.

Here are four pictures I wanted to share with you.  I don’t really know if they go together, but let us pretend that they do.

Posted in Simple Sunday | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

A Dinner Fit for a King

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Shoes

Tonight we dined on crackers and cheese.

Our eating habits this week have been influenced by our houseguest, Mr. Influenza.

An unwanted house guest that just won't take a hint.

With low energy and even lower appetite, we have been living off such an exciting variety as toast, mac and cheese, and scrambled eggs.  Mmmmm.

Tonight I was tired, Husband left this afternoon for a long weekend business trip, and the boys were getting grumpy.  It was dinner time and I had nothing.  So I thought of the first thing the boys like to eat as a snack and decided that with a bit of flair, it could be turned into a decent meal.

From the cupboard I pulled several opened plastic cracker sleeves, added some Ritz crackers and created a sampler platter of crackers.  I rummaged in the fridge and came out with cheese: cream (is this a type of cheese?), cheddar, mozzarella, and some amazing Very Old Gouda that I hid from the boys behind a pile of clean towels I had thrown on the dining room table and had never gotten around to folding and putting away.  I mean, really, why waste really good cheese on a three and five year old – or am I being selfish?  I added some thinly sliced beef summer sausage, apple slices, baby carrots, roasted pumpkin seeds and a container of squeeze mustard, for Cody the mustard lover, and we were set.

Ummm, yeah - it looked just like that.

Everyone was happily eating; Carter was eating his crackers into shapes resembling ferry boats and Cody was making “Poor’durves”.  I was greatly enjoying my gouda and then I looked across the table at Cody.  He had strategically placed several mustard dots along the midline of his cracker when a small piece of it broke off and stuck to the mustard bottle top.  I think his little boy instincts kicked in or all his years of table manners went out the window, whatever it was, he popped the mustard bottle top into his mouth and slurped off the cracker piece.  I was horrified.  I could not stop thinking about what a petri dish his mouth must be after running a fever for six days now.  I immediately took action and cleaned the offending mustard top with soap and hot water.

So there you have it; you have been warned.  If I invite you over for a friendly lunch of soup and sandwiches in the next two to four months I recommend you take a pass on the mustard.

Posted in Food Glorious Food, Little Feet | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Plague Hath Arrived

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Shoes

Please excuse my lack of blogging these past many days, but we are in the process of trying not to die.  If we were living in the 14th century (nevermind you would not be reading this on your computer or phone or whatever) I am pretty sure some dear chap would be responsible for painting a nice red cross on our front door.

Our house is not made of stone, but you get the idea.

Carter ran a fever for two days: Thursday and Friday.  Cody spiked a fever Saturday, had two seizures that were several hours apart, and is currently on day five of running a fever.  My fever arrived early Sunday morning and is still going strong.  Both Husband and I are exhausted from being on what we call, high alert, for so long, watching for seizure activity.  We are basically a wreck.  The house is trashed beyond the typical daily clutter with the added bonus of sick people filth.  It is lovely.

We managed to rally for a couple of hours on Halloween, when in a Tylenol and Motrin drenched haze, Cody enjoyed carving pumpkins with Carter and Husband.  The boys also had an hour or so of trick or treating when Cody’s fever was knocked down with medicine.  It was perhaps not the best mothering decision I have ever made but I was feeling bad about Cody missing his classroom Halloween party.

Firefighter Cody and Froggy Carter with their Jack-o'-lanterns

Tomorrow is a new day.  Perhaps it will be a fever free one too.  A girl can dream.

Posted in Sniffles & Seizures | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Simple Sunday – Sick

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Shoes

Just a few highlights of our weekend.

Fevers, aches, and seizures this weekend.  I don’t have it in me to type about it – perhaps tomorrow when I am not feeling so ill.  At least the boys are on the mend.

Posted in Simple Sunday, Sniffles & Seizures | Tagged , | 4 Comments