making it up as i go along
The weekend was nice. Dinner with my parents on Friday. They cooked AND cleaned at our house. So very nice. Video games, shopping with friends, family party, dinner out, errand running, laundry-doing, TV-watching, more video-game playing, dinner making. That was the rest of the weekend.
Weather was gorgeous. Clear skies, temps in the 50s, no wind. Lovely. We took Loki to the dog park and very nearly wore him out.
Can't believe it's Monday again. At least it's a short weeek! 
I took a look over our calendar for the next 6 weeks or so and I'm exhausted just from looking at it. We are jam packed with events so much that we don't have a free weekend until mid December and as you can imagine, “free” will be a relative term as we wrap up Christmas shopping, finish wrapping, and trim the tree.
Of course even with all the business, I really look forward to our Christmas traditions. A couple of my faves:
* buying goofy stocking stuffers for everyone (one year we bought my dad travel-sized Charmin for camping)
* having tamales and guacamole and margaritas on Christmas Eve – we pick them up earlier in the day from an awesome place around here since no one wants to cook and nothing is open on Christmas Eve
* this year we're starting what we hope will become a new tradition – we're going up into the mountains with some of our nearest and dearest and spending the weekend baking cookies and watching DVDs and such
What are your holiday traditions?
I must admit, I happen to really like the dollar department stores (Dollar Tree, Dollar General, whateva). I won't buy certain things there (wrapping paper), but there are other things for which shopping there makes excellent sense.
Organizing tools are my numero uno favorite thing to buy at the dollar store. They always have a bountiful selection of clear plastic shoe boxes ($2 at Container Store) and other various plastic containers for cheap cheap cheap. Pair those with the erasable labels from Container Store (tons for $7) and you can organize most things on the cheeeeep. Continue reading “The Dolla Store”
I love my car and this is all that much more crushing because since the folks at Honda couldn't leave well enough alone and have had two new body styles since mine, so the new CR-Vs don't look a thing like mine! And I like mine so much … it's all sporty. And the new ones look like mini BMW SUVs which is OK, but not me.
Matt, of course, wants me to get some leather-covered mom mobile (I probably should start embracing momish things, though, now that I think about it) with GPS and heated seats. Silly boy. I don't like leather, and I think Loki would be paticular murder on a nice car.
Maybe when the time comes I'll have to get Continue reading “Car Love”
I'm having some blahs right now. No biggie. I'm pretty sure most of them stem from not sleeping so well lately (sleep being one of the largest pillars of my happiness), but there you have it. I had to get up early this morning to take my car in for service and since it won't be done until late, I'll be putting extra time in at the office waiting for it to get finished instead of doing what I really want to do which is go home and watch Tivo. But I'll spare you more whining. Things in general are fine.
Here are some good links that I've been enjoying …
* 101 ways to save $$
* ever heard of non-newtonian liquid? basically, if you mix the proper amounts of cornstarch and water, you get a liquid that gets hard when you apply pressure to it and soft when you don't … these guys filled a pool with it. check this out
* input a random word and this spells it out with Flickr photos
* interesting gift guides
* luvin these teeeny houses
* always makes me feel better
Well I finally added a couple of crock pot recipes to the cookbook. In fact, I gave them their own recipe. I have at least one more to add … the one for red beans and rice … as soon as I can find the dern thing. Matt is starting another one this morning so dinner will be all ready when I get home. Yay.
We had a pretty nice weekend. I spent Fri afternoon with Kelly doing random things including taking Loki to the dog park so he could have a swim (in 40 degree weather, no less) and manically chase balls until he was dry … and then playing Rockstar Games' (the fine folks who gave us Grand Theft Auto) new game, Bully. Matt took off a bit early and joined us. We met up with my parents and my dad's brother for pizza at a great place in Lousville which I shall add to the travelog soon. Continue reading “What a Crock”
from: 161
Ingredients
1/2 C orange marmalade
16 oz can whole cranberries in suace
2 tsp. orange zest, grated
3-lb turkey breast
Directions
Combine marmalade, cranberries and zest in a bowl. Place the turnkey in the slow cooker and pour half the mixture over the turkey. Cover. Cook on low 7-8 hours or on high 3.5-4 hours until the turkey juices run clear.
Add the remaining half of the orange-cranberry mixture for the last half hour of cooking. Remove the turkey to a warm platter and allow to rest for 15 min before slicing. Serve with the orange ranberry sauce.
Nutritional Info (1/9 recipe(
270 cals, 1g fat, 125 mg cholesterol, 90 mg sodium, 18g carbs, 46g protein
from: 161
Ingredients
1.5 lbs lean stew meat, trimmed of fat
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced,
1 tsp. salt
1/4 t black pepper
1 lb fresh mushrooms
can cream of mushroom soup (healthy variety)
1 C water
1 C fat free sour cream
Directions
Combine all ingredients except sour cream in slow cooker. Cook on low 6-8 hours. Stir in sour cream. Cook on high for a few minutes to heat sour cream.
Nutritional Info (1/6 recipe(
240 calories, 7g fat, 75 mg cholesterol, 900 mg sodium, 15 g carbs, 27 g protein
from: 161
Ingredients
1/2 C orange marmalade
16 oz can whole cranberries in suace
2 tsp. orange zest, grated
3-lb turkey breast
Directions
Combine marmalade, cranberries and zest in a bowl. Place the turnkey in the slow cooker and pour half the mixture over the turkey. Cover. Cook on low 7-8 hours or on high 3.5-4 hours until the turkey juices run clear.
Add the remaining half of the orange-cranberry mixture for the last half hour of cooking. Remove the turkey to a warm platter and allow to rest for 15 min before slicing. Serve with the orange ranberry sauce.
Nutritional Info (1/9 recipe(
270 cals, 1g fat, 125 mg cholesterol, 90 mg sodium, 18g carbs, 46g protein
It's a cold grey day here in the Mile-High city, which is logical since we had highs yesterday in the low 80s. 
We haven't been up to a whole lot, just working and such. I picked up the audio version of Freakonomics from our library last week and Matt and I both enjoyed it immensely. Basically a couple of economists use economic methods to answer bizarre questions. They cover various topics from teachers cheating on standardized tests to the business model for an urban drug gang. The answers are frequently pretty surprising. A good book to check out.
We've also been on a crock-pot kick at home. It's the perfect time of year for the crock pot and it's a nice thing to have your meal mostly made by the time you get home from work. We picked up Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly and we've made two great recipes from it so far – one for roast turkey breast with orange cranberry sauce and one for beef stroganoff. Both turned out quite well. I'll try to remember to post the recipes at some point.
I spent part of last night playing around with Microsoft Photo Story 3 (which you can download here). Basically what it does is create a photo slide show and turn it into a wmv film. It's pretty simple but does some pretty nice effects. You can do narration (possibly for your travel photos?) and include music. I did one of Loki photos last night to the peanuts theme. It was pretty cute. Anyhow, we're planning to create a photo slideshow for my grandma's memorial service so I think we'll use that.