Writing about Food

Okay, so I have to admit that since I have started this blog, what I have really wanted to blog about is food related stuff. So I decided to start another blog, this one totally devoted to cooking, recpies, eating and such. Anyhow I just finished my first post on my new blog so check it out. Hopefully I can send some great recipes and food ideas your way! Check out my new blog here.

Mike's first post :)

Well, Jessica said I was free to blog about stuff anytime I desired. She has been doing a good job of keeping up on the kid’s lives and stuff so here’s something a little different.

My bet is that most people probably won’t know what happened on February 20^th 2009. It started on September 13 of 1993 and after 16 years Conan O’Brien’s run on Late Night is over. During the monologue of the last show he said they have run 2725 shows of which “42 of them were quite good.” I guess 42 is pretty decent for a show running this long ;) Conan’s brand of self-depreciating and physical humor has made him my favorite late night host. He has had some excellent pieces and some of his funniest moments were during writer’s strike in 2008 when he did several shows by adlibbing and playing different situations off the cuff. This is in addition to the full beard he grew. Fear not though, Conan will be replacing Leno on the Tonight Show on June 1^st. Anywho, I thought I’d include some of my favorite clips and skits from the show. Enjoy, hopefully they aren’t too questionable. :)

Who knew, Conan is an auto buff.


Funny - video powered by Metacafe

Martha and Conan... best buds

Conan With Martha Stewart - Click here for funny video clips

Mr. Norris


Conan's favorite clip replayed on his last show.


Travels with Conan
Part 1


Part 2


If any of the above have been too questionable, you should probably avoid Triumph.
Part 1


Part 2


Well that's all for now from me... I'll post again later, if Jessica is still letting me post. :D

Sunshine makes me happy

Hooray, I took some pictures! Actually it wasn't as difficult as I thought, I think partly because we had a really yummy taste of spring this week. Things have been near 50 (yeah I know, I'm pathetic to be excited about 50) and so we have been outside some and I opened up the house yesterday and just tried to air out winter. It has been really nice and good for my soul.

Okay, I start with Monday. It was President's Day, so Logan was home. Back in August at Logan's birthday he had his party at Chuck E. Cheese. As a gift from them he got 100 free tickets. We came home with those tickets and ever since then he has been bugging me to go back and spend them. So I caved and we went on Monday. He says "If I can just get 100 more tickets while we are there it would be awesome," on the way over. We get there and start playing. The kids are having a great time, I'm mostly following Kaylinn around when Logan come running up, so excited with a huge fistful of tickets (in total about 300). He said he got the jackpot, but I think the machine just malfunctioned. All told we ended up with about 600 tickets. We literally could not find enough things that the kids wanted to spend the tickets on. We could not get rid of them. Logan mostly ended up with bugs and other creepy crawly things. Kaylinn went for the jewelry. After that we went and got free personal pizza (thank you Pizza Hut Book It! program) and called it good.


Friday morning, with the beautiful weather outside, I dropped Kaylinn off at my sister-in-law's, and my mom and I went for a hike. We went to Bells Canyon and hiked for about 2 hours. It was just glorious in the sun and breathing the fresh air and just generally getting out in nature. We took snowshoes with us, but for the most part they weren't really necessary. There were actually some parts of the path that was just dirt. The whole experience was good for my emotional self, I think.



Mike took me out last night to Market Street Grill. I had some yummy crab ravioli. It was very tasty and a good date night.

As for my winter projects, I got my pictures hung over the fireplace (by the way thanks for the mirror MaryIrene--I know it took me like 3 years to actually hang, but I think it looks good) and my next project this week has been the hall along the stairs going down. I have 4 panoramas that I have been working to frame for that space.

What? So I think I'm a movie critic now?

I keep trying to write once a week and then I look at the last entry and realize it's been 2 weeks or 3 or 4. And I would like to post pictures, but there is nothing to post because I am not taking pictures. I think that is on account of the winter blahs. We aren't doing much, so there isn't that much to report. I did get under my stairs cleaned out, but I haven't painted Kaylinn's room. I went to tape and started marking up the walls. I was way off in my measurements. I think that I just don't have enough perfection in me to do a project like that. So I think I'd better recruit some help. I have moved onto another project, this week however, so it hasn't just been a total loss. This is project fill the walls. We have lived here for 5 years and I am just now for the first time getting the decorating bug. So I've started trying to hang thing up on my walls. I hung up some things in the dining area and I am just waiting on Mike to hang up another group of things over the fireplace. I'm actually excited about these pictures because they are photographs that I took. It's amazing how professional the pictures that I took look in a frame with matting and all. This is one of my goals for this project: to get some of the pictures that I have taken that I love off of my computer where I never see them and onto my walls where I can enjoy them.

Valentine's Day was yesterday. Mike and I played it casual, we went to dinner at Kneaders and then went to see Coraline in 3-D. I really liked Coraline. It is a kids movie from a kids book. I read the book first and it is wonderful. The book and the movie, however are both a little dark, so I don't know that it's apppropriate for little kids, maybe older kids. Anyhow, the story is really creative, and filed with lots of great characters. The animation was very well done, and I really liked the soundtrack. The night before that Mike was gone at a Scout campout (brrrr....). When he's gone, whether it's for scouts or work, the kids and I always try and really do something fun. It helps pass the time. So we got Igor (fun, but I liked Coraline better). We played games and had popcorn. Then the next morning I made heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. We cleaned the house together (okay maybe not so much fun, but at least the house is clean and it passed the time). Then I took the kids to McDonald's. Mike hates McDonald's, so we go there when he's not around. I took my book and we stayed for almost 2 hours. I just let the kids run around and we pretended it was outside and we could actually go to a playground (sigh). I'd say it was a really good weekend.

I've really been into reading lately. I do have a goodreads account, if you want more details on what exactly I have been reading. I usually pick one leisure activity and do it almost exclusively when I have free time. Reading has been it recently. I have been reading 1-2 books a week, especially fantasy. I've actually found a niche of fairy tale books. It's been a nice and cozy winter activity.

Well, I will try and take pictures this week so I have something visual to post next time. Maybe by making the commitment in writing I will have to actually do it. Hehe.

January Blahs

I'm getting so tired of winter! I'm starting to feel that the constant chill to my bones is permanent and spring won't even be able to chase it away. I long to be out in the warm and gardening. But the ground is too hard and there still is no warm. Well enough of my pity party.

So an update to my winter project (Kaylinn's room). Now that the bulk of the moving is done things are kind of fun actually. I have gotten a comforter and curtains and thus a color pallet. I have started the painting. Well at least I have patched and primed the wall. I am going to leave the chair rail up with the bottom half of the wall still brown. On the top I am going to leave it white and just add big pink stripes (to the top only). I got sheer pink curtains and a pink and brown comforter. So yeah, that's exciting and I'm hoping to get painting this week. Tomorrow I take a deep breath and try to clean out the storage space under the stairs. I have been frightened to death of that project, it just seems like way too much work, but it will give me a place (hopefully) to put the rest of the homeless office refugees. That is a very good thing.


Logan has been playing basketball this winter. It has been pretty funny. Logan is not an athlete. He is great at video games and school. But sports? Never been a strong point. I keep him in sports to keep him well rounded and to get him exercising more. As far as sports go he is definitely better at the individual sports than the team sports. We love karate. But it's good for you to make weak things stronger right? So we keep playing the soccer and the basketball and such. This has been his first time playing basketball and the poor kid can't dribble or make a basket to save a life. He knows this too so he keeps a fair distance from the action and I think he might be praying the whole time that the ball doesn't get passed to him. In general, it's funny to watch this age group because they break all the rules: traveling, double dribbling, double teaming, fouling. Plus they probably make 10% of all the shots they throw. Well at least it's been an entertaining experience and he runs a lot.

On Moving

Okay, admittedly I have been a slacker. But I did warn you that I was really questioning my consistancy with the blogging thing from the beginning.

At any rate, here I am...Let's see what have I been up to the last while?

So the big January project has been getting Kaylinn her own room. That means I have to say goodbye to my office. Which is actually quite a conundrum as the office is my dumping zone. In fact I would argue that the office is the space that holds the most stuff of any room in our house. This is also the room that things get thrown into when people come over. Some of it finds it's way back, some of it doesn't. I guess it's all just part of the carefully controlled chaos that is my house. Probably what I should be worried about is what I am going to do with things when I don't have that room as a junk drop anymore. It took about a week to move everthing out. While I was going through the filing cabinet and I found receipts and statements that went back to the year Mike and I were married (that's 1999). Actually the last things that I had filed away were from 2006. Since then it has gone into a pile on the floor, that although I would go through from time to time, never actually made it into the filing cabinet. I went through the stuff pulled out a lot of what was unnecessary. That created a huge pile of stuff that needed to be shredded on the floor that Kaylinn and Logan were happily throwing into the shredder. So I generated large piles of garbage and DI donations. I still have 3 large boxes which have no home so I guess I need to get into some storage space and clean that out. I took a break to pay attention to the rest of my life and house and I have as yet to be ready to jump back in. Things that still need to be done include getting Kaylinn a bed (right now she is on one of the bunk bed mattresses on the floor), and painting and decorating her room. Of course things were very miserable that first week while Kaylinn was getting used to the new arrangements, but I am happy to announce that things are running smoothly right now and we are all sleeping well now. Hooray for sleep and personal space.

PS We are inbetween computers and I'm not sure I have access to pictures at the moment so when I figure that out I will post with some pictures...you will all just have to hold your breath until then.

Christmas Festivities

Ah, the Christmas fun. We just finished doing the neighbor gift gamble. You know: where you take gifts to neighbors and hope it's the neighbors who were planning on giving something to you. Then comes that moment when you have run out of gifts and someone you didn't plan one for shows up at your door with a plate of goodies. Then you just feel bad. I do enjoy making the gifts though. I decided a few years back that I wanted to make something to eat, because I like to cook and share food with others. The other criteria is I don't want to give just a plate of treats (since that is overdone each year) and it would be nice if it is something that has a decent shelf life. That way they can enjoy it in a few weeks after the Christmas binging is over. Last year I gave jalapeno jelly with an appetizer recipe. The year before that I did loaves of whole wheat bread. This year it's granola. As we were running around I saw 3 other people I know out running neighbor gifts too. I guess that means we were right on time. Also under the heading of Christmas fun was Logan's first (and probably last) Christmas party. Okay, so granted I started out by inviting too many boys, but by the time I had finished the guest list was at 14. Yes, you read that right. I invited 14 6- and 7-year-old boys to my house at the same time. Oh yeah, did I mention that the party lasted 2 hours? We had made it through the organized activities (which by the way were good...frosting cookies, bingo, pin the nose of Rudolph and snowflake ornament crafts), and there was still 45 minutes left before their moms came to pick them up. Thankfully my mom came to help out (she took pity on me when I told her that I'd gotten myself in way too deep). But still it didn't take long for the swords and guns to come out. It was an all out epic battle in my basement. The boys would go up to each other "Are you good? Well I'm evil." The good news is no one got hurt and the house came up unscathed. Probably the only casualty was my emotional state. It took a good 48 hours to calm down and relax. Oh well, what are you gonna do? Laugh I suppose.