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Monthly Archives: April 2009
It’s a Good Thing
With a nod to Martha Stewart for a phrase I am sure she thinks she invented, I’d like to tell you something that I love, something I think is a good thing:
Reynold’s Cooking Bags. Yes. I love them.
I just roasted 6+ pounds of roast beef for the chimichangas we are making later. I threw in onions and garlic and peppers, walked away and came back to pure succulence. It IS a good thing. I have got to start remembering that I can use them at times other than Thanksgiving (when they provide a lovely turkey and cut down on the mess)!
What the ever loving~?!?
http://www.regiftable.com/RegiftingRobinPopUp.html
Curious. Mysterious. How? Some one, please tell me how?
Just Dandy
I spent 38.4 minutes dallying about the backyard in late afternoon. I cleaned a little. I re-arranged some patio furniture. I dug up grass from the garden boxes where it is not welcomed. I placed landscaping rocks back where they belong and not where the grand-bebes have carried them. I discovered the Asian Lilies greening up with new growth, some self-placed Cosmos sprouting between the pathway rocks and a still-intact though flattened and quite-orange pumpkin hiding under some leaves.
And? I dug up 3 perfectly formed, healthy and delightfully brilliant-yellow dandelions. Because they are not allowed in the neighborhood. But I secretly think they deserve to be.
Chalk it Up
Carol Ann has a blackboard-door in her kitchen. I have always loved it. My sister-in-law, Robin, is famous for her re-purposed art-to-board chalkboards. I just have a little store-bought chalkboard I sometimes write scriptures on, or birthday greetings for the fam. It is NOT a good one at all. (pictured below: Carol Ann’s, one of Robin’s and mine after Stormie’s accident last fall)
I have planned on buying a can of chalkboard paint from WalMart for like – 5 years, at least, to have something more interesting than the board I have. So, I went ahead and bought a can for $8.98 and told Tara I thought I had an original and brilliant idea: to chalkboard-paint the base of our kitchen breakfast counter so the grand-bebe’s could sit on the floor and do artwork for me. I had never seen anything like it….UNTIL I decided to google “chalkboard paint ideas” and omygoodness - people have beat me to it. Figures.
Meanwhile, I also found some other kitchen designs with chalkboard paint. There is crazy stuff out there!
Here are the 2 breakfast counters I found (which I really thought was MY idea!!).
There is a chalkboard-fridge thing going on. I don’t know if I could do this!?? Maaaaaaybe on the wall around it, though?
This cabinet is pristine. Would you be eating chalkdust if you wrote on placemats? The plate thing? Pretty easily do-able. I just saw this very plate at WalMart for less than $3. Paint the middle, plop it on a cookbook stand and voila!
Here are some cute ideas – pantry doors, doorway, shelves and backsplash:
How cute are these rooms?? But the kids already have to remind me to write the birthday message before people arrive. Ha! I can’t imagine what would happen if I had to have all sorts of clever script on entire walls!
This, though, is my absolute FAVORITE! Why? Because: clean, modern cooking/eating area. Woods floors, creativity and art on top of the pantry. The heavy-duty industrial warehouse doors that slide to hide the pantry as needed. Whimsy. The old with the new. Is that enough reason to adore it?!? What am I doing in suburbia?
Will one can of chalkboard paint even be enough?…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Start painting before Dave sees this post!
She Questions:
They have developed watermelon with no seeds, invented hands-free cell phones.
Why does bacon still pop like a violent banchee when you fry it? Y-ouch!
She Rants
I avoid public restrooms at all costs – except not the cost of not buying and drinking the largest possible ice teas I can find and drinking myself into an amber-liquid stupor. Therefore, as it turns out, I am forced to use public restrooms.
I have noticed a disturbing trend recently, on those 23″ in diameter circles of toilet paper. They are jimmy-rigged to allow you only two squares. Two. Then then they break off and you have to re-twirl the roll 17 times to find the end again – at which time, regardless of how slowly and carefully you pull, you will still get only two squares.
Nevermind that this stuff is so thin you could read the fine print of a car warranty through it and that is so crunchy as to cause serious doubts it is only a paper product (there has to be lava rock in the mix, I am certain). You still only get two squares. Period.
Listen, you public restroom establishments, you: your bathrooms are already disgustingly outdated and yuck, your hand soap is going to take off the first 2 layers of my skin and none of the locks on the stalls work right. For the love of God and all that is holy – let me have as many squares as I need – no, as I want!
Dear Billy Mays
Dear Billy, No one is going to respond when you yell for help someday because you yell all. the. time!
My heart is still racing because I just endured yet another 17-minute (OK – maybe only 60-second) Billy Mays commercial. Could some one ask that guy to tone it down a little? I have ceased to even know what he is advertising (there are at least 517 products) because I have to run for cover everytime he shows up.
You are not at a construction site, my friend. You’re in my living room. Show some respect.
Happy Birthday, Zach!
Our nephew Zach turns 19 today! He is my brother Tim’s oldest son. He is pictured below with his younger brothers Seth and Caleb. Tim and his wife Julie have turned out some awesome boys (BTW: loving the St. Louis Cardinals is a Moslander-family rule)!
Zach is living with us while he works and is doing a ministry internship (worship arts) at Northern Hills. We feel honored to have him here, are so glad for the opprotunity to bless the young man of God as he prepares himself for what lies ahead.
We got together last night to celebrate his birthday and teased the stuffing out of him for the Wii Fitness Age of 71 that he got (which had to be bogus, because he really is quite athletic and agile)! Tara replaced a few of the candles with the kind that you can’t blow out and even though he kind of knew it, he good-naturedly kept blowing on them – creating a major smoke cloud over the kitchen and making my grandbebes laugh with glee.
Happy Birthday, Zach-a-ronis. We are so blessed to have you here, to get this time together. You are kind of like the little brother Rocky never had and I am so glad you guys are getting this time. Thanks for sharing your life and time with us and being such an awesome example of the believer, even at this very young age. I know God has great things in store for you and one day we’ll say, “We knew him when…”
Much Love…Aunt Jeanie for all
NOTE TO SELF: Cook more for Zach so he doesn’t starve to death under my care.
pictured – the 3-layer chocolate pudding cake (very dense and moist) with chocolate fudge icing; I used the extra batter to make a couple dozen mini-cupcakes, some iced in confetti icing, some in the extra chocolate fidge; then with the “extra” cake removed from the layers, I made “cake bites” by crumbling the cake, putting the extra icing in, added some slightly sweetened cream cheese, rolled into balls, then coated in melted white chocolate chips. Used every single bit of cake! Zach’s Wii screen. Zach and the candles that wouldn’t die.
Dave’s Money-Saving Tip
In these challenging economic times, it seems there is a free-flow of tips and tricks on the news and in the magazines about how to be frugal and save money.
I was telling Dave how a women’s magazine writer had spent two or three paragraphs telling how she saved $2 a week by having her high school daughter take her lunch instead of buying it one day a week during the school year and how ridiculous I thought it was that they wasted good paper and ink to even print such a lengthy and lame “tip.” C’mon-you’re a novice if saving two bucks a week is a revelation to you. I can think of 101 ways to save $2 a week (which would give you a total saving of $202, btw). What a lightweight. {insert smirk here} Thank goodness the magazine was given to me free.
Dave (apparently ignoring my sarcasm) responds, “I can save $38.75 a year by getting your books back to the library on time.”
Because I never do.
But I also see it as a contribution to the library and a good-citizen-type thing to do.
Hmph.
image: google (I would NOT have a cat book…)