Friday, April 29, 2011

The Seasons of my Door Mats

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Here in lovely Canada we have a lot of seasons, sometimes in just one month.

We have snow season.  Snow Season is the season in which I will step in every last melted puddle of snow with a fresh, dry pair of socks.  I swear I went through more socks and had wet feet more this year than any other!


Then we have the Mud Season.  Tracks through the house just to grab "one more thing" before heading out to play in the backyard.  This season doesn't sound so bad, except when you realize that unless the kids have been playing in my flowerbeds (a big no no!), we no longer have any exposed dirt to make mud, and that "mud" you may have been vaccuuming up off the mat is really Rodeo made "mud" and not so pleasant smelling.  I'll spare you any pictures of that.

Following quickly and sometimes at the same time, is Grass Season.  This is when the dog will go outside and roll around on the freshly exposed lawn and bring in every last piece of dead grass he could possibly stick to his coat and drop it on your mat.  This also applies to the children, who although don't roll on the grass in fear of some Rodeo-made "mud", they do quickly abandon shoes, boots, and any other footwear to run across the dead grass to the trampoline and back again!

This is a small and really bad representation of how much grass
 comes in the house, but I had actually just vacuumed the other day.
  Shocking, I know. 

I was complaining about grass season, and how much I loathe it.  Ryan quickly assured me not to worry, it would soon be followed by Sand Season.  Oh joy.


I need Cooler Season to be here, and soon. My deck is calling me.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Crossing #23 off the list

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If you had any doubt about how long I can delay on doing something, this picture below should put your mind at ease, or maybe that should be unease at how I can get so little done and yet not have a job.


That is a picture of my messy desk.  It's also a picture of my old computer tower.  We bought two new computer towers back in October (!!) and that old one has been sitting there ever since.  Shameful, I know.  I just couldn't bring myself to go through it.  I did initially copy off photos onto a few usb sticks but that's as far as I got.

I bought that computer, the second computer I've ever owned, right after Blade was born.  Seven years.  The thing is practically ready for the museum!  It has on it all my old Christmas letters, my labels, all my old videos and pictures, stories Clayton wrote for school, my brother's old resumes and cover letters, you name it, it's on there.  I actually toyed with the idea of not getting rid of it, of getting another monitor and moving it upstairs with a printer to be my offline work spot.  Which is my defense for not getting rid of it by now.  I was still debating if I wanted to keep it.  Turns out I haven't turned it on or hooked it up to the monitor since I got my new one!  So if I haven't even used the thing in the last 6 months, I don't think I need to keep it. 

I didn't want to deal with it in the basement though.  Ugh.  It just seemed like I would be sitting down to waste time on the computer.  *ahem* not like I ever do that.  Ha.  So I had Ryan haul it upstairs to the kitchen table as well as my monitor.  Did you know I could have done that myself?  Of course I could have, but this way I got to delay the rest of the afternoon too!  Sitting it on the table where we were going to need to eat in an hour or so made me get through the files and double check I had all the pictures off of it, delete all my documents and reformat it.  It also gave me a chance to see how dirty my screen is.....


Ayayayaye  and that's not even a good picture of all the finger prints!  I'd like to say I've cleaned it by now, but I'm pretty sure Ryan just moved it back downstairs and hooked it up again without wiping it.  You can't notice the prints when the screen isn't black I swear! (perhaps I'll do that right now so I can say I did something today besides waste time at my computer....)

The tower is at the front door now.  Destination: a) one of Clayton's friends b) one of those people who uses old computers for parts or c) the recycle area at the dump.  Check back in 6 months to see if it's moved yet.

My desk is now noticeably emptier and it's making me feel inspired to get on making that desk out of the old door we brought home from Dad's back in October.  It's Canada. It was cold all winter. We don't have a garage. Three reasons why it's still sitting in my basement needing paint and cutting.  The fourth reason is of course that why do it today when I can delay for a few months.

This weekend it may get done in the nice weather.  Except the weather is inspiring the kids too, and they want to make a trip to Grandpa's to play.  I can't argue with that!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

L*O*V*E

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Friends, I'm in love.

For Family Friday (that's a lot of capital F's!) and Easter I made this new iced chocolate cake recipe I found from another blog with the recipe actually coming from Martha Stewart's website.  Oh my.  I don't even like chocolate cake, and I certainly don't like chocolate icing.  But this, this is GOOD.  I'd share a picture of my masterpiece cake but of course I didn't remember to take a picture at home with my good camera.  I snapped a picture with my blackberry while I was waiting for Ryan to get gas.  Here's my craptastic picture.

Sorry! But if you don't judge this recipe on my BB's photo skills and just make it, you won't be sorry!

I'm just going to write out the icing recipe and leave you with the link to Martha Stewart's site instead for the cake.  The cake was amazing.  The icing even more amazing.

Chocolate Frosting
4 1/2 cups of icing sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
12 ounces of cream cheese (that's a pkg and a half for us Canadians)
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
18 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, melted*
1 1/2 cups sour cream

Mix the icing sugar, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl.  With a mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter on medium-high until fluffy, about 4 minutes.  Reduce speed to low.  Gradually add sugar mixture, beating until combined.  Beat in melted chocolate and sour cream until combined.

*Now for my suggestions.  This makes a crap ton of frosting, so if you aren't looking to ice two double layer cakes, cut the recipe in half for sure.  I still have a big tub in the fridge left over.  (poor me, as I sit here eating it with a spoon as I type out this recipe).  It calls for 18oz of bittersweet chocolate melted.  I only had 8 squares of semi-sweet baker's chocolate and some chocolate chips.  I ended up melting the squares and 1 2/3cups of chips to make up the 18 oz.  Yes, it sounds like a lot of chocolate to me too! I was worried it would be way way too sweet ( I mean, 4.5 cups of icing sugar!!?!) but it's yummy and creamy.   I hate sour cream.  Hate the smell of it, the look of it, the fact that someone out there wanted me to put it in my icing.  Do it anyways.  You can't taste it and it gives it an amazing creamy lighter texture.

The cake recipe was amazingly good as well.  The rum, well Screech in my case, adds a delicious smell and slight taste to it.  Here's the link to her site with the cake recipe.  Chocolate Cake

And no, mine didn't look much like hers!  But like I have time to make a fake bird's nest and put fancy grass on the top of it as well! 

Now if you'll excuse me, my ass has a date with this:




Oh dear.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Easter

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This year I left it up to Clayton to organize the Easter egg hunt.  I wasn't really feeling like doing one at all when he asked when we were doing it.  So I told him that he could do it and I'd supply the cash for the chocolate. 

A quick trip downtown for chocolate and a late night adventure of stuffing eggs, making up clues and hiding eggs in obvious but not too obvious places equals three happy children Saturday morning. 

He came up with some pretty good clues all on his own!


We had a good little laugh over some of them, including "I'm getting 'queky Clean in here". 
It was late, that's all he's going to say about that. Hehe.
The kids with their loot:

Not too much that I wonder when the heck they will eat it all!
Thanks big brother!!
Yes, he's still in his blankey.  Yes it's bright outside.  It's probably about 11 AM in this picture! And yes he enjoyed that hug about as much as it looks like he did.

Ha!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

#2

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There's a little bit of celebrating going on around here.

This:


And this:


have finally been paid off!  Yay!  That means I get to cross off #2 off of my list.  I'd like to thank all the little people who made this possible.  No really, thanks kids for being a tax deduction!

Also in good news, this:


will have it's last payment made next month!

With the Internet as my witness, I shall not finance again.  (in my defense, both were at 0% interest, but still such a pain to have to make payments)

Now if only I could afford to go back here:


Although at this point in my long Canadian winter, I'd settle for green grass in my backyard and a cooler in my hand.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Better late than never

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Lest you think me a terrible slacker, here are a few pictures from our latest birthday boys.


For a boy who did NOT want to turn 5 a couple of years ago, he was extremely excited this year to turn 7.


And although this one did not get his birthday wish to be in PEI right at this moment, he did get to eat out for his birthday.  And if you know Ryan, you know that was pretty okay in his books too!


He shall remain un-outed on how old he now is.

And lastly, how freaking cute are these three??


We ended Blade's impromtu party with a massive all-out nerf gun war, Grandma included!  Even sick, she was a pretty good shot!

One step forward, two steps back

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The step forward:

The door handles! They have been installed! Okay, they actually even got installed way before last weekend, but I've been too busy and too tired to even take a picture of them.


Riveting pictures, I know.

Now for the step back part.  You can clearly see now how yucky the doors look and how badly they need painted.  I'm going to attempt to spray paint our keypad lock cover black instead of the weird off-cream it is now, and also try and cover up Rodeo's frequent scratching at the back door marks. One thing crossed off the list, two things added on to it!


Bugger.  Nice of him to wreck the paint no?

And lastly a big BOO!!! to Mother Nature who turned my brown grass back into this.


You're really messing with my projects lady!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

True to Form

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I love lists.  Love to write them.  Love to cross stuff off of them.  When I write them, I have a tendency to write things down that I know for sure I'll be able to cross off.  Sometimes I write stuff down that I just finished doing so that I can cross it off...

So what's the point of this?  Well, I think I'll add an item to the 2011 To Do List so that I can cross it off!  Don't judge me!  I never put this item on the list (mostly because I forgot, I'm sure) because I probably didn't think it was that big of a deal and at the time they weren't a problem.

Our two outside doors in the last couple of months have decided to misbehave.  The back one decided to break and lock us in the house one night, one snowy -30 night when the dog really needed to go out. Handy that.  Ryan fixed it as best as he could at 11 at night and now it only opens if you turn it in one direction only.  The front door has decided to become extremely sticky and looks like this 99% of the time when you open it.


You shut the door, and it swings back open. The kids run out the door, and then have to run back to shut the stupid thing again. We are constantly pulling the inside handle up to unstick the latch. 

Yesterday in a fit of PMS-Ijustcan'tstanditanymorestupid$%$^ingdoorgahhh, I made a stop at the hardware store and bought Ryan's job for the weekend.


And now I'm going to go add it to the list, so that I can cross it off this weekend!