Makes Me Smile Monday

This front page picture from the Post last week just cracks me up.  Temperature around 30 degrees, no coat, snow/ice coming down and and carrying an ice cream cone.  Haha gotta love random moments that are captured on film!  I bet that this guy has gotten some serious ribbing from his friends, family and co-workers.

Maybe he was trying to impress a girl? 

Cute Kid Quote of the Day

Even though our dinner plans were cancelled the other night, (you can read the story here) we still enjoyed the apple pie I baked.  What else were we supposed to do, right?

So as our daughter was gobbling up her slice of pie she matter-of-factly commented "I never get tired of eating homemade pie".  It was a sort of statement and thinly-veiled hint all rolled into one. What makes it even funnier, is that she has probably had one other slice of pie in her life.

What's Cooking - Crisp Cornmeal Scones

 The night before last we were expecting a guest for dinner, a local that my husband had worked with while in Iraq.  We never have guests over so I was a bit concerned about planning a meal that someone outside of our family might enjoy.  My Hubby suggested an all-American sort of meal since his friend has only visited the States once before.  We went with pot roast with carrots, onions and potatoes; a fresh salad, cornbread and for desert apple pie and chocolate chip cookies.  Well, we ended up getting 8 inches of snow in just a few hours and since the road crews here in northern VA have no clue how to efficiently plow the roadways, we had no choice but to cancel the dinner plans.

I tried out a new recipe for the cornbread and my husband informed me that it is a keeper.  This says a lot because he is a bit picky about cornbread.  With his family coming mostly from KY, he likes the southern non-sweet kind.  Me?  My mother made only one type of cornbread my entire life....Jiffy Mix Cornbread in the little blue boxes.

It is a bit on the sweet side, so I really don't care for the bland southern type my hubby's family likes.  But this recipe was just the right mixture of both sweet and cornmealish.  We both liked it and even better yet it was super easy to make!

Crisp Cornmeal Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold butter, coarsely shredded* or cubed
1 cup buttermilk
buttermilk
coarse sugar

1.  Preheat oven to 425.  In large bowl whisk together flour, cornmeal, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt.

2.  Add shredded butter to flour mixture; toss to distribute.  (Or cut cubed butter into flour mixture with pastry blender until it resembles coarse crumbs).  Make well in center of flour-butter mixture.  Add 1 cup buttermilk; stir with spoon until moistened.  Do not overmix.  (If dough appears dry, add 1-2 Tbsp additional buttermilk).

3.  Turn dough out onto floured surface.  Gently knead by lifting and folding dough, 4 or 5 times, giving a quarter turn after each knead.  Roll into 8-inch square, 3/4 inch thick.  Cut into 1 1/2 to 2 inch squares.  Place squares 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet.  Brush with buttermilk; sprinkle with coarse sugar.

4.  Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned; cool scones on a rack.

*shredding butter - Freeze butter for 15 minutes.  Using a grater, coarsely shred the cold butter.  Toss into flour mixture or refrigerate, loosely covered, until needed.

Note:  I did not brush the scones with buttermilk or add sugar atop and I think they turned out just fine without it.

Around the House: Valentine's Mantle

One of the reasons why I love the house we have right now is the mantle.  There is just something about this one that makes our living room seem so cozy.  On most days, it gets a bunch of sun during the morning and early afternoon.  Of course, the day I went to take these pictures it was gloomy outside and so the pics look a bit dull.  (My old point-and-shoot doesn't help either ;-)

At the far right you can see a red heart-shaped box with our picture perched atop it.  We received it in '98 as a wedding present from a family friend living in CA at the time.  She filled the box with different shells she had collected, painted with a clear sparkly varnish (glitter ModPodge?), and attached a bail and wire so that we could use these on our Christmas tree.  She also cut out small sections of our wedding invitation and glued them on some of the ornaments.  To this day, it is one of my favorite gifts we received because it was simple and heartfelt.  So what better way to display it than on a Valentine mantle.  In the center is a little plaque I found while we were on a mini-vacation not long after my Husband came home from Iraq last year.  It reads "Grow Old With Me, The Best is Yet To Be".

 The majority of the pictures displayed are old ones from both sides of our families.  There is just something romantic about black & white or sepia tones don't you think?

 I took white satin ribbon that I have been saving from various pajama sets I've received over the years (yes, I am cheap.  Er...*thrifty, and I keep it because it just seems too good to throw away.  Oh man, that sounds like a Hoarder, doesn't it?)  and then used photo squares to attach the pink doilies.  The squares showed through the white ones so I had to go hunting in the kids' craft box for a glue stick.  I then used some old scrapbook letters I had lying around to spell out the word "FAMILY".  I would've used my Cricut but alas, it is dead at the moment.  That is a whole other post all on it's own.

 I love this picture of my husband's Grandparents during the war.  They look so in love, so young.  The shell you see here has the stamp from our RSVP card attached to it.  Yes, postage has gone up quite a bit in the past 13 years!

 The vase, flowers and Redhots all came from the Dollar Store.  Gotta love all the stuff they have for each holiday.  This particular picture is of my Grandma's brother and sister.  They were much older than her and unfortunately they both died in their mid 20s, so I never got the chance to meet them.  This is one of my favorite family photos because it looks so classic.

 I crocheted the little hearts from a tutorial I found on a great blog by the name of Wise Craft.  Click here for the link.  I only hooked the first round mainly because I liked the daintyness (is that even a word?) of the little hearts.  And because I didn't think I could actually finish them all up in time for the holiday.  These days I just have to be realistic about my time with the baby arriving soon.

The above picture reminds me of the painting American Gothic.  It is of my Great Grandparents standing on their farm in their everyday clothes.  I don't know the story of how they met but from the stories that my Dad has told me, I know that they were one of those old couples that remained in love long after they were married.  They passed away four years to the day of each other.  I feel lucky to have my Great Grandma's handwritten recipes, several of her handmade aprons and her old wooden rolling pin.  According to my Dad, she would make a pie nearly every day.  So who knows how many hundreds of pie crusts that rolling pin rolled out.  I'm sure her crust would put mine to shame ;-)

And while I'm at it, I might as well show you the light above our table.  Nothing fancy, just a few doilies with some heart stickers in the center and some wired heart garland from the Dollar Store.  Pay no attention to the burnt out light bulb.  That's real romantic huh? 

And this mirror hangs on the wall behind our table.  It looked a little plain so I used the garland I had left over and some more doilies.  Let me tell you that working with that wire garland is not easy.  It seriously has a mind of its own, twisting this way and that.

So in all, I think I probably spent about $5 for all my V-Day decorations.  The doilies, letter stickers, yarn and ribbon I already had on hand.  I'm glad to finally put some it to use.  I've been wanting to use the yarn since I picked it up the fall before last at a 1812 reenactment.  Now that I've used some of it, I think it'll go into the garage sale pile because it was a pain to work with.  Originally, I had hoped to make a scarf out of it but it is so stiff and scratchy that there is no way I want that rubbing up against my neck. 

Wow, this post ended up being a bit on the long side.  I didn't intend to go into such detail but I guess it just shows how much the little things on our mantle mean to me.  Hope you enjoyed my rambling.  I'm sure that after the Baby arrives I'll keep things short and sweet. ;-)

I'm linking to:

Cute Kid Quotes

This evening my husband went to the barber after work.  That isn't such an exciting thing.  But what is exciting is the little family-owned bakery that is right next door.  They have such good stuff there, lots of different types of cookies and even mini creme brulee.  And it's fairly cheap.  Oh, such a dangerous combination ;-)

You can probably guess where my hubby stopped after his haircut.  Yep, tonight after dinner we split a few different types of cookies, much to the delight of our daughter.  She doesn't get sweets too often so it is a big treat for her.

Afterwards she nuzzled up to my husband and said "You're my hero".

Maybe it was the cookies or maybe it came from watching cartoons.  Whatever it was it was, it was beyond cute.

Makes Me Smile Moday

This coffee mug is bringing a smile to my face today.  First of all, it has Snoopy on it.  And come on...who doesn't smile when they see Snoopy.  My little gal loves him.  When she was 2 and a half all she wanted for Christmas was a Snoopy backpack.  I have no idea where she came up with the idea but it left us scrambling to find one in time for Santa to put it under the tree.  Thank goodness for Amazon!

And the other reason it makes me smile is because it was a surprise from my mom.  She ordered it and had them personalize it with "Mom" instead of just my name.  It was nice to have my morning cup of coffee with this little reminder written on the side, while my husband was away in Iraq.  It reminded me that things could always be worse and that the day will come when we would all be back together again.

And knowing that if all goes the way we have planned, we will never have to do an unaccompanied tour again, ever.  And boy, does that make me smile!

For the Record

As we were lying in bed the other night, my husband said one of the nicest things he has ever said to me.  We were talking about a friend of ours and how she has a particular affinity for drama.  (No, not the "Shakespeare, theater" kind.  But the "everything in my life is soooo difficult" kind.  We love her all the same but sometimes the drama can be a bit much).

And that's when he nonchalantly remarked "I'm so glad you're not a nut".  Awww, instant smile to this gal's face.  And I'm not being sarcastic when I write that.

We have been together for nearly 17 years and for some reason that little statement stands out as one of the sweetest things he's ever said to me.  Maybe because it was the simplicity of the remark or the way it casually came out of his mouth.  Or maybe it was just what I needed at this point in my pregnancy, especially since I feel so erratic sometimes with all the hormonalness.  (Yep, I just made that word up.)

Now I don't want to paint the picture that my husband is not the mushy romantic type.  I think he does pretty good in that category.  He still brings me flowers and knows that I love unwrapping tiny boxes from Tiffany's.  He holds doors, carries groceries and goes out of his way to make me feel special.  He has written me plenty of sweet letters in our years together and recently started making movies celebrating our anniversary, birth of our kids, etc.  I just have to gush, he truly is great.

But there was just something special about those 7 little words he said the other night.

Frustration

Ugh, Blogger why do you have to be so difficult?  Why is HTML like learning a different language?  Why can't I just click, upload, drag and drop what I want to go where and then be done with it.  But no, it's not that easy.

I just spent over an hour trying, in vain, (But you obviously can see that because I still have the same ugly plain header.  Oh wait, I have ZERO followers so you obviously don't see it.) to come up with a great eye-catching header.  I had high hopes after reading Nina's Beautify Your Blog series over at Momma Go Round.  But evidentally I am just challenged in the blogging department. 

So for now I will just have to suffer with the same dull layout.  Believe me I have some great ideas in mind for what I want this blog to look like.  I just have to find a way to translate it all into code.  Or what might be easier is to befriend a talented web designer who will gift me with an awesome layout.  Anyone know a web designer looking for a friend?

Slowly getting there....

I feel like I am slowly getting there.  "There" is an organized home.  Well, I should probably rephrase that...."a better organized home".  I don't think I will ever have our house put together like I really want it to.  Not as long as we are moving as often as we do, and the kiddos are at home all day.

Lately, I've noticed just little odd jobs around the house that needed to be done and realized "Hey, I bet I could take care of that in 10 minutes or so".  And you know what?  It usually only took 10-15 minutes!  Amazing! ;-)  Now, I may get interrupted with a diaper change or a ouchie that needs to be tended.  But my little task eventually gets finished and I can then stand back and smile because it is no longer nagging me to get done.

Ten minutes a day (or even every other day) is such a small investment of time.  It really helps to make all those little tasks seem less daunting.  And lets be honest, it is all those odd jobs that rush through your mind on sleepless nights, right?

I've taken a few pictures, so maybe I'll get around to posting before and afters.

Makes Me Smile Monday

Posting kind of late today because I nearly forgot that today is Monday.  Seems like I have something ingrained in my mind that if my husband is home for the day then it must be the weekend.

So today what is making me smile is nothing.  As in, I've gained nothing since my last doc appt 2 weeks ago.  In fact, Doc told me I actually lost a pound.  WooHoo!  I was starting to worry that I was going to end up gaining more than I had with our first two kiddos, and the baby would be big, and delivery would be tough, and I'd end up with another c-section, and on and on.

I feel like I still need to watch myself.  I've got 8 weeks to go (I think).  But tonight I treated myself to some vanilla ice cream with fresh berries and then a handful of Trader Joe's vanilla wafers, yum.

The countdown is on....

The countdown is on.  The clock is ticking away.  Baby Girl will make her arrival into the world in less than 10 weeks.

I'm sure there are many moms out there that can relate to what I'm feeling lately.  It is getting harder and harder to manuever this belly of mine around.  It seems to be getting noticeably bigger by the day.  The kids, especially the Little Guy have a tendency to treat the baby bulge like it is their own personal playgym; romping, wallowing and rolling around my mid-section.  That gets old REAL quick.  And then there is the issue of trying to get a decent nights' sleep.  It is just not happening at this point.  I am uncomfortable and just ready for the big day to get here.

But here is where the Catch-22 comes in.  I feel like I have a list of projects a mile long and the time is running out to complete them all before the Baby gets here.  Most of them are uncompleted projects that I haven't been able to get finished in the past few years.  The house we are renting right now has a perfect layout for me to splatter out what I'm working on and not have to pack it away each night.  We are set to move again this August and I have no idea what kind of house we'll end up in.  It might be so small that everything has to remain packed away.  So I feel like I absolutely HAVE TO take advantage of the time and set up I have right now to get some of this crap crossed off my to-do list.  And so I wish that the Baby's due date was more than 10 weeks away.

I need to get organized and really buckle down before March comes around.  And with that said, now that the kids are down for naptime I'm off to the basement to see what I can get done in the next hour or so.

Sabotaged by the Netbook. Really.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to try my best to keep this blog updated regularly.  I might not always have the time or something to say but I want to make an effort.

Well, last night I sat down to make a post and my netbook sabotaged the effort.  Every click I made was excrutiatingly slow and finally around midnight I decided to call it quits.  Evidentally, updates need to be installed and that was the culprit of all the sluggishness.

Today with the little guy napping and big sis on her way to dreamland (or so I thought.  She never did nod off, ugh) I decided to give it another go.  This time around I couldn't even log into Blogger because some error message about a security certificate kept popping up.  I tried everything to get around it but to no avail.

Grrr....I hate when I have the motivation and time to get something done and an outside force conspires against me.

Makes Me Smile Monday

Clearing out old expired coupons
+ a 3.5 and 1.5 year old
= Fun, fun, fun for the kids and a big, big, big mess for mom to clean up later.

They had such a good time pretending that the coupons were snow and I was able to cross this job off my to-do list, so in the end it was all worth it.  Multi-tasking at it's best!

Dance Class? DANCE CLASS!!

Our daughter is FINALLY old enough to participate in some sort of tot class.  We could've enrolled her in the fall, but we moved to this area about a week after classes started and with all the hustle and bustles that comes with moving, we decided to just wait until spring registration. 

So today I told her we were going to put her name on the list for a dance class and the little gal nearly shot straight up off the potty.  She was beyond excited.  The whole way to the community center she kept asking me "Is this the dance class place?", "Where's my teacher?" etc.  She skipped her way up the sidewalk telling me "I'm so excited, this is going to be so much fun!".

Despite a last minute poopy diaper change before heading out the door and a close call with a policeman (he ended up pulling over the guy in front of me, whew!) we made it just in time to claim the very last space in the class.

I don't know who is more excited about this class....me or my daughter ;-)

No use crying over spilled milk

Last week we left VA at 2:30am to visit our families for a belated Christmas and for New Years.  All was going well until we ran into this...

For 4 hours we sat at a complete stop on the Pennsylvania turnpike.  Four hours with two little kids who hadn't eaten breakfast yet and were getting restless.  Thank goodness we splurged and had a DVD player installed when we got our new car last summer.  It was a godsend and and I think that if I were to ever meet the person who invented portable DVD players, I would give them a HUGE hug. 

But after a quick Bing search to learn the details of the backup, I feel so blessed that we narrowly missed this tragic accident.  We came upon this wreck not long after it happened and I'm sure that if we had been closer my husband would've went to assist those that were injured.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that a good samaritan was struck while aiding an injured motorist.  How scary to think that could've been my hubby.

Pedestrian hit amid series of turnpike crashes

By Jennifer Reeger, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, December 31, 2010

Back-to-back crashes involving three vehicles and a pedestrian on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Penn Township on Thursday morning sent four people to hospitals for treatment and closed the westbound lanes for several hours.

The crashes occurred between the Irwin and Monroeville interchanges at about 5 a.m., state police in New Stanton said.

The chain of events began when Jeremy J. Brunot, 33, of Greensburg, fell asleep while driving a tanker truck carrying milk, and lost control of the truck, police said. Brunot tried to steer the truck back onto the road but overcompensated, rolling the tanker onto its driver's side, police said.

A few minutes later, as traffic slowed because of the crash that had blocked both westbound lanes, the second crash occurred, police said.

Ronald W. Jacquess of Toledo, Ohio, was driving a tractor-trailer and came upon the traffic snarl. Jacquess couldn't stop in time and swerved to avoid a stopped vehicle driven by Wil D. Livengood of Dunbar, pushing the vehicle into the crashed milk tanker, police said.

Jacquess' tractor-trailer continued past the first crash onto the berm and struck Michael W. Walz of Parlin, N.J., who had gotten out of his vehicle to offer assistance at the first crash, police said.

Livengood had to be extricated from his vehicle and was flown to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh because of his injuries and prior medical conditions, police said. His condition was not known late yesterday.

A passenger in Livengood's vehicle, Michelle L. Livengood of Dunbar, was taken to Forbes Regional Hospital in Monroeville for treatment of minor injuries.

Walz was flown to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh's North Side where he was listed in serious condition yesterday afternoon.

Brunot was taken to Forbes by private vehicle for treatment of minor injuries. Jacquess was not injured, police said.

The westbound lanes of the turnpike were closed until just before 11 a.m. while crews cleared the wreckage.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_716042.html

So after reading about all that transpired there on the turnpike, I won't complain about the fact that we arrived at my parent's house at 6:30pm, long after our initial 12 noon expected arrival time.  We made it safely and that is really all that matters.