Daily Archives: February 19, 2008

Ambience!

by

My kids had a blast this past weekend playing with their grandparents, visiting from up north. My Hungarian Goulash was successful on Saturday and I got rewarded for my efforts. You see, on Sunday morning my living room looked like this:

fp-fix.jpg

which resulted in a far better outcome than I could have possibly imagined from my poorly built home. By Sunday evening I was relaxing by this:

fireplace.jpg

Doesn’t it look great? Who’d a thunk a gas fireplace could look so real? And it put out a nice heat and didn’t smell like burning propane. How psyched am I????

AND I had some knitting time this weekend so I worked for a bit on what I’ve been referring to as “Maddie’s Emo Socks”. The yarn is to die for, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts (Socks That Rock in colorway Hardrock); it’s soft and black and grey and pink and fuschia. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s been knitting up pretty quickly and I’ve been having a blast with it. I’m using the basic sock recipe from Stephanie Pearl McPhee’s Knitting Rules.

mads-emo-sock.jpg

Hopefully I’ll have a bit of time this week to work on them. (No, we are NOT mentioning the eleventy other projects I have begun and need to work on).

Valentine’s Day Has Passed and My Blonde is Showing

by

Valentine’s Day around these parts means Chinese food. Every February 14th for almost 12 years now there’s been Chinese food. Usually take – out, always yummy. Emily used this year as an opportunity to try crab and lobster, in the form of seafood soup. She loved it so much she asked if she could eat it for dinner every night from now on.

The next night was not as yummy or healthy. I was expecting the in – laws for dinner so I thawed a huge amount of stew beef to make a Hungarian Goulash. I had planned on serving it with a nice salad and Italian bread. Then it became apparent that they weren’t going to arrive in time for dinner, and I had nothing else at the ready. So it was off to McDonald’s so I could save myself the effort to cook and clean up the kitchen. The older girls wanted chicken nuggets……so when I pulled up to the drive thru I ordered chicken nuggets. Or at least I’d swear I did. But Emily heard “cheeseburger”, and so did the nice lady at the window. And I can’t say truthfully that this is the first time this has happened to me. My blonde has been showing a lot lately. I swear I’ve said or heard something but everyone else around me says otherwise. Either it’s a well organized plot to convince me I am senile, or I truly am losing it.

So anyway I handed my two girls their happy meals and as I am driving away it becomes clear that these meals are actually not happy because they are the wrong damn thing. I apologize and tell them I’ll somehow make it up to them. Emily assures me it’s ok; she’ll enjoy her fries and chocolate milk and have a snack of some sort when we get home. This sounded reasonable. I agreed to her terms. Then I asked Neve if that sounded ok to her. No. It was most definitely not ok.

“I want you to turn around right now and get me my chicken nuggets”.

That’s my Neve.

No, I did not turn around. I don’t let her boss me around. Much.