Happy Birthday Dana!

So today is Dana’s birthday and she had one simple little request. She wanted some linky love- not a big thing to ask for so I’m doing just that. I also thought that since I haven’t gotten around to making her a card (mostly because I just feel that cards are not my forte and quite frankly if cards are not your forte you shouldn’t send one to the queen of cards) I would make her a collage. But I couldn’t come up with a subject and being the procrastinator that I am I was short on time. And so I decided to just share one of my favorite shots of Dana.

Looks pretty good for her age doesn’t she?

Slower than molasses in the winter time

Thats about howfast things have been moving around here lately. It seems that when you have no money coming in that nothing else seems to happen either. I guess thats life tho- something most people have to face at one point or another. So all I have to share with you guys today is this recipe. Which technically belongs over on myother blog but who really cares, right?

So this is my quick and cheap version of Alfredo sauce. And for the record, its also easy and delicious.

5 tbsp flour

4 tbsp butter

1 3/4 cups chicken stock

1 ¼ cups milk

Dash of thyme

3 cloves minced garlic

¼ cup powdered parmesan cheese

2 tbsp dried minced onion

1/8 tsp ground red pepper

Dash of pepper

½ tsp salt

Dash of nutmeg

Melt butter in saucepan. Slowly add flour and whisk as you add. Add garlic. Cook for a few minutes on low heat. Slowly add milk and chicken stock whisking to an even consistency. Add spices and parmesan cheese and bring slowly to a simmer over medium heat whisking often to prevent separation. Lower heat and cook till thickened and remove from heat.

The best thing to do is to serve this over homemade noodles with a little rosemary chicken and a nice veggie side. You can use it to wow your husband, wife, mother, father, boyfriend, girlfriend, or nosey neighbor. The wow factor drops drasticly if you don’t make the noodles yourself but you could do that in a pinch.  Buon Appetito!

 

Busy! I’m so busy my head is spinnin like a whirlpool it never ends…

Silly Melissa thats not how it goes! Oh alright maybe not but it fits. Okay so the business is self-imposed but thats alright. I have been working outside in the garden every day and it feels so nice to be keeping up with things. Sadly this means that my housework is suffering and that bothers my poor husband more than it does me. I actually had to make myself stay inside and do dishes today instead of going out to the garden to see a new baby zucchini growing on one of my plants. The conversation (out loud of course) went something like this. “Melissa that will still be there when you’re done with the dishes. Get in the kitchen now!” Why yes, I do talk  to myself. Is that a problem? Sadly I still don’t have any pictures from the garden to show you because my camera is still dead. So I won’t bore you with glowing descriptions of my babies. I will tell you that I have had fun chopping nasty squash bugs in half with my clippers today while I trimmed the leaves they had killed off my zucchini plants. I also got to see the end of my first okra blossom and noticed new bell peppers coming on. Now I need to figure out what I can plant in July that will be ready to harvest before our first frost and I think I might be able to swing some sweet corn. Which would be…. sweeeeet! *grins* I couldn’t resist that one. Alright I know enough about the garden already. Hope all is well everyone. Au revoir!

Michelin Man costume?

This is my SIL in her Renaissance Festival costume. See Dana? Its like the Michelin Man’s arms. But she looks so pretty anyway- even way outside her comfort zone in all those bright colors. If anyone is in the Kansas City area you should definitely check out the KC Ren Fest starting Labor Day weekend. If you watch you can see my SIL’s and my youngest BIL dressed like this.

Don’t ask why he was strangling J12. J13 is the only twin participating in the ren fest but J12 helped out with the parade because they were short on gypsy boys.

Happy Independence Day

I just wanted to drop by real fast to say Happy Independence Day.

The dress is almost done and I have proof

So the pictures are crap because they were taken with my camera. You can’t really see color or texture correctly- sorry about that. But I can now prove that I’m working on this dress. Not sure I like the fabric because its too thin, but its a good run through till I can get some fabric I do like. This dress isn’t quite finished- if you look closely at the armholes you’ll see they kinda gape and are still rough but its mostly done. Done enough certainly for me to decide that I probably won’t wear it (sigh) but if I do finish it, it would be cute and comfy for summer wear. Just too see through till I can get it lined. So see I’m not crazy or a liar. I appologize for the poor quality of the pictures. Aack not to flattering either are they?!

Routine

Well I was mistaken about the Nablopomo theme for this month. Last month was heroes but this month is routine. Which really works better for me anyway because the only thing I could think of when trying to right about heroes was that song by Enrique Iglesias and then I’d have “I can be your hero baby” running over and over in my head.

To start the month off right I’ll let you in on my routine.

Every morning except weekends I get up when my husband does. I wander into the bathroom to put in my contacts and then its off to the living room to do my workout. If I get it out of the way early I am more likely to do it. Wii Fit is my activity of choice as its a weigh-in and workout all in one altho sometimes I’m not too fond of the machine. When my workout is done I usually veg on the couch to check email and my favorite blogs. That done I shower, eat lunch, and then my routine is pretty uncertain till around 4 when I start to think about dinner. Pretty boring, huh?

I am a talented individual (or why I shouldn’t be allowed to us a weedeater)

So today I was weedeating our front yard. Trying to do my part to maintain the house and specifically my garden which is a pain for my husband to mow around. I was doing great. And then I started working around the trellis that my brother and I built. All of a sudden my weedeater stopped short with a sickening jolt and as I looked down I saw that it had tried to tangle with the chicken wire and lost. (or is it won? It did get tangled after all) So I sheepishly called Jarell and said something along the lines of I got the weedeater stuck on the chicken wire. I have to give him credit- he didn’t laugh or get mad he just told me where to find some wire cutters if I needed them. I asked him if this had ever happened to him and he said it happened all the time. I felt better until he clarified that when it happened to him it was just tall weeds and never fencing. Oh well, thats life. It did give me something to talk about at least and as you can see I took advantage of my cell phone’s camera to bring you the picture.

I decided to sign up for Nablopomo and soon I’ll find a little linky widgety thing for my blog. I figure if I want readers I should at least have something for them to read, right? Right. So be prepared to have lots of ….. fascinating reading this month. The theme is heroes if I choose to follow it. Today my husband is my hero for saving me from the evil chicken wire. Wait a second, I did that all by myself! Well he’s still my hero anyway!

Ta for now folks!

Happy birthday

So today is my baby brother’s 18th birthday. I remember the day my mom went to the doctor to take a pregnancy test. I remember even better the night when my little brother made his appearance. At home. An hour or so before the midwife arrived because my mom had had several false labors already and didn’t want her to have to make the long drive to our home for no reason. I remember my other brother wanting a lollipop while there was so much drama going on around him. Clifford has been surrounded by drama ever since.

As a birthday present I wanted to give him something that is a little bit from me and also a little bit from Kevin, my other brother (the middle child). Enter Kevin’s remarkable artistic talent. The picture below is his creation and a rather simple picture compared to some of his amazing work because I needed to be able to change it into a simplified line drawing so I could use it as an embroidery pattern. Slowly but surely I did just that.

Ever so carefully I painstakingly embroidered the frog and his shroom seat onto some plain white fabric to make a patch. The picture below is an in progress shot.

Finally I finished (actually it only took me two or three hours) I sewed it to a plain white t-shirt et voila.

The project was enough to inspire me to buy some more embroidery floss to replenish my dwindling supply. As you can see below I found a nice batch of color and I plan to do some more embroidery from other pictures that my brother has drawn. Who knows where I’ll go with it.

Oh and Clifford, if you’re reading this, you just spoiled  your birthday present surprise….. shame on you