Love the Human Fund card (yes, we’re Seinfeld rerun fans). Some of the designs are fabulous. Some of the designs are really not my taste. There’s a huge variety at Cafe Press – and it’s because this site allows you to sell your own cards, calendars and other items and prints on demand – fabulous. It’s like nouveau Ebay or Etsy but for print! Me likey! Check the selection out here and click here if you’re interested in selling designs. I especially enjoyed browsing the political bumper stickers – wow – eye openers!
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Pumpkin Carving with The Boys
How’s that for enough pics? Ah, I can never get enough of my boys! The in-laws left this morning and I have laryngitis but feel pretty good – it’s awfully quiet around here. I’m looking forward to class parties at the elementary school this afternoon.
Lotta Jansdotter Fall Collection
I love Lotta’s stuff…this fall isn’t as great as some in the past except I do adore this pattern on the charcoal gray bag. Lovely! Check it out here.
Pictures from Vala’s
Vala’s Pumpkin Patch & In-Laws
The in-laws are here and while Don and his dad were hunting pheasant and turkey, Grandma and the kids and I went to Vala’s Pumpkin Patch – surely one of the greatest pumpkin patches in history (and all right here in Gretna!). I will post enough pictures to make up for my lack of a post yesterday, however, I’m drop-dead tired and will have to post them tomorrow or the next day! Stay tuned…
Online Giveaway: Deseret Book’s “Give” T-Shirt!
My t-shirts came and I love ’em. I bought one extra to use as an online giveaway which is great because now they are SOLD OUT in this color! Up for grabs is one “give” t-shirt in charcoal heather gray in an XL size (a trim size XL). I’m going to leave this one open until next Sunday at midnight to try and get more comments/entries than last time but if I don’t, your chances are good to win. This tee is adorable with jeans. Just leave a comment on this post before midnight on Sunday, November 2nd and you’re entered to win. Shipping is on me!
Great Sales at Brocade Home
Love this site. Watch carefully and every cool thing on their sale section gets to eventually be another half off (at least that was the last great sale I saw!) – makes the extra shipping for furniture worth it. I’m not too frilly of a person but I just love, love, love these gray and silver duvet covers. Check out the website here and the design blog here.
Nana’s Chicken & Gummy Noodle Soup
Yummy gummy homemade noodles. My mother makes the best homemade chicken noodle soup EVER. Thick, gummy noodles that my kids adore. They hadn’t eaten one of my meals in weeks and they gobbled this up declaring I was the best cook in the whole world. Cheap, easy, delicious. Hope you enjoy the recipe.
Nana’s Homemade Chicken & Gummy Noodle Soup:
Bring chicken parts (best with skin and bone) with one chopped onion and an optional clove of garlic (use whatever chicken you’ve got on hand and as much as you want) to boil in a large stock pot of water. Drain chicken, straining and keeping strained broth. Cool chicken in fridge until you’re ready to pull off the meat. For noodles: Beat 6 eggs (you can use the whole egg – we’re not fussy here) with flour adding one cup at a time until it becomes a very soft dough consistency. Being very generous with flour, roll out onto the counter into a rectangle shape. Roll up with lots of flour and cut into discs that will unroll as noodles (the dough will stick to itself if you didn’t use enough flour!). Seriously, be generous with the flour. Let the dough strips stay on your counter for about 3 hours or until you’re ready to make the soup. While you’re doing that, you can pick the meat off the chicken bones, ready to add back to the soup later.
About 20 minutes before you’d like to eat, bring the broth to a boil – add a little bouillon for flavor – if you want sliced carrots, add them now. Add the noodles, a few at a time, with extra flour on them, to the broth and stir occasionally as you add them so they don’t stick. Noodles will cook in about 20 minutes. Adjust heat as needed. The extra flour on the noodles thickens the broth. Return chicken to soup and heat through. Salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!
Gorgeous, Inspiring Sites!
I had never before seen The French Garden House. I normally like much more spare design but it is so very lovely.
I wish I spoke or read Norwegian because here are two design sites that I discovered today. I love Danish and Norwegian design because they use what they have and it is spare and somehow still is very, very pretty. Clears the mind. Check out the two sites here and here.
Asthma: One Breath at a Time + Buteyko
Last week I woke up mad. Mad at my own lungs. They aren’t working right and it is very frustrating to dream that you can’t breathe and wake up gasping for air. I never had to use inhalers until my last pregnancy. Since then, I use them intermittently, for exercise, or when my lungs are tight. Well, it seems like every September and October (for 2 years running, anyway – literally) I become heavily dependent on two different inhalers. The step back in my running is not a pretty one. I hate taking medications. I get even more frustrated because it becomes highly difficult for me to run even a half an hour at a very easy pace where I’m used to running an hour and pushing my time or doing intervals to increase my speed. I have this terrible paranoioa that it might never get better. It is so tiring to even walk across the room when you can’t breathe. My stupid lungs. I was feeling this way and even cried a bit until I realized…hey, wait! Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago I said I would be grateful if I could even run a mile? And another thing — 37 years ago, way back in 1971, I was born premature, at 26 weeks (very early for 1971!), weighing 1 lb 15 oz, with hyaline membrane disease and my lungs were good to me then. They pulled me through against all the odds and I know they can do it again. I have good lungs. They have been good to me when so much could have gone wrong. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself as I know there are millions of people with lung cancer or lung issues much worse than mine. These ARE good lungs and I am thankful for them. Maybe another set – or even a normal set – wouldn’t have pulled me through. These lungs have allowed me to do many great things. I’ll go and be thankful now – one breath at a time.
Update yesterday: I went for a good hour long run this morning and had to use my inhaler beforehand but was happy with the results. I’m not feeling so anxious about it. I read up on some interesting asthma theories, including the Buteyko method for controlling asthma. There are so many valid medical studies on this – it’s incredible! If you haven’t checked it out, go here for free information. The rate at which this can reduce medication is incredible – I have tried it and it helps almost instantly (it worked especially well during the night) but I still need my inhaler to run. What I find most fascinating is the theory behind why it works. Interesting!
Ben Still Needs Naptime
Well, I wanted to keep Bennie up so he would go to bed on time one evening and around 3 p.m. this is what I found in the family room. I guess he’s just not ready to outgrow his nap (that’s fine by me!). What a kid! He was snuggled up sideways in our red chair-and-a-half. He’s been called a girl twice this week PLUS we were served two boys’ and one girl’s happy meal the other day. I think it may be time for a haircut but I’m not ready. Lili’s hubby, Ron, says he would look like the Wendy’s girl if his hair was red. Yeah, probably. He is such a great kid! He’s just so rough and tough and wears camo so much we never considered he’d look girly in any way!
Middle School Curriculum Rant #1 (I expect there will be more)
I just finished a 1970 copy of a MIDDLE SCHOOL text called Close Up: A Collection of Short Plays. I enjoyed it immensely! It was better than a magazine – each play was short enough that I could read it in little bits of time but feel liked I’d watched an entire drama. These one act plays are fantastic. If you’ve never read short drama, I highly recommend it. It leaves so much to the imagination and is a very cunning and concise craft. What bothers me is this: Why is this textbook withdrawn and why are our children reading much less interesting and much less thought provoking, easier texts today? I visited my son’s 7th grade reading classroom at the middle school’s open house and discussed what was going to be read this year with his reading teacher. I was delighted to see Shakespeare’s Hamlet among the reading list. I was not delighted to see the dumbed down version they were reading. I was appalled – the original text on the left hand side with the easier, new version on the right hand side of each page. What?!? This is someone’s interpretation. It is not Shakespeare. Every nuance, vocabulary, contextual usage, etc., will be completely lost. What kid is not going to prefer to read the easy side? This makes it seem that Shakespeare must difficult to understand since we’re being provided a comprehensible version. Nothing could be further from the truth (this reminds me of the Barbie that said, “Math is HARD!”). Give ’em the real deal and I don’t think the reader will let you down but you have to let them discover and help them through discussion – NOT replacing the text. We truly demand so little of our kids these days; whatever happened to excellence and enlightenment? Nah, it’d be easier just to excel for them and make it easier on them because we love them, right? Geesh. Rant over, for now.
The Winner of the Blissful Brownies Giveaway is…
…Kara, commenter #2, who said, “how cool are you?!! yummy! i need to enter more online giveaway’s…have you won a lot? hey, how’s ebay by the way? i took a break over the summer that is now lasting thru the fall :). i LOVED the cash from ebay, but now that i’m not doing it i love the stress free days as well :). i need to find the strength to re-list all my stuff!!”. Thanks for entering, everybody – there were only 12 entries so your chances were good. I’m still trying to figure out something great to giveaway this week so check back as I’ll have found something good by the end of the week for sure. Kara’s entry was chosen numerically by random from random.org. For those of you who care about such things, comment #7 came in second place – I wish I had a consolation prize (maybe next time)! I hope you enjoy the brownie recipes from the book and, hey, feel free to send me some!
Adorable Site – Pimp Stitch
I Know My Husband Loves Me
There are times that I am – without any shadow of doubt – sure that my husband loves me. Today is one of those times. The realization occurred to me as I was talking to him on my cell phone and he was on the other end, standing in the feminine protection aisle of the grocery store on his lunch hour, calling me to ask about brands and sizes, saying certain words OUT LOUD! Then he proceeded to Jimmy John’s for a diet coke and came home with all my goodies. I wasn’t feeling well and this was a monumental sacrifice on his part, or, now that I think about it – maybe not. I think he’s buttering me up for the annual Rolfson Family Pheasant Hunt next weekend. He got the sandwich at Jimmy John’s after all. This man would do anything for lunch — I mean, love — and 17 years of it, too.
I had originally scheduled the last two posts to round out the week but I couldn’t resist publishing them. I think I’ve posted enough today to take tomorrow and Friday off (or actually spend it working). Do I hear a collective sigh of relief??