Tuesday fun

I've decided to tackle today and plow through my chores. So, why am I watching Heroes? I love me some heroes! But I'm watching Heroes because I'm FAHREEZING. The promised temperature drop hasn't happened yet, but it's supposed to, and then this afternoon we're supposed to get some of that dreaded snow. I'm in a little state of shock, it's not that I didn't know I was moving to a snow area in April, heck, I moved from Boston, so that's not the shock. It's that...well, it's cold, and this summer was gloriously hot. It really was just idyllic. I wish that I could explain to you how marvelous it was. Anyway, I'm taking the time to wrap myself in a blanket and warm up.

I'm working on the deck today. I have taken the tiki torches and tossed them, removed the zip ties from the posts that were holding them up - - I need to find a little more of a classy way of holding up the tiki torches over the winter! I've also pulled in the plant holders and during the day I'm going to take the chairs down into the basement. I have no desire to drag the table around though. I'll leave that to the man.

In other goals I really want to get the trash in the basement into the garage. Trash in basement? I've been going through boxes like crazy. There's a ton of things that I want to just shed myself of from my life with Gary. I'm so glad to be able to do this on my own schedule. I'm ready to do this now.

When I finish with that stuff I'm going to take my scrapbook paper out of the horizontal storage and put it into cropper hopper holders. I really dislike the way my cardstock is being stored, and just need to start tackling that and getting it into a use able setup.

I will post my recipe for cheesy garlic bread later today. It's so yummy.

Cheescake is now full circle

The cheesecake that I so diligently made on Sunday was taken out of the refrigerator tonight after a meal of lasagne and a salad with a slab of delicious, incredible cheese bread. I will post the recipe tomorrow. It's really THAT good.

Today I didn't get a lot done, I hate it when I feel like I've spent the day washing dishes from one thing to the other. I even lost patience with the dishwasher and pulled out various dishes so that I could just get them put away.

Tomorrow I hope to get lots of stuff done. It's really rewarding to see things get finished, but it's even better to finish things so that I can play without guilt!

NaBloPoMo

I'm doing National Blog Posting Month. Mostly because I'm waaaay to lame to do NaNoWriMo.

So I'm going to challenge myself to do this everyday. Some days are going to be pretty lame though!

Today was a heck of a day. The oldest kid worked very late, so she stayed at a friends apartment near the club. Today she was very tired, and slept through a chunk of church. It was annoying, but I was honestly glad that she was there. It's nice to have them around, even if they aren't always cheerful.

Then we went off to the store and dropped a huge chunk of change on groceries.

After we finished putting things away I made a pumpkin chocolate chip cheesecake! I used this recipe.
I haven't tried it yet, but I will tomorrow for dinner. I tossed in a few mini morsels ( roughly a cup full) into the batter before pouring it into the pan. I've never made a cheesecake before, but you can be sure that I'm going to do it again. It wasn't super easy, but it wasn't as difficult as other things I've made.

We then made grilled steaks for us, and grilled a couple chicken breasts for the eldest and her buddy. I made a couple quick side dishes... green beans with bacon and garlic, and potato gnocci and an alfredo sauce. It was wonderful. The whole meal was just a pleasure, and I'm looking forward to heating up the steak and gnocci for lunch tomorrow. I've discovered that grilled meats actually heat up quite nicely on the grill. I just set them on a piece of aluminum and then heat it up that way. So if you hear a lot of happy, yummy sounds in this area of the country around noon, it'll be me eating up the leftovers!

Tomorrow night for dinner I'm going to make Lasagne, and we'll follow that up with the pumpkin cheesecake from the cooking part of our show today.

I am feeling REALLY good lately. My workouts are paying off. I feel stronger, and my clothes are getting bigger. It's quite nice!

Don't forget to "Fall Back!"

Well, today I taught the class at the store. It was not exactly a hard class, it was basically one where you use the scraps that you already have. I tried to teach them to pull out scraps that they liked, blur their eyes to make sure the papers all work together. Then to choose a background piece of cardstock to help all the colors blend.

Pretty simple, but still a lot of work! We used a ton of punches and I taught them all about visual triangles and ways to use simple shapes. It was fun, and one of the class students was very fun, her layouts came together very fast. The other student was a little slower, but had some great ideas for her page.

In the end I think that I learned a ton of things, I need to make sure the class knows that time is a ticking. I think that I'm also going to work on handouts so that they can have something to go home with. Although they each put together two layouts, so that worked out really well!

In other news, during the Round Up, I managed to finish every one of the challenges! I'm liking that too! I like it when I get a ton of things done, and I'm glad to be able to scrap those dreaded graduation pictures that I've been avoiding.

OK. Now, off to bed. I need to remember to "Fall Back" with the clock in the AM. An extra hour of sleep! NIRVANA!

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I teach my scrapping class at the local store. I really am looking forward to it, and hope that the ladies in the class really enjoy themselves and learn lots.

Not much else to say!

Loving my stuff!

I just went downstairs to grab a few of my crafting supplies, and I started to laugh at all of the Fiskars tools that I have sitting on my craft table. It makes me laugh when I see how much of their products that I have and use.

My favorite is the old standby paper trimmer. I also have the rotary trimmer with all the cool shape blades, but my favorite, and the one that I reach for time and time again is their simple trimmer. I like that I can see where the blade hits the paper so that I can slice out just what I need for my project.

My second favorite tool is the Titanium Nitride Mighty Snip. I use it to snip one of the spokes on the roll of adhesive as I pop it into my ATG gun. It really has made loading the gun a simple process ( if I could just remember each time which direction the take up reel needs to go! Ugh!).

My third, or perhaps Very first tool would be the 12 x 18 self healing mat. It's always right there, beneath my project, protecting my table top. I don't use it to cut on, I usually throw a glass mat on top of it when I'm using an exacto, but I do use it for gluing and painting and everything else that gets dirty. I've found that it comes as clean as I need it to when I'm finished, and it does a fantastic job protecting my table top.

Batteries are a girls best friend

Last night the man is here, and we've finished with a very late dinner because we had the neighbor over with her very shrill daughters. Dinner didn't get made until So we settle down to watch tv. We have three...well, make that four remotes. We also have a universal remote somewhere around here.

1. The remote for the tv can also work the cable box, but not the amplifier.
2. The remote for the amplifier only works the amplifier, not the cable box, nor the TV. BUT, the TV doesn't work if the amplifier isn't on, because the way we have the system set up, the TV is a monitor.
3. The remote for the cable box doesn't work because it needs batteries. The cable remote can adjust the sound on the TV/monitor and it changes the channels, of course.

Now, I'm a much more practical person. I don't have the "high functioning brain" that the man has. If something is broke, I take a look at the object and immediately try to fix it. The man will sit there and RANDOMLY poke at the buttons on various remotes. Not paying attention to what buttons he's pushing, but he pushes buttons like crazy and DEPROGRAMS the remotes that ARE working. These are the remotes that we had the technician program when they installed our system. I'm now left with a dead cable remote and 2 other remotes that are out of program. It was all I could not to whack his knuckles with the dead remote when I came back into the room AFTER HAVING TAKEN THE LID OFF THE BATTERY COMPARTMENT and removed the batteries when I see him poking at keys, three remotes in front of him... gaah!

So, I tell him..."There are no batteries in that remote!" pop the batteries back in, and click on the cable box. Then I fiddle with the remote for the TV/monitor and by some stroke of luck that turns on. Then 20 minutes later, I found the magic combination for the amplifier.

Then we watched nonstop CSI. I think that I'm going to go nuts if I see Horatio take those black sunglasses off and spout an aphorism one more time.

So, today is going to be a good day. I remembered to put the leashes on the dogs before taking them out to the yard for their poop session. Therefore preventing me from having to run all over the neighborhood in my jammies. It never fails that they want to run across the street to see Yogi and BooBoo and I'm wearing the man's boots and my nightshirt, hoping to be able to just stand on the front porch so then I look like a crazed woman shouting the names of the dogs as I run through a series of backyards.

I may actually get to do some scrapping. I loves me some scrapping.