What I’m Making for FriendsGiving
I am especially thankful this year. For reasons this mostly introverted personality still can’t quite fathom, we have been embraced by so many big-hearted people in Georgia. I don’t necessarily walk around under a cloud of warm fuzzies, so I think that says a lot more about them than me. When you move someplace new, without a support network, it can be overwhelming. To find people who have your back if you are running late for the bus stop or who will watch your kids when you are in the hospital or who make you laugh on a daily basis – well, it’s my idea of hitting the lottery. I’m…
When Would You Paint A Counter?
The the burning question of the day is when would a sane person paint a counter? Answer? When they are desperate. In picture form, desperation looks like this: That is an unfortunate countertop made doubly worse by some sort of permanent marker that even Mr. Eraser and his band of toxic cleaners could not fix. To the child that decided to draw a heart on the counter…I’m not feeling the love. And no, it wasn’t one of mine. The countertop came to us this way. This bathroom needs to be gutted and reconfigured, but that’s not happening in the near future. In the meantime, I thought I would read all of the…
Fixing Nasty Grout Is Pretty Easy
The Junk Whisperer is coming to visit me next month and it prompted me to take a good hard look at the bathroom she would be using during her stay. Normally, if I have to go in there, I just kind of squint and say to myself, “hey, it’s not so bad…if you don’t turn on the light.” I’m fairly certain the bathroom is original to the house. My powers of deduction lead me to conclude that the grout in this bathroom is also original to the house. While I’m holding on to the most fervent of delusions that the grout has been thoroughly cleaned periodically in the last 50 years,…
Hat Box Makeover
I grew up in a family where the ladies wore hats to weddings and funerals for other family members. It’s a formality in our increasingly casual society that I love for the respect it brings to a momentous occasion. I don’t have many hats, but the ones I do have are kept protected in hat boxes – usually in the top of my closet. Except in this house, our closets are itty-bitty and the hat boxes have not had priority placement in the closet. So, that means they’ve been sitting out where I can see them right before I shut my eyes each night. The nightmares were getting to me, so I decided…
Gallery Wall
I do a lot of confessing on the ol’ blog. Why stop now? After we moved here in March, I decided to hang my first ever gallery wall. I know, I know. What took me so long? Visions of every bad gallery wall I saw in the 80s, that’s what. I had some frames and in April I hung them on a wall I deemed perfect for this inaugural endeavor. I told myself I would fill them with pictures before my children’s birthday party in May. Of course, that didn’t happen. After the party was over, I figured everyone had seen my wall of framed strangers, so why rush it?…
Hello, My Name Is Stuck on Your Shirt
Usually it is my children who cause me laundry grief – especially when it comes to leaving stickers on clothes. If I had a nickel for every sticker that was inappropriately placed on a wall, a door, a car seat, a forehead or article of clothing, well, I’d be rich. When I found my husband’s blue polo shirt rolled up in the hamper, I didn’t think twice about tossing it in the wash. Surely, my husband knows by now what happens when you wash a shirt that has a sticker attached to it. Surely. For the record, the “hello, my name is” name tag is a sticker. A very sticky sticker.…
Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits
Sometimes you have to give in to the urge. The craving. It’s the right thing to do when there is cheese involved. I modified my absolute favorite biscuit recipe to be a little bit more savory. It seemed like the right thing to do on a cold, blustery day. Yes, we do occasionally get those in Georgia and it prompts some serious hibernation tendencies and carbohydrate consumption. I’m not sure what accounts for those things on the other days in my life. When I went to link up my favorite biscuit recipe, I realized I haven’t ever posted about my favorite biscuits. The HORROR! How is that possible? I’m definitely…
All I Want For Christmas
It’s a slippery slope, but I feel compelled to violate my “one holiday at a time” rule today. It’s for a good reason though. You see, for the last 5 years, I’ve been telling my son that the “J” initial on his Christmas stocking is just a super fancy “T” with a curve at the bottom. That’s right. The poor kid doesn’t have his own Christmas stocking. I’ve been putting his stocking stuffers into my husband’s stocking, which means that my husband’s stocking stuffers just lie around willy nilly. In the grand scheme of all of the injustices in the world, I realize this one doesn’t even rate. However, my son is in…
Cooking with Kids. Did I Survive?
There is a noticeable difference between 2nd and 3rd grade. I don’t remember this from my own experiences in elementary school (maybe I blocked it out?), but I have noticed it with my oldest now in 3rd grade. Yes, the work is harder, but the biggest difference is the expectation of the student. It’s all about personal responsibility and building independence. Ding, ding, ding! Those are some parenting buzzwords you can take to the bank. Except that independence thing…my babies can stay home forever. Kidding! So, so kidding. They are going to need that independent trait so they can get rich and buy me that home in the south of France.…
Pomegranate White Chocolate Cookies
A lot of good things happen when Kroger has pomegranates on sale for a dollar each. And by good, I mean mouth-watering. Before this produce sale, I knew two things for certain: 1) I like pomegranate juice. 2) Pomegranate juice is expensive. Here’s what I did not know: 1) The least annoying way to get the pomegranate seeds out of the shell. Clearly, extracting those suckers is why the juice is so expensive. 2) The proper name for that shell and the seeds. (It’s the rind and the arils, by the way.) 3) What to do with the vast amounts of arils that come out of two pomegranates. To solve the…
