fancy

 

I stepped into this decade and got a phone that doesn't weigh 8 pounds.  I'm not gonna lie...I miss my dear slide.  But I feel very fancy now, and if I close my eyes and imagine really hard, my shoes are Prada.  

 

Trying to get the hang of the camera options is exactly that...tryyyyying.  It seems like the pictures should be more clear, yet I don't know how to make them that way.  It just doesn't quite compare to the real thing - I'm not ready to switch from my heavy canon camera anytime soon.  But here's a few happy things my camera found today...

 



 

 

double digits

So my little girl turned ten!

It does feel like a decade ago that I carried her in my belly and met her for the first time.  But looking at pictures like this....I can still smell her sweet skin and hear her little voice.

She's a headstrong girl who challenges me daily to be intentional in growing my kids.  She has taken me down a few notches and shown me just how much I don't know, and is the first of my three to prove that my capacity to love is greater than I ever knew. 

And now I see glimpses of a grown-up popping through.  I like what I see and I know she is Going Places!

For her birthday, we gave her a "Double Digit Room".  Translated loosely, it means "Something in there will eat you and you'll never make it to 11, so something must be done Room".  Ryan and I put her in front of the TV and went to town...

The pictures don't do it justice.  For starters, she keeps everything.  EVERYTHING.  Every note, wrapper, birthday treat, pencil, sock, tag, and booger.  I'm going to threaten grandparents and all well-meaning people within an inch of their lives if they give her one more trinket.  One more...I mean it people, don't try me!

 



 A binkie, a face fan, and an old church seating chart all macgyver-ed together with duck tape and hanging from the closet.  This is what I mean.

 

This is my This Sucker is Mine! gameface.

Three hours and six garbage bags snuck out the front door later...

She loved it!  The best part though is the way her "new room" has translated to a "new girl".  She is acting more calm, more mature, more kind, more in control of herself.  I think something about it all showed her that we believe she is truly growing up.  That we know she's a girl on a mission.  And that we adore and respect who she is becoming.

Well, mostly...

That is how she posed when I said I wanted a pic.  Which is terrifying. 

Good thing the room is clean because it looks like she'll be locked in it without access to social media for the next 10 years.

superwoman makes meatballs

While I made supper tonight, Sage drew my picture...

I'm rockin' wings and a frontbutt. 

I feel though, that with an S on my chest, I'm basically invincible. 

Which includes making meatballs and the easiest twice-baked potatoes EVAR.

There's just no way to take pretty pictures of meatballs.  Similar to photographing toes.  (Don't try to tell me you haven't noticed that too.)  Do pinterest people have professional photographers living in their spare bedroom?!  For real, how do they do it?  Well, I don't have the time or the skills but you're going to have to just go ahead and trust me that these two recipes are the bomb-diggity.  I haven't posted them ever because I can't get a good picture.  Also because I'm not mature enough to talk at length about balls.

But the frontbutt has empowered me to just get them out there anyway, so here goes...

Balls of Meat:

1 lb. ground beef

3/4 c. whole ground oats

1/4 c. chopped onion

1/3 c. fat free evaporated milk

1 egg

2 carrots, peeled, and chopped very finely (I don't always do this....learned it from Mom...its a great way to sneak in some extra nutrition)

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper 

Sauce:

1 c. ketchup

1/3 c. brown sugar

1/8 c. chopped onion

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Combine all ball ingredients in the kitchen-aid mixer.  Form 9 raquet-ball size balls.  Place in an 8x8 baking dish.  Combine the sauce on the stove over medium-high heat until sugar is melted.  Pour the sauce over the balls.  Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees, for one hour.  Allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Sandy Potatoes:

Aunt Sandy from Illinois made these whenever we visited.  They have evolved through various kitchens over the years, but eating them still makes me feel spoiled, and they are perfectly Fancy-Easy.  Like Sandy. 

8 baking potatoes, quartered, with skin on

5 Tbsp. butter, cut into about 16 tiny squares

1 1/2 c. shredded colby-jack cheese

1/4 c. green onion, diced

salt and pepper

Spread out the potatoes, open side up in a 9x13 glass baking dish.  Put 3 Tbsp of the butter squares on the potatoes.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  Take out of the oven and salt and pepper generously.  Add the remaining butter chunks.  Use a potato masher to mush down the potatoes....they don't need to be mashed completely - allow big chunks to remain.  Cover it all in the shredded cheese and green onion.  By now your meatballs should have 5-10 minutes remaining...put the pan back in the oven to melt the cheese.  Take both the potatoes and meatballs out of the oven at the same time.  And walllahhhh....Soive!



Happy Valentine's Day!

I hi-jacked their valentine's for school again this year.  Can't help myself.  Hey, at least this year, I let them pick what they wanted to do and say.  And they turned out SO fun!

 

With pop-rocks candy...

 





With a bag of chips...

With a chocolate heart...

I have arrived at grown-up-ness, because we spent VDay cleaning the house and working on job stuff on our laptops.  Now we are headed to the neighbors to let the kids play while we warm our insides with beverages and conversation.  And my heart is oh so full.

Happy heart day one and all!

laugh stack

Here's the stack...in hopes of taking everything a lot less seriously...

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs...author of Running with Scissors...So far very very funny and highly irreverent, yet still so poignant.  Incidentally, I never noticed that that there are 6 fingers on the hand on the cover til a friend pointed it out.

Adultery by Paulo Coelho....he also wrote The Alchemist.  Speaking of, have you read that yet?  Please please do.  It doesn't matter what the topic is, his insights are incredible. This book won't be funny, it will be heavy, but it will be by Coelho so its truths will feed me.  And I better hurry...the inter-library-loan chipmunks want it back asap.

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky.....he visited a bunch of hotels and talked to their staff and has the inside scoop on everything.  I already used his trick last weekend to not have to pay for a movie that I bought and only watched part of.  That's $19 more I spent at Ikea later.  Woot-woot!

Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern...NY Times bestseller.  Supposed to be hilarious.  I cant identify because my Dad doesn't really say shit (just in case he still reads my blog!!)

Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan....Another 921, because that's my section and I can't help it.  Also its supposed to be funny.

Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott.....Because, Lamott.

grumpies be gone

I have been taking myself waaaaay too seriously lately.  Which makes me irritable and grumpy and sleepy.  Which makes normally no-big-things make me feel like life is all going to shit. Shut down your bank accounts and sandbag your houses, the universe will implode in the next hour.  Maybe two.

I blame this insanely horrible winter, even though I've been hyggy-ing my hiney off.

Its just sooooooo  blaaaaahhhhh everrrrrrrywherrrrrre, Mommmmmmmmmmmmm.  Ugh.

My kids are whining it inside their little hearts and outside in their swinging fists.  And so am I, which leaves me very much wondering when the grown-ups are going to show up and take us to the pool or give us a licorice rope to make everything better.

There's legitimate little hiccups in life to blame, like getting strep throat and realizing I'm now geriatric enough that it takes seven times as long to get over things.  Similar to the way a snicker's candybar - a single stinking candybar! - affects my hips now that I'm in my fourth decade. 

But really its all truly no-big-things.  Which, in light of the fact that laughter is carbonated holiness (says Lammott), if I were in a better frame of mind, they could be just that - hiccups.

So...I'm doing little happy things like this:

 

And this:

And this:

Thank God for this little lady, who seems to sense the desperate need for laughter within these four walls and is pulling antics like this...

To be totally honest, I'm just plain saying Fuck It when Serious knocks at the door.  You know what I mean, don't you?  Its a mindset.

I have this condition inherited from my dad where I can't fake anything no matter how hard I try because my facial expressions betray me.  What I think is, for better or for worse, written on my face.  So here's what I want to look like...

"I plan to arrive at the end of this roller coaster with a firecracker in one hand and your hand in the other, head thrown back, yelling

'Whooo-hoooo that was one hell of a ride!'"