Invitations

So our awesome Valetine's Day party was an email invite but I still wanted it to be special so I whipped this guy up. Again, if you would like to use it next year, just let me know and I'll take the 30 seconds to customize it for you. I think a nicely designed email invite has more of the effect of a paper invite when it comes to building anticipation and attendance. A step up from a facebook event at least.

We couldn't let the St. Patrick's Day party be any less awesome since we actually planned it a month in advance. For St. Patty's day we decided to let J and Ellie in on the fun.

First I carved a shamrock out of a potato which took about 3 minutes. Then I dipped it in modge podge (because I was out of white glue) and stamped it on white cardstock.

Then I tapped the cards onto a board (this one is a random piece of Ikea furniture from the time I bought a pile of scraps in the as-is section for $5. It is awesome for crafts when I want to protect my table)

Then I showed the girls how to do darkest at the bottom and light at the top. I have some liquid watercolor so it helped that they only had one color to choose from. Otherwise we would have needed a rainbow look/

Once they got tired of it, I went back over them to even out the colors for the ombre look we were going for. Then we let them dry and peeled off the tape. I liked the white border so we didn't trim them. 

Since we only had 8 invites, I just hand wrote the info. Add a little washi tape to the envelope and BAM! you know it will be a fun party.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Kitty collars

I was picking up after my delightful progeny the other day and found all the puzzle pieces arranged with a semblance of order, ten feet away from their proper home. Then I noticed a small collection of pilfered hair ties and realized this was an intentional tableau. I asked the artist what it all meant, but in true artistic fashion, she left me to construe my own meaning.

My money is on a collar. Or a food bowl. But why only the kitties? Thoughts?

Lobster

So I have tried to expand my culinary endeavors lately. Mostly because I dislike making dinner in general. Fore the most part this means buying a new kind of cheese each trip. It really makes a huge difference in the delicious factor of meals. And in true Geevz fashion, I may have taken the hobby a little overboard. There is usually 6-8 different kinds of cheese in my deli drawer at any given moment these days. My current favorite is smoked Gruyere, which my friend Brian described as bacon cheese. I think the contents now is Jarlsberg, pepper jack, string cheese, creamy swiss, fresh grated parmigiana, smoked gouda, and whatever cheese Babybel original actually is.

I even learned how to make homemade ricotta, but that is a post for a different day.

The whole point is trying out new cooking adventures and next to my beloved cheese aisle at Winco (praise be its name forever oh king of grocery stores) there were frozen lobster tails for $4 each.

It's a life goal of mine to cook a live lobster so I thought this might be a gateway of sorts. and for $8, I could afford to royally screw it up. It did totally weird me out though. I mean, this is how it starts out.

It has a slightly spiny fin and legs. The legs got me the most before I mind-over-matter-ed it.

 Bleck. I had to put on my big girl panties and sliced off the legs and removed that belly casing part. Thank goodness for the internet and it's excellent resources. I mean, suppose people actually had to use cookbooks or take classes or something. Weird.  It was surprisingly easy though. After you chop of the legs, you add butter and some seasoning and bake it in foil for 20 minutes or so. Then you get this.

Really, lobster is just an expensive carrier for garlic butter, but it was yummy all the same. Next time you have a special occasion and want to save the money of going out, give it a shot! Until then, go buy some fancy cheese until you get your courage up.

Outside adventures

So a few weeks back many parts of the valley had snow. Not my house, but you can see it on the mountains from my backyard.



Lately though, we've had the weather people suffer through the summers for, days that look like this.

I'm still whining because I wanted more days of cold weather but J is having a blast. I'm not asking for a New England or Minnesota winter, but I'd happily take a Flagstaff or Denver one. J is having a blast though. I love sending her outside and trying to figure out what game is happening in her head.

This day I'm pretty sure she was getting in her car and going to work. It was followed by lots of  "bye bye! See ya! Have a good day!"

Then there was lots of jumping and exploring going on here. Maybe there was bug eating I didn't catch as I sneakily observed the toddler in her natural environment.

She notices she is being watched.

Then waits nonchalantly for her moment...

Then she attacks! Howling her war cry while she charges.

This day she was playing in the wind after berating her puppy. The puppy's infraction led to banishment and a finger pointing, "Outside!" She may have heard this phrase several times...

"cheese!"

Mustard and Carrots

For all the grief she gave me with eating her first year of life, J has turned into a wonderful little eater. She doesn't usually eat a ton, but she tries everything and legitimately enjoys vegetables. This week she saw me putting mustard on fish (dude, rub it on tilapia, then dip the fish in  bread crumbs with parm cheese and pan fry it in a bit of oil. Heaven for dinner in about 15 minutes) and wanted to try the mustard.

She didn't vocalize this fact, but started to touch the raw fish and lick her fingers repeatedly. So I gave her a little plate of mustard to try and prevent food poisoning while I finished dinner. She was downing it so I thought I'd try and teach her the true meaning of a condiment by dipping carrots in mustard.

This resulted in one mouthful of masticated carrot on her plate while the other carrot was used in fun dip fashion.

Mustache Glasses

In more glass etching adventures, I made these bad boys for a friend's Christmas gift. Of course I didn't get around to them in December so I made them into a Valentine's gift instead. And I'm blogging about it in March. I think I may be in a time warp. Anyways, I thought they turned out cool and were perfect because she is slightly obsessed with mustaches and adds them to every picture on facebook.

Daddy's Song

Lately I caught J singing her very own composition that I have titled, "Daddy's Song."  Completely spontaneous and unprompted because I was busy doing nothing on the internet. Of course I only got the last 5 secs of it before she was more concerned about charging the drum set.

Thankfully I was giving an encore performance a couple weeks later as I was doing my hair. You can ignore the last 30 seconds when she gets distracted by the glass objects now accessible from her perch on a stool.

And while I was telling Lil's Sis about Daddy's Song, J performed this little number while we skyped. Probably the best one if you are only going to watch one video.

The last lines are "Daddy work, Mommy work, goodnight"