Maybe will start cooking again

I cooked last night.  And the night before.  Maybe it will become a habit again?  Maybe my husband won't have to subsist off of cereal anymore?  I'm not holding my breath yet.  But my domestic leanings are starting to stir again.  Possibly.

I'm starting small.  I made BBQ chicken in the crockpot Tuesday.  Toss frozen chicken in the pot, and cover with BBQ sauce.  Then I made a frozen stirfry last night, that I thought was gross, but Blake said was decent and he'd eat the leftovers.  I had a small bowl, then had some Eggo Waffles.  But I also made a recipe for Taco Joe Dip, it was really good!  I think I'll use it as a filling in quesadillas tonight.

Taco Joe Dip

• 1 can (16 ounces) kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can (15-1/4 ounces) whole kernel corn, drained
• 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can (14-1/2 ounces) stewed tomatoes
• 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
• 1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies, drained
• 1 envelope taco seasoning
• 1/2 cup chopped onion

Put ingredients in crockpot (4 hours on high, or 6-8 hours on low). Serve with Tortilla chips

Also, and update.  My itchy eyes are back.  So, I'm keeping them under control with eye drops that have antihistamine in them.  It's manageable so far.  I'm not going back to the Dr. for it though.

Doogan playing with a table

We recently got a side table that has a lamp attached to it, and a magazine rack on the bottom.  Here's Doogan enjoying the new toy.

Video 1

From 6.24.10

Video 2

From 6.24.10

Absent

Yes, I've been absent lately.  Last week was a challenging week.  Blake upgraded some of his sound equipment and there was a bigger learning curve than we expected.  But, we are past it now, and smarter for it :)  I'm proud that he and I figured it out.  That's all I will say about that, and will spare you the recap involving tears and late nights.  We're sane again now.

I've been reading a lot lately, still.  It really is my escape and I love that I love to read.  It's so "me."  My office manager here at work, oddly, has the most awesome taste in books.  Some of my best reads have been suggested by her: "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle", "The Pillars of the Earth" (which started my love affair with author Ken Follett)," another fun author named Lisa Gardner, and most recently, the author Jodi Picoult.  I just finished "My Sister's Keeper" which, yes, was recently a movie that was deemed "awful", but the book was really good.  After that book I am now reading another book by her called "The Plain Truth", which I am liking even better that the Sister's Keeper one.  Her writing does have a way of grabbing you and flowing you through the story.  Her subjects of her novels are always some contemporary controversial topic.  They're clean novels and thought provoking.  I'm enjoying her and will continue to read through her repetoire.

I also have been listening to "The Swan Thieves" by Elizabeth Kostova on audio book.

I listen on my 20 min drive to work, and that has been really fun.  My recent book club read was "The Bufflehead Sisters" which I enjoyed a lot but don't feel comfortable recommending because of some scenes in the book.  It mainly focused on a deep childhood friendship and it's evolution into adulthood.  Our next meeting is this Saturday, I'm so excited!

Blake gets home from Arkansas tonight - he headlined at a Festival there last night.  In the rain.  But he said about 40-50 people stayed and toughed it out in their lawn chairs under their umbrellas :)

Haven't done anything to the house lately.  It's kind of a wreck right now.  I'm counting on this weekend to inspire me to clean up.  Then, my immediate to do list includes:

• Painting the Guest Bath laminate counter-top - yes I'm going to paint it.
• Find wall sconces that do not require an electrician to wire them
• Finalize my decision on Master Bed, Guest Bed, and Living room ceiling fan purchases
• Hang the new Hobby Lobby decorations I got in the office!
• Hang the framed prayers I made for Blake at Christmas in his practice room - yep, they still aren't hung

I think that should keep me occupied for a bit.

Mirrors

I love decorating with mirrors.  And white lights! In fact, at my wedding the only decor I really had were white Christmas lights and mirrors and greenery. 

Blake and I had found a magazine picture of these 3 huge floor mirrors leaned up against a living room wall - just gorgeous! We'd been on a hunt to find something similar since we have such a massive living room with nothing on the walls.  We kept looking and looking and mirrors were just SO expensive!  Usually, they were at least $200 for the size we were wanting.  The ones in the picture we liked so much were $400 a piece.  Yikes.  There are starving kids in Africa, I don't need three $400 mirrors.  But!!  We found some mirrors at Kirkland's this past weekend that were close enough to what we were looking for that we sprung for them - and best of all they were marked down to clearance for $40 each. Blake hung them immediately and we got some sconces we are going to mount, too.  But we'll need an electrician to wire them.  We're hoping next weekend we can arrange that.

Here's the mirrors Blake hung.  We wanted them chunkier, but for $40 a piece, these are perfect.

And here's Blake modeling the sconces :)  They'll sure be pretty all lit up.

Love my hubby. He measured everything out and it's perfectly level. Like, Perfectly.  He's such a stickler on all that.  I just commented - you should be glad I'm not hanging them, they'd just be eyeballed and called "good." He smiled and said, "I know. That's why I'm hanging them."  And that's also why I'm not the one that irons in our household.  The way I iron drives Blake crazy, so he does it.  I'm not complaining.  Have you ever seen that "Everybody Loves Raymond" episode where Ray fakes that he doesn't know how to do laundry and even ruins something just so Deborah will do the laundry for him.  Yeah, I kind of do that with ironing.  But Blake pulls the laundry card on me all the time (saying he doesn't know how to do it) so I declare us "even."  I may need to verify with his mother if she ever trained him to do laundry.  I think he's faking (except he did shrink some shirts one time).

New Additions

We added a couple things on Saturday. I redid this lamp. I got it used from Craigslist and it was an ugly old yellow. The shade was too small. So I sanded the lamp down and spray painted it white and got a new shade from Ross. I really like how it turned out.

We got this bench at an antique store for $40! Love it. Have already sat on it a lot.

Got new throw pillows for 60% off at Kohls. Most people liked the pillows that came with the couch. But I didn't. They were too modern for me. I plan to get a couple more accent pillows that have my intended accent color of a light blue for the room.

And we got this cute stool to go under our desk in the kitchen at an antique store.  Slowly but surely!! 

Doogan Called the Police

We've been giving Doogan increments of more freedom. Instead of putting him in his room every time we leave the house, we've been leaving him for longer and longer times to roam.  We've done up to a few hours now without incident (other than Doogan knocking over an open box of Bisquick).  So, Blake suggested we leave him out to roam the house during the night, that way we'd hear if he did anything really bad.  We got to bed pretty late last night, around midnight.  Not 30 minutes later, we are awoken to the screeching of our home alarm.  Blake and I were in a sleep daze, totally out of it and not comprehending things.  I struggle to the front of the house where we keep the alarm pad that sits on our dining area counter top.  I punch in the deactivation code and the shrill alarm finally shut off.  Frustrated because we've had false alarms before due to equipment low-battery, I thought the system was acting up again.  But Blake commented: "Doogan must have stepped on some buttons and made it sound off".  I put Doogan in the laundry room and shut the door for the night.  No more roaming for him tonight.  I go back to the alarm and press the status button to see what it said happened, and it said the Panic button had been pressed.  Still in a sleep-fog, I go back to bed.  But as I try to go back to sleep, I become fully awake.  Of course.  Then, I think, wait-if he pressed the panic alarm, that calls the police, doesn't it?  I waited.  Nah, the alarm company hadn't even called to check what happened, they wouldn't dispatch the police yet would they?  20 minutes later I hear a soft knock on our front door.  Thank goodness I had thought of the possibility or I would have been completely asleep, and our doorbell doesn't work. So who knows what would have happened.  I greet the policeman at the door and tell him about our cat.  He left and I went back to bed, still thinking it was odd our alarm company hadn't called to check on us.  At 5:15 this morning, Blake's brother, Brent, called to see if we were okay because he'd been contacted by the alarm company about our panic signal.  So we had a wild night last night!!  It may be awhile before I leave Doogan out by himself again!

Around the House

We've been fixing things around the house. Blake hung our bikes up in the garage!!




And he dug up all the overgrown grass from around our bushes.




And we hired the plumber to come fix out leaky master showerhead. He installed an access panel in my clean, painted wall. I gotta find something to put over now.

 

But it turned out well on the inside!!