June 2013

I'm so behind and my OCD won't let me blog out of order!  I have half a mind to just scrap these missed months posts but I don't want to forget these little moments so I'll try to blow through these to get to the meaty stuff. 

June 8

Alyssa's grad party

Remember in mays post the madness that was my desk?  That was the creation of little Missy's graduation gift of a years worth of photos and mementos her mama cleverly snuck away.  I was glad to provide my artistic abilities.

June 14

Book club

Ms. Lindsay did an amazing job with our china themed party.  She choose the book Shanghai Girls by Lisa See.  The details in the book were so intricate you could picture everything.  It was so emotional and raw, incredible page turner, I had to get the second book because I had to know what was going to happen next!

As always we do what we do best eat, talk, kiss babies, eat, talk and eat some more!

June 16

The entire month of May my sister and her hubby were touring Europe. (Yes jealous!)

We had them over for Sunday dinner, I made my first ham and tried my hand at grandma's potato salad.  I did pretty darn good too.  My lovely sister brought me these delightful goodies, soap from Paris, bowls from Italy bracelets from Spain.  All in my favorite color, aqua!  It looked so pretty like this I left it to display in my book shelf.  

June  22-23

Yearly I put on a craft day which has affectionately become known as CYBO (craft your brains out) for 10 delirious hours of crafting food and games.  I normally to do it at a local high school in a big room but my connection retired so we were on the hunt for a new location.  Only problem is we were so used to the nice accommodations and being free is a big plus!  Another change this year was that I now have a house to host in, so I took the challenge of fitting 15 crafters between 3 rooms. 

I think these girls look pretty happy.

Aprils Missed Post

I know its been a really long time, nearly 3 whole months since I've blogged.  We've just had a lot going on that I'll get into in another post.  In the mean time I notice that this little post never got to make its debut in April. 

Friday April 12

I hosted book club at my house for the first time.  I picked my favorite book ever, The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy.  It's set between London and a small town in Ireland so I picked pub food for the theme.

I found this super cute little tea pot at World Market, reminded me of Big Ben.  I sat it on a stack of books by the same author and set out some teas.

What's more Pub like than a little beer?  Whilst at World Market I asked for a recommendation on Irish beers, I'm definately not a cono sur of any sort.  I was told that Wexford's was a cross between a blonde beer and cream soda, Delish!  Sounded like it would go great over vanilla ice cream, so I got everything in place for Beer Floats!!

We had a small showing, a quaint group of 4 got to sit around the kitchen table and drink wine. 

I found the best red I've ever tasted.  So not a red drinker, but this little baby was so smooth.

Along with our beer floats we had Pork and Cabbage sliders, Potatoes, Traditional meat pies and

soda bread with Dublin butter.

YUM

Saturday April 13

Our local scrap store closed (sad face) on the last day of March.  I'd really grown attached to the lady's that worked there in the past 5 years.  The only good part is that I totally scored on the going out of business sale and stocked up on supplies.  I even got a hanging rack to beautifully display all my treasures (stickers, embellishments, etc)

I have a gigantic clear cookie jar that houses my ribbon stash.  Since it was a lazy movie watching afternoon I decided to copy a technique I learned from Paper Craft Princess Cindy and band my ribbons with strips of brown paper bag.  They look so much better now and I'm able to find things much easier than dumping out the whole jar.

Sunday April 14
Curly Hair dont Care & the coffee that gets the morning going.

April 21

Went to visit my sissy in San Clemente to get my hair done before she rendezvous off to Europe for a month! We enjoyed the sunshine, had a nice hawaiian dinner and she made these delicious drinks with milk, cinnamon and chocolate whip vodka!  I'm a sucker for mason jars and colorful straws so had to snap a pic.

April 28

We got Zoe Monster....which we talked about here.

Thats it for April, now I'll move on to the blur that was May.



B is for Book Club and Babies

So there's no weigh in up date this week.  I was unable to make my meeting because I had a work meeting run late.  I'm sure this is a blessing as I DOVE off the wagon last weekend and I'm sure I gained.  I just got a little free pass till next week to make it up.   Instead I'll be sharing about book club.

I read the book "the Lost wife" based in Prague during WW2.  This is my favorite excerpt from the book with out spoiling the story.  It has special meaning to me from my own experiences, things in my past that I'm not willing or ready to blog about.

When I got to the host home it quickly became apparent that we would do more stuffing of faces than talking about the book!  There was an amazing spread of desserts and wine along with gourmet grilled cheese and soups.  What could possibly make grilled cheese gourmet you might ask?  I'll tell you. It starts with raisin nut bread lathered in butter stuffed with brie, prosciutto, apple, fig spread and arugula.  Take that Ham and Cheese!  There was also the option of brie and chocolate; and Yes, it was delicious.  I tried to be good, honest I did.  I started with half a sandwich and salad. It was just TO good.  So I had another quarter of the sandwich.  I did however avoid the desert table because I'm pretty sure I already ate my weight in points.

I had really been wanting to join this book club for a while, but the entrance challange was a spelling bee.  Don't get me wrong, I can spell with the best of them.  I "words with friends" and "scrabble".  But to do it in front of people, NO thanks.  For some reason I was able to attend with out having to face the challenge so I gladly jumped on board.  I figured I'd know a couple people based on the evite list.  These are people I havent seen in 10 plus years.  At first I felt kind of "high school reunion" about it, but then was pleasantly surprised to see I'm not the only one a little more round in the face.  Then the next wave of realization hit.

Babies. Babies everywhere. There were 3 gooey tots to drool over.  Like this little guy, Wyatt.

There were 12 women there including myself, I started counting and realized that there were only 3 other people there with out children. 1/4 of attendees.  I wondered how they were feeling, do they not have kids by choice?  Or are they in a similar boat as me?  I'm guessing probably 50/50.

This is Sawyer, the little bean I'm making the book for you saw in my last post.  He helped keep me distracted from over thinking and over eating lol.  For some reason the reverse lens on my iphone started taking grainy pictures??

I won a game, answering the most correct questions about the book, and got this cute book tote....and in the end I signed up to have the next book club at my house in March.  The book I've chosen is one of my old fav's The Glass Lake by Mauve Binchey.

Hobbies and Jalepano's

I don't have anything super wonderful to report, but I feel like writing so it's time for show and tell.

Since its been cold and raining, the general feeling is to be inside nice and cozy.  So here are a few of my current projects. 

I started a mini book that I had intended to give as a baby shower gift.  That didn't happen and now the baby's heading into 4 months lol.  But I had all the stuff and so I decided to go ahead and finish it, the up side is I can now add pictures instead of giving it to my friend blank!

Next on my list of cozy projects is knitting.  One day while walking through Michael's I noticed this scrumptious sample of yarn, Loops & Threads Bunny Tail (pom pom).  I had to have it.  It looked really hard to work with, so I did my research and found some patterns to use.  Last November one of my besties and fellow knitter came over and we watched multiple you tube videos to figure out how to cast on these little monsters.   Once we got it down the rest was easy peasy.  The trick is you knit one stitch between the balls. The funny story about this blanket is that it called for 70 stitches.  I decided I wanted it a little bigger so I cast on 80 stitches.  Then I had my sister look at it and she said might as well make it a even hundred.  Well NOW the blanket is about 6 feet in length.  What started to be a lap blanket will now be a couch blanket for me and my hunny.   Since I usually scrap during the summer (and we've had a unseasonably warm winter) this project got pushed in the closet and was recently resurrected.  I'll be sure to post a picture when its done.  At the rate I'm knitting should be some time in January.

Last but not least I joined a book club.  This past month I read "The Lost Wife".  It was REALLY good so much I wish I had more book to read.  Tonight is the first meeting I'll be attending and the dinner theme is Gourmet Grilled Cheese, Soups and Champagne.   I'm in trouble lol.  I made jalapeno poppers pictured below.  Not too bad, I used the reduced fat crescent roll dough and re cut the sheet into 32 squares.  With a tsp of cream cheese and some chopped jale's, they come out to 1 point each.   I also made some with mini chocolate chips and brown sugar, also 1 point each.

Down side, I had a off site meeting for work today and they provided lunch.  The lunch in itself wasn't bad, 7 pts.  But I was STARVING and ended up eating the 12 point cookie that came in the lunch box.  I'm contemplating taking my own dinner to book club tonight so I don't totally botch this week.  We'll see what the scale says on Monday!