demon zombie crickets

Am I the only one?  I know I have issues, but is this something I should add to the ever growing list?

I killed a cricket while doing my hair.  Used a tissue to pick up the evidence of my deed, and then deposit it so it could be flushed.

While I am normally very conservation minded I had to waste an entire bowl of toilet water and flush immediately.

Because, you know, that if I didn't and I just left it there, it would have been the zombie demon cricket from hell and attacked my ass the second I sat down to pee.  Am I right or am I right?!

I am working already on a post for tomorrow.  Its an Olympic recap, Dr. D style!

speaking of cherries ...

So I am not exactly an old hand at blogging.  Being a sarcastic biotch, failing massively at domestic crap ... old news.  Been doing that for years now.  But writing about it?  Online?  Yeah, not so much.  Look around there is plenty of evidence of my newness here.

I try not to force people into reading my stuff because, well, I mean the whole platform of this blog is how I kinda suck -- why would I be all sharey sharey with friends and family about that?!  In fact, I am semi anonymous about my online failure exposuring to the degree that most of my in-real-life friends have no idea about this blog.

Shhhhh ... its a secret.

But I was reading at a site I really really love, You Know It Happens At Your House Too, and they were hosting a blog hop.  Blog hop? What the doodle is a blog hop? I asked myself. Then I was pretty embarrassed because I was reading it on my phone in the doctor's office waiting room and just actually asked it out loud.

Anyhoo, I am new at this and hoping not to commit some horrendous blogging faux pas but here we go!  I am participating in a blog hop, first one evah, and I think I understand what that means now.

If not, well, I will figure it out eventually.  I hope.

If you are here because you tripped on me from the hop, welcome to my happy little space of internet home!  If you want to know more about me check out the SAHM Manefesto in the menu bar and feel free to look around.



If you comment and start following me I will be glad to return the favor!  Don't forget to keep checking out more of the awesome blogs on the list, I know my daily projected productivity around the house just took a big nose dive because I gots some readin' to do!

the baking grenade

You know how some people have weird issues that are like totally die hard serious for them but you cannot help but laugh a bit at them?  Like, take my husband for example.  He has to just see those wood  popsicle sticks, like the tongue depressors they use at the doctor's office, and he gags.  If you jokingly say "you mean like {mimic licking a popsicle} popsicle sticks?  Those things?" incredulously when he tells you about it while you are dating him he will actually wretch and ask you to never do that again, please.

True story. I admit to laughing and feeling horrible at the same time.

So hubby has popsicle stick issues, and yes, that made my chore sticks project a bit uncomfortable for him.  But, I am scared of these things.

Seriously, my only thought for the day is this ...

... the words "Press spoon at seam until can pops open" could instead read ...

..."pull pin, throw grenade, then run like hell!" ... and be just as accurate.

I hate these things, yet you can make so much out of the stuff in tubes that explode!

excesso pesto

You know how sometimes  you come across a deal that is just faboosh and you cannot pass it up, but you know you won't really be able to use all of it?

Like, say for example, you come across a butt ton of pesto at Fresh and Easy, all of it on clearance because it needs to be used/sold that day.  But you know that pesto, even yummy pesto, is one of those a-little-goes-a-long-way sorts of things and three tubs of it is just too much even if it only costs you like $5 for all of them ... what is a cheap biotch to do???

Freeze it!

I wanted to use muffin tins because I figured that would be a good protion size for a future meal.  I started by olive oiling the crap outta my muffin tins because I didn't have the paper dodads, then poured the pesto in, stuck 'em in the freezer for 24 hours, popped those bad boys out and stuck them into a freezer bag.

I waited to post this until after I had tried it to make sure that it doesn't get all wonky ... like avocado, for example.  You cannot make guacamole and freeze it without making it totally nastified.  Trust me.

But pesto does freeze okay, and my little muffin pucks were the perfect size!

So don't pass up the awesome deal of oodles of pest for $5 if you see it!

cheap, check! pretty, check!

A little while back I was looking for something easy, but cute to make for my mom.  She was having a run of crappy luck combined with a string of bad days -- and if anyone does not deserve that kind of combo it is my mama.  She is a beyond awesome human being, and I wanted her to feel appreciated.

But here is the catch: my mom is impossible to buy or make anything for.  Like really.

One thing she does like is her flowers.  Her front yard and backyard is always a bit like a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot.  She also has arthritis and Reynaud's, so taking care of her hands is quite important all things considered.

So color me pink when I came across this on Pintercrack!

It was easy, it was pretty, it would be something to spoil her and it was something she'd never do for herself!  Yay!

So I had to buy a four pack of these Ball jars, which was cool because I could make one of these for myself and had two more jars for storage of other stuff.  I think they are adorable.

So I just needed to pour some sugar and some of that yummy smelling Dawn with Olay  and mix ... it was so easy!

Once I was done I wanted something to use as a scoop of some sort.  It had to be cute and I had just the thing in mind.  I was given these cutesy measuring spoons as a wedding gift.  They had sat in a drawer, never used due to impracticality and lack of me-ness.  Lets be honest, I am not exactly a cutesy heart spoon kind of girl.

So I broke out the hemp, and got to work securing the spoons to my mom's and my own.  I used a bit of ribbon on my mom's, but just stuck with the hemp for mine.

End result was quite pretty and practical all things considered.  The sugar Dawn scrub works awesome, smells fantastic and the little jar of it was cute.  My mom loved it to pieces and it made her smile.

Count this one as a success!

put it on a stick

Given my recent flops in the kitchen I decided to focus my energies elsewhere for a bit.  Needing a confidence boost, I switched gears to some easy stuff.  Like painfully so simple a monkey could do it blindfolded, that kind of simple.

Our local Sprouts Market had this big ol' sale on grapes and I decided to grab some.  We had plenty for just normal grape-eating, but since it has been about fifty billion degrees outside I wanted to freeze some.  I have seen people put them in champagne as "ice cubes" so I figured we could do something like that, but a little more kid friendly.  I am not a champagne person anyway.

So we tried just dropping them in a glass with some Sprite as a special treat for Meatball.

I decided that just dropping frozen grapes into a cup wasn't enough, I could do better.  So I got some bamboo skewers and made frozen grape kabobs out of them.

I know this sounds so simple, but you'd swear this was the height of high class dining if you heard the way Meatball and the neighbor kids go on about it.

I now have a  Ziplock tub of them out in the freezer at all times.  When Meatball wants one he just pulls it out and sticks it in his drink, it makes him feel fancy and he is eating something that is healthy and cost me very, very little.

I may not rock all the time, but man, when I do, I am soooo awesome.

failure, with a dash of cinnamon and plastic

I need to take a break from attempting new recipes, particularly it would seem those of the baking-breakfasty-sweetness variety.

Its my Achilles heel, my kryptonite, my bucket of water on the Witch of the West.

This week anyway, next week is totally up for grabs.

So I saw these on the website that provides an endless source of failure possibilities for me (Pintercrack, of course) and I thought to myself "Self, I can do that!"  Yes, these are dangerous words.

Cinnamon roll pancakes.

Yeah, that sounds like heaven on a plate, and so the fail began ...

I followed her recipe, all of her instructions right up to the part where I was supposed to put the gooey cinnamon stuff in a baggie and clip a corner.  I thought hey, why would I do that when I can just use one of these spiffy ketchup bottle thingies I got for a buck.  I actually thought to myself that diverging from the instructions would be a good thing this time.  I was making it easier on myself with this change.  I am so clever, I thought, as I patted my back and poured the delicious concoction into the bottle.

Um, not so much.

the cinnamon goo, pre-Bottle of Doom

The neck of the bottle got clogged, and only the buttery stuff poured out making a huge mess, so I had to squeeze the bottle harder figuring it would let the one stuck piece come out.

But then it exploded out, with lots of the cinnamon goo, and that pancake was a mess.  So I figured, hey, I only lost one, no biggie ... then it happened again, but this time I squeezed the bottle so hard that the goo oozed out from under the cap.  Everywhere.

This made the bottle slippery.  Slippery bottles are hard to hold.  Slippery bottles that are hard to hold should not be held by frazzled women standing over a skillet of pancakes that are cooked on one side, but not the other.  If they are held by such a domestic goddess she might *ahem* drop the slippery bottle onto the half cooked pancakes, smearing them, melting part of her cheap ketchup bottle, burning her fingers while she tries to pick up the bottle and ultimately destroying all eight of the pancakes on the skillet aesthetically.

I know you are hoping for a huge picture bomb of this fail, but alas, I have none.  I was too covered in cinnamon, butter and pancake batter with three fingers on fire and a stunned family near by wondering what the hell we were having for dinner.

I do have a picture of one pancake, and it is seriously deceptive.

It was the only one that looked like it had swirled, but I would like you to take note that the the cinnamon swirl did not stay ON the pancake.  No, you can see it just above the pancake on the skillet, burning.  

I made the icing, and just poured a ton of it onto the pancakes to hide the mess they were.

Then we accidentally left the icing (the only part I did not screw up) out on the counter overnight, so it was ruined.

So there were three major components to this meal ...

1.) The pancakes -- which I dropped a bottle onto and smeared everywhere

2.) The swirl -- which exploded onto the pancakes and made a mess, never actually sticking to any of them

3.) The icing -- which was delicious, but left out over night so it was ruined

Three strikes ... and I am out.

No one complained about dinner, even if it wasn't pretty or anything like it was supposed to be.  In fact, the husband and the Meatball said it was yummy.

But that may have been because I was still mumbling under my breath and nursing three burned fingers while the smell of burnt cinnamon and plastic hung heavily in the air.