Vanilla Icing

Edgewood 2 Forest Hills 6

Tristyn had his first away game of the season tonight. The first game, a home game, he played 3rd base for part of the game. But today--oh wonderful today!--he got to be the catcher. He thought it was so cool putting on all the gear because it made him feel like a robot.

Check out his face in this picture. Wondering why he looks so upset? It's because he had to become human again. I think he would have left that stuff on the rest of the game if had been permitted.

This is the please-don't-make-me-stand-here-any-longer look. And I can't say I blame him---it was freezing outside today!

Daisy Tea Party

Saturday morning was our Daisy Scouts Tea Party. There was a lot of care and preparation put into it and it came off without a hitch! The few days leading up to it I was very, very nervous. I'm finding that volunteering (in this case as a Daisy leader along with my poor co-leaders I strong-armed politely asked) is difficult. Before, whenever I've volunteered for something it's always been for a couple hours or a one time event. Never an ongoing 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month plus extra activities sort of deal. There is a lot of time and work involved not only in doing the activities but in the planning. But that's not the difficult part. The difficult part is trying to keep the parents happy.

I really don't enjoy getting phone calls from parents about complaints that are not really in my realm of 'things I can fix.' It's very hard to stay calm and polite and say all the right things when I really want to shout "Hey look! I'm doing the best I can and I'm just a volunteer and if you would have read the newsletter I send home with your daughter after each and every meeting detailing precisely what we are doing/will be doing you would know what is going on!!!" or "Hey! I'm just volunteering and trying my best and it's not my fault your daughter doesn't like the snack some other girl brought that week for the troop!!!" or even, once, "Hey!!! @#%$^#@$!!!!" <----That one was really unkind of me to think.

Anyway, I digress. I just needed to get that off my chest. Back to the tea party and don't mind the mix-match of chairs. My dining room table is very large but we only have 6 chairs and we had 11 girls.

Our other girl was sick with strep throat so the girls made her a get well poster. Each girl drew a picture and wrote her name on it and after the tea party Maia and I took the poster plus a plate of tea party food, necklaces and her tea cup with flower to her house. She wasn't home when we got there and we had to leave the items on the stoop and leave a message on the answering machine. I'm a little worried because it ended up raining that afternoon. I hope she got them in time!

Originally I wanted to thrift all of the items but going out of town and all that awful soreness left me unable to properly scrounge around. The lace runner, the silver piece holding the cupcakes, the small tea cups with their matching saucers on top of them and one of the teapots were all thrifted. Can you guess which teapot? We ended up finding the rest of the teacups and saucers at a local craft store.

The menu was heart shaped peanut butter sandwiches on extra thin bread, sliced cucumbers and carrots, cheese cracker crisps, sliced strawberries and white cupcakes with strawberry frosting. The 'tea' was apple juice.

All of the girls came dressed in their best 'tea party' dresses and the hats we made at our Daisy Scout meeting the previous Tuesday. We had picked up some fun, shiny necklaces for the girls to put on when they arrived. Feather boas would have been fantastic--except they cost $10 and $15 a boa and that was out of budget. =(

After tea, Miss Sami, Maeve's mom, read Miss Spider's Tea Party to the girls while Missy, Amanda and I quickly prepped for the activity.

When we were ready, each girl put on a shirt from Mom or Dad that they had brought along to protect their dresses and we all went out to the deck. Then, everyone got to plant a sunny yellow marigold in their teacup to take home.

By the way, I have many cute pictures of our whole tea party; unfortunately I had to make copies of the pictures and crop everyone out because I'm not going to post pictures of other people's children without permission. I say unfortunately because the pictures are really cute!

When it was time to go, all of the girls assembled on the front porch to have their picture taken in all of their finery. It was also a time that the girls got really loud and giggly but I think they needed it since they had been practicing their good manners during the tea party. As each girl departed she was given a chocolate daisy covered pretzel as a parting gift and she also got to take home a balloon.

Somehow, we managed not to send any balloons sailing off into the sky!

Gnocchi

I dream of that perfect kitchen the way some women dream of the perfect wedding. I think about it a lot. A LOT. Good news is that I can see it in my head. Bad news is that I can't convey it to Rick 'cause he's a guy which means he's pretty visual. Since, I can't draw it to show it to him I can only show him pictures that sorta kinda look like what I'm talking about and that means I've showed him hundreds of pictures. Each one followed by something along the lines of 'See? Now look at that window. That is exactly the type of window I want.' or 'See that shade of paint/curve of cupboard/doohickey on the edge of the stove?'

In the meantime, the one thing I DO love about my current kitchen is that its wonky countertop is practically impervious to scratches, cuts, and knicks. This means I can cut things directly on it with no worries. However, I only use this quality for pastry and noodle-y things because it's too hard to confine these things to a cutting board.

Take today for example. This dough had to be rolled out in sections because there was so much of it and then cut into approximately 1 inch pieces. I would have gone crazy if I had been trying to keep the long ropes of dough on my cutting board.

I guess there aren't any long ropes in this particular picture. Oops.

The technique of using a fork to roll the gnocchi off your hand thus creating the grooves is harder than it looks. It took me several batches to perfect it and not smoosh too much. It only took slighty more attempts to get the fork balanced while i took the picture with the other hand. There is a little too much smooshing at the tip end of the tines but hey, I had to stop the fork from falling off before I took the picture. =P

Only non-Italian people like Martha Stewart would worry about something like keeping them all a uniform shape and size.

Tristyn and Maia call these 'Snowball Spaghetti' because they couldn't always pronouce 'gnocchi.' Either way.....yum!

Good Morning

It is so nice to wake up to a house that is already clean and ready to go. It feels like it's been forever since that has happened and that is supposed to be my norm! But with going to the office 5 days a week, the amount of times that has happened has dwindled steadily and I'm always playing catch up. Then, with this last week of being so sore and unable to do much it has been impossible.

But, last night, Missy came over to help me catch up. And catch up we did! Every room--and that's 11 of 'em--got attacked and whipped into shape. I'm so grateful to her for helping me catch up!

Today, I'm home from the office and I have quite a few things to do because tomorrow is our Daisy Scout Tea Party. The list so far of things to do and I'm sure I'll have more come to mind as I complete this list:

* Straighten deck for after Tea Party Project
* Obtain flowers and potting soil for after Tea Party Project
* Obtain foodstuffs for Tea Party
* Drop into B&N for a cup of coffee and perhaps to squeeze in a bit of writing on my 2nd novel? <---I like the idea of doing this one first
* Have a meeting with my treadmill and proceed with care
* Shower & Dress <---Looks like B&N will be moving to 3rd on the list
* Look at cut flowers and determine if they will be able to come home today v. going out early tomorrow morning to get them
* Fold some laundry, Wash some laundry, Dry some laundry, repeat from * 6 or 7 times
* Lunch? Does it fit in there somewhere?
* Embroidery Project--work on it if time allows
* Prep for dinnner if refrigerator search (post posting) doesn't yield sufficient leftovers for chili dogs

Here I go!

Beignets

Cajun Food Night is coming up....I need an excuse to bake......a practice run. I want to see if these things are still good cold as I want to bring them along to Cajun Food Night. We ate a bunch of them piping hot, brought some to some friends and put aside some to save to try cold tomorrow.

I have a thing for taking pictures of Tristyn shoving food in his mouth. I don't know why. Even in his baby pictures this is evident; I rarely took any of Maia as a baby doing that.

Maia carefully posed for this picture. What you can't see is the powdered sugar streak in her hair from when she tucked her hair behind her ear. It's very hard to get a picture of Maia when she's not aware of the camera.

Friends!

At long last, Layla and Eddie have made peace.

Udipi Cafe

I'm addicted. Obsessed. A week without a meal at Udipi Cafe just isn't a week. Take today for example. Even sore and miserable, I still dragged myself out to Chelsea's car so we could go to lunch there. I was only able to eat about half of what I'd normally be able to eat but it didn't matter. I was glad to have any at all! We ordered Chana Masala and Palak Paneer. Yummmmmmm!!!!

When I first read the reviews of the place, the common thread was that the service was polite...but somewhat 'absent.' This was certainly true the first two times we went. The waiter would take the order and bring the food never to be seen again. But I think we might be getting some mild recognization because the presence of the waiters is much more evident. Then again, it might just be because Chelsea's daughter is so adorable and they love to come and comment on how much she loves Indian food. They seem to be quite impressed <--- I know I am! My children aren't anywhere near that adventurous when it comes to food. =( Hopefully as they grow that will continue to change. (It's been changing...just ever so slllll---ooooo----wwwww---ly)

Embroidery

Embroidery is a nice project for long car rides. I was able to finish most of this piece on the way down and back to North Carolina. The next few days I'm supposed to be doing a lot of resting and I'm finding more embroidery and Bollywood movies to be quite a nce mix. =)

Vespa

Dinner on Thursday night.

Where I Am

Chapel Hill, North Carolina