A Pink Fiesta

Look what I just found!

Fiesta ‘Flamingo’!

This will be a great addition to my lovely rainbow of Fiesta dinnerware. I’m so excited!

The color is still in preorder but I ordered a few to add to my collection. I’m so excited. They look so lovely!

In other news…. Our England trip is less than a month away. I’m freaking out a little bit right now. And I’m so very grateful I have a sister who lives there to not only invite me, but be familiar with the area a bit. It’s strange to travel without my husband.

Speaking of his deployment, he ate camel meat. Can you believe it?

And on the home front, today is the last day of school. My daughter went to the park with friends and I brought them a bag full of treats to celebrate. And in an unusual twist for Washington, it actually LOOKED like summer. Hoorah!

-Lynnae

One Week Down…….

My sweetie has been gone just over a week now. Over 9 months to go for his deployment. Just writing that sort of takes the wind out of my sails a little bit.

I know I’ve been a crummy blogger lately. Between getting up at 4:30 every morning for an early morning job (which tires me out), and preparing for my husband to be gone (which saddens my heart) I just haven’t had the mental energy to sit and blog and say everything except what I’m thinking about non-stop.

I have done a few little projects around the house this week. One that I’ve had a lot of fun with is fixing up my porch with more flowers and trying to make it more inviting.

Here’s the view from the front Yard….

-Lynnae

Cured by a Hot Glue Gun

January has been a little crazy, and no, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.

I was sick early in January, then in mid January we had crazy snowstorms, school cancellations, and an ice storm, followed by a three day power outage.

Then my husband left for a short Army Reserve training in Pennsylvania and I had big plans. I was finally going to paint my family room, get ready for my Jane Austen party, and do a bunch of other cool stuff, and low and behold, I got sick again.

I was a miserable, laying around, achy eyed, coughing kind of sick, for about a week, and did almost nothing except the basic laundry and food for my daughter, and taking her to school.

Now the fog is lifting. Laryngitis has left my voice a little raspy, but I have felt bad for so long that now I almost feel hyper. Which is good because now I have less time to do all the things I wanted to do.

I’ve spent the last two days catching up on laundry and crafting with my daughter. She wanted to try this cool art project with melted crayons that we saw on Pinterest.  She had a lot of fun and it turned out really cool.

As for me, my BFF’s daughter is expecting her first child, and I am helping out with the baby shower. I’ve been experimenting with all kinds of tissue flowers and coffee filter pom-poms. Next time I’ll post a picture of what I come up with!

-Lynnae

PS. wanna have a peek at my Pinterest Boards? Click here!

Wedding Plans: Bridals

Yesterday was a big day in the wedding preparations world, which is pretty much the world I exist in right now. We met with the woman making the wedding cake, and she also brought some yummy cake with her.

Library at University of Washington

  It was also the day for my daughter’s bridal photos. So her hair was done and the trip to Seattle was planned despite it raining cats and dogs. I bought a huge umbrella and prayed for a sun break. It cleared up in time for her late afternoon photo shoot. I took a few photos for the scrapbook of her and the photographer. Joshua from Joshua Gene Photography was great and really fun to work with. Unfortunately for you, all photos of the bride in the dress are under wraps until the wedding day. But I did snap a few pictures of the lovely locations we visited.

Lovely garden that will remain nameless for the time being because upon leaving we saw a sign that said no commercial photography was allowed. Whoops!

As enchanting as all this looked, it involved rushing around all day, eating nothing except cake samples, and neglecting my other daughters. I’m grateful to my second daughter who stepped in when daughter number 3 was having a bit of a meltdown about her 8th grade project being more lame than anyone else's.  That’s life in the real world. We got home from the bridal shoot at 10 pm, I ate more cake, and then stayed up until 1 am cutting new holes in the album filler sheets for said project because I bought the wrong type of pages and my hole punch was lost.

It’s good that there’s always a little something to keep me grounded.

Tomorrow my good friend down the street is hosting a bridal shower for my daughter, and then the next day we’re off to more showers and parties in ..…….

New Orleans!

Stay tuned,

-Lynnae

P.S. The 8th grade project turned out more awesome than anyone else’s.

From Aprons To Austen to Ruby Slippers

Yesterday I taught an apron class for our Super Saturday at church. I’ve been so stressed about this class. Sometimes even if Something is not a lot of work I still will get stressed out about it, it’s just my way. And in the end things went OK,  but I do have to say that making your own pattern and instructions is pretty hard work.

  I made my daughters ruffled aprons in 2008 after making up a pattern and modifying it a little for each girl. Yesterday I was teaching one of those aprons but I had to make actual paper patterns, which I never had when I made mine.

So that has been occupying my thoughts and what free time I have.

I did take apart one of the old clocks I bought at Bad Girls Antiques going out of business sale (sad!)

And my daughter and I put up some Halloween decorations.

One cool thing about last week….I got the tags back from Karla Nathan’s Dorothy Tag Swap.

This was such a fun project. Thanks again to Karla for all her work. And it was a LOT of work.

Here are six tags from the swap plus one of mine and the one Karla Nathan made for everyone.

Being in a tag swap is wonderful. It’s like an art project and a birthday surprise all in one! I’ve done a couple swaps from blogs, and convinced the ladies in my family to do a Valentines Day swap last year. I would love to host my own internet tag swap, but I’m afraid I’m not that organized yet.

And now for Austentime………. 11 more days until my Jane Austen weekend with my Mom. I am so excited- but there is so much to do. I will keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Lynnae

Cake Stands

Last month when my mom came to visit, she brought me a gift of a lovely white cake stand.  Thank You Mom!

A few days later we went on a little treasure hunt at Goodwill, and mom had gathered up a bunch of candlesticks and dessert plates. She said she was going to epoxy them together to make mini cake stands. So of course I had to get in on the action and find some things too.

Here’s my loot from Goodwill

Today I finally put them together. I used a regular epoxy that my husband had around for the tall white stand, but it was gray, and I realized I needed a clear glue for the glass plate. Once I found something I got them all together. I hadn’t really thought about how the glass plate would look with the glue. You can see it pressed against the plate in the center.

But I like it so much I don’t care. When I use it for a little party a pretty doily will cover that up nicely.

Once I assembled the cake stands all there was left to do was make some cupcakes (one can’t really photograph naked cake stands now, can we?).

For these treats I used Krusteaz brand Fat Free Cranberry Orange muffin mix, then I added orange zest and Neufchatel cheese* to white frosting that I had on hand. YUM!

I don’t like the cupcake papers, but I was trying to used what I had on hand. I thought of peeling them all, but then I wouldn’t be able to give them away, and would have to eat them all. Even I won’t go quite that far for a blog post.

Speaking of blog post…. I’ve had a weird allergy all day today, and finally took some medicine, so this post has been a race against time. So I will hit ‘publish’, sign off, and hopefully nothing is amiss.

Tomorrow, among other things, I’ll be in Tacoma for a two hour Zumba class. The ‘Party in Pink’ is raising money for Susan G. Komen foundation. I also have a great Goodwill find from yesterday that I need to show you.

* I use Neufchatel cheese in place of regular cream cheese for everything. It is lower in fat than reg. cream cheese but tastes wonderful.

Dinner Bell, Dinner Bell Ring!

This post started as a comment to my sister’s blog, Better Than We Deserve, but not wanting to take up a ton of space I turned my reply into a post of my own.

I believe it is my nurturing duty as a mom to make dinner for my family. But I don’t really LOVE cooking. I don’t see recipes and get excited (unless they include massive amounts of chocolate).

  A few years ago at a church activity we made these nifty dinner calendars. you just think of 50 meals you regularly prepare (four of mine said EAT OUT). We printed them in squares and laminated it.  Then you could plan out your whole month, and the extra squares stuck on the back with velcro.

The scripture above the calendar squares says “Love bears, believes, hopes and endures all things…….

Getting sick of that idea and having more recipes I thought I’d add into the circulation, a year and a half ago I planned out a years worth of meals from all the cookbooks I wanted to try and all the regular favorites. So I go to that every week, sometimes shuffling things around or changing things for convenience. I'm still pretty flexible but I like not having to think about it much.

   Jon likes to cook but he is conveniently not home at that time.....LOL-he's still at work until 6:30 or 7, selfish man.....
But maybe when he's retired I'll make him do it. I would rather be on clean up.
  Everyone on shows who enjoy cooking also drink wine, so maybe that's my problem- I don’t drink. Sometimes I will try to 'make it fun' by having a diet coke, which isn't really that fun. On Cinco de Mayo I tried to make it fun by eating chips and salsa while cooking the food. Then I was stuffed by dinner. But it was fun.

Who does the meal planning and prep in your house? Do you love it or hate it? Do you have a method to your madness?

Chalkboard Project

 

I made this chalkboard as a Super Saturday craft a while back and finally got around to hanging it up. We were repainting old window frames, and after washing and sanding mine I decided to leave the paint as-is. We replaced the glass area with a board painted with chalkboard paint. I added a row of square nails across the bottom for keys.

I decided to hang it on my tricky wall, so you’ll have to tell me what you think. The tricky thing about this wall is that it has the doorbell box, a thermostat, and an oddly placed switch plate. I shopped my house for other little things to put around the chalkboard and balance out the little boxes.  I think it looks pretty, but I don’t know if it’s cluttered or if I’m just not used to it because the wall was so plain before.

I also went to Michaels and found a sale on little garden and home decorations. Several cute little things I’ve been admiring were half off. I bought these cute little hangers for the pantry closet. I decided to mix and match rather than go with a matched set. It makes me smile every time I open the pantry.

 

-Lynnae

Happy New Year!

Once my sisters and I had the crazy idea of making Rice Krispies Treat Sushi. So I made some to take to the New Years Eve Party. I used Kelloggs Rice Krispies, fruit leather, Swedish Fish, Sour Patch worms and other delicacies, along with a little bit of pink frosting. Instead of putting the warm rice krispie treats into a pan, I put it on wax paper, washed and buttered my hands and pushed it down into a thin layer that could be rolled up easily.

My favorites are wrapped in green apple fruit leather with red-hots on top.

 

I’m taking them to the New years party at my sis’ house.

Luckily in our family you can do something a little strange and no one really questions it.

Happy New Year!

-Lynnae

Domesticity

I’ve uploaded a few pictures of our ‘Sister’s day. There are still a few pix I want to get up here but frankly I find the whole photo entry system so confusing that I can only handle so much in one day. I definitely was meant for a less technological era! (Every time I want to post a picture I have to read the ‘help’ again to figure it out.)
I think my all my time with my sister brought on a burst of domesticity. We had discussed laundry a lot- what works and what doesn’t, so I had a chuckle when she called after her trip to say she had found a sign with the following notice…..
“The Laundry is DONE……..The ashes are in the fireplace.”
Did you know that in Jane Austen’s time much of the finer clothing, especially silks and men’s clothes, were rarely if ever washed, and were cut apart to be washed piece by piece and then reassembled! It kind of makes you thankful for the old Whirlpool!
Burst of domesticity #2- I normally plan menus for a week at a time before I go grocery shopping. I was feeling like everything was always so rushed and last minute that I had a brilliant idea- Plan dinners for the whole year! So I made twelve pages of grids and spread them out in front of my on the dining room table, then I was able to do five week sections, first filling in things we like and eat every month, then every other month, then say, once a quarter. After that I got out four or five cookbooks plus the dinner recipes I used to get from ‘Menu Mailer’ and filled in all the rest of the spaces with recipes I wanted to try or already like but rarely use. In the summer months I replaced regular dinners with things that are more hot weather friendly.
So, we’ll see how it goes. I’m one week into it and like it already. I’m still pretty flexible, no eat outs or special holiday dinners are planned, since I want it to be a perpetual calendar. Each month is made up of five weeks, starting with Sunday, so if the month starts on a Wednesday I just skip the first three blocks on the calendar. Because of this the first and last few squares are things we might not want to have as often.
The other day one of the kids commented on dinner, saying it was good. Then DH (Dear hubby) said “I hope you enjoyed it because we aren’t having it again until the third week in September” or something like that. He’s teased me about it but I bet deep down he thinks its cool!!!
While I am talking about him, I must say he felt like I was complaining about him in my last entry about the dollhouse. I don’t think it was bad, only the truth, he’s not sentimental about things like that. But that I understand that and have to say that he is a sweetie. Who else would take me to every new Jane Austen flick rather than just send me out with the girls or try to get me to wait till it went to the video store.
When we went on a date to see “Pride and Prejudice” when it was in the theater, it was opening night so a lot of hard core Janites were there. Well, the woman behind me was talking so much during the show, and in such an annoying way (a la Mrs. Elton) at some point I leaned to my hubby and said “I’m about to reach back there, pull her coat over her head and pummel her hockey style”.
He said “I’d give you 50 bucks. That would be so cool at a Jane Austen premier. He thought a fight breaking out at an Austen premier would be funny and make the papers. Good thing I'm such a peaceful person.