blurb and eyelash curlers and coupons

today i got a very bossy email saying if i don't order my blurb book within 24 hours it will be deleted! gasp!! i leapt out of bed to go back to poring over every border to make sure they are all perfectly straight and full bleed (mistakes in photo books printed on premium paper = very very very bad) and to gently nudge every arm/chin away from the cut-off edge around each page. oh gosh - 24 hours? really? why, blurb???!!! it's not fair - i only finished it yesterday :(

i really wish my camera came in bright red like this one... or better still bright yellow! but with the option to still be black... hmm, maybe a little cozy rubber jacket would do the trick, i should invent one

i just went to target to buy eyelash curlers and found these for ONE DOLLAR! i was happy to pay up to $16 but one dollar???! such things put a spring in my step for the rest of the day

however watching extreme couponing last night made me extremely sick. and only slightly with jealousy, because i can never get anything worth having for free (though a dollar for the eyelash curlers!!? they were practically free!! and i went for eyelash curlers! it's not like i bought something i don't drastically need!) those people were buying 200 boxes of pasta :| and not even to give to starving malnourished people - oh noooo, to keep in their garages. i thought i was nuts because i had 8 boxes of pumpkin bread for emergencies (whatever's in pumpkin bread with cream cheese frosting with half the sugar, i am clearly deficient in it, because i can't stop eating it :)

what about bugs!! those moth things that fly out of pasta scare me to death and force me to immediately burn all of our food and order takeout... don't those people worry about bugs? and eggs of bugs?! or see imaginary mold on food that wasn't bought that week? because i do!! and the soap - i don't care if i can get 100 bottles of 'tropical mango' or 'spiced apple' hand soap for free, i don't want to use it!!! if my hands don't have that squeaky clean neutrogena smell, life just isn't worth living :|

with that i have a hankering to make oatmeal with nutella and watch some more Dr Drew. i wish the subtitles for Celebrity Rehab were always placed over the face of the 'celebrity' and not over Dr Drew - if i was doing the closed captioning, they would never ever ever cover Dr Drew's face :)

it was this cold yesterday (we switched to flannel sheets... that's seriously cold:)


but he is just like a little warm ray of sunshine

and so is he :)

blurb and sluts and coupons

finally
finished my blurb book this morning - hurray!! 120 pages (no more no less, the price goes up after 120 pages ;) arranged with calm, chronological perfection. then today... i took more pictures :| what to do... which pictures to X out or squeeeeeze in with other pictures that don't really belong together, thus making me feel slightly sick everytime i open that page. oh sigh, i just hope i don't meet George Clooney or anything really interesting tomorrow or friday... because the book will surely become a point of even more stress if anything photographable happens...

finally
got steroids injected into my tennis elbow today and a huge wad of bandage around my arm so people would feel sorry for me (the best part:)

finally
saw real snowflakes falling today - the first since moving from England. i don't miss it that much (it's cold and not very fun to walk in) but driving in a winter wonderland was quite wonderful :)

slightly shocked
at Danny's new Roald Dahl poem book... i am sure reading Cinderella labeled a 'slut' is going to result in an inappropriate comment on our next trip to Storybook Land at Disneyland.... but i had to say it, because it rhymed with 'nut', as in the chopping off of heads :|

completely
loving that when i watch Up with Danny, he covers my eyes at the part when Ellie dies because it always makes me cry (how i love his tender care-taking little ways:)

also completely loving
him call San Francisco 'france-and-sticks-go' :)

almost
got my ass whooped dancing to Big Girl (you are beautiful).... by a BOY! (who i am sure has read some way to cheat online) BUT that was soooo not going to happen!!! i had to totally bust out of my elbow bandage to win (and probably set my healing back a few days....)

off to climb the wooden hill to bedfordshire and watch a little extreme couponing so i don't feel like such a total L-O-S-E-R for having a (completely worn-out, well-used) coupon keeper in my purse :)

loving

loving
our very first christmas day spent entirely at home just the four of us - ahhhhh!! (that's the sound of angels singing as children play with their little toys for hours on end and Mummy having time for 'Married to Rock' and INDIAN FOOD for lunch!!!)

loving
most especially, my very adorable Hello Kitty stationery set. everyone has received a note in sparkly green/pink ink today (which Sam laminated with his new laminating machine and Danny read all by himself :)

loving
Despicable Me almost as much as Up... which was the cause of this morning's slightly horrible sore throat (sooooo much crying last night watching it, i love Up)

loving
that after being Santa and his helper for the past 10 years, yesterday we switched from boring old fart cookies to delicious delectable susiecakes red velvet cupcakes (duh!! why did it take us SO LONG to figure that out??!)

loving
my slow cooker :) it's magical!! however... not so much loving Jessica Seinfeld's lasagne recipe - it's just soooo blanilla. shoulda known, she's kind of blanilla too ;). next thing going in the pot, the fixins for mushroom fettuccine alfredo :) it's magic, you throw all the ingredients in - just like literally empty a grocery bag into it, talk on the phone for so long the battery goes dead, come back and there's a MEAL in there!!

loving
my hubbie for buying trader joe's entire supply of pumpkin bread for me, before it all disappears off the shelves for the next 40 weeks, i simply can't live without it. can't and shan't :)

this is his Barbra Streisand pose




Sam was Santa last night (he loved it!)


Jurassic Copter!

8am :)

puppy power!!

we got to visit Steph's new bundles of pure puppy joy, Canon Glitter and Nikon Shine, today and had soooooo much fun with them!! we also took one or two pictures :)

bedtime baking mats and married to rock

loving
bedtime. it needs to be bedtime more often!

not loving
Costco christmas card envelopes - they are honestly the work of the devil. you can't slice them open with your finger because the foil inside is soooo thick, that trying to do so sends shooting pains down your arm (or maybe it's just me and my terrible 'Thriller' elbow...) by the time i get the card out (i admit to having zero tolerance) the people on the card are creased and torn beyond recognition :(

loving
finding these baking mats today at Costco for a third of the amazon price (they were in my cart while i debated whether buying them would just encourage me to bake more, thus making me gain more weight and feel more worthless/less worthful...) for a third of the price we can use them for play doh!!

wondering
if i'll EVER watch this week's "married to rock"... it's wednesday and it was on on sunday... what is wrong with this picture??!

making, finally...
the blurb book. it's agony - i am torn between creating perfectly zen pages with just one or two perfect pictures on them and a whole lot of blank space, or awful busy collage pages with 9 mismatched pictures crammed together because i have SO MANY pictures to fit in the book... sigh, i should be more selective but i don't want to miss a significant story-telling moment from the year like the first picture of Clarice (we miss you sweet sassy Clarice...RIP) or the last day in Mrs Kay's class or the day we saw the dog whisperer :) i take a lot of pictures of very important things...

wanting
to adopt a shelter kitty but stressing that it will be one too many cats... but they do say, once you have two you might as well have ten (or is that children...? my rule with children is don't have more than you have hands :)

missing
cream cheese frosting... it's all gone :( would it be so terrible to make some frosting even though i technically have nothing to put it on, so i could just eat little bowls of it for each meal...?

off to bed! horray!!

cutest christmas concert EVER...


what we made tonight... ok i watched :)

Danny was very poorly on our trip to the mountains - i hope he didn't get Santa sick....


they behaved like princes and loved their first doggie vacation (so did we :)

it was a bad day ;)

and it shouldn't have been. it should have been a wonderful day but i have come to the conclusion that however much i pretend i like rainy days, i actually kind of hate them when i have places to be and places to walk to and i have to wear a real jacket and real shoes - today was dark and ugly and nothing short of mean and it needs to be bedtime already, at which point it will miraculously stop raining so i won't be able to lay in bed and listen to the sound of rain with the windows slightly open :|

have you ever been about to take a magical pill that promises to delete pain and impatience and make the day go 100% more swimmingly, a pill that you treasure and only take in dire emergencies when you need to feel like superwoman... and you accidentally drop that pill into the sink just before taking it and the water starts to dissolve it, and before you can rescue the powdery remnants of it, your magic pill is washed away forever, along with your hopes for a perfect day...? yes, that happened first thing this morning and it was just that kind of mean reds day all day long :(

today we went to Danny's christmas concert. it was very cute, but towards the end of the last song i realized i hadn't really just sat and actually wa-t-c-h-e-d and absorbed the sweetness of it all... of course, the video and pictures are precious but i get so tired of watching through a viewfinder instead of just soaking in the good :|

after that, i had promised to stay and help the kids make their PB&J reindeer sandwiches at kindy (why that pill was so desperately needed). never again, i am so not that kind of mom.... i upset a little girl (with an admittedly forgettable name) by forgetting her name over and over, broke the water fountain (sorry Mr Janitor...) and even though it's technically illegal, i cut out every struggling little boy's antlers because their friends were already watching the Charlie Brown christmas special :|

after school, we decided - in a moment of total mind-boggling stupidity - to do an errand at the mall :| not just any mall - the Santa Ana mall. oh gawd - i hate that mall. but before i could recalculate my thoughts, we were driving up and down rainy parking lot aisles of people who can't drive in the rain and fighting to find a lame spot. it was in a word, AWFUL. i hate the mall so much! inside we were so starving hungry, we tried to eat at the awful Olive Garden but it was so full of generic people waiting for generic food that we left in a tizzy to go to somewhere more unique and less populated by the united states of generica

on the way to Haveli there was a potential moment of delight, i spotted the oscar meyer weinermobile!! we squealed to an emergency stop, did a u-turn and ran over to it.... only to discover that beyond the large sausage-like exterior, the weinermobile is actually void of anything remotely interesting on the inside :| the nice ladies gave the boys whistles to blow - weiner shaped whistles?! yes :| and we took a picture in the rain. it was sooo beyond lame :|

we arrived home and found Clarice doing the death spiral in her little glass bowl :( she is still alive but hanging on by a thread, and no amount of gently tapping on the tank asking if there is anything i can do seems to be helping :(

sigh. so when the going gets tough, the tough make an extra large, extra whippy batch of cream cheese frosting to eat from a bowl in bed watching Tabatha Takes Over and hope for a better day tomorrow :)

ps it could be worse... it is pouring with rain, 8pm on a friday night and there is no sign of poor Mr UPS yet :( sure he's probably at Corner Bakery playing with the bakugan toy that he is supposed to be delivering, but for this once, i will give him a break ;)

i helped 31 kindergarteners make these sandwiches. 50% of them freaked out about having the slightest smidgen of peanut butter on their fingers :| the other 50% licked their spoon and dunked it right back into the peanut butter jar... and i wanted to scream, (like this "arggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!") at the jarring imbalance of it all... but i didn't want to scare the children :)

today i.... (part two)

had crunchy peanut butter in my oatmeal - so soooo much better than better'n peanut butter :)

pained over my boys' christmas gifts - they must receive the exact same monetary value of stuff or it's just not fair or right, it should be a game on the Price is Right...

drove to Costa Mesa and back

decided to buy heavy cream after staring at heavy whipping cream and heavy cream for about 15 minutes straight and being asked repeatedly by troubled Trader Joe's employees if i was ok, when clearly i was ok, just hopelessly confused by the weight and whippiness of cream

bought laundry detergent from amazon.com... i almost feel bad for Mr UPS, i know it's his busiest time of the year and all, but amazon is just soooooo convenient! Mr UPS delivered our breakfast cereal yesterday - no trip to the grocery store required! (ok it was required today for heavy cream... )

made salted caramel and fudge! (and tried reaalllly hard not to eat it all...)

had an adorable three-dinosaur-mad-little-boys playdate :)

didn't get around to taking the baby/Santa picture - tomorrow for sure :) it's supposed to rain, oh please clouds, make it rain!! i need to go to crazy 8 for a brown gingham shirt (for the below mentioned concert - all boys must dress in shirts, it says. Danny has shirts but this is a good reason to buy a new shirt :)

vowed to absolutely definitely find my flip before friday's long awaited kindy christmas concert (they're singing that chinese song 'feliz navidad' :)

almost went to Olive Garden for dinner but since smart ones frozen entrees taste pretty much the same, stayed home instead :)

watched Dr Phil - it was very boring

got hopelessly lost looking at pictures from March and didn't make a single page of my blurb book....

cuddled with Jerry the very lonely rat (he's very lonely these days... Aaron thinks it's all in my head:)

made a huge batch of cream cheese frosting... it's sooo good i am going to freeze it in little scoops for emergencies:

• 2 packages of cream cheese (i use the third less fat one though it never makes me a third less fat...)
• 1/2 cup butter (i use that slimming i-can't-believe-it's-not-butter butter:)
• 2 cups sifted powder sugar (which i never ever sift - purlease!)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

then i whip it until i am too hungry to wait any longer and eat it all by itself, no pumpkin loaf required :) though i did make a pumpkin bread too, so i feel less guilty about living off frosting.... surely having it on bread makes it less unhealthy :)

off to bed - there's a new Tabatha Takes Over to watch :)

today i...

actually successfully put christmas music on my iphone!! and it worked and everything! (at least i think it did... things flashed and looked like they were doing something positive. of course when we get to the point of driving up the mountain in the snow and i neeeeeeed to hear 'white christmas', the songs will all have miraculously vanished....)

must make a mercy dash to Trader Joe's. i need more wonderful treats for our please-make-us-be-snowed-in-but-still-able-to-have-pizza-delivered trip :)

want to take an angelic picture of the baby with Santa Claus and rush to print it at Tustin Ranch Costco - yes.... i like his mom that much :)

look at huge picture frames - bleck. i hate buying frames soooooo much :(

walk 6 miles - i think i might try to reverse my walk to make it more scintillating :) skipping it altogether would make it awesome ;)

need to dance a WHOLE LOT so my jeans don't feel so ridiculously suffocatingly tight when i sit down :|

new kitty Zoey

sweet Oreo - still needs a home... sigh. i love him.....

Clare, who always turns her head sideways for pictures like this (: