Memorial Day Weekend

I had a very busy weekend.  The plan was to sleep as much as possible- and that didn't happen. 

Friday night my sister and I went to the Traveler's game.  When I told her that we would go, I forgot that was the opening night of Riverfest.  Oh well, we had a good time at the game and the Travs won.

We ate lots of junk and jumped on the inflatables (well she did- I'm too old haha) and danced around.  We didn't catch a fly ball though.  She was disappointed.

Saturday I woke up early, so I did chores around the house.  A miracle occurs when you clean out the shower drain....

Anway- later Saturday I went to Riverfest with my mom.  We saw David Nail and the Charlie Daniels Band at the Ampitheatre.  My favorites were at the Yarnell's Family stage though. Haha.  We saw a gymnastics school and then the Jesse White Tumblers.

This makes me a little nervous too- I wish they would use a bigger mat.  :)  Then on Sunday we went back to Riverfest and we tried to see the Kenyan Acrobats.  It was a very short show because apparently half of their team got sick from performing in the heat??!?  I guess it is hotter in Arkansas than in Kenya...

I ate a lot of crap that day- but this was a first- a donut grilled cheese.  It wasn't bad, actually.

I also met the peanut man. lol- it isn't a good trip to Riverfest if you don't take at least one weird picture.

On Sunday, we also saw Mike Posner (I am not a fan) and REO Speedwagon.  We also had the obligatory fireworks.  I recorded the fireworks on my phone, but I can't seem to get it on here.  Oh well- I am sure you have seen fireworks before.  :)

Railing!

So I am in the (very long and drawn out) process of finishing the railing on my front steps.  I have been planning on doing this since I moved into this house about 14 months ago.  I hired this guy in January, and he has been slowly working on bits and pieces and driving me absolutely insane.  I am not in a hurry to get it done, but I was kind of afraid he was going to take my deposit money and run away.  This is a before picture.


Obviously this is not a recent picture since there is snow on the ground.  I took this way back when I thought the after picture would be soon after I hired the guy....

So today the guy calls me at work.  He started out asking me if I had noticed any settling of my house since he has last been out.  I was like um... no.  So he said that he built the frame out at my house last time (which he did) and that now it didn't fit.  I was like well...  not my problem lol.  So he said he would fix it but he wasn't sure if he would be able to finish it today.  He wanted to let me know that it was ugly and he didn't want me to freak out when I got home because he would come back and fix it later in the week.  (We are expecting bad weather tomorrow.)  Needless to say, I was slightly worried, but what can you do.  When I got home, I found this:


Please ignore the hose hanging out in the yard lol.  I am lazy.  Anyway- back to the railing.  I am pleased with what has been done so far.  Obviously I don't know what it looked like when he first started because I was at work, but I don't think anything is wrong with it other than a few paint chips from the installation.  I don't particularly love the black post things showing so much, but I don't know what much can be done about that.  I am going to have to grow some kind of bush there or something I guess.

He's not finished yet.  He still has to do the last part of the front side, and then that little short side on the back side.  However, I am just so glad that I finally have something for my money haha!  Hopefully he will come back again (and not in 4 more months) and finish the job!

Rainy Weekend

This weekend has been very wet!

Friday night I went to the Greek Food Festival with my mom despite the rain.  I had a falafel and a Greek salad and of course some baklava and butter cookies.  The pastries are the best part.  Also (and completely unrelated) I went to Walgreens looking for some OPI shatter nailpolish.  They didn't have it, but I did get some Riverfest tickets.  I eventually found the nailpolish at JCPenney.  I didn't do a superb job though.  I think I used too much shatter and too light of a color underneath.  Hopefully next time will be better.

Saturday, a miracle happened and I slept untill 11:00.  That has not happened in forever and I was so thankful.  Then I went to a birthday party for my cousin and my sister came home with me to spend the night.  I decided to try out a new recipe for cottage cheese pancakes.  They were not spectacular.  I also tried to make some homemade vanilla pudding.  Another failure.  So I had a box of brownie mix that was supposed to be for people with all these allergies so it was nut free and egg free, and apparently taste free.  Failure #3.  I suffered through the pancakes, and my sister had cheerios, marshmallows, and pickles for dinner.  Classy.

This morning, we went to church and then we were supposed to go to the Greek Food Festival again with our friends.  It was raining, so everyone ditched us.  By the time we got outside though, the rain had stopped so we decided to go anyway.  We rode the trolley from our church and we were the only ones.  We ate and watched the little Greek dancing kids, and then decided to walk back to the church instead of riding the trolley.  Stupid.  Then we went to a birthday party at a local amusement park.  It was hot and humid.  Welcome to summer I guess.  Then I went to church to meet a potential new youth minister.  At about 8pm I realized that I forgot to cook anything for dinner.  I tried to make a frozen pizza.   Failure #4, unless you like burnt pizza.  It was a bad weekend to be eating at my house.  :)

Blogging Challenge Post 7

So this is only my 3rd post in May.  Lame.  So I thought I would go back to the blogging challenge since my friend Lyndsey is showing me up since I started before her and she is already passing me in the order.  Oops.

So today is my most treasured item.  This is a hard one.  I am not incredibly sentimental....  Honestly I would cry a lot if I lost my iPhone. lol.  But that is something that I could replace and it would not be the end of the world.  Although I sure do love it.  Most of the stuff I have could be easily replaced, so that is what is making this one so hard. 

So these two rings are special to me.  And no- I don't wear them both like that.  That looks stupid and is just for the purpose of this picture.  :)  The one on the top is a ring that my grandmother and great-grandmother (who is no longer living) gave me when I graduated from high school.  It is opal, my birthstone.  I don't wear it a lot though because it is yellow gold, which I don't wear a lot and also it has a high setting, so I tend to hit it on a lot of stuff when I do wear it.  The bottom one was my sorority pin when I was in college.  I always intended on having it made into a ring after I graduated and never really got around to it.  My mom had it done for me when I graduated with my MBA.  I wear this one almost every day.  The band of this ring is really awesome, but too bad you can't see it...  haha you will just have to trust me on that one,

DAY 01: A PICTURE OF YOURSELF WITH FIFTEEN FACTS



DAY 02: A PICTURE OF YOU AND SOMEONE YOU USED TO BE CLOSE WITH


DAY 03: A PICTURE OF THE CAST FROM YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW


DAY 04: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE DAY


DAY 05: A PICTURE OF ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE MEMORIES


DAY 06: A PICTURE OF A PERSON YOU'D LOVE TO CHANGE PLACES WITH FOR A DAY


DAY 07: A PICTURE OF YOUR MOST TREASURED ITEM


DAY 08: A PICTURE THAT MAKES YOU LAUGH


DAY 09: PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER


DAY 10: A PICTURE OF THE PEOPLE YOU DID THE CRAZIEST THINGS WITH


DAY 11: A PICTURE OF SOMETHING YOU DON'T LIKE


DAY 12: A PICTURE OF SOMETHING YOU LIKE


DAY 13: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAMILY


DAY 14: A PICTURE OF SOMEONE YOU COULD NEVER IMAGINE YOUR LIFE WITHOUT


DAY 15: A PICTURE OF SOMETHING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE.


DAY 16: A PICTURE OF WHERE YOU WANT TO LIVE OUT YOUR DAYS


DAY 17: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE SUPER HERO


DAY 18: FIRST 10 SONGS ON YOUR iPOD SHUFFLE


DAY 19: A PICTURE OF YOU AS A KID


DAY 20: A PICTURE OF SOMEWHERE YOU'D LIKE TO TRAVEL


DAY 21: A PICTURE FROM LAST SUMMER


DAY 22: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE FOOD


DAY 23: A PICTURE OF SOMETHING YOU WISH YOU WERE BETTER AT


DAY 24: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOK


DAY 25: A PICTURE OF YOU AND YOUR SIBLINGS


DAY 26: A PICTURE OF THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN THEATERS


DAY 27: A PICTURE OF A TRADITION YOU HAVE


DAY 28: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO SHOP


DAY 29: A PICTURE OF WHERE YOU LIVE


DAY 30: A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE SPORT

Alien Invasion

My sister turned 7.  She wanted alien cupcakes for her party.  It took a whole freaking day.  Although now that I know how to do it, I'm thinking I could crank them out in half a day.  :)  Here's the process:

First, bake 24 cupcakes of your desired flavor.  These are chocolate.


Then after they cool, put a thin layer of icing on them, and then half of a giant marshmallow.


Then add some more icing and a donut hole.  (I never claimed these were healthy.  I say go big or go home.  And lets not talk about the extra donuts that I ate this day.)


Then put icing around the sides.  However, I later figured out that this is pretty pointless and it works fine if you skip this step.  It will save a lot of time, frustration, and icing. (Please ignore the Krispy Kreme box.  I know that donut holes do not come in that kind of box.)


Then I skipped a bunch of steps in my picture taking.  Freeze these weird looking things for 15 minutes.  Heat up some icing in the microwave for about 15 seconds and then dip the frozen cupcakes in the heated icing to get a nice, shiny, smooth surface of icing.  Then add two chocolate covered sunflower seeds as the eyes and two licorice pieces (we had some black licorice and some red twizzlers because we think black licorice is nasty) as antennae.  Then make a space ship for the alien invaders.  It would be ideal to use take out containers, but when the only place in town to get them is Sam's Club, and you don't really have any use for 350 containers, 9 ounce punch cups will do.   Just be sure to use a small piece of tape on the back side so that the lid does not blow off in the 100 mile per hour winds.  I did as a precaution-  it was a good idea.  Trust me.  The wind was so strong that it was blowing the presents off the table.  At least it was not hot.  Anyway- back on track.  Here's the finished product.  And this one kind of reminds me of Harry Potter since the flash reflected off of his space ship and made a lightning bolt shape on his forehead. haha.

Danger in the Freezer

I like to freeze eggs.  I do this because I do not like to eat eggs, so usually when I have to buy eggs for a recipe, the rest of the eggs hardly ever get used.  Since I know now that you can freeze them, I have saved lots of eggs from being thrown in the trash.  I usually get lots of questions about this.  What I do is crack the eggs in a bowl, whisk them pretty good, and then put them in an ice cube tray until they are frozen.  Make sure you notice how many ice cubes equals one egg.  In my tray, 2 cubes equals one egg.  Then after they are frozen, I put the egg cubes into a freezer bag and freeze them until I need them.  I don't know about eating them as plain ol' eggs, but I use them in baking and I haven't had any problems.  Just make sure that you remember to take the eggs out of the freezer in plenty of time to thaw before you need them.  This is my biggest problem.

So anyway- tonight I am making some cupcakes for a lady that bid on them in an auction.  After work, I planned on taking out the eggs.  I got half of what I needed out, and the rest of the eggs are all frozen together.  This is unfortunate.  I don't want to thaw out the other eggs, just the ones I need.  In the process of trying to break off the equivalent of 3 eggs, I managed to cut my finger with a frozen egg, and stab myself with a fork.  Nice.  These things only happen to me.  :)