Exceedingly Mundane

Our clematis is growing and growing, but no blooms yet. We went to Tim’s parent’s house this past weekend, and all of their clematis have beautiful blooms on them, though. His brother has a purple one at his house, and his mom has a maroon one… aren’t they pretty?!

Mine won’t be long, it has got blooms on it and has really grown exponentially the last couple of weeks. Ours is not a pretty color though, just a white one. Since we planted it against the house, which has red brick, I wanted something that would show up against the brick. More pictures when it starts blooming 😀

I haven’t felt great this week. Nothing really hurts and I don’t have a fever or infection, but I just generally don’t feel good. The blah’s mostly. I don’t seem to have a lot of energy and I do NOT want to get anywhere near the treadmill. That treadmill is evil (more on that later).

So when you have a sweet husband like mine, one who offers to go get me Chinese one night for supper, you take him up on it (that way, I don’t have to cook!) He knows Chinese food is my favorite. 😀

He also came in with this:

It’s from Snow Biz and it’s a strawberry shortcake snow cone. Yummy! He said he thought it would make me feel better! And he was right, it really did!

I saw this over at Marianne’s blog yesterday, and swiped it! Thanks Marianne 🙂

Have you ever…

(x) Gone on a blind date
(x) Skipped School
( ) Watched someone die
( ) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
(x) Been to Florida
(x) Been on a plane
(x) Been lost
(x) Been on the opposite side of the country
(x) Gone to Washington , DC
( ) Swam in the ocean
(x) Cried yourself to sleep
( ) Played cops and robbers
(x) Recently colored with crayons
( ) Sang Karaoke ….
( ) Paid for a meal with coins only?
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t?
(x) Made prank phone calls
(x) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose – or other places!
(x) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(x) Danced in the rain
(x) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(x) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(x) Watched the sunrise with someone you care about
(x) Blown bubbles
( ) Gone ice-skating
( ) Been skinny dipping outdoors

Let me know if you decide to play along at your blog; I’d love to come by and read your answers!

Today’s “Question of the Day” is short and sweet – how many DVD players do you have in your house? The reason that I ask is that mine just broke. Wah! We actually have two in our den, one is a multi-disc player and the other is a combo that includes a DVD recorder. But, we did have a small, cheap one in our bedroom. That way, if I wanted to watch a “girl movie” and Tim was watching something in the den, I could just go in our room. Also, when we have football parties and stuff, it lets us put the kiddos in our room with a Disney movie. That doesn’t happen very often though, so we are considering not replacing the one in our room.

How many DVD players do you have, and in which rooms? How often are they used? We use our den one a lot, because we rent movies from Netflix, so we watch a lot of movies in the den.

Leave me a comment and let me know! And have a wonderful day 🙂

Well, I was sorry to see that there was no new Friday Feast today. I probably could have surfed around and found a substitute, or even tried to recycle an old one, but instead, I thought I’d ask a “Question of the Day“. I haven’t done one of these in a while. I actually sort of ran out of interesting ideas. Maybe, since my blog is over 3 years old, I’ll have to go back and recycle some of the more popular ones that I’ve asked before 🙂

In the mean time, here’s one that I’ve been meaning to ask:

Have you ever read the ending of a book before you actually got to the end?

This is not something I have ever done. I always, always flip ahead though and see what page number is the last page. I have this thing about knowing how many pages are in the book, and at any given point, how far I am into a book and how much left I have to go. But, I never read the ending. I don’t like knowing how it will turn out. That sort of makes reading the book totally useless to me!

So, how about you? Have you ever flipped to the end to read how it’s going to turn out?

Today is all about my DVR. I’m so excited! I have a bunch of Jon and Kate plus 8 episodes that taped during TLC’s mini-marathon last night. I just recently discovered this show, and am enjoying catching up on older episodes. I never could have taped all of these shows like this, when we were using a VCR. We often tape two shows at one time, too, since we got the DVR. I love that thing 🙂

I am going to take a break from blogging today, and from reading your blogs. Jon and Kate are calling, as well as the Idol Gives Back show from last night. Try to hold off on posting anything new today, will ya?! 😀

Have a great day!

Tim and I stopped after church last weekend at our new Fresh Market grocery store. I’ve been several times, and have been wanting to get some stuff from their meat and seafood counters to take home and prepare at home. They have some awesome looking food – fish that is coated in sesame or almond mixtures, seafood stuffed with crabmeat and other fillings, chicken breasts that are stuffed or seasoned, beef pinwheels, stuffed flank steaks, huge burgers that are stuffed with things like blue cheese, portabello mushrooms, etc, stuffed pork chops and even italian meatloaves already prepared and ready to bake. Every thing I have seen looks awesome 🙂

So, after church, we stopped by and got some cranberry-brie stuffed chicken breasts. I had sweet potatoes and salad mix at home already, so I was happy with just those. Tim was really sweet though, and knew I wanted to try more stuff there. So, we got some spinach-artichoke dip from the deli counter (delicious, as good as any we’ve had in a restaurant) and some of their bottled lemonade. I swear, the lemonade might also have been the best stuff I’ve tasted. I know I’ve had raspberry lemonade at Olive Garden or somewhere like that and it is really good, but this stuff is just as good, or better 🙂

I didn’t take pictures of the food, but I might next time! The chicken breasts were supposed to be cooked in the oven for about 50 minutes, but Tim was starving and didn’t want to wait that long, so we threw them on the grill. I don’t think they cooked as well, so next time, I want to follow the instructions. They still tasted good, but probably not as good as they would have if they had been baked in the oven.

The lemonade was so good, it tasted just like spring! It was perfect for eating lunch outside in the sunshine, on our deck. They had several flavors of this lemonade, but Tim wanted to start off “easy”. 🙂 He doesn’t tend to like really fruity stuff. I would have tried the blueberry or pomegranate or other flavors, but we started off slow with just the pink lemonade:

I’m hoping to make this a new tradition for the spring. I’ve told Tim that I want to stop over there after church for the next few weeks, and get something new to try every time. We’ll see how well that goes over, and for how long. 😀

Who needs a cat around when you have a dog that will kill the rats he hunts down in your backyard? That would be Beau, my mighty hunter!

We have a big ditch behind our house, behind the fence, and there is a lake in our subdivision, behind the houses that are across the street from us. I’ve always said, we live in the critter/crawl path. The snakes and rats and horrible things slither and crawl from one place to the next. I’ve blogged in the past about the possums and raccoons that we’ve had in our yard. I even mentioned before that Tim had opened up our gas grill one spring evening, only to find that rats had been nesting in the grill over the winter. Ugh. It gives me the heebie-jeebies! We live in the suburbs, for goodness sakes, not the country. We’re not supposed to have this many gross things around.

BUT – I have a mighty hunter now! Beau has been stalking squirrels by day, and rats by night. The squirrels are just too fast for him, and see him coming. He hasn’t gotten one yet, but he has not given up. He is relentless in his watching from the back door – he does it for hours every day. He had not gotten a rat either. Tim had shot one out of the big tree in the backyard with a pellet gun a few weeks ago, but this is the first one that Beau actually stalked down and killed himself. He was so proud of himself, Tim said! It was late one night, a couple of nights ago, and Tim “saved” the rat for me to see. Ugh! I took a picture though, so if you really want to see a big, dead rat, then click on the extended page for a picture.

Beau is the Mighty Hunter!

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We had some bad weather move through our area on Friday afternoon. I think the weather people are still trying to decide if it was a tornado or straight line winds, but either way, it was bad. Tim and I were home with Beau and we’d never heard it hail like that before. We’ve had bad wind before, with Katrina, but I think this wind was stronger, just thankfully a lot shorter duration.

There was a lot of damage in our area, mostly trees and power lines down, and some roofs blown off. A gas station about a mile from our house had the awning over the pumps come down on two cars that were parked underneath it. We drove by and saw that yesterday and it looked bad. We were very lucky and had almost no damage. Tim’s truck was parked outside and we were afraid he would have hail damage on it, but it looks ok. We had a lot of leaves down and a few small limbs, but that’s it. We were very lucky.

I tried to get a few pictures, but I was a bit late to the game. Most of the hail had melted by the time I got my camera out:

On the positive side, it’s supposed to be really pretty here today – sunny and 84 degrees! Looks like spring is about over here and it will be out hot, humid summertime before long 🙂 Have a great day!

Feast One Hundred & Eighty Six
April 4, 2008

Appetizer
Invent a new flower; give it a name and describe it. Oh, now, I have no idea! Too early in the morning, and I haven’t had my coffee yet 😀 How about a rose with red and yellow on it and you call it a Stoplight Rose? 🙄

Soup
Name someone whom you think has a wonderful voice. Ooh, there two, but I can only think of one of their names. Dennis Haysbert, who played David Palmer on 24 and then was on “The Unit”. He also does the State Farm commercials. His voice is like velvet to me. He has a very “James Earl Jones” kind of voice, good for voice-overs, narrations and commercials.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how clean do you keep your car? I keep my car pretty clean on the inside. Tim treats it like a gym locker though, taking it to the golf course and stuff. I’d say about a 7 or 8 overall. It needs washing right now because of all of the pollen everywhere here.

Main Course
How do you feel about poetry? Nah, not really into poetry. Doesn’t do anything for me.

Dessert
What was the last person/place/thing you took a picture of? Beau, of course! I even remember distinctly because Tim came into the living room and I was taking a photo of him. Tim said “was he doing something special?” and I said “No, he’s just so cute laying there”. He rolled his eyes and asked how many photos I had like that of Beau. Thousands, I said! So, Beau definitely. He’s my favorite subject

Spring has sprung here! We’re really loving being out in the warm weather and seeing all of our shrubs flowering in the backyard. It’s been raining some this week and a bit overcast, but it’s still so nice to look out and see stuff blooming. Tim has been working on and off for the last few days, pressure washing the deck, patio furniture, house and fence, and getting ready to apply our annual coat of water sealer to all of the wood. Things look really good in our back yard right now, thanks to the stuff blooming and Tim’s hard work 🙂

Here’s our Indian Hawthorne shrubs in the backyard:

And our yellow Lady Banks climbing rose that is growing on our fence:

‘

Have a great day 🙂

I’m curious – did you “give up” anything to start, or continue, blogging? As in, time-wise, do you spend time blogging that you would otherwise be using for something else, another hobby, more time with family or friends, or something like that? Anything specific? Me, I gave up scrapbooking when I started blogging. I really miss it sometimes, but I’m realistic – I can’t seem to do both. It’s enough that I read as much as I do and blog, while everything else is going on around here. I know my limitations – if I add scrapbooking back in, then something else will have to give. Either the insane amount of TV/movie watching we do (which would work for me now, I’d gladly give up some to read more, but Tim loves to watch TV and movies and that’s a lot of our “together” time), or the cooking/baking/recipe collecting, or the reading. Or the blogging. Logically, I know I could scale each of them down and add scrapbooking back in, but realistically, I know the way I work and function, and I know I’d have to really cut one back severely, or out altogether, to add something as time-intensive as scrapping back for me.

How about you? Do you feel like you cut back or gave anything up to blog regularly? Is there a hobby you used to enjoy, but you no longer do because you’re spending that time blogging?

I’ve been trying, for a while now, to figure out how to post this question, without either appearing like a weirdo and without making my blogger buddies out there run screaming from the computer because it’s such an odd and long-winded question. I haven’t quite figured out how to do either of those yet, so I guess I’ll just dive right in.

I’m curious about how much “stuff” others have in their kitchen cabinets, drawers and pantry. Do other people have as much cookware, bakeware, prep equipment, gadgets, etc as I do? Tim says most people don’t. This question comes about for two basic reasons – 1) I’m wanting to get more dishes (I’ve almost completely decided on Fiestaware, but waffling on color choices) but also keep the everyday dishes I already have (Mikasa French Countryside). Which means some “stuff” has to go to make room for more dishes and mugs. And 2) I’m trying to declutter and clean different areas of the house, and the kitchen is a hard one for me. I really and truly feel like everything in my kitchen is either needed (something I use on a fairly regular basis while cooking and baking), or else, if it’s something I rarely use, it’s stored there because it is kitchen-related and I have no where else to store it for part of the year. Think seasonal stuff, like a roasting pan for cooking a turkey or ham at the holidays.

I do have a lot of stuff. I like to cook and bake. I’m wondering if other people who cook have as much, or more, or less. For example, I have more than one muffin pan. I have a 12 cup muffin tin, a 6 cup muffin tin and a mini-muffin tin. Tim says I should just have one, but I say, sometimes I make a recipe for 12, sometimes I cut muffins or cornbread in half and just cook 6 in my toaster oven, and sometimes I make mini muffins. Those are just for muffins – if I’m baking a cake, I like to have a choice of a round cake pan, an oblong pan (like a 9×13) or a bundt pan. Which leads to another example – I have more than one 9×13 pan. I have metal, because I like metal for bar cookies, brownies, cakes and things like that. I also have a glass one, because I like to make casseroles and stuff like that in a glass or ceramic one. I have mixing bowls, a Dutch oven, a bigger soup pot, various and sundry casserole dishes (I have about 5 different sizes in the Corningware French White, it matches my everyday white dishes and I like Corningware products). I do bake bread, so I have more than one loaf pan, too. The madness never ends, it just keeps going on and on 🙂

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We’ve been seeing a few robins here, but I’ve been having a hard time getting a photo of them. They tend to just flitter down to the ground, and then they fly away rather quickly. From the windows on the back of our house, where I normally shoot photos of the birds and squirrels, I have a hard time seeing parts of the ground because of our deck. So, I’ve had trouble photographing these pesky robins. I was really excited last week to see a robin perched on my fence. I ran to get my camera, then had to change out the lens to my telephoto lens. I was sure he would be gone by the time I got all of that done… but no, he was still sitting there. I realized why after I transferred the photos. He seems to be a pretty old, slightly grizzled robin! I guess he was tired and not in a hurry to fly off! Oh well, at least I got a couple of photos of the robins this year!!! 🙂

P.S. Saturday morning early, I got up to let Beau out to go to the bathroom. I saw a beautiful bluebird perched on the edge of one of my hanging baskets. We rarely have bluebirds here. I have bluejays here all the time, and mockingbirds too, but hardly ever a beautiful bluebird. I think I’ve only seen them in our yard maybe 3 times in the last several years. This time, I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I got my camera, he had flown away. Boo-hoo. 🙁