Pink Saturday banner

Good Sunday morning! Let's relive a bit of Pink Saturday, shall we?

I made this pink banner for my swap partner Angela for Linda's Vintage Spring Sweetness swap over at A Swap For All Seasons. I'll be posting the rest of what I sent and what I got soon. Linda is a great swap hostess and she'll be announcing her summer swap in the next few days, so check it out!

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See those pink and white curtains behind my banner?? Those are part of my pink room that will someday make it to Pink Saturday. You'll love it!

Perfect today

Today is my perfect kind of day. Happy sun, blue sky, no clouds. There's the slightest hint of a nip in the air, and its a little chilly in the shade, but in the sun my black tee can soak up the rays until I'm pleasantly warm. The breeze gives me a little shiver, but a good one.

It's like this...

(Photo credit: Sascha Corti)

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or this. I don't know her but she's enjoying my perfect day.

(Photo credit: lesamonster)

This is the kind of day that makes me glad to be alive, proud to be American (I can't explain this one...I've experienced gorgeous weather in other countries, too), humbled to be a child of God and thankful that I let myself delight in something as simple as the weather (we don't need to talk about how much of an impact bad weather has one me...this is a happy post). I want to be close to nature on a day like today. And, ask hubs, I am NOT a nature girl. He likes to ask me how long its been since I've set foot in the back yard. I try to explain that there is nothing for me in the back yard, and what's the point of his question anyway. Then I pull a dirty trick like asking him when was the last time he ran the dishwasher :D (Its a dirty trick, because hubs often rescues me from the piles of handwash items that I let languish for embarrassingly long periods of time...I tell him I've been busy in the back yard)

Today I would like to run away with hubs and lay in a hammock in the sun. Or lay in a pile of squishy pillows on a window seat in the sun. Or ride a horse in the sun. Or any outdoor activity that results in perspiration on a normal summer day, I would like to do that today in the sun.

Weather.com has crunched the numbers of my perfect day and here's what it looks like:

-Sunny

-61 degrees F

-UV Index: 7 High (ok, I have to be careful with this one. I'm white as a sheet, and I'm on acne medicine (27 and on acne meds, yay!) that makes me sensitive to the sun...puts a damper on all my "in the sun" activities, huh)

-Wind: From NE at 10 mph

-Humidity: 20%

-Pressure: 30.26 inches (what the heck does that mean?)

-Visibility: 10.0 miles

God is so good to give me a day like this.

Butt cheeks

I am not your typical person. I don't say this in an "I'm sooo amazing" way...more like a "wow...I'm so weird..." way. A way that makes hubs shake his head and wonder sometimes...and be SO glad that he'll be entertained for the rest of his life, you know it!

Example:

Conversation between hubs and I as we left Wal-Mart several weeks ago:

Hubs (holding out little tin of saddle soap): "Know what that's for?"

Me (having absolutely no idea but deciding to throw something out there) : "Um, your baseball glove."

Hubs: "Nope! My butt cheeks!"

Me (somewhat surprised hubs was divulging this information as he tends to keep subjects such as this fairly private, but not wanting him to feel like he shared more than he should have): "Awwww, babe, are they chapped?"

Hubs (pause, furrowing brow and looking at me in the "What the...?" way): "Ok...what do you think I said?"

Me: "Butt cheeks"

Hubs (feeling like he shared more than he should have): "I said BOAT SHOES!"

I doubled over in the Wal-Mart parking lot and laughed hard for quite some time. Hubs shook his head and wondered at the fact that he had all this to himself for the rest of his life.

"My Deodorant Failed Me" or "Danger: Too Much Information Ahead"

You read the title, right? There is definitely TMI ahead, so consider yourself warned.

Um, today was rough. I guess mostly the end of it where I smelled worse than I've ever smelled in my life. And I really had no good reason to, like running 10 miles or even just 1.

I am trying to save the world. I have reusable grocery bags (which I actually remembered to take to the store for the first time on Sunday! I've had them for months), natural dishwashing paste (mixed reviews on that one...it left my stainless silverware cloudy), whole wheat pasta, lots of tofu and the chemical-free deodorant alluded to above.

There are lots of chemicals in most of the mass produced soaps and cleansers we find in stores; these additives are harsh on our skin and bad for the Earth. I've found great natural soaps that perform beautifully, so several months ago I embarked on a mission to switch to a chemical-free deodorant. I first tried out Tom's of Maine in one of the scents...I think it was Lemongrass. That worked pretty well if I really put it on heavily, but it was a bit harsh and burned a bit after a while and actually made the skin around my armpits (can you believe I typed THAT word on my blog?!) peel a little bit. So next I tried Tom's of Maine unscented which didn't irritate my skin, but every once in a while it would fail me a bit. I remember the first time I noticed it I was reaching for a paint sample in Lowe's and got quite an embarrassing surprise. I had had a dinner date with my brother earlier that evening after which I definitely hugged him, so I had to call him and apologize for any...offense. So embarrassing. So I redoubled my efforts to apply plenty of natural Earth-saving Tom's.

In light of the ok results with the Tom's products I decided to audition a new player: Kiss My Face Active Enzyme Fragrance Free. I think I started using that this past Sunday. Monday went pretty well. Than came Tuesday.

Its late afternoon today and I'm washing my hands after a bathroom break. While reaching for the paper towels...yes, you guessed it, another embarrassing surprise. I was like, "Shoot! I'm just trying to save the Earth here!" I had sweated a tiny bit while running errands at lunch time (to clarify I didn't run at all...it was pretty warm today, though), but not enough to warrant an embarrassing surprise. We were done for the day just a couple hours later, and I decided to wait and shower after the 30 minute walk (2nd one in two days...we're trying to save ourselves along with the Earth!) with hubs. It was just a walk! But by the time I got back the situation had gone from bad to horrendously worse. I couldn't help but LAUGH really hard at the horrendousness. It was CRAZY! Kiss My Face let me DOWN! Absolutely the WORST I have smelled in my life. I don't know if I've EVER smelled another human being as offensive as I was.

What am I going to do? I want to save the Earth, but I also want hubs, with his ridiculously keen sense of smell, to want to be around me. And friends are nice, too. Sigh...there are a couple other brands I can look into. I shall continue the mission, but I might have to smell like a man tomorrow...the only other deodorant in the house is hub's, so hopefully he'll let me borrow it.

Stick Figure Family

Haaaaa! I just found a link on Tracey's blog to this website where you can order those family stickers for your car. I couldn't resist mocking up this sticker for us. This sticker would cost me $47.25...I gotta lose a couple random animals or something.

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Please note! Hubs wears a helmet when riding his motorcycle...the site only offered a head with a football helmet or a hockey helmet...and then you would have laughed and mocked him for wearing the wrong kind of helmet. Don't say you wouldn't.

The Way Men Are

(Photo credit tanbob)

I have permission from hubs to share this; you all gotta know I do whatever I can to keep my hubs happy including asking his permission to post his business. I love to see my hubs happy!

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Hubs set up a Google document for a guy at work we'll call Tim. The document was empty so that Tim could populate it when he got a chance. A few minutes later hubs sent the link to the document to several people so they'd have access to the work sheet when Tim finished with it. Within a few minutes a guy, we'll call him Michael, called hubs.

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Michael: Hey man

Hubs: Hey, what's up

Michael: Hey, that document you sent is empty.

Hubs: ...did you read the email? I said the document is blank until Tim populates it.

Michael: Oh...yeah, ok, I see that now. Thanks man

A few minutes later hubs heads to a meeting and when he gets to the room another guy we'll call Dan says:

I looked at that document you sent; it was empty

Hubs: Did you read the email?

Dan: I never read the email!

Hubs: In the email I said the document is blank until Tim populates it.

Dan: Oh! Well that makes sense then.

Haaaaaa! Michael and Dan both opened a document entitled "Tim's document" with absolutely no knowledge as to what could be in Tim's document, but they were not concerned by this. They felt pretty confident they could look over Tim's document and figure out what they needed to know.

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If we called hub's email "instructions" and Tim's document "something complicated" then it all becomes clear, doesn't it. How many men do we know who would rather eat dirt than look at the instructions? On the other hand, I let the big new camera hubs gave me for Christmas a few years ago sit in the box for weeks because I was intimidated by it and thought I needed to read through the instruction booklet first which I just never got around to doing. Finally hubs took the camera out and fiddled with it for a few minutes and showed me a couple things, and I got over myself long enough to play with it a little bit and get comfortable with it. There's a happy medium between "ignoring the instructions" and "death grip on the instructions", but that's a sermon for another day.

Here's to Michael and Dan, fearless conquerors of blank documents belonging to Tim!

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

This Tuesday with Dorie we made the Caramel Crunch Bars; sooooo-weee, these are good! Crunchy and sweet and buttery = YUM.

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This fairly simple recipe came together pretty quickly (I am slow as molasses in the kitchen, so "quickly" is a relative term), sat in my oven for about 18 minutes and then got some chocolate chips poured on top to be melted for the top layer. Ah, how to say this, THEY NEVER MELTED...those bars probably spent a total of another 30 minutes in the oven as I put them in, took them out, tried unsuccessfully to swirl the luscious should-have-been-but-wasn't melted chocolate into one luscious layer...instead the spoon sort of skipped around digging the non melted chips into the shortbread base...this process was repeated at least 3 times before I decided that now that they were sufficiently ugly I would quit, knowing at least they would taste good. Ooo, I was frustrated. I have heard that chocolate chips are engineered to hold their shape when warm, but I didn't realize they just will never melt...Annoying things. Should have just chopped up bar chocolate like Dorie said...you haven't always followed Dorie's instructions to the letter; don't judge me!! >:[

In any case these were delicious. I took the majority to work and people were so gracious and just cleaned them right up. One taster declared they were 4-star worthy...then later decided they were just "ok" and I needed to practice my technique 2 or 3 more times and let her evaluate the results :)

I'm glad these were yummy, especially since this is my first TWD assignment completed in a long time...my kitchen has turned into a mad science lab with parts and pieces of previous Dorie recipes laying around...the cake layers from the last assigment are done, just not iced...the dry ingredients for the ginger chocolate cake were mixed...and not another thing was done for that recipe. It feels good to actually finish something. Ahh, commitment.

Whitney of What's Left on the Table picked these yummy bars and has posted the recipe. You should make these!