Over the weekend...

We went Goodwilling! We were going to go yardsaling, but it rained. No loss! At Goodwill, we found two matching little corner shelves/bookcases, a large, rustic breadbox, a "Golden Pie" collection pie plate with a decorative recipe for peach pie on the bottom, a set of six lovely glass dessert plates (not good for company, but there are six people in our family to enjoy them) and an assortment of much-needed winter clothes for my little brothers. I also found two cute little heart-shaped wall-mount candle-holders that are going in my hope chest. I think that's where the "Golden Pie" plate is going too.

The little corner bookshelves were assembled and placed into two parallel corners of our dining room, and instantly filled with pottery pieces from my mom's Seagrove pottery collection.

The rustic breadbox is currently in use holding three loaves of bread and any opened chip bags, with plans for making it less rustic in the future... hopefully sometime this week, if the weather really is as nice as it's been forecast, I'll get outside and paint it white. And then Sarah has agreed to paint some sort of design and maybe a Bible verse on the lid.

Then, on Sunday, Mom altered some curtains we got at a yard sale recently and I attempted to mount the curtain rod... I've done it before, but these windows were higher and I was at a bad angle for drilling and screwing AND I had the really heavy corded drill/screwdriver because our two battery operated ones are both dead (*sigh*). My Uncle Joel kindly finished it for me. And now we have some cute green and white checkered curtains hanging in our breakfast room! They give it a bright, airy side-walk-cafe feel.

And since I know all my readers hang on my every word and live for my day-to-day life stories, I've decided to create suspense and not post pictures until I get satisfactorily clamorous pleadings.

~Lizzie

(Actually, I just don't have time to take the pictures yet... although I won't bother to post them without requests... =P )

Mice, ideas and new-found goodies.

I think I will go in reverse order of the title so that thoughts of the rodent and the idea won't obscure the yumminess of the cream cheese brownies I've discovered. No, I'm not taking credit for the recipe, only for finding it on the internet. :P

Here's the recipe from one of my favorite recipe sites, "Joy of Baking" - Cream Cheese Brownies (link). Theirs look better than mine I think, but I can never get my food to look like a piece of art. That's Sarah's specialty. I've made three batches of these brownies so far, and the first time they came out of the pan very well without the aluminum foil (we try not to use aluminum foil in baking because it cooks into the food); I just buttered it very well. For some reason though, the second two batches didn't work out so well. They stuck pretty badly. I'm blaming it on the strange sugar I had to use. It refused to dissolve and made the batter very wet and sticky. We've really enjoyed these brownies though (even the sticky ones with crunchy sugar). This is the first time I've made something where I ask if anyone wants some and even my parents say "Yes!" with hopeful eagerness.

And as for my idea, I've been thinking about doing a review blog. I really enjoy reviewing books and movies, and I get criticized for posting my reviews on my own blog, so I figured if I start a blog for that purpose it'll be better accepted. And then, if it ever happens to be big enough that it could actually be a job (with which I could somehow extract money from people), that would be nice. Probably not though, with the current economy. So anyway, I will be thinking on that. And if anyone is interested in being a writer, just send me a sample review. ;)

I hate mice. It's like my cat knows this and intentionally catches and brings into the house more mice than is natural for any cat. She even takes up the slack for our other two cats who are remarkably less interested in small animals. She doesn't look malicious, does she?

*sigh* So just a few minutes ago she came inside a dropped a mouse and then went back outside. We have our broom/trashcan/scream method all worked out. Except this time we were trying to decide if we should let Shadow (the kitty with kidney problems) have a fresh... treat. *gag* And Mom was holding the broom on top of him while we tried to decide to sweep him into the trashcan or somehow let Shadow eat him without him running all over the house... and decided on the the trashcan, but apparently the mouse had already smothered. *shudder* *cough* *shudder*

*grimace* So... I can't leave you with that... ... I bought a new purse today.

It was on sale, and I just couldn't resist. I really like it. :P

~Lizzie

What a gray day...

It's such an awful depressing day outside (in my opinion) and I'm really tempted to do a dull complaining post.... since not much good has happened to me today. But I think instead that I'll do a wry complaing post and try to wring a chuckle out of my readers.

I slept really hard from 11 to 9, and woke up feeling strange. My entire body ached from swimming, dance, swimming and water polo. And even after sleeping in, I still felt so tired that the last thing I wanted to do was get up. But I did.

And I drove Sarah to her art lesson, and then went grocery shopping. It is a fact well known that precisely 87.22% of all shopping carts are evil. Yes... they have personalities. And those evil 87.22% are adept at picking shoppers who are having not-so-awesome days. You thought you picked the cart? Well, that just shows how sneaky they are. The government could learn some tips from shopping carts.

So today, the particular shopping cart that picked me was innocent looking enough. It was even close to the door, instead of being miles away in the almost-empty, depleted tunnel of shopping cart storage. It even appeared to work fine until I'd gotten so far that I didn't want to go back and get another cart. And then it started swerving to the left. Some carts not so evil as this one will swerve gently, and in wide open spaces. This cart swerved sharper and more suddenly and maliciously than a cart shoved by two young boys, and it made sure to swerve when there was an elaborate display of parmesan cheese nearby. However, that is not the end of this particular cart's talents. It also made turning right insanely difficult.

Besides the annoyance of swerving and not being able to turn right, those two faults combine to make an action worthy of being considered a third fault in its own right. Imagine this.... I'm looking at the organic juices on the right, and to the left are shelves and shelves of wine bottles. (I see you wincing... my story is too predictable.) I finish selecting juice, and begin to move forward. The cart immediately swerves to the left, into the wine bottles. I try to stop and turn the cart to the right to compensate for the swerve to the left and encounter the 2nd fault: turning to the right is almost impossible. The cart then accelerates by itself and sweeps down the entire row of wine bottles, sending them crashing to the floor. People stare and the store employees come running.

Don't worry, it wasn't all that awful. I managed not to hit the wine bottles. But as I jerked the cart to the right with all my screaming muscles, I did see that scenario flash before my eyes. Somewhat how I imagine one sees one's life flash before one's eyes in situations where you think you might die.

After that close call, I made it through the rest of my shopping without further mishaps (thank goodness) and as soon as I was through with the cart, I gave it a nice shove into the brick wall of its home as payback. (Yes, I'm fond of such petty but satisfactory retaliation....)

I got home with Sarah, and even started feeling better. Until we got to swim team. Warm-ups weren't so bad, and we had an easy 50 set. But then, we did 3 200 IM's split lane and I was supposed to lead. (This was because I was in the Silver lane for all that were curiously wondering how I managed to lead Platinum.) I tried, but my muscles were refusing to work well, so I ended up making Sarah lead. And then I sat out the 3rd 200 in an effort to recover. That didn't work either. Then we did 20 25's on the :30. That worked pretty well, actually, cause I barely made it, and then I got out of the pool, climbed on the block and dove off so fast that I didn't have time to get dizzy and fall off the block.

By then I was almost completely exhausted. And we did relays. It's very sad.... there are three things we do in swimming that it seems most everyone enjoys: relays and two games, Sharks & Minnows and Capture the Flag (flip-flop). I have difficulty deciding which I hate more. I used to think that Sharks and Minnows was the worst, but then we played Capture the Flag yesterday and I think it's worse. It goes on longer, and there's the potential for getting grabbed, kicked, scratched and then pulled to the surface and tagged more than once in Capture the Flag. In Sharks and Minnows it only happens once and then you get to be the one grabbing and tagging. You do still get kicked and scratched as a shark though.

However, I'm quite certain that relays involving corkscrew are worse than both of those games. Corkscrew, for those that don't know, is a torturous practice not worthy of being called a stroke. You take one freestyle stroke, and then roll to your back and take one back stroke then roll again and take a freestyle stroke and so on and so forth until you arrive at the wall. Hopefully the wall arrives before the wave of nausea. When I was finished with my leg of the relay my head was pounding, I felt sick, and my muscles were completely limp. I eventually dragged myself out of the pool, mumbled something about leaving early and went to take a nice hot shower and change into my dry clothes.

I survived and made it home, and I feel much better now that I've had a snack and sat around comfortably doing nothing. Hopefully I'll be fine tomorrow because I won't get a relaxing weekend this weekend. We have a lot to do.

~Lizzie

Fun Meet.

Yesterday was one of those really long, fun and exhausting days. I left at 10 in the morning and didn't get back home until 11 at night. I had a 2 hour piano lesson, and then the water polo play-offs. We (Sean's team) managed to beat Nathan's team and then we played Matt's team for the championship. We were up the entire game, and then lost in the last quarter by 2 points. It was kinda disappointing. Especially since they probably wouldn't have won if Coach had seen a couple inside-the-2-meters. *sniff* But oh well.

Then we walked over to the mall (TAC is RIGHT next to the mall) ate lunch and walked around shopping for about an hour before we went back to TAC for the fun meet. The fun meet was absolutely insane, with hardly any of the organization we usually manage at our own summer pool. It was still fun though. We had the family 200 IM relay (yeah.... guess who won?), the noodle relay, the flippers relay, the corkscrew relay and the multiple kickboards relay. Amazingly enough, we somehow escaped the multiple goggle relay. (Actually, I'm kinda sad about that.....) Along with regular events like freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly.

Then we took our team picture with the B's ingenious idea of holding up letters spelling "undefeated." After which we packed up and drove to the other side of the mall to Ragazzi's for our award ceremony. Trying to get seated was crazy. Everyone wanted to sit with everyone else and there wasn't enough room at one table for everyone. We all finally got settled and ordered our food. Then Coach announced that the score of the fun meet had been tallied... and that some of us wouldn't be leaving with an undefeated season.

Now, keep in mind that these are different teams than the water polo teams mentioned earlier in this post. But still, Matt's team won. However, I guess we can't begrudge our best and graduating swimmer his completely undefeated season. Then Coach presented the most improved and most outstanding awards, and the ribbons (and medal! Torin won a medal!) won in the Championship meet. And lastly, he gave Matt a photo collage and championship shirt signed by all the Seahawks.

Then we all came home and crashed. It was a great end to the season. Even if it did make half of our team not completely undefeated. :P

~Lizzie

Oops!

So I took Daddy to pick up his car, and after I dropped him off, I went to Wal-Mart to get some elastic for a shirt Mom's making. On the way to the back of the store I took a few detours... through the pillow isle, curtain isle, and plastic-storage-containers isle. By then I'd gone to the back of the store... but the wrong side of the back, and on my way to the elastic I slowed to look at some movies.

Then when I got to the sewing section, I got distracted by all the fabrics and looking at ideas for future projects. I did finally manage to get the elastic, but it's next to the patterns... and I caved and got this really cute skirt pattern that I'm going to make as soon as I finish the blouse I'm working on. And then I saw the sale rack of fabrics and got even more distracted. There was a lovely orange bolt of flannel on sale, and I wanted to get the whole thing, but I didn't.... and now I wish I had at least gotten a couple yards. That was right next to the ribbon and my departure was further delayed.

I finally made it back to the front of the store to check out.... and I almost went to look at clothes when I realized that I had been gone an hour! And I left bread rising in the oven! I tried to call home but my phone was dead. Hoping that my family wasn't worried or steaming mad that I'd been so careless, I hurried and checked out and came home as fast as the speed limit would allow. When I got home, my parents were fine (I guess they know how easily I get distracted...) and my wonderful little sister had taken care of the bread for me.

Whew. I'm very grateful.... but I've really got to be more focused. And I do wish I'd gotten that flannel.

~Lizzie