Because it’s going to be fun! Quick details, 7pm Saturday, at Manassas Presbyterian Church in Manassas. It will probably last little over an hour, and there will be refreshments afterward. Please come. I will love you forever.

More details here.

So that brings me to the refreshments. What to make.. what to make.. I love to bake, and baking for an event is even better, because then you don’t have to have all the baked goods in your house. Where you will just eat them. OK maybe not you, but me.

However, there is a complication. A few months ago, I was making cookie doug and thought, “oh I don’t need to change out the wire whisks to the batter beater, it’ll be fine.” This was at the end, when the dough gets really thick and stiff. So cue a minute later a horrible noise eminates from my mixer and look, sure enough, I broke the wire whisk. I can’t remember what happened next, but next I managed to break my mixer bowl.

So then I go looking online for a replacement part and run up onto some bad news.

See, I didn’t buy a pansy kitchen aid mixer like everyone else in the world has (including everyone on the food network). I bought a knock off of my mother’s mixer, a mixer she’s had for over 20 years.. hell, it may be over 30 years now, the Bosch Universal Mixer. This is a mixer that can knead enough bread dough to feed a family of 8, and yes, that’s what my mother used it for when I was young.

So I’ve always wanted a mixer like hers, hello 700 watts, not like the pansy kitchen aid of only 325 (i am probably wrong on both, but it’s more) and it is also a very high choice among those who make a lot of bread. So I bought one! Except no, I didn’t, I bought a knock off of one! Big mistake!

In my defense, I found about this new mixer, the Dimension 2000, which looks and acts just like the Bosch, from a little bakery/mixer part store in Utah, when my mom and I went in to get her a new lid for her mixer bowl. The bakery part of the shop had switched from the Bosch machines to the Dimension 2000 machines and couldn’t stop singing it’s praises. So when I got back home, I researched a bit, and purchased my mixer, hopefully to last me 20 years or more!

Well, I went online to buy me a new bowl… and the company has apparently gone out of business. Since there are still some parts out there, I bought a new mixer bowl for my mixer, but if anything does go wrong again with my mixer.. well, I’m screwed. Doh.

That should teach me a lesson to never go with the knock-off!

Anyway, I ordered it on Sunday night and thought it would get here in time for my baking spree for the concert, but UPS has it scheduled to arrive on Monday.

MONDAY!!!

Making tres leche cake (yum, you know you want to come) and carrot cake cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting is going to be a lot more work with only a hand mixer.

Anyone want to lend me their pansy ass extremely delightful and not to mention top quality kitchenaid?

Micheal Jackson’s video “Thriller” as performed by over 1500 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines.

I could NOT tear my eyes away.

AND THEY DO MORE!

In fact.. I’m going to make 2. One for Ethan, one for Jocelyn.

Fabric.. fabric.. what kind of fabric..

This is my mystery squash. It turned up right in my row of sunflowers and I’ve no idea how it got there. I recognized it as some sort of squash, let it grow, and now it’s threatening to invade china. Anyone know what it is?

(same squash, different angle)

I shoudln’t be allowed to plant anything that hangs. Only things that have access to the timer released drip irrigation watering system.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

overflowing cherry tomato plants, both of which need staking desparately. Still producing prodigiously.

fruit of my labor.. too bad i let the zucchini overgrow

After 3 years, my hydrangea finally produced 2 blooms. This is the one that shows.

We’re all (and by “all” I mean James and I) getting a little crazed in the panders household. Why, you ask?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am so excited I can barely contain myself.

I am so sad and depressed that this is it, this is the end, damn.

If you don’t really care about Harry Potter, then you should stop reading now.
If you haven’t read the last 6 books and don’t want to hear possible spoilers, then you should stop reading now.
If you don’t want to hear theories and thoughts on the possibilities of book 7, then you should also stop reading now.

Continue Reading »

My grandmother was a quilter.* My mother is a quilter. She makes beautiful quilts.

Our trip to Utah in May/June included a long weekend camping in souther utah, near Moab. My entire family was there, with the exception of my sister’s husband. All five of my siblings, and all of their kids were there. There’s kind of 2 waves of grandkids. The older kids, and the younger kids. My niece Susan is the oldest of the older kids, at almost 16 and it ranges down to my nephew Eric, who is 9. There are 5 younger kids, aged 5, 4, 3, 3, and 3. Ethan is the oldest, and Jocelyn is the youngest of the younger set.

Anyway, I got kind of side tracked there – my point is, a nice time for our family, having everyone there, and especially for my folks who got to see all of their grandkids. We’re usually the weak link in family get togethers, as we live on the east coast and no one else in my family lives further east than Colorado.

So for our camping trip, my mom got those cute LED head lamps for all the older kids, and for the younger kids, she made each one a camp blankey.

Here are Ethan’s and Jocelyn’s blankeys. (I took these at night, so while I tweaked the white balance so the colors look OK, some of the pictures look a little washed out.)

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Ethan’s camp blanket

Jocelyn’s camp blanket

Corner button

Close up of stitching

-amy

Because today is POP TART DAY at California Tortilla!

Head over to your local California Tortilla and they’ll give you a pop-tart. Isn’t July 18th WONDERFUL? It’s POP TART DAY! And, hell, get a burrito, nachos and darn tasty queso while you’re there. I highly recommend the crunchy barbeque ranch. Yum.

July 17th: Unbeknownst to the vacationing Pop Tarts,
they would all be eaten the next day.

• made french toast, yum!
• bought 2 boy presents for upcoming birthday parties
• somehow prevented ethan from opening/ playing with/ otherwise molesting said birthday presents (james receives due credit for this feat as well.
• cleaned out office/guest room closet (#2 hardness rating on scale of 1-5, 5 being the hardest)
• bought new hardware for kids’ chest of drawers, the same chest of drawers that james had in his room growing up (hardness rating, #1)
• installed very cute new drawer pulls/knobs (#1)
• realized that a great deal more work will be needed to install new slides (#3)
• abandoned ‘fix kids’ dresser’ project, got thee to ikea for new dresser and shelf above dresser (#-137, oh so fun! ikea! yay!)
• 90% completion of putting together new dresser (#3, just on pure tediousness and time consumption)
• cleaned out 2nd walk in master bedroom closet (#4329, OMG I’D RATHER HAVE GOUGED MY EYEBALLS OUT)
• harvested small bowl of cherry tomatoes (2nd bowl sitting on the counter that i need to do something with
• harvested HUGE zucchini that I had no idea was actually growing on the plant. oops.
• harvested FIVE RASPBERRIES.
• convinced ethan to try one (jocelyn was a no-go)
• did not let children drown while swimming over at kurt and ann’s (au contraire, much fun was had by all, cute kid stories on that later)
• took beautiful pictures of blankies made by mother, and given to the kids when we were on our vacation in utah
• saw harry potter and the order of the phoenix (… eh.. did they READ the book? yeah, didn’t think so..)
• procured babysitter for next friday night, when james and i will buy the VERY LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK AT MIDNIGHT OMG I’M FREAKING OUT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
• learned all about queen/pharaoh Hatshepsut, damn one ballsy woman.
• drank a little too much …. and wrote this entry. wheeee!
• i know i should link some things in this entry, but NOT GOING TO. DEAL.
• once again, WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

• My wallpaper art didn’t come yesterday. MAYBE TODAY!
• I’ve decided that the guest room will need some red in it. I hankering for a cuckoo clock painted glossy red, how yummy!
• my design/ decorating/ interior blog reading has reached new obsessive porportions that even frightens me a little bit. I woke up this morning from a dream that involved curtains, artwork and paint chips after reading casapinka’s blog all the way through from the first entry last night.
• I lost the lens cap to our camera. Luckily it was the cheap lens. Does that make it any better? I’m hoping it will show up, but since I ALWAYS stick the lens cap into my bra, and it wasn’t there when I was through with the camera nor anywhere in the only two rooms I was in during the camera’s use, I have no choice but to look facts in the face. My bosoms have eaten the lens cap. James would do well to beware.
• I got out the camera last night because James was out boozing and whoring with people who have absolutely nothing in common except the facts that they all own the same kind of car*, and I got to stay home and play with the kids by myself.

  This is more of a challenge than you might think. If you just play with Ethan, then Jocelyn is left out. If you just play with Jocelyn, then Ethan is left out. So we all played together in a big roleplay of getting Cinderella to the ball. Since I actually took pictures, I’ll wait until they are accessible before giving you the whole story, but I will tell you it involved cinderella, of course, construction machines, race cars, a my little pony and a police helicopter. More at 11.

-amy practices for the bubble yum olympics

* I guess they also have the penis thing in common. Will have to ask if any girls attended STI gathering.