What's in YOUR purse?

Today I had a mini freak out because I couldn't find my car keys. I have them on a lanyard along with my work keys, whistle, and badge and even with this "easy to find" combinatoin it was nowhere to be found. At first I thought I locked it in my purse which was in the locked car that started this whole adventure. However, by randomly coming upon a spare key I forgot existed, I unlocked the car, got said purse, and discovered my keys were not the purse at all.

What WAS in my purse you ask. I will tell you:

62 cents in change
3 plastic sporks
1 plastic spoon
1/2 a stick of gum
1 crumpled post-it that said "dont forget" with the second half missing
3 seperate glittery nail files
1 spare key to a car I no longer own
5 pieces of random christmas ribbons
2 cherry hershey kisses
4 tea bags
1 button with a photo of an ugly Christmas sweater on it
and 1 roll of scotch tape.

I think I have some issues I may need to look into. I am *not* a purse girl normally, although thats been changing slowly. I love to collect purses, it just seems a hassle to carry them with me a lot (hence locking it in the car and forgetting about it). I would expect very few of these items to be in a normal person's purse and would expect chapsticks, makeup, real money, a wallet, etc in a regular purse. I carry plastic utensils and tape apparantly. Always be prepared?

4th Annual Sibling Christmas Eve Eve Party

Vince and I in hooded footie pajamas. I am the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and he is Mickey Mouse.

 It was hard when we were first married to figure out a way to combine our family Christmas traditions. I grew up having a big fancy Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve night and opening presents as a family after, on Christmas morning we would go see what Santa brought us -usually our biggest best present- and we would have leftover fried ham and Christmas cookies for breakfast. Vincent's family opens their presents on Christmas morning and receive holiday pajamas from their mom on Christmas Eve. We went more with Vince's parent's traditions since we were local to them and my parents were in another state and decided to just always do Christmas by visiting my sister every year. 

Because of the above and my need for traditions I started our own new tradition (which is hard to do when you don't have children of your own to get excited about Christmas for you.) I host an annual sibling Christmas Eve-Eve party with white elephant gift exchange for my husband and his siblings. I am just an honorary sibling since I'm an in-law and my own sibling/family do their own thing without us. The first year we were going to watch Muppet Christmas Carol but somehow it lost the vote to Muppet Treasure Island and an odd sing-along tradition was born.

Vince was overjoyed at getting wooden puzzle brain teasers.

As the years pass its harder for all siblings to get together. This year a spouse was added and she as well as James had to work late. However, we were all together for at least 20 minutes. This years White Elephant included a set of Chuck Norris joke books, a bag of ball pit balls, mustache coasters, a handheld skiball game, wooden brainteaser puzzles, and a gag box that looked liked a chest hair shaving design kit but was a Mario goomba hat. Last years best gift was a tie between a singing Justin Beiber toothbrush and a set of suicidal sea monkeys.    

Somehow another odd tradition came to be. Katie shaving James' head and us playing pictionary on it.

Inside the Gag box was this Mario Goomba hat.

The Gag box made Katie believe she received a chest hair shaver/design kit.

Reflective Christmas Thoughts

Don we now our Christmas apparel... falala lalala la la laaaaaa

Poor neglected blog.
Maybe I'll update more in 2013. No promises.

We've been pretty busy around here for the holidays. I had to send my packages out late, sorry family. Well, except for my Grandpa, whose present I bought online and almost spent more on 1-day shipping than the actual gift iteself. Yipes! Luckily, our cards went out nice and on time. I can't take credit for that- I did the lazy girl thing and had the company who printed them send them out with postage for me. I didn't have to address, seal, or stamp a thing. Merry Christmas to me!

This Christmas I decided to take a large portion of my gift budgets and put it towards giving kids in need a good Christmas. This wasn't a charity that helps children, this was my own project I took on to help children who I see regularly and know personally. I see their faces and I know their stories that range from hunger, loss, neglect, and having no place to call home. Most don't have gloves, socks, etc for winter. What really kills me is how few of them have an actual book (let alone bookS) at home. I changed all that for them this Christmas. By not buying gifts for friends and cutting waaay back on family gifts I was able to provide fun Christmas gift bags to twenty-eight children aged 5-6. The gift bags were beautiful and I made sure they had the proper big bows and tissue paper- that alone made their little eyes go WIDE with excitement.

Each bag contained 6 books, a pair of extra soft gloves, a hat, a scarf, a wooden ornament to decorate, a holiday themed wooden mask-on-a-stick to decorate and color, a big box of crayons, coloring paper, pencils, writing paper, socks, and a pack of tissues. I couldn't do this all alone. A complete stranger heard about what I was doing from my mom and donated to my cause. A couple who is very dear to my husband and I also made a very generous donation to this project. There are AMAZING people in this world, and I am humbled by the help I received to give these children a good Christmas.

Apart from this I was able to see Toys for Tots in action this year. You may have seen the bins for donations, you may have even donated yourself, but how many of you have actually SEEN the children receiving the toys? It made me think, "28 years of life and for the first time I'm REALLY seeing Christmas".  Next year I hope we are in a situation to help even more. However, I don't want this to be a Chrismas thing, I want to help always. 

Renaissance Festival (late post)

I just realized I never showed off my cute costume from the Renaissance festival this summer. Well, here it is. And you even get a Frank-da-Pug cameo for good measure.

I had my hair done at the fair, because we all know I even fail at my own ponytail attempts. The design was called "Princess with Fireworks"- so of course I found it fitting. Trish, Bruce, Vince and I spent more time shopping than actually going through all the entertainment. Sometimes it is dangerous to have Trish and I loose when there is shopping that can be done. Remember the 3-hour "we just needed some velcro" Walmart shopping trip?

It was a hot day, we drank lots of pink lemonade and thank goodness we had umbrellas for shade. (was that almost a poem just now?) I really enjoyed watching the bagpipe players and the drummers, but I also got to see an elephant up close which for some reason became the highlight for me.

I'm wearing my adorable corset and red hip poof things that are from Damsel in the Dress, snagged them up during an online grab bag sale. Thank goodness (grab bag style) she matched some fun items up for me, because I usually go for black and navy but this red and gold is GORGEOUS! I purchased my first corset from her when she was out in Denver for Anamolycon, the steampunk convention. My exact words to my friend Holly were, "Look Holly- I have boobs!" Umm.. on that awkward admission I think my post for today is done.

Wicked

I have not yet caught on to this whole "blogging regularly" trend yet. To feed your curiosity of what we've been up to I'm posting this photo of us on the stage of Wicked. I'm sure you are wondering how we managed to get on stage during such a high-energy scene. We are just THAT good. Or, ya know, its one of those souvenir green screen photos you can get. If I had scanned it you would be able to tell, but a low quality photo-of-a-photo makes my first story almost believable.

Wicked is, hands down, our favorite musical. It was great to see it again (Thanks, Grandpa!)

Chicken Recipe, it was much requested

In a crockpot, mix a large greedy kid handful of brown sugar (like ¼ cup), about 3 bottle “gups”- you kow that sound liquid out of bottles makes? Yeah that... three of those of balsamic vinegar (1/4 cup if you’re one of THOSE people), some soy sauce- I use safeways orange ginger soy sauce its cheap and works well. How much of that? I dunno, I just let it ooze out the bottle. It reminds me of cool sci-fi sludge cause its thick sO I like to watch it creep out the bottle. If you used real regular soy sauce you could just kinda make a guess and if it turns out gross give it to the dog. Or your teenager who pissed you off. Now take your favorite brand of Orange Juice and toss some of that in. I think this needs about 6 gups. I said gups not cups! Were you paying attention to know what a gup is? So, then in addition to all that fun liquid use a garlic press and murder the heck out of 2-3 cloves. It makes your hands smell delicious, I promise. Now you smell like a real chef, minus the curly mustache. Now that you’re cooking fake an accent, it will impress people. Sprinkle in some dry red pepper flakes. I use one shake for each thing my husband has done that pissed me off that week, since he hates spicier food. You can always add more later if needed, but maybe 4 quick shakes is good. Add some boneless chicken, 1-1.5 lbs. I never weigh the stuff but that is about how much I imagine it is. Add more if you want to feed more people. I add more because I like to eat myself silly in front of the TV. Don’t judge, Walmart sells stretchy pants for a reason. And ya know, leftovers. So yeah, sauce, dead chicken- turn to coat. Cook, covered, until the chicken is cooked through and very tender, 6 to 7 hours on low or 3 to 4 hours on high. Or 2 hours after you realize the house smells good and you’re hungry.

Sometime before the chicken is devoured cook some rice. Don’t ask me how, just read the damn rice box. Did you know rice now comes in little “boil it in this bag” bags? Saves me from having to scrub a pot because rice pots always suck to scrub. You can also get “crockpot bags” to cook crockpot food in so when you’re done you toss the bag and your crockpot is clean. Genius. I support inventions that allow me to be lazy. Like the Snuggie. God bless the snuggie... is it a backwards robe? A stylish outfit for walmart trips? A blankey? Who knows! But this is about cooking, not the snuggie (of which i own 5, in case you were curious)

If you want to be fancy: Cut away the peel and white gunk of the orange. Cut the orange into thin half-moons and place in a medium bowl. You can cut up two scallions and fold those in as well. Scallions is just some stuffy rich white persons idea of green onions. Is that racist? I’m white, can I say that? Okay, it’s what multicultural PC people of high wealth say. I don’t know these people, but if I did that’s what they would say. They would have curly mustaches and accents to. You know they would. All the best villains do and they are always rich, they save money by skipping therapy and buying suped up lazer powertools of death.

ANYWAY using two forks, gently shred the chicken into medium pieces and stir into the cooking liquid. Or ya know, just attack the chicken with whatever stirring device you’ve been using. Don’t lie to me- you stirred it with something and checked on it several times. And whats this “gently” crap? Thats what cookbooks always say. What- are you trying to make friends with the food? Its DEAD! Take your anger out on it. The lettuce also, because you need a head of lettuce. Ever wonder where they hid the rest of the lettuce body? These are the things I think about. So now you fill the lettuce leaves with the rice and top with the chicken and the orange mixture if you went fancy.

Eat. Enjoy. Ponder where the body of lettuce is.

You're never to old...

You are never to old to play dress up when what you should be doing is cleaning up the messy office you have behind you in a photo.

True Love Is...

True Love is...

taking out the stinky or heavy trash without being asked. I was going to do it (2-3 days ago) but avoiding it seemed like a better solution at the time.

Xoxo.

Happy Valentines Day!

I give my husband a lot of crap and snide comments about him not being romantic. He just isn't in the traditional sense. However, "in the traditional sense" doesn't describe us as a couple at all.

For Valentines day he got me a mini box of Sees candy that was the same one I got each year growing up from my Dad. (He gave the mini boxes to my sister and me and large version to my mom). And a bouquet of Sees cinnamon pops, to. Mmmm. My "real" present isn't here yet, but he ordered one of our wedding photos to be printed on a large canvas! LOVE! We don't have a single wedding photo up in our house because we ordered them as part of an uber fancy professional album. I wish I had ordered large prints when we got married, but I figured we have a gazillion other pics up. Then digital photos happened and I haven't had a real copy of any photo in years.

I told hubby I got us a groupon deal for a restaurant called Tony's. I kinda let some info leak out that I will be driving us to a secret location where we will be taken to the restaurant by way that involves animals, the deal includes transportation, dinner, and dessert and I had to make a reservation. That's all I'm going to say in case Vince checks our blog at work. But this surprise is more than meets the eye... or more than I've revealed in my hints I guess. I'm REALLY surprised he hasn't caught on to the "catch" yet. I wonder if anyone reading this has.

Sarah's Wacky Tacky Bday Party Photos!

Just some quick shots of the fun we had!

It's almost my Birthday.. ba ba ba da ba BIRTHDAY!

Since I'm turning 25 this year..okay... you caught me, I've been 25 a few years in a row now... I decided that we needed to have an excuse to par-tay! At first it was going to be a Murder Mystery dinner, then it was going to just be dinner out with friends, and now it's a Wonderfully Wacky Tacky Birthday Party! Held at one of my favorite places, Petries Family Games, and it will be a casual get together of friends, eating chocolate-chocolate covered cake, and of course playing board games and large-group party-style board games!

One tradition I've carried over from my childhood is having a helium-filled mylar balloon for the Birthday person tied to their chair at the dinner table. As you can see, this year I picked out my own HUGE balloon. It has hot pink, polka dots, zebra print AND a feather boa trim! I am IN LOVE! Have I mentioned how much I love tacky things? This is the pic from my party evite:

Holy Cra-zay game night!

We're both uber tired today. That might be due in part to gaming last night until 1am. I've said it a hundred times but I seriously love the friends we have in Colorado, they are SO much fun. Geeky game people are their own special brand of awesome. We were at a new friends house with a bunch of mutual friends and it was just fun to have so much gaming and socializing going on, such a change from living under that rock thing we have done previously.

Theres not much that stands out as total blog-worthyness, but details of playing Cards Against Humanity isn't really appropriate for family friendly blog. There was also Catan, Quelf, and Vince played a video game I'm not familure with. Oh yeah, I played pinball since I'm kinda seriously addicted to it!

If I can get a photo of it (many were taken by many people, just not me) I'll post the cake. It was a My Little Pony masacre, since Ernest is a Bronie (bro' who loves ponies). I'd let the pic speak for itself if I had one. Kinda reminds me of the cake we got a few years back for my friend Kevin when we asked the cake people to spell everything wrong, give us a smooshed reject cake, and then we put pretty princesses in it upside down. At the time it went well the party theme of "everything thrown together last minute from mixed dollar store finds" but looking back now I bet the fine cake people at Safeway thought we were high on something (besides life).

New Recipe: Seared Tilapia w/ Pineapple Cucumber Relish

I realized today that I don't blog much, it just seems that "blog-worthy" posts need to be exciting and full of ooooh and aaaahhhs. Then again, anything- and I do mean anything- can be worthy of a facebook status. I decided to turn this around and blog all the meaningless happenings of our happily ever after. Because really, its the little moments not full of ooh and ahh that make our lives what they are.

Tonight I tried a new recipe for dinner. A little back story here: I've only made ONE dinner in our 5+ years of marraige that didn't turn out delicious. Through the magic of my cooking I've even been able to get my husband to eat fish and enjoy it. For this evenings meal I decided that Seared Tilapia with Pineapple Cucumber Relish sounded adventurous. I've been feeling bored with cooking and needed to branch out so the whole month is nothing by new recipes I'm trying. My poor husband, I've turned him into some kind of crazy guinea pig.


RECIPE:
1 cup(s) long-grain white rice
2 tablespoon(s) fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon(s) grated ginger
2 teaspoon(s) honey
2 tablespoon(s) (plus 1 tsp) olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, (seeded, if desired), finely chopped
1/2 small pineapple, (about 1 lb), peeled, cored and cut into small pieces
1 small English cucumber, cut into small pieces
4 6- ounce(s) tilapia fillets

*Cook the rice according to package directions.
*Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the lime juice, ginger, honey, 2 Tbsp oil and ¼ tsp each salt and pepper. Toss with the scallions, jalapeño, pineapple and cucumber.
*Heat the remaining tsp oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Season the tilapia with ¼ tsp each salt and pepper and cook until golden brown and cooked through, 1 to 3 minutes per side. Serve the fish with the rice and relish.

The result? Vince said it was odd, like nothing he's ever had before. I agreed. It was good and we both ate it all but agreed it tasted like it needed something. Maybe a side of broccoli? Of course, I could live off fish and broccoli, but thats another story.
So theres my report for the day, a new strange dish. After dinner Vince wrote his birthday thankyous (I could write a book about my thoughts on the importance and lost art of thank you writing), we watched television, and now we're in the office as I type to you and Vince does taxes. Wow, I feel so...married. And did I really just become one of those housewives who blogs food? Ew.