Full Plate Friday

Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. I know this.

On Friday my heart starts a-racing and I start coming up with plans and schemes for what I can get done over the weekend. I mean, two whole days! Filled with productive possibility!


Then by Sunday night I feel like a failure because I haven't managed to get done half of what was on my list. I chalk this up to being far too reckless in my planning. I mean, two days seems like a lot when you're on the Friday end of them. But when you're in the thick of them they're really not that much time. Plus a lot of the tasks I plan for myself end up taking way more time than I had anticipated.

Or I just get sleepy and the couch looks really good or there's a movie on that I L-O-V-E and while I've seen it a thousand times (*gives any movie in the "Rocky" series the side-eye*), I need to watch it again or my day will be ruined. Before I know it, it's dinner time and I've wasted half of my day making sure that Rocky still defeats his foe.


I mean, you never know. They could have changed the ending or something and I wasn't informed.


Anyway, with this in mind and with the knowledge that many hours of our Saturday will be spent at our soon-to-be new home, I have compiled this list of things to do this weekend:

1) Laundry - ALL OF IT!

2) Pack up the rest of the decorations and get them ready to be moved over to the new house.

3) Finally sew button back on coat (it's been missing for a week now)

4) Finally hem pant leg (pants have not been worn in at least a month because the entire hem came out one day and I haven't gotten to them!)

5) Finish organizing new kitchen - this entails packing up things that haven't been used in decades and replacing them with my own things. The replacing part hasn't happened yet but should be started tomorrow with things I rarely use, like my rice cooker and blender - who's making smoothies in this cold weather? *UPDATE*: Since I typed #5 we found out that Rob's dad is probably being sent home in three weeks.  Gulp.  So we have to kick it into overdrive...

6) Take pictures of garden beds - this will require its own post once the pictures are taken. The entire house is surrounded by garden beds which are just begging for me to get my grubby hands in them - or for me to get my hands grubby in them. Either way.

7) Possibly work on this wreath over at tatertotsandjello, which has been haunting me with its perfection since the moment I first saw it:

It will be mine.  Oh yes.

If I manage to make this happen I will definitely take pictures!

8) Clean. This goes without saying.

9) Work on crocheting afghan.

So that's what I have on my plate. We'll see how much I accomplish. I'll come back Sunday night and divulge - and I'll be totally honest!


So what's on your plate this weekend?

The Situation

If we're going to be friends, you should know something about me.

I'm usually about 3 or 4 months behind the rest of the country when it comes to pop culture.  If not more.

It's true.  I actually don't think I ever listened to "Rehab" until a year after it came out.  I have only listened to one Lady Gaga song and it wasn't even the whole song and it was a live version.  I don't get many of-the-moment pop culture jokes.  There are many examples of my inability to keep up with the times.

Finally, though, I've joined the national conversation on one point:

I'm watching Jersey Shore.

I know, I know, I know.  It's been on forever.  I already knew about the people on the show, their various...situations.  The use of "guido" and "guidette" as complimentary terms (I didn't even know that "guidette" existed before now, but I guess it kind of makes sense?).  However, I hadn't seen it until tonight.

Oh, what I've missed.  I love this show.  I have hidden my face in my hands several times because I just couldn't bear to look.  I have laughed, I have wanted to cry.  I have marveled at how seriously some people take themselves.  The drama.  The draaaaaama.  And the incessant and constant bleeping of certain choice words.  The fake tans, the hair gel.  I love it.

This is classic television at its finest*.  The end.



* Just kidding.  In case you don't know me, let me assure you that this is pretty much the polar opposite of what I consider classic TV.  However, it is massively entertaining and allows me to take some much-needed time out of my day when I don't need to use too many brain cells.  Thank you, MTV.

Making a Bad Day Better

Today has been a blah day.  I've been emotional for no good reason.  Everything's making me angry and when I'm angry and can't yell it out, I get frustrated.

For me, Anger + Frustration = Tears

So I did some of that this morning.

But then!

I checked out Jenny's blog.  And Jenny put into words something I haven't been able to express in the past week: As much as the earthquake in Haiti is a terrible, terrible tragedy, there is still help needed across our country, and we can't forget that.  People in America need help too.  Of course I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist that I got from it.

She read my mind.  I have been thinking about that all week now.  So many people need help HERE.  It's great that Americans rally together to help those in other places who cannot help themselves, but what about our fellow Americans? What to do?

Through Jenny's blog I've found warmupamerica.org, and something to do with the huge box o'yarn that is sitting in my storage closet at the moment.  I'm so excited and feel a renewed energy which has totally turned this day around.  Instead of wishing I could help, I know that in my small way, I can.

I can't wait to crochet my little fingers off!

Thanks again, Jenny!

Apple Dumplings

This evening, Rob and I went to visit with my parents and to enjoy a delicious feast prepared by my dad.

It's weird for my dad to be the one doing the cooking.  I'm usually the one who ends up doing the cooking.  Well, I am.  So when I saw these delicious looking bits of heavenliness on Pioneer Woman's website, I knew I'd found my contribution for the evening (PS, I love Pioneer Woman.  I know that thousands of other people do, but I had to put it out there!).  Not only did they look...well, heavenly...but they also looked easy which is always good when you're cooking at someone else's house and they're already using all four burners and the microwave.  Yeah, Dad really went all out.

I enlisted some help for this little project.  I introduce to you my mom and my sister, Stephanie.

My busy bees were hard at work to make this dessert a reality.  I took pictures and screamed orders at them.  It went well.

We started off by peeling two granny smith apples.  Stephanie had never used a peeler before.  That's why my mom jumped in.

Let me say for the record that Stephanie actually does cook and makes some really good stuff.  She's an experimenter.  I guess none of those experiments ever involved a peeler.

Since she was no longer peeling, I handed her two tubes of crescent rolls and asked her to take them out and put them on a plate.  Off she went, opening tubes and pulling dough apart.

This is the face she ended up making a minute later when she couldn't figure out how to get the rolls separated from each other.

Isn't she a cutie pie?

Let me also state for the record that Stephanie is super smart and was reading when she was, like, two and a half years old.  She was just having an off night.  Don't we all sometimes?

And while we're talking about the deficiencies in my family, let me state for the record that I requested 16 apple slices from my mom.  8 from each apple.  8 x 2 = 16, right? I'm pretty sure we ended up with at least 21 of them.  And then I noticed that Stephanie was EATING THEM.  But it was okay, as my mom explained - we had plenty of slices, after all.  I felt like I was going crazy just being in the room.

So it's not just my sister.  It's my mom, too.  Which makes me wonder about my own abilities.

Moving on...

This is what we ended up with.  Don't count the number in the pan, please.

You're counting, aren't you? Even though I told you not to.

Okay, we wound up with 14.  It was supposed to be 16, yes I know.  But I'm a dope and only got the "extra big" crescent rolls, which means there's only 6 in each tube instead of 8.  So we improvised and ended up with 14 after cutting pieces off a few of the rolls.

What have I proven tonight? That the entire female side of my immediate family is missing something upstairs.

Anyway, I busied myself melting two sticks of butter and mixing in a cup and a half of sugar and a splash of vanilla, and poured this over top of the rolls in the pan.  I then poured 12 oz of Mountain Dew over top of this and sprinkled on some cinnamon.

Yes.  I said Mountain Dew back there.  I'm not entirely sure why or what it adds to the recipe, exactly.  But I'm not one to question the wisdom of folks who know better than I do.  Because I can't even buy the right number of crescent rolls.

After 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven, we had this:

And with some vanilla ice cream, it looked like this:

Just looking at this makes me drool

How did it taste? My brother said it tasted like crack.  I'm not sure what this says about my brother.  I'm hoping it doesn't say that he knows what crack tastes like.

Everyone loved them, even my dad and he's not a dessert guy.  Which is a pity, but then again that always leaves more for us.  My mom even took some to a neighbor's house.  However, now that I think about it that could be taken one of two ways.  I mean, if they were truly so life-changingly good, why would you want to share them? Wouldn't you want to horde them for yourself? Maybe I'm just a horrible, selfish person.

Wow, I'm learning so much about myself tonight.  This is better than therapy.

What did I think of them? Words haven't been invented yet to express how wonderful they are. They're so delicious and so sinful and so darn EASY! Which also makes them terribly dangerous because, seriously, who can't pull this off? Multiple times a week? Even daily?

Even my family could make them happen, and as we learned over the course of this post...we're not completely with it.  So there you go.

Yes.  My mother has apple peels up her nose.  We're just class personified.

Linking to:

A Soft Place To Land - DIY Day

  Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday