Resolutions

I'm not much of a fan for making resolutions for the new year.  But I do have a few goals:

• Move out of too-small apartment, buy my own condo.  Preferably before the tax credit expires.
• Cook a real dinner more often.
• Have better lunches at school - it's hard to break that mac and cheese trend once I get started...
• Be more crafty (and have a whole craft room?!?!)
• Grade school work more quickly
• Be more patient.  In pretty much all areas.  But that doesn't mean that PUNCTUALITY isn't important, male members of the family.
• Keep up with the laundry.
• Floss my teeth.  (ha ha ha, who am I kidding?!)

Those are mine.  What are yours?

Happy Christmas to all....

Another holiday, another excuse to serve a fancy meal.  And that is basically all Christmas was at my house this year.  I spent much of the morning and early afternoon terribly bored.  I made another craft Christmas flower arrangement.  This is my favorite shape flower to make.

The boys came over in the afternoon.  They took turns napping on the couch - what a big surprise...  Appetizer foods included chips and dip and pepperoni rolls.  I made them correctly this time.  You may recall my Thanksgiving issue when I bought crescent rolls instead of pizza dough.  Anyway they turned out just fine this time.  So fine that David ate 5 of the 8.  Pig.

Dinner was Ragout de Bouef.  Or beef stew.  It was very very easy to make.  I added potatoes to the recipe and also used beef stock instead of water.  More than two hours later, it was finished and we were good to go.

I once again took the table setting to a bit of an extreme for only three people.  I think maybe menus and placecards are unnecessary but I like to set a nice table, so we will all just have to put up with it...  I even ironed the napkins and table cloth this year, but that more because I was trying to fold the napkins in some creative way and that was hard to do when it was all wrinkled.  Unfortunately, it seems that my napkins aren't exactly square shaped, making it difficult to fold them precisely.  Anyway, the table looked very nice, I thought.  Sarah picked the color scheme of green and silver.  I knew she was a Slytherin at heart.

Dinner was good.  It left me with plenty of leftovers.  David survived on bread and salad (and pepperoni rolls from earlier...).  All in all, the meal was a success, it just didn't feel like Christmas.  I miss our old Christmases.

my emergency kit.

so, i know there are some skeptics among you who have made a tremendous amount of fun of my emergency kit. and i recognize that with the exception of an early use of the permanent marker in it, there were no emergencies that required its use on the alaska trip. but it also came along on this trip, and in the past 24 hours, we have used:

1. a small carabiner clip, to hold closed the curtain that separates our section of the room from sophie's, so she would go to sleep.
2. a binder clip, to hold the same curtain at one end, since we pulled it too hard & popped off whatever held it closed on that end previously (note: this was not specifically in the emergency kit, but it was meant to be, i just forgot to put it into the bag.)
3. cortisone cream, for a bizarre, unpleasant, majorly itchy allergic reaction that was spreading giant red welts up my legs.
4. benadryl, for the same itchy mess
5. the flashlight, because miss sophie was declining sleep with any lights on in the whole room, and, well, we wanted to see...

so, as you all can tell, without my emergency kit, we would have been stuck with a screaming non-sleeping baby, in the dark, and ridiculously itchy (or paying an overpriced visit to health services).

carabiner: $3
binder clip: $0.50
cortisone cream: $5
benadryl: $5
flashlight $7
not having a miserable first night of vacation: priceless.

love,
sarah, from key west.

House Hunting 12/6

I decided I am going to use the blog to write about the various homes I go see - what I like, what I don't, etc...  Today we went to 3 open houses.  We tried for #4 but the directions I had vs. the roads that actually exist didn't really match.

#1 - 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath
Pros - finished basement with full bathroom, new furnace and water heater, good master bedroom size

Cons - weird smell, smallish kitchen, weird layout with kitchen/dining room and a half wall type set-up, dated carpet, no private master bathroom, no central air, really ugly bathroom cabinetry

#2 - 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath - same complex as #1, slightly different first floor layout
Pros - bigger kitchen with open to dining area compared to #1, bonus room on 2nd floor (for storage, crafts, etc.), good master bedroom size, new windows

Cons - basement had very strong/odd odor, no central air, same really ugly bathroom cabinetry, dated carpets, no private master bathroom

Other - Note to the realtor: being forced to stand next to your extraordinarily pungent flavored coffee nearly caused me to puke.  Ick.

#3 - 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath
Pros - nice open kitchen, dining, living room - very bright with lots of windows and vaulted ceiling, central air, new kitchen appliances, "crisp" looking

Cons - very weird layout with most of unit on 3rd floor but a separate room on the 1st level, way too many stairs to climb (separate home on the 2nd level), strange kitchen corner, no private master bathroom

Other - aside from odd first floor room and massive number of stairs to get to the home, all living is on one floor - not sure how I feel about that...