Archive | October, 2010

One Frightful Night

30 Oct

This isn’t even my kids but he was a fright!

At the last-minute FringeMan quickly made a few tombstones for our front yard.  It was a rough day for him, and he totally impressed me with his handiwork.  He wanted to get much more elaborate, but he ran out of time.  You see his broken driver’s seat came unbolted from the vehicle frame yesterday.  When he pulled into the hardware store parking lot and opened his door, it fell off.  ToTheGround!

I laughed and laughed, because I envisioned him being a cartoon character driving down the road, losing car parts with each mile.  I saw him eventually sitting in the air with just a steering wheel in his hand, finally falling to the ground with a thud and a cloud burst of dust.

He didn’t share the humor in my vision.

But still, he spooked out our yard and played gruesome music for the children.  Trick-or-Treating is officially on Friday night in our town.  At first I didn’t like it not being on the actual day, but it is better.  It’s easier to know it’s always on Friday night.  I just wish my kids wanted to be something cute.

FringeBoy

Please ignore the siding falling from my house.  It’s kinda like the car.

Both my kids were vampires!

Uh, I wanted something more like a teddy bear and bumble-bee.  Why are they growing into gruesome children?

What happened to my sweet baby girl?

I know many of you probably do not celebrate Halloween, but for us, it’s nothing more than a fun night.   We dress up in goofy outfits, let the kids eat way too much sugar, and do our part to add fun to our neighborhood.  Yes, sometimes even FringeMan and I dress-up.  Not this year.  Time and money did not permit.

If you’d like to see frightening photos of FringeMan and I from the past, you may click HERE or HERE or HERE.

The boys went out together, pillaging the town’s people for all they are worth.  Rumors of full size candy bars floated around town in the weeks prior to last night, and my son and his friendly hooligans were bound and determined to find them.

My neighbor and I took out the girls.  They put their heads to the ground and shut their eyes tight at the creepiest houses.  So funny!  I love it when adults try to scare the sweets from the children.  It is the one night a year we can get even!

The day ended with a house full of kids, mac & cheese, and a Frankenstein movie.  The adults retreated to the kitchen to eat pizza and pick out the good chocolate.

FringeKid, notebook in hand, was cataloging her candy when I finally made her go to bed last night.  I had to promise not to eat anything before she could finish her work in the morning.

 

 

 

Would I steal candy?

No, no…never…not me.

 

My Final Recipe…Finally!

29 Oct

I’m never posting a recipe again!

That’s probably not true, but that’s how I feel this morning.  I woke up today and thought, Ahhhhhh!  Friday!!  ALREADY!

This recipe is in honor of fall.  It’s a perfect side dish for Thanksgiving.  I’ve been making it for years, and most people like it.  It’s also easy.

CANDIED YAMS WITH APPLES

* Makes 8 Side-Dish Servings

3 lbs. yams, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces; 1lb Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces; 2 med. onions, cut into 1-inch wedges; 4 tablespoons butter; 1/4 cup honey; 1 teaspoon salt; 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg; 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Since I’m not good with measuring, I usually have more apples, yams, and onions than necessary, so I add more of the other ingredients.

Toss all ingredients in a large bowl to combine.  Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350 degrees, stirring occasionally, until yams are tender – about 1 hour.  Increase oven to 500 degrees and bake until liquid evaporates and yams are browned – 10 to 15 min.  Serve hot.

I got this recipe from a magazine several years ago and it’s been a Thanksgiving staple ever since.  Wish I remembered which magazine, but I do not.

If you have a recipe to contribute, leave your link in the comments please.

Have a great weekend!  My town is trick-or-treating tonight, so I am gearing up for the candy grabbers.  Such fun!!

Mi Manta Mexicana

27 Oct

You didn’t know I was bilingual, did you?

Well, bilingual is actually a bit of a stretch.  I did, however, take two years of Spanish in college.  I don’t want to tell stories, but my Spanish teacher was meaner than two rattlesnakes who hadn’t had any mice in a month.

Uh, I really hope she hasn’t stumbled upon my blog.  For the record, some brown-nosers students loved her.

Me…

I shed tears over my Spanish class.

I lost sleep over my Spanish class.

I had evil, sinful thoughts because of my Spanish teacher class.

I’m glad it’s behind me.  To this day, I still cannot watch Dora the Explorer without thinking of Spanish class.

Well, I told you that I’ve learned to crochet.  In fact, I even showed you my Christmas tree.  I’ll have to perfect that mistake before December, but now I am working on a blanket.  FringeMan calls it my Mexican blanket, because it gives him enchilada cravings.

What can I say?

Bring on the salsa!

 

I’ve Been Tagged

26 Oct

Remember jail tag and freeze tag?

As a kid, I loved playing tag.  I mean, what’s better than chasing your friends all around and putting them in jail?  In fact, I think I’d like to play it again!

Just so happens Jill from Jill Boyd’s Place tagged me in a blog game.  Thankfully I am not in jail, although I have been in jail.

Twice.

Don’t get excited.  It’s not what you think.  I was never prosecuted for the cacti.

I’ve been to a lovely banquet in prison where the inmates actually served us, only those on their best behavior.  Talk about heartburn!  It’s stressful watching men in prison garb slicing turkey.  The other time was in a juvenile detention center and it wasn’t so bad.  As a matter of fact, you leave with your heart breaking just a bit for those kids.

Ok, enough about jail.  I stay out of jail.  FringeMan on the other hand…

According to the rules, and I’m not a good rule follower when it comes to these games, I have 8 questions to answer and I must tag 8 people.

1. What is one food you detest?

I hate when the white part of the egg is runny.  It’s ok if the yolk runs, but not the white part.  I also don’t eat sushi.  Gasp!  I know, I know.

2. What is your perfect day?

Oh, I guess about 75 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze coming from the East.  This is a hard one.  I’m not good with perfection, but I know it would include no alarm clock, chocolate, and quite possibly the beach.

3. If you could take a vacation next week, where would you go.

Is airfare included?  I would say a the tropics, but it’s hurricane season, so maybe Europe.  If airfare isn’t included, I’d go to Florida.  Heck, I’d even go to the Jersey shore.  Basically I’d go anywhere someone else was making my bed and cooking my meals.  Any offers?

4. What are your five favorite blogs?

I don’t like answering these kinds of questions.  It’s like when my kids both draw a picture and ask me which one is better.  It’s a lose-lose situation.  Just because I’m going to pick five to list, doesn’t mean there aren’t a bunch of others I love.  I love you all!  Really.

life in grace, Flower Patch Farmgirl, Remodeling This Life, Clover Lane, and of course I love Jill. Seriously, have you guys read her blog?  She’s hysterical.  Guaranteed.

Just so happens that life in grace will be hosting The 12 Days of Handmade Christmas.  Be sure to visit!
5. What are your thoughts on Facebook?

Hello, my name is FringeGirl. I facebook, and I like it.

Most of my family is scattered all over the country, and I’ve moved a few times, so I have friends all over.  Facebook is an easy way to stay in touch, because let’s face it, I will never write them an actual pen & ink letter.  Facebook works for me!

Is it shallow?  Is it superficial?  Does it waste time?

Really, who cares.  I get to see pictures, make stupid comments to old friends, and annoy my mother.  Quit over thinking things and enjoy life a little.  Loosen up people!

6. Are your parent’s technological goobers like mine?

I’m a technological goober at times, and they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

7. If you had to choose between losing 15 pounds forever OR having perfect skin, but putting on 15 pounds permanently…what would it be?

That question confuses the snot out of me!

Well, 15 pounds is exactly what I need to lose.  Can’t I just lose 15 and have great skin?  Am I asking too much of life??  Exactly how bad would my face be if I lost the 15 pounds?  Are we talking pizza face or just a light polka dot?

8. What is your best recipe?

Check out my FOOD section, HERE.  Pick one and let me know. ;-)

*DONE*

Now I must tag people…Broken Poet, Cathy @ TCKK, Nina @ Portugal Bound, Mama’s Minutia, Loyalist Cottage, The Charming Tyrants, Confessions of the Pastor’s Wife, Marytoo @ quirks and glitches, the unfocused life.

I’m worn out now!  I need a nap.  All those links take FOREVER.  Play along if you want.  If you don’t, I’ll put you in jail. ;-)

Nightstand’s Big Reveal

25 Oct

There is one thing about me that I know.  I am becoming neater with age, a fact that makes me very happy.  For me, I guess it’s a perk to growing-old.  Doesn’t quite make up for the gray hairs though.

I was a mess of a child, and if it’s possible, I was worse as a teenager.  No stories about when I was in college or the short years thereafter; however, since I’ve had children, I have steadily become neater – less cluttered.  Perhaps it’s because my home can only handle so many messy dwellers.  One of us needs to man up and clean up!

After many years of FringeMan telling people I specialized in pile management, he finally admitted that now, I was the clean one in our marriage.  I was shocked into a happy stupor, or else I would have gotten that statement in writing.  I think the words escaped his mouth before his mind realized the full admission of his words.

Friends, it’s true.  Every word.  I will prove it to you with photos that tell quite a story.

Ignore Raggady-Ann.  She needs hospitalization.  Unfortunately her doctor pinned her leg back together.  It’s a modern method, similar to rods and surgical staples.

Please take note of my clean dresser top and then notice the reflection in the mirror.  That would be FringeMan’s dresser top.  I doubt he even knows what’s hiding on it.

Enough said.  Moving one to our nightstands…

I consider this a normal amount of junk for a nightstand.  I do live here, so it’s not quite a page from a magazine, but I try to limit my junk to the things I use every night.

Now FringeMan’s nightstand.

Brace yourselves people.

It’s not pretty.

???

I have no words.

During the conversation where he let the words, “Now she’s neater than me” escape from his lips, he looked over to me with squinted eyes and said, “I think she’s just learned how to hide her piles.”

Mmm, hmmm.

Sneaky of me, huh?

Should I share my secret with him?

It’s called a trash can.  I’ve learned, I don’t really need it, despite what I may think.

So, what does your nightstand say about you?

Split Personality

23 Oct

We are on the cusp of winter.  I am certain, because we had snow flurries yesterday.  My kids act like Snoopy when the first snow falls, dancing around with their open mouths upturned toward the gray sky.

A celebration of winter.

Winter brings inventory time.  I yell to my kids and ask what they need systematically go through my children’s wardrobes in an effort to ensure everyone is properly attired for the cold.  This year we were down two pairs of boots, a pair of foot-y pajamas, and blankets – three to be exact.

It was a bad year for blankets in my household.  The dog dug a hole through my daughter’s quilt.  My son’s quilt was worn threadbare, and my extra blanket went the way of the hole digging dog.  I lost it to allergy prevention.  You see it was a down filled throw blanket that just covered me.  FringeMan runs quite a bit warmer and appreciated that the heavy blanket only covered me.  Since we have no heat upstairs, blankets are a must.  You can freeze your heart cold without enough blankets.

Blanket shopping is where I realized that I have a split personality.  For some this revelation comes at the diagnosis of a doctor, or perhaps while lounging comfortably on a couch and reliving your life in words; however, my moment of clarity came in an aisle of Target.

Let me show you.

I absolutely LOVE this clean, crisp, calm, relaxing look.  It’s just that I imagine myself lounging on that bed and thinking about how I can add a splashy pillow here, or a burst of color there, and before I realize what is happening…

I end up with this.

Is it too ridiculous?

I fell in love with a bed in a bag.  I tried to act mature and choose a more adult-like pattern, but I was shopping with an eight year-old who only encourages my tacky taste.

I think it may be a mistake to shop with a kid who walks around looking like this.

Anyway, do you think my room is too tacky?

FringeMan thinks I tend towards tacky, and I must admit, I’m a little fearful of the Tacky House show ending up on my doorstep.  BUT, the curtains are white, the walls are boring, and the floor is white.  That’s very neutral of me, don’t you think?

Next post will be ‘Our Nightstand Tells All’.  Stay tuned.

AKA-Stargazer, a Wanna-be detective, & a Recipe

21 Oct

It’s Friday AGAIN!  Who put so many Fridays in October?  A better question – Why did I ever decide to have a Food Carnival?  We all know I don’t cook well enough to be passing my recipes around like I’m a contestant on the Food Network.  Thank God I froze all those meals or else we’d be eating peanut-butter and jelly too many times this week.

I decided to give you recipes from real cooks, instead of trying to make something up. It’s already Thursday night and all I’ve done is reheat food all week.  Correction:  I did cook one not priorly frozen meal this week, but I’ve already shared that chicken and gravy recipe.  I doubt you want a duplicate.

Anyway, the food needs to wait.  Something happened in the wee hours of the morning and I must talk about it, because I’m a hearty-tack waiting to happen.  It’s all my mother’s husband’s fault!

FringeMan likes to play detective.  I got that out of my system when I was fourteen, but he’s only now realizing his dreams, giving voice to his innermost longings, and imagining himself a detective.  Hence he likes to watch dramatized cop shows.  Not the Law & Order kind, but The First 48 kind.  The actual ‘this really did happen in NY, Chicago, Detroit, or Miami’ type of shows.

I can’t watch these.  I hate to see people shot for no good reason.  I am too sensitive; they give me nightmares.  Unfortunately, last night I watched two such shows.

On Wednesday my mother sent me an email saying that Hailey’s Commet was showering meteors, or it was possibly going to rain stars, or some such astronomical event on Thursday morning.  I try to delete all such emails before my son gets wind of them, but I think she talked to him on the phone and gave him a heads-up.  He’s young.  He’s impressionable.  He likes stars enough to wake-up at 4a.m.

Yes, 4a.m. on the morning after I watched a scary police show.  When he padded, bathrobe clad, into my dark bedroom at 4a.m., I startled.  Before I realized the shadowy figure by my bedside was the four-foot tall boy I birthed, I let out a wail of a scream.  Out of one eye, I watched as my son jumped out of his socks.  Out of the other eye, I saw FringeMan lift at least a foot off the bed, arms and legs flying like a cartoon cat.

I blame my rather loud show of fright on the fact that I didn’t sleep well.  It was FringeMan’s silly shows!

So FringeBoy tells us that he’s going outside to look at the stars.  Ten minutes later I look over to FringeMan and he says with sigh, “He’s still outside.”

FringeMan went out to fetch him from the sidewalk.  I mean how long can a bathrobe clad boy stand on the sidewalk gazing at the sky before a neighbor notices that we’re allowing our children to wander about in the dark?  It was all ridiculous!

FringeBoy was still shaky by ten am.  Seems the socks were still scared off him.  My daughter slept through it all.

That’s another reason I don’t have a recipe of my own for you today.  I am tired.  I’ve been up since 4a.m.

If you ever need an excuse for anything, come see me first.  I come up with the most ridiculous.  It’s a talent of mine.

Here are the recipes…FINALLY!

I’m definitely trying these yummy delights, as soon as I begin cooking again.

FringeKid has been bugging me to try Pumpkin Soup and this recipe has a gigantic twist for the tastebuds.

That’s it.  These two recipes should keep you full for a while.

It's Mercury, the planet. Can't you tell?

Oh, one more thing…I’m making a blanket – blue, lime green & red…Oooohhh Baby!

Happy Weekend!

Fall in Photos…well, maybe a few words

20 Oct


Is fall pretty where you live?

Why I Can’t Blog

19 Oct

I cannot blog, because I am obsessed.  Last night both FringeKid and I decided to learn to crochet.  A dear woman gifted me some yarn and knitting needles a few months ago, but I cannot knit.  Seriously, I’m less than coordinated, much less, and knitting requires the use of two hands, one brain, and a ball of yarn.  Nope, can’t do it.

Crocheting uses one less needle, and I have vague memories of my grandmother teaching me to crochet when I was a kid.  I remember making a yarn snake that slithered for yards.  Since my grandmother is in heaven and I can’t make a quick roundtrip to ask her how to crochet, and since my mother is far away, I turned to YouTube.  It’s like having your grandmother and a live band all at the click of a mouse.  Modern learning.

I’m about to show you my first attempt.  Promise not to laugh.

I wasn’t planning on making a Christmas tree, but since I did, it will wash my dishes in December.  I was shooting for a square.

Thankfully, I found my mistake.  My second attempt was better.

This square managed to grow into a full scarf for my daughter.

I’m on a roll now!

I guess everybody is getting a new scarf for Christmas.  Too bad my brother and his family live in Florida.  I’ll have to make their scarves extra holy!

The Raw, Sometimes Ugly Truth

16 Oct

Judging from the number of comments on my last Confessions post, we all need to get things off our chest sometimes.  So because it’s Saturday, and because I’m bored, and because FringeMan is working, and because my house is mostly clean and my dishes are mostly washed….

I offer you Confessions, Round #2.

*  I hate nothing more than opening and washing a container that has been in the refrigerator too long.  You know the ones – the moldy fuzz growing on once edible leftovers that can now be used as a science project.  My confession: I don’t wash them.  I simply throw them out.  Wasteful?  Absolutely!  I just can’t do it.  I confess.

*  I am a night snacker.  I can go all day bypassing goodies and eating small portions or even nothing at all, but when evening comes, it’s all down hill.  My favorite sit-on-the-couch-under-a-warm-blanket snack is a plate of tortilla chips with melted cheddar cheese on them.  I cannot resist.  I crave them.  I truly believe I am deficient in corn.  It’s the only logical reason for craving tortilla chips.

*  I am afraid of heights.  My stomach actually flipped while watching Ice Road Truckers Scariest Roads in The World (or whatever it’s called!).  When Lisa was navigating those shocking roads in India where people drive like a stampede of wild elephants chasing peanuts, I died inside.  Just a little.  It takes all the courage I have to walk across a bridge, or stand by and let my children look off a balcony or something like that.  Almost always, I must look away.

*  I’ve been watching the alligator hunters on TV for the past couple of weeks and in some ridiculous way, I’ve enjoyed it.  Maybe I am just glad I wasn’t born in the swamp.  Maybe I am glad we don’t have alligators in the North, because I know if we did, FringeMan would hunt them too.  Maybe I just like imagining myself in a pair of shiny alligator skin shoes.  I don’t rightly know, but it’s been entertaining.

*  You know how prepared I was for homeschooling right?  I’m running out of stuff to do.  No joke.  It’s my son.  He’s a fifth grader and he’s smarter than me.  I’ll just go ahead and confess, but if you ever tell him, I’ll block you from my blog.  I promise.  I’ll do it as soon as I figure out how.  You saw how much curriculum I bought, didn’t you?  He needs more.  I’m literally making extra stuff up for him to do as we go along.  At this rate, I’ll have to order another set of curriculum by Christmas.

The other day he asked me if he could start his own blog.  I hesitated, because now my child can tell stories about me.

Mmmmmm………

Mom, for a quick second, I felt your pain.

All of it.

If you’re interested in seeing FringeBoy’s blog, let me know in the comments.  I hesitate to link his blog to my own, because I’ve been getting lots (more than 100 a day) of hits off of a questionable site.  His blog is blocked to search engines, so I’ll email you the link if you’d like to see it.  If you have a child that also blogs, let me know.  It will be something my son can read.

Ok, I’ve said far too much.  It really is your turn, and I warn you, your confession(s) better be good. ;-)

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