Pickled Banana? Anyone? Anyone?

I was packing my lunch this morning and I thought, "Hey! I'm having a BBQ chicken sandwich for lunch! You know what goes great with BBQ chicken sandwiches??? PICKLES! And once I start eating pickles, there's no telling how many I'm gonna want, so I better go ahead and bring the whole jar!"

So I did. Now, any non-idiotic person would have foreseen that everything else in my lunch bag was doomed to be contaminated with pickle juice because liquid never seems to want to stay in jars, but not this girl! I did consider the possibility of leakage, but my solution was to wrap the jar in a plastic grocery bag before putting it in my lunch bag, because those things are totally water tight!

So now I have the pleasure of adding a pickled banana and a pickled apple to today's menu. Who knows? Maybe they'll be delicious! Also maybe someone will give me a million dollars today! And then I'll never have to work again! WHICH MEANS THERE WILL NEVER AGAIN BE A NEED FOR ME TO PACK A LUNCH THAT INCLUDES A JAR OF PICKLES WHOSE CONTENTS WILL SEEP THROUGH MY LUNCH BAG, STINKING UP SARAH'S CAR AND PARTIALLY PRESERVING MY LEFT LEG!!! THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!

Or maybe it'll just be a regular day during which everyone keeps a safe distance from my pickled leg.

We Are All Destined to Fail

Nice title, don't you think? Yeah, me neither. This morning on our way to work, Sarah and I got behind a car with a bumper sticker featuring those very words in Nickelodeon slime green.

First of all I should tell you that I am absolutely fascinated by bumper stickers. What is the one thing you want every other car on the road to know about you? That your kids are smarter than theirs? You might wanna go for the "My son is on the honor roll" bumper sticker. That you have a slight road rage problem? Try one of the many available variations of, "Nice front bumper you've got there. Shame if something happened to it..."That you can't decide on a religious affiliation so you'd like to choose them all? Slap on a "coexist" sticker. (If you don't live in Colorado, maybe you haven't seen one of these on every other car on the road. They look like this, and they really irk me for some reason. It's like...we are coexisting, are we not? Make a decision, hippie! And WASH YOUR HAIR WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!)

But this guy can't be satisfied by your run-of-the-mill anti-government propaganda or even a slightly distasteful joke about children being a sexually-transmitted disease; no no. He will not rest until he has depressed each and every driver who has the misfortune of sharing the road with him.

Then again, what do I know? Maybe he's actually going for the opposite effect. Maybe he thinks that by suggesting that we are all destined to fail, he'll get everybody riled up enough to SUCCEED!*

*The chances of this being the case are slim to none, but it was worth a shot.

You Know What This Day Needs?

A nice kick in the pants.

We used to have this lighter that looked like a pig and shot flames out its nose, and whenever we lit it we would say, "PIG FROM HELLLLLLLLLLL" and then laugh for an hour.

It looked something like this:

So now whenever I'm having a really bad day I like to say to myself, "DAY FROM HELLLLLL" in the same gravelly voice and it makes me laugh at least for a second...until I remember I'm having the day from hell.

Anyway, to make up for my complaining I'm going to share the recipe for the AWESOME potato soup I made last night. I had it for lunch today and it helped my spirits almost as much as the sweet, sweet memory of the firepig, so just imagine what it could do for you on a good day!

Ham and Potato Soup

Curtain Call

I was talking to Sarah over the weekend about how I was afraid people might be getting annoyed that I'm posting so much craft-type stuff and not enough funny stuff. Then she kindly reminded me that this is my blog and I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT. Which brings me to today's post: pictures of all the fabric I got to make curtains.  





This first one will cover the window in the back door so I can safely walk to the dryer in my underwear. (The dryer is the only place I ever have clean clothes because I do laundry only when absolutely necessary. Things like closets and dressers are for people who plan ahead.)

This one's my favorite. It's going up in the living room to cover up the ugly mini-blinds and also to make me happy.



This one is also for the living room but not as curtains. I'm in the process of lining the back of a bookshelf* with it and I think I will also use it to cover a couple of throw pillows.


And finally, this one is for the master bedroom. What's that? You say it looks like I just reduced the hue and upped the contrast of a picture of the first fabric??? CAUGHT ME! That's exactly what I did, because since I needed a whopping 8 yards of this one, the nice lady at Hancock's had to order some for me so I don't actually have it yet. But this is what it looks like. I realized at the last second that I was using the same pattern twice, just in two different colors, but in the end I decided to do whatever I want as usual.  

*I inherited the bookshelf from the Miller twins...which brings me to the real reason I help people move so much: the hope that in an effort to simplify the moving process, they will give me a large piece of furniture for free. 60% of the time, it works every time.

Parental Discretion Advised

My parents were here this weekend and it was awesome as usual. My mom helped me pick out fabric for curtains for my entire house...and when I say "helped me" I mean she paid for all of it because I'm a poor kid. I should also point out that she did all the math required to calculate the correct yardage because, judging by the brainsplosion that occurred when I tried to figure it out, apparently I'm also a stupid kid.

Meanwhile my dad spent the weekend making sure I had a healthy fear of grizzly bears after I made the mistake of telling him we had some friends who had a problem with bears getting into their trash. I told him I was sure they were just black bears, but he went on to assure me that there are probably grizzlies in Colorado and those grizzlies are probably going to track me down and eat me for lunch, and even if I try to play dead, they'll probably just maul me anyway because grizzlies are effing crazy and they love killing little blonde girls for pleasure.

"They're about 12 feet tall standing on their hind legs, they can outrun a horse, and they climb trees better than any cat. Once one smells you and decides he wants to eat you, there's no escape; you're dead." -Tim Howrey

That's both a direct quote and the source of my recurring nightmares.

Slack Attack

I know, I'm the worst. And worse still, I'm not really blogging today either because my parents are still here and I love them more than I love you.

But to ease your angry minds, here's yet another OK Go video -- this time with Muppets.

Pinteresting...Verrrry Pinteresting.

So yesterday I joined Pinterest and then my brain exploded from awesomeness overload. I think I found about 50,000 new things I wanna make. If you're wondering what the heck Pinterest is, click this link to find out.

Anyway there's really no point writing more today because I know you're too busy foaming at the mouth after discovering what you've been missing out on to focus on anything else, because that's what happened to me yesterday.

PEACE!

No Big Deal...EXCEPT YES IT IS

So uh...my husband made this.

And not only that; he's also the new assistant manager at Ranch Hand Colorado Springs! THAT'S RIGHT!

Basically what I'm trying to say is my husband is the greatest man that ever lived.

THE END

Well I'm Stuffed.

When Gary and I got married, we got to pick out and buy furniture for the first time in our lives. Naturally, we ended up coming home with this guy:

Because really, what newlywed couple doesn't want a gigantic $200 bean bag chair??? It's called a "Sitsational" and let me tell you, the product lives up to its name. We were fully satisfied with its performance; so satisfied, in fact, that one night one of us who shall remain nameless decided to take it over to our friend's house for a guys' movie night, dragged it over a sharp piece of metal and ended up ripping a giant hole in it. BUT I WON'T NAME NAMES.

That happened about six months after we got it, and it's been sitting on the giant desk* in our basement ever since. Last week when we had to destroy the desk with a sledgehammer because that was the only means of removing it from the basement, we were forced to make a decision as to whether or not we wanted to try to salvage the sitsash as we so lovingly refer to it. We decided to try to fix it, which we knew would mean removing all its stuffing, sewing up the rip and then restuffing it. What we were not prepared for was GOOD GRAVY THAT'S A LOTTA STUFFING.

But I'm happy to report that the Sitsuation (see what I did there?) has been contained.

I'll leave you with a bit of a warning: Should you ever decide to purchase one of these or merely bring it up frequently in conversation, at some point you will end up cursing accidentally.

*Is it possible I've never blogged about this??? I tried searching for it just now and came up with nothing. Stop me if you've heard this one, (GET IT?! You can't!) but long story short, my dad gave us this giant desk he got from his work right before we got married, but when we got it up here we realized it wouldn't fit in our tiny house so we decided to put it in the basement. Gary backed the truck up to the basement door and started to slide it out of the truck bed and down the stairs but lost his grip, and that is the story of how we destroyed our bottom three basement stairs before we even moved into our house.

On to the Next One

First of all, do you know how much I love Jay-Z? A lot. Especially this song (careful - the lyrics are delightfully explicit.)

All delusions of buckness aside, I'm happy absolutely ecstatic PEEING MY PANTS WITH EXCITEMENT to report that we are DONE WITH THE OLD HOUSE!!! After countless hours of scrubbing, scraping and toiling in what I'm sure will turn out to have been a vain attempt to meet all their ridiculous cleaning requirements (yeah...about hiring a professional blind-cleaning company...we didn't) we left our keys in the drop box and can now start the process of trying to forget the place completely. (That is, until the day they inevitably notify us that we will not be receiving a penny of our security deposit. Even though I know it's coming, I'm sure I'll still be reasonably pissed off and probably want to break something.)

Anyway, we closed that nightmarish chapter of our lives just in time to open an enjoyable new one this weekend as we help Sarah Howrey and the Miller Twins move into their new place. It's in the Old North End, which means maybe they won't see so many people get arrested from out their bedroom windows. AND it has AIR CONDITIONING which means I'll be spending my summers there. 

If anybody feels like earning fifty billion awesome points this weekend, we can certainly use all the help we can get! Sarah's got a lotta couch and my strapping young husband will be otherwise engaged. You MIGHT even get your name mentioned on the blog! THAT'S RIGHT! A whopping 30 people will read your name on the internet! BOLD AND IN ALL CAPS!

I'll just be over here waiting to sign you all up. PEACE.

I Love Lamp

This is the thing I was telling you about on Friday that I couldn't show you, but now I can because I gave it to Leah and SHE LIKED IT! SHE REALLY LIKED IT!

It is a lamp made out of old hardback books. Before you mistakenly start to think I'm a genius for coming up with the idea, let me disillusion you by giving you this link to the tutorial I used.

Here are some pictures of the process:

This is the first hole I ever drilled. You can see the clamp I used on the left -- if you're thinking about doing this project, I highly recommend using two clamps, not just one like I did. We have two...I was just too stupid to find the other one.



I screwed the bottom book up from the bottom, and then the rest of the books were screwed from the top down. In case you didn't notice, I'm really enjoying the opportunity to use the word "screwed" so many times here.



I just thought this looked cool.



How I'm an Idiot Part I: Headless Screw

  

How I'm an Idiot Part II: Disembodied Head



So I bought the wrong kind of lamp shade, because again, I'm an idiot. I didn't even know there was more than one kind. Anyway I was all upset that I had bought the non-harp kind and I needed the harp kind, when Gary swooped in and saved the day once again! He just cut the bars and soldered them to a washer and BAM! Harp kind.



This is just a close-up of the awesomeness.

Solder-boy tell 'em. GET IT?!



Ta-da! This was really fun, and you should probably make one too.



The Craft

I don't know if it's that I'm poor or just that I'm nerdy...but I've been really into crafting lately. (Clearly it's that I'm nerdy since I just used the word crafting.)

I'm really excited to show you the stuff I'm making, but so far I've only finished one project and I can't show it to you because it's a birthday present that I haven't given to the birthday girl yet. BUT. I'm working on some other stuff that I CAN tell you about.

I have two projects in the works, and then a couple more ideas that I'm not sure about.

The first project is making curtains for our kitchen. I eventually want to make some for the entire house, but since I bought the fabric for the kitchen like three weeks ago and still haven't even finished ironing it all, I should be done with the entire house...never. (In my defense, I've had to iron the same pieces of fabric multiple times because I keep laying them out on the guest bed and someone keeps trampling on them. Okay it's two someones. Two hairy, four-legged someones.)

Anyway here's the fabric I bought for the kitchen:

The second project is the one I'm most excited about (besides the AWESOME birthday present which I will show you on Monday.) This is the plan:

(I found this on an etsy site called BootsNGus where they make lots of awesome lights and other things)

They're mason jar hanging lights! We don't have a real light in our living room so we've just been using a floor lamp, but I think it would be nice to have something hanging down from the ceiling instead of our lamp which points straight up. (P.S. I should point out that I will have little to nothing to do with making this because I'm kind of an idiot and Gary is kind of a genius. For example, he fixed our dishwasher this weekend which involved something something copper pipes...unfortunately the only plumbing terminology I'm familiar with is the word plumbing.)

Now on to the maybes...this log wall art that I found on Curbly:



(Tutorial can be found here)

And these q-tip flowers from homemade ginger...

(Tutorial here)

...which are based on these giant ones from Anthropologie.

I really like both of these ideas but I'm just a little hesitant, a) because the first one requires the use of a saw and I totally wouldn't put it past me to cut off one of my own fingers; and b) because I'm not sure how obvious it is that the second one is made from Q-tips and food coloring.

Thoughts are welcome, but only if they're nice and/or helpful.

A Birthday Limerick

There once was a woman named Leah
Who lived 'round the corner from me-ah
She had pretty hair
She'd impersonate Cher
And everyone wanted to be-ah*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEAH!!!

I promise I worked harder on your present than I did on this limerick.

*Be her...I realize this is a stretch. Grammatically -- not literally. In fact, click this to see for yourself just how much you want to be-ah.

I'm Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. Kutcher

I didn't post anything yesterday because I was cleaning the old house, or "in hell" as I like to call it. Actually it wasn't as bad this time around because Gary was there. (I went over there by myself on Saturday while he was at work and somehow ended up sobbing in the fetal position in the middle of the bathroom floor with no recollection of how I got there. I can only assume it had something to do with the trauma of cleaning the toilet.) But having Gary with me was like a breath of fresh air. Well, not fresh exactly...more like stale, dusty air with traces of lead paint...but that really couldn't be helped considering where we were.

Anyway, we'd been there for a couple hours and I was nearly done scrubbing the baseboards when Gary walked over to me with an incredulous look on his face and said, "You are not gonna believe this. There's a dude just chilling on our front lawn. Right now. As we speak."

I walked over to the window and sure enough, there was a dude. Just chilling. On our front lawn. (Actually, I guess it's someone else's front lawn now since the "For Rent" sign has been conspicuously removed. Poor souls.) The weird thing was it wasn't even a crackhead as far as I could tell. It was just some guy, probably in his mid-sixties, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, who by the looks of things was just enjoying a mid-Tuesday stroll and decided to take a rest.

I realize at this point I shouldn't be surprised by things of this nature, but somehow I still had trouble processing that this was really happening. For a good ten minutes all I could say was, "Are you kidding me? You're kidding me. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

I've been formulating a theory of late that we may be the victims of the most elaborate prank ever played, and at any moment someone's gonna jump out and yell, "GOTCHA! Ohh man, you should have seen your faces!!!" My plan for when this finally happens is to laugh goodheartedly, walk over as if to put my arm around that person's shoulders and then choke them to death.

THE END

Inkplot

We haven't been in our house three weeks yet, so it makes perfect sense that on Saturday I discovered this:

I checked Gary's mouth for ink marks but there was nothing there. It wasn't too long before I discovered this little guy looking a little blue if you catch my drift:

It's clear what happened here: Brutus chewed up a pen and then rubbed my poor sweet baby Bravo's paws in the ink so I'd think he did it. Poor little angel; always getting picked on by his bully of an older brother.

Anyway I'm certainly open to suggestions as to how to get the spot out of the carpet. I read something online that said to saturate the stain with hairspray, let it dry, and then pour a solution of one part white vinegar and one part water on the stain and scrub it with a toothbrush. I did all those things, and all it did was make my carpet smell really good (thank you Herbal Essences) and then really bad (no thank you Heinz).

Plandanowitz

Many of you may have seen my post on FB yesterday regarding this link to the listing of our old house.

I didn't blog about it yesterday partly because I had already started writing about how often I crave jelly rolls and partly because I was so angry that I knew nothing good would come of talking about it. (Insert bad FB status such as, "Complaining on the internet is like [something offensive]" here.)

I've stopped visibly shaking, but I'm still pretty appalled. Basically the rental company took everything we told them about the things that happened to us in that house and decided, "You know what? We're the devil; I bet we could squeeze another $55 a month out of this puppy!" So some poor, unsuspecting person is going to rent that house with no idea of what they're signing up for.

But not to worry, everyone, for I have devised a plan.

The first draft of the plan, I'll admit, wasn't my best. It involved staking out the house for the next two weeks and then running out barefoot, dressed in dirty overalls, waving a pitchfork and screaming incoherent warnings every time someone came to look at the house. Then, Gary would just happen to be walking by and mention casually, "Oh that? That's just Crazy Millie. She's harmless...well, unless you have children or pets. Or are susceptible to pitchfork wounds." But really, who has the time or the overalls for a production of that caliber?

My current plan is a much more reasonable one which includes strategically placing notes of dire warning all over the inside of the house. My hope is that that any potential residents would at best heed my advice to look elsewhere for lodgings lest they be forever haunted by the Ghost of Crackhouse Past and at worst realize that a crazy person seems to have access to this house and feel unsafe enough to leave.

Little Diablo

Let me tell you a little something about being on a diet: It makes the weirdest stuff sound delicious. It doesn't matter if you've been eating without abandon for the past three weeks; the very day you get back on the wagon, it begins.

You'll be standing in the bakery section at the grocery store trying to convince yourself that these 100% whole wheat bagel thins probably taste just as good as the sweet, dense potato bread you love so much (keep telling yourself that, you poor, sweet, naive baby fawn) and without warning, you're suddenly made stomach-growlingly aware that you'd like nothing more than to tear into and devour that entire package of jelly rolls on the bottom shelf. And they're not even the good ones!* They're some Mexican brand name you can't pronounce, and there's really no telling how long they've been on the shelf (Do I detect a thick layer of dust on the box? Eh, that'll come off. You're in this for the carbs, not the cardboard) but the cartoon bear on the front is winking so convincingly that you're sure you'd be willing to trade your firstborn just to lick the finger of someone who'd recently taken a bite of one.

If you've never dieted then I secretly hate you. I'll be nice to your face, but just know that deep down I'm hoping your metabolism gives out and you suddenly get fat you might not ever have experienced this.

*And by good ones I of course mean Little Debbie®, manufacturer of all things that are good and holy.

Oh Dad.

The following is an email my dad sent me after reading Monday's post.

Emily, 

I am very proud of you for mastering the power drill. I think you can do anything you put your mind to.

Not to scare you or go overboard on safety, but here are two things to remember about power tools.

1) Power tools are your friends, if you like mindless killers.

2) Power tools don’t care if you are a pro or a rookie, they will hurt you if you give them a chance.

I have used power tools for most of my life but it scares me every time. You need to have respect for them.

I really like you with all your fingers and arms and stuff in place. So, please read all directions and be careful when using power tools.

Love,

Dad 

Oh, my dad? He loves me. And also is funny. NBD.

Like A Good Neighbor...

Hidey-ho, neighborino!

I'm sorry we haven't come across the alley to introduce ourselves yet; we've been a little busy with the move and everything...okay who are we kidding. We're never going to introduce ourselves because we're a little bit antisocial and we tend to hate people. ESPECIALLY PEOPLE WHO MOW THEIR YARDS AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING.

Seriously. Seriously?!? You felt it was appropriate to gas up the grass cutter neighbor alienator prior to 7 am knowing that most people in this town don't have air conditioning and therefore probably have their bedroom windows open? Like maybe the window that's RIGHT NEXT TO THEIR SLEEPY LITTLE HEADS? ON GARY'S DAY OFF??? (Alright, I'll retract that last part since you couldn't possibly have known.*)

Now, should I recognize the fact that this is one of those normal, everyday nuisances you just have to put up with from your neighbors and be thankful that we no longer live next to a full-blown meth lab? Probably. But the joke's still on you, buddy, because the difference between you and the crackheads (besides the fact that you don't seem to find it as amusing as they did to stare out your windows at us for hours on end) is that we were afraid of them. They were twitchy and unpredictable, while based on what I've gathered, you're nothing more than a boring middle-aged couple who never comes outside--unless of course you feel the need to mow your lawn at some ungodly hour of the morning.

So the real reason I wrote this letter was to welcome you to PARTY CENTRAL!

That's right! Starting tonight around 11pm, we are going to be partying it up YOUNG PEOPLE STYLE at ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT! Anytime we think you might be trying to sleep, you can "rest" (get it?!) assured we will be doing something SUPER LOUD to guarantee that you wake up cussing us!

I realize this retaliation will probably cause all the neighbors who haven't done anything to deserve this to hate us as well, but ya know what? BRING IT ON, INNOCENT NEIGHBORS!

WE'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!

THIS IS OUR HOOD NOW!!!

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH-

Neighbors,

I apologize for my wife - she's not well. We would really appreciate it if you would consider restricting your lawn-mowing to sometime between the hours of 8am and 9pm because the noise makes it difficult for us to sleep.

Thanks for all your help,

Gary

*The beauty of this is that even though I said I'd retract it, it's still out there, swaying people's opinions and making everyone think you're an inconsiderate jerk! MUAHAHAHAHAHA! Justice - you just got served.

I Am Woman.

This weekend I bought a drill.

Then I took it home and used it.

THE END

Juuust kidding. That's not really the end. IT'S JUST THE BEGINNING.

Sarah and I have this little joke about how I'm "crippled by a husband." Basically there are just a lot of things I've never needed to learn how to do (hang shelves, kill spiders, hit things with a hammer) because I have a strapping young man at my disposal to do it for me.

However, since Gary's started working weekends I've begun to realize that I am NOT in fact a weak and helpless female. To my surprise, I'm actually turning out to be kind of a bamf. And I've got the examples to prove it!

Example #1: I smoked ribs for Sarah's birthday party a couple weeks ago. And they were GOOD.

Example #2: Yesterday...well, you know. The drill. (Get it?! You know the drill?! Man I crack me up.)

The significance of this is of course that in the event that Gary should die in a fiery helicopter crash, I just might survive.