Death by Caramel...

Each year about this time, I make a variety of candies and goodies to give away as teacher & neighbor gifts! NORMALLY, I have 5 or 6 other friends come over and we make a HUGE variety of goods and then share our spoils of the day with each other. WELL, I can't do that this year, as my kitchen is truly a one-fanny kitchen. SO I started my venture last night and will continue making some kind of poisonous junk every day until my rear end is roughly the size of the kitchen door. (They wrote a song about me - something involving a 2x4? haa!)

I start my journey with probably the easiest recipe...My dear friend Kris has this highly dangerous recipe for caramel which is, well, you just have to make it to understand the effects it can have on your hiney...she shared the recipe with me last year with the following warning "Be careful, this tends to skip the mouth and go straight to the hips" so - - with that warning, I share her caramel recipe!


Heat the following to 260 degrees:
1 3/4 cups Karo Syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter

while still on the heat, add:

2 cups of room temperature heavy whipping cream and heat to 260 (hard ball stage)

remove from heat and add:

1 teaspoon vanilla
mix well and pour onto buttered cookie sheet.

Once mixture cools, apply directly to hips.

OKAY - so I did that last night - and this morning I decided to dip some of them in chocolate. This is a fairly easy recipe - and even easier to apply the chocolate - directions for that include - cutting the caramel, and dipping it in melted almond bark chocolate - it works best when you eat every-other one...

My agenda for the rest of the day includes sitting on the couch regretting all the sugar I consumed for the day - and daydreaming of all the things I should be doing, but can't because the sugar high has left me nauseated and tired...or maybe that's the baby? You never can tell....

A story from last year

I just came across - and it had me in stitches. Last year - of course, wasn't much different health-wise for Howie - and it found us again in the doctors office. Here's what I recorded....

We've moved into the doctor's office (hey, better than the ER, right? the cool thing is - they told me I didn't have to make any more appts, I could just come in, and they'll give us a room!) Anyway - he was a little high from the sterroids they give him for his asthma - (makes him kind of jittery and "busy" so he was really talking up a storm & bouncing from topic to topic) the nurse came in & she had vanilla lotion on - right when she walked in - you could REALLY smell it -

Howie said "Does it smell like roasted marshmellos in here?"

She laughed & commented it was her lotion.

Howie kept asking her "Are you eating roasted marshmellows" and "Did you brush your teeth with marshmellows?" But WAIT - that's not the funny part...

The doctor came in right as the nurse was leaving & sat next to Howie on the exam talbe to hear his lungs - there they are sort of sitting next to each other & swinging their legs off the exan bed, and making small talk...

The doctor scooted over closer to Howie & told him he needed to listen to his lungs, took the stethescope to Howie's back (Howie had to lean slightly forward) & right then Howie said (and I SWEAR I have never heard him say this before - just not something we say in our house) "Careful, it's loaded" and then he ripped the loudest, longest fart you have EVER heard - it was a MAN fart like no ones' business - of course, the doctor and I were BUSTING our GUTS and Howie didn't skip a beat - "Smells like marshmello's in here, doesn't it?" ROFL! I knew what he was talking about, but we could NOT stop laughing!

I'm so impressed with me

I made homemade Christmas cards - YEP, Christmas cards, not "holiday cards" not "seasons greetings" cards - but CHRISTMAS cards. Yep, even put the word "CHRISTMAS" on the outside of the card. {{Gasp}} I have a Jewish friend and an atheist friend and I'm SOO sending them my CHRISTMAS card - and I guarantee they won't be one bit offended!

But before I can send off my cards, I have to come up with a clever family letter. I do one every year, I try to steer clear of the "My child is the smartest kid in the school" typical "look how awesomely blessed my life is" letter & stick to the facts - things we did - a year in review sort of thing. Last year I did my newsletter by switching the words of the song "The 12 Days of Christmas..."

I'm debating whether or not I should keep doing the 12 days (months) of the year newsletter, or if I should do a different song each year? What think ye? Different song - or same theme year after year?

Busy week!

We had a fun week! On Monday for FHE/Howie's birthday, we went to see Zoo lights. Howie had some money from his uncle Jason, and decided he wanted to get a night glow toy...which lasted approximately 3 hours - an all time new record for over-priced night glow toys all over the world...



The zoo also had their "Stingray Bay" opened - it's a huge "touch tank" for stingrays - and EVERYONE spent way too much time - hanging over the pool with the top halves of their bodies draped into the water - the sting rays would swim by and apparently they like to get pet!



There's also Jaffy the Giraffe - who is auditioning to be a reindeer - and helped relay messages to Santa Clause as he talked to the children to see what they wanted. Brynn was completely FREAKED out - but the other kids thought it was pretty cool.



And when all was said and done, Brynn dictated when we headed back home..."I need to go night night in sissy's bed." We complied!

It's amazing how much I could love him!

7 years ago today! Has it really been 7 years?





7 Things I LOVE About Howie!


1 - You're funny! I can't even start to tell the stories of Howie that so fully describe his unique personality!



2 - You LOVE being a big brother! You were only a little brother for 5 years - nothing "big" about you - when Brynn came along, you swore to "pretect her with dad's big swords" if anyone tried to hurt her! You're a good protector!

3 - Your passionate! Everything you do, you do with every ounce of your energy! (Including getting sick!)


4 - You'll always be my baby! I was so worried before Brynn came, that you would think your roll as "baby" would be taken away - and you cuddled me and told me "I'll always be your baby" and even now, you will come sit on my lap and say "I'm still your baby"



5 - You share everything you have (and maybe some things you DON'T have!) with whoever you think needs it at the time! You're a giving boy!


6 - You still get excited over "little" things like crayons and paper airplanes!

7 - Your smile lights up the room, even when someone is mad at you - somehow your magical smile softens them.


Howie, his transformer & his Dr. Suess cake (compiled by Kiersten and Kali with special instruction and frosting by Howie!)



Happy 7th Birthday to my funny, loving, passionatate, sharing, caring, and a dash of crazy "little" boy! I love you always & forever!

Springs & chains....

I've decided in order to save stress and money, I will have to come up with a series of security measures to incorporate into things that are used and misplaced daily.


I want to connect a chain to the girls hairbrush - there's a little hole in the bottom of hairbrushes...ever wonder why? NOPE, it's not so you can hang it on a hook...it's so that you can put a chain around it and anchor it to the wall in the vanity.
This would have to be attached to only two places in the house - one in my bathroom and one in the girls...my brush will never go missing again because they girls won't have misplaced theirs and come and taken mine! GENIUS, I know.

I also need to get one of those retractable springy type chains this will enable the remote control, portable phones and PENS to NEVER be lost - remember the olden days before things became wireless? (okay NOT pens, but phones used to actually be STUCK to the wall and kids couldn't wander off with them - and remote controls, too - stuck right to the tv and connected by a long cord - NEVER LOST)

Also - I want to be able to add some kind of magnetic device to clean clothes - shirts will have a special code that applies to the drawer they belong to, socks & underwear, shorts - things of that nature, so when I fold them, they actually have to be WORN before they're tossed back into the dirty clothes hamper.

Sure, it seems like a lot of work gluing everything down - and affixing electronic devices or other metallic interferences to items - but in the long run, it helps preserve sanity - there will be no more need for things such as prozac, or zoloft - because things won't misplace themselves...can't have anxiety or stress or depression if your house cleans itself, am I right?

SPT - Getting into the holiday spirit....

Yep, had to steal an idea for today's post - so I'm grabbing the SPT from Kris's blog.

How do we get into the holiday spirit? Well, since I've been wearing thin w/ Howie being sick lately - it's been difficult...that coupled with the fact that it's in the upper 80's and will be in the lower 90's tomorrow! It doesn't "feel" holiday-ish!

Growing up in Texas, we had some fun holiday preparations - things leading up to the holidays...I remember we had these gas space heaters - lets say it looked EXACTLY like this:

and my dad wouldn't let us turn it on unless the temperature outside was 50. So we would call "time & temp" every 5 minutes waiting for the temp to change from 53 down to 50!

When it finally did, we danced around and then fought about who got to be in the center of the space heater! Miraculously no one was significantly burned! But I remember when the space heater went on - the decorations went up shortly thereafter!

Also - Dad wouldn't let us start listening to Christmas music until December 1st. Even though everyone else listened to it the day after Thanksgiving...BUT we did get to listen to it through the END of December, so we were kind of special that way!

One of my favorite songs was this song sung by Barbara Striesand - "Jingle Bells"
(it's a bad recording, but the good recording didn't enable embedding!!)

That's a fun song to wear the kids out - we would run around in circles around the space heater until someone ended up with waffle marks on their back...okay - not really - I don't know how any of us escaped serious injury from that space heater!

So - for gettin THIS family in the holiday spirit - we will have to wait until Thanksgiving when we pull the stuff out & start decorating! Yep, rebelling against my childhood traditions of not listening to Christmas music until December 1st! We hit the sounds on Thanksgiving!

Got another new camera

I'm really REALLY missing my Fuji Finepix S7000! Wish that didn't go the way of the earth! So this "trial" is a canon - which actually makes a fairly good camera, it's the elph SD950 - it's small - not "professional" as far as options go - I can do macro and burst shots - but I can't adjust most other settings I've been able to with my other cameras...which is okay - BUT I do like the option if I want to change things up a bit!

Here are some more sample pictures (compare to the other post "Camera Comparison" where I use the incredibly awesome professional grade Nikon DX40 and the POS Olympus something or another...not even worth mentioning!! You can get better pictures from a disposable!!)




Not so bad, I would still like the coloring to be a bit more vibrant - but whatever. I'm leaning toward getting a refurbished Fuji S7000 from e-bay, it would be a better camera - and one that I know and LOVE - for a few hundred less than what I have now - but I hesitate to do this because - well - I can't take it back anywhere in 4 years if it breaks! LOL! I got to love me some Costco!!

On being domestic...

There's this nasty little homemade bread recipe from my friend Kari that's been going around like a bad virus. Dear Ana raved about it (click here for the recipe) and put me in the mood. So I tried it.

Of course, nothing can be done by myself in this house - so Brynn decided to pull the "mom's helper" card & help me make it!

It made 3 scrum dittly umptious loaves! And I think I shall never purchase bread again! I did eat an entire 1/2 loaf myself - oh - can you say swallow a brick! It was SO good, though!

Thanks Kari for kiling me softly with your recipies!

The loot...

Okay - we dumped all the goods into a 5 gallon bucket & it was overflowing! So I sorted everything for easy access- put them into 1 gallon ziplock bags - under the following categories -- chocolate, suckers, hard candies, chewey candies and compressed sugars (smarties, runts, sweethearts, etc) I also had a bag for mexican candy and tootsie rolls - which I threw out because 1- no one would eat them and 2-there just wasn't room in the 5 gallon bucket for rejected candies that would stay there till next year & tempt me to hand them out as trick or treat candies at THAT point in time...don't want to be labled cheap or frugle - no one likes the people who hand out the tootsie rolls anyway.

Anyway - it's interesting to see how "little" it looks like you have once you sort all the candy out & put them in their own spots!
Here are more pictures of the kids (see our trunk or treating post a few posts down from this for more pictures!)