an afternoon

Yesterday I preparing to make a quesadilla from stale tortillas and leftover cheese.  DH walked in and suggested something else.












We picked up some burgers and went to the zoo. Our membership expires tomorrow so we needed to renew. We walked through Zoo North to burn off some of those hamburger calories. We checked out the new koalas.  On our way home, we decided to drive over the new Margaret Hunt Hill bridge that opened for traffic only hours before.  It was a nice afternoon date.

new glasses

J's glasses broke last week. The ear piece fell off. We took them in to get them fixed but they were irreparable. He had to pick new ones. After some waffling on his decision over the weekend, we went back in on Monday to make sure. He tried on glasses and still picked the same frames.






He's so handsome and so grown up! I remember when he first got glasses and then his camo glasses. Of course, B had to intrude on the photos.

Take a seat

Since I started working from home, I've used the desk my mother gave me.  She bought the desk soon after they moved to Dallas, so 1972-1973. It sat in the living room, a room that was only used for the occasional bridge party, rosary or the annual Christmas Open House or Easter Confetti Egg party. In other words, it was not used very often.

In the last six years, that chair has taken a beating.






I planned to reupholster it like this chair. I purchased the foam but never found fabric that satisfied me. Instead, every time I sat in the chair I silently cursed as I felt the cane breaking or the foam crumbling.

I have looked for a replacement chair.  I have perused web sites. I have drooled over the $2000.00 perfect replacement.  I have sat in every desk chair that I've found in Target/Ross/Marshalls/Goodwill. Nothing that was right.

Finally, yesterday a flyer came in the newspaper for World Market.  A few hours later, after a bit of haggling over a very light stain, I came home with this. 








I got it for 20% off.  The first 10% was for the stain, the second was the coupon that was on the flyer.

It is a bit shorter than the original chair, but it is comfortable. I think I'm going to get some chair slides for the legs at the hardware store. Hopefully, that will give it a little lift and make it easier to slide under the desk when not in use.

I'm going to keep the old chair.  Some day I may find the perfect fabric and finally get around to re-doing it.  Until, I'm happy with my new chair.

Wowa's Grey Matter

I finished Mom's birthday present, one month and 12 days later. It is nice to finally be done.

Pinterest Challenge Winter Edition

One week late.

I had planned on making art.  Well, I made art.  I planned on framing the art.  Then I didn't like the frames I bought and spring break happened and we decided to go to Galveston.  Art didn't get finished.

So here is my practical Pinterest Challenge.  I have a cast iron pan.  I loved cooking in that pan until DH did dishes and scrubbed the seasoning out and let it air dry.  It got all rusty and nasty.  I've wanted to re-do the seasoning for a long time.  I pinned a how to clean your cast iron pan on my to-do board 34 weeks ago so it really has been a long time.

I finally did it.

I ended up using the original link, plus two more for reference. 


Before


Scrubbing with salt and foil (I couldn't find and hate the feel of steel wool)


Covered the pot with coconut oil (I was out of bacon grease, lard and crisco)


After 3 hours of baking in the oven


Much prettier.  First, I need to fry up some bacon or something equally greasy to set my seasoning.  Second, I need to teach DH exactly how (or how not) to clean the pan or I have to dishes on nights I use it.

I'm a week too late to link up to the Pinterest Challenge on YHL.  Darn, I liked the bump in traffic I got with my last challenge.  At least I have an almost new again pan.

Garden Update

The weather has been warm and things are growing. We came back from Galveston to find

:: tomato flowers

:: strawberry flowers

:: teeny tiny carrot leaves

:: butter crunch lettuce

DH made burgers for dinner. He said it was an almost a perfect burger (bacon = perfection) and wanted me to take a picture of it. For the blog.

Spring Break 2012 - Part IV

Soccer Tournament








We experienced our first soccer tournament on Saturday. A couple of friends from B's soccer team decided to play in a 3 x 3 tournament and asked B to join in. It was crazy. Kids and parents and soccer fields everywhere.

It was a not a good day for the PST06 team.  The coach's son was out in the first half of the first game.  He had hurt his leg earlier in the week and hid it from his mother so he could play in the tournament.  His limping became obvious as soon as he tried to play.  The other 3 boys had to play the rest of the games.

In each of the next three games, one of the boys got hurt and came out crying.  T went in and stood in front of the goal doing his best.  In the last game, B got hit in the face with the ball on a kick in front of the goal.  He came out bawling & bleeding where his teeth fell out.  Luckily they were already out or they would have been.  Plus his thumb was jammed when he tried to block the ball from hitting his face. Poor T tried to go stand in for him but couldn't do it, so it went down to 2 on 2 instead. B took a couple of deep breaths and sucked it up.  He went back in the for the last 4 minutes of the game.  As soon as the ref blew the whistle, he started crying again and walked off the field. He was done with soccer for the day.

Spring Break 2012 - Part III

Galveston
























We took a quick trip to Galveston, about 60 hours total, but it was jam packed with fun. We spent two afternoons at the beach full of boogie boarding, wave jumping, sand castles & hermit crabs. I was lucky to come home without a new pet. We also did some kayaking and fishing. J caught a black drum and B caught a catfish. We stopped to geocache at a bird sanctuary on our way out of town.

It really was a nice trip. The kids all got along. The parents got along. We got to spend time with good friends that we hadn't seen since our last trip to Galveston.  We can't wait until our next trip to the beach.

Spring Break 2012 - Part II

So it is all M.V., all the time so far this Spring Break. M.V. is J's BFF.

First it was the soccer game and dinner on Sunday. Monday night, his family came over for dinner and stayed for s'mores.




Today, I picked up M.V. and his brother for some geocaching. The boys had never gone geocaching before. I picked a Breckinridge Park in Richardson because I knew there were multiple caches that we could hunt without driving all over town.  It was a very successful day.








The V boys had a good time. They found cache #1 & #2 and said they wanted to go again.  They were planning to get their dad to download the app to his iphone so they could with him. A was happy because her friend couldn't make it but she did find the final cache after we almost gave up.

Spring Break 2012 - Part I

We're on Spring Break this week. We don't have much going on but that is nice.

Saturday, A & I went to the Dallas Quilt Show to help Wowa out. She is in charge of tickets for the whole show so I helped take tickets and hand out programs. A helped with the mini quilt auction, holding quilts up for the bidding audience. She wasn't too thrilled with her lesson in giving and lenten sacrifice. At least that was what I told her after I told her that I didn't want to listen to her whining anymore as we left. The boys hung out at Grandma and PaPa's house with DH.

Sunday was a big day for the boys. They headed out to the season opener for FC Dallas with friends. They had a great time and came home with new hats, new jerseys & free vuvuzelas.




I'm so glad I didn't go to the game. I would have died from the noise. I'm discovering the joy of a 3 vuvuzela household (they brought one home for A) and take them away every time they blow one inside the house. Yesterday, I came out of room fuming ready to grab another one form B only to discover that he actually was outside. They are that loud!

After the game we made plans to meet the other family out for dinner. We had a half hour to kill so we spent it outside. It had rained for 4 days straight, but the sun finally come out. I did some weeding, DH drank a beer and the boys played basketball. Right before we had to leave, I heard B cry and J call out, "Are you okay?", which meant B had hurt himself and J wasn't involved, so I ran. (If J had ignored the cry and kept playing, pretending like nothing happened, generally means just just elbowed B in the gut to get him out of the way of his shot.) B caught a bad bounce right in the mouth and was bleeding.

Here is the result






Another front tooth gone. Luckily it was already loose. He got another $5.00 from the tooth fairy and is walking around lisping all over the place. I feel like I'm in the episode of the Brady Bunch where Cindy has to go to speech therapy. I keep wanting to tell him to quit talking like a baby (a bad habit lately) and then realize he really can't help it. I know, Bad Mom!

More good things

Last night A didn't have homework. It's a miracle! I asked her what she wanted to do with her free evening. She wasn't sure. I said make dinner, so she did.







I pulled ingredients out of the pantry and fridge and she made a baked rotini pasta with ham. It was good.

While the pasta was cooking, B came into the kitchen looking like he had just been in a bar fight. He pulled his tooth. That kid is so unlike most of the children in our family. Instead of having to sit on him to get a tooth out, he pulls it himself.





Now maybe he'll pay attention on the soccer field instead of standing around wiggling that tooth. Or more likely, he'll start wiggling on the other one.