how does it happen so quickly?

My house is a disaster!!! (and my font is huge, wtf?, bah, I'll edit it later if I need to)

So, my husband was away for a week, and upon his return my kitchen was pretty and clean, the living room was mostly neat an organized, and even the bathrooms were in better shape.

Of course, yesterday my son had a pretty violent food poisoning incident. The poor boy :(  and that pretty much put a stop to everything that was going on. A little laundry got washed, and the dishwasher ran, but little else happened. My husband even came home early to be with his son (because when you're little boy says "I want my daddy" daddy came home)

OH, and then the school program we are working with sent us a computer since mine died (I am currently using an old computer with a Live CD, and it doesn't support flash, which means no school, and this computer isn't functional enough to install an operating system on :/ lol) Anyway, that means there are boxes and computer components on the kitchen table.

Bah, anyway, the point is my house was getting very near a point where I was excited I was making great progress, and now it's "omg please no one ring my doorbell!"

Tomorrow, I'm letting the kids have a free day. The boy can either continue to laze about and recover or he can play (hopefully calmly) and the girl will hopefully still be bouncing around. Setting up a computer, dishes, cleaning the table, the kitchen counters, the stuff I pulled out of the van so I could FINALLY replace the back seat. I'm glad to have the seat out of here, that means I can prepare to move the snake. He needs a slightly warmer spot in the house now that it's gotten cooler (or as it was in the beginning of the week, down right frigid!). My daughter is ready for me to make Santa's cookies. I, however, am ready for a clean house for a day or two before I do that. Not to mention I don't want everything to go back to this state in time for Christmas Eve...No Way. I need time to wrap the gifts! At least one kid is still awake, which makes wrapping risky. There is also no space to wrap. Must. Clean.

I'm still not sure about that Turkey dinner. Though now I am wishing I had thought to do it for Yule. :/ Maybe I will manage something special that day :)

Ok, enough mindless rambling, I am tired, and likely not making sense. So...Good night!!

Oops, forgot about that

Inspiration from my friend Lisa in her recent "Deck the Hall's" post...I just took pictures of all our Christmas Decorations. Well, most of them. For somethings, like my wreath, it was the first time I'd ever taken a picture of it. Anyway....then I remembered, I can't get them off the camera. At least not until tomorrow when I can get my husband to put them on HIS computer. Gah. >pout<

You see I had been running one computer, since April. A hand-me-down machine, but it worked great....until last Friday when the video card decided NOT to wake up. And still hasn't. Crap. So I'm using my old computer, that prior to April was the main machine I used. It had/has a nasty habit of overheating even though both fans spin freely, and from what we can tell at the proper RPM. No idea. It eventually crashed (shortly after the hand-me-down machine was brought home), so it's using a Live CD version of Ubuntu. Sometimes I can access the harddrive, sometimes I can not. No matter because I don't have the permissions to save anything to that HD. Go figure.

So I talked my kids into cleaning up their rooms, took pictures of their trees and of course them. Looking so cute in their pj's and bed-head. And then to the living room to capture our tree, my beautiful stocking, our "Santa Table", and the kids stockings. Plenty more I could snap pictures of but not with out cleaning up *everything* and it's clean enough for this morning. At least until the coffee kicks in and the headache goes away!

Hopefully I can get those pictures off the camera (and any others that might bring life to my posts) and get them shared, sometime BEFORE the holiday!

I'm also trying to plan a few things for Yule. I want to celebrate it with my kids at least. I would like to make some Sun Bread, and hopefully cut out some snowflakes with the kids, or something else crafty. Of course we will be getting ready to bake our cookies for Santa. (It's interesting being a "new Pagan" in a house hold that celebrates Christmas. My kids enjoy it, so I'll continue, but I want to add to their holiday experience with a bit of my own "stuff")

Ah well, time to end this, I need to get ready to head out for our Saturday errands :D Hope you all have a great weekend!

Thanksgiving Dinner for NYE?

I want to roast a turkey. Or a chicken.  And I want it to come out right.  I'm torturing myself sitting here thinking about the two turkeys I got to enjoy this Thanksgiving....and I am drooling. They were very different, and both so good.

I'm sure my husband wouldn't turn down the idea. The frozen birds are out for Christmas...and if I wait a bit I could get a good deal! Then I could do it for New Years. Crazy? We need to make room in our freezer for sure lol

I'm not sure if I want to tackle a lot of sides. But I can't just stuff the bird. I should totally make a pie! What kind of pie....probably apple pie. And...hmm green bean casserole? I'll have to get Hubby's opinion on that one.  He's working that day, but if I time it going in the oven right, it can be done an hour or two after he gets home....the kids get to stay up late anyway ;)

It sounds like fun, which is weird to say, but it does. It also sounds a little stressful because I wouldn't want it to be under cooked. Then what would I serve?? I'd have no room for frozen pizza, and you'll wait 3 hours on NYE to get delivery.

there is also the whole...I don't have a roasting pan...thing.

So, should I buy the roasting pan and roast a turkey? or chicken?

I am not one to have many 'creative' or 'original' ideas....which you get used to eventually. Business name ideas, using "old" names for your kids thinking the trends are still edging toward new more "trendy" names....and then running in to no fewer than 8 little boys with the same nickname. And one with the same first & middle. Yeah. Well, at least I know it's a good name, right?

This is a common theme in my life...and it extends to the kitchen. I cook what I know...and I don't know squat! But, I love watching 'cooking shows'. Master Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Iron Chef these are some of my favorites. Probably because the only time I get to watch Food Network or Food TV, whatever it's called now, is when Paula Dean is on. Now, there is nothing wrong with Paula Dean, but, we can't eat "southern style" all the time with out greatly increasing our pants sizes. And quite frankly, I'd like mine to get SMALLER!! Not that my idea will actually achieve that goal either.

Last night as I was cleaning up the kitchen I opened that cabinet over the fridge (you know the one you can't reach so the stuff you never use gets shoved in there when you unpack?...yeah that one) and I pulled out a book my grandmother sent me when I got married. Every time I had attempted to use the book before I either didn't have the proper equipment, or couldn't find enough of the ingredients, or both. Well, now there are still a lot of things I don't have, and probably a lot of things I can't find, but now I know I can find substitutions by doing a Google search.

So I went through the cookbook, and I cut apart post-it notes (I have an over-abundance of regular post it notes) and marked roughly 72 NEW things to try to cook, or to draw inspiration from. This is also in an effort to learn how to cook, so I can come up with some things of my own. Sometime I would really love is a great cookbook for veggies, mostly as sides, but as the main dish would be ok...I just don't know how to cook veggies and they're ALWAYS gross. Overcooked, undercooked, or just, yucky.

So, in a perfect world I would cook 4 new things a week, but if I go by budget it will probably just be 1 or two. I *have* to have a 'back up' I do have kids to feed!! The next step in this task will be deciding when to cook what. I need to look at ingredients and see what I can get and what I'll need to wait for....AND what I can plan to GROW! YAY! Garden ideas!! Another thing I needed. Too bad it's fracking December and the ground is nearly rock hard and I did zero prepping.

Well, I should get back to the cookbook, and my menu planning :D