Wanna come over?

The witch is making dinner :)

Halloween favorites

Here are some of my family favorites to read and watch for Halloween:

The first thing that comes to mind is: cute! And not in a bad way at all... this is a very imaginative, uplifting movie. Unless you are the grinch it'll put a smile on your face!

Definitly not my favorite but my 11 year old liked it :)

Everything in Winnie's house is black: the bed, the bathtub, the stairs...even the cat. And that's the problem: you can't see a black cat on a black floor against a black wall. And you trip on him over and over again...what is a witch to do??
Alice and Greta went to the same school and learned the same spells...but Greta forgot about the most important lesson of all: the brewmerang principle.
"Whatever you chant
Whatever you brew
Sooner or later
Comes back to you!"

I love this book ans so do my children. Mitzi is a witch and she likes creepy things. So, when she decides she wants a pet, she, of course, wants a creepy one. But looks aren't everything...

All right, after a raging war between Blogger and me I'm admitting defeat. I wanted to add a pic for The nightmare before Christmas but for some totally unknown and obviously idiotic reason Blogger is not letting me uploading the pic. I'll put the links for all of these items on the right. Anyway, unless you've been raised by penguins in an ice cave, you know the story. And you know it's brilliant too.

Enjoy!

Pete's pond

Just a quick note that I've been wanting to do for a while. There is a live national geographic camera at Pete's pond in Africa. You can see elephants, giraffes, zebras, crocodile and a lot more as they come to drink at the pond during the dry season. I like to leave the site on all the time to hear the animal sounds: birds, insects and... bats!
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/

Well, well, well

Long time no see as they say. It's just that I thought I was having such a good time with strep throat. So 2 days after I stopped the antibiotics I, of course, caught a big cold. It actually wiped me out for a week which is pretty unusual. If I remember correctly I said I'd post Halloween pics so here they are! Only a few for today but I'll be back. If I don't get the flu, Ebola or with all the giant mosquitoes flying around, West Nile.

Apologies

I wish to apologize in advance for this post. It's terrifying and gross. It's the horror that gave its name to horror.
I present to you the lunch menu at my kids' school:

October 16
Cheesy bread sticks or chicken nuggets
Marinara sauce
Cinnamon belly bear cookie

October 17
Beef soft taco or chicken nuggets
Fruit snacks (these are candies not fresh fruits)

October 18
Hot dog w/bun or chicken nuggets
Vegetarian baked beans
Wiggly red pear jello

October 19
Pepperoni pizza or chicken nuggets
Chocolate chip elf graham

October 20
Penne pasta w/ meat sauce or chicken nuggets
Animal crackers

Now honesty moves me to mention that there is a salad bar ( only since end of last year ) but the stuff in there is so unappetizing that the only kids that I've seen using it are vegetarians (obviously they don't have a choice!).
Thankfully we make our kids lunches and one good thing is that we are welcome any day to share lunch with the kids.
You know what's ironic too? On the paper that has the menu on it, they insist heavily on haow important it is to get you 5 fruits and vegetables a day. Ha!
Now if you really want to be disgusted with the whole thing go check Candy Froggie's website where she posts her daughter's school lunch menu ;)

Confessions

There was a nice "confession" post on http://blog.candyfroggie.com/. I love that kind of post, it's always fun and it's a tiny crack in other people's lives. Which will explain my first confession...

Confession 1:
I visit this blog http://www.popsugar.com/ regularly. Ahem.

Confession 2:
I never rest when I'm sick which makes it worse and then I get very grumpy. I am also not trustworthy when it comes to take medications.

Confession 3:
I give my dog tidbits from my plate under the table exactly like when I was a kid.

Confession 4:
I love boots. The tall ones that are all leather with no heels. Yes, like pirate's boots :)

Confession 5:
In the family, only my sister knows about my blog. Unless my other relatives discovered it by themselves.

Confession 6:
my favorite ice cream is http://www.benjerrys.com/our_products/flavorWorld.cfm ( Phish Food ) which has marshmallow, caramel and fudge. Ben, tant qu'a faire hein!

Confession 7:
When my daughter was around 2 years old she took the habit of waking me up every day at dawn saying: "mama, mama, you can wake up now the sun is up!!".And one day I said: "Well, then he doesn't need me anymore now does he?". She stopped talking for a full minute at that point, which is still a record ;)

Wasn't meant to be

I was going to do a cheerful little post about Halloween, decorations, cookies and pumpkin pie with lots of pictures. But it wasn't meant to be: my computer is lying in pieces with my husband trying to replace the hard drive. He is swearing profusely ahem. We have 4 computers in the house. Yes, 4. And not one of them is working correctly. It seems I'm also having side effects from the antibiotics I'm taking for strep throat, lovely. Laurienna jewelry has been updated though with new earrings and bookmarks. But the new necklaces and bracelets are not there yet. I'll put that up once I get my "real" computer back. If ever *sigh*
Hehe, I just reread myself: I sound so melodramatic :):)

Candy Froggie

I just added a link ( you know on the right other there ). Candy Froggie's website is fantastic in every sense of the word. And she just added her last Halloween painting for 2006. Does it really have to be the last? ;). Go check it out!

Friday the 13th

I'm one of these people who think that friday the 13th is a lucky day. Nothing bad ever happened to me on a friday the 13th. And I owned a black cat and I gleefully walked under ladders too. That was until yesterday. Yesterday my son's teacher sent her usual friday e-mail giving info on what happened in class during the week. It was student election week and we learn who won which post ( like president, vice president, tresorer etc). My son was not running which should exempt me of any sort of bias, right? Well, I learned that the kid who won vice-president cheated. He distributed printed t-shirts with his name on it ( which is against the printed rules given to you when you run and that have to be signed). Which implies that he was helped by his parents who forked a lot of money to have t-shirts printed. The teachers knew about it, they told the principal who said: "oh well". I'm so mad. I know it seems silly and they are only 10 and eleven years old and all. But you know what? That family works for a very well known actor who is our governor ( you know the one with the hummers and uzis galore). These people make me sick : they cheat, lie and weasel their way out of anything. It starts in elementary school and goes all the way to the president of the us. Black Friday indeed. Shame on you.

Piper

Ladies and Gentleman, may I present you Piper aka Big Baby. She is 8 months old and we adopted her from a shelter when she was 13 weeks old. No, no you are not on the "Save the dogs" website where we'll get all teary eyed and mushy. However, I get a lot of questions about her and the fact that she is a rescue puppy. She is part labrador, part Mastiff. We didn't know what she was crossed with when we adopted her but we did know she would be big ( at 13 weeks her paws were as big as the palms of my hands ). She is the smartest and most gentle dog I have ever known ( and I've known quite a bit ). She was house trained in 3 days, stole food once and never did it again, hasn't destroyed anything in the house and is very easily trained to do pretty much anything. she has not shown any aggression. In fact, when on a few occasions suspicious people have shown up at the door or passed us on walks at night she simply but very effectively put herself between me and them. No growl, but a definit message was sent: you are not coming any closer. Any other people ( even strangers ) are greeted with a wagging tail and rolling tongue. Why am I saying all this? Christmas season is coming and a lot of people are buying pets as gifts. Every year my local newspaper is full of ads selling puppies and kittens for hundreds of dollars a piece. Please think twice. It might take a little longer to get that dream puppy or kitten that will be a good match for you but I can assure you, you will. There are thousands and thousands of animals in shelters waiting for somebody to love them. They might not be perfect ( Piper got her tail broken at birth so now it's crooked and it looks a little funny :)) but I can honestly tell you that when you'll meet them you won't care one bit.





If you live in the Sacramento area check this shelter where we adopted Piper:
http://www.cashelterfriends.org/cashelterfriends.html

Morning walk

Wine and tv

Well, I'm sure that all of you are impatiently waiting for more tidbits of my fascinating life. However, right now, I'm sipping a glass of wine, watching Bones and waiting for the season premiere of Lost :). I'll just share this bit from dinner. Miss A.( 7 ) is animatedly telling us that today she learned about presidents and the White House. And she says she really really really wants to visit the White House. A bit puzzled I ask why. " They have 35 BATHROOMS in there!! Can you imagine? You are visiting and then suddenly you've got to pee, but they have 35 BATHROOMS! And you are in the hallway jumping up and down and and and HOW DO YOU CHOOSE ONE??" huhuhu

??

Does anybody know why I suddenly have links in my texts that I didn't have before? Like sea salt, hard drive, pet mouse? Does anybody else get links with these words or is it just me?

Still alive!

Yes I know, shame on me. Again. I promise I'll make more efforts to post regularly :)
It's not even for lack of things to say, far from it. Actually the opposite: so many things to say and like everybody else it seems, so little time. I've been working quite a bit of course. Expect lots of changes on the website in the coming weeks: new designs of course but also lots of new ideas and directions. And no,I won't tell in advance ;).
To do list for today:
- Finish an order
- Drink lots of thyme and lemon balm tea cause I'm getting sick
- Force that same tea down the throat of my 11 year old who is sick too ( yeah what a coincidence, don't you think?)
- Make brownies with the 7 year old because she was inconsolable yesterday when one of his brother's pet mice died (old age). After proper burial and quite a bit of worrying on my part regarding our giant puppy ( part canidae, part dragon ), that could have, ahem, desecrated the grave in seconds. So far so good by the way. So after that sad episode, I, thoughtful mother that I am make the dinner that I always do when one of us is overworked, sick, in need of a pick me up: chili. And of course it's dinner time and everybody is talking about their day and so I mentionned that I saw a falcon in one of our trees today and it was eating something.
Miss A. : " What do falcons eat?"
The Thoughtful Mother : " Oh, rats, mice, sqirrels and other small animals."
Now on any other day that would have been fine, right. Any Other Day. But not That day. Sigh. I'll pass on what came after ( more tears, reassurance that no the falcon is not going to eat the remaining pet mouse ( named Thunderstorm ) etc. Ah yes, I was talking about brownies. Well after a difficult bedtime, a small little voice asked if we could bake brownies together today. What do you think I said?
- Find a new hard drive because mine is quitting.
- Take pics of new jewelry.
- Plant coriander and Chamomile seeds.
- Give a bath to the aforementionned canidae/dragon. Wonder where that huge tarp went.
- I'll probably need a bath myself after.
- Make onion soup.
- Go to bed and sleep . Well, or read. Or beg for a shoulder massage.

Yoho, yoho, a pirate's life for me

I just couldn't think of a better way to start Friday than with pirates and Johnny Depp. Plus that picture is quite funny. Can't wait for the 3rd installment!

Can't wait

Yesterday Mr T.'s yogurt exploded in his lunch box and Miss A. had a "wardrobe malfunction" :). I just can't wait for them to come home today. I certainly hope that chemistry was not on anybody's schedule.

Banana Shockproof Vest

First Day of School was a pretty god day in all. The only casualty was my son's banana that exploded in the lunch box making everything soggy ( not very surprising when you see what he does with his backpack). So, last night he requested " a more sturdy banana" in his lunch. Mwahaha, a more sturdy banana! If anybody has developped a patent regarding shockproof-bulletproof ( at least, maybe even atomic bomb grade) banana vest, please contact us.

First Day of School

Miss A. ( 7 years old ) and Mr. T. ( 11 years old in a few days ) are at school right now. All summer long I've waited for that blissful moment when the house is silent, and I can use MY computer without having to negotiate which usually goes like that:
Me - Darling, I need the computer.
Mr T. - ...
Me - T.? Did you hear me?
Mr. T. - mmmm?
Me getting a wee bit irritated ( although at least I know he is still breathing which you couldn't be absolutly certain since he looks catatonic )
-I need the computer for work.
Mr T. - But I'm mining!
Me - So?
Mr T. - I can't just stop!
Me - Well let's see it his way, if I don't work we'll have to sell the computer to buy food.
Mr T. who is only half listening putters a wwhaaatttt??? and promptly returns to mining.
The evil mother manually removes the child who then mutters all day long that he is oppressed. The mother then mutters all day long that Mr. T. has won a one way ticket to Africa to work in a mine and then we'll see he is still feeling oppressed etc etc...
So why then do I have a pit in my stomach since last night and why do I both want them back right now??
I hope they are both having a good first day. After all, I don't want other people to oppress my children. It's MY job.

Bad habit

My husband reads the paper every morning while having breakfast, I guess like most people. I can't do that. It makes my blood pressure go up first thing in the morning and I'm in foul mood for the rest of the day. Instead I like to spread it out during the day when I'm very busy and don't have too much time to reflect on the stupidity of human beings. Well anyway it works kind of, I still rant a fair amount for hum, some time after I read someting particularly outrageous. Perfect plan for me. Spreading the rants. Now, today was supposed to be a beautiful day in spite of a chopped up sleep last night. I was just sitting to baguette, quince jam and about 2 liters of the blackest coffee when he blurts out: "I just read something really dumb". Theatrical pause. Wearily glancing up at the spread out newspaper, I sigh and say : "mmmm, what a surprise. What? " Well, yes I'm human after all, and who at that point wouldn't say "what?". Husband continues: "They did a study in Africa about AIDS and circumcision and found that you have a lesser change of catching it if you are circumcised. So now they are telling people in Africa to get circumcised." Long silence while I examine in my head all the implications of this statement. The only thing I could come up with was : " who is the stupid idiot who thought that saying this to people who believe that having sex with a virgin is going to CURE them of AIDS was a good idea? I mean we all know how it is going to be interpreted: Oh, I'm circumcised so I can have sex safely with whomever. And I'm not even going to mention the very high risk of infections due to this surgery. Now, again, how do stupid people like that get to be in charge of anything, and especially how do they get to be in charge of life and death situations like this. Africa is a beautiful country that I fell totally in love with many many years ago. It's full of amazing people that are poor, yes, but are also smart, very resourceful and hardworking. They are not helpless and they don't wallow in their misfortune. They need to be helped intelligently not put further down by the white people than they already have. It reminds me of this article I read years ago where, again, stupid dumb " white experts" backed up by well known makers of formula, declared that babies in Africa should be fed formula instead of their mother's milk. Similar to what they did in the seventies in the western counries. The result: scores of babies dying or being very sick. Anybody with half a brain and who would have been in Africa for half an hour could have foretold this. You need clean water to make milk from formula and a lot of peolple there don't have that luxury. You need money to buy that expensive powder. Since they didn't have money they reduced the amount of powder they had to put in each bottle. If the baby didn't finish the bottle right away they didn't have a fridge to put it in. It would spoil and be covered in flies in minutes. Too expensive to throw away. Ah yes, and what about sterilizing the bottle?
Now, you think that maybe that endless post would mercifully come to its end by now, right? No, no such luck. Because husband hasn't finished to read the paper. Nope. So now comes a very small article, which really, in normal circumstances, I probably would have rolled my eyes and no more. Ah, but I'm fired up today. Here it is: " a NASA official insists that the crystal clear tapes from the Appollo mission of first man on the moon are not lost. They just don't know where they are." Ok, I said, chuckling, we all know what that means. Now comes the outrageous part: " most of these tapes have never been reviewed by anyone, even at NASA." " What?" ( yes I know I repeat myself a lot). " You are telling me that after spending billions after billions they don't even review the data??" Now I'm asking this: how would the world fare now if these billions had been put toward helping humanity instead of a silly little race which only goal was to plant a flag and do a silly little dance so that they could say: I'm first, I'm first like a first grader racing to be first in the line. Cause obviously it wasn't knowledge they were after.
Ok, now it's done. Yes I'm ending the post. Finally. And I promise not to read the paper anymore today and to stay clear of anyone with a newspaper in hand. Hopefully I'll post again today. A more pleasant post. Hopefully. And nobody better cross me today or it won't be pretty.

Food for stressful days

Some days are stressful enough. A lot of people have take out on these days because it's stressful for them to think about dinner and to make it. Call me nuts, and some people have :), but I'm the total opposite. Cooking is stress relieving and calming to me. I'm lucky that my children are not picky and I love to try new food. Fennel has been a long time favorite of mine and this recipe is very simple with a minimum of prep time. I found it in this book

Pasta with golden Fennel

2 or 3 large fennel bulbs, including the greens
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 galic clove, minced
3/4 to 1 lb fettuccine
Parmigiano-Reggiano or dry Monterey Jack cheese

_ Slice the fennel thinly. Heat water for the pasta.
_ Melt 1tbsp of the butter with the olive oil in a wide skillet. Add the fennel and saute over high heat, stirring occasionally, until brownd in places, 7 to 10 mns. Season with 1 tsp salt. Toss with the lemon juice, then add 1 cup water. Reduce the heat and cook, covered, until the liquid has evaporated. Add another 1/2 cup water and continue cooking in this fashion until the fennel is very soft and deep gold in color, about 25 mns in all. Season with pepper. Chop a handful of fennel greens ( about 1/3 cup) with the garlic and lemon zest and set aside.
_ Add the cooked pasta to the fennel. Add the chopped greens.

Serve with the grated cheese.
It's melt in your mouth delicious.

Bon appetit!