a new series!!!

And only because I feel like I have so many "That Awkward Moment" experiences that it warrants a series.

Like the Awkward Moment just now...

A meeting at work with a possible new insurance broker.

He's cute (in an Ivy league, summers on the Cape, wholesome kinda way) and taaaaalllll (a huge perk for a 5'10" gal! and we're talking SIX FOOT FOUR tall (he told us during the first meeting a few weeks ago, when he was still inches taller than me in my stiletto booties!))


Anyways - so we're settling into a casual meeting when I realized I hadn't shaved my legs...

for THREE DAYS.

Blond leg hair, glistening in the afternoon sun... WITH NO TABLE TO HIDE BEHIND!


Thank god I just had hot yoga last night and was able to basically do THIS \/ with my legs, while trying to tuck them as far under the chair as possible...

That Awkward Moment...

...when you walk into the single-stall unisex bathroom you share with other managers, knowing ManagerMan just walked out (handed you the key!) and he S-T-U-N-K it up.

and even more awkward, when you realize his ass-cheeks were just on that toilet seat you're supposed to sit on.  They were there for most likely long enough to really warm it up....


BLECH



Any "That Awkward Moment When" for you lately??

Shakin' and Makin'

it's Monday.

I'll probably make stuff tonight:

and by "probably" I mean I may end up cleaning the kitchen, organize the chaos that is in the guest bedroom (gifts, wrapping- and tissue-paper, tape, scissors.  ALL OVER) sit for a minute to breathe, and find myself in bed with my latest NookNook... but we'll see.

But here's some stuff I've recently Made.  

maybe even on Mondays:

I'm the worst.  THE.  WORST.  at remembering birthdays (I mean, really - aside from those easy to remember - obviously MY family, and for some reason my MIL (Dec 1st).)

It was awful - we went to visit my sister and her family this past spring.  About a month or so after Niece #1's birthday.  Other mutual family were also with us - and had brought small gifts for Niece #1 and Niece #2 (7yo and 6yo respectively).  And Niece #2 turns to E and I and says, "Hey - did YOUUUU get [Niece#1] anything for her birfday?!"

OMG what a call-out...

And then as Niece #2's birthday passed on Oct 29th (and on Halloween I realized I'd forgotten to send EVEN A CARD) I said ENOUGH.

And took to p!nterest.... =)

 Got my E's power drills out (let me hear you, women who can wield a drill!!!)

I made a list (ahead of time and with E's help) of aaalll the birthdays I wanted to remember...

listed per month...

I have to say, I think it came out pretty cute! (pardon the yellow lighting...) 

Here's to never forgetting another birthday!
(and avoiding future embarrassing call-outs by 6-year-olds!!)

MenVsWomen Musings

Another difference between Mamas & Papas (men vs women.  VENUS against MARS!)

I'm able to occupy (no valuables near the toilet!) and watch Button (through the vanity mirror, with one eye pinched shut putting on eyeshadow) while getting ready in the morning.

E stands there with him (basically tapping his foot) and says, "If you're done, can you take him so I can get dressed?"


Also - I am so able to get out of the house with Button (and Zoey - a therapy dog who comes to work with me once a week! seriously!) and (after balancing a tray of cut grapes, arranged TurkeyTail style - thank you P!nterest) can drop Button off at daycare (all the while traipsing in my new Guess loafer platforms!)

P.S. thrifed : $17

apparently MSRP is $115!!!

Dads? Like the one I noticed this morning akwardly hefting around the bucket infant seat in which sat an adorable baby girl (must have been dressed by mom - those leggings!) who was watching me watch them (I'm pretty sure she and I shared the look, "is this guy for real?")

That dad - he had on a parka, jeans, Tshirt (pretty good so far, right?) and.... 

flip-flops.

And in case you forgot, this is us right now

(with snow two days ago!)

And in keeping with Foodie Friday, some Food I've made lately (possibly on Fridays...)

One night I thought - homemade pizza! The best way to get rid of leftover sausage! and deli meats! and spinach!  Awesome-sauce.

Also - amazing lemon (I think) mushroom chicken tomato (stuff) pasta! 

I'm like, all domesticated and cooking shit lately - just think, a few short years ago (ok more like 6-7) I was catching taco shells on FIRE in the oven! (true story - thank god I'm married to a firefighter)

And just because G00gle does awesome stuff like this:

That's the hotair vent that both doggies fight for the prime real estate in front of, and that Button likes to strum like a guitar =)

Friday Funnies

(MUST have volume for this video!)

Hope your weekend is full of giggles!

Thirsty...

...Thursday.

I've got wine to drink (hence thirsty).

I've got laundry to do (again.)

((that shit builds up, even though I'm doing it once a week... I tried to stretch it the past few weeks to once every 1.5 weeks - instead of every weekend, it got stretched to a Wednesday night last week.
But now Button is sleeping on an adult-sized flat-sheet, wrapped 'round and round his whole mattress so it doesn't unbunch during the night... sounds ghetto, it's safe - I promise.
But all that, because all of his sheets (6 sets!! Ok, one stays at daycare - and one just came off his bed, dirty - so 4 extra sets!!) are ALL DIRTY.))

So, wine tonight.

and maybe a fun wheel pose:

because supposedly those "create energy" according to my Wednesday night HotYoga instructor...
(which, I have to admit - as a GrouponWhore, I paid full price for my 10 classes, I like the Wednesday night class THAT MUCH!)

and I've even accomplished THIS BITCH (firstly at home, goofing off - but last night I got it in class!!!!!)

so tonight - starting laundry load #1 followed by drunk yoga.

Happy Thirsty Thursday!

Needs. I got 'em

I found a fun activity...

letting Google auto-fill queries...

Like:

And apparently Google is pretty damn accurate, because lord knows when my last haircut, pedicure, or hairstyle was!

Now a cold shower, that could be due to mr. yummy consultant coming in every few days...

and I definitely have party needs. Like, sometimes I just need to party...

*OH. you say I got it wrong?  that it's supposed to be more like, "My party needs.... some more cowbell?"

Nothing like a Little Halloween...

How about a little Halloween in December?!

Cuz that's how we roll...

It was during E's weekend in Canada with his BIL that we kicked off our fall festivities with a little Mom&Me breakfast at Dunkin (he was so well behaved!)

After that, we headed out to the local pumpkin patch with The Girls (The Girls being MIL, SILs, and E's aunt and cousin) (and by "local" I mean that SIL navigated us to the wrong town, so we went 30 minutes out of the way... lol)

We (The Girls) went to this pumpkin patch because of it's Haunted Hayride, which - let's be honest - I was glad to have Button as the excuse to not attend because I'm the biggest wuss when it comes to All Things Scary!

(And while we're being honest - Button was TOTALLY unimpressed with the "kiddie" hayride,  I'm sure he would have totally rocked on the Scary one!)

They had a cute petting zoo with goats that Button tried to make-out with... (after of course, he tried to pick their nose...)

We tried to get him to sit cute in front of The Perfect Picture backdrop, and it lasted for a bit - he just never would look straight at the camera(s! Grandma, one great aunt and 3 aunts all had their phones out!)

 We spent the next day scaling a tree-top fort (ssh don't tell Button it was really his 2ft plastic TreeTopTreeHouse) and conquering the forest (really, just the one ginormous tree in our backyard) while waiting for Daddy to return from Canada:

The next weekend was actual  Halloween (and forgive me if this is duplicitous, I'm too lazy to go look and see if I've already posted these... because if I have, they're cute enough to get a double post!)
(speaking of duplicitous - I'm getting hardcore DejaVue when thinking of typing up his Halloween Parade story - so I have a strong feeling I already told you about how I cried when I thought I was going to miss him, yada yada yada)

Let's not forget FoodieFriday:

The coolest Cookie-cutter ever...

Found, Bought, Baked!

 

Catching Up... Kind of

There was this nice and neat list of stuff to post about, all ready in a drafted post... but since blogger just decided to DELETE that list.. (THANKS BLOGGER!!!!!!) it's going to have to be mostly by memory, triggered by the pictures I had queued up!
(but seriously, EFF YOU blogger...)

So here goes, the last few weeks (months?!) in a nutshell:

We found Ben's costume (despite all wishy-washy day dreams of making a costume from scratch, one worth of a Pinterest-home-Page-Pin!) at Walmart!

(Ben had lots of fun shopping, and in fact tried loading half the toy aisle into his cart...)

We spent weekends with cousins at our favorite play gym - and it's our favorite because they serve Starbucks!!!

We prepared for Halloween WAY early... (like, I started buying candy the end of September - no it didn't last - and we carved on only the second weekend of October... I'll spare you images of the sad sacks our pumpkins turned into after the gorgeous late summer weather we had that wilted our leering Jack-O-Lanterns...)

Mickey pumpkin for Button!

I road-raged my ass off to get to Ben's daycare in time for his Halloween parade (I made it to the middle of the parking lot, discovered the first batch of Infant 2 kids had gone - started to cry when I thought I'd missed him ((seriously Kate? It's just a Halloween parade!)) then jumped for joy when E mouthed to me from his spot on the parade route (around the little enclosed playground...) "He's in the second group from Infant Two - haven't come out yet!")

 (cutest thing, his hesitancy at the whole she-bang, and then the shy smile when he realized we were there watching..... #meltingheart)

I cooked some awesome Food.  On Fridays.  (and also throughout the week...)

yummy Pasta Carbonara! (E hates peas, remember?! and so his looked really plain and not colorful...)

I had a half can of condensed (evaporated? I confused the two...) milk left over from the cream carbonara sauce, so I'd decided to make caramel sauce out of for some caramel corn! Well, the only microwave popcorn we had was kettle corn, so I had to even pop corn the old fashioned way...

I horribly burnt the first batch (see pic) as the oil was WAY too hot... but you can see (pic 2) I finally got the hang of it!  (I ended up eating just a few pieces, bagged the rest - and promptly threw it all away a week later...)

Some ground beef, Italian-seasoned bread crumbs, and spinach made for some yummy stuffed shells - Button couldn't get enough!

Also -

I wore clothes.  

On Wednesdays.. (and also throughout the week!)

My new favorite outfit:

(The plaid shirt is actually E's couin's... borrowed. I'm probably going to just offer to buy it from her at this point... lol)

I started making some really cool shit.  (and still haven't finished it... But I totally lay that blame on E - he said he didn't trust the hanging hooks that were currently on the shelf and insists they be replaced! I'm still waiting for him, weeks later...)

And you remember the groom whose Montreal Bachelor Party ended up with just one attendee and his bro-in-law?
Well we dropped Ben off (for the night!) at Grandma's, and went to the wedding where we made friends with our table-mates: laughed about kids eating poop (theirs!) and kids getting tongued by dogs (ours!) and got deliciously toasted.

It was fun.





There.

You're caught up.

See you next month!!! =P

((just kidding... I was serious about the whole I'm going to try to stop sucking at blogging! thing on Friday!!))

((and I also just remembered/found pictures from our Pumpkin Patch visit! I'll have to continue with Halloween 2014 next post, cuz I also just found pictures from the KICK-ASS cookies I made for Button's party...))

The Power of Word...

not really in the biblical sense, or in the Microsoft Office sense, but in the "Get Free Shit" way!

I hope you readers are around the right age (or at least in the same age RANGE as me) that you remember this movie??

(OMG I just aged myself. lol)

If you do know the movie, you'll remember the scene where someone's sunglasses broke, and so as a writing project the entire class wrote letters of complaint - and because they were well written (I use that term loosely!) they received a large box of free sunglasses from the manufacturer!

Well - I get a BirchBox monthly.  And when you leave a quick review for any or all of the 5 products you receive, you get 10 BirchPoints.  Every 100 points you earn equals $10 off a purchase.  And once you hit 500 for the calendar year, you become a member of the Aces Program!


I got an email recently with a subject line of "November UnBoxed" - which contains, according to the subject line, all the November products and the links to leave reviews (for points!) So I avoided opening until my November box showed up - I hate spoilers and love the surprise of opening the box!
Well I opened the email this morning - it was for the OCTOBER products, and the time frame to leave reviews FOR POINTS has passed. BOO!

Queue up the Well-Written Customer Service email...



AAAAAAND I got my 50 Birch Points! =P

the power of Word!


(I suck at blogging, this I know.  work was crazy, psycho assistant left (thank god!) and new person started - who is AWESOME SO FAR!)  Week days are Lather,RinseRepeat with Ben, daycare, work, daycare, home... I live for the weekends, not to sleep in, but to party with this animal:

(Wacky Wednesday at daycare!)

All this to say, I'll do my best to stop avoiding posting because it's been too long - because then it just gets to be longer, and then I feel even worse and avoid it more - it's a vicious cycle!

Best Part of Wakin' Up...

... is FRIDAY in your cup!!!

First off - E is flying off to Canada today for a cancelled Bachelor Party in Montreal... wait, what?

An ex-co-worker of his is getting married November 1st... so when the best man approached E with the Bachelor Party plans (a weekend in Canada! Bus transportation + hotel room for cheap!) he was so down - he's never been to Canada and was excited, more so since his BIL (who knows no one of the group) agreed to come along (E also knows no one but the groom, and wanted a friend to be along for the trip...) BIL was excited as well, has also never been to Canada.


A few days after they booked their plane tickets (no HOURS-long busride into Canada for these two divas... lol) E got a text from the best man - not enough interest (basically none) was expressed for the Canada trip (i.e. the groom's friends all still live at home, sometimes hold jobs, and don't have the money to go to Canada).
And so the Montreal Bachelor Party was cancelled.


But the best part was that E and his BIL have non-refundable tickets....

When the best man text E with the new plans a few days later (Atlantic City, your go-to for Bachelor/Bachelorette parties in the north east...) E just shook his head and responded, "yea, sorry I won't make it - I'll be in Canada that weekend!"  (AND THEN the best man had the nerve to still ask E to chip in for groom's expenses in A.C.)


Sooooooo E and BIL are going to have themselves a little man-cation this weekend. =)

and honestly, I'm looking forward to having the house to myself Friday and Saturday night! (ok yes, I have grand dreams of watching whatever I want on TV for hours, staying up late, playing my piano and singing as loud as I want, when the stark reality is: I'll be passed out on the couch by 10:30....)







 Anyways - a quick Foodie Friday for you! (In case you've been dying to know since yesterday, WHAT'S ON THE MENU?!)
(And watching Rachel Ray must have finally jump-started my domestic gene because I made:)

HOMEMADE Butternut Squash Soup!

The whole process was actually pretty easy (as these soups usually are)

(follow clock-wise from top Right:)

First was chopping time!  

Then I browned the onions in a big soup pot (which I used later)

cuts down on the dirty dishes!

While the onions were browning, (top of left picture) 

I peeled & cubed apples, and made broth (chicken, I think - basic bouillon!)

(And I cheated - I bought pre-cubed butternut squash...)

Once everything was cubed and the onions had browned, I added the apples, squash and broth to the pot.  This was simmered (see recipe below!) until everything got decently tender.
And then, as with a number of these kind of soups, the whole mixture gets mashed or pureed in a blender.  (And here is where I need a hand-mixer! I had to put it in the blender, bit by bit!)
And here is also where I think I under-blended it, as the final soup was a tad crunchy/chewy with onions...
But it came out AWESOMELY with the bread bowls I found at our grocery store!

 (And I just remembered where I even got this recipe - from a pumpkin patch a few years ago! They had a table full of paper scraps, all different recipes!)

(And no, I didn't use fresh ginger - I used ginger powder - it still came out pretty good!)

Hot Saturday Nights... with MAYO?!

Want to know what my hot Saturday nights now look like? I mean, just a few short years ago (ok, like, 6-7 years ago...) I was primping and straightening (and pre-gaming!) before a night out on the town, that probably started around 11pm...

Well - last weekend, after No-Nap-Button finally crashed during a long neighborhood stroll (at 5:45pm!!!) I was spent after I put him to bed at 7:30....

So I treated myself to a spa night:
I started with a mayo hair mask - my hair is thick, curly and usually pretty dry... leave-in conditioners don't really do a ton... and I wanted to blow dry and straighten my hair last weekend, and what a good start to supposedly get soft sleek strands!

some random site I found said that heat really releases the protein in the mayo (and yes, I used straight-up sandwich Hellman's...) so, yay for plastic bag head... 

Told you I had hot Saturday nights now...

After the 20-minute wait, you're to shampoo out the mayo, and supposedly it will take a few shampoo-ings to get all the oil-i-ness out... well I either didn't use enough mayo, or had such dry hair that sucked up EVERYTHING in the mayo, because I barely shampooed it once, and it didn't feel *that* much sleeker...
#dryhairproblems

Anyways - postShower I slathered on an aloe mask (which is clear, and I very nearly forgot I had on...) and treated myself to my first #JamberryMani:

I finished the night off around 11pm, blow drying my hair - which I then slept on to get some of the POOFINESS out, and then straightened the next morning as well... Just a TAD different than years past when I was blow-drying hair at 11pm, just starting my night...

MoreMissingMonth:

(Waiting in LincolnTunnel Traffic...)

The very last day in September, I was back in NYC - but this time was with my new-momma BFF Dee and her mom.  We were there to see Rachel Ray!!!!

Here we are on TV!

We were right on the aisle, and got shown alot during audience shots!

(I hope no one from work happened to be watching, as I called out sick that day!)

The best part of the whole show? the guest co-host that walked out with Rachel Ray...
a HUGE MEGA TV star that we had no clue was going to be there,
so the shock and awe and excited giddiness of the audience was very real when he walked out!
(We weren't allowed cameras in the studio, so I was thrilled when - as we were leaving,
 we passed Huge Mega TV Star getting into his limo, and was able to snap these close up shots!
I mean, I could have reached out and slapped him high-five!)

In case you have been living under a rock the past 50 years couldn't tell, it's REGIS PHILBIN!

Back to basics tomorrow: 

BuggyList hot Yoga-ness!

and Foodie Friday - what's on the menu?!