we're going on vacation! we're going on vacation!

WE'RE GOING ON VACATION! we leave tomorrow for the wonderful mackinac island. 2 nights at the campground and 1 night actually on the island. we've never stayed on the island, and i am really looking forward to it. fancy dinner at the hotel. fancy bed for the night. fancy breakfast the next morning. fancy fancy fancy.

it's official

autumn is here. i put flannel sheets on the bed yesterday, and pulled out my flannel jammies today, and put my short sleeves and capris away for the duration. right now its cool (about 50ish deg) and raining. i love the fall, but it just means winter is on it's way.

while i finished my afghan for Afghans, i had ollie sleeping next to me on the couch. he snored. a cool rainy day seemed the perfect day to finish the afghan. i made it for Marolyn for her birthday present. she's always telling me she doesn't need anymore "stuff", so for her birthday, i thought instead of buying her more "stuff", i'd do something for charity. and i like to knit, and "afghans for Afghans" needed hand knit baby blankets for the newborns in their hospital in Kabul. a match made in knitting heaven, if you ask me. i get a warm fuzzy shiver whenever i think of some poor woman who doesn't have a single personal possession who will be thrilled to wrap her newborn in my warm wool baby blanket. i hope they'll be ok.

dinner guests two nights in a row!

we are party animals! we just can't help it. last night it was jason and jennifer and our (sort of) stepfather, gene. we had roast pork (a butt--it was on sale) roasted with prunes and leeks. mashed pa'taters and braised red cabbage. apple crisp for dessert. i love braised cabbage. i made a shitload of it so i could have leftovers. mmmm. gassy cabbage. mmmm.

tonight our friend trish is coming for dinner. roast chicken, roasted carrots and potatoes and broccoli with cheese sauce. lemon bars for dessert. fancy wedding china two nights in a row. i love an excuse to drag out the good china. and the fancy flatware. and the silver coffee set. which, by the way, i got at the hospice care thrift store for 15 bucks! i love a good deal.

i'm the best wife ever

i'm just sayin'. i made hubbo cookies today. oatmeal with chocolate chips and oatmeal with orange flavored craisins. yum. we'll see if hubbo will eat the ones with craisins. that might be a bit much for my picky hubbers. (although, if you ask him, he's not picky at all {wife snorts to herself})

finally effing done!

yes boys and girls! i am finally done. hubbo and i can finally eat at the kitchen table again (although not today, still a little damp). it's like a modern day fairy tale! after 6 coats of paint (and that's just the table) and 4 coats of polyacrylic, the table and chairs are done. thankyoubabyjesus! it is, of course, raining today. but it's not hot. so that helps (a little) with that whole humidity/drying issue. you can't really see it, but the table is aqua, and each chair is a different color: pale green, pink, yellow and orange. it reminds me of sherbert. i've never been a big fan of sherbert as food, but as color? yeah, that's nice.

i know we need the rain...

but it makes it very difficult to finish painting the kitchen table and chairs. although, i have finished painting, and am just on the sealing portion of this lovely project. i'm going to be very very shirty if my furniture is sticky for the rest of my life. cause let's face it, there is no way hubbo is going to let me get new kitchen furniture any time soon. but i'm telling you now, if i find a chrome and formica table and chairs in yellow or aqua for a resonable amount, i'm getting no matter what he says. (that sounds super badass, but we all know i'll still ask and i won't get it if he says we can't afford it.)
on another housekeeping note. we have a rather large window in our front door. with godawful miniblinds on it. i hate miniblinds. they are so 1986. when, by the way, i loved them. i thought they were the height of coolness. chic. i've gotten over that. so i was at Home Despot with my dad (he needed a grab bar for the shower--he finally got his cast off, and is a little wobbly after not standing/walking on 2 legs for so long), and i saw this. it's a plastic cling-y thing. it came in a bunch of different designs and colors, and it was on sale. i'll tell you though, it was a bitch to get up there properly. it took 4 tries before i finally got it right. and i think it looks very nice. you can't see it very well (seeing as how it's raining and all), but it looks good. lets in just the right amount of light. it does sort of showcare the door, which (now that i'm really looking at it) is pretty effing dirty. so i'll have to scrub the door down, we'll see when/if that'll happen any time soon.

we're going on vacation!

ok, so we're not going for a while yet, but still. i love going on vacation. and we're going to mackinac island! pictured here is what it looks like on the island right now! i love going to the island. hubbo and i have gone every year we've been married except for last year. gas prices were just too high for us to afford it. bummer. but this year we're making sure we can afford it. even if it means ramen noodles for every meal, we'll get there. we have such a good time when we go. we always camp in mackinaw city and ferry over for a day. sometimes we go to Michilimackinac. which is a really cool fort on the island. guides in period cotumes and whatnot. lots of fun. i think one of the things i like the most is camping. we always take a bottle of wine (or two), have a fire and just sit and read or talk or stare at the fire and enjoy being away from stress and whatnot. we always treat ourselves to one "fancy" meal. i.e. not brats at the campsite or a pasty in mack city. this year we're eating at 1852 Grill Room in the island house hotel. their menu is amazing.
http://www.theislandhouse.com/uploads/2009_Menu.pdf
YUM is all i have to say. i already know what i want. october cannot come soon enough for me!

ahhh. the joys of painting furniture.

painting furniture is a major pain in the ass. but it looks so purdy when it's done. you can't help but sit next to it and admire. so the table is done (including the leaf), and i have one of the chairs with it's first coat of paint. the table took 4 coats of paint. i'm thinking the chairs will be 4 or 5 coats. we'll see.

the perils of yarn shopping on ebay

so i bought this rilly rilly pretty yarn on ebay. it's 50% alpaca and 50% wool. in a dark rosy pink. it's a marolyn color. the woman has a pink kitchen for god's sake. and i love her for that. anyway. the plan was to knit her an afghan. she'd love it. then the yarn came in the mail. it's lace weight yarn! ye gads! how the hell had i missed that in the description on ebay? so i looked at the description again. nothing. nada. those bastards didn't say anything about how effing fine this yarn is! so i'm back to square one. i thought i would make a shawl. it's like an afghan, but instead of on your lap, it goes around your shoulders. the same, only different. so i started it. it looks like crap. there is no way in hell i can give this to someone who loves me. you can kinda see in the pic the garter stitch is crooked. how the hell i managed to make a garter stitch crooked, i'm not sure. so i'll have to keep this one. (i can't bear to rip it, i just can't do it) and i'll do the next one in moss stitch. that should be enough structure to not look like crap.

i have my own patron saint!

meet St. Martha. patron saint of housewives! how cool is that? i am psyched to have my own saint. granted, i think religion is mostly a bunch of oogga boogga, but i might be wrong, so i like to cover all my bases.

here's what i've learned so far:

"We know that she busied herself preparing a meal for Jesus and his disciples, then went to Jesus to complain that Mary did nothing while she had to do all the housework. It was at that time Jesus reminder her that Mary had chosen "the best part"."

now, if you ask me this is a bunch of bullshit. mary was just being lazy and jesus should have seen that. mary just didn't feel like making the fishes and the loaves and the what-have-you's. trust me, there are days i don't like feel like making the loaves too, but i do it. i do it because it's my job. hello?! moving on...

"The cult of St. Martha began about the year 1200. Where or how she died we do not know. Whether hers was a matyr's death or a natural one we do not know."

i'm thinking she worked herself to death. just because that lazy shiftless (yeah, i said shiftless. she was without shift) mary couldn't be bothered to lift one little finger, our girl martha died. what a shame.

many thanks to the Pallottine Fathers of sarasota, fl for the info. fyi, they do a mass in english, spanish and vietnamese. if you're into that sort of thing.

when is it going to end?

i am so sick of hearing about michael jackson. the man is dead. he was a very troubled, very sick man. let's just let it go already. seriously, is this news? do we really need to spend so much time on this? the today show spend 2 full segments this morning on this. and it's all speculation! they don't actually know anything! and who really cares is my question. i know he was a giant star (like 20 YEARS ago), but i don't think we need to keep going on about this. he was a freaking pedophile! let's just be glad he can't screw up any more children!

brunch update!!

this is one of the best meals i have had in a long time. let me tell you what we had. american potatoes (just the right amount of crispy crunchy), bacon (not too done, not too raw), sausage--the big ones, not the anemic ones like at the grocery store. every kind of bagel can imagine. enough lox to keep even ME satisfied. a whole (eyes included) smoked salmon. also yum. some kind of rice salad thing--not being a fan of rice salad, i passed. the best pancakes i have ever had. kind of eggy (but good) french toast. ham carving and beef carving stations. plus eggs and omelets to order. (neither of us had them, but the folks at the table next to us did, and it looked pretty good.) plus a super yummy mimosa. after we made 2 (yes, two) trips to the buffet, we wandered around the theatre a little. it is just so pretty. old fashioned marble bathrooms. think of how many people have peed in those toilets! the mind boggles!

we really have to go outside

hubbo and i have spent most of this weekend (thus far) watching "Mad Men". this show is fantastic. set in the early 1960's on madison avenue.
smart and funny very very real. housewives (yay!) are not just june cleaver. they have brains. they're bored sometimes. let's be real, staying home is not always a good time. sometimes, you just get bored. anyway. awesome. but still, we really need to leave the house at some point. perhaps i can lure him out to the sunday farmer's market up the street. it's a lot smaller than the big one on the capitol square, so instead of taking an hour to get through, it only takes about 15 minutes. plus you don't have to pay for parking. and later this morning i'm having brunch with trish. we're going to the orpheum. hubbo and i went there this winter for dinner before we saw "A Christmas Carol". the food was awful. and i mean really bad. mine was actually cold! not just lukewarm, but cold. plus the restaurant was cold ( i wore my coat through the entire meal), and the service was terrible. i swore never again. but then i saw their sunday buffet menu. and i do love a buffet. if this is bad, then i swear, never ever again.

is this just about the cutest thing ever?!

this is oliver. hubbo calls him "spud", i call him olliecat. cause it sounds kinda like "ally cat", and i loved the stray cats when i was a munchkin growing up. ollie is known for bringing little fuzzy balls to us at 3 in the morning with the hope that we'll magically wake up and want to play. he seriously cannot understand when we don't. just cause he's pretty don't mean he's smart.

addiction is a bad thing

and i've become addicted to "Harvest Moon". sadly, i'm not very good at it. i'm really not very good at video games in general. but this one seemed so up my ally. it's sort of a freaky japanese style sims. only instead of creating a city life, it's trying to make you into a rancher. so you have to raise crops, harvest them, eat etc. i don't seem to be able to eat. my poor little farmer girl (shirley) hasn't eaten a bite since she moved to her ranch. and she gets lost. a lot. i'm not sure what my damage is, but we're having some issues. i'm thinking of killing her off and starting over. nice, huh? but it really is fun. my only real beef with it is the time factor. no, not how much time i'm spending playing it; but in the game. does it really take shirley 45 minutes to get from her front door to the backyard? and she's not even getting lost along the way! i'll have to work on this one.

poor shirley.

muggy muggy muggy

i hate muggy weather. i just want to put that out into the universe. it makes everything feel like ick. i just refinished and painted a super cute coffee table that i got at the Hospice thrift shop. only cost me $15! and then another $10 for paint and such. not too shabby. anyway, with the humidity, the paint can't/won't dry all the way. errrrgh. so everything is kinda sticking to it. now i spent almost an entire day working on this thing, and the remote sticks to it. that mother nature is such a biatch. so here's what it looks like. keeping in mind that you can't actually pick up any of the items on the table because the paint will come off with them. i hate muggy weather.

all i ever wanted...

as a new housewife (less than 2 months), i have found that what i do is under rated, under appreciated, misunderstood. when i tell someone that i'm a housewife, i get the glazed, "oh you don't have a real job" look, and then i'm passed by. i spent 10 years at a job i hated. working with people who were kinda dumb (aka dum--not smart enough to put the "b" on the end) and doing work that was basically pointless. what i do now actually seems to matter. at least to me. and maybe to my husband (hereafter referred to as "hubbo"). i want to have a clean, pretty house. i want to spend my time knitting, cooking and finding super cheap stuff on ebay. i want to clean my house and feel proud that hubbo comes home to a clean, well organized home with dinner almost on the table. i can already hear the feminists, "is this what your mother fought and argued for? for you to be a housewife?!" and my answer to that is quite simply, "yes." my mother was a feminist. she was pro-choice. she wanted a female president (sadly, she didn't live long enough to see Hillary at least run). she wanted me to be whatever i wanted to be. she wanted me to be happy. she fought and argued so that i would have the choice to do what i wanted. and all i have ever really wanted was to be a housewife. and hopefully soon, a mother.