We’re getting rid of wood before the move!
Category Archives: House & Home
Our ghetto garden!
Obviously we normally just plant the things in the raised planters, but since we’re moving mid-summer this seemed like the best plan. It also came in handy when we were expecting frost one night!
Good news and annoying kids.
Getting good news on our house purchase!
Dealing with ungrateful kids who refused to clean their rooms so I’m tempted to burn everything they own so they have nothing to clean.
Tom is now officially in charge of making pizza.
He tried our first ever deep dish tonight and holy hell it was good. Pepperoni for the kids—and onion, homemade sweet pepperocini, and leftover chicken apple sausage for us!
Here’s the pan we used if you’re interested. We had been looking at recommended deep dish pizza pans and they were like $40! This one worked fine!
Of course we had drama over it, too. Katie—who loves pizza—picked at it and then refused to eat it. She’s a pain in the butt when it comes to food and frankly we weren’t surprised but we’re so exhausted with her over it… So we asked what she didn’t like about it. Silence. Asked again. Silence. Asked again, saying we want to make something she’d like the next time so she needs to tell us what she doesn’t like about it. She doesn’t like deep dish pizza. BZZT. We call bullshit. She likes it just fine—it’s got to bed SOMETHING ELSE. Silence. This went on for a good five minutes. I finally told her to to get ready for bed then (it was almost 7). Of course she didn’t want that. After more discussion and prodding, do you know what it was? The freaking parmesan cheese Tom sprinkled on top after it came out of the oven. We gave her a new piece and she gobbled it up and asked for another. Ugh. Frankly we call BS on that, too, since she has sprinkled it on her pizzas before… We just can’t ever win and it’s exhausting.
It won’t be nice again for a week.
So it’s time to go work by the fire. And the kids are out riding bikes so it’s quiet…..
My first eggplant dish!
We have a veggie subscription box so one of the last things I had to use was an eggplant. Any other time I would just have so much fun trying to figure out how to use it but I am under a little bit of stress these days (work stuff, new house stuff) and I have zero brain power. So I went simple with eggplant fries. Battered and air fried… they turned out pretty good. Own liked them, Katie didn’t (not surprised).
This is well-deserved tonight!
After a full day of working on my big scary plan !!!EEEEEEEEK!!! this is well-deserved. (Yes I worked on mother’s day. My gift was the kids leaving me alone in peace and quiet.)
I might be a little ahead of planning for our housewarming.
(They were free on Vine. Discretionary spending has all but stopped.)
We will be homeowners again!
It’s really happening, y’all. We will be homeowners again on July 8 barring any unforeseen circumstances! That’s two months from now!
From seeing the house listed Tuesday to getting pre-approved Wednesday morning to walking through the house Wednesday to making and signing an offer and getting the offer accepted was less than 48 hours!! We were only the second people to view the house!
This wasn’t something we were going to do until spring but we’ve been looking at houses for a few months and we know what’s out there and what we want…and this house had 95% of our wish list!!
And look at my side of the master bath!
As soon as this Covid debacle allows, we will be having a MEGA housewarming/retirement party. Oh, yeah – Tom turned in his retirement papers last week so that’s official now, too (his official date is July 1, 2021).
We are still stunned. And excited. And exhausted.
I’ve taken control of my chair!
And even asked Tom to move it out to the grass for a change of scenery!!
I might have gotten sidetracked on the way there. The sun feels so good.
Someone is in my chair.
Okay, we’ll share for a bit.
Tom braved Sam’s Club today…
so it’s pizza for dinner. And of course drinks.
Shut up Mint. Mind your own business.
(Some of that was for friends, but still.)
Yes he’s mowing the lawn.
He loves mowing the lawn because he gets to wear headphones and listen to music but holy moly does it take him forever.
If you look closely you can see the neighbor kid mowing their lawn, too!
Today’s eLearning lesson?
Bartending 101: Bloody Marys — Teach your children well, folks. #dontjudgeme
I’ve kinda lost count.
It’s a 24oz. tumbler but Tom keeps refilling somewhat randomly. /hiccup
Family drive to pick up some more alcohol!
We had to take Tom in to drop off his car (when he took it out this week he realized the brakes needed attention) so since we were going to be out, we placed an order…
I hate not being able to wander and shop but I could get used to drive up service.
Tom came up with dinner tonight
Introducing naan pizzas with leftovers! We each got to build our own with bunches of whatever was left in the fridge!
- Tom: pulled pork, fried onions, fried jalapeño, bbq sauce, mozzarella
- Owen: pizza sauce, spaghetti and meatballs, pulled pork, bratwurst, cheddar cheese
- Jen: mozzarella cheese, fried onions, fried jalapeño, bbq sauce, cheddar cheese
- Katie: bratwurst, pulled pork, cheddar cheese
They were delicious. But more importantly, Katie willingly ate meat! She finished the whole thing!
When you wake up to snow in mid-April, this happens.
The snow is long gone but we are just now getting around to starting the fire.
Katie accessorizes everything.
Dusting to drink!
Picking a bottle off the shelf in the garage means I have to dust. And I didn’t even pay attention that Tom opened something for me while I was busy. P.S. The white sangria is yummy.
Another dinner, another drink.
When you have to get creative with dinner because the packaged cabbage salad (that you forgot about in your garage fridge) is half frozen (because the fridge is stupid and apparently can’t hold a correct temperature) so you have to improvise and create an egg roll stir fry with some leftover pork while also making chicken nuggets for the kids because you know they won’t eat the stir fry and then hubby gets yet another work call right as we’re sitting down.
I can still smile, though.
You take what you can get in a pandemic.
Trying a new Mike’s flavor. I normally don’t get these but you take what you can get in a pandemic. It’s not too bad.
These pics are what I post in that Show me your drunk face Facebook group I started. It’s still going strong and is up to 178 members!
Sometimes I do get a mom win.
Trying to be creative in using up leftovers, some fresh ingredients, and stuff from the freezer… I present pepperoni cheese bites (kids) and steak/ham/jalapeno/cheese bites (us)
The kids were beyond thrilled with this lunch. Sometimes I do get a mom win.
No contacts. No makeup. No screw top!
I’m classin’ it up tonight with some fancy Moscato while making homemade turkey pot pie.
This basement makes me want to scream.
They’re cleaning right now…but please tell me we’re not alone.
Also? They cleaned for a whopping two minutes before they started playing with the toys. WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT CLEANING UP? Yet if I stand there and micromanage they throw a fit.
Honestly, the only rule they really have is that I need to be able to walk to the pantry and the cat room without tripping on anything. If they would just keep those pathways cleared I would be much more lenient. But they don’t. So then I have to let loose on everything else.
P.S. Granted it was over a week, but it’s what happens when they NEVER put anything away when you’re done with it and Mom isn’t standing over them nagging.
Playing with the Portal
We got a Facebook Portal and are LOVING IT. I can easily conference call with friends for work. And our good friends got one, too, so we call to chat all the time and it’s awesome. And it’s tech so of course the kids love it, too.
Neighbor jam session!
Owen decided to play his sax on the front porch. There was no one out to listen to him but he didn’t care.
The next thing I know I hear an electric guitar…and look out to see this. I was at once happy (that they figured out how to play together safety) and sad (that they had to).
They played for probably two hours. Katie was sitting with a sign asking for donations to buy sanitizer for people who don’t have any. (So later we had a talk about that being a wonderful idea but how could we make it better. We landed on donating to the school’s food drive.)
We tried the totwaffle!
It all started with this viral Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/506801921/posts/10156771865371922/?d=n which starts like this:
So we decided it had to be done.
And Tom was in charge and I was busy working so I didn’t get any more pictures until the end.
Aaaand…it took much longer to cook than we thought, plus Tom didn’t fill it full enough to start so had to add some more tots halfway through. This pic is after we took some off for the kids.
We also made the syrup/ketchup mix (read the linked post for details) and it was yummy. The tots were crispy but I’d like them even crispier.
In short, they were good and a nice change…and the candied bacon and cheesy scrambled eggs were good sides…but I probably wouldn’t do the totwaffle again. I’m perfectly happy to expend way less energy and effort and just have tots.
Making our own pseudo corn dogs!
They turned out okay and everybody liked them but I would probably do it differently the next time. We had to lay the hotdogs down because they were too tall to stand upright but it was a little weird just having a hotdog in the middle so I would probably actually cut up discs instead. I might also make them more bite-size and use smaller tins.