back to home page of Noodle's Life Blog

Spring is here? I know that technically it is, and according to at least one of my plants it must be true. So many of the plants I bought last year are dead, but I’ve got this one that is hearty as hearty can be and it’s blooming! I’m thrilled, and you can bet I’m going to buy another one shortly. Seeing as how my fuschia bush did not survive I will be replacing it with another one of these:

There will be hundreds of those little white blossoms all over this. The branches kind of droop with the weight of them. It’s lovely. I don’t even remember what it’s called but I saw it at more than one garden center so I should have no problem finding another one.

Don’t be surprised if this blog goes from being about food to being about plants. I’ll try and mix it up though!

Not a lot going on around here. Thus no blogs. Isaac and I did have ourselves a nice night out the other day while Ella spent the night with her grandparents. We went to Harbor Lights in Tacoma for dinner (us and a bunch of senior citizens, considering it was only 5pm). It was the 3rd Thursday of the month, which in Tacoma means you can get in to the Museum of Glass, the Washington State History Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum all for free from 5pm until 8pm. We hit to the 2 former. Glad I didn’t pay full price for either. Honestly. The glass museum was cool but rather small.

Gotta run. Saturday is calling.

We eat a lot of pork here. I get so tired of doing chicken all the time, and I avoid beef whenever possible. If I need a ground meat we go with turkey. White meats and fish, that’s what we eat. I eat red meat when I go out.

I tried a new variety of piccata tonight. I accidentally hit the burner knob and it went up to high and burned the stuff on the bottom of the pan, so the meal overall had this burnt thing going on. Could’ve been better. Not one of my finer meals.

I feel like doing a lasagna. I haven’t even bought a frozen one in ages because of the acid reflux disease. All that tomoato sauce hurts! I’m feeling pretty ok these days though. I made these nachos yesterday that I hadn’t made in ages (a recipe I got from my parents - a childhood meal). I thought for sure I’d be hurting afterwards but I felt fine. Phew!

The other day I watched “Australia”. I have a mind to watch it again. I REALLY enjoyed. I also bought “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” this past weekend. When I rented it from Netflix awhile back I watched 2 or 3 times, something I don’t normally do with a rental. I’ve watched 3 times since I bought it I think. It is SOOOO funny. It’s great for background noise while I work. Great lines in that movie. Mom and dad, you probably wouldn’t like it. Just sayin’.

I cleaned up my dead plants today. The ones that didn’t survive the winter. I don’t have a clue about these things. I think I need to get get my mom to go to Furney’s with me to pick out things that’ll last. My jasmine vines are dead I’m pretty sure. They smelled so good last spring and summer. And I want to redo my hanging  baskets with  plants that will last all year, even if that means their less colorful. I just don’t want to have to repot every spring.

When would be a good time for you mom?

Every now and this blog does funny things. I had written this paragraph about dinner and now it’s not there any more. I don’t want to type it all out again. It’s nearly a repeat of a meal I made 1.5 weeks ago anyhow so, there.

The computer is working out grand. Possibly right in the nick of time. I tried to get the older tower going when I realized I hadn’t put a copy of my fonts on my external hard drive and couldn’t get it to fully boot up. GRRR. Fortunately I had some of the fonts stored away and others I was able to retrieve from myfonts.com. Thankfully you can redownload from them over and over and over, years later.

The two new computers come with Spider solitaire. Enter my latest obsession. Also, the new Dell has mahjongg, which I haven’t played in awhile and forgot how much I like it.

A gripe. Dell called today, presumably to check in and make sure it’s working like I expected. They followed that up with a hard sell of their extended warranty. Isaac and I find these extended warranties to be a marvel. Is Dell telling me that they don’t expect their product to work for more than a year? Why would you say you don’t make a quality product?! I just don’t get it. I declined. It’s refurbished and I got a good deal on it. If it doesn’t last a year then I guess I get a new one that’ll of course be even better than the one I just got. My last computer served me for 4.5 years and I only got a new one because I upgraded software that didn’t work so well on the old one.

Time will tell!

My Dell showed up today. No advance warning. Just a FedEx person at my door. What’s up with that? I haven’t set it up yet and I’m not really looking forward to it. It’ll take awhile to get it set up how I want and setting up all the various email accounts I have in Outlook. Grrr.

Isaac’s back and reeking havoc all ready. Like trying to lay sideways in bed last night. Um, no! *sigh*

Dinner was quesadillas. Woo!

Since it’s just Ella and I there’s no need to be creative in terms of dinner, so we had pancakes again. Added to that was eggs (yea!) and bacon (yes, again). I chucked the cast iron double-sided griddle and used my cast iron skillet for the bacon and eggs (burned a few bacon… still need to figure out the temp on that thing from time to time) and my electric pancake griddle. Pancakes came out perfect. Eggs were perfect. Ella ate well. Yea!

Didn’t blog yesterday. We spent the day with my friend Jen, who came down from Bothell. We went out to lunch at Dave’s Diner in SeaTac. Jen’s going through a “diner” phase so I indulged her even though I was feeling more like Panera Bread that day. Dave’s Diner is really good and fun, so it was worth it. I had breakfast for lunch. Can you tell that I love breakfast foods?

After lunch we headed to Southcenter Mall because Jen hadn’t seen it since the renovation opened up. We hit up Teavana (got some “chocolate” tea), Pumpkin Patch and Sanrio for Ella (Hello Kitty plush toy and super cute clothes, of course) and H&M for Jen. I have yet to really find anything I like there. Maybe next time.

I worked last night. So much for a fun Saturday evening. I did watch “High School Musical 3″ while I worked. I really like those movies. Don’t mock unless you’ve sat through them and watched them. I worked some more this morning while it snowed. Then after lunch today we went grocery shopping. Worked some more, cooked and ate dinner, and here I sit. 

Isaac will be home in about 2.5 hours. 8:30pm. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to go get him or not. Typically Ella is in bed at 8:30 and any one who knows me knows I don’t like messing with her bed time. 

What to do?

I haven’t quite figured out cast iron. I’ve kind of gotten the hang of a skillet I have, but I got this dual-sided griddle and I’m burning stuff and it’s wicked hard to clean and I’m ready to chuck it. $40 down the drain. Ugh.

Pancakes for dinner, one of my favorite things to do. With hashbrowns, and I wanted eggs but there was only one. Then I needed to come up with something to go with the pancakes and hashbrowns. I had a lot of fruit leftover from last weekend’s fruit pizza and I had some vanilla yogurt so I made fruit and yogurt parfaits with granola in icecream sunday glasses. Pretty, and tasty! Ella ate a fair amount even. She really put away the pancakes.

Check it, I’m blogging from my living room. Ella and I got a laptop today. I went to get a HP Mini Netbook but when I got to Best Buy there was a laptop for the same price. So, more bang for my buck. Now there are 3 computers, and 3 of us. One for each of us. Ha! This picture of me is pretty terrible, but I don’t care.

“Every day I can hear you”.

This is what Ella says after I admonish her for waving a wand in my face as I try to work on the computer (yes, you heard me right, a wand - a magic wand) and ask her “do you hear me?”.

ha ha!

Ok, those of you reading. What book is the post title from? It’s a story in a book (not a book in and of itself). It’s one of my favorites (the whole book, but this story in particular).

Did you catch that? That’s 2 Dr. Seuss references in the post titles. Let’s see if I can keep this up! This post is for Tuesday, March 3rd. I can tell you right now I don’t have much to say for today, Wednesday March 4th.

As I was cooking dinner last night several things occurred to me that I should blog about but darned if I can’t remember a one. I had a home owner’s board meeting so by the time I got home from that I wanted to spend time with the kid and then the husband who left for MN today. Therefore, no blogging.

Isaac got home late from work so it was just Ella and I. Typically I don — am stopping to gripe about something. I do not know why but whenever I try to type an apostrophe this search box pops up in the lower left corner of the Firefox browser. Some “quick link” thing. Really annoying. Never had that happen before. So, I guess no conjunctions for the remainder of this blog.

Ok, so I was saying that typically I do not like to cook when it is just Ella and I, but I had thawed out some tilapia fish the night before so it needed to get consumed.

The kid inhaled her food. I could not believe it. Dinner has been a struggle pretty much her whole life, and I just could not believe she was enjoying fish! Course it was smothered in a cheese mixture, but still. She also finished her rice and green beans. My efforts at least this time were not in vain! Woo!

Here’s an Ella photo for you. She took it herself:

I’m realizing I’m 3 days behind in posting. This will be a post for Monday, March 2nd, which was Dr. Seuess’ birthday. This is “Read Across America” week. How many of you knew that? Hmmm? I only knew it because Isaac makes it his business to know such thing so he can tailor his show to any special themes happening.

I bailed out of work early to take Ella to watch her cousin Owen be THE Cat in the Hat in a school play/assembly. He’s 11, and he was pretty adorable. I  didn’t even know he was interested in doing plays and whatnot.

It was hard to get good pictures. I’ve got video, or will once they’re done uploading to Google Video, but it’s taking awhile. If you really want to watch I’ll send you a link.

Ella was largely bored to tears after the opening musical number was done. She fell asleep on the way home in the car.

It’s been a good weekend. It’s been a busy weekend until today (Sunday). I’m pretty tired and generally not feeling well, but I suspect tomorrow I’ll be feeling much better.

Friday I cooked from 4pm until 9:15pm. I cooked 4 delicious desserts. Yesterday I helped host a baby shower for one of my dearest friends. Said desserts were served and largely consumed here, though there is lots left.

I don’t have much to say, so without further delay, here are some photos.

Baby Shower Goodies

My friend Jaime made these cute little cupcakes and the chocolate covered strawberries below.

Jaime hung this cute clothesline and made the below diaper wreath.