Thursday, February 28, 2013

Tea Time!

I've been telling my friend for about a year that I'd like to take her to a tea house.  Her birthday was the perfect excuse to finally go!   I hadn't been to a high Victorian tea in many years, and it was just as lovely as I remembered.  With all the tea houses I've watched come and go, I'm happy to still be able to recommend this one for the perfect girls' outing.   The gal I chatted with sounded enthusiastic about their future, so I think it should be around for awhile yet!

My Cup at Brambleberry Cottage and Tea Shoppe

Blonde Escapades

Karla does so many posts about coffee outings, I thought it was high time I did one.  ;-)

So I don't like regular coffee, but not for lack of trying.  I will occasionally taste some and be amazed at how disgusting it is.  When I discovered white coffee, I was quite excited!  It's not that I'm a big coffee drinker, I just enjoy having something fun to sip once in awhile.  Then I discovered that Starbucks doesn't carry white coffee.  Smaller places are fine, but a lot of them aren't open as late.  We regularly purchase drinks in the evenings while running errands.  Recently, I began seeing Starbucks ads about a "blonde roast" for people who like lighter roasts.  I wondered if maybe, just maybe, it was similar to white coffee?  There happens to be a Starbucks in our grocery store.  I asked the lady to tell me about Blonde and whether it's similar to white coffee.  She explained that they are not the same and that white coffee has a higher concentration of caffeine.  That made no sense, because white coffee doesn't taste as strong as the usual stuff, which is exactly why I'm able to drink it.  I went over to Greg and told him she had no idea what she was talking about.  (Actually, she did.)  I decided it couldn't hurt to try it.  We hit the drive through at another location, and they said they only make it until noon.  After that, they do pour-overs.  What's that?  We couldn't get a clear answer, but not to worry!  We were going to co-op the next morning, which is about the only day of the week I'm out and about before noon.  Greg usually drops us off, goes to get the drink(s), and brings it back before heading to work.  If I'm not around, he has a certain place he leaves it.  When I came back, I found a chai tea latte and the following note attached to the bag with painter's tape:

He's so sweet.  But can you believe it??  After all that!  Hey, if I can't have it as a latte, it's not happening.  Ah well.  Twas not meant to be, I suppose.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Heart Day 2013

For some time now, Kylen has been showing signs of outgrowing some of our treasured holiday traditions.  This will be a transitional year when we'll be learning how to make changes while still keeping the holidays special.  In one way, it's nice because it means less work, but in another it's sad.  I guess all moms have to go through this, although I'm thinking those with more children don't face it as soon!

Valentine's Day was our first big holiday.  Instead of the annual treasure hunt, we decided to eat at a fancy brunch buffet we'd been wanting to try.  We still exchanged cards, Greg gave me his usual gifts (a tradition I refuse to give up!), and we made a special dessert that was more trouble than it was worth.  (I had no idea how hard it would be to find strawberries!  The stores were wiped out!)  We felt the buffet was a wonderful substitution and plan to visit again in 12 months.  :-)

My favorite items were the Brie with fruit and turkey with stuffing.

Desserts galore!

The dessert we made was very easy.  It involved cutting hearts out of pound cake using a cookie cutter, layers with whipped cream, topped with a sliced strawberry for garnish.  The cake isn't supposed to have splits, but the slices weren't big enough.  Oh well!  They still turned out kinda pretty.
We ﻿usually celebrate Valentine's Day on the weekend, and ended up taking my grandma out for dinner on the actual day.  I didn't plan it that way, but I'm so glad God worked it out like that!  It was more special having her with us.  Wish I'd taken the camera though!


I was the first one to spot an 8-letter word in our new Boggle game!  Can you find it?  The rules are that each successive letter must be touching the previous one, you can move in any direction, and you can't use the same physical die twice.  For example, there is a 7-letter word here: noodles.  I'll have the answer in the comments.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Kylen's a Teenager!








Why We Picked Blue:

We have lots more decals to put up.  This is a start!

Saturday, February 23, 2013

TV and Arcade Half Cabinet

This is Greg and Kylen trying out the new tv and the arcade cabinet Greg made.  As you can see, there was still a lot of cabinet construction going on!

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Digital Scrapbooking

I've been bitten by the digital scrapbooking bug!  That's where most of my computer time has gone the last few weeks, which partially explains the gap in blogging.  2007 was my last year to fill up an album.  How did I get so far behind?  Life, I guess!  But after making a couple of  calendars, small books, our Christmas card, and talking to a friend who does their albums that way, I finally decided to give it a try.  Plus, the idea of making progress, ANY progress towards catching up is appealing.  It's been more time-consuming than I expected, but I know that's partly due to my own pickiness.  Then there's the learning curve and the fact that I take a LOT of pictures.  I'm also doing quite a bit of editing, since pictures from our older camera are not at the level of quality I'm used to.  I've been aiming for 2-4 pages/day - a snail's pace - but I'm more than half through!  After that, I'll do 2012 while the memories are recent, back to 2009, forward to 2013, alternating between distant and recent past.  At least that's the plan.  But there will likely be long breaks between.

I was first introduced to digital photo books by my aunt, ironically enough, the same year I stopped doing albums.  It was one of the neatest things I'd ever seen, but I couldn't get past the loss of quality and rich textures that "real" scrapbooking provides.  Then I discovered print quality could be pretty decent, and well . . . I got over my snobbish attitude out of desperation!  I've done enough real scrapbooking to know that the digital version is WAY faster for me.  On top of all that, Mixbook has a good selection of backgrounds, stickers, and what-nots to feed my need for variety in a creative project.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!

A screen shot of a two page spread about painting Kylen's room:

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Dessert Fondue



White Chocolate and Toffee Swirl ~ Serves 6 to 8
8 oz white chocolate, broken into small pieces
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp corn syrup
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp light cream

Suggested Dippers:



Maple and Cinnamon ~ Serves 4
1/2 stick butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups light cream
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp cornstarch

Suggested Dippers:






Monday, February 4, 2013


Our basement resembles a furniture factory!