It's almost OCTOBER??

How did this happen? I swear, I just stopped blogging for one day. Maybe two. But that was all. I promise!! And now I look back and realize it's been over two weeks! Unbelievable.

Highlights from the past two weeks:

• Went home to my parent's house and visited while they had a band gig.
• Unpacked more things from our GV house to the new house - whew!
• Papa and Bushia came for a surprise visit before their next adventure at Amazon.com
• Work is - eh - work is work. But it's not bad.
• Have been rapidly gearing up to begin school full time starting October 1st.

In a nutshell, nothing earth-shattering. Life is trudging along. We're heading into THE BEST time of year. Sister and I are trying to plan a "Fall Date" where we wear layers, drink chai and look at seasonal decorations (yes, we're dorks!).

I'm nervous about starting school again. It's been a long time coming and I hope I can stay on track. I have every desire to and my drive is such that I am determined not to mess this up. If all goes as planned, within two years I'll have my BA and have completed my student teaching. Keep your fingers crossed!

That's all for now.

I'll be better.

Promise.

Peace Out :)

Taking a little time

I'm learning to be "ok" with not being "on" all of the time. Does that make sense to anyone out there in cyberworld? This past weekend, I had great plans. I wanted to clean,  I wanted to organize, I wanted to cook. Then Saturday morning rolled around and I just didn't want to. Not in the same way you don't want to go to work in the morning, but more that I just wanted a day (or two) to not be responsible for anything. I realized that I am the only person putting these "rules" onto myself. I'm the boss of me and my weekend decisions. I decided to give myself the day off.

It was nice.

I hardly even cooked, which is very unlike me.

What did I do?

I hung out with the kids. I surfed the internet. I drank tea on the swing with Chad. We dreamed of future plans. I read my book. We watched some movies. I went to bed early.

I finally feel rested after a weekend. And I thought I would feel guilty about all the things I wanted to do, but I don't. Coming to peace with realizing sometimes even Mama Bear needs a day off.

As you can see, I didn't even post on the blog.

But now I'm back. Gearing up for a busy week and weekend ahead of me. It was a nice break.

Peace Out :)

Carb count is??

So dinner. YUMMY. Comforting? Yes. Delicious? Yes. Healthy? Er....not so much.

I love pasta.

I love bread.

I love pasta and bread together.

Parmesan Pepper Corn Bread rolled flat like pizza, topped with spicy Italian Sausage spaghetti

Braided and brushed with egg wash and dusted with Parmesan

Baked and cut open!! I forgot to mention I topped the spaghetti with a little mozzarella then braided the bread over the top. Extra gooey = extra yummy (but only when we're talking about cheese - otherwise it's weird. or gross)

I am sufficiently carb loaded.

Ready for my marathon.

Just kidding. I'm in a carb coma. Ready for bed.

Peace Out :)

The In-Betweener

Nothing new to report. Wanted desperately to make my chicken pot pies last night but unfortunately that pesky work business got in my way. Didn't even get HOME until about 6:30. Gross. But, today the small boy is at school and the medium boy is at an ortho appointment with dad which means the house is mine until everyone gets home. Yippee!! Maybe I'll get something done!

I have a dinner idea cooking up in my head. If it's a success, you'll read all about it!

Peace Out :)

Labor (of love) Day, Part 1

I had many ideas of what to call this post.

Labored Day. The Great Freezer Stock-Up of 2012. A little bit crazy, but much less hungry.

You get the idea. So Labor Day weekend. Started the whole thing off with a family reunion at my aunt's house in Sebastopol. Weather was amazing. Such a relief from the heat of our inland empire. We were celebrating all kinds of things, namely my grandmother's 90th birthday (which isn't until October, but hey! We were excited!). It was wonderful to see family and all get together. Three of my cousins have recently had babies, so you can imagine where I spent a lot of my time (eh-hem, on the "baby blanket" on the grass). My husband was finally able to meet my mom's last brother (he's met the other six, but Tom lives in Hawaii and doesn't often make it to the mainland). All in all, a great day. Lots of yummy food, good times, lots of pictures, lots of smiles.

Sunday morning was leisurely. Hubs and I have taken to drinking our morning tea (weekends only) on the porch swing while discussing our plans for the day, the week, the year and life in general. We gently sway back and forth dreaming of what our property and home will become. I have come to really rely on that special bonding time. We cherish our few quiet minutes before the boys and dogs have gotten up and before we are "supposed" to be doing something else.

Spur of the moment on Sunday late morning I decided to head into town and do my grocery shopping. Now, in a typical household, this would consist of about a week's worth of groceries. But alas, we are anything but typical. I had already made up my menu for the month and consequently had created my grocery list. The question was when the shopping would occur. No time like the present! After hours of carefully monitoring my Excel spreadsheet of groceries and calculating as I went, I was finally done with both grocery stores and people and my car was full to the top. Yay!

Monday. THE day. I say this is Part 1 because not all of my projects were completed. I will finish them today or tomorrow. Here's what I got finished:

Recipe makes two "logs" of cinnamon rolls...Here's the first all shiny with butter :) 

Six trays of cinnamon rolls later....Popped them into the freezer. Now we just thaw, let rise and throw 'em in the oven. Cinnamon rolls on a Sunday morning without getting up at 3AM!

 Six trays of PW Cinnamon Rolls (with a few variations to make them more of a combo of Cinnamon Rolls and my mother's/grandmother's German Coffee Cake). See PW recipe here

Challah Bread BEFORE

After! Punch down and rise again!

 My recipe for Challah Bread is supposed to make one loaf, but a few weeks ago when I made it, it ended up HUGE so I took that same recipe and made two loaves out of it. I then made a second batch of dough strictly to make sandwich rolls for the boys' lunches (I'll do anything to help inspire them to "remember" to pack a lunch). My recipes for two batches of Challah yielded two loaves and sixteen sandwich rolls. YUM!

Golden on the outside, soft on the inside. Challah Sandwich Rolls

Two beautiful loaves of Challah. I just love the braided look. One is happily in the freezer for later use. 

 For the family reunion this weekend, I made Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. It was so popular (with my family!) that I shredded more carrots and doubled the recipe and made muffins yesterday. How can I turn down kids asking to eat veggies?? :)

Two dozen Carrot Muffins cooling...Bread and rolls in the back

 My mother grew up in a HUGE family. Well, huge by today's standards. Then? Large, but not unheard of. Well, yesterday I finally got to feel what she and my aunt, JT, did on a regular basis. I peeled 10 lbs of potatoes in one sitting. Now, this is obviously way more than my family will eat, however, in an effort of being time conscious, I boiled them all up, mashed and distributed them into "throw away" aluminum containers to freeze for those days when I don't have time to come up with dinner (or any potatoes!)

10 lbs later......my fingers hurt

Three large trays of mashed potatoes cooling, waiting to go to the freezer. 

 So, my other accomplishments didn't have any pictures. I made more chicken stock from thigh pieces and boneless breast. The breast meat and stock will be combined (today or tomorrow) to make frozen chicken pot pies. Pictures to follow. The thigh meat will be picked off the bones and mixed with rice, carrots and sweet potatoes to mix with our dogs' current dog food (trying to help with the dog food budget).

I made 20 more of the cheeseburger wraps I wrote back in an earlier post for hubs' lunch. I also baked potatoes and sweet potatoes to be turned into a sweet potato side dish and frozen (much like the mashed potatoes) and also twice baked potatoes (also frozen). In addition I made the following crockpot meals. Now all I (or one of the kids) have to do is find the appropriate bag, follow the instructions and dump into the crockpot! We now have:

2 - Salsa Chicken
2 - Chipotle Salsa Chicken
2 - Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken
1 - Cajun Chicken Fettucini (without the pasta...add that when cooked)
1 - Rancho Style Steak (courtesy of my Grandpa Robert's recipe)
2 - Sweet & Spicy Chipotle Chicken
1 - Greek lemon/herb Chicken
1 - Chili Colorado Beef
3 - PW Chicken Tacos Mix
2 - Ranch Buffalo Chicken
8 - Ground Beef packages, seasoned ready for use

That about covers it for my weekend. However, that's not all the labor that was done on Labor Day. Allow me to continue in this show and tell.....

Looking from the back deck (also from the kitchen back door) to the back of the property. Barn is to the left. Pasture beyond the bushes. 

As I described in "Moving on up!", Hubs and I decided to switch the placement of the garden. Well, the process has begun. Very slightly. Up until now, the bushes above were meant to hide his junkyard collection of trucks. Last weekend, we felt a flip-flop was in order and wanted to put the garden where the trucks were located which resulted in a larger dog yard for our puppies. Because I love spending so much time on the deck and I look out at it, it made more sense to add the garden where we can enjoy it on a daily basis. That being decided, the ugly shrubs had to go. And let me just say, I am NOT sad to see them leave.

Loves to use the chainsaw. 

Mostly all gone! Left enough of a stump so the tractor had something to hold on to when pulling them up. 

 The last shrub on the end wasn't coming down yesterday. As Hubs discovered, it is HEAVILY populated with wasps who were non-too-happy about the loud ruckus of his chainsaw and removal of their brush. Needless to say, that will come down at a later date. That, and the plum tree next to it is in full bloom and needs to be trimmed up as well. However, they are heavily entwined, so it looks like fall is the time for those to get cleaned up.

New View...Tried to do a panoramic one...Picture this pic with the one below it...

Can you see what I was going for? 

So, busy weekend all around. Hubs was laboring. I was laboring. Good Labor Day. I'm tired.

Peace Out :)

Foggy blanket and ocean mist

A reflection piece. Perhaps because I had a very vivid dream of my hometown last night. In it, I had gone back to the high school and was shocked and disheartened by the decrepit buildings and overgrown weeds. I was saddened knowing that when I lived there, it was a source of pride to tell people that I had grown up in this picturesque and quaint little coastal village in Northern California. 

All time time I would be told just how lucky I was to be there. And at the time, while I knew it was beautiful, I never fully grasped just how special it was. Ask anyone who spent any part of their childhood there. It was just an extraordinary sort of place.

This morning, in an effort to relieve my anxiety of my dwindling town, I spent a few minutes googling Mendocino trying to find recent pictures; anything to prove to myself that it was as beautiful as ever. In my most recent visit (which I am embarrassed to say has been over three years), I couldn't wait to show my then boyfriend (now husband) all of my old stomping grounds. I wanted to take him to the bakery where my friends and I would get our morning tea and bagel as well as show him the cute little jewelry store where I worked for a summer. I wanted to show him the "fancy" tourist restaurants that none of us locals could afford to eat at, but where we all knew at least half of the staff. I wanted to brag and show him the view of my high school and the little French shop where my mom worked as a bookkeeper for years and years....All of these things I was so excited to show him. And you know what? Only one was not as I remembered. My beloved bakery had changed hands and while it was similar, it wasn't quite the same. However, one thing in all wasn't too shabby.

I remember excitedly pointing out the spots on Lansing Street that they had shut down during the making of The Majestic and how cool it had been that Jim Carey was in our town. In fact, he paid a visit to the little store my mom worked at and did quite a bit of shopping; unfortunately, mom wasn't at work that day :(. 

Top of Lansing Street looking down into "down town". 

Almost an exact replica of the view of town from my old high school. 

One of our favorite things to tell visitors was that it was absolutely normal to see Christopher Lloyd walk his dog around the football field and track at the high school. Every day. His house was just down the block. So many neat little things that made our town special and unique.

Mendocino holds a special place in my heart. To me, no matter where I live, it will always be home. The crash of waves and damp coolness of the fog will always bring me comfort. I have a fear of enclosed tight spaces, however the envelopment of fog all around me has never once made me feel uncomfortable. To me, instead, it is like a reassuring blanket. It quiets everything around you and allows for time to think. To this day, seeing fog instantly takes me back to happy memories where all is safe and good in the world. 

Mendocino evening. This image is not my own. 

Movin' on up!

The dogs are moving up. Seriously. A mere three months ago, they had a tiny dog yard up in Grass Valley. Enter: Loma Rica House. Suddenly they find themselves with an acre of play-space. Yippee! The downside being that now they can get to full speed and both seem to be suffering (never at the same time of course) from hip/foot pain. This is what happens when you barrel roll over the top of your four legged friend. This past weekend, hubs and I decided to shift gears with our layout. Originally, we had planned that we wanted to have a huge garden right next to the barn. After allowing our chickens to scratch in that area for the past few weeks, we have discovered that the previous owners must have used part of that section of the yard as dumping grounds. We have unearthed cans and pieces of metal galore. Gross. NOT what I want to grow my veggies in.

Ponder, ponder, ponder....Ah-ha! Let's flip flop the placement of some of Chad's project trucks and the garden...Trucks don't care if they are sitting on top of metal. In fact, they like it! The long and short of it is that we decided to extend our yard (ie dog yard) quite a bit to include placement of the trucks. My garden will now be able to be viewed from the kitchen and the back deck which in all honesty, is much better.

Looking from current yard to new yard. Just removed the gate

Remainder of the old fence used to fix the fence in the next picture

Recycle, reduce, reuse! Fencing repaired with pieces from other fencing which was taken down

Other side of new dog yard looking back towards the barn and the house. Hubs is setting up sprinklers so we can get it nice and green :) 

 It was a long day, wrestling with fence boards, maneuvering barbed wire and man-handling the hog panels....but it's done! While I didn't actually do much (see, I can be honest), I did stay out with the boys all days and document as well as help carry things. I even attacked some fence boards with a drill (eh-hem). Earning my keep ;).

After being in the sun, we were ravenous and nothing sounded better than burgers. Unfortunately, I had no hamburger buns AND the buns I had made and frozen a few weeks ago were long gone. I had found a recipe online for self-proclaimed "40 minute hamburger buns" and figured I may as well try them out. The verdict? Pretty good....A little heavier than I would have liked, but good flavor. I will try them again and experiment with adding different things (such as whole wheat flour though I know that will increase the weight of them...). Work in progress.

End of a nice work day...Homemade hamburger buns to go with Meatball Burgers and Spicy Green Chili Chicken Burgers. Yum!

I am super excited to start adding fruit trees down in that dog yard along the fence line (added privacy AND food. Score!). We checked out the local nursery and found great options. Time to start saving up.

Back to the grindstone. Heading to the store after work today....SO excited about the huge meat sale Raley's is having (what does that say about me???). It's the little things, right? Stocking up makes me happy.

Peace Out :)