Mother’s Day–Eat up!

Sunday morning after church we had brunch at our house.  My inlaws and some great friends came over bringing a ham and a french toast bake (with icing.  Dude.)

Peter and I made roasted potatoes, scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and coffee.  We also had 2 cakes: a lemon poppy seed cake and a german walnut cake, bagels, mimosa’s, orange juice, and champagne, strawberries, and other fruit.

Maybe we should rename Mother’s Day to Eat Your Heart Out Day :), at least at my house anyway.

It’s almost like I’m Laura Ingalls

So this whole going green thing has really gotten me.  I’ve done all I can to green our household products, I made a cake from scratch when my daughter broke her arm (she wanted a PINK cake–that’s a LOT of red food coloring), and today I made my own laundry detergent using this recipe which was recommended by this lovely lady.

Yeah.  I did.  And you know what?  I used it to wash 2 loads of laundry which came out totally clean and smelling fresh!!!!  I loved it.  I did hate grating that damn bar of soap though–it took a good 45 minutes to do, but I took a lot of breaks, so it actually took me longer.

So now my husband wants to know when we’ll be moving to Lancaster so we can live in harmony with the Amish.  NEVER!!!!  If you ever see me wearing ankle length skirts and my hair in a bun with a bonnet, just shoot me.  Please.  Or better yet, make me live on Long Island again for a reality check.

We didn’t need to worry

Well, we had our home visit the other day and it turned out that the dog person is one of our neighbors!  She’s a dog breeder who lives down the street and showed up with one of her own dogs: a 7 year old retired champion Great Dane.  Have you ever seen one of those dogs up close?  H-U-G-E.  Where I come from we call something that size a pony, but he had no idea how big he was.  He was so good and gentle, we were pleasantly surprised by him.  He weighed in at the vet’s last week at 140 pounds.  Yeah.  His owner weighs about 105 pounds.  What can I say?

Anyway, we just talked with her for a little while.  She asked us some of the questions that the people who actually own the dog sent her, but not all of them because even she thought they were a bit much.  Then she emailed us a copy with her answers and we saw that one of the questions asked how she perceived our marriage to be!!!  LOL!!!!!  I KNEW there would be a question like that!  I mean, they sent her a list of 40 questions!!!!  Too funny!  She wrote that she thought we were very nice and that our children were well behaved (which they actually were), and she noted –drum roll please–, that our home was “clean, neat, and tidy.” I like her!!!

So, now we wait to see just how worthy of this puppy we are.  I swear, it’s easier to have a baby than to adopt a dog.

Home inspection

I’m getting ready for a home inspection that we are having tomorrow afternoon. We are “adopting” a puppy, and apparently the “dog people” want to know if we are good people, so someone is coming over tomorrow to check up on us. I am a firm believer that to show I am a good person, I will clean my house from top to bottom because that is how I was raised. The last thing I want is for the “dog person inspector” to think that we are not worthy of adopting a puppy because we have dust on our furniture. There will be no dust on any furniture around here, NO SIR!

And I’m thinking that before the “dog person inspector” comes over, I will walk up and down my street to make sure all my neighbors have neat lawns because I want to show that I live on a civilized street, which is worthy of adopting a puppy. I know, I’m good.

Already this morning I have cleaned my kitchen and dining room and I have done one load of laundry. I know, I’m good. After some errands I will attack the living room, family room, bedrooms, and do some more laundry, and dammit, we may need to eat out tonight because I don’t want to get my kitchen dirty. All this is being done with NON toxic cleaners, thankyouverymuch. We are good people. We deserve a dog. We (will) have a clean house. My mother will be proud.

These are some photos of my clean house taken around Easter time. Proof that we are good people. Even though I have to take photos to remind myself what exactly my house looks like when it’s clean, because God knows it doesn’t last long, (we are still good people, though).

Conversation with the neighbors

I just went to get my mail and 2 of my neighbors, K and C, who are in 3rd and 4th grades (I know, I’m cool), were outside watering K’s lawn.  C yells, “hey Cathy!  can we wash your car?”

Let’s just stop here for a quick side note:  I LOVE my car.  It’s like a “person” to me (shut up!  I do not need a therapist!).  I know 3rd and 4th graders—they won’t be careful and my “person” car will get scratched and my heart will be wounded forever.

I look over to my “person” car and mentally tell her that I will not let anything happen to her.

So I say to the kids, “No, not today, but thanks!”

Without skipping a beat C says, “well, we can’t do it anyway because P (another 4th grade neighbor— no, I do not live inside an elementary school) is not with us.  He’s part of our team.”

So, la di da to me!  They weren’t gonna wash my “person” car anyway.  Whatever!  That would have been the best car they ever would have washed!

Earth Day

Though today is officially Earth Day, my town has decided to celebrate it this coming Saturday. A few months ago, I can’t remember exactly when, I think it was last summer, I started getting really irritated that so many of the chemicals found in all of our household products, clothing, and food were so dangerous. Why are they even there?

We started buying organic food (we do not exclusively buy organic) and researched non-toxic household cleaners. Luckily there is a lot of resources out there that have already done all the work so finding out what I could do to have a healthier household was pretty easy.

None of the changes my family and I have made have interfered with our lifestyle. The only thing that I do find still a bit odd is that now I use cloth napkins at dinnertime and fleece washable cloths in place of paper towels. We barely use paper towels now. I think I find it odd because I’ve never done it before. However, we LOVE the cloth napkins. I bought some on ebay, and then I found a wonderful “shop” on etsy where I have bought all my children’s cloth napkins from. She uses great child friendly prints and is very reasonably priced.

That’s it. That’s my little speech on Earth Day. We certainly don’t do everything right around this house, but we’ve been pretty good with some things. Stay well and live green These are just some of my “green” products. The napkins on the left (orange/green/blue colored) are from littlesprouts.etsy.com, and so are the red and orange crotched wipes in the bottom center of the photo.

For now I think I will stay

I REALLY LOVE to blog.  REALLY.

There are some nasty sleaze buckets out there,  but tough luck to them.

Just to be on the cautious side though, my photos will NOT show faces of anyone, if I actually post a photo of a person.

There.  I win.

A New York hangover

Good morning everyone.  We got home late last night from visiting the grandparents in NY this weekend and attending my beautiful cousin’s bridal shower yesterday afternoon.

We all had a wonderful time but boy am I tired!  I’m now trying to decide why I shouldn’t go to my friends house to be surrounded by a friendly and funny group of women while the kids play, but I can’t convince myself that being tired and having a couple of loads of laundry to do is a good reason.  Does anyone want to drive us there?  NO?  Darn.

Shutting down….

Hi!  The creepiest thing happened.  Someone stole some of my photos from my flickr account and used them on their bowling site.  My friend informed me of this when she went on their site to book a party.  Who knows which other photos, if any, they stole.

So, this next week I will be shutting down this blog because I just feel completely creeped out.  I will, however, continue to read all the blogs I love and comment now and then.

Goodbye.

Nature hunt

We had a great nature hunt this morning with some friends.  It was colder than we would have liked, (spring, where are you?!) but we put our warm clothes on and went into the woods out back and went hunting.  We used our trusty magnifying glasses and binoculars  and we came up with some pretty good stuff.  The kids searched for leaves, rocks, tree bark, and bird feathers.  They also found pine cones, huge rocks with moss all over them, fallen branches, and flowers beginning to pop up.

What a great little science project for these little ones to do.  I got the idea at Lapaz Home Learning.