Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Rain Puddles and Special Moments


I played in puddles today. It rained most of the day up at my parent's house and my daughter was outside in it helping Grampy plant trowels in the garden. Yes, you read right. Trowels. So after she came in all wet, I decided on an impromtu puddle-jumping session. Now, normally I'm a bit picky about the puddles I jump in, but I wasnt' today. The biggest puddle was the dip in the gutter at the end of the driveway. So my mom, my siblings, and my daughter and I were splashing icky water all over each other until we were completely soaked, and we didn't mind a bit. The pants I have all are a bit too long, so they hung partly over my feet and acted as perfect scoopers to send big waves of water when I swung my leg through the water. It was fun! Their dog Miko, a white Miniature American Eskimo with a curious patch of yellowish fur low on his back, was more gray than white by the time we were done. So while the kids trooped into the house for baths, I gave the poor dog a bath with the hose outside. He did not appreciate that AT ALL. And he kinda looks like he's been through a losing battle with a blender. All his fur is matted so bad you can see clear down to his skin. Poor puppy.

Anyway, so that was probably the highlight of my day. Earlier we watched a movie I've added to my Must Get list. It's called Leap Year and has Amy Adams and a guy whose name I cannot remember, and it was really cute. So I now have 5 movies currently on my list, at least until I remember any other ones. Blindside, Shrek 4, Benny and Joon, Leap Year, and the new Alice in Wonderland. I just saw that one with my sister-in-law this week and I liked it. I don't like most of Tim Burton's movies, and I haven't seen a lot of them, but I love Johnny Depp so I went for it. Johnny Depp may just be my favorite actor of all time. There is not a role he cannot play, and the more crazy and over-the-top, the better. He is simply amazing. And freaking hot as well, which only improves things.

Also today I made chocolate covered strawberries with my sisters and youngest brother. We had fun, and it has been decreed that I am the master at chocolate covered strawberries and making garlic bread (yes, the garlic bread was a completely random point, but I made that tonight too and I have my own "secret" recipe for the perfect garlic butter topping). Also, I have invented a new delicacy. Strawberry Volcanoes. That's when you cut the tops off of strawberries, put a circle of melted chocolate on a flat surface (like a pan or something), set the berry flat side down on the chocolate so it covers the bottom of the berry, then with a spatula or fork or whatever, drizzle chocolate over the top of the strawberry generously. It kinda looks like a volcano. And Chocolate Strawberry Mountains are just the topless strawberries dipped in chocolate. Hey, the more chocolate the better! But none of this cheap, crappy chocolate you get in the baking aisle that come in those plastic bags that have pictures of different candies on the front. You must use a really good chocolate. My favorite is the plain chocolate Symphony bars. Hershey's chocolate chips or bars, or if you're of a mind to be a tad more expensive, Lindt Extra Creamy bars would probably work fabulously as well. Add that chocolate to perfectly perfect strawberries, and you have achieved heaven in a candy.

Let's see, other than that, I went to the store with my mom and sisters today and finally bought a new floofah (my lingo for loofah). One of the dogs chewed up my old one two weeks ago (the turds) and I've been needing to get one ever since and I finally did! And I got an extra for my travel bag. Yay me!

Oh, and I have two more things to report. The first is that when we were out playing in the rain today, a train was coming by the house. My parent's house is right across the street from where the train tracks are, and my daughter loves to watch it go by. So my dad took her over closer to the tracks to see it better, and it was just the perfect photographic moment. It was raining, so the light was soft and pretty and bright colors stood out great. They were holding hands and watching the train, and one thing that is kinda cool is that my grandpa, my dad's dad, loved trains. He had a model train set put up in a room in their basement with a whole landscape that he built, and it was wonderful. Trains were his thing. So we got a great photographic moment there. Grampy and granddaughter watching the train go by, holding hands. It was so cute. I think there's a good Father's Day present right there.

The last thing is that my hubby got a letter today. It's a letter that he wrote to himself Senior year of high school for an assignment that they said they would send out five years later. That would be now. After quite a bit of pouting and threats, he finally let me read it. And although I am sworn to secrecy about what it says, it made me smile. In it there is one part that says that he doesn't care about anything else as long as he's married to me and keeping me happy. It was kind of a blast to the past to our dating days, and I miss those days. We had lots of fun and we didn't have to be adults yet. I was talking to my mom today, and if couples didn't have to worry about money, marriages would be so much easier. It's being the adult that sucks when you get married, not the marriage or your spouse. I've said before that I was completely ready to be married, even though I was only 18. And I was. It was being a responsible adult I wasn't ready for. Bounced checks and car payments and overdue rent. The love, however, I was always ready for.

And on that note, I'm going to do my calendar (what exactly is the point of calendars if you don't write down what you do that day? Calendars have kind of become my mini diaries) and read the next chapter in my scriptures (I'm on David and Goliath, I'm excited) then kiss my husband and go to sleep. Sounds like a plan to me.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Chocolate Covered Strawberries and Disney Princesses


Ah, it's been such an interesting day. I think we'll start right now and go backwards, seeing as how this day has been more interesting than entire weeks are sometimes.

I just finished looking through lots of different kinds of pictures and fan art of the Disney princesses with my husband, and it was hilarious! Just google Disney princess and do images, there's all sorts of fun stuff. The princesses arguing, wearing each other's clothes, stealing each other's clothes, with their kids, all sorts of hilarious and cool stuff. Like the comic strip above.

Earlier this evening my best friend and I made chocolate covered strawberries. And I have a new contender for my Top Three Foods That Are Almost Better Than Sex. Garlic bread is one of them. Chocolate cake/brownies is another. Seafood. And Italian food. I know, that's like forty thousand options, but I can be a particular sort of person when I want to.

Back to the strawberries, they were absolutely delightful. A life-changing experience. I don't like that chocolate they keep in the baking aisle that you're supposed to use for candy and stuff like that, so I got two humongous Sympony bars instead. I'm a sucker for Hershey's, I admit it. Anyway, so this was our first time making any kind of chocolate dipped anything, and it took a bit of tweaking to make them all pretty, but we really didn't care. They were perfection! If I could have melted into the floor with tastebud pleasure, I would have.

Before that she did her nails and mine while we watched a movie. I did my daughter's nails. She's two and thinks that it's almost the coolest thing in the world. Besides the new shoes she got today. She's got the most interesting feet. They're adorable, but they're wider than most shoes that fit the length of her foot. So her toes are always way away from the end of the shoe while she's out-growing them width-wise.

Aside from re-outfitting my daughter's feet, I went to work today and was very tired. I was up late last night finising the book I was reading and had to get up early. Stupid, yes. Ill-planned, yes. Did I enjoy it anyway? Yes.

It is now 2:48 in the morning, and I need to consider going to bed. Although I can sleep in as late as I want tomorrow, in theory, if darling child allows it. So until next time, and whatever I next find the need to write about, see ya!