Juice Box Baby

Bobosaur loves him some juice boxes! I love these juice boxes because they contain a serving of fruit AND a serving of veggies. Bobo's not been wanting to eat much lately, and veggies are definitely at the bottom of his list, so any way I can sneak them in is a plus.



P.S. I absolutely love these jammies on him... he looks like a little bunny or something and is SO cuddly!

Nifty Photo Collection by Peter Funch

Someone posted this on facebook, and I don't usually take notice but the title was interesting... it was something like images of NYC composited over time but not space. I thought it would be something like, pictures from the 1920s through current day of the same location, which would be interesting, but it wasn't. Still interesting though!

The artist, Peter Funch, sits in one spot in NYC for two weeks or something, and takes a bunch of pictures. Then, he sits down and edits people/things out of some of the photographs and collages them all together so it looks like it was just a normal picture he took... but all the people are doing the same things (looking up, yawning) or wearing similar colors, something that is like, wow what a coincidence! And a lot of them are in pairs, so he has one of everyone wearing dark colors, followed by one of everyone wearing whites. Pretty neat!

Go check it out, if that's your bag.

Cold Steps, Rainy Day

Wine Aficionado

(or water aficionado, as the case may be)

Busy Easter Weekend

Since it's Easter Weekend we have a ton of stuff to do.

Yesterday we went to my Mom's cousin's house down in Connecticut for a Good Friday supper. It was a lot of fun, and we got to see Auntie Carol, Noni and Uncle Eddie plus a bunch of relatives I haven't seen since I was little. Arin got to play with PUPPIES and chase little kids around so he was in heaven. Unfortunately, we left pretty late and he slept on the car ride... then woke up when we got home and couldn't fall back asleep until 4:30 AM. Not cool.


So, he's been cranky all day, which made our town Easter Egg Hunt not as fun as it might have been. It's also rainy and wet out. One happy moment was that he got to see the Easter Bunny, and he LOVED him! He thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, he wanted to hug him and everything. So cute! During the Egg Hunt itself they let the 0-3 year olds have their own field, and the parents were vultures let me tell you! Arin wasn't into the whole 'getting eggs' thing though... he picked up one egg and then couldn't be bothered... he wanted to try to get to the CARS that were driving by outside the field, thank goodness it was fenced in!


Carl came over, and Cheri brought her kids to the hunt, and we all hung out here and had a pizza party for lunch... the kids had fun running amok, and now Arin's taking a nap. Tonight we're going to dye Eggs and make some yummies.

Tomorrow morning Arin will get his own Egg Hunt around the living room and I'm sure he'll be more interested in it when there is actualy CHOCOLATE involved. :) And then we're going out to an Easter Brunch with Mom and Dad, who's finally coming back from Long Island.

Whew, I'm exhausted, and the weekend isn't even over yet...

I don't really like Blue Nails

Let me share with you my little nail polish saga from Wednesday. It began with my trying out a 'new' shade. I bought China Glaze - For Audrey when I got everyone's Christmas nail polishes, but I hadn't tried it out. After seeing the Greenport nail polish that I wrote about before, I decided I really wanted to see if I liked blue/greens on, as I never used to. Well, yeah, I still don't. It just looks too middle school for me, I don't know? I saw the host on that makeup artist show wearing it last season, I didn't like it on her either.


For Audrey, obviously, is supposed to be Tiffany blue, and alludes to Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn. Well, here is my comparison... it's a pretty close match but not exact. The nail polish is just a little darker and a little more greenish. Actually, it is a pretty good dupe now that I look at this picture again.



One positive about the polish is that it helped me FINALLY find a purse! I've been looking for one since before Christmas, since my 'everyday' one is quite old and has seen better days. I was browsing handbags for the millionth time, and found one that was almost the same shade as my nails! It's so pretty, and that was the sign I was looking for that this is the one I should get. So now I have a new purse and if I'm feeling crazy I can paint my nails to match it! Happy Ending. :)



Update: I put some silver glitter over the top and the polish looks 10 times better. And now it REALLY matches my pocketbook!

I Heart PB & J

I really need to find more creative lunches that are healthier than PB&J ... maybe peanut butter and broccoli? Or spinach butter and mango jam? Well, maybe not, but I think next time I'm at the store I'm going to buy the Polaner All Fruit spread instead of the liquid purple goo they have turned grape jelly into.

Mommy Kiss, Larger

Moss Scapes

Since our 'grass' has been... unmaintained for a number of years, it basically no longer exists. However, much of our large yard is covered with delicious, fuzzy, luxurious, verdant moss. So I wanted to encourage the moss and make a lovely moss garden... I'm starting with an area in the back behind the pool. While out raking my 'moss garden' yesterday I noticed some weird little ... things growing on some of the moss. I had my camera and... now you're subject to my series on ALIEN MOSS SCAPES! Mwwahhhh...






You can click them to see all the weird freaky little bumps and details. Neat, huh?

Blueberry Sour Cream Scones

YUM!

I really like the King Arthur Cream Tea Scones mix they sell at the grocery store... it comes out really yummy. I asked my sister to pick up a box at the store, and unfortunately she came back with the Blueberry Sour Cream variety. Ick, I thought, I don't like blueberries! Well, out of desperation for scones to compliment the rainy weather and my warm English Breakfast tea, I decided to try it. Here's the before-baking shot:


And guess what... King Arthur didn't let me down, these are delicious! I still don't like blueberries, but these scones are moist and doughy and yummy. I don't know that I would put lemon curd on them as I usually do, but they were good enough to eat just on their own. Mmm.

I like to put a lot of sugar on the top to make it all crunchy and delicious, but they were very sweet on their own. And this was after I picked out about half the million blueberries (couldn't resist trying!).

The Difference in 5am

Now this is what 5am is supposed to look like.

Beautiful early sunrise ocean views after a long night of dancing with friends in an exotic location.

All that stands between me and dreaming of these sweet, sweet memories is a 5am courtesy of... BOBOSAURUS REX.


Which 5am would you prefer?

Aeggekage is Perfect

I love breakfast, and I especially love baking for breakfast. I was in search of new and interesting egg recipes when I came across this gem... Danish Aeggekage. I'm assuming that translates to Egg Cake. I was pronouncing it aggle-kak-en-kugel. *That's not correct, weirdly enough. It tastes like a thick crepe in the middle (I love crepes) and the puffy edges taste like popovers. Delicious.



So I've made this a fair number of times over the past few months... I'm trying to perfect it for my situation. It's originally meant to be quite large, containing 8 or 10 eggs... but I made my first few with 6 eggs and have since downsized to a 4 aegge kage. It is really filling and I would have it left over for days if I stuck with the large size. It tastes fine if you heat it in the microwave (and will puff up if it wasn't baked long enough)... but fresh out of the oven all buttery and hot its just ambrosial.

The original recipe I started with was here on allrecipes.com. This is what I have settled on for the moment:

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees F.
In a big bowl, combine:
4 eggs
1 cup milk (or 3/4 milk and 1/4 cream)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar (use 1 teaspoon if you want this savory / use a full cup if you want it like a sweet crepe)
1 teaspoon salt

Whisk the batter together until the lumps are gone and its airy. Supposedly you are supposed to let it rest for half an hour, but pffft.

Grab half a stick of butter (or more if you want bigger pools of golden deliciousness on the top) and put it in a 9x9 glass baking dish, or a 9x13 baking disk, or any random container you want to use... I'm trying a cookie sheet next. Anyway, put the butter in the dish and pop it in the oven until the butter is just melted. Take it out and coat every speck of the dish with the melted butter, all the way up the sides. I find it easier to take a piece of cold butter and rub it along the sides to ensure they're covered.

This is from a 9x9 pan, I think it ends up puffing higher and being more airy than the larger pan, or maybe it was because I put a whole cup of sugar in this one by accident (came out yummy though!):


Next, pour the batter over the hot butter. It'll start to pool up on the edges. Then pop it in the oven (make sure it's not close to the top because it puffs). I found I needed to leave it in 18-20 minutes for maximum 'rise'.

Keep checking it though, it'll keep puffing up but you probably want to take it out before it gets too brown on the top, unless you like crispies.

After that, let it cool a little (or just rip it off immediately and burn yourself like I do) and serve it up with whipped cream or fresh berries and lemon juice or cashew chicken... it's tasty with everything.

Danish Cookie Monster

When it comes to getting into something he wants, Arin is a genius... an EVIL genius. He couldn't stack Legos for the longest time, but he sure had no issue taking the top off this huge tin of Danish cookies. Todd brought them home from school, and someone left them in the living room. I didn't discover his new 'trick' until he'd eaten about 50 of them I'm sure. This is because after sneaking a cookie out, he would carefully fit the top back on and push it closed before enjoying his tasty treat... every time.

I hid them on top of the fridge for a while, but I wanted to see if he could still do his trick. Yup! Just look at this face:

OM NOM NOM

Legos at Last

A few days ago, Arin has finally figured out how to stick Legos together! Check out his amazing stripey tower. Of course, he's feigning disinterest because I wanted to a cute picture of him proudly holding his work... go figure.

Agave Nectar is Not a Better Alternative

So, a little while ago I was going through some recipes for 'healthy' baked yummies... the kind those crazy raw food / super health nuts would make for their kids and husbands. I'm trying to generally trend towards healthier foods with less chemical additives, so I figured why not go to the source. I kept seeing references to Agave Nectar, and these women were touting it as a healthy and fabulous miracle sweetener that was totally 100% great to use in place of horrible things like corn syrup, sugar, or honey (which everyone knows rots your insides and makes you 50x more likely to die immediately).


Well, I figured if it was so healthy it must taste NASTY, but maybe the sacrifice would be worth it to make healthier cakes and such for my family, right? Imagine, serving up a tantalizing torte that was GOOD for you? Anyway, I wanted to see what it tasted like- then amazingly I actually found it at a local grocery store and snapped it up. Well, it's been sitting on my shelf for a while, as I was too afraid to try it. My sister informed me that agave it was the same plant they make tequila out of, so I just had horrible visions of semi-sweet, thick tequila goo. It was off-putting.

Well, tonight I broke down and tried it, and imagine my surprise at how TASTY and PURE it was! I purchased the light variety, and the flavor is so clean, sweet and most of all... delicate! I wanted to make little fairy cakes with it. It is more liquid than corn syrup or honey but still a little viscous. It reminded me of a honey but thinner and lighter and without the flavors of honey, just the sweetness, and no aftertaste.

Of course, this stuff tasted delicious- no way it could be good for you.. those health nuts were morons! Couldn't they taste this stuff? I wanted to eat it out of the bottle for Pete's sakes! Well, unfortunately I was right on this count, it isn't good for you, and might be worse for you than stuff like white sugar and even high fructose corn syrup... because it contains 90% fructose in a condensed syrup which really makes it not nutritious. Certainly not any better than maple syrup or honey at all. Only reason to like it is if you have problems with glucose I guess. But it just causes other problems in response!

Well, you don't have to believe me you can go google it, there are lots of places that say it's unhealthy. Here is one person's summary that I found pretty complete, but it is from a raw foodie perspective so ... grain of salt. And here is the website of the company which made my Agave Nectar. Notice they also make it sound like dew from heaven. So, basically, go try the stuff if you want a nifty new syrup to play with... but not if you're looking for some healthy sugar substitute.

Oh well, if something sounds too good to be true... At least I will be able to make some unhealthily delicious little tea cakes!

Photoshop Actions

I used to spend a lot of time tooling around in Photoshop making my photos look perfect, or crazy. That was all well and good, but with the appearance of Bobo on the scene, my Photoshop time was drastically decreased. I was never really into actions before, but once I realized how fun, controllable and quick they were I was a convert.


If I just want to quickly slap a picture up I usually just resize it and optimize the Levels, and call it a day (like the picture above). But, if I want it to look fancy, which includes a lot of the pictures I put up here, I run and tweak a few actions on them.

There are free actions all over the place. I could make my own but I haven't had much time to play around with that. I can't imagine people paying for them, but there are lots of 'artists' who sell their actions. Stupid if you ask me. Just google them, or even better head on over to Deviantart and search for Photoshop (your version) actions, and voila... a bunch of great free sets. The pics above and below are just a single action, 'Missing Mile' from Alice_in_Underland 's Photoshop Color Actions2 set I found on Deviantart. Awesome.


When I have a blurry or otherwise poor quality photo but I still think its cute, a way to salvage it is to run a bunch of stuff on it and make it more conceptual than about the caliber of the focus. The one below was super blurry, so after I sharpened the heck out of it until it looked nasty (worse than this, trust me), I threw a bunch of actions at it. Still not a great picture, but I wanted to preserve the nose-picking moment for all time. AWWR.


And if you want to get really weird with your stuff you can just call it photo art and people will nod and smile.


Oh, when I don't have a lot of time to find the perfect action, my standby is using one of Pioneer Woman's actions. They aren't fancy or professional or the best out there, but the names are intuitive and they have a nice range of effects. You can download them... oh fine let me get the link. Here, this will get you to both her sets as well as show examples of what each one does. It's a good place to start. And, super easy ... she explains the whole deal.

Poindexter 3D Glasses

Apparently there is a new 3D Monsters vs. Aliens movie out... and it's for kids? I thought this was a scary and gory R rated movie that came out 2 years ago, but I guess that one was PREDATOR vs. Alien. Whatever. In any case, Carl took JJ to go see it, and kept the glasses. Of course Bobo thought they were great.

Doesn't he look dapper?

When I was little, 3D glasses were made out of paper and had one red and one blue eye... now they're fancy sunglasses with some top secret laser etching technology on them. Makes for a cute Bobo toy though. :)

Shifting schedule

Whenever people ask me what time Bobo goes to bed or gets up in the morning I always say, 'It varies,' and get an eyeroll in response, as if I'm being deliberately stubborn. 'I know it varies, he's a baby... but what time usually?' 'IT VARIES.' If he had a USUAL bedtime/waking time I wouldn't hedge around the issue just to make conversation, I'd tell you straight off! It's not like he gets up between 8:30-8:50 each day or something and I'm just exaggerating, honestly!
I would LIKE him to go to bed/wake up at set times, but that doesn't seem to happen around here. Some nights I put him down to bed at a reasonable hour, and he just can't fall asleep for THREE HOURS sometimes. So I end up singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" until I'm hoarse and he wiggles all around the bed being frustrated and we're both bored... it makes no sense to me. That's three hours we could all spend doing something better. I'd rather put him to bed very late some nights (when I know he'll be restless) than make us both suffer.

Anyway, the point is that this week he was going to bed super late thanks to weird nap schedules, and getting up around 10:30. Then he decided to shift gears the past two mornings, to a 5am Reveille. At least last night he went to bed easily, so tonight should be easy too. :) Not much to do at 5am though, when I'm trying not to wake anyone else!

One super cute thing about it is that when he wakes up at the crack of dawn, this tends to happen around 10am... he just passes out in the middle of whatever he's doing. One minute he'll be reading a book or dancing, the next I'll look over and he's asleep! I don't think I'll ever get over how funny and adorable it is to see him asleep in random places.

Fitting in with the Oracle crowd

For my DBA (Oracle Database Administration) class we were told to get a portable flash drive to store our databases on, one which we could easily transport to class. I already had one, but it is large and has all my precious travel photos on it, so I grabbed a new one at Costco. Well, we haven't really needed it yet, but for the next course when we do, I decided to spruce mine up.

It seems that most everyone in my classes are serious, older, already working in the field, professional IT types. So I thought of a great way to fit in... 'modding' my hardware and showing everyone I was a serious prospective database admin who will be more than ready to handle mission-critical systems with assurance, reliability and professionalism.


Look, it's so hardcore it has a back tat!

Man I love sparklies.

Bye-Bye Auntie Ju-Ju

On Wednesday evening we dropped Julie off at the airport, bound for London. I really wish we had all been going, but she was so rude as to not include us in her two-week adventure! The nerve, I know. We hope she has a safe trip and brings us home lots of presents including GU Choco Pots and Waitrose Chicken Tikka Masala. MMMMMMMmmmm.

Bon Voyage!

Cabinet Dweller

Eep, I found a sneaky little gnome that lives in kitchen cabinets and steals all the lids to tupperware so they never ever match!

New Stroller

We've had a bunch of drama with Arin's strollers. First, when he was tiny, we had a Snap-n-Go that worked great with his car seat, I really liked it and it wasn't too bulky. Of course, before he was out of his baby seat, one of the rear wheels fell off! I kept putting it back on, but every time we would walk somewhere it would fall off again every 15 seconds. There was no way to reattach it permanently, so finally I had to give up.

Somewhere during this time Cheri gave us a stroller she got with her car seat and wasn't using (since she has twins). It was a 'big boy' stroller though, so I hesitated to use it. Once I finally did... let's just say it was the bane of my existence. I could see why they have to give it away with car seats, it's terrible! Never get a Cosco stroller, EVER. So we suffered along using this until I didn't even bother to bring it out, it was so hard to handle and uncomfortable for Arin and wobbly and miserable. UCK.

Finally though, there is a happy ending! I was looking at strollers and comparing, and had decided on a Maclaren which are lightweight and have a good reputation, but when I was debating them I threw in the Bob Revolution jogging stroller which was more expensive but... fancier! Of course, I dream about quality and getting the best for Arin, so finally decided that was the one to get. It arrived in the mail about two weeks ago and ... WOW.

This thing is nice! It handles like a dream, it's super comfy and even fully reclines so Arin can sleep, it's super sturdy and safe and I just love it. I can NOT get over how well it moves and turns on a dime, it's like warm butter! The only thing I don't love is that it's quite big and doesn't clasp folded so you have to be careful when carrying it (or maybe I'm just missing how to do this), but we have plenty of trunk space so it doesn't bother me much. I can't wait to bring it on grass and rough terrain this spring/summer, it's so fun to drive! And not to mention, Arin thinks its his own little dune buggy, he loves it. He couldn't even wait until it was put together to start playing with it:



I don't jog, but the Bob Revolution stroller makes me want to head over to the Rail Trail and start. It has two 'modes', you flick a little thingie and it goes from jogging mode which keeps the wheels straight, or walking mode which lets you weeble around any which way you could want. The tires are big, thick and sturdy and great for going over rough surfaces. The sunshade is all fancy too, it has a little clear peep window for when it's fully extended so I can make sure Bobo is relaxing happily.


The first time I brought it out I stopped into TJMaxx and was looking at purses. I was taking up the whole aisle with this thing, and some woman was inching around me very slowly. Finally I was like, 'okay creepy...' and looked up at her. She was practically gaping at the stroller trying to scrutinize it's gears and such. She saw me looking and asked, 'Is that one of those jogging strollers?' And then just started gushing over how great it looked. This stroller inspires ENVY, isn't that fantastic? Stylish and practical, how can you go wrong? I wish I had gotten this from the beginning, (there's a way to put a baby seat into it too I think), I don't know what I did without it.