I Might Just Get My Mojo Back After All

Bundt-cake baking aside...I am so sick and tired of being tired, not feeling good and not enjoying the things that normally make me smile and relax and not potentially go all Kate-Gosselin-minus-the-hair-extenstions on my family.


For the record, I have never worn a pimped out popcorn bucket on my head . Yet. But it's in me, and I fear not far from the surface. Which, you see, is why a trip to Michaels after work last night was necessary. To save my poor husband and children from certain blood-curdling cries or finding me in the closet. Behind the clothes. In the fetal position. Eating popcorn.

The bad news is: I didn't fix dinner and brought taco's home. (Kate would never do that.) The good news is: they didn't starve and mama found inspiration!

My new project is for me, myself, and Irene. Its Bernat yarn in a color I forget the name of but it contains the word heather and looks like brown shark-skin. The color really shimmers & almost changes colors when you hold it to the light. The lighter color is called Silk - ok, so it may not exactly feel like silk, but it does look it. The pattern is kind of a glorified round ripple (I love round ripples!) and I love the way it drapes in the booklets picture. I bought the yarn intending to do stripes, but I'm second guessing it a little - will it look too Where's Waldo-y in stripes ya think? Then again, do I care? I love me some stripes. Plus everyone who's anyone knows they go hand in hand with a round ripple. Duh. ;)
And besides, I couldn't decide on which color. They are both pretty awesome, no? As are the new Michaels shopping bags and Creative Couture yarn tote!!

Here's to a relaxing evening propped on the couch crocheting with Max while he watches the Disney Channel....

Another Obsession, Because I Needed One?

"You're my obsession,

My fetish, My religion

My confusion, My confession

The one I want tonight..."

(~Cinema Bizarre~)

Is it wrong that this is the song I sing to my cake? Weird maybe, but not wrong...right?

It's just that I've fallen in love with this cake recipe and it's sooooo good that it deserves to be sung to.

Especially because it's a bundt cake which, let's face it, is little competition for the cupcake.

Personally, I always thought they were, um, gross. Yes, gross. There. I admit it. I thought they were gross and heavy and laden with fruits or nuts and best used as door stops. Or anchor ships.

That is...until my mom's birthday rolled around last week and I desperately wanted to deliver her some Happy Birthday goodness.

Her day was off to a sad start because she hadn't received her morning "wake up it's your birthday" call from her mom (my grandmother who passed away in December). I'd sent her a card, but she moved and so the card was delayed in getting to her new address. Flowers seemed to be the first logical option - but have you seen the wimpy little bouquets they pass off for a small fortune these days? Then I thought about one of those cookie or fruit bouquets - but Paso Robles doesn't have one there. Plus? Twice as much as flowers. Pretty much everything I came up with had some silly requirement about ordering earlier to ensure a same day delivery. Whatever.

Then I remembered this little bakery called Kiki's or Koko's in a small town called Arroyo Grande which is not far from Paso Robles, so I turned to my good friend Google and VOILA - there they were!

Looking at their website I could almost smell the goodness right thru my computer screen. They are called KK's and they specialize in gourmet bundt cakes. (Who knew they could be gourmet?) I called the bakery - thanks to my lucky stars and a 3 hour time difference they had just opened. The owner was WONDERFUL! She listened to my story, she tracked down a messenger headed in the direction of Paso Robles, and she made sure that by noon my mother had in her hands her very own fresh baked french vanilla butter rum cake to celebrate her birthday - which also happens to be my step-dads birthday so they could share it! She reported back that not only did it smell declicious and have all of her coworkers mouths watering - but it really was good has now become her new favorite dessert. SCORE!

Perusing the KK's website begged the question, why have I never made a bundt cake before? All of KK's certainly looked yummy enough...could it be that I have been mistaken all these years and I am actually missing out?

Nah.

Friday night I was stuck browsing thru Target, sipping on a Starbucks grande white hot chocolate while I waited A.J. who was attending a Team Impact thing he was invited to (oh the agony of motherhood!) when suddenly I remembered: bundt pan.

I didn't own one and even if I don't ever make a bundt cake, shouldn't I at least own one? Isn't it a right of womanhood or something? Can I call my kitchen complete without one?

So I bought the almost cheapest one they had - because if something comes in teflon? It's in my best interest to choose that. Toxins be damned! (I may or may not have a penchant for burning things.)

To give credit where credit is due, Mr. Jones is the one who kept the new pan from being put directly into a far reaching, dark, forgotten corner of the kitchen cabinets. See, he sort of bet me that I couldn't wander to isles of Target and leave empty handed. And I sort of said "I'll take that bet, yer gonna regret, cause I'm the best that ever been...." and then I rocked my Charlie Daniels air fiddle skills for his air for his entertainment bemusement. 

I really hate it when he wins bets. He never lets it go! All day Saturday he kept asking me about my new pan and what I was going to make in it and when was I going to make whatever I make in it and blah blah blah. I was left with no choice but to find a stupid bundt cake recipe. But the jokes on him now, cause as it turns out I learned all about how the bundt pan came to be and gained this whole new appreciation for a cake I had thought to be so icky.

The recipe I chose for my first attempt was an Apricot cake - you use a regular box cake mix but you add apricot jello mix and apricot nectar. It was SO GOOD! Nevermind that I broke the cake by releasing it from the pan too soon, it was scrumdiddlyumptious. I never even got around to making a glaze because the kids' noses' pulled them in with their mouths wide open. I literally had to cut a couple slices off and hide them so that I could have some for work today. Then I started singing. "You're my obsession, my fetish, my religion, my confusion, my confession....the one I want tonight..."

Oooh, and guess what I ordered this evening?

These little bundt-les of love. (Haha, get it? Bundt-les, bundles? No? Just me then?)

....you're my obsession....

Diary Of A Blog Slacker

Dude, where's my mojo? I cannot for the life of me seem to get my fingers to do the talking for me these days.

While the move was a couple weeks ago, we're still not all the way unpacked. The boy's rooms are fine, the downstairs bathroom outfitted in new duds, the kitchen - meh, the living room is looking pretty with in all it's new furnitureness, but the dining room? Do I even want to mention the dining room? It's looking like a very special episode of Hoarders.

Boxes and bins and bags, oh my!

I really want to focus on it this weekend because its smack dab in the middle of the house - you must go thru it to get to the kitchen, laundry room, back door & porch. You must also go thru a corner of it to get to the rest of the joint. I mean house.

What's worse is I haven't even been for a morning walk on the beach yet. Sinful.

On the other hand, I have been crocheting little dabs of sweetness here & there. And I have a plan in the works to make up some coasters too. (Aim high I always say!) Just need some country red wool to match my new color scheme - which is all shades of brown, cocoa, & beige with red thrown in for sassyness.

Wanna see my new coffee table? It's almost like it was born to be a crocheters coffee table with those under the glass, pie shaped baskets huh?!!

True Love. Even if the quality of my photo is crap...but it's late and my phone battery light is flashing fiercely so I guess I'm lucky it even cooperated at all. Anyways, can you not just see it chock full of tangled skeins and half-completed projects? Remind me to take another pic in about 6 months, lol!

You can't really tell but its sitting on a clearance-priced-groovy-chocolate-colored-shag area rug. More love.

I mention "clearance priced" because I'm on a frugal roll and diggin' it.

Has anyone seen the price tags on throw pillows these days? Highway robbery! (And yet another reason to learn to sew in a jiffy.) My big red pillow? Its a standard bed pillow with a gorgeous red quilted sham from WallyWorld - half the price & twice the size of a ribbon rose pillow I fawned over at Pier One.
We're couch wallowing people, we will fight over this pillow I can promise you. Plus a sham is removable & washable. Very important details not to be taken for granted in a house full of guys.

Oh, and the scrolly satin & velvet side pillow that you can barely see because my photography skills are Blackberry is lame? Yeah, totally a Family Dollar steal at only $5bucks. Got two. Still less than half the price of aforementioned ribbon rose rip off at Pier One. Ok, maybe not so washable, but I've laid down the law and plan to infuse as much estrogen into the room as possible to keep them on their toes (and off my foo-foo stuff!).

Tssssssssssssssssss..............that's the sound of me putting my imaginary flaming finger out on my tushie. Sizzle!

Welp, thats about all I can muster for tonite...meeting at the school first thing in the AM before work, still trying to get Max some attention for his learning disability. Night kids!

Can You See My Smoke Signals?

HELP ME! 

I'm lost in a pile of boxes that are not unpacking themselves - which ridiculously unfair considering we packed them AND moved them. 

I've mastered wiggling my nose just like Samantha on Bewitched, but the magic of TV hardly works in real life. 

Also, self-cleaning ovens? Big fat lie. Big. HUGE. 

I miss you all~

Will be back soon~

Promise~

Love you~

Mean it!