Visitors and Bloody nose

The little "picker" dancing to Bella Bella Dancer- Ella.

Well, I was meaning to finish up a bunch of mini Amy Butler purses last night but realized that I was going to have family coming today! Instead, I fell asleep when I should have been cleaning, then had to miss my son's last baseball game (bad mother!!) so I can clean, cook and get the "guest" room ready.

One of my Aunt's shopped from my Etsy box (Thanks, Aunt L!) and ended up buying quite a few things so those are now gone from Dizzy Broad, along with a couple of items that were to be posted later. I did get one made with some coordinating card candy so may post that tomorrow.

While we were out walking and showing my Aunt how close we are to the SF bay, my daughter had a major nosebleed (those little fingers just don't know enough to keep from sticking them into the nostrils!). No one had tissues. So she was bleeding profusely and screaming like a maniac. She also started to throw up because, obviously, that blood taste is just nauseating! Should have just scooped her up and ran her home but didn't want her to panic further so in between screams, throw up (sorry!) and spitting out blood, we managed to calmly walk home. Ended up hosing her off in the driveway - yeah! It was finally warm enough today to go out without jackets - while my son got her tissues from the car. What a mess she was!! Now I'm crossing my fingers that HER fingers don't make their way up that nose again tonight while she is sleeping!

This is what happens during the day with a 4 yr old

Barbie. Polly. Kelly. This is what my daughter and I do most everyday - playing with her dolls. These days are fast and fleeting and am realizing this so I try to capture what I can with the camera and hopefully, someday, have the time to put it all together in a scrapbook. How fun would it be for her to see this scene when she's 18 years old?!

Summer official starts for us today as my daughter is done with preschool...forever! The weather is still not cooperating (only in the low 60s), however, it is a beautiful sunny day.

This is just a quick post - my daughter is now calling me for our afternoon tea with all her little dolly friends. Have a glorious day!

One more...

Speaking of caffeine...here's a photo of my favorite coffee. Oh, how I miss going to the local Tully's in my Seattle neighborhood and getting my usual and sneaking in a bit of their soft serve Tully's ice cream (it's to die for!!!). Yep, it used to be the coffee bag and recycled into a little purse to hold a set of coffee scented mini cards.

If you look really closely at the cards you'll see that it even looks like the coffee is spilling over the cups (that actually is the scent oil spilling over :-)! LOL! You'd get a caffeine buzz just smelling these cards.

I'll try and post this set tomorrow in my Etsy shop, if kids allow me time to do so!

Hello Nightowls!!

I drank an entire bottle of that Mocha Frappaccino after dinner (because I needed the bottle for a craft project) so I'm fully caffeinated and ready to wake up the blogging world!

Tomorrow is my daughter's last day of preschool :-( She was telling me tonight before bed that she is really sad about it because she is going to miss her friends and her teachers. Made me almost cry listening to her talk about that. Didn't think a 4 yr old was capable of those feelings. I told her that we're going to make it a special day by giving her teachers presents and if I'm still awake after this posting, I'd make something too for a couple of her friends (that she won't see again as they are all going to different elementary school). This was a milestone for my girl to make friends as she was always tagging along with her big brother and hanging out with his friends so this year was the first time she really made friends on her own and is very sad about leaving them.

Above is a photo of what I made. The little cards next to the bottles are actually gift card holders and the little boxes are the presents for the assistants - they are Hershey Nuggets all gussied up. I love this color combination - reminds me of chocolate covered cherries i used to eat when we lived in Seattle. Also, the bottles are not my original idea...saw them somewhere on Splitcoasters.

Good grief! Just noticed my DH is asleep on the chair! He NEEDS to get upstairs to sleep so he can earn more money for my crafting habit :-). Plus my Zutter arrived today so need to sell a bunch of Etsy stuff to help pay for that binding machine!! Good night - or I should say, Good Morning!

More Dream Dinner Opinion

Well, hey, looks like the hired blogger folks at Dream Dinner found me....see post about Hell's Kitchen and click on comment....

Continuing on - have no clue if these are helpful to anyone but I sure wish someone had done this before so I'd know what not to order at Dream Dinners!

The Good

Chicken Enchilada - these are no-brainer to fix if you had to make them at home but you can't beat the convenience of having this ready in your freezer. The sauce you add to the chicken (this is cooked diced chicken you add with the rest of the filling) is a mixture of sourcream and salsa and a bit of green chilies, green onions and a little cheese. I've tried doing this at home but it never tastes as good as the DD version. I'm sure it has something to do with the brand of salsa they use (I'm assuming it's all SYSCO brand). Anyway, when I do try to copy this at home, I use whole grain tortillas, non-fat sourcream, fake chicken strips (Morningstar brand is pretty good) and light cheese. I'm not sure how much calories I save my family but they prefer the DD version.

Chicken Mirabella -they call this customer favorite and comes back several times a year at the shop. I have a recipe very similar to this one but have to admit, that mine has more sour flavor whereas DD's is a little sweeter. This has prunes (yes - sounds weird but think of fiber=good for your kids). It also has green olives and capers. It's a great dish to serve when you're expecting company. The only thing I don't like about this is that they stopped selling this with rice. As a matter of fact, very few DD entrees the last couple of months no longer come with a side of something. Hmmmmm.....

Bombay Chicken with Coconut Rice - I think the last time this was offered was last June and am hoping that the paid bloggers at Dream Dinner gets a whiff of this post and tell the DD folks bring it back sometime soon. This was absolutely fantastic!!! However, if you're one with pedestrian taste, then you'd probably hate it. It had cumin, chutney and other things I can't recall but it earned 4 stars in my book! We've grilled the chicken and also done it on stovetop and it's delicious both ways. If they do offer this again and offer it with the side dish of coconut rice, you'll need to add an extra 1/2 c. of water to the rice for the medium serving and about 3/4 c. for the large serving.

The Bad

Anything with Southern Living or Body + Soul or REDBOOK in front of the entree name is a waste of your money. You may as well spend that money on frozen dinner from the grocery store! The ones we've had were:

Body+Soul Chicken with Papaya: Sounds yummy and exotic, right? WRONG! This dish has too much ginger (and I'm careful not to add too much ginger when I'm at the shop!). The papaya adds nothing to the dish - it may as well be squash and you'd never know the difference. It also had a bit of a sour taste. I couldn't figure out how to make this palatable and made me mad that I had ordered two of these entrees.

REDBOOK Madras Chicken Curry: This one smelled fantastic but the flavor was shallow. It tasted like it needed to simmer for a couple of days for the flavors to fully develop. I can't recall what was in it except that I didn't want to order this again!

Body+Soul Moroccan Chicken with Pumpkin: There they go again, tempting you with exotic names but don't be fooled, this was very so-so. You can pull out your Betty Crocker cookbook and make something similar in taste. I think it had raisins and too much cinnamon flavor. Best to save those 2 ingredients in a pie. If you want something Moroccan, go to a Moroccan restaurant.

Southern Living Herbed Chicken & White Beans: Oh, I had high hopes for this dish - especially since my submission for Chicken Cassoulet didn't even win a mention in the Dream Dinner Recipe contest (if you want my cassoulet recipe, leave me a comment and I'll send it to you - super easy and a one-pot-meal that even your children would eat!). Anyway, it looked like a good, stewy dish to eat on a cold evening but this dish needed a lot of sprucing up. I added extra garlic and a dash of balsamic vinegar just to try and wake up some flavors but that's already too much to do when this is supposed to be a defrost-cook-serve meal. The herbs called for were too strong and left a perfumy taste so I tried to overcome those flavors with the vinegar and garlic.

I'm not sure what Dream Dinner was doing there by having those Magazines "sponsor" those recipes. Maybe they got free advertisement in their magazines??? I hope they don't do a partnership like that again because I thought they were all disappointments and a sell out. Did those magazines really have input with those dishes? Yuck! Please, Dream Dinner, don't do that again!

Now, I'm feeling rather hungry....

Is it ever going to get warm?!?!?!?!

We thought that moving to California would mean lots of warm and sunny days...we got sunny but the heat is seriously lacking! Perhaps we were imagining Southern California-type heat? We may as well be living in another state! Anyway, am just a little ticked that it's June 1st tomorrow and I'm still wearing a fleece coat!

My son and husband are off in the mountains somewhere on a cub scouts camping trip. It's my little guy's first camping trip and he was very worried about werewolves and Sasquatch (Ok, he's only 7 so what did you expect?). I just got a text from them from last night that they are fine and warm inside the sleeping bags. No mention of werewolves...

So, Beck's and I are having a girly weekend. We are still in our pjs (yikes!). It's a good thing that our neighbors are allergic to people so no worry about unexpected folks coming up to the door to say hello or be neighborly. They would get quite a fright looking at us both. Oh....I just looked at my daughter and she is dressed! When did she do that??! She is sporting her favorite Hannah Montana t-shirt and a skirt, of course.

The picture above is from a couple of years ago, at a beach in Southern California. It was a lovely, beautiful and hot, hot day. Sigh....

Hell's Kitchen

Ok - took a little time off from my craft table tonight and got caught up on HK. It's entertaining TV but you couldn't get me to eat there!! And here are the following reasons:

1. Maybe some of the scenes were cut but from the looks of it, several people touch the food before they take it out to the diners. Chef Ramsey is doing most of the touching and not once do you see him wash his hands.

2. Chef Ramsey and the rest of the contestants touch their faces a lot while they are in the kitchen! Then they touch the food!! Hello!!! If you have pimples and you touch your face, then touch food, you can possibly contaminate the food you are handling with bacteria! I thought I remember reading that you can transfer salmonella from your pimples!!! Eeeuw!

3. All the contestants smoke. I know that this should not be a cause for prejudice but sure hope that they wash their hands after they smoke and BEFORE they handle food.

4. One of the episodes even showed one of the contestants with sweat streaming down his face and onto the pasta he was cooking! Ohhhhh...it's making me nauseous just thinking about it!

5. I think there are only 3 contestants who really know what they are doing. I think the rest were casts for their personalities (and definitely not on their level of attractiveness).

6. One contestant tried to use unwashed lettuce for garnish on the shrimp cocktail. His excuse for not doing it? He said "he couldn't help it"! Yikes!

In my other life, I had dreams of becoming a chef too and went to cooking school. One of the requirements was to intern at a restaurant. I had to do a rotation in the restaurant kitchen and the area that was such an eye opener for me was the "cold" table where salads were prepared. I had to do a lot of chopping and slicing for dinner salads. One of the regular restaurant employee was working along side me one evening and I don't know if he was showing off or what but he was trying to do some fancy maneuvers with his knife. Well, shortly after that, he sliced his finger! I don't think it came off but it bled profusely. He acted all cool and merely got a paper towel to wrap his finger in and continued to slice!! I was horrified! Hasn't this guy heard of HIV or Hepatitis??? Well, you can guess from here that I don't order salads at restaurants anymore!! If it's cold, I don't order it (unless it's ice cream :-)!

See why I do Dream Dinners? It's like eating out but you have control over the touching and cooking of your food! I have many more food horror stories but I don't want to completely gross you out now so I'll save the rest for another time!