A weekend filled with Harry Potter, house rearranging/organizing, a bike ride, making food stuff (smoothies, bread cars & initials, cookies), and refrigerator shopping is time well spent which is a good thing because I felt as if I was distracted and spinning my wheels focus-wise on Thursday and Friday. It was a tricky question of balance where the scales completely tipped out of my favor seeing as how I didn't shower until after the kids were in bed (at night!) or manage to squeeze in a workout (I'm calling it "time off" though there hasn't been much time ON but there will be plenty of time for ON TIME over the next two weeks if the weather holds out), yet we had truly wonderful days enjoying games, projects, music, and time together (even if one of us might have been stinkier than usual if you got too close. My kidlet tribe didn't seem to mind). Some days are just like that.
But what I discovered is that weeks without a bit of camp are really fun once we hit our groove and I convince the kids that arguing with each other before 9 am isn't the best way to start of the day. (Must have more of these unscheduled weeks next summer! And we still never made it to hike anywhere yet.). What else? Ryan is a kick-butt DJ. He had us grooving to the best tunes every time we needed some musical accompaniment with a solid mix of our favorite bands and songs.
This weekend is also ground-breaking because now both kids are on the parental dole. BOTH of them now GET ALLOWANCE! Yep, Ryan has been wanting to accumulate more money after seeing his big sister rolling in the dough and able to buy webkinz at will once a month when she saves up her "spend money" and wants in on the action. He's been trying to sell his artwork to me (and he's not pricing things to sell if you know what I mean) and he also didn't want to take no for an answer. He was just plain badgering me. I stood my ground because I was worried that he'd start charging me for every picture he drew for me so didn't want to start down that road and chose another path, albiet a more expensive one in the end. But it's time he start learning about saving, and giving, and how to manage his own money. I'm on the hunt to find the same bank that Jessi has that we LOVE! They didn't have it at the store that I remember seeing it at last so I need to call around this week.
I have a thick stack of magazines that I am going to start tackling this week (or else you will need to dig me out of this glossy papered hole that I will surely be in if things continue)! I will also be making yummy food this week (Pesto Potato Frittata, baby artichoke & scallion saute over penne, ivory lentil pancakes with mixed vegetable kootu) and hopefully posting some recipes that I've tried over the past two weeks to Whole Abundance (coconut lentil soup with lime, cheese straws, chocolate chip zucchini cake, my traditional summertime gazpacho, my favorite herb butter - all delicious).
And if you walk into my house right now you will see that the first room you see looks as empty our first townhouse looked when we just got out of college. We did some rearranging and moved some furniture that took up a chunk of space in this opening room and now just looks barren and sad. We're deciding on what we want to go there. A tall bookcase? A low bookcase and an arrangement of 4 12x12 layouts? Something else entirely? Who knows. We're taking suggestions (and hoping that Jeanette is reading this and wants to take on a charity case for those with poor home design skills/confidence or really people that just don't like to shop for things beyond the kitchen or on art supplies/books/biking equipment).
We had a refrigerator repairman come out on Friday to check out our ailing refrigerator (it's the one we have in the garage as our 2nd one.... or the one that Mike likes to call his beer fridge... the one that he complains is SUPPOSED to be his beer fridge but that, as it turns out, is really my flour fridge. It's where I keep all my whole wheat, millet, quinoa, white whole wheat, rye, whole wheat pastry, garbanzo bean, and other flours, as well as many of my whole grains, nuts, and whole wheat pastas from my Whole Foods runs where I clear the shelves of their 365 whole wheat pastas in any shape I can get it because it's the only whole wheat pasta we enjoy - except for homemade but since going to DLX from my Kitchenaid I can no longer make homemade pastas. Let me pause while I weep.)
......<sniff> <sniff>.......
Okay, I think I'm better now.
Ah, yes, where was I? Oh, yeah, the broken fridge. Our freezer doesn't seem to be doing such a good job of keeping things frozen these days. The inner areas seem fine, there's no frost/ice buildup but the door contents seem a little more unfrozen than I like my frozen things. So the repairman came out, checked all the parts, couldn't find any parts that needed repairing, concurred that our unit is very old (it came with the house and turns out to be a 1989 model - I didn't even KNOW my husband then) and will likely need replacing soon, then took one look at our coils and said that we definitely needed to clean those suckers for optimum performance. So I got out the vacuum and sucked all that dust right off!! Who knew you were supposed to do this every year?? I've owned my own home that contained a refrigerator for over 12 years (and have lived in a house that has had a refrigerator in in for 34 years) and never knew you were supposed to vacuum the coils once a year. So the man said that in 24 hours if the freezer doesn't seem to have gotten any better then it's time to go shopping. To not draw this out any longer.... well... we went shopping today. We found some that we both like and were suprised at how easy it was to agree on things. We are still going to look around to see if there are more models we like but so far we are leaning towards a side-by-side, stainless steel model, with water/ice on the door. It's very similar to what we currently have in our kitchen (except in our kitchen now is white... we are going to move that one outside to the garage to replace the broken one and then move the new one into our kitchen to match the rest of our appliances). I was looking at some of the French door styles and I just don't know if I want to be piling stuff on the bottom. Will things be harder to manage this way? Will I have enough room? Will it be harder to find things? I'd love to hear from people that cook a lot and freeze things like doughs, soups, breads, etc. and how they fare with the models they have and any drawbacks/suggestions, etc.
In other news.... my Mom comes to visit on Friday! I'm very much looking forward to seeing her in a few days as it's been too long since our last visit!
