My new cool plant

Skott did an amazing job in the thoughtful gift department this year!  My stocking was a "nerd/geek" theme and I LOVED it!  It contained things such as a titanium spork, a staple-less stapler, a light/field magnifying scope, and a pair of socks that look like purple "chucks" shoes.
One of my other gifts was this cool plant.  It is dormant and all dried out.  These photos were taken every hour after I watered it. You could literally sit and watch it move and grow.

To keep the plant healthy, you actually need to let it go dormant a couple times a year.  Perfect for people who forget to water their plants!  :)

Happy Day

Fucie has been quite entertaining lately, when he is not sleeping.  He packed around this toy like this for part of the afternoon.  It just cracked me up every time I looked at him.

I am thoroughly enjoying being able to finally relax!  Even though it is only temporary, it is a much needed break.  I FINALLY got a new cell phone yesterday.  Let me tell you, if you are thinking of getting a new phone AVOID Motorola (specifically the RockR)!!!  I have had SO many problems with the software, it's unbelievable!  -and not to mention the "smart" text is DUMBER than the dumbest hillbilly redneck.  I had to "teach" it to spell common words like "hahaha" "lol" "aren't"..... EVERY day.  So frustrating.  Anyways, back to my rant  :)   I have had this model of Motorola for a little over a year and have replaced the phone three times for various reasons.  It would have been more times than that but I just gave up and decided to deal with it randomly shutting off, splitting the screen in half, blinking out during texts, not notifying me of calls and texts, and not being able to spell.  I don't know who is happier: me, or Skott, since he won't have to listen to me go ballistic over the latest phone antics anymore.  My new phone is just like one that Skott has and he loves his so hopefully this relationship fares better.  I do get a giant kick out of the fact that our cell phones have more memory than our computer and almost the same megapixels as our regular digital camera!  Yikes!

I hope you all have a very happy new year!

What a relaxing weekend!

Having a very relaxing weekend with Skott off work for four days.  We got a lot of weather so it was nice to just stay indoors, safe and warm.

We decorated our tree this year with a coastal theme. A few years ago Skott painstakingly made ornaments from all the shells and sand dollars we had collected on the beach. We had to supplement with a few shells off ebay. The garland is made from fishing net.  We had a great christmas day and yes, we even have stockings for our dogs :)

Weekend trip to Duluth/North Shore, MN

First, can I just say this new blogging thing I uploaded is driving me nuts.  I can't get it to move the pictures where I want them.  Why do "upgrades" usually cause so much frustration when they are supposed to be faster, easier, and more convenient????  Anyways, enough of that :) 

Skott had to work on his actual birthday and I had a final exam that day so we celebrated over the weekend.  I planned a suprise trip to Duluth, MN.  It was somewhere we had never been and we needed an adventure!

I am sure visiting Duluth in the dead of winter is not actually a good idea.  We stayed downtown by the Canal District.  They are trying to revitalize the area but what sounded neat and interesting on the internet..... is just about that: sounds good, looks good on paper, but....  They still have a long ways to go before I will feel comfortable walking around at night down there.  The only redeeming thing about downtwon Duluth is they have a "skywalk" which is heated and connected to much of the downtown shops.  They were a few neat, unique shops but overall, not my favorite place by far!  We thought maybe we were "missing" something.  Asked the locals.  Nope.  Not much to Duluth, especially in the winter.

But we had FUN and laughed a lot!

The next day we headed north along the scenic route.  We found an amazing coffee shop out in the middle of nowhere.  It was SO GOOD!  How could we not have a good day after that?  We pulled off and took a lot of pictures.  We spent the morning driving, talking, and enjoying the view.  Our plans were to stop by Gooseberry Falls Park but we wimped out and decided to stay in the warm car.

Had a great time but we both agree we can cross Duluth off our list of places to live someday :) 

D.O.N.E.

Done with another semester.  Feels great!

Plants are COOL

Anyone who knows me, knows that I freaking LOVE plants! They fascinate me! They have no brain and are rooted to one spot, yet have so many adaptations to get the resources they need to survive. Amazing!
So you can only imagine I was IN HEAVEN last weekend when we went to the Conservatory in Minneapolis/St. Paul. It felt so wonderful in there: warm, peaceful, bright, and uplifting. Here are just a few random shots of all the neat things we saw:

This one was taken using the negative setting on my phone camera:

Skott is at it again!

It started out looking like this:

(yes, this is our driveway)

and choice pieces ended up being used for wonderful creations like this:

a gardening caddy for Sherry

an artists caddy for Justine

And the final masterpiece:



A cabinet for our office that holds the filing cabinet and has plenty of drawers for organizing paper, envelopes, paper clips, etc.
It looks so amazing! I am so proud of him!

I caved

Well it's official:
I am a Wisconsin resident.
After two years of freezing my feet all winter long, I decided to quit borrowing Skott's boots so much and cough up the money for a good pair of winter boots.
I bought some Columbia boots rated for -32 degrees last weekend.
(If they sold a lower rating, I would have gotten those instead.)

This may look like a beautiful bridge:

and it is a gorgeous walk when it's not freezing cold outside.
This is the bridge I walk across every day to get to school.
During the winter, I lose feeling in my toes about half way across.
By the time I have completed the 15 minute walk from my car, across this bridge, and to the science building, I can't feel my legs.

This bridge made David Letterman's Top 10 Coldest Places.

I will not argue.

But I am ready now. Me and my new boots.

A delicious new recipe

Skott is an amazing cook! I really got lucky. His latest is this awesome recipe he found in Coastal Living magazine. He made it for Thanksgiving dinner and it was AMAZING! We try to limit our sugar intake so we are always on the lookout for dessert recipes that don't contain a ton of sugar. Anyone needing a new idea:

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Plum Upside-Down Pudding Cake

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 25 minutes

Cool time: 30 minutes

4 small red or black plums, sliced

1/2 cup sugar (we used splenda)

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (we used vanilla extract + what's below)

3/4 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup whole or low-fat buttermilk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup flour (we used whole wheat pastry flour)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

whipping cream

1. Combine plums, 1 Tbsp sugar, lemon juice (vanilla), and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl, tossing gently.

2. Grease sides and bottom of a 9-inch cast-iron skillet or deep dish pie pan (we used glass pyrex pie pan). Cover bottom with plum slices, overlapping slightly.

3. Whisk together eggs, remaining sugar, buttermilk, vanilla, and butter until well blended.

4. Combine flour, baking powder, and remaining salt; whisk into egg mixture. Pour batter over fruit. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown (the longer you cook, the more cake-like it becomes instead of pudding/cakey).

Cool in pan 30 minutes.

5. Run tip of knife around edges of cake to loosen. Invert onto a platter and serve with sweetened whipped cream.

Skott has also made this with apple slices and pecans. It is a nice touch if there is extra fruit, to slice and lay on top after you have flipped the cake onto a platter.

He is going to try various fruit combinations in the future.

We found we liked it better without the whipped cream (but we are weird like that, we don't like sweet things)

P.S. all mentioning of "we" above actually means "He" (Skott) hahaha!

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And one last tip:

Don't forget to shut the beaters off before you plug them back in after walking across the kitchen to have your wife sample the whipping cream! :) if I could have captured the entire kitchen, you would have seen the whipped cream across the entire thing and up onto the cabinets!

Our furry "kidz" licking the beaters

Random happenings

Skott has been working A LOT of double shifts the past few months and I have been buried in homework. Needless to say, our lives have been fairly uneventful. I guess that is ok.
Skott's double shifts involve him driving all night so I try to send him funny texts and pictures while I, myself, am awake pulling all-nighters (clearly getting too old for this).
This one I titled: "Me and my new lover":


We have these awesome chairs in our bedroom that I love to sit in and do homework. The dogs fight over the other chair and the ottoman. Izzy is in the chair and Fucie is at my feet on the ottoman.
This is titled: "waiting for daddy to get home":


Izzy showing love:

Thanks for working so hard babe!
Just two more semesters

Fall-ness

I was going to title my blog "Halloween" but I don't want to scare any fragile children that might see the title and get "scared"
Puhleez
Sometimes all this political correctness crap really bothers me!

Anyways, my nephews Mason and Aundray spent the night. Skott made cupcakes with them:

and I made this disgusting jello foot:

next year I want to try my hand at a jello brain mold....

grape juice

We have a grape vine on a trellis in front of our house and also one along the fence in our driveway. The vine in the driveway gets picked clean by critters but they seem to miss the one up front. Last summer we didn't do anything with the grapes. This summer, the grape vine went crazy and actually destroyed the trellis under the weight of all the fruit.

I went out last Sunday afternoon to "hurry and pick the grapes". Three plastic bags later... this is what I hd soaking in the kitchen sink:

I didn't have the first clue as to what to do with them so I put them in a strainer and smashed them with a big ladle. Two hours later, this is my reward:

The entire time I kept thinking.... "there has got to be a better way to do this....".
It did smell wonderful though! -and tastes amazing.

Admist all the drying foliage popped this little beauty: a random late bloomer in my wildflower garden.

not a leaky window

I went into the bedroom to open the blinds before leaving for school. I almost panicked when I saw this puddle of "water" on the floor. It was huge! My first thought was that the window (or roof) was leaking.

But if you can tell from this picture, it was just Confuscious drooling. He is developing a bit of a drool problem in his old age. He loves to sleep on this ottoman under the window. I guess it's a good thing his head WAS hanging off the edge a little with that much drool.

this just struck me as funny

Maybe I am just in a bizarre mood today but I actually laughed out loud when I was walking to school and saw all the city snowplows and sanding trucks scooping and hauling LEAVES.
This is one of the many gigantic piles in the school parking lot: