6/365: Relaxing after a long day

6/365: Relaxing after a long day, a photo by AuntCharChar on Flickr.

We spent the day looking after John's dad and decided to go out to dinner and have a few drinks afterwards. We had a great time. I love this picture of John!

5/365: White Pan Bread

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"5/365:  Breakfast bread"

This morning we went to see John's dad for breakfast.  We prepped everything last night.  He requested a Western Omlette and home fries.  We chopped the onions and peppers, cooked the potatoes, and made the bread dough.  Today we chopped the potatoes, baked the bread in our never before used pullman loaf pan and packed everything up for breakfast.  The omlette's were delicious and the potatoes were even better.  I think everyone enjoyed their meal.  

3/365: poopoopaper - paper made from moose poo. My mom went to Canadaand brought this back for me. It's sitting on my desk, ready for me tostart my "poo" list :-)

3/365: poopoopaper - paper made from moose poo. My mom went to Canada and brought this back for me. It's sitting on my desk, ready for me to start my "poo" list :-), a photo by AuntCharChar on Flickr.

Happy Birthday Zoe!

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"I think she likes it!"

Amazing

I'm in a really bad mood right now, but I'm hanging on to something precious.  Something precious that I want to share.

This was the first year in a very long time that I did not need the help of pharmaceuticals to get me through Christmas.  This makes me so happy.

That is all.

Charlene

Where I'm From

Where I’m From

November 8, 2012

I am from clothes hanging on the line outside, from Hellman’s mayo and great grandma’s sweet pickles.

I am from the hot, un-airconditioned SOUTH, playing in the sprinklers, getting a suntan on the boat or the back deck or the hand-dug pond in the back yard that is warmed with water that flows through a pipe that goes through a fire pit.

I am from the Aralias, Gerbera Daisies and the marijuana, the crinkly leaves, the stunning gem colors, and the curious cages.

I am from Ginnie Springs camping at Thanksgiving and Standing Rib Roast at Christmas.  I am from Great Grandma Wood and Great Grammie Glidden and across the Northeast US and across the pond.

I am from the alcoholism and deep stubbornness .

From “Don’t make that face or it’ll get frozen that way” and “Because I said so”.

I am from going to churches with friends and relatives and on special occasions. I am from Montessori School to Sunday School.

I'm from Florida, Germany and Scotland, Great grandpa’s refrigerator Velcro soup, Entenman’s doughnuts and fresh fish and lobster on demand.

From the time on the Peace River when it was “TOO DEEP”, the times the fire department was called to the house because of shenanigans that were too obvious to ignore, to cozy, fun, loving sleepovers at JoJo and Aunt Sandy’s houses.

I am from Great Grandma’s book of our genealogy, The Wood family wall in JoJo’s house, and the love that was never lacking.

Saturday - Fun Day

So after sleeping in until almost noon, I finally rolled my butt out of bed and got on with the day.  I had a few errands I had to run today and my mom called me so I asked her if she wanted to join me.  She's always up for some shopping so off we went.  First we went and had lunch at Tijuana Flats.  I had the chicken flautas.  They were ok.  Mom had some kind of rice bowl which was way better than the flautas.  I don't get the love for that place.  That's the second time I've been and I have to say, I'm just not that impressed.

After lunch we went to Target, I needed to buy an air mattress for our camping trip that's coming up at the end of the month.  I ended up with a queen sized coleman - it was a decent price and it should be a little sturdier than the Serta that was ten bucks more.  While at Target, I spied the new PINK CD, which I had to have, and some halloween marshmallows that i'm going to dehydrate for the camping trip for us to have in our hot chocolate.  I have a few friends coming this year on the camping trip and I'm really excited about it.  More on that another day.

After Target, we went to World Market to look around, and I ended up with some orange chocolate truffle cookies in my paws.  We munched on those afterwards and they were delicious!  Onward to Yankee Candle where I procured two giant whoopee pie candles for work.  We bake cookies for our clients, but they don't always smell as cookie-like as we want, so I thought the chocolate candles would enhance the scent of the cookies a bit more.  Don't you wish your financial planner baked fresh cookies when you came in to an appointment?  Uh huh!

Finally we went to BJ's where I got a bunch of stuff for work, water, coffee, TP, paper towels etc.

Mom got a half price costume at Target for Halloween next year.  She tried it on when we got home and it looks super cute!  It's held together in the back by velcro, so she's going to have to be careful! LOL!

Now I'm home and just finished watching Private Practice from last week and I'm wishing there was a Pioneer Woman to watch from this morning.

I'm pooped!  How was your day?

Char

Pineapple Upside Down Cake for Mom's Birthday

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"Homemade pineapple upside down cake for mommy's birthday tomorrow."

They look so darn happy!

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"Celebrating with mom and

her BFF for BFF's bday"

We went to Squid Lips.  The food was exceptionally good.  The pineapple martini... meh.

Goth Daisy and more Black and Whites ~ For What's Next Girls

Soooo... "The Aunt' over at What's Next Girls was talking about Black and White pictures today, and I am also a huge fan.  I just took this one last night....

I thought Goth Daisy was a pretty good title for it, what do you think?

I got a new app for my iPhone recently called Instagram.  It's pretty cool and I can take a picture, add a filter to it and post it to FB, Twitter and Instagram lickety split... unfortunately I can't post them to my blog as easily... so if you'd like to see them, please follow me on Instagram I'm @ChaRoo on there - I'm also going to start sending them to Flickr - I just set up a Flickr account under Cha_Roo, some rat-nose already stole my handle, can you believe it?? I'm totally loving this iPhone.

Anywho, I went through the archives because "The Aunt" was talkin about B&W pics to see what else I could find, and here they are, hope you enjoy!  Thanks for the idea "The Aunt" - Hahaha I guess I need to figure out your name eh?  :) :) :)  BTW, the funny thing, is that I only know her as "The Aunt" because that's what "Jennifer" her niece calls her over at Wild and Precious whom I also enjoy reading.  Check them out if you get a chance.  They're good people :)

Without further ado... more black and whites...

Hope you enjoyed them!  Char

I'm a New Great Aunt

Say Hello to Grace Elena Noel.  She was born around noon today. Isn't she a cutie pie???  I can't wait to meet her!!

Happy Birthday to Me

If you know me well, you know that my favorite holiday of the year is my birthday. I try to milk it all month too. Oh and it's important that you know that Valentines day is NOT the same as my birthday, and you bes not make that mistake ;-)

Anyway, my husband has this gift thing DOWN! He got me this gorgeous necklace for my birthday today, plus two awesome birthday cards. I love him so much.






Love's Embrace Birthday Necklace

  
I got over 45 birthday wishes on Facebook, and both my sisters, my mom, one of my aunts, MY COUSIN, MY BROTHER and GRAMMIE called me today.

I learned a few little juicy tidbits of information... Grammie (who is 84 BTW) is dating a guy named Lou, they have a set date every Thursday night - because that's the only night that she's available.  They generally go to the Moose Lodge to play games and they eat dinner there or sometimes they go out.  That's pretty cool!  He lives in the same park as Grammie.  I'm so happy for her.  I firmly believe that the best thing that she could have done after Grampy died was to move to the place she is now.  She's got a complete and full social life, and all of us around if she needs us.

The other juicy tidbit I learned today is that someone in high school had a crush on me... How CRAZY is that???  I'm seriously shocked, and flattered!  This is how it went down:

High School Guy (HSG): Charlene do you remember me from highschool?

Me: Hi HSG! I remember your name and your face, but I can't remember a lot of specifics :) But I don't remember a lot of specifics from High School... I think it's my mind protecting me ! Heehee! How have you been? Is there anything that I should remember that I don't? How come we aren't friends yet? What have you been up to?

HSG:  I was quiet and shy in highschool but had a huge crush on you . I got expelled senior year for stealing Rival School's mascot with SR lol I used to hang with JD, CJ, MS etc

Me (Truly shocked): Wow! I had no idea you had a crush on me!!!!! How come you never said anything to me? That's funny about stealing the mascot! I don't recognize J, C or M's names. I'm much better with faces though. I guess I'm going to have to dig out the yearbooks... (although I have no idea where they are!)

...and on it went from there.  He's married with three kids, and I'm married obviously.  We live thousands of miles apart.  But wow... what an ego boost.  What a crazy feeling.  I never ever thought guys in HS gave me a second look (I never dated HS guys, always guys I met at the beach or at clubs - outside my HS - usually hispanic HA!).  It was great to connect with him and hopefully we'll keep in touch.  What a strange world we live in these days.

Hope you all enjoy my birthday month as much as I am.  OH, and don't  worry... I still have to tell you about the Drag Queen Show I was surprised with last Friday night from my husband and sisters for my birthday.  Crazy fun!

Stay tuned!

Char

Dad

My second dad.

I'm so happy John's dad is in town.  It's been so wonderful seeing so much of him.  We'll be sad when he goes back to NY.

That's a couple of handsome looking men there.

C

The Birthday Girl

Happy 4th Birthday Miss Zoe. We love you!
Aunt CharChar and Uncle John


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Baba's Bread Pudding

John's Baba used to make this. His dad is in town for a few weeks so I made some for him. I hope he will like it.
Char
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Merry Christmas and Happy New Decade

Christmas is over and for the most part it was drama free.  Thank you God!

I received some nice things and exactly what I wanted, plus was surprised too which is always a good thing.  More importantly to me, I was able to give some things.  They were homemade, but most everyone seemed to appreciate the time and effort that went into making them.  It would be so much easier for us to write a check or go to the store and pick up a gift, but money was tight this year so we baked.  This is what we made and distributed to friends and family:

Christmas Mice
Cream cheese filled Oatmeal Raisin Whoopie pies
Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sugar cookies with sprinkles and dots
Pecan rolo pretzels
Pretzel rolo pretzels
Mojo de Ajo
Cranberry almond white chocolate bark

We had planned to make more or bake cakes etc... but that just didn't happen.  I think Christmas was a success this year because:

I put a tree up (Next year I would like for us to put it up together and maybe get a real one)
I was able to find and give enough things to make me feel good
I received surprises. (I guess I love surprises!)
I sent out Christmas cards (Even if they weren't embellished)
There was no family drama.  Everyone was perfect!!
I got to spend Christmas morning watching Zoe & Zane opening gifts again
We had a fantastic meal with both families
I made a VERY yummy rub/paste for the rib roast


These things about Christmas did not make me very happy, and I'd like to improve them next year:

I left the ribs to the rib roast on the counter, so I had to throw them away instead of making yummy soup! :(
I remembered at the last minute that John had to work until late on Christmas Eve and it upset me a lot
I mostly got all the gifts together myself
I filled John's stocking at the last minute
I finished wrapping presents at the last minute


All in all I can't complain.  I'm a very happy camper!

How was your Christmas?? 

How are you going to ring in the new decade?

Char

One of my surprises:

Christmas Morning

Here are some pictures of how I spent Christmas Morning:

Mmmmm Coffee

Zane posing for a picture

Zoe posing with a napkin on her head.  Silly Goose!

They opened their stockings, now waiting patiently for breakfast!

Finally we can open our gifts!

The big reveal!  Just what we asked Santa for!

Zoe:  I want to ride it!  Zane:  I want to put my lollypops in the basket!

Ready to go!

Zoom~Zoom~Zoom

I can do this too!

Helping daddy put on the bell

Hangin with mama!

Special thanks to my sister and BIL for letting me share Christmas morning with them again this year since John had to work!

C

Christmas Eve Bummer

I was enjoying the 'W' family Christmas but really missing my husband. He made it just as we were sitting down to eat. You can bet that turned this frown upside down!
C

Christmas Gifts

In my family since there are now 7 grandchildren/nieces and nephews, we decided quite a few years ago that the adults would draw names. That worked out well, but now that times are tighter, for the past two years we've added a new wrinkle.


You draw a name, and you can get that person anything you want, as long as it comes from your home (something you already have) or you make it.

The idea is that you don't have to go out and spend money. It's worked out pretty fantastic for the most part.

This year my grandmother picked my name and she gave me a sweet little box filled with about 8 shot glasses that my grandfather had purchased from Eastern Airlines when he worked for them over 50 years ago. She wrapped them in some of her delicate, gorgeous hankies that I have always loved. A true treasure for sure!

My brother got John's name, and my brother has been honing his woodworking skills on the tools that he inherited after my grandfather passed away. He made my brother a wooden sign that says "John's Cafe" with a little pot with steam coming off of it. It is really beautiful!

John and I both made various baked goods for our giftees and added some little trinkets that we had laying around.

I think everyone was pretty pleased with how things turned out. I know I am!!  I also like how it makes it more about each other and less about trying to out-buy someone.

How do you guys deal with Christmas gifting in your family?
 
Charlene

White Mice - For Chrismouse

I'm pretty bah humbug when it comes to Christmas.  I guess it's mostly because I hate all the garbage that comes along with the holidays.  The planning, the parties, the commitments blah blah blah...

It really doesn't help when you don't have money to spend on gifts for people, when you really, really want to.

We have 20 nieces and nephews plus 3 great nieces/nephews in the family and even if we only gave them each $10 it would still be $230... that's a lot of dough for us right now.

I was talking to Summer, and she suggested that I make something... I was like yeah but...blah... and she's like what about those mice that you made a few years ago.  Those were so cute, and the kids would really get a kick out of them...  So she inspired me.  To wit:

Mice en Place (har har har) (Click on the pictures to enlarge)

Mice - First dip

Mice - Second dip plus ears

Cute little meeses

Mischief of mice!

Ready for packaging

Char