I hate my oven.

Either I am turning into a failure of a cook or my oven is crap.

I vote B.

In the last week I have had a double batch of poppyseed bread BURN, and a double batch of homemade brownies BURN.

The brownies maaay have been slightly my fault (they were really thick), but the poppyseed bread was most definitely the oven's fault.

This is horribly embarrassing to me. I've been cooking and baking since the 4th grade. I'm normally good at it. The brownies were so bad not even Matt would eat them and I had to throw them out. You have got to understand, he love, love, loves brownies. For him not to eat them they've got to be really bad.

Last night was our company Christmas party and I made brownies, cheesecake squares, and magic cookie bars. The only one that they ate all of was the brownies. What is wrong with people? All that magnificent baking (because these really did turn out awesome) and all they want to eat are brownies?

Now I know why some people skip holiday baking. Humbug.

Sweet Dreams

I Heart Faces Week 48: Sweet Dreams



When I saw this week's challenge for I ♥ Faces I thought "I can TOTALLY DO this!" Well, fact of the matter is I totally have done it about a million times. Some results better than others. But this one of Xander is by far one of my favorites. Taking such beautiful pictures of my kids now makes me feel guilty for gipping my older girls with bad photography when they were littler. Not that I'm stellar now, but I'm a good stretch better than I was. It also helps that my camera is about a gazillion times better than that first little Kodak point and shoot 3 megapixel camera I had 7 years ago!

Anywho, this is my beautiful son. Just a few hours after he was born. Taken by me after Matt had left the hospital to spend some time with the girls at home and let me rest. I may not have gotten much rest but that hospital had some of the best lighting EVER. I was seriously jealous that my home didn't have such nice light. I can feel how soft his cheeks are just looking at this picture. I can see my girls in those cheeks, too, and remember how it was when they were all this small (and now they are gangly legged Big Girls... 'cept Charlotte, she still has a little chub on her cheeks ;) still some gangle in her legs, though ). It makes me a little sad that he's already starting to crawl. And yet again I'm still so proud of him for it. But, that's a blog for another day.

Sweet sleeping babies. They make my heart sing.

L.

A few years ago I was on a kick of making avatars and desktops. I saved all of them (some are pretty pathetic and no I will not share them). Among these files I found this:



I had made a pretty sweet desktop background for L. with it. The girl in the painting reminded me of her. When I think of her that's the face I see (only L, not a painting). I still think that the Little Knitter looks like L. Only L has a few years on her. haha

There is a bit of irony there, though, because sometimes I think the Little Knitter looks sad, and when I think of L. my favorite thing to think about is her laugh. It's amazing. It makes me feel happy. I like making her laugh just to hear it.

I think I should record her laughing and use it for my ringtone.

That would be epic.

Photographic...

Today, I can report (with humorously mixed feelings [not in a bad way]) that I was featured on PW's blog!

I'm excited that she mentioned me (I have to say, personally I thought Laura's and my stunt was pretty memorable), but on the down side I pretty much look like a dork. Whoops.

In keeping with that theme I got a new ID card today as my old one was about to expire and on a military base you basically can't do anything without one of those magic little cards. And you know what? I look like a total freak.



Seriously, where the heck are my eyebrows??? And why do I look like I'm on drugs?

I tried to take a couple pictures to redeem myself and even that didn't really work out very well. (Thank you Daughters O Mine for breaking my tripod.)

Blurry:


Meh:


Why yes, I DID do laundry today and hung it to dry on my husbands pull up bar. How did you know?


This is probably the best one, after some serious cropping, and it's still rotten (I should have cropped that last one, it may actually be better but out of the 6 shots I took they all made me wince so I quit).


These are some of the first pictures I've tried taking since having Xander (we took a couple after Matt's Ranger school graduation, but I really think that's just about the only pictures I've taken... that's a lie, I did take a couple "head shots" for Matt while he was away at Ranger school because he missed my face and I'd only been sending him pics of the kids). At least Xander is lovely and adorable no matter what.

That's got to count for something, right?

I met PW. Kinda.

Ok, so after my "I love Laura" post last night I should probably go a little more in depth and explain why I was so giddy.

I chatted with her as she left work last night and she told me she was going to Ree Drummond's (The Pioneer Woman http://thepioneerwoman.com/) book signing.

Color me jealous.

I wished her a happy adventure and said I'd chat with her later. I also told her to tell PW that I love her. haha

A couple hours down the road I received the following message:

Laura: okay so im at the pw signing ;)
if you connect via video when i get up there i might let you say hi :-P

Well, needless to say I jumped on THAT train immediately, because I'm a P-dub addict and read her blog every day unless something keeps me away from my computer.

I uncorked a bottle of wine and we chatted for the next few hours while Laura made her merry way down the line. At some point along the way, I forget how early on, Laura told me that she had bought me one of Ree's books and was getting it signed for me. Which blew my mind because it was pure awesome. I was going to order one off amazon but I knew that there weren't going to be any stops along Ree's book tour that I'd be able to make it to so I'd resigned myself to my fate of not getting a signed copy and never getting to meet Ree.

We also took pictures. It's what we do.



I think people found us humorous.



Laura prefers to be behind the lens so most of the pictures I got of the evening looked like this:



Or this classic Laura pose:



While we were in line I got to meet Amy from http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/



We also perused the shelves (like how I talk about this like I was physically there?) and found such gems as this:



Flash cards? Oh my.

And we got closer and closer. Poor Laura had to carry me all night. But she was such a trooper. I really had the better end of the deal, I just sat around and drank wine and chatted.



I never realized that Borders had a whole section for Dummy books.



In keeping with our earlier theme:



Lest anyone worry that her arms got too tired hauling my bum around the store all night she did get a chance to sit and rest:



And we did a lot of this:



and this:



My ONLY regret is that when I actually got to "meet" Ree my head was in the clouds and I neglected to take a picture. Laura has one that I am going to steal. haha

So, thank you Laura for doing this for me. You made my night. Thank you Ree for being such a good sport and staying up till the wee hours to sign the books for all us yahoos. And thank you to all the people who hung out with us all night and laughed at our antics. I had a blast at the book signing. :D

ETA: Check out L's version of our grand adventure (her pictures are undoubtedly better because they weren't taken through a computer screen! haha!) http://whennooneslooking.wordpress.com/

Love that girl.

Laura, let it be said, is effing a-mazing. She stood in a line for hours to get a book signed (by one of the arguably coolest bloggers ever) and not only included me in her adventure but got me a book and a t-shirt. Freaking awesome. I love you forever, Laura. I hope I didn't scandalize anyone with my loose tongue there at then end, but I was a wee bit tipsy (still am) and ridiculously excited. I hope Ree wasn't too freaked out by my mug on the computer right in front of her face. haha

I'm stoked and cannot wait till we can wear our t-shirts together and plot what recipes to cook.

FTW! haha