Still need a costume...?

Aren't these great? You can find all of them over at Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The R2-D2 mask is fabulous ... but I do love Christopher Walken!! Which one is your favorite?

Recipe Alert: Chicken Creole Soup ...

I made this soup/stew over the weekend - and it is FABulous! Seriously. I am a soup snob. This is great! It has just enough "heat", plenty of body and lots of chicken. I'd even serve this to guests with some cornbread and a salad. I picked up this little mini-cookbook from Walgreen's the other day, and I have about two dozen recipes I'm dying to try.

Anyway... here's the recipe (fyi, anything with an asterisk means I veered from recipe):
Chicken Creole Soup
2 T butter
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
2 medium celery stalks, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
1 medium green bell pepper, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
2 t finely chopped garlic
2 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1" pieces
1/4 c all purpose flour
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes, undrained*
4 c (32 oz) reduced sodium chicken broth*
2 c water
1 c uncooked regular long grain white rice*
1 t salt
1/4 t ground red pepper (cayenne)
2 dried bay leaves

1: In 5 to 6 quart Dutch oven, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic and chicken; cook 7 to 9 minutes, stirring frequently, until onion is softened.

2: Stir in flour. Cook 5 to 6 minutes, stirring constantly, until flour is light brown.

3: Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover; cook 15 to 20* minutes, stirring occasionally, until rice is tender and chicken is no longer pink in center. Remove bay leaves.

*CHANGES*
...I used one 14.5oz can seasoned (for chili) diced tomatoes and one can 10 oz can Rotel (all I had in the house)
...I used regular chicken broth
...I used brown rice instead of white, which also meant I needed to adjust the simmer time to about 40 minutes to allow the brown rice to fully cook

I also let it sit on the stove, with the burner off and the lid off - to let some of the liquid evaporate -- I like it more like a stew.

(And I swear, I can't find the booklet for sale online... sorry.)

Snow ... and cookies ...

After returning home from a weekend in the Black Hills, we woke up this morning to our first real snowfall of the season! (Setting a record for the earliest, significant snowfall - no less.) It was made all the sweeter because the kids don't have school today.

After throwing snow around for a couple of hours over at the neighbors house, the boys returned home with these!

Made. from. scratch!

No lie... they melt in your mouth. Crispy on the edges, soft on the inside... completely, utterly, delicious! (...and they were STILL WARM!!)



Thank you Natalie, Aaron and Noelle!! :) (fyi... I'm working on finagling the recipe...!)

Top image via Josh (busychild424) on Flickr - beautiful, isn't it?!
Bottom image, Natalie's Chocolate Chip Cookies on my counter!! :)

Weekly goodies ... the free Dover Sampler

Halloween samples ...


a Vector image sample ...


and an Art Nouveau poster sample ...

This is one of my favorite emails in my Friday Inbox ... the weekly Dover sampler! It's like a grab bag of goodies ... they email you links to sample a variety of their products (historical images / children's puzzles / origami how-to / etc) some of the samples are so-so, but there are always a couple that are fab. u. lous! If you like something, be sure to save it to a disc or harddrive/etc, because the images are available for that week only. So... here's my tip of the day: if you'd like a free surprise every Friday, go sign up over at Dover Publications.

(P.S. I first heard about this a few years ago from the lovely Jessica at How About Orange. )

So stinkin' cute!

This little guy is so adorable! Found via Kristen @ Pretty Little World.

(P.S. Image credit unknow. Kristen wasn't sure where she had found this little fella, so if you should happen to know, please feel free to pass it along.)

So THIS is what Facebook is for...

This is nothing short of hilarious. Created by Mike Booth, creator of Some Grey Bloke ... his website has an entire series of different animated cartoons that are just as entertaining.

(found via SwissMiss, who found it via Tim at One + Infinity)

Weekend Warrior ...

So this is part of what our family did this weekend ... watched the oldest son play high school football in the 19th annual President's Bowl. This is D as his name was read as part of the starting line up... pointing to the crowd before heading down the row/tunnel of his teammates. We are immensely proud of him and all of the hard work he has put in over the years.

My aunt had sent out the roundup-call via email -- so there were plenty of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends on hand to cheer him on. :) (I don't think any of them read this blog, but if they should happen to stumble upon this post, here's a big THANKS to all of you very special people!)

One of our dear friends, "Rem", who is nearly part of the family (thanks to my cousin Amy), sent a text prior to the game and asked that I forward it on to D. I swear, as goofy as this sounds, it nearly brought me to tears. (and I do not cry...) Rem is a soft spoken, bear of a man who played football on a collegiate level and ranks quite high on our son's scale of what a man should be. His opinions and advice are important to D, more so than anything I could ever say... and probably even his dad. Here's the text ... I think it's those last few lines that nearly got me:

"Please forward to D: D, play hard & fundamentally. Finish your blocks. Watch the ball all the way into your hands. Run your patterns perfectly. Fundamentals will help you win. I am very proud of you. I will be there tonight. Play hard every play."

Kitchen Towel love ... and a bit of profanity

So I'm reading the "Orange You Lucky" blog today... she mentions there is a sale at BlueQ tied to her blog. A sale! I'm always up for a sale! So I click the link and I. am. in heaven ... there are all kinds of smart and smart-assed goodies ~ and so reasonably priced. (How come I had never heard of this shop before?) So here's a short list of my favorites:

Please Shut the Hell Up dish towel ... $9.99

Rise and Shine dish towel ... $9.99

I Adore You dish towel ... $9.99

And last, but not least ... Douche Bag chewing gum $1.25 ... peppermint flavor ... nice to meet you. So is it just me, or maybe it's a regional thing (or worse, I'm watching too much South Park) ... is the phrase "douche bag" enjoying a resurgence in popularity? (and just so you know... they also have packages in these "flavors" as well: Ass Kisser gum, Beyotch gum, Shut the Hell Up gum, Let's Pretend I Give A Shit gum, and F&ck It gum.)

And with that, have a lovely weekend folks!
(images: www.blueq.com )

Community ... DVR worthy

Okay... I loved Joel McHale on The Soup, and in various guest spots on shows like "Pushing Daisies", so I was intrigued when I heard he was in a new NBC show with Chevy Chase. After watching this preview, I think it's safe to say this will be a regularly recorded DVR show. It's that good.

(P.S. You have to watch the whole thing... the end is hilarious "Can you hear me? Am I deaf?!" ha ha!!)

The Three Amigos ... Aqua is the new Quatro

Aren't these little guys adorable?
I overheard them trying to count to ten in Spanish. It went something like this... "uno... dos... tres... aqua... cinco..."

Mad Men Yourself ... via AMC

Check out this interactive ditty over on AMC ... After you've created yourself, you can download your "scene" as desktop wallpaper, or use your "face" as an avatar over on Twitter/Facebook/etc.

Mad Men's new season starts August 16th!

Inspiration ... Animal Font

I'm not sure how I'd use these, but I think they are fabulous! (They'd be terrific to use as stencils for unique wall art, applique or kitschy printed tea towels.) And there are even more versions of them when you use the special fonts. The lower case characters are the "baby" version ... adorable! Go check them out here. (I especially love the zebra's.)

(Found via Abbey Goes Design Scouting. Font via Alan Carr at Dafont.com.)

Outcasts United ... A Refugee Team, An American Town

This book looks like a wonderful, inspiring story. I saw the author, Warren St.John, on MSNBC's Morning Joe last week. (According to Mike Barnacle and Joe Scarborough, this needs to be made into a movie!)

From the book's website: Outcasts United is the story of a refugee soccer team, a remarkable woman coach and a small southern town turned upside down by the process of refugee resettlement.

In the 1990s, that town, Clarkston, Georgia, became a resettlement center for refugees and a modern-day Ellis Island for scores of families from war zones in Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to help keep Clarkston’s boys off the streets.

Theirs is a story about resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship, the power of one person to make a difference and the daunting challenge of creating community in a place where people seem to have so little in common.

On a lighter note...

Loving Kim Kardashian's lighter locks. (found via TMZ.com - one of my guilty pleasures. Image credit: Getty.) I went darker the last time I had my hair done ... against my better judgement. I've read that the darker your hair is, that any flaws in your skin will be more noticeable. (translation: next time I will be framing my face with highlights...)

Have you seen Fergie's darker look? I'm not sure if I like this or not... The "before" is on the right. (It's a much softer look, don't you think?) (found via Glamour's Beauty Blog. Images: WireImage.) There's a survey being taken over on BellaSugar ... currently over 70% do not like the new look.


What do you think?

(By the way, this reminds me of a post by one of my favorite bloggers ... who is absolutely adorable with her dark locks - even first thing in the morn.)

Pole Dancing ... Grizzly Style

Apparently this has been around for awhile, but I just saw it today and think it's a riot!! (I may have to get some old-school Kool & the Gang downloaded to my iTunes.)

Video via nativemustang on YouTube.

The Swear Jar... this is how it would work in my home...

Swear Jar--Funniest Commercial Ever! - watch more funny videos

One of my "Facebook" friends posted this link ~ what a hoot!! (And as I posted earlier, you know there is a special place in my heart for bad language...)

Profane Hilarity ... P.S. Don't play this at work or in front of children

If you ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you that I do, on occasion, use bad language. That said, I don't think I'm quite on the same level as these two guys.


(This is a hilarious YouTube mix by TheSexyPatriot, that aired on Countdown with Keith Olbermann this evening. You know me...I just had to post about it.)

Kate Spade and the best email campaigns ever

I don't know about you, but my email inbox is completely out of hand. However, no matter how bad it gets, I will never unsubscribe from the Kate Spade emails. (I actually save them online in a special little "inspiration" folder.) They are absolutely delicious in so many ways. Cheeky, fun, cheerful, nostalgic and glamourous! And if you've never peeked behind the curtain, you really must go take a look. Loads of inspiration, free desktop wallpapers, information on their charity events and projects, NY in Spades shows you around the city, and "the things we love" section has loads of links to other fabulous websites.

Speaking of glamour, as in old-school, I really liked this post.

(photos: via Kate Spade)

Do you twitter?

I just signed up for Twitter. I did not understand what the hell it even was until I signed up.... I've decided it's kind of like instant messaging combined with blogging... sort of.