November 2011
3 posts
October 2011
7 posts
September 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Text I just received
Joel: If I ever lose an eye, I'm going to text my smiley faces like this. .)
1 tag
dinner time
rosanna: ooh, should we have some sour cream with our tacos?
joel: yeah, that sounds good. as long as it means you're not making sour cream from scratch.
rosanna: ...
August 2011
4 posts
Porter brothers
The swedes took us out for a sail the other day. We ate a lovely dinner, drank some tasty wine, and felt the wind whip through our hair while admiring the beautiful sunset.
The norwegian then regaled us with stories about building things. Or something.
July 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Collective reasoning
Possibly one of my favorite moments in going to see Harry Potter 7.2 last night at midnight came during the previews.
Half way through the first preview, Tom Cruise’s face popped up in the new Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol movie and the entire audience gasped and then booed. HAHA.
June 2011
4 posts
1 tag
birthday cake
Another year, another birthday cake. I think each year joel’s birthday cake has been absurd, but this year’s might take the cake (sad trombone noise).
Ha! Throughout the day it became the leaning tower of Rainer.
This cake was extremely fun to make, and it also reiterated how much I need to get frosting tips of my own. I made the R and stripes with just a tip cut out of a...
then and now
i met bo when he was nine years old. he was a wee little lad then. we’ve been buds ever since.
when i first met bo, he wasn’t a very strong reader. we would sit on the couch and read books hour by hour. he would read a page, and then i would read a page, he would read a page, then my turn. we read the first harry potter book over a summer. we read all the books assigned for school....
1 tag
Leek, Fiddlehead Fern and Mushroom Quiche
This spring I have become completely and wholeheartedly obsessed with quiches. I think I made one a week for about a month, and now, using all the restraint I can muster, am down to just one quiche a month … or so.
Quiches are delightful vehicles for any matter of egg-y filling. I was particularly pleased with this fiddlehead fern/leek/mushroom concoction.
And these mushrooms are...
May 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Easter, a little late
I am the oldest of a darling multitude of cousins. In the particular branch of the family that we celebrated Easter with, Katie and Eric are the youngest - but are really not so young anymore as both are graduating from high school this year. But who said spring sphere hunts were for kids only! My aunt, uncle and I hid the eggs and everyone ran outside for a delightful northwest egg hunt...
1 tag
retired
joel: i don't understand why you're acting so tortured right now.
rosanna: it's my job to be tortured.
joel: well, you should retire.
1 tag
Biscuits
My niece, Marilouise, came over the other day. We made biscuits. It was great.
These biscuits are essential to a quality every day life. I pretty much have a stash of them in the freezer at all times because you never know when you’ll just need to pop one in the oven. 15 minutes later, you have a delightful, fresh biscuit ready to rescue you from the doldrums of gray Seattle skies.
...
April 2011
8 posts
1 tag
quest for perfection, and an ulcer.
Seth and Stephanie, of the beautiful invitations, are getting married next weekend. And I have the honor (or idiocy - depending on your feelings on matters such as these) to be making their cake.
You did hear that correctly. I am making a wedding cake. Holy freaking crap.
So I’ve been practicing. And purchasing things like 7.5 POUNDS of cream cheese, or 3 POUNDS of sugar. Should be...
1 tag
The empanada game
My family definitely has a set of noticeable quirks, and that might be the most boring observation ever, because what family doesn’t have their quirks.
Growing up everything was a game. “Let’s see how fast we can unload the dishwasher!” “Let’s play a game! Let’s see how much we can clean in 10 minutes”. When we were kids, it worked great. OOH! A...
1 tag
Limoncello update
So, the lemon zest sat with the vodka for about 46 days.
Next step:
Add simple syrup and another bottle of vodka
and let sit for another 40 days.
A man of his word
For about the last 6 months, both our laptops have been hazardously on their last legs. Joel’s mouse/trackpad only works intermittently (um, and that’s kind of key to using the thing), the disc drive doesn’t work. My screen flickers, and because I updated the operating system, without checking how much ram i have, it’s s l o w a s m o l a s s e s. And web design has...
1 tag
Irish twins
This photograph was taken exactly 21 years ago, and in the photo my sister and I are both 5 years old.
Only, Valerie had been five for a whopping 2 days, while I had been five for 363 days. Math, you are confusing.
little flags
i really do love tiny things. and i also really love flags. the combination is very exciting to me.
also, i am quite lazy when it comes to certain kinds of activities. i’ve read a few tutorials about how to make bunting and pretty much fell asleep after “step one: get out your sewing machine”. i don’t need these professional huge banners.
so i just kept loving tiny...
1 tag
Ginger ale
When I was a kid, and the flight attendant came down the rows asking what you wanted to drink, I always said “Ginger ale!”. We didn’t drink much pop in our house growing up so it was always a treat, and I loved that ginger ale.
Last summer I found a recipe for homemade ginger ale, and it was definitely one of those “What! you can actually make that stuff!” moments. I...
March 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Orcas Island
Weekend get-away to Orcas Island, visiting dear friends, eating delicious food, enjoying the beauty of the island, eating more delicious food, reading, napping - this weekend was pretty much perfect.
We go back with Miri quite a few years. We live and work with her in Palm Springs every winter and go into withdrawals when the winter is over, we all migrate north and no longer spend every minute...
1 tag
1 tag
Boss
R: Geez, you're so bossy.
J: Nah, I'm not bossy.
R: Yeah, you really are.
J: Well, if I didn't tell you what to do we'd never get anything done.
R: . . .
February 2011
4 posts
1 tag
veronica
It is a well known fact amongst our family that Veronica could talk the teeth off a horse. It has been speculated amongst our family that, if not interrupted, she could talk on and on, indefinitely, until her tongue fell out. On our recent vacation, Veronica was enlightening us all to some particular bit of knowledge she had been gaining from a book. I was making breakfast I think. Others were...
1 tag
What became of the lemons that arrived on our...
The jar contains the beginning of the limoncello. The juice became lemon curd, also known as liquid sunshine. The limoncello will have to sit in the pantry for another month or so before we do anything else with it, so it can wait.
Joel’s mom happened to be visiting for the day so she helped me juice and zest all the lemons. In the middle of our juicing and zesting, Marilouise stopped...
Home again
We arrived home from Hawaii this morning at the wonderful hour of 530 AM. It was cold, a bit windy and rainy. One of the potted plants that hangs on our front porch was blown into the yard, and there was even a bit of snow lingering on the ground. Welcome home!
A package was sitting on our doorstep though, so of course we opened it right away despite our bleary-eyed state. It was literally a box...
January 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Unfortunately predictable.
My sisters came to visit last week, for a whole week. Seeing as they live across the country, we only get to see each other a couple times a year. But when we do have our glorious reunions, this inevitably happens.
And hey! It’s not our fault that Britney had a new single out while we were together and that within 24 hrs it was #1 world-wide. We couldn’t help that we had to...
Waiting to be juiced
A great Sunday morning