those crazy kids from around the block
Current Mood:
Jammin’
KID AT HEART!
I know it’s late….but at least it’s up. This is my mom riding in the go karts at our daughter’s 5th birthday. I don’t know who had more fun in the go carts…her or Clare!?!?!?!
For more Wordless Wednesday’s check out 5 Minutes for Mom or Wordless Wednesday.
Current Mood: Jammin’
It’s Tuesday again…..time for some tackling! However, unfortunately I won’t be able to get much done today as we have a busy schedule of playgroup this AM followed by school. Instead of trying to squeeze a good tackle in that little amount of time, I am going to tell you what I tackled this weekend. Drum Roll Please…….Because the weather was so spectacular on Saturday, and because it was in much need of being done (especially since I think the last time I think I did it was sometime in July) I took a few hours to…..shave my legs. (EWE, No……Gross) Seriously though, I mowed the lawn. Brad was able to sucessfully fix the brakes on my car, so I figured I’d take it up to the gas station to put some much needed air in it’s tire and fill my little gas tank for the mower. The yard was pretty bad, probably a good 3 inches tall in the back yard in spots. I hadn’t mowed it in so long because it was so dry, and brown for most of the summer. It got so bad that I finally gave in and started watering it some nights just to get some green back in it. Well, then after we had a few weeks of MI rain finally it kinda got out of control, and I haven’t had much time to take on the task of mowing. It was so thick I think I emptied my mower bag like 3 times in the back yard. Here in Grand Rapids we have yard waste bags (they are like 4ft. tall by 1ft wide), I filled 2 of them to the top by the time I pulled out some of the dying filler weedy type stuff we have in our back yard. It took me about 2.5 hours to get it all done, and our yard isn’t even that big! Ah well…..it looks beautiful now. 
Oh, and yesterday I tackled 6 loads of laundry. I also have hopes to continue cleaning our overly dusty house some time this week. For more tackling check out 5 Minutes for Mom! What are you tacking today?
As many of you know, I have a liking for digital art and I sometimes liken myself as a bit of a digital artist (though nowhere near as good as some folks I know who are gifted artists in the real world). I also have a tendency to mimic those things that I see around with my own style applied; more adaptation than artistry I guess.
The end result is something that creates a little quick artistic outlet for me.
I really enjoy logo work and messing with text. Here’s a little bit of my latest Photoshop work, which you will also see around the site (I do most of the graphics around here from scratch, barring the tiny icons, which are done by folks much better at that sort of thing than I am.
There’s nothing really special here, just basic effects and trying to mimic the glass effects I see around. I also like the reflection thing quite a bit; especially for graphics that I’m just presenting to something to look at. It adds some depth and is a really stupid-simple effect to pull off.
Both of these items are things I’m thinking about using on the site. Typically, I’ve always used a full graphic logo at the top of our various websites. The fact that this one uses only text with a header background has bothered me since the beginning, but it’s been at the bottom of my list of things to “fix”. So there it is; a little preview of what you might see on the site in the future.
Current Mood:
Happy & 
Surprised
So, I was tagged by my pal Big Binder to do an Eat Local Meal this week. What this requires is that the majority of your meal comes from within in a 100 mile radius of where you live, and if that’s too hard then at least from the state you live in. The reason being, if you buy and eat local, the majority of your money stays in your local area. Since MI is in such a bad place, the more local things you buy the faster our state will recover.
After some thinking, because it does require thinking to figure out what and where are we going to get local foods, we came up with what we hope to be a tasty Mexican Fiesta! We went to our local greenhouse grocery Horrocks to see what we could find. It didn’t take much looking, or searching for products when we got there…..but thinking of a recipe made me draw a blank - which is why I called on my trusty partner in crime life. Thanks to Brad though, he created what I think is a pretty good meal! So, here’s our recipe for Vegetable Burrito’s ala Brad:
1 1/2 cups Calrose Rice (cook as directed - we use our wonderful rice maker, but you can use the stove. After it’s cooked add the juice of a lime - let steam for a minute or two then add 1/3 cup fresh chopped cilantro, stir well)
1 1/2 cups Black Beans (we found Carlson-Arbogast Farm out of Howard City, MI) Cook as directed, and season with 1tsp. minced garlic (if you do fresh 3-4cloves), 1/4tsp. cumin, 1/4tsp. salt, pepper, 2tsp sugar
1 pepper of each color: Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green (our green peppers came from Brad’s Parent’s garden in Niles - 104 miles away but who’s counting, the others were store bought)
1 Crookneck Squash sliced, and then quarter the slices (Ours is not from within the 100 miles of home, but it’s from Char’s Parent’s garden in Goodells, MI - 164 miles away…hey it was free to us, and something we had on hand)
Saute the peppers & squash in 2 tablespoons Olive oil, add 1/3 cup tequila, salt, pepper, and Fajita Seasoning (all of our spices come from Penzey’s, not local but fabulous!)
1 package of 10″ Flour Tortilla’s (ours were San Marcos from Grand Rapids, MI)
Salsa freshly made by Horrocks
Monterey Jack cheese (also from Horrocks in their local cheese bin) shredded
Steam your tortillas in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes
Build your burritos (by the way this makes about 6 burritos maybe more if you don’t make them too big) by spreading some sour cream on, add the rice, peppers & squash, shredded cheese, and salsa. Wrap up and ENJOY! As a side we also served up our favorite El Matador Tortilla Chips (from Grand Rapids, MI) to dip in our yummy salsa from Horrocks.
Brad did a fabulous job on these, and I hope that we’ll make them again soon. I wish we would have taken a picture of them so you could see our final meal, but it’s a burrito…..do you really need to see it?!?! Everything in our meal was local (if not to our 100 mile area, at least our state) with the exception of the rice, limes, cilantro (maybe?), the seasonings, the tequila, and the colored peppers.
Now, I am supposed to tag 2 people to do this Meme as well. I tag Mom to Two Boys and The Artistic Pursuit of Life on Earth. If the 2 of you actually do this Meme (I sure hope you do…..I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with) please be sure to link back to Eastowners as well as Big Binder. Good Luck, and Happy Cooking!
Current Mood: Chillin
So the guy never showed yesterday to look at the roof. I’m a little tired of the contractor and I’m going to find someone else to help us. I need to get on fixing the wall and ceiling upstairs. This is starting to get stupid.
Tomorrow we’ll be getting our Ebay stuff together in order to start getting the funds together to pay for all this. I’ll post with what we have for sale in case anyone’s interested. It’ll probably be a lot of computer stuff and I’m considering parting out my project motorcycle if it comes down to it.
Today I managed to actually complete something on a car in one day. I got the busted brake line on Char’s car replaced with really little incident (other than racking my knuckles, which is completely normal). It was actually a lot better than I first thought it would be.
I pulled off some especially tasty sandwiches for dinner this evening. Italian-esque portobello mushrooms on ciabatta with roasted red peppers and cheese.
4-5 medium portobello mushrooms, stems removed
2-3 Roasted Red Peppers (bottled work dandily)
3-4 small ciabatta loaves
1 Jar of marinara
4-5 slices of your favorite white cheese
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
3/4 tsp Basil
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp White Pepper
Port or Sherry
Butter
Melt butter in a large pan over medium-high heat (I use approximately 3-4 tbsp). Add mushrooms and fry 5-6 minutes. Add approximately 1/4 cup sherry or port (I like port personally). Add garlic, basil, oregano, and pepper. Reduce heat and let simmer until wine reduces, 10 minutes or so. Slice the red pepper into strips to match the mushrooms and add to the pan. Allow the peppers to thoroughly heat.
Start the oven; set on broil. Split ciabatta into a sandwich. Spoon the mushroom/pepper mixture onto the ciabatta, add 3-4 tbsp of marinara, top with sliced cheese. Broil for 5-6 minutes until cheese is melted and begins to brown (if you’ve picked a softer cheese).
Top with other half of the ciabatta and serve.
Current Mood:
Playful
Ah……sigh……another quiet morning in the Eastowner house. I feel like things are slowing down, or at least I HOPE they are. I don’t know if I can handle too many more crazy weeks. Last night instead of cooking dinner we opted for going out to Zoup! for some fine soup. There are several of these restaurants around town, and they offer a great variety of 12 handmade soups every day….that’s right, every day they make their own soups in restaurant with frest ingredients for you to enjoy. We hadn’t been in a while because by the time we got what we wanted the bill was quite pricey when taking a child that doesn’t eat an entire bowl of soup. They however now offer a relatively cheap kids meal, and the cost of our entire bill was just over $20 for the 3 of us. Clare had their kids meal with a grilled cheese, a small bowl of Fire Roasted Tomato Bisque (they have mac & Cheese too for the wee ones that don’t like soup), gold fish crackers, and a juice box. Brad & I both had one of their newer offerings…..a You Pick Crock. With the crock you can put over brown rice or whole grain pasta your choice of 5 toppings. Now, the 5 toppings thing we were still unsure of what that all entailed…..but for sure we both put soup over our rice. I had the Seafood Chowder, and Brad had the Fire Roasted Tomato Bisque. It was perfect for a cloudy & chilly Friday night. And because Clare cleared her entire plate, we bought 2 brownie squares (one chocolate & one blonde) for the 3 of us to share. We came home, it was clean up time, and time for Clare to get to bed. Brad & I settled down to a movie - “Better Off Dead” - a hilarious 1985 John Cusack flick. The few drinks we had helped with the aweful 1980’s cinematography…..God some of those movies were so aweful then, I don’t know why I ever thought some of them were so Cool when I was a kid. Better Off Dead though, was a fun look at the past though……and made for some fun movie watching on a chilly Friday night. I LOVE this weather!
So, apprently September is the month in which the Locavore’s around the world try to promote eating locally. What is a Locavore you ask? It is someone that eats things from within 100 miles of their home. Why eat local…..well, it helps keep the dollars you would normally spend on something from over 1500 miles away (yes, most of our food comes from that far away to our plates) in your local area. There are tons of info on this way of thinking, but most of my info has come from 2 places…..my pal Big Binder and a website that is supporting the Eat Local Challenge in our area: Local First. There are tons of info on the Eat Local Challenge in both of these places. I personally perfer Big Binder, because she sifts through all the info for me! Thanks Big Binder :) She has several posts on the topic, including how to get started. The challenge is supposed to be for 2 weeks, however I think we’ll be lucky to pull together 1 meal in the Eastowner house. It’ll be particularly challenging because we are demi-vegetarian (the only type of meat we eat is fish/shrimp). This weekend I will be making my meal, and then asking someone else to take the challenge! So if you are a reader and would like to be tagged feel free to comment. If not I will be eenie meanie miney moing it!
In the spririt of eating local Big Binder has several contests going on promoting foods that are from our area: Grand Rapids, MI. Head on over and check out the 5 great products that she has up for winning this week. You better hurry because they will end soon!
Current Mood:
Martini Mood
This morning has been relatively quiet around the Eastowners’ house…..and might I add it’s sweet bliss. Yesterday was far too hectic of a day for me, and I needed a day to clear my anger out of my head. Yesterday started out okay, I got to sleep in a bit…..Clare ate breakfast, as did I, I surfed my usual blog reading with the help of my handy dandy Google Reader, and it went down hill from there. Before I go down hill I would like to share with those readers of our fine blog exactly what Google Reader does for me. If you have (or want to create) a gmail account (googles answer to e-mail), you have access to their Reader. When you go to Google’s page, look in the upper left for the More tab, click on it and you’ll see Reader down under it. Here you can subscribe any and all blogs you read on a daily basis. It tells me when my pals have posted a new blog, I read them….comment if I choose to…..and then I move on up the line to the next blog. I find it handy especially as a busy mom that has to read a sentence 10 times before I can get through a blog post, and this way I’m not clicking all over creation to find the blogs I read the most. I come downstairs every morning, open up my laptop, click refresh, and I read to my hearts content. It’s a great way to manange your blog reading if you do a lot of it. I’m sure I’m not even using it to it’s fullest potential…..but I would have to say I LOVE it!
Back to the down hill slide of yesterday that put me in such an utter bad mood I felt like crying. I did my reading, and decided to take a shower before getting Clare to school. Clare asked if she could get a shower too…..I said yes, thinking if she got in there first I could slip in after her and she could get dressed while I showered. I got wrapped up in folding towels, and then it took Clare far too long to get dressed. Okay fine, I thought I’d take her to school, come home grab a shower, and have a relaxing afternoon. We got through lunch with the help of the timer (we’ve been using it A LOT as of late to help us in our time management), and headed out the door with time to spare. Sweet, I don’t have to speed accross town to get her to school on time! Well, not 3 blocks from our house my brakes blew out. I stopped, thankfully, called Brad immediately ready to cry, crept my way around the corner and barely stopped in front of our house. Brad came home, gave me his car and he tried adding brake fluid to my car…..I immediately saw the leak, brake fluid gushing out by my rear passanger tire. He told me to leave, and had a coworker come pick him up to take him back to work (thankfully he works only 2 miles away from home). Clare was 10 minutes late to school, I felt aweful. I’ve been telling her all along that we need to be to school on time because now that she’s in Kindergarten it counts if she’s tardy, and if we’re late too many times we end up in the Principal’s Office. The office staff, and her teacher were very kind in saying don’t worry about it……I thought to myself, I wonder how many stories they hear when people are late. My brakes truely did go out though. The only stipulation for taking Brad’s car though was that he wanted me to check the oil in it, as he thought it was low. I said, “Well, why don’t I just take it for an oil change since that hasn’t been done in almost a year.” While I was out he was able to find a part for my car to fix the brake line in the back, so I figured I’d go down to Delta Imports and pick it up because the sooner I have the part the faster my car gets fixed (in theory anyway). By the time all that was said and done I only had a little less than an hour before having to head back to school to get Clare, and I was still showerless and very cranky. I came home, read for a bit, and then left to get Clare. Dinner wasn’t so bad, something new Eggplant Parmesean sandwhiches with a side of rice. IT was actually kinda yummy. Brad made me a drink to help ease the pain of my day. We sent Clare to bed early as the toll of school has really given her some attitude issues, and we settled down to a night of DVR & drinks.
Today has been relatively quiet. I was able to get my shower, breakfast, and do my blog reading all the while having a quiet morning. Let’s hope our afternoon is equally quiet!
Current Mood:
Tired of Everything
The contractor was here. He didn’t bring a ladder and is the Vice President of the company anyway (which is contractor speak for “I don’t climb no freaking ladders”). He’s sending a guy out on Friday afternoon to look at the chimney and the guy is supposed to bring a bucket of tar with him. Hopefully it’ll only cost us a couple of hours of time for them to fix it up right.
So as I said, we got put down on our plans for a home equity loan, so we’ll be listing some of our more tangible good on ebay in the coming week to try to come up with the extra cash needed to do the interior work (and maybe we’ll get enough to do something about the bathroom as well).
On top of it all, Char’s car bursted a brake line today. It’s not a huge deal. I found the culprit, a piece of rubber hose that connects the rigid brake line to the caliper on the passenger-side rear. I called Delta. They had the part. $38 later, we’ll have it all fixed up… at least that’s what I hope. This is work I’m pretty confident at.
Hopefully I won’t have to bleed the brakes. The brake fluid reservoir isn’t empty, so I’m hoping I can get away with it. I don’t have book on it and I have no idea how to do it. It’ll be a call to Auto Sports to ask them.
Anyway… it’s been an interesting day. It’s not even 3pm.
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