Shopping Booty!

Who had a productive day of shopping?? Here's what just happened to follow me home:

Super cute belted gray/black top from Gottschalks
A cute gray sweater from the Gap made out of a thick jersey material.

At Mervyn's I couldn't decide on a pair of shoes, so I bought them all.

I'm just trying to stimulate the economy, that's all.

Super Saturday

Yesterday morning Mum and I went to the farmer's market together. I've been having to go by myself for the last couple of weeks because the novelty has worn off for Chris and it would require that he wake up a little earlier than he's ready to on a Saturday. Cranky Chris is not a happy shopping Chris. Anyway, when we had dinner with the 'rents on Friday (Chowder House) I made plans with my real shopping buddy, Mum. She puts my shopping to shame. It was nice weather Saturday morning (not too cold) and we took her convertible Miata over there. Instead of my usually cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, I got mung bean sprouts (for Chris), nectarines, plums, fresh eggs, jicama and an eggplant. Mum got stuff, stuff and way more stuff...

That's her in the turquoise shirt. She's a much better cook than I, so she knows what to do with the weird stuff at the market like leeks, bok choy and ugly bumpy cucumber things.

I had my eye on the pottery booth. They had a couple beautiful mugs, but they were $18. I told Mum that I wanted to buy my produce first and then if I had enough left I would come back for one, but alas I did not.

Last night we went over to the 'rents for a bbq. During my outing with Mum earlier in the day we stopped at S&S and got some marinated country style ribs to bbq. The marinade smelled delicious. Anyway Chris bbq'd the ribs, sliced japanese eggplant and those bullet style onions. We brought a tomato and mozzarella balls salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Mum also made toasted asiago cheese bread and baked beans. It was sooo good and I ate toooo much and had a rough night. Chris even lucked out with some leftovers.

No big plans for today. Chris is watching a car race he taped early this morning and I'm looking at ads. At 10:00 I'm heading over to Mervyn's and taking a look at the boots on sale. There's some cute ones in the ad, but I have monster size calves, so we'll see. Gottschalks is also having a good shoe sale with lots of cute heels. So many shoes, so little time.

Uh oh, Chris's recording cut off right before the last lap finished and now he wants the computer to look up the race results. What a pisser.

Last Race of the Season

Today we played hooky from work for Chris's last race day of the season out at Thunderhill in Willows. We had to get up at the ass crack of dawn (5:20) so that we could be rolling out here by 6:00 a.m. It was Customer Appreciation Day so rates were cheaper causing every race group to be full. It also meant that we didn't get our complimentary coffee and danishes this morning or a free lunch ticket. I was outraged and coffeeless!! Anyway, Chris turned in his best times for the season and clinched the championship for his race class in time trials and the race group. GT4 Champions! You know where you can send the gifts...

Don't mind the chain link fence in the photo. I apparently have gotten lazy with my bad photography skills by the end of the season.

As you can see, the 'rents were there too. They just got back into town yesterday specifically so they could make the race today. Mr. A. even made sure to wear his Thunderhill t-shirt (and ended up buying a matching hat while there too). No comment.

The temps weren't too bad, but looking at myself when we got home I apparently got a little sun on my chest and arms. Perfect, end summer with a nice farmers tan.

We have plans to meet the rents for dinner tomorrow at their abode. BBQ, I think. Right now Chris is trying not to fall asleep on the couch and I'm trying to come up with an insiring grocery list. We're both failing miserably.

Ok, I have to go now, captain bossy pants wants some cheese, crackers and olives. Men!

Dancing with the Hartmans

Here are the two other pages I finished scrapbooking this weekend;
You can't tell, but there's silver rub-ons along the left hand side.

We're watching Dancing with the Stars right now. I'm cheering for Lance Bass of course. I'm making Chris cheer for Cloris Leachman. Older women are his thing. The only bad thing is that QVC is doing a Creative Memories program from 9-11 which is right in the middle of my dancing. Oh, the priorities!

Scrapbookin' Mama

I have discovered the magic of the crop room at the scrapbook store. As part of my crop membership I can use the crop room anytime for free during the regular business hours as long as there's not a class going on. So last Sunday and today I spent the afternoon over there getting busy on some projects. I'm making a calendar for a co-worker's birthday so I spent last weekend getting it started (and actually got it about 70% done there) and today I worked on some pages for my albums. The biggest benefit of scrapping there is that I can use the QuicKutz for free. The owner has just about every die set and all the alphabets. It's fabulous, and now not all my pages have the same fonts. I finished a page about our garden we planted, one of the farmer's market and one of my disco karaoke, but I only took photos of one so far;
Of course I can't bring everything with me when I go to the scrapbook store so as expected I think of stuff I wish I had and am not able to completely put the pages together there, but I get more of the embellishments and papers cut.

For dinner tonight I made a shepherd's pie out of my Gooseberry Patch Comfort Foods cookbook. It was soooo good (and easy). Chris laid around on the couch rubbing his Buddha belly when he was done because it was so full of delicious mash potatoes, veggies and beef.
Yes, that is yummy greasy cheese melted all over smooth, hot mash potatoes. Sorry Wilson, I should have added this one to your cookbook.

Right now we're just watching football. Green Bay vs. Dallas. I cheer for Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers (our Chico quarterback). Chris cheers for whoever will give him the most fanasty football points. No loyalty.

The 'rents are coming back on Thursday for their next multi-week stay. I guess I should get over there some time and return Mum's magazines I stole to read. Oops. They wanted to come back in time for Chris's last race which is Friday. I have the day off since I'm the crew chief. Mr. A.'s going to come over Thursday night and help Chris load the car since I'll be off praising Jesus at bible study. Chris has even somehow scored dinner at the 'rents out of the whole gig.

No movies to report on this weekend. We haven't been in two weeks. It's embarrassing. The last thing we saw was Tropic Thunder (which was hilarious). We want to see Burn After Reading (Brad Pitt and George Clooney) and Pineapple Express. We've both just been busy tinkering and haven't had a chance to go.

Don't forget....Dancing with the Stars starts tomorrow night!!

Fat Camp

Fat camp is back! We got addicted to Biggest Loser last year and now we're front and center for the new season.
Next week Dancing with the Stars starts back up. We'll be television junkies Monday and Tuesday nights for the next couple months. Ahhh...the reality TV drama!

The Magical World of Miniature Donkeys

Today has been the day we've waited for all week....the miniature donkey show at the Tehama County Fairgrounds in Red Bluff! Chris, the world's biggest burro fan, and I got up bright and early this morning, zoomed over to the farmers market, inhaled some breakfast and beat feet to Red Bluff to be first in line to cuddle and pet all the burros. It was a real donkey show, like a dog show, where trainers/owners were dressed in ridiculous rhinestone costumes and pranced the tiny donkeys around the arena for the judge to inspect. CrAZy. Outside of the (covered) arena was where the action was. The burros were waiting in the wings with their trainers waiting for their class to be called so we could walk right up and accost them with photos and hands. The owners were all very nice and one of them even gave us the reins to "Charlie":

Charlie liked us, you could tell. He kept sniffing at my purse, I think he wanted a piece of gum. Gotta look sharp for the judges!

Chris with his three new best friends.
Please, Mr. Burro, please don't bite me.

We managed to make it out of there without buying any of the numerous burros for sale, though not for lack of trying.

Seconds please!

I'm stuffed! Chris prepared a family style dinner tonight:

That's our [cherry] tomato! This growing season can now officially be deemed a success!

That's odd....

Hmm..I don't remember this being my computer desktop background last night...

On an unrelated note (I'm sure), my husband was home alone today for lunch...

Chubs le Rue

On the nights we don't go to the gym we go out for a walk around the block. Or, like tonight, we do both because the weather is so nice earlier in the evening. Finally we remembered to take our camera with us because our favorite part of our walk is visiting with our friend, Chubs le Rue (our name for him). He is the biggest, fluffiest, friendliest cat we've ever met. He comes out to met us and follows us down the block. His favorite move is to run ahead of us and then flop over on his back right in front of us so that we have to stop and pet his belly.


We love Chubs le Rue and are very sad when he's not around to greet us. Unfortunately he's too big to steal. Chris would probably throw his back out trying to carry him home, but we invite him to walk over anytime he wants.

Weekend Warriors

Woo hoo - it's the weekend!! Not that we did much relaxing this morning, but we're making up for it this evening. After a quick breakfast of freshly baked Cinnabon muffins and coffee, Chris and I parted ways for morning errands. He went off to help a friend lay bamboo flooring in his newly constructed house and I ran to the Farmer's Market. It was a little late (10:00 a.m.), but I needed to get him more cucumbers and I needed new squash. Amazingly I got a parking spot right away and got right to business. I found some cucumbers, crookneck squash, skinny eggplants, a bag of mung bean sprouts (for Chris-ugh), yellow cherry tomatoes and a delicious fat loaf of Chico Sourdough from the Tin Roof bakery. On my way back home I stopped at Trader Joe's and finished the rest of my grocery shopping. I get my coffee there and my french vanilla half-and-half. I was so busy talking to the checker that I forgot I had my shopping bag tucked under my arm until I noticed the bagger had already bagged all my groceries. I apologized when I gave it to him and made him repack all my groceries in it. Oops.

Chris called me right after noon to see if I'd like to go to lunch with him and our friend, Justin (the one building the house), at Chipotle. He came by to pick me up and we went to meet Justin and his wife, Stephanie, there. When we got there we found out that the plans had changed and that the wife had accidentally gone to Pluto's (downtown by Peet's Coffee) instead and was waiting there for all of us. Pluto's was okay, though. Chris and I both got roasted turkey sandwiches on sourdough bread.

On our way home from lunch we stopped at Blockbuster and rented two videos; Be Kind Rewind (with Jack Black) and In Bruges (with Colin Farrell). We watched Be Kind Rewind when we got home. It way funny, but I thought it'd be funnier. It's the one where Jack Black and Mos Def work at a video store and accidentally erase all the VHS's so they have to remake them on video themselves to rent.

For dinner tonight we had chicken with spinach and new potatoes. It's a crock pot recipe from one of my many Sandra Lee cookbooks. I got it started around noon and it was ready at 5:30.
Of course the one night I actually go through all the trouble to have dinner ready we got invited out to dinner with friends. What are the odds? We didn't even think we had friends.

We're just hanging out on the couch now watching Thin Red Line on IFC. It's some sort of WWII movie. Yeah, just my style. Fortunately, I have my new issues of Creating Keepsakes and Paper Crafts to entertain me amidst all the sounds of gun fire.

We're hoping for a evening walk tonight, but it's still 88 degrees outside. We usually wait it out until it hits 85 or less. Something important must be happening right now in the movie, I hear extraordinary amounts of artillery. Better go check it out.