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.