Advent

It's officially advent!

Usually by this time of the year, we have our tree up and our house decorated for this holiday season.  In fact, it almost always happens the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Since I'm fighting a cold, I'm also fighting productivity and have opted to just sort of lay low this weekend.  Jon did start our outdoor lights yesterday, though.  We'll get there . . .

Last year, I made this lovely lil' advent wreath.

If nothing else, I'll probably root around through our holiday tupperware bins to find this.  Evelyn so enjoyed the lighting of the first candle in this morning's church service.  We'll work on the tree later this week, I hope!

I hope your advent season is full of hope and wonderment!

an 'ugh' sort of day

Ugh.  I haven't had a day like this in a LONG while, but a bunch of little things have been adding up to make for a crummy day(and consequent sniffly mood).

First off, it's Saturday.  That means it's my weekly WW weigh-in day.  I was stoked to go in today because I had an AMAZING week.  I felt lighter, and with only 5.6 pounds to go until hitting the 50 lb. celebration, I thought for sure that I'd be weighing in two to three pounds less than last week.  Next week marks my one year anniversary of joining weight watchers and I was really trying to get the 50 lb. charm for that date.

Yeah, so.  Not gonna happen.

I gained 2.4 pounds this week.


GAINED????

GAINED???


But, but . . . I had a GREAT week!  I was just so dumbfounded and so upset that I didn't even stay for the meeting.  I was just battling too many emotions at once.   Sure, I've gained before.  No big deal.  It's the lifestyle that matters.  But this was just a huge let-down for me.

So, I got in the car, held back some tears, and decided to hit up the library.  I had a few dvds to return and I'd figured that I'd pick up season six of Road to Avonlea.  Got everything, walked down to the  circulation desk, knew that I had a small fine from returning Avonlea's season five two days late, asked about the fine, and found out that I had a $6.30 fine due because I forgot to return one of Evelyn's videos last week.  So, a dollar a day really adds up.  Ugh.  $6.30 for being foolish and forgetting to return things.  Not a big deal but after my weigh-in, I was really upset with myself.

So then I decided to treat myself to a low-point treat to maybe pick up my mood.  I drove over to one of my favorite non-chain coffee shops and ordered a medium chai frappe (which with skim milk and no whipped cream is only 4 points).  The lovely woman made my frappe, I headed out the door, took a sip and found that she had made the wrong chai beverage.  I walked back in.  There weren't any other customers so I went up to the woman behind the counter and politely explained that I wasn't sure that she made what I had ordered.  I even prefaced it with, "I really don't want to be a pain of a customer, but . . . "

Yeah.  She totally snapped at me, took my drink, poured it into a blender, added TONS of ice, blended it, put it back in my cup, and threw it back at me.  I graciously thanked her and took another sip to find that it had absolutely no flavor.  Oh well.  I retreated home with my watery chai beverage that I shelled out $5.55 for.  Bummer.

Got home.  Hurricanes Irene and Lee brought an abundance of rain and consequently, weeds decided to grow like crazy in our gardens.  I weeded for an hour which was actually an excellent way to release some of my frustrations.  After returning some lawn bags to the garage, I decided to take some time to begin organizing the garage (a project that Jon and I have been meaning to get to for two years now).  I found a box that contained a bunch of collectibles from my childhood bedroom.  Y'know . . . porcelein Disney figurines, decorative Peter Rabbit plates, things like that.  Evelyn is so into Mickey Mouse these days that I thought I could take some of the figurines out for her room.

Took the box out to our picnic table.  Noticed that a critter had chewed a tiny hole on one of the corners. Opened the box.  It smelled pretty badly.  Began unwrapping the contents of the box.  Eventually found a dead, decaying mouse.  Awesome.  I salvaged what I could (which Jon cleaned for me because I had had enough) and chucked the rest.  Ugh.  Silly me for not organizing sooner.

Now, my macbook pro from my school district isn't turning on.  About 40 minutes ago, I was panicking because I thought I had to make a DVD highlighting our VBS program from this summer.  Fortunately, I found out that someone else had already made one.  But still.

As I sit here reflecting on this crummy day, I am reminded how my misfortunes are nothing compared to what millions of people are experiencing right now.  Flooding in our region has been absolutely devastating.  Texans are dealing with frightful fires.  People across the world are living in war-zones.  Famine all over the world, especially Somalia, is causing many people to starve to death.  I am thankful for everything the Lord has given me and my family.  As I struggle with this rather bad day, I need to stop and pray for the people who struggle with much worse.

Thanks for putting up with my major vent session today and please remember to pray for all of those who are struggling in the world.



Peace and love,

Betsy

gettin' crafty with it

Irene came and went and boy, are we glad she's gone!

Our pre-hurricane preparations were not in vain as the storm hit hard in our neck of the woods.  Once the eye of the storm passed through, our power went out and while Jon manned the house (namely, working closely with neighbors to prevent the serious flooding in our cellars to become too damaging), Evelyn and I kept busy indoors.

[By the way - major props to Jon and our neighbors for their true display of old fashioned "neighborly-ness."  By working together, they kept a bad situation from getting worse.]

About five hours into lost power, I set Evelyn up with some play-dough while I made my first attempts at creating fabric flowers.  I've long admired the beautiful jewelry that many bloggers/etsy-site owners create with their fabric florettes so I thought it'd be fun to give it a try.  Why not, right?  I had plenty of time (although no access to an online tutorial - ack!).

So here they are!  I don't pride myself on being crafty AT ALL so this was a pretty big accomplishment!  And, I ended with a pretty cute ring in the process!

It was nice to bid adieu to Irene with a bit of loveliness adorning my right hand!

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here she comes

Oh, Irene.

I suppose we're ready.  Our cellar has been emptied.  Our pond has been drained a bit (not too much to make the koi uncomfortable but hopefully enough to prevent pond flooding).  The extraneous items on our property (grill, hammock, patio chairs, lawn ornaments, etc.) have been secured in the garage.  Lanterns, flashlights, and candles are on the kitchen counters, ready to be quickly accessed.  Batteries and other "essentials" have been purchased.  Local officials are issuing driving bans for the next few days so our pastor needed to cancel church.  I just finished making several phone calls off of the church directory to let them know of this cancellation (ah, the duties of a council president).

Now we wait.

On the plus side?  Well, our local library has every season's box set to one of my favorite childhood television series: Road to Avonlea.

Anyone else an Avonlea junkie as a kid?  My mom, sister, and I tuned in to this Disney Channel program every Sunday night for seven seasons.  It's been great fun to re-discover this series and I'm already on the second disc to the third season.  In fact, I just watched the episode to which the above photo is taken (Aunt Olivia's wedding to Jasper).  So until the power goes out, I'll be finishing up season three and moving onward to season four.  Jon's even enjoying it a bit, although he mercilessly makes fun of the soundtrack (too many woodwinds, especially bassoon, for his liking . . . apparently)!


I mentioned our pond up above.  Here is a picture of it . . . we love our gigantic koi!

  
The pond is directly next to our cellar door so if it overflows, it'll drain right on down . . . and if the power goes out, our poor sump pump will not be able to "save the day" as in previous instances.  I hope our fishies bury themselves in the mud in order to ride out the storm, otherwise they may find themselves swimming in the hot water tank!

Stay safe, everyone!

 

veggie lasagna

YUM!

Weight Watchers designated this week's theme to be "Go Meatless" (or something along those lines -- I'd have to pull out my weekly to be sure).  Part of our meeting, with my fabulous leader Chellay, was spent discussing yummy meatless dinner ideas and some inspiration was really flowing to me!

This afternoon, while planning out our weekly dinner menu, I decided to search out a new vegetarian lasagna recipe.  I've made my own spinach lasagna plenty of times but really wanted to branch out, especially since veggies are so fresh and plentiful this time of year!

My search landed me with an AMAZING Weight Watchers recipe.  I would HIGHLY recommend this one!  As always, I adapted the recipe a bit to our own liking, but here's the general gist . . .

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Roast assortment of veggies with garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil for 25 minutes, or until very tender (stirring often).  Our veggie assortment consisted of one small eggplant, one zucchini, one yellow squash, three roma tomatoes, one small onion, shredded carrots, mushrooms, and two sweet red peppers. 
3. Pour half of your roasted vegetables into your blender (be sure that they're very tender).  Add about a half cup of water and puree.  
4. Meanwhile, you've boiled your whole grain lasagna noodles.  I needed 11 to fit three layers in my baking dish.
5. Layer your lasagna, from bottom to top: puree, noodles, puree, roasted veggies, fresh (shredded, part-skim) mozzarella, fresh shredded parmesan, noodles, puree, roasted veggies, cheese, noodles, puree, cheese.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until bubbly.

Seriously, we gobbled this yup (lil' two year old Evelyn, included)!  I invited my sister over to dinner and she raved about it, too, which can be a rare occurrence!

I did manage to take a few pictures, albeit not many.  Regretfully, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, as I was rushing to feed my hungry lil' one!

Roasted Vegetables

Bottom layer of Veggie Puree.

I think this is the third layer??

OH!  And did I mention that each serving (of what I cut - 12 servings in my pan) were only 4 POINTS PLUS?!?!?!  Such a lovely Sunday supper on this late [and rainy] summer evening!

Sunny Days

It was nearly a year and a half ago, but the other day, I received yet another compliment on Evelyn's first birthday party from March of 2010. She was just getting into Sesame Street, so we appropriately appointed the theme as "Sunny Days."

Here's some inspiration for any of you who are thinking of throwing a Sesame Street themed birthday party for your little girl . . .

We went with an orange and pink color scheme to bring a little originality to the Sesame Street party.  Orange = Evelyn's favorite color (even then) and the pink brought a bit of femininity.

Evelyn's all-natural smash cake.

Cookie Monster obviously wanted to hang with the desserts!

The birthday girl and her proud parents.

Since this is one and a half years ago, I was still carrying the 50+ lbs I have since lost on Weight Watchers.

The "piece of resistance" = Ernie's Rubber Duckie Punch!

"Chalk" Full 'o Love

I have some pretty amazing students!

Being a high school choral director, I have the pleasure of getting to know my students over the span of four years.  It's such an amazing experience to really watch them grow and develop into such inspiring young adults.

This year's group of seniors, the class of 2011, were particularly inspiring to me in my career.  First off, it was a gigantic class (I graduated 28 from the choral program - that's well over 10% of the graduating class . . . probably closer to 25%)!  Secondly, they were especially enthused and motivated in their vocal and theatrical endeavors.  Most importantly, I feel as though I really had the opportunity to "grow up" with this class, as they were freshmen when Jon and I got married (some of them even sang with our church choir at our wedding) and were VERY involved in my pregnancy with Evelyn.  [Seeing me directing our production of Grease while in my third trimester probably served as some of the best birth control for any high schooler to witness - I was a very cranky lady.]  They have been so involved in our lives that Evelyn always refers to them as "Mommy's kids."

Needless to say, it was very difficult to watch them graduate.

I had watched (and many a-time counseled them through) these kids overcome typical teenage growing pains (i.e. first dates, bad test grades, break-ups, familial frustrations).  I had also been deeply involved in many atypical, and sometimes very serious,  issues, including my one student's intense battle with cancer.  [By the way - Nick has been CANCER-FREE since the end of November!!!!!!!!!  Thank you, Lord!]

ANYWAY!

I found a lovely surprise left by a few of these special students in our department's office. . . .

I share an office with a very dear colleague and friend, Heather (our band director).  A few years ago, she thought it would be cool to hang a corkboard where we could display any senior portraits that our students gave us.

Well!  This corkboard has never been taken down by either Heather or myself since it was initially hung in 2009 but a student of ours recently started dropping hints to us that he and a few of his friends left a surprise in the office.  Boy, did we search EVERYWHERE for this "surprise!"  I mean, we had to clean the office out before our summer recess so we thought for sure that we would've uncovered said surprise at some point.  Having found nothing out of the ordinary, the student hinted to Heather that the surprise was somehow associated with the corkboard.  We pulled it off the wall, and this is what we uncovered .  .

Professions of their gratitude in rainbow chalk!  

So sweet and so representative of just how special these students are!

Thanks for making my life so lovely, Class of 2011!

Muffin Tins: Part 2

I highly recommend cooking with your muffin tin if you are the parent of a toddler.  Um, and if you are on Weight Watchers.  It allows for perfect portion control (for both scenarios) and adds a bit of whimsy to eating a balanced meal (for the toddler . . . okay, yeah for both . . . ).

We did muffin sized turkey meat-loaves this evening.

As I've previously mentioned, I'm not the biggest fan of meat dishes but these were pretty good (and only 3 points per "muffin" on the Weight Watchers PointPlus program).  Jon and Evelyn, however, really enjoyed this concoction.  I sort of made the recipe up as I went along, but here's the gist of it:

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and spray muffin tin with extra virgin olive oil cooking spray.
• Combine in a large bowl one pound of all natural ground turkey, 1 egg, about 1/3 cup of skim ricotta cheese, 1/2 of a diced onion, 1/2 a cup of sliced mushrooms, 1 packet of no-salt bullion, and black pepper.  
• Using an ice cream scoop, place one serving (1 scoop) in each muffin.  Top with a pinch of seasoned bread crumbs and 1/2 of a cherry tomato.
• Bake for 35 minutes.

On another note, I've almost finished a mini-home decor project in the bathroom.   When I say "mini," I really mean a small project which may not seem like much to those of you who blog on these matters.  It was on my list of projects to get done this summer, however, and I'm sure we can all relate to the satisfaction found in crossing items off a "to-do" list.  Will post more upon its completion!

Enjoy your holiday weekends, everyone!

Fun with Muffin Tins

As I've mentioned before, one of my goals this summer is to make at least one new recipe each week.  This week, I've run into a bit of a theme where many of my meals have been made in a muffin tin!

We started with an old stand-by in our house: Mini Muffin Quiche.  Okay, they're probably really frittatas since I don't make a crust, but anyway . . .

I love this dish for many reasons.  Evelyn LOVES these little delicacies and will gobble them down like rapid fire, plus they're full of power foods which are awesome for her growth and development.  Also, they serve as amazing leftovers and can be reheated the next day for either breakfast or lunch.

Okay, so the recipe is as follows (adapted from a recipe I found on Weelicious last summer):

• Spray muffin tin with that handy extra-virgin olive oil cooking spray stuff and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Whisk five eggs with about 1/4 cup of milk and about 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese.  Season to your preference.
• Add any vegetables.  This particular batch had spinach (3 cups pre-cooked with the water drained like crazy), 1 diced tomato, and chopped black olives.  I also added fresh shredded mozzarella.
• Pour into muffin tin.  Be sure to fill only halfway because they will rise!
• Cook for 25 to 30 minutes or so (or until a nice golden brown).

This morning, with the temperatures being so cool, Evelyn and I decided to use up some of our ripening produce and bake.  We took an old stand-by banana bread recipe with the intent of folding blueberries into the batter.  As we got going, I realized that our three little ripened bananas wouldn't have been enough to yield the two cups of mashed banana so we added some applesauce to the banana (and cut the 2 eggs to 1).  My, oh my . . .were these ever a toddler hit!

  Yummy, yummy.

Tonight's original dinner plans included MORE muffin tins (mini ground turkey meat-loaves) but we decided to treat Evelyn to a date out with Mommy and Daddy instead.  We hit up a local Salad bistro (where the kid's meal is practically as large as an adult-serving - ahh!), visited a local kiddie amusement park, and finished the night off with some fro-yo.    If these temperatures keep up, then I'll give the turkey muffin meatloaves a try tomorrow!

Ringing in the Summer Season

Yesterday marked the first official day of summer (woo!), and while I'm still slaving away at school, I decided to celebrate a bit!

I came home to find that the little one hadn't eaten her afternoon snack, so we piled into the car and headed to our favorite frozen yogurt bar.  Mmmmm.  Fat-free yogurt with fresh fruit.  Guilt-free decadence!

After heading back home, we found that Jon hadn't returned from work yet, so I decided to surprise him with some hamburger patties to throw on the grill.  He's all about beef and I'm hit or miss with it, so needless to say, this was a huge treat for him.  And y'know, these were pretty darn tasty!  Here's my recipe that I kind of made up on the spot . . .

• Take 1 pound of ground beef (we only use all-natural, grass-fed which kind of makes it tastier, anyway).
• Mix well with one egg, chopped onion (half), and minced garlic.  Season with black pepper and Mrs. Dash's salt-free table seasoning.
• Form beef mixture into 12 round balls (even in size) and then squash down.  
• On six patties, sprinkle a pinch of shredded mozzarella cheese and a pinch of crumbled feta cheese.  Cover each cheese-topped patty with a plain patty.

Grill to your preference.  Mmm mmmm.

Anyway, I had those ready to go, sliced up a fresh and juicy watermelon, and then Jon walked in the door with a fresh bouquet of flowers from my favorite local florist!  Whatta guy!  He knows how I strongly dislike grocery store bouquets!

It is a huge arrangement, therefore I had the opportunity to use my HUGE music vase that the Class of 2010 gave me last Spring!


And because it was the first day of summer, I made a point in starting one of my projects.  My sister, Abby, and I sanded down the old picnic table that has been taking up space next to our garage for the past three years.  We then began giving it a fresh coat of paint in a buttercream yellowish hue.  Still have a bit more to go but I feel accomplished in starting it (at least)!  Unfortunately, I TOTALLY forgot to take a before picture.  I always forget to do that!  Oh well!

Dwindling Year

It's been difficult to find the time to post for the past week or so.  With the hustle and bustle of the end of the year, I've just been too plum tired to type.

Another school year is quickly winding down and as we're entering Regents testing week, I'm spending my time proctoring, filing music, planning for next year, and cleaning the toxic waste zone known as my desk.  Y'know, I often lament the sorry state of my desk at school.  Try as I might to keep things tidy, the piles continue to bloom and grow like pesky lil' weeds.  Oh, how I wish I was "type A."

While I'll miss the Class of 2011 (because they're really great kids) an awful lot, I am beginning the final countdown towards this year's summer recess by making finite goals for my "upcycling projects."  Typing these here will hold me to them, so the first three projects include . . .

• refinishing and repainting an old picnic table
• creating pillowcase dresses out of a few embroidered vintage pillowcases that I scored on Etsy (this project will require much assistance from Mom)
• modge-podging coasters out of bathroom tile.

Also on the agenda: trimming away my tulip/daffodil stems and planting petunias in the rock garden.  Of course, this means that I'll choose the petunias and then point and shoot Jon in the directions to where I'd like them planted.  He loves gardening and completing outdoor chores.  I do not share this love.  This is obviously one prime example of how our contrasting personalities and interests make for a perfect match.  [Cue Paula Abdul . . .]