Surprise!

Since it's so difficult to surprise me, my family went all out with a combination Mother's Day and birthday celebration yesterday.

Ds1 and I were off to see Spiderman 3. I don't know if it was the hassle prior to the movie, or sitting four rows back from the screen, but I didn't much care for it. I loved the first two Spiderman movies. I guess I'm hard to please.

So we got back home to find this, notice the coloring of the balloons to the right. The colors signify some of my gifts, NICE, guys, very clever touch (seriously!).
Dinner was ready to eat, and there was a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting.

I commenced to opening my presents. First I opened my card, which was very sweet and funny from ds2.

My first gift was a Whitman's Sampler (chocolates) which ds2 asked to have immediately... the pink Disney shirt is a gift from my mother, btw.



My next present was Russell Stover Nut, Chewy and Crisp Centers, but I wasn't about to give these up, nuts and chews are my favorite! Even ds1 was begging for a handout on these!




My next gift was a lovely teapot with all the things I wanted in a teapot, and a beautiful cup with which to drink tea.

That was all the presents on the table, but then dh handed me a small gift wrapped box.



WOW, is that beautiful?

I was momentarily confused, as just this past week I bought myself two rings off eBay. The first one is an eternity ring and was $8.99. .925 Sterling Silver and Austrian crystals (copies of diamonds and emeralds).
The second one is diamond cut rhodium-plated. This ring is made of jeweler's brass, and was $4.99. $2.52 shipping on each ring.

Got ds2 good, too. Told him they cost, "Four ninety-nine and eight ninety-nine." He asked, "Dollars?" And was freaking out, thinking I'd charged $1400.00 on rings. Finally told him they were only $4.99 and $8.99. Pretty rings, fast and courteous communication from the seller, arriving by USPS a mere two days after I'd purchased them.

I'd looked at the emerald and diamond gold ring a couple of weeks ago at a local, family-owned jewelry store and really liked it... but felt it was too much money to spend on a ring... $300. The jeweler told us she was running a 25% sale for Mother's Day, so it ended up being $225.

The confusion came in because I thought dh had somehow found time to wrap the rings I just received in the mail that very day, and had had with me while at the movie. I didn't understand another little ring box.

Which brings me to my last gift, from ds2.


WOW. These are gorgeous earrings and at first I was freaking out, since they were so expensive. They were regularly $400!!! OUCH!!! But the jeweler put the cost down to $189 because dh and ds2 explained that they only had exactly $450 to spend.

It's really hard for dh to surprise me, since I manage the finances... I would know if large sums of money were missing, or I would see charges to credit/debit cards.

Since the guys bought these on Friday, they had to hurry and surprise me, or I would have known something was up. See they had me pull out $300 cash for hay... under the guise of getting 30 bales all at once. Then they realized that if I didn't see 30 bales of hay, I'd know something was up. So they decided to give me an early Mother's Day/birthday surprise.

Awesome. I feel loved.

Until next time.

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Forgot The Camera

My company allows me to use its camera for personal use and I always bring it home with me, unless I happen to forget. Which I did last night. I remember looking at it and I could have sworn I picked it up and brought it with me. But it was not in my purse when I got home and it was on my desk when I got to work.

ANYHOO... all that to say I had hoped last night to take a picture of the yarn I found over the weekend so I could post about it this morning. But then I didn't have the camera. We own a camera of our own, but this one is way better AND it takes the honking huge SmartMedia card we got for it. I think we paid $10 after rebates from TigerDirect.com. It's an ULTRA SECURE DIGITAL CARD 2GB 60X. So now I can take something like 1500 pictures on this card and I don't know how long of a video. I impulsively made a bid on a similar camera on eBay. See... I know the battery insertion directions on this camera are confusing and people here at my job often put them in the wrong way. So I found this camera with four days left to go on the bidding and decided to place a bid! Anyway, the auction says the camera won't turn on, and I bet it's because the batteries were put in backwards. I could be wrong, I might be wrong and hopefully if I am, someone will outbid me in the next four days. Otherwise I'm taking my chances - I won't bid any higher than I have already.

Regarding My Birthday Wishlist... I found this really awesome little tool on Amazon, which I would love to impulsively buy. I have always had an interest in how much electricity is used by household appliances and for many years I was proud of myself for my low electricity bills. For years and years I paid less than $100/month. Then we moved and most of our family members put on weight and now we run the air conditioning a lot. Anyway, this item is called P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor and you plug your appliance into it - blender, television, computer monitor, whatever sparks your curiosity, and you can find out how much electricity the item uses. We have three old refrigerators and one old freezer and they were given to us free - hand me downs from family members - and everyone says new ones use less electricity. Now if I had one of these neat little tools I could see how much electricity they really use.

I did look at the bags of yarn. One had Ungar "Made In France" "Fluffy" Acrylic Yarn, a dark turquoise-green color. The Lion Chenille is not the "Thick and Quick" but the smaller skeins with the skinny yarn. I said yesterday it was $1.99 but it actually cost me $2.99 and there are seven rolls.

Well, it's almost 7. I'd better stop for now. I wanted to talk about my Lutterloh Pattern Making book which I found several years ago for $0.75 at a thrift store. It sells for $50 and up on eBay every time I search for it. But I'm keeping this one! Apparently this book is still updated, so I'm looking into maybe updating mine if I can ever get the PDF order form to open...

Until next time.

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Watching Food

I had a bad day with food yesterday. By "bad" I mean I didn't bring the right kinds of food with me, and was hungry often throughout the day. Like annoyingly hungry every couple of hours. It is becoming more and more apparent that my body is sensitive to carbohydrates. And mostly what I mean by this is when I eat carbs, they don't stay with me and I'm very hungry within a short period of time. I started the day out with a bagel with cream cheese.

Last week I started to loosely pay attention to exactly how many calories I'm ingesting and was chagrined to discover it's a lot more than I thought. Like 3000 a day or more? No wonder I continue to gain weight. I think 2000 is a good goal for me, so that's what I started aiming for, and soon discovered I could easily go through that many calories before dinner. I tend to eat a large dinner, too. Back in my dieting days, about a decade ago, I would save 1000 calories for dinner. Anyway, back to the bagel. It was a Trader Joe's brand onion bagel and those suckers are huge and full of calories. 320 to be exact. Not to mention they are white flour which is basically sucking nutrients from my body to even digest the things. Next 2 ounces of cream cheese because I may as well forego the cream cheese altogether if I limit myself to 1 ounce. I toasted my bagel and ate it at 6:30am. By 8:30am I was ravenous.

I find I do much better with my kefir smoothie. 1/2 cup kefir, 1/2 cup goat's milk [168], 1 tablespoon virgin unrefined coconut oil [120], four strawberries [15] and today to cut out 100 more calories I started using the stevia again. I was using maple syrup - 1 to 2 tablespoons daily. We'll see how it goes for me today, food-wise. I also brought a chicken breast, maybe 3 ounces? 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1/2 avocado (if I bring the whole one I'd eat it), cauliflower, cucumber slices, baby carrots, 4 slices salami (100). Eating the salami at 3:30 holds me well until dinner three hours later. I'm not dieting. I'm just paying attention to what I'm eating. Yesterday was very uncomfortable what with all the hunger pangs from too many carbs. The foods I brought today have few carbs, so I'll see if that makes a difference. I have known for years that I can't tolerate sugars well, and our bodies convert carbohydrates into sugars. Anyway, enough about food.

My birthday is next month and this year I want my immediate family to acknowledge that. Since I'm the only female human in the household, I probably should spell that out exactly what I mean by "acknowledging" my birthday. Nothing big and fancy, guys. We don't have to celebrate ON my birthday, which falls on a Friday, we can celebrate it on one of the weekend days. I'd like a cake, but I'm not sure what kind yet. Maybe carrot cake? And ice cream. I would like some gifts, wrapped please. Maybe a birthday tablecloth, some balloons? I'll be 434. So I'm going to rein in my impulsive purchases for the next few weeks and list the things I'd like to have here, so y'all will have an opportunity to buy me a few things. Four weeks notice should be good, yes? I'll start thinking. Since my dh doesn't do computers, I'm hoping ds2 can help me out with triangulating.

Wish List Item 1: Whistling Teapot. It needs to have these features:

1. The lid has to come off and the opening big enough that I can get my hand into it for cleaning.
2. It should have a whistle so I'll know when the water is boiling.
3. It should be stainless steel or porcelain (not aluminum).
   
4. I would like the bottom edge to be rounded and smooth, as opposed to having a lip and a corner. For example, view this teapot to see what I don't want.
5. Basically I want one like the one my sister and I passed back and forth to each other at holidays for a few years. It was white, porcelain, had a whistle, the lid was big enough to fit my hand into to clean. I think it was tossed some time ago.
   

I like this one, although I don't know how well it will blend in with the Holstein cow theme: Pfaltzgraff Napoli Whistling Tea Kettle

I like this red one, although it seems a bit expensive: SoftWorks Red Pick-Me Up Tea Kettle

This one is nice, also on the expensive side. I do like these colors better than the first Pfaltzgraff: Pfaltzgraff Mission Flower Whistling Tea Kettle

OH, OH, OH!! Look at this one! I would love to have this one! Very cute! However, it has some poor reviews, [spout doesn't work well, spills water all over] and I do want it to be functional. Kamenstein Cow Design Tea Kettle 2222

Okay, so there are only one of these available, it's used. It would work great, if it's still available.
Pfaltzgraff Sphere 2-1/2--Quart Enamel on Steel Whistling Tea Kettle

The teapots listed should give an idea of what I'm looking for. If one meeting the criteria can be found at a thrift store for $3 -- even better. In fact, I'm going to hit some Goodwill's this coming Saturday [50% off sale!], so maybe I can even find one that y'all can give me. ;-)

Until next time.

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