G is for giveaway

Not mine this time though. Pop over to Lila Tueller Designs for a chance to win this fabulous fabric.

And the winner is.....

Rocco could hardly stand the excitement!!

So all the numbers were put on slips of paper, and *drumroll please*

#67, Jennifer of Hoodies and Flip Flops, come on down!! I think it's karma; I miss my flip flops most in January. I'll post some pictures after she receives it. Thank you to everyone who entered! I feel so special ;D.

Edit: Here it is, all ready to go. I couldn't resist one picture...

To Marcia, so she can stop checking (love you ;D)

Hello everybody.
Let's see... what's been happening...
Well, I've been waiting for that phone call about that job, that I no longer believe in. Which has been leading me to wallow, much like this

...but without the stuffy (and I've been walking the dog, and taking him in the park, and cooking him chicken hearts that he was kind enough to share with me and on and on about the hound). Unemployment sucks greasy gopher balls, I must say.

I've been reading a book of Neil Gaiman short stories, one of which scared the pee out of me. ("The Price," from Smoke and Mirrors. Creeeeeeeeeeeeepy).

I've been looking at this mess
...and thinking I should really do something about that. The boxes? They're for material. See how they're still empty? Yea. Slack as me arse.

I've been thinking about going back to school, and if it would stop snowing at some point tomorrow (or next week. I'll wait. Longer. If I have to) I'm going to talk to someone about that.

I made something for someone's birthday, who may or may not be reading this *Hiiiiiiiiiii Marther*. Sneak (blurry) peek:

Oh, and I did make a necklace...
... that I don't think is done yet. It needs some buttons. And it gave me an idea: I will be making a zig-zag quilt with red/turquoise/black, and put together with dark grey. When? No time in the near future, but... y'know... sometime...

And also, this?

This is me, on any given day, until about 11 o'clock. The miracle of not working is that every day feels like Wednesday. Sort of like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But I digress.

Check back in later to see who won my giveaway!

As God is my witness, I. Will never. Bake. Again.

Last night, I made a spice cake. That part went well (lesson learned: next time, just make a cake). This morning, I got up, did the dishes (cause I was that lazy last night), all the while whistling Chocolate Salty Balls. I won't lie, I was excited about my cake balls. So, my balls were in the freezer (heh heh) and I was melting my white chocolate, when I accidentally splashed some water in there from my double boiler. Now, before this morning, I didn't know that chocolate could seize. For those of you who also didn't know this, here's the explanation I found via about.com:

Chocolate is a mixture of fat (from cocoa butter) and dry particles (cocoa and
sugar). When the melted chocolate comes into contact with water, the dry
particles become moist and begin to stick together, quickly forming a
gritty, rough mass of chocolate.

Bully. It also goes on to say that it can't be fixed. Great. Thankfully, I had got 2 bags of chips (which wasn't enough, but I'll get to that). Adam will not see chocolate go to waste, so he pressed it between some wax paper, wrote in it, and put it in the freezer.

Aww. Bless his little heart. So I didn't take them out back and hurk them at the squirrel like I wanted to do. No no, I "dipped" them. Ish. Problems included:

• Too much icing made for squishy balls.
• Squishy, crumbly balls made for dirty chocolate.
• Dirty chocolate made for not very pretty balls. Nobody wants to put a lumpy ball in their mouth. But I persevered.

I ran short of white chocolate, so I had to melt some semi-sweet. I think I ended up with more on my hands than on the cake balls, but that's okay. They're done, and they taste good. They should just be eaten in the dark. Want to see my balls?

I partly blame all this on tomorrow's full moon. Also being blamed on the moon:

• Took the dog to the off-leash part of the Bedford Commons yesterday where he proceeded to pee on 2 people. We're now known as the people who own the "pee-er". Amidst our protestations of "No! No, he's never done this before!!" and "I don't know what could have come over him!" and our apologies to the people with the sodden boots (just what you want when it's COLD), there he is, off in the distance, standing next to the oblivious girl on her cell phone, leg cocked... the hound, not the girl. Adam yelled, and he stopped, but what the hell?? I looked it up, and apparently he is a)either marking people he would like to keep as his own (I hope not; we really don't have room for an extra person in here), or b)just superexcitedOMGpeopleanddogsanddogsandpeopleOMGOMGOMG!!. I think it's probably the latter, and what I read said that with young dogs, excitement will cause them to pee on the closest vertical thing. It shouldn't be hard to correct him, we just have to be close to him when he's about to wee. In the mean time, I've been calling him Pissyfoot, and if you see him, don't stand too close.
• Adam broke the over-the-door towel rack yesterday (through no fault of his own. Hung the towel; a screw snapped. Clearly, it's a lunar event). This forced me to put up the wall mounted rack my sister got me for Christmas. This may have been the turning point for the day, as this went well, we went back to the park, and no one was peed on, and then I made a delicious hamburger/potato/not quite Shepard's Pie for supper.

Full moon tomorrow; I'll be expecting a drastic turnaround on all fronts by Friday.

BEETLEJUICE! BEETLEJUICE! BEETLEJUICE!!

Apparently today is Blue Monday and I'm celebrating by... wallowing? No, that's not right. The hound gets a trip to the park, and then I'm going to try my hand at some cake balls. If they don't come out, I'll just eat the evidence (I'm watching some cake show on TLC. I would be livid if someone paid that much for a cake for me, regardless of the occasion. Just a thought...).

I've been working on what I'm making for the Nightmare before Valentine's Day swap. I won't show anything until my swap partner receives it (which won't be for a while. Shhh, I'm just excited!). Just a hint I got a meter (on clearance) of this before Christmas, even though I had no idea what I would use it for. Coincidence? Well, yes, actually, but a handy one!

And a sneak peak:

I have baker's rage

So let's get right down to it: I hate baking. I do it quite often because I love to eat, and Adam loves to eat, and most of the time, it's okay. Okay, so half way through, it's too hot in the kitchen, and I'm watching the growing pile of dishes, and thinking, 'Why did I start this? I could have just got some Oreos', but then the food is done, and it's good and worth it, but not tonight. No no; tonight, I experienced some stuckage issues. In which the bottom of my banana bread became one with the pan, and as I stood there looking at it, half of it upside down on the cooling rack, the other half, torn open and exposed in the loaf pan, I think I had an aneurysm. *insert horrendous swearing and speaking in tongues here*. FML. (Oh, and Amber, does that answer your question about what some people would call irrational anger?). Whatever. No food goes to waste here; next time, the pan will be greased and floured. *insert some residual swearing here*

So anyway. Want to see my masking tape (this is becoming a bit of an addiction)?

(The blue (which is polka dots) and the font (loveit!!!) are from Michael's ($1.50); the rest are from Liquidation World ($0.88!). The one on the top says, "Hey you!! Propeller cuts the head" and the bottom says, "How many vacant hours do you spend?" I have a feeling they lose something in the translation. BUT that leads me to a question: how many hours do you waste? I spend far too much time doing nothing. Being idle and lackadaisical. Which I'm going to try very hard to change. There are so many things I want and need to do around the house; so many things I want to make, and I really need to get more active. Mostly for me, and it would benefit the hound. So that's my goal: use my time in a more productive way. We'll see how it goes. And in keeping with that, I leave you with this:

"Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where
you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your
command, and better tools will be found as you go along."
-- George Herbert

Just a thought, found over at zzyzx & Sue.

God bless the Hamburger Helper.

So since I was up until 3.30 with indigestion that would drop a Hun, I figured I would get some things done for my Aunts for their birthdays. Birthday? They share a date. However you want to say it, here are some pictures, as I'm tired, hungry and still in misery. (Anyone have some miracle cures for indigestion that won't die??)

Anyroad. Here they are, out of the envelopes:

...and opened up:

Off to shower and mail these. And then write threatening letters to the little hamburger helper hand. Son of a....

PS. If you're new here, well, Hi, how are you? :D And check out my giveaway.