We woke up too early but we had to if we wanted to see Sherwood Forest. Before we boarded our train to Nottingham, we walked through Trafalgar Square and back to Piccadilly so that I could look through the window at Fortnum and Mason.
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We woke up in the countryside which was a nice change of pace after London. The bed and breakfast we stayed at had a beautiful garden and they served us a nice English breakfast. They also let us leave our backpacks there for the day.

We did not have plans. Shocking I know. We walked onto the small road and headed for center of town which was a very small walk.



It was idyllic countryside. I loved Amesbury.
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We woke up and ate at the local Pret a Manger which is a cross between a restaurant and a 7-eleven with the quality and freshness of something you put together yourself. I say 7-eleven only because sandwiches are pre-made (that day). I believe I had a tomato mozzarella croissant for breakfast. I'm telling you their fast food is incredible in England.


( Boats and Bridges! )

I feel like I should have been done chronicling our honeymoon a very long time ago. At this rate we'll have been married for years before I'm done. Oh Well. Keep on Keeping On.

So at the end of Day 3 we turned in our rental car and boarded a train in Bristol and arrived in London quite late at night. We stayed in a budget/hostel type of place though we had our own room and connected bathroom. It was very clean, but very noisy and the bed was uncomfortable. Oh well. We weren't there to sleep.

Bright and early the next morning we figured out how to ride the underground and went to Piccadilly to get our London Pass. With pass in hand we went straight to the Tower of London.


( more! more! more! )

I apologize to all the people on facebook who watched my mission status updates without knowing about the mission. I'm not usually that cryptic but I didn't want Mary and Miguel to read anything about their cake/cupcakes before their wedding on Valentine's Day.

I am very grateful to have a Kevin for a husband. He's very helpful and took on the cupcake stand. I'm also very lucky that his parents already built one for his cousin Erika's wedding. So last week I drove around from store to store trying to get ideas and then the four of us...yes even Max and Sam "helped" (critiqued)...decided together how to decorate the stand. And then Kevin did all the work. That was nice. Seriously, that's how I'd love to go through life. Here's my design ... someone else make it happen!



I make White cake with buttercream icing cupcakes...
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Wish Nicole would play. She'd kick everyone's ass.

1. Bold the shows you watch/used to watch.
2. Italicize the shows you've seen at least one episode of.
3. Underline the shows you own [at least one season] on DVD and/or VHS.
4. Post your answers.

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I had two bizarre dreams this morning one of which is directly related to facebook. Although not the way it begins. That's just weird all by itself.

I was at a slumber party at Oprah's. But it wasn't grand or anything. Facebook comes into play because there were a couple girls from High School there. As each of us woke up we trickled into the living room. In the living room there were boys from High School. They must have spent the night with Stedman.

We were definitely adults at this time. I went to the refrigerator and grabbed a diet Dr. Pepper. One woman complained that she had given up soda and that I was tempting her. In High School it would have been regular Dr. Pepper and who gave up stuff then?

After we all chatted for a bit (Oprah and Stedman remained asleep), we decided to go to the playground outside and play tag. I never played tag in high school. We must have been regressing at an alarming pace. It was super fun although the men seemed to have an advantage over grown up women who were much slower and wearing inappropriate tag clothing. But I woke up feeling that sense of being free and easy as a kid. So thank you Facebook.

The other dream was weird too but not facebook related. We were supposed to visit my sister Mis who had purchased property in the remote and less populated area of South East CA. We were having a photo shoot with a famous actor. I don't know why and I don't know who the actor was. I only knew that Mis called and asked us where the hell we were because famous actor man is waiting.

And then she was at our hotel with Kevin in her car and me following in mine. And she demanded that we go to her remote place that was about 45 min. away. We get separated. We are off of the freeway on a small road that was cute and country like. For some reason I decided that I'd be better off rollerskating the rest of the way so I left my car by the side of the road and skated merrily along. (Hmmm regressing again) After about 15 minutes I come upon a humongous hill and I'm kind of excited and scared to skate down it. I do it and it's fun and exhilarating. I'm now too far from the car to go back but still really far from Mis's so I decide to call and that's when I realize that I don't have anything at all on me. No cell and no keys. I skate on and find a cell phone by the side of the road and call for a ride. Max answers Kevin's cell and I start negotiating a ride.

I woke up feeling that the dream was kind of weird but all I can think about is how big that hill was. Definitely not as fun a dream as playing tag with your friends.

I've chosen not to eat the simple carbohydrates. I have a tendency to over-complicate things in general so why not carbs too?

I never liked brown rice until I tried the following recipe. It's easy to put together and risk free because it bakes in the oven. The result is fluffy and flavorful brown rice that isn't so bad anymore at all. I have been known to mix it with pinto beans in a burrito, add it to soup and lately I've been mixing it with vegetarian chili (canned) for a healthy and quick dinner.

Baked Brown Rice

* I use any kind of brown rice including long grain. I sub out the butter with olive oil. The taste is just slightly less delicious. I don't pre-boil the water. I just use hot tap water. Yes I know that's bad but I'm lazy sometimes.

1 1/2 cups brown rice, medium or short grain
2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the rice into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.

Bring the water, butter, and salt just to a boil in a kettle or covered saucepan. Once the water boils, pour it over the rice, stir to combine, and cover the dish tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove cover and fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately.

As I said before, I am posting tips. Maybe they'll be helpful and maybe they won't. However, it may prompt discussion which is always good and it may invite you to share a tip of your own that I could use.

One of my favorite things is Sarah Lee Delightful 100% Whole Wheat Bread. It is only 45 calories per slice. Of course I eat two slices (and sometimes four!) which provides 6 protein and 4 fiber grams while only costing 90 calories.

This lets me have toast, sandwiches, hotdogs and hamburgers (veggie of course).

It's easy, tastes good and I always have it on hand.

Many deals to be had due to superbowl Sunday. I filled the bottom of the cart with 12-packs of soda. Seven to be exact. That's five across the bottom and two stacked on top.

I checked out and walked across the parking lot toward my car on a slight decline. One 12-pack fell off in front of the cart and the cart ran over it. Right in the middle of the street. Soda was squirting everywhere and I was a traffic hazard like a big rig with a spilled load on the highway.

It turned out to be not such a big deal you know? I quickly got the cart free of the soda and picked up the messy 12-pack in one hand and pushed the cart to my car with the other hand. As I was loading my groceries into the truck I was approached by no less than two people at two different times. Both wanted to make sure that I planned on taking that 12-pack back into the grocery store and making sure the store would give me a new one to replace the destroyed one for free.

I appreciated their concern initially but told them that I was the one that packed the cart. They said "Still. You should do it."

I said that I only lost two cans out of twelve and they said, "Still."

Finally I had to tell them that it really isn't that big of a deal. It's my fault and it's not a big loss at all. No.

Am I missing something?

This year I made a quiet resolution to myself that I shared with a few people in conversation. Basically, I wanted to fly. There are people that I know in real life (not just TV shows like "Leave it to Beaver") that have their households run like finely-tuned machines. When I say that it sounds like I'm looking for perfection but I'm not. I want to have my house always "company ready". I'd love to spontaneously have people over without any thought at all to how the house looks. I'd like my clothes put away in the closet. I want wake up each morning to a bare desk that invites morning pages.

The main reason I am going down this path is so that I get what I really need. Because along with the peace of mind that a well-organized living situation provides I will also gain TIME. I know a family that after dinner the husband and wife wash, dry and put away the dishes. They bathe and get the kids in bed. Leftovers are packed into lunches for the next day. The key is that they do everything without thinking about it. It's a habit and it gets done fast.

So I started keeping my kitchen sink fairly clean (remember no dishwasher here!). I started deciding what I'm wearing the night before. I'm building these habits see?

But I was feeling like crap. At first I thought it was resistance until I remembered that I'd been slowly getting worse since before Christmas. I also noticed clothes were getting to be too tight. At first I thought that I couldn't possibly commit myself to eating healthy and exercising along with becoming more organized until I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot trying to do one without the other. There's no way I could put into place new habits while becoming more and more run down.

The first thing I did was quit the full calorie soda. After our wedding last September, I went from diet to regular in case I got pregnant (no phenylalanine). It's funny how we think. Like a baby needs full calorie soda! So now I'm drinking water and tea and the occasional diet soda and I feel so much better.

I started using sparkpeople again. I bought a wii fit that I love. I joined a "biggest loser" group at work and have a chance to win $1,000.

I think that if I eat in a way that energizes I gain time as well. I've always subscribed to the idea that goals need to be specific and measurable. I'm following my gut now not my head. I also know that in order to succeed, sometimes you have to fail a lot and with each failure it brings you closer and closer to your goal. So I'm not going to worry. I'm just going to keep moving forward and see what tomorrow brings.

I will also be making posts about things that work for me in this process and hopefully people reading this will share their ideas with me. I could use them!

I deliberately took today off of work. Last Monday I knew I needed a day for myself. I had no plans and that was kinda the point. Turns out I had my Oscar season kick off event.

This year I thought I had decided to forgo my mad obsession to see every major Oscar nominated film prior to the Oscars. I didn't see that many 2008 movies. At least not Oscar caliber films. I tend to like the action movies and go with my dad whenever a new one comes out. Those don't normally get Oscar nominations. Why can't there be more Lord of the Rings type films?

So in my meanderings online this morning I happened to see the nominations that were recently announced. The analyst in me decided to see how many films were still playing and it turns out quite a few. In fact, if my day had 10+ hours free to watch movies and the theaters cooperated, I could have seen all of the Best Picture Nominations today.

Instead I saw just one. The one that no other person in my household would ever care to see. Sam wants to see Benjamin Button and Milk. Max wants to see Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire. No one wants to see "The Reader".

As I drove through the drizzle and then walked to the ticket counter I enjoyed the damp weather and the quiet. It felt just like this movie.

I haven't even seen the other movies but I don't think it will win Best Picture or even Best Actress for Kate Winslet. It was well done and thoughtful though. It was quiet. It was interesting.

I would never have seen this if it wasn't nominated. It's not my type. And that is exactly why I do this. I enjoy the stretch.

Yesterday we had lunch at the Back Bay Bistro at Newport Dunes. It's in a beautiful location and has a fairly decent menu. Dad and I both had the grilled salmon. They had a nice spicy seafood chowder as well. The main thing about the place though was the view over the back bay. Very light and modern inside and the view adds to the tranquility.

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Right around Christmas at some point I felt sorry for myself for about 3 minutes. It was because my schedule was crammed tight and my ex's was not. I knew that once he made it to his parents house he'd have pretty smooth sailing from that point on and that he'd get to hang out with his family including Max and Sam and his parents and his brother's family. They'd eat and they'd play games together. They play games all day and all night. I love games. How come I can't lay around and play and eat and play some more? With my kids too!

On Christmas there just isn't time. Christmas eve we go to Kevin's parents and the Christmas day we have half a day to do our thing with my dad and then they are off with their dad which is as it should be.

So after the 3 minutes of pouting I decided to take back New Years Day. No one I know has a New Years Day tradition. I told Kevin. I told Jeff. I told the kids that New Years Day is mine and that we will be celebrating as a family.

I declared it Favorite Foods and Game Day.

For breakfast I made crepes for them and baked oatmeal for me. I remembered that Melissa had given me a jar of Bananas Foster Jelly that she made and I filled my crepes with that. DELICIOUS! Kevin always puts honey on his and Max loves powdered sugar and lemon juice on his. Plus we had those super juicy lemons!
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It went better than I thought it would. What with the wedding, work related projects and visiting Seattle I didn't get started until the weekend before. To top things off I absolutely refuse to do anything less than mindful when it comes to giving gifts. It's very important to me to think of something special for people so that when they open their gifts they know.

But it's like everything. I underestimated myself. I started before that weekend. In my head I had been thinking about everyone for a long while so when it came to that weekend I basically had to write a plan and then execute it.

One of my most favorite gifts that I gave this year was to our family but mostly Max and especially Sam. We visited my sister in Washington just a few short weeks before Christmas. She runs a bed and breakfast out of her house and has a basket with snacks in it in her family room that guests can grab from. Sam was in love with the snack basket.

He said on more than one occasion, "Please can we have a snack basket?!" My response was, "How long do you think that would last in our house with you, Max and Al eating from it?" We agreed on maybe three days.

But his face would light up when he saw the snack basket.

I'm not a snacker. I eat plenty but I do it at meal times so I do not appreciate snack food like he does. He has lived in my house and has been snack deprived his whole 16 years.

I thought I should maybe do this snack basket thing but I did not want to contribute to bad eating habits. I decided that I would try to make it 80% healthy and 20% not healthy. I'm fortunate that my kids like healthy snacks.

I spent over $150 at Smart and Final, Costco and the grocery store and came up with this:


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Things are never as simple as they should be for me. I have been known to over think things.

Melissa wrote me an email today specifically to tell me that the lemons from Charles and Michele's house were the juiciest lemons ever and did I notice? I found this hilarious because not only did I notice but I took a picture of them.


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Ok so the other day I made tamale pie and said that you'd hear more later for two reasons. One, I didn't have a picture and I love posting pictures and two because no one has ever heard of this dish. I have searched the internet high and low looking for something comparable to no avail. I want to put this out there and see how it developed.

I have my theories. In the cookbook my mom made me, she said that this recipe comes from Alice Matae a friend of my grandmothers in 1940. This dish makes a lot of food with inexpensive ingredients. It's probably some Great Depression concoction.

All the recipes for tamale pie usually had ground beef covered with a cornmeal topping. This isn't like that at all. It's like a pudding consistency. Maybe a soft polenta? It's odd for two more reasons. The protein in this recipe is tuna. That lost most people at work when I mentioned it. GROSS! Tuna in cornmeal? Yum. It's delicious. Don't knock it till you try it. The other reason this is really weird is that for the olives and the corn you are supposed to put them in UNDRAINED. I assume it adds more flavor but for some reason that grosses me out a little bit but I add them as stated anyway and then promptly forget about it.

There is also too much oil I think and I hate it when recipes list instruction in the body of the directions that apply to the ingredients above. The first thing after the ingredients says mix all ingredients. If I wasn't a person who read recipes all the way through first I totally would have drained the olives and the corn.



Tamale Pie

1 cup salad oil
6 cups milk
1 can corn
3 cans tomato sauce
2 cans tuna
3 T chile powder
1 can pitted olives
2 cups yellow corn meal
3 eggs beaten
2 tsp sald
1/2 tsp pepper
1 onion chopped

Mix all ingredients. Drain tuna and flake before adding to mixture. Do not drain corn or olives. Bake at 350 degrees for 2 hours. Stir once or twice during baking.

I also made this cherry crisp which was delicious.



You all don't know how much I love almond croissants. I ate them often in England and whenever I can in CA. Well they recently renovated the coffee stand in the CHOC hospital cafeteria and turned it into a nice little place with fresh pastries and the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted. And they have my almond croissants. If I wanted to I could eat then every single day but I restrain myself.