miscellany monday

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend! Ours was great.

1) Everyone was posting about things to be thankful for last week. I didn't. But I thought I'd mention a few today. The most important are: Chris and Celia. Our families. My parents being a huge part of Celia's life, and a big help to me in raising her. The friends I mentioned in yesterday's post. My job, which though stressful at times, is one I love and with some of the best co-workers and friends I could ask for. That we are lucky enough not to want for any basic needs, like so many others do. That we are a happy and healthy family.

I could go on forever. Those are the important ones, though.

2) Thought it would be fun to continue with the seasonal background thing and make the blog a bit Christmas-y. The new scheme is nice, eh?

3) Otis the Christmas tree is doing well. Now that he's all spruced up (no pun intended- but then I realized it could indeed be a very good pun and intentionally left it there) he looks pretty good, as long as I don't put him next to any other Christmas trees for comparison.

4) I made Veganomicon's Not-tella last night. It was definitely not Nutella. I was disappointed. Those blasted trans fats taste so good!

5) There are a couple other new recipes on my radar to try this week. One is these lemon bars. They look delicious and the recipe looks easy.

6) The night we put up Otis, we also ordered delivery for dinner. Chris called to order, and had to explain and spell our address several times to the person taking the order. Then we waited much longer than the estimated 20 minutes. Then a man with a thick foreign accent (the delivery man) called and Chris had a very confusing conversation with him about how to find our address. He hung up having no idea where the delivery man was, or whether he had helped the situation at all. Finally, our food arrived. The poor delivery guy showed us what the order taker had given him:

A bunch of random letters and numbers having absolutely nothing to do with our actual address and phone number. It's a freaking miracle he found our house at all, given what he had to work with. He got a good tip.

7) Last night I was putting laundry away and Celia was playing in my closet. Before I knew it, that little monkey had managed to find a board game I had been hiding to save for her birthday. She was so excited to have found it and immediately wanted to open it up. Not much I could do, so we set it up and played.

It's The Very Hungry Caterpillar Game. Really cute, but a bit advanced for Celia. I'm going to sneak it back into hiding and save it for when she's ready.

8) The outfit of the week involves the boots again. This time the fashion is to wear one boot while carrying the other in hand. Add a binky as accessory, and you have yourself quite an ensemble. 

9) I just finished reading The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change. It was very good. I highly recommend it, and it would be an especially good read now before Christmas.

10) I have a lot of not so fun to-dos this week (like get another oil change- hopefully not like this one), but we are starting the week with a nice clean house. Laundry's done and I vacuumed yesterday. Always nice.

Have a great week, all!