Author: heather

Product Reviews

Best pajama shorts ever

heather

I’m conflicted about Old Navy.  I never used to shop there when I was in high school.  The store was too loud, too busy, and too colorful.  I preferred the laid-back blue and gray tones of the Gap.  But, over the past few years I’ve wandered in and found some things I like.  I like their lounge pants, for one.  But,  you have to be careful to not dry them; otherwise, they will shrink at least 2 inches with each drying.  That’s the complaint I have with most of their clothes – they are inexpensive for a reason – they’re cheap.  No matter how awesomely they fit when you first put them on, if you dry them, they morph into a boxy, short, bastard version of their original selves.

So, I shop there with caution.  But I found some shorts I liked there last summer, so I went back last month to get some more.  I discovered 2 gems.

1.  I have a hard time finding pajama bottoms that I really like.  Is it just me, or do other people have issues with PJ bottoms that ride up while they sleep?  Maybe I am a really active sleeper.  I roll over a lot or scooch up and down the bed.  I don’t know.  I just know that the wrong pair of shorts can give you a mean wedgie.  You cannot get a good night’s sleep with a wedgie.  So, I thought I would try out the Women’s Jersey Lounge Shorts – for $5 if they didn’t work out, no harm no foul.

But, work out they did!  They are awesome.  They are the perfect length, super comfortable and very cute.  At least Tim always tells me I look cute when I wear them.  I liked them so much that I bought too more pairs.  Best…PJ…shorts…ever.

2. I also love these Mid-rise Zip Pocket Shorts.  The hem around the bottoms pulls in the legs of the shorts so they don’t flair out and make one’s hips look even bigger.  They are a great length – not mom-long and not hoochie-short.  They also have nice, deep pockets that will fit a cell phone.  I went back to buy them in additional colors, but of course they now only have sizes 0, 4, and 16.  Online they are out of size 10s in every color but white.  I am not a person who wears white below the waistline.  That is my other HUGE pet peeve with Old Navy.  They are always out of my size. Whatever I look at there are racks of miniature sizes and huge sizes and nothing for the plethora of us girls who are an average size.  Super annoying.  Hopefully Old Navy will bring these back next summer, so I can get some more then.

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Junlygamation

heather

Herein lies an amalgamated synopsis of our busy June & July 2010.

In early June Tim and I, all dressed to the nines:

went to a wedding in Muscatine, and then stopped in downtown Davenport on our way home.  Of course we hit up our favorite tasting lounge first.  On our way there, we saw this amazing sky over downtown Davenport:

The beautiful sky lasted long enough for us to get a beer and then walk to the Skybridge.  By the time we hit the sky bridge, the sky was taking on a more ominous quality:

We hung out on the bridge until we felt the wind hit it.  The bridge started to sway underneath us, so we got the heck out of there.  We exited the bridge into a full-on rain storm.  We ended up having to sprint from the Radisson to our car, parked by Great River. Running in heeled sandals is not fun a’tall.

Since we were all dressed up, Tim tried to get some good pictures of us.  I have a disorder wherein I cannot keep my eyes open while getting my picture taken.  So we have a vast collection of pictures that look like this:

When I consciously try to keep my eyes open, I look as if I’m crazy.  Click on the picture below – it will enlarge, and you’ll be able to see what I mean:

Poor Tim.

Now, I’m fast forwarding a few weeks.  When Nate and Rachel were back, we drove up to Monticello, intending to canoe.  We got rained out both Saturday and Sunday.  So on Sunday we went to the Grant Wood Art Festival instead.

Attending The Grant Wood Art Festival is somewhat of a tradition in our family.  We used to always go on Sunday after meeting.  Actually, at one point the festival was on both Saturday and Sunday.  That was so long ago that I was in the face painting stage/kid tent stage.  I think I made a paper plate doll head with yarn hair and everything.  Back in those days, the festival was super awesome.  The first awesome thing about it was that, as an elementary student at Strawberry Hill, we had the chance to draw a picture that would be used on the buttons used to gain entry to the festival.  That was always super exciting.  I don’t think my drawing ever got chosen, but that was just due to the poor taste of the judges, I am sure.

The second thing that made the Festival awesome was that you could take a bus tour around Stone City, which is this super neat little town northeast of Anamosa, Iowa where Grant Wood started an art colony.  Several years ago, the bus would take you ALL over town, even to the burned out Green mansion.  You could get out of the bus and walk around the ruins of the limestone mansion.  It was such a cool thing to see.  One never sees stone ruins in the Midwest.  Eventually, however, they stopped letting you get out of the bus – you would just drive by the ruins, craning your neck to see as much as you could.  Then they stopped taking you past the ruins all together.  I think the ruins have actually been torn down now, which is so sad.  It was  just a portend of things to come, however.  After decades of having the festival in Stone City, the festival had to get moved to downtown Anamosa because the new owners of the 3 story barn that was the heart of the festival no longer wanted the festival on the grounds.

A Grant Wood Art Festival not in Stone City is just wrong.  The organizers did their best to make the event engaging and interesting, but attending a “festival” in a community center cannot measure up to one held in the magic of Stone City.

Plus, it was raining.  Buckets.

Hopefully some day the new owners of the barn will have a change of heart, and the festival can move back to its homeland. In the meantime, we’ll have to comfort ourselves with this:

It is easy to see why Grant Wood chose Eastern Iowa to found a colony.  It’s super serene and beautiful.  This photo was taken in my parents’ front yard.  Every time I visit their house in Monticello, I feel as if I’m in the Shire.  I’m re-reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy right now, and I’m afraid that what was true for the Shire in the book is also true of Iowa – there is no safe place from the long arm of Sauron anymore, not even in our beautiful heartland.  But, I digress.

Here is another picture of serenity to get your thoughts off the somewhat imminent (probably) destruction of our peaceful lives by greedy, evil leaders (aka Sauron).

We finally did get our canoe trip in.  Benny came back the last week of the month, and I took Friday off, and we hit the Maquoketa river.  It was a perfect day, and we had an awesome time.  I’m glad we got the trip in when we did, because with the dam breaking at Delhi, who knows when the river will be safe for canoers again.


My garden is producing fruit.  I’m pretty amazed that it is, because most of the plants look like something growing in the Dead Marshes.  I don’t know if they are getting too much sun, not enough sun, too much water, not enough water, not enough soil, or what.  They are mystifying me.  But, we’ve gotten some good peppers and small tomatoes from them, so I count the bucket garden a success.

Lastly, but not leastly, I’ve started a new blanket. This one is for the Benny Boo.  He wanted it long enough so that he can tuck the blanket under his feet.  Consequently it is NINE FEET long.  It is going to take buckets of hours to get it done, but it will be a thing of beauty and function in the end.  I know Benny will use the heck out of it.  The blanket is going to be a mix of Peruvian Print and Heather Grey.  I haven’t done any rows with Heather Grey yet; I’m too enamored with the Peruvian to switch colors.  I love variegated yarns – they are a joy to crochet with.  They keep it interesting, too, because you never know which two colors will meet up.

That is a random bunch of stuff, but there’s been a lot to write about lately.  I need to start posting more often and more succintly.  Some day…

Uncategorized

Veronica Mars and What Not

heather

What not.  It’s an interesting phrase.  I have a friend who appends it to the end of almost every sentence – “So, I got into a car accident on Saturday and severed my foot below the ankle and what not…”  Ever since I noticed this foible, I’ve become more sensitive to the usage of the phrase.  I hear it everywhere now.  What not.  What does that even mean?!

Well, thank goodness for the internets.  I just looked it up and discovered it’s actually spelled “whatnot.”  So, I guess it’s a word and not a phrase.  The origins, as explained here, are not that illuminating:

Word Origin & History
whatnot

1540, “anything,” from what + not. As the name of a furniture item, first attested 1808, so named for the objects it is meant to hold.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

I am so glad that the Online Etymology Dictionary relieved me of my ignorance of the origin of the word “what not” by telling me that it came from “what” plus “not.”

Anyway, back to Veronica Mars and whatnot.  Tim and I recently discovered the first season of Veronica Mars on Netflix Streaming.  We are only 6 episodes in, but so far I really, really like it.  It’s freeing me from my Bones kick, which is good because the show was starting to annoy me, but I was so used to watching it that I couldn’t stop.  Plus Emily Deschanel is so interestingly pretty.  She’s hard not to watch.  Look at her!

Man, am I ever tangential tonight.  Back to Veronica Mars.  It’s a good show.  I can’t wait to find out what really happened to Lilly Kane (the estimable Amanda Seyfried, who won my heart in Mean Girls).  Maybe some night when Tim is not home,  I will skip to the end and watch the last episode of season 2.  Or I’ll read the plot synopsis on the internets.  Mu ha ha ha.  You can’t stop me, Teem!!!

Cooking/Recipes

Weird Food

heather

As I mentioned, Tim and I recently had a house-full of guests.  As a result, we had a medley of unusual food loitering about the place.  Tim and I often take the easy road and pick something up for supper, but last night we decided to be resourceful, and we actually ate food that already existed in our kitchen!  It was weird but delicious mix of:

1.  A microwaved sweet potato.  I did the old grocery bag trick, and the potato cooked up perfectly in about 12 minutes.  It was a huge potato, BTW.  I added butter and salt and pepper, and it was delicious.

2.  We had 2 leftover jalapeno and cheddar hot dogs, so Tim sliced them up, fried them in a skillet and added them to a can of Pork and Beans that mysteriously appeared in our cupboard.  It was right next to a package of ramen that was tucked away deep in the cupboard.  The interesting thing was, that someone had only used HALF of the ramen packet.  Yes, half of an 18 cent package of ramen.  That person then sort of folded over the open end of the ramen, tucked the 1/2 used packet seasoning back into the package, and then stashed it in the back of the cupboard, never to be seen again.  I’m pretty sure the culprit was the Teentz, but I can’t say for certain.

3.  Cheese!  The Beentz is a huge cheese freak, so we had 3 different kinds of cheeses opened and half-eaten – colby jack, swiss, and a mysterious soft, white cheese I couldn’t quite identify.

4.  Our bucket garden is starting to produce, so Tim cut up some tomatoes and peppers.  He added the peppers to the pork and beans and hot dog stew – tried to health it up a bit.  We ate the tomatoes straight-up.

5.  Tim polished off his supper with some Rold Gold sourdough pretzels.  I was already full by that time, however.

It was a weird, albeit delicious, supper.  We felt very proud of ourselves for using our groceries, too.  We are so grown up.

Tonight Tim is making pasta.  He added some garden-fresh peppers to the sauce, as well as some black olives, and he is grilling MorningStar patties.  We are going to cut them up and add them to the pasta.  I’m sure it’s going to be awesome.

Uncategorized

Too fast, so goes my life

heather

Again, it’s been forever since I’ve posted.  It’s ironic – the busier I am, the more I have to write about, but the less time I have to write.  When I have time to write, I don’t have anything to write about.

It’s been another busy weekend, on top of a busy month.  Nate & Rachel visited in early June, and we had an awesome, jam-packed weekend with them.  We had one weekend off, and then we had more visitors – my brother, his girlfriend, and Tim’s brother.  We spent the 10 days visiting Mom and Dad, chilling on the back patio because the weather was the most perfect weather I have ever seen, playing Bags on the awesome Bags setup Benny built, drinking lots of microbrews, playing Euchre and Settlers of Catan, canoeing, watching the misty galaxies float by in Monticello, and dodging spinning firecrackers that tried to attack Mom and me.  Our cooler saved us and has the battle scars to prove it.

This was our first weekend guest-free, but Tim was driving shuttles for the JD Classic, and I was bringing our household back in order.  It went by in a flash.  I did get to run yesterday, which felt great.  Amazingly enough, 10 days of brats, beer, and pretzel M&Ms kind of jacks up the body.  I feel one million times better after running yesterday and walking today.  I think my posture has even improved.  I know my mental disposition has.  I woke up out-of-sorts today – I blame it on the clouds and loneliness.  One day to myself after a busy, full week is perfect.  Two days is too much.  I missed the Teems.  I forced myself to get out and walk (I couldn’t muster up the energy to run), and the birds, and the trees, and the breeze cleared up my head and put me to rights.

Hopefully I’ll find some time this week to get my writing caught up with my thoughts and activities.  I have so much to write about – Star Wars in Concert, my new purse, the new blanket I started crocheting, the table my brother and dad are building for me, the Fair I want to go to, the books I want to read and have read, the movies we watched, the trials and happiness of living in a small house, the joys and frustrations of trying to raise tomatoes, the best pajama shorts ever, etc. etc. etc.

But now it’s tea-time, and I need to finish Fellowship of the Rings.  Good night until I have another pocket of time, energy, and inspiration.

Uncategorized

Busy Busy Weekend

heather

I have been a reticent poster as of late.   I have not been lazy however.  Nate & Rachel visited last week, and we broke world records  for doing the most activities in one weekend:

Friday

Exotic Thai for supper

Harlans for bfast

Paddle boats at West Lake

Café Fresh for lunch

Klemme Klassic Kar museum

Bike ride to Duck Creek Lagoon

Supper at Boat House

Channel Cat ride to Moline

Beer at Bier Stube

Loop Bus ride to John O Donnel

Attended the baseball game

I can’t show the picture I really want, of the fattest kid EVER!!!  With the biggest hair EVER!! So I’ll show none a’tall.

Loop Bus to East Village to pick up car

Saturday

Drove to my parents in Monticello for canceled canoe trip

Cable Car in Dubuque

Walked to the Shot Tower

Supper at Houlihans – Mom and I split a pitcher of Georgia Long Island Iced Tea, eek

Sunday

Packed up the coolers only to cancel the canoe trip again

Drove to Anamosa – walked through antique shops

Breakfast at Opera House

Attended the Grant Wood Art Festival

Went to the library to view original artwork from GW’s day

Went to Stone City, had snacks and drinks at the General Store

Back to Monticello

Back to Davenport for pizza and Blues Brothers

We have tons more good pictures from the weekend.  Once Tim gets them tagged and added to my computer, I’ll post a link to a Picasa web album.

It was a great, busy weekend.  I’m sad that it’s over.  But, fortunately, Benny, Steven, and Molly are coming next weekend, so we’ll get to run through the list all over again!

Uncategorized

My bucket garden

heather

My Burpee garden showed up last week.  It was in pretty sad shape by the time it reached our house.  It looked as if the box had been tipped over and stepped on a few times.  None of the tags were in the correct pots, so I’m not positive what I have.  I know I have tomatoes, peppers, and basil, but that’s about all I know. Since our dirt is essentially clay, I decided to plant the garden in Lucent’s  old litter buckets.  I drilled drainage holes in the sides and bottom of the buckets, filled them up in the bottom with about an inch of gravel and/or broken clay pots, and then filled up the buckets with several pounds of potting soil.  The plants seem to be doing pretty good, so far.  The pepper plants still look pretty peaked, but maybe that’s just how pepper plants look?

Hopefully the plants will survive and produce something.  The tomato plants already have some flowers on them.

I also planted vincas, impatiens, and 4 hostas, and pulled up the lawn carpet that had started to encroach on our front sidewalk.  I raked the old mulch off of the bed on the south-side of the house and pulled a bunch of weeds from everywhere.  I worked outside for about four hours – most of the time on my knees, leaning forward pulling or digging.  It was Thursday of the following week before my lower back and hamstrings felt normal again.  Gardening is hard work.  Wah, I know.

Most of the hard work is done now.  I just need to get some new mulch and keep on top of the weeding.  I probably should plant some stuff in the bed in the northeast corner of the house, too.  I just don’t know if I’m up to that yet.  Plus, our garden hose doesn’t reach that far, so I would have to water any plants over there with a watering can, and that’s tedious.  This Fall, after we re-paint the front of the house, I need to take the time to plan out what I want to plant.  I need to put in some grasses or bushes and some perennials, so that each summer I don’t have to spend $50 on new plants and ruin my back and legs planting junk.  The only perennials we have now are peonies which are super beautiful right now.  Tim took these:

Here is the current state of my flower garden.  I’m hoping it will look amazing in 3-4 weeks.  I love vincas and impatiens – they are so easy to take care of, and they flower all summer long.

This year, for the first time, I also planted some flowers in pots on the patio.  If I can keep the rabbits from eating them, they are going to look super pretty back there.

So far I’ve been warding off squirrels and rabbits with a blood meal and coffee grounds mixed with cayenne pepper.  I’m going to attempt to cut Tim’s hair today, too, so some of that might end up as a warning around the plants too.

So, there are my gardening highlights. My gardening endeavors pale severely in comparison to the fantastic work of my other gardening friends:

http://prairieinalittlehouse.wordpress.com/

http://newlywoodwards.blogspot.com/

But, it’s a start!

Movies

Iron Man 2

heather

Tim, Butterbrickled, and I attended the 4:25 showing of Iron Man 2 yesterday.  We got off to an inauspicious start – the theater was prohibitively laced with pockets of children – a row towards the front, and a row towards the back.  We choose to sit behind the back row of kids, which ended up maybe not being the best decision.  There was one guy who was trying to corral 3 kids, all under the age of maybe 7?  The, I suppose most people would say “cute” 4 or 5-year-old, kept turning around, staring at my husband, and telling Tim to quit looking at her.  He was, of course, not looking at her, but was looking at the screen behind her, but try convincing a 4-year-old of that.

For the first 15-20 minutes, the kids transferred from seat to lap to seat to bathroom to seat to lap, etc.  I think about half-way through the movie, the guy just gave up.  The whole crew got up, left the theater and were never to be seen again.  At least not by us.  Ahhh….

The quiet allowed us to focus on the movie, which, actually, doesn’t require a lot of focusing.  It was a very typical summer blockbuster sequel type of movie.  The robots/drones/Iron Man effects were cool.  The Genesis-System type robot arm was played up for cuteness again (oh, he looks sad…), Tony Stark had cool tech and invented cool tech, Mickey Rourke was, well, Mickey Rourke.  Overall, I enjoyed the movie.  It’s not nearly as good as the first one, but it’s entertaining.  I was really disappointed by the women in the movie, however.

Pepper Potts was a very strong character in the first movie.  In this movie she spends all her time mincing around in high heels and SUPER tight dresses, whining about everything.  SPOILER ALERT – She and Tony hook up in the end (Tony said he is going to “do right by” Pepper – how romantic), and their kiss is super lame.  If the character had been written smart and sophisticated, as she was in the first movie, their romance in the second movie would have made much more sense.

Which brings me to Scarlett Johannson.  She, of course, also wears super tight dresses.  I honestly don’t believe that either her or Gwyneth could even sit down in one of those dresses.  She also wears a cat suit at one point, well, two points.  She is super gorgeous and has a beautiful figure.  But that’s pretty much all there is to her  in the movie.  She has a fight scene towards the end of the film, but it’s super fast and quick and unrealistic.  I can understand her wearing a cat suit for the fight scene – you don’t want your clothes to get in the way when you are vanquishing 20+ guys in the span of 7 minutes.  What I don’t understand, is why you wouldn’t put your super long hair in a pony tail or braid or something.  All that hair would totally get in the way.  So unrealistic.

Yes, in a movie about a guy with a flying exo-suit powered by a palladium core in his chest, I am complaining that a girl fighting with her hair down is unrealistic.  But really, the first thing any girl in that situation would do, is pull that hair up.

My final verdict on the movie – it’s worth watching for the cool effects and some funny material.  It’s worth a matinee ticket price.

Health & Fitness

Sunday Sunny Sunday

heather

Yes, yes, I know.  It’s a beautiful day outside – why am I inside writing a blog post?  ‘Cause I feel like it, that’s why.  So there.

It really is a beautiful day.  I picked up an apple fritter and bavarian cream-filled long john for Tim and me for breakfast (no judging – it’s a holiday weekend) and some coffee from Starbucks.  We read the paper out on the back patio, and it was perfect – the birds were singing, the sun was shining, Lucent was peeing on my pepper pots.  We retreated back to the house when the sun started to crest the roof-line, and I made some boiled eggs.  We’re going on a bike ride today, so we need something more substantial than coffee and doughnuts.  The eggs were delicious.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet – Tim finally got road bike.  He found it on Craigslist a couple weekends ago.  It’s a Cannondale from the late 90s.  It’s is in amazing shape – looks almost brand new.  We bought it from a bike enthusiast in Bettendorf.  He bought it from someone else, just because it was a good deal.  He already has a dozen bikes, so he decided to sell it.  Since we currently have no working way to transport bicycles, Tim rode it home.  The seller recommended getting a hitch bike rack – said they are inexpensive and secure.  I called the garage next to my office, and they want FOUR HUNDRED dollars to install a hitch – a hitch that only needs to be strong enough to hold two super-light bikes.  I need to check around and see what other places charge.  Tim and I have also discussed getting the Ranger in our garage operational again.  For so many reasons, it would be nice to have a working truck.

Tim really likes the new wheels.  I have to say, though, that he was much easier to keep up with when he was on his Hard Rock, and I was on my Avail.  Now, he can just fly!  It’s good for me, though – makes me work harder.

So, today I look forward to a great day of bicycling, evening out the tan line I accidentally got last weekend (we’re going to a wedding on Saturday, and I don’t want to look two-toned in my dress), maybe doing a little shopping, a little work, and maybe finally getting some Mexicana from Great River.  Hopefully they are open today.

I hope you have an awesome Memorial Day weekend!

Cooking/Recipes

How to poach an egg (and not just the yolk)

heather

I loved poached eggs on toast.  I especially love poached eggs on English muffins with slices of avocado.  My problem is that many times, I lose at least 50% of the egg white when I poach an egg.  It turns into ghostly wisps that separate from the main egg section, and I end up just washing it into the drain or garbage.

I recently read that to make a good poached egg you should boil water in a deep skillet, add a little salt and vinegar into the water, and then use a little bowl to ease each egg in one at a time when the water reaches a rolling boil.  I tried this yesterday, and I don’t know what I did wrong, but one of the eggs was a complete disaster.  The other one was undercooked, and I didn’t drain the water off well enough, so when I broke the yolk, it mixed with the water and was disgusting.

Today, though, they turned out EXCELLENTLY.  The combo of the vinegar and water keeps the egg in a nice compact, fluffy-looking mound!  Here is how they look in the skillet:

If I was using my former method (using a tiny pot, bringing the water to a boil, and then adding two eggs at once to the water), the water would be full of stringy, wispy egg whites.

I boiled the eggs for 4 minutes, and the yolks were perfect – not too hard and not too soft.  This method is more work and more resource intensive, but the eggs turn out so much better.