I love this.

I want more...

Tiny Bebe!

Before...

After...

Before....

After...

She looks, well, ridiculous, but it was necessary.

I'm a Planner

Me: "I think I'm going to start playing the lottery..."

William: (weird face at me) "You're supposed to do that compulsively."

Can't help it, I'm a planner.

Another great William (he's full of them today!) "I want to become a notary, just for the jokes. Notary humor."

Some things I'm noticing this summer

1. Make-up is optional. And not probable.

2. I'm probably going to start wearing these a lot:

3. As referenced by above picture, I don't brush my hair much either.

4. I'll probably start pizza-stalking Spike from Top Chef in DC.

5. Not working is the BEST. I didn't know what I was missing.

6. July is almost over and that Could make me sad, but then I remember that I have almost all of August left.

7. You can meet really cool people on planes.

8. I can talk to Joy any time of the day.

9. When Phebe naps, I nap.

10. Blogs are awesome. Especially this one: http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

Happy Birthday, Pup of mine!

My darling little Phebe turned One today. I've had her for nine months but she's been in this world for a year. What a lucky world.

She was only 5.5 pounds when I got her on October 17, 2009.

And scared of everything!

And she slept... a lot.. I miss those days.

She got bigger and more adventurous. (Adventurous= Mischievous)

But she let me dress her up at Christmastime.

And she did silly things in the snow.

And she grew some more, a lot more, in the springtime.

And let me put more clothes on her for St. Patrick's Day.

And she discovered that she can crawl around under my bed.

(and chased more than a few dust bunnies)

She loves to read trashy mags with me.

And she was the lifeguard on the 4th of July.

She learned a few tricks...

But since today is her birthday, we did some really special things. First, we went to PetsMart and had a "shopping spree" (coupon). She got some of her favorite toys and treats. I also made her a "cake" using peanut butter and milkbones.

She LOVED it!

She made a mess, typical.

Is this a one-year-old's birthday or what?

BIG SMILE!!

I love you, little Phebe. You're the most wonderful sidekick a girl could have.

I tweet

I tweet now. I'm not ashamed. It's really fun.

Twitter: C8EMee1981. Give it a look.

Truth: It's mostly me repeating other people's awesome.

I'm not convinced I used the apostrophe in the right place there. But it's summer and I'm ok with that.

BEST. PICTURE. EVER.

Ok, what's not awesome about this picture? (sorry, Hugh and Cassie, I'm sure as dog parents this was terrifying. But fortunately he had a life jacket).

1. A dog wearing a life jacket.

2. That particular dog going head first into the water accidentally.

3. Another dog (life jacket-less) staring in... shock? horror? amusement?

Note: Fletcher is ok and has since been rescued. Awfully cute jacket, too.

JOYOUS SUCCESS!

Hey, remember this girl? Well, her baby bump is bigger and she likes to shop.

AND SHOP WE DID! We went to the Leesburg Outlets today and spent about 4.5 hours rocking through stores and finding great deals. I almost feel like I should apologize to the Gap.

If I total up all my purchases over the last two days, I spent $174.19 on 2 skirts, 2 dresses, 1 scarf, 1 pair of comfy sweatpants, 2 pairs of shorts, and 5 shirts. 13 items of clothing for $174.19!!! That's about $13/item! Gap, Old Navy, Charlotte Russe, and H & M. I am excited.

My GAP purchases were 7 of those items for $94.53. But when I totalled up the tags from them (the original prices)... those 7 things would have been $189.53!! WOAH!!! I am so excited.

Ahhhh.....

Joy also bought that dress... her baby bump looks ADORABLE in it! I am just excited that it's not too long for short ol' me.

Another KateCait Adventure

Last night, Kate and I went to Tysons Corner. I had a shopping agenda and she wanted sushi, so we happily combined the two while we caught up on our weekends. The shopping was "meh" (I found a fun scarf for my travels and a $5.95 skirt, both from H & M) but that was about it.

Kate and I had both seen this sushi place in Tysons where you sit at a bar and different kinds of sushi come around on a conveyor belt. It looks so cool! And I will admit that we felt pretty metropolitan sitting there .

All the different kinds of salads, sushi, sashimi, etc was on different colored plates and each plate had a price. Or so the menu told us...

I think this was called the California Volcano Roll. It was too cool to pass up and it was delicious!

This was about halfway through. Of course all the purple plates (most expensive) looked the best to me. Sigh. But we had so much fun!

Thanks for the date, Kate!

Just a Friendly visit...

On Sunday night, my roommates and I found ourselves at Friendly's. This was an adventure, as it was about 25 minutes from our house. We were on a mission.

We perused the menu for awhile. Lou and I were both much more excited for dessert than actual food.

Mikey, however, was brave enough to order a hamburger with two grilled cheese sandwiches as the buns. Amazing. Sounds like Sunday food to me.

I didn't take a picture of the dessert we all had. But we ordered 4 Reese's pieces sundaes. And they were FANTASTIC.

just one question...

True or False: I can't sleep because I am watching Mr. Holland's Opus live streaming from Netflix and crying like a baby.

True.

Earthquaaaaaaake

So, apparently the DC metro area had an earthquake last night.

The Huffington Post reports that “according to the US Geological Survey, it was the strongest quake to hit within 30 miles of DC since 1974.” The quake measured a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter Scale, jolting many area residents awake around 5:00 am.

I, of course, slept through it. But I have talked to people around here who felt it. My

friend Jaime sent me this today, which I think is the best way to describe it:

Earthquake Damage:

HUGE CRUSH

I am totally in love with Nate Berkus, the designer from the Oprah show. He sparkles and has made me cry several times over the years with the way he changes homes and touches the lives of families. He's just... a... good... guy.

If anybody knows a straight Nate Berkus (Strate Berkus), please let me know. :)

Oui, Oui!

My wonderful friend Kate likes holidays. Most holidays. Nope, all holidays. American or not! She's also very patriotic and loves red, white and blue. She got us all excited about Bastille Day (July 14) and invited all the girls over for brie cheese, wine, champagne, etc. I love Kate's enthusiasm for holidays. A LOT. So I got on board.

I decided to make a dessert. Truffles. So I googled "easy truffle recipe". One popped up. I also thought it might be fun to make little french flags to put in the truffles. (**I don't care what anybody thinks about France, I'm indifferent and I like crafts, so zip it) I decided to make the flags first, thinking the truffles wouldn't take too long.

In Word, I made some little french flags and then printed them out. I gathered some toothpicks and some scrapbooking double-sided adhesive tape. I cut out the flags and left a little extra white paper on the side next to the blue part of the flag. I put the tape on that part and then wrapped it around a toothpick.

Success!

So I made 24 more.

When they were finished, I gathered all the materials that I would need for the truffles. Most important: the cookbook macbook with the recipe.

My sous chef was ready to lend a hand.

My favorite part of the recipe was blending together cream cheese and confectioners sugar. Mmmm. I could eat it all day.

Then I melted 3 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave (not cool enough for a picture) and added it to the cream cheese/sugar mixture. It started to thicken immediately and definitely had what I would call a "truffly" texture.

Now time to gather the fun toppings in which to roll the truffles. I had a bag of sliced almonds (they were on sale) so I grabbed the magic bullet and pulverized them.

Success!

Then I gathered cocoa, coconut and more confectioners sugar.

At Michael's, I found some red and blue baking cups! I lined the traveling tupperware with them.

My first truffles!!

Viva la truffles.

Truffle Recipe:

Easy Decadent Truffles

Prep Time:
1 Hr

Ready In:
1 Hr

Original Recipe Yield 5 dozen

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 3 cups semisweet chocolate chips, melted
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions

1. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar until well blended. Stir in melted chocolate and vanilla until no streaks remain. Refrigerate for about 1 hour. Shape into 1 inch balls.

Footnotes

• Roll truffles in ground walnuts (or any ground nuts), cocoa, coconut, confectioners' sugar, candy sprinkles, etc.
• To flavor truffles with liqueurs or other flavorings, omit vanilla. Divide truffle mixture into thirds. Add 1 tablespoon liqueur (almond, coffee, orange) to each mixture; mix well.

A lot of lazy around here

I have made it my goal this summer to keep busy. Not TOO busy, but just busy enough so I don't get bored. I do yard work, I go shopping, I visit people, I read books, I watch movies, I blog, I read blogs, I play with Phebe, I go to the pool, I've been keeping busy.

But the animals of this house are not.

Lou's cat, Murphy, loves to sleep on the table. (The pots on the table behind him are going to be the subject of a post at the end of July.)

Phebe crashes out on my bed whenever I'm blogging or reading blogs.

DON'T WAKE MURPH, HE GETS PISSED!!!

Sidebar: tonight I learned how much Lou loves me. She HATES bugs, but she ever so calmly took a stink bug off the back of my shirt tonight. If you know Lou, you know this is real love.