Kitteh's New Hang Out.

A.K.A. - Our bathroom sink.

She lays in there all the time lately and - because the faucet is kinda leaky right now - she lets water collect on her back and licks it off, or stands with her front paws in the sink and her back on the edge of the counter and tries to catch the drop of water as it falls out. She also usually sits on the edge of the tub between the shower curtain and the liner and pokes her paws in periodically when someone's in the shower. I've never seen a cat like water so much! It's really funny. Mark keeps threatening to throw her in the bathtub and soak her to cure her of her water facination. As it is, she tries to grip onto the sink if you have to lift her out and move her to I dunno... actually wash your hands or something - it is the sink after all!

This weekend was pretty eventful.

Friday evening we met one of Mark's friends for drinks down in German Village, then we met my friend and her fiance for bowling at Gahanna Lanes. Yeah, we've got a random bowling alley.

Saturday, my sister and brother came over for a visit and brought my niece along. She's going through an I-don't-like-anyone-who-doesn't-live-at-my-house phase. It makes me sad... but I'm fairly certain it'll pass. She's 5 1/2 months old now and eating cereal and baby food in addition to her formula! She's flipping over and seems like she'll start to crawl soon. I didn't take any new pics because she was kinda screamy most of the time, but I'll try to next time I see her!

Saturday night, Mark and I went out for pizza with my friend Nicole at a sports bar around the corner. Then she and I hung out for a few hours, not really doing anything, but we did take a drive through Reynoldsburg - it has changed so much! It's really weird, I don't like the changes, it makes me feel out of place.

And Sunday... well Mark worked in the morning, then he came home, we ate lunch and we headed back to bed for a nap that lasted most of the afternoon. I did get laundry washed, but not yet folded. I have been very lazy today. The weather is kind of conducive to laziness as it's rainy/stormy off and on and the temperature has dropped quite drastically. Not fun.

Oh, and I did make some yummy cookies yesterday! They're chewy and thick and delicious.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (I had to use 1/4 cup margarine, 1/4 cup butter because that's what I had)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I used chocolate chunks)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth.

Stir in the peanut butter, vanilla and egg until well blended.

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the batter just until moistened.

Mix in the oats and chocolate chips until evenly distributed.

Drop by tablespoonfuls on to lightly greased cookie sheets.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until the edges start to brown.

Cool on cookie sheets for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

*From allrecipes.com

A Few Things.

Dear Mr. Postman,

Certainly you do not think that I spent the 2 extra minutes on a Monday morning when I was (as usual) already running about 10 minutes late for work removing our latest Netflix DVD from the player, sliding it back into the sleeve, packaging it all up, and remembering to take it with me out the door and place it in the mailbox so that you could "accidentally" "overlook" the BRIGHT RED envelope in our mailbox when you came to our house today?!

Yet THIS is what I come home to find.

I took the extra 2 minutes this morning in hopes that I could have a speedy turnaround in the switch from this DVD to the next, you Sir, are thwarting my attempts at adult forethought.

SERIOUSLY!

A Disgruntled Citizen-Customer.

On the good news front...

LOOK!

Our daffodils are blooming!

It's a sure sign that we may just make it through this ucky Ohio Winter after all! I love daffodils. One because yellow is one of my favorite colors, and two, because it's usually one of the very first plants (if not the first?) to bloom in the Spring. It gives me hope and makes my heart happy to see something pretty after months of gray!

Also...

We have a shelf in our newly mucked out and renovated office!

Upon which sits one of Mark's favorite objects - the OSU gnome, as well as this clock:

Which he swears really "makes" the room. Whatever that means.

The shelf was of course installed by my very handy hubby who is currently taking advantage of this fine Spring weather and golfing. I'm sure he'll be home in a few hours crying about aches and pains and how old he is ::eye roll:: but at least he's probably having fun right now!

I'm Sick of Basketball.

I'm tired of hearing about it, listening to it, and looking at it. It's just too many games all mushed together for me, it's like there's no break from it!

Friday, I took a vacation day from work. I really needed a mental health day, but it ended up being a sick day. I went into work sick on Thursday and worked my booty off so that I could clear my desk and then scheduled Friday off. Mark went out of town to watch a basketball game, and I stayed home with a terrible sore throat trying to resist my urge to give myself a tonsilectomy. Not exactly the way I envisioned spending my first vacation day from work since mid-October. *sigh*

I started feeling a little bit better on Saturday, so we spent most of the day laying around and then we went to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner, which by the way, they seem to have raised their prices and lowered the quality of their fettucini alfredo - this does not sparkle or please. I always enjoy going there, it is a fun place, and I luuuurve their sourdough bread and garlic-herb butter - I could go there just for that - but for 2 entrees, a soft drink, an alcoholic beverage, and 2 desserts to go, we didn't get out of there for less than $40! That's a bit high in my opinion. I know it didn't use to be that much!

Sunday we spent doing the usual. Mark watched sports for like 12 hours. I finished up a book, started another, washed and folded two loads of laundry, made dinner - corned beef and cabbage, our St. Patty's day celebration a few days late - emptied the dishwasher and straighted up the kitchen, and I still need to change the sheets and dust the family room, Mark cleaned up dinner, played with the dog outside, and vacuumed. Sundays are usually fairly productive for us because the next 5 days kind of all blend together with one another in a blur until we can make it through to next weekend!

I am feeling better today, thank goodness! I'm really not a good patient. I'm whiney and needy and it's no wonder Mark opted to be out of town :(

Now, I get to return to work tomorrow with tons of paperwork still just sitting there waiting for me, a day further behind, and less rested than usual since I spent the majority of the weekend sick.

Hopefully this week is better than last!


Corned Beef & Cabbage My Way!

2ish pound corned beef roast w/ the seasoning packet

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup water

12 oz. beer

2 T. yellow mustard

1 head of cabbage

Place roast in the bottom of a slow cooker.

Mix brown sugar into water and pour over top of roast. Pour beer over roast.

Spread mustard over top of roast and dump in seasoning packet.

Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 4-6 hours.

Pull roast out once cooked and tent with foil.

Cut cabbage into quarters (remember to remove the core!) and place in liquid left behind in the slow cooker. Cook on high for approximately 30 mins.

Slice beef and serve with mustard and saurkraut! Yum!

The Army of Markness.

Or so Mark has dubbed his Little League photo cutouts. They're kind of... creepy staring back at you all the same way, but it is cute to see him in all his little boy glory I suppose.

He has insisted that we find a place to display The Army of Markness in our newly redone office. I don't suppose the closet will be an acceptable enough spot?

Our Office Project.

I haven't been posting because the majority of our spare time has been spent working on our home office.

When we moved into the house about 2 1/2 years ago, it was set up (and used) as a functional office. Then we started wedding planning, and had wedding showers, and got wedding gifts and it took over the room. Embarassingly enough, wedding stuff at one time was taking up both the spare bedroom and the office.

In December, I tackled the spare bedroom and got everything cleaned up in there and we even got a bed set up! Yay us!

Two weekends ago I got the productive bug and decided to tackle the office, which has pretty much sat untouched as a storage room since May-ish of last year.

Here's a before pic:

Here's after I mucked it out:

You'll have to forgive my photography skills above, I snapped those with my cell phone.
We aren't 100% finished with everything because we still have a few accessories to hang, need to reorganize the stuff on the bookcases, and maybe a few other things, but here's where we are at right now:

Please note Kitteh demonstrating how to sit at the desk! ; )
We (mostly meaning Mark) tore down wallpaper, fixed walls (and recently discovered holes...), painted, hung curtains, put together 2 book cases, and refinished the desk! He's so handy!
The walls are painted gray, which look a little bluish in the pic, but I'm sure it's affected by the natural light coming in, and obviously all the furniture is black. We're very pleased with how it has turned out.
I'll share some more pics once we get all of the final touches taken care of!