A couple of new favorites...

My new favorite drink...

Peach Mojitos - yum yum. I used a few shortcuts by using frozen peaches and bottled lime juice, they were a big hit at the party on Saturday. I'll be making them for our annual scrapbook weekend, and this year I'll have my new drink strainer with!

My other new favorite...

Dyson Vacuum. I originally purchased the smaller version, but after the roller bar kept quitting I returned it and got the bigger version. I don't think the smaller version had enough suck power.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope your Valentine's Day is/was a good one. Charlie bought me a bouquet of my favorite flowers - tulips! I work this evening so it will be a pretty low key day.

I played around with my camera and flowers, the background is a little grainy - I know why, but I'm too lazy to go fix it and take more.

The trick to getting CJ to smile nice is to tell him NOT to smile and then talk to him...

Here's Nick being daring and climbing the couch the CJ disassembled...

Better post while I'm still on my sugar high...

CJ and I made Valentine cookies today, holy sugar...yum. It did re-affirm why I have Charlie bring home premade cutouts from work for Christmas cookies. I HATE rolling and cutting sugar cookies. I just suck at it...not enough flour, too much flour. And might I add I'm not a fan of the Pampered Chef roller - no offense Carin. Where's my 'ole wooden rolling pin when I need it. I almost broke out the vintage rolling pin Grandma Dora gave me as a wedding shower gift. Any way - here are some pics. CJ had great fun and it was quite a mess!

This picture is funny - it looks like he's reading the recipe.

Inappropriate?

I didn't think I'd have to be concerned about kids valentine cards but what do you think of these? CJ wanted Nerd candy valentines for his class. There are two different sayings on them...

Love the NERD You're With!
Here's Lookin' at You, NERD!

Am I completely oversensitive? Maybe I was called a nerd to many times growing up, but I can't believe these! Does the word nerd have a different connotation now?

We'll be making a Target trip for different Valentines.

What am I missing?

Please, someone please read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle to tell me what I'm missing. From Oprah's book club selection to the other rave reviews I've read, I just don't get it. If you can manage to get through all 560ish pages, I'd love to hear what you think. Granted there are other reviewers out there like my who simply hated it. Maybe it's just because I don't have a dog....

And while your at it, join good reads. A great place to find out what to read, what not to read. And please, I need more than just 2 friends to pick their book brains. Although I can always rely on Tonja for a good recommendation!

And one more request - please EMAIL ME! just send a blank email if you want - after my hard drive request I lost all email addresses (and really don't want to type them all back in from the computer downstairs).

I was glad to find out I could copy all music from my Zune BACK to my computer - so I didn't lose any of my tunes.

CRASH!!!!

the laptop hard drive crashed. Fortunately I was able to get about 800 of my 1800 pictures I took since October onto my external hard drive. It's under warranty so thankfully we didn't have to pay for the repair. When I dropped it off, they thought it was a software issue. He said before they had to erase anything they would call us for the data recovery, which would be an additional $99. When I didn't hear anything else, silly me assumed the data recovery would be included since it was a hardware issue. Silly me, the guy laughed at me when I asked him about the data. He said "ma'am you had a physical hard drive failure, there is no recovery". oh.

At first I wasn't too concerned, I got most of my pictures - I had checked and all the "big events" were still there. (although I haven't figured out yet what didn't transfer) (might not want to know). But then I started to realize everything else... our bills spreadsheet (what to pay when), the full inbox of emails "to follow up on of some kind", all my Zune music. Ick.

There is something to be said for "backup". Especially since I've had a stack of DVDs for back up sitting in my laptop bag for months now.

Live and learn!