Author: eaumaison (Page 191 of 210)

What is Caturday?? A celebration of the hilarity of cats, sometimes with funny captions. But first, let’s meet a new cat

Brian’s face shows what “smitten” looks like. I went with Brian to help Cate and Trevor find a cat. Although Brian swore he was just researching, he ended up bringing home a gray tabby kitten who he named Zoe. She’s pretty fantastic. She perches on shoulders, plays a lot, let’s you hold her on her back, and does lots of Celine Dion paw stretches when you scratch her.

Cate picked out a cuddly long gray-haired cat who was just itching for love. They named her Mona, and she’s working extra hard to earn Trevor’s cold heart.

But BACK TO CATURDAY, which is really about online pictures. Do a search or go to this website to brighten up your dreary days. Here are some of my favorites.

An no funny captions (or should I saw, Cat-shuns. OH!!) but here are some funny pictures of the Demolisher:

I love the new Endless.com, run by Amazon. Great organization and search terms, great prices, great layout (no flash!) and free overnight shipping. Right now they’re giving you $5 off to use overnight shipping. I got two beautiful pairs of Kenneth Coles for super cheap. They have 1 year return policy and they pay for return shipping. Who could ask for anything more?

Hello! I’m 25 now! I had an excellent birthday, even though my family got snowed out of visiting.

That weekend we went bowling at Lucky Strike, had dinner with friends, and played with my new present:

Thank you to everyone who pitched in for my super cool gorgeous flat screen HDTV! Our games look fantastic, I don’t have to squint from the back couch, and we get most network HD stations with out antenna (no cable for us!). Also, I discovered this rad channel call the tube that
plays music videos ALL the time. It’s a dream come true (sniff!). On my actual birthday we played games with friends and had pizza and ice cream cake. I won boggle and scrabble 🙂

In other news, I went to a new craft store with a new friend. Fancy Tiger has great fabrics, yarns (including crewel!), and vintage goodies for making hip crafts. I got some great fabrics for my wall projects and a tiny crewel kit.

I saw The Queen this weekend and loved it. One of the best made movies in a long while, definitely recommend it. Should have won Best Picture (my Oscar party was fun, by the way. Shawn won the pool).

My HOA is hilarious sometimes. They do an awesome job keeping the grounds clean, especially with the constant snowfall. One day we came home to this on our door:

Overkill?

Chicken with shallots, sundried tomatoes, garlic, and spinach pasta
Chips with garbanzo bean, pepper, and corn dip and guacamole (and favorite salsa!)

Chicken, broccoflower, and shallot stirfry on white rice

Gingerbread cookies with cream cheese frosting

Tomato soup with Blarney Castle cheese sandwiches

Kale soup with chickpeas, carrots, and celery

Lentil soup with carrots, onion, and garlic with biryani spices

Homemade bread and butter pickles from Ben’s boss (killer stuff!)

Spinach enchiladas (with cottage cheese, cheddar, olives, anaheim peppers, and Hatch sauce)

Ben and I have a plan to eat healthy and lose weight this year. We’re trying to limit our meat consumption (Word of Wisdom), only diet soda, and when we eat out (hopefully less often) we’ll eat less of the portions and order lower calorie foods. Ben is also committed to cooking one meal a week so he’s less dependent on me for dinners.

Here are some of the things I made in my kitchen so far this year.

BBQ boneless chicken with corn muffin and roasted brussel sprouts (my favorite new way of cooking them).

Roasted carrots and parsnips, lemony lima beans with parmesan, and buttered noodles.

Blueberry lemon muffins.

Broccoli soup. The creaminess comes from using oats – there’s no cream, cheese, or milk!

Chinese chicken soup (chicken, peppers, carrots, and garlic)

Turkey meatloaf, braised butternut squash and sage, wild rice.

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and candied ginger.

Tofu udon soup with spinach, shitake, and scallions. I HATED this. Ben liked it well enough.

Tofu tacos. I hate tofu, but this was an acceptable way of eating it. Black beans would have been better though.

My version of massaman curry with sweet potatoes in place of regular, scallions instead of onions, and lowfat coconut milk.

Ben also made some pasta and bean soups that didn’t get photographed. I made old vegetarian favorites that I didn’t record as well. Overall I’d say we’re doing pretty well this year.

I took these photos while hiking on Apex trail a few weeks ago. The snow was still very deep (the last week has been sunny in Denver, melting about half of our winter accumulation)

By the way, my fishy died a while ago. It was really cold, he lost most of his color. I switched him to this jug and rigged a heating system. For the night he warmed up and got his color back.

But the next day I left him by the window and I think he overheated from the sun and glass. I got home from work and he was floating. Bummer dude. I guess I can’t be trusted to keep fish in winter, it’s too cold! I’ll try again when this spring, maybe with a goldfish! For now my uber cool pod is acting as a flower vase.

Not as exciting, but still very pretty.

Here’s my first quilt ever.

I did a fairly terrible job. I measured the squares by eyeballing only and I ripped the fabric into pieces instead of cutting. The lady at the craft store was very disapproving when I told her I wasn’t going to use a frame to tie it. She gave me an earful of advice I decided to ignore. See, I have no patience for quilting, all the painstaking measuring and ironing, moving at a snail’s pace. I like to create shortcuts wherever possible. With help from mom on the telephone, this came together rather quickly.

And I don’t care if it’s perfectly smooth and aligned. It’s warm and it’s Star Wars!

(We had to leave church early because Ben felt a migraine coming. He’s napping upstairs now while I post these pictures and enjoy a snack of crackers and goat cheese with mineral water and craisins. For some reason I find that funny.)

Friday I finally painted our bedroom! I haven’t hung much art yet, but here’s a look at it so far:

We also replaced the ugly faucets with something more appropriate for a pedestal sink.

I love being a homeowner.

The pictures really say it all, so there won’t be too much commentary. More pictures from family members posted here.

We stayed in the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

It had Japanese TV with Sumo every night. This is a puppet show of a blood vessel (we think).

These animals are right outside our room balcony.

The following safari pics are from the Animal Kingdom park.

Onto Epcot!

And the Magic Kingdom!

I maxed out the score on Buzz Lightyear. Andy and Ben were uber jealous, then accused me of cheating.

Who’s that guy in the skirt? Oh right, my uncle 🙂

Hey look! A line!

Jungle Cruise

And now MGM Studios.

I love this one of me and Ben.

And this one is to be sure you all check out my sweet sweet fanny pack

Dinner in the Sci-Fi cafe, where you eat in cars and watch a reel of old movie promos and ads. Very fun!

Honey I shrunk the kids playground set

Back to Magic Kingdom on the last night.

And Downtown to kill time before our flight.

It was a Fantastic vacation. Thanks Mom and Dad!

I’ve let my blogging duties slide, and now I pay the consequences: you sneak in with pictures from a Merchant Ivory film production in China. Well I ain’t got no China. But I have lots of pictures and crafts and stuff going on that’s been piling up. Now that I’ve got a fire under me, expect a few more posts this weekend.

And finally pictures to show you what a great holiday break it was!
** means be sure to click on the pictures for glorious enlarged details.

On the second day of the big blizzard we said “to heck with this!, ” chained up the car, drugged up the cat, and skirted off to Grand Junction to jumpstart vacation.

**the small red sign say “No Parking, snow storage area, you will be towed or buried”

Dad and Amanda made two kinds of nut brittle

Mom and I painted the study

Andy did his mac thing

This brittle was devine

Christmas eve carols

and cat picture outtakes! I love that only me and Amanda are looking in the same direction out of all six of us.

We kids got dad a rc airplane. After a couple days the snow melted enough to give it a whirl

And dad loved Andy’s wii almost as much as Andy. He got his own recently – and so did we! I mean wii!

Dad whaled Andy on both tennis and boxing

Addison is getting cuter everyday! Read about Kristin’s family on her site.

All three Waterhouse kids teethed on this Sesame Street finger puppet.

There was a bonfire party at the Graves house. Ben was in heaven with their dogs

Later in the trip we were able to give the plane a proper run. I think it took two trips to the hobby shop to replace parts, but we had a great time flying.

**Love mom’s face in this shot

**zoom in to see Dad watch his plane take a nose dive! This was a hilarious lucky shot.

Mom and dad have a fantastic aquarium in their office. These shrimp are fun to watch

At the end we had a beautiful drive back over the mountains.

We left later than planned because of more snow on the front range. I was spoiled with presents, got to see a lot of friends and family, and came back thoroughly relaxed. Merry Christmas.