May I suggest?

This for your next breakfast?

It is a pomegranate smoothie and boy was it yummy (recipe from Every Day Food 4/08 I think).  Here's how you make it:

1 C berries (I used a couple of frozen strawberries and the rest were frozen raspberries)

1/2 C Pomegranate juice (I used Langer's straight from the jug...fresh is not necessary)

1/3 C or 3 oz of silken tofu- yes, tofu...trust me it is really good!

2 T honey

1/4 C ice

Blend, drink, enjoy, feel healthy, wonder if you are really drinking tofu.

Also, there is this for your next afternoon snack:

Roasted Garlic Cheese

Late July Buttery crackers (or Ritz)

Slice, stack, devour, resist the temptation to break out the wine at 4pm.

And for your next movie viewing, please consider this:

North and South (TV series from BBC)

Join Netflix, stream all four episodes in a row, fall in love with Mr. Thornton, watch again and again.

The week is off and running!  I have a huge pile of fabric that I hope to attack sometime in the next few days.  Results coming soon!

**ps thank you for all your sweet comments about my hair.  I am no longer pouting about it- I may even learn to love it!!

Makeover

My dear sweet Tante spent her entire afternoon here yesterday. With just a hammer and some nails, she totally gave my living room a new look- rearranging what I already had.

I wish that we had taken a "before" picture because the difference is amazing.  I couldn't get the whole room in the shot-- I almost fell to my death from my perch on the ledge of the staircase.

Here are a few things that she taught me about decorating.

1. Always use odd numbers to group things (ie. pictures, knick knacks, etc)

2. Hang pictures low, at least down at eye level.

3. Vary heights.  Your eye should go up and down as you look around a room.

4. Keep the room interesting, create opportunities for your guests to discover surprises.

5. Old and out of shape women (I include myself) can move any piece of furniture when they get excited about decorating-- we know because we moved my huge, heavy armoire approximately 6 inches.

I am so grateful to her for coming.  I always enjoy my time with her, and my room looks so much better.  She promised to come back and tackle another one next time.

Also made over was my mop.  I am much less excited about this change.  Almost 8 hard earned inches hacked of my hair.  It is just a whole lot thinner and shorter that I had pictured.  Oh well, it is not like an arm or leg or something...it will grow back.

New shoes too.  Flats are becoming a compulsion for me.  Perhaps it is their resemblance to ballet shoes that makes them so endearing.  Good thing Old Navy makes them cute and CHEAP!  These were $11.70 online.

I must tell you what my husband did for me yesterday.  I left the house in a raging mess as I overslept and scurried to get the girls off to school on time.  After dropping them off and keeping an appt. I was to meet my Aunt back at the house for our afternoon of decorating.  I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and upset because the house was going to be so gross for my company and I wanted to make her a nice lunch too.  With dread I pulled into the driveway with only 30 minutes to attack the house before my Aunt was due.  I was strategizing about hiding dirty dishes and sweeping crumbs into a corner in order for everything to look somewhat presentable. As I walked inside, I couldn't believe what I saw.  A perfectly, PERFECTLY clean house.  My wonderful, handsome, thoughtful, considerate husband had some compassion on my plight and stayed behind us that morning to clean the house.  We're talking vacuuming, dishes and all!  Isn't that just the sweetest thing that you have ever heard?  It was such a treat for me.  Truly, I don't deserve him- well maybe a little.

Have a great weekend!

First and Last

Hi!  This is me:

And this is what I did Sunday:

My first time skiing in about 10 years on the last day of the season. I grew up skiing. I have mentioned that before.  I have also mentioned the correlation between the number of years it has been since I have skied and the number of years that I have been married.  My sabbatical is over now.  I am hooked again.  And, whether or not he likes it- I am hooking my husband in too.  The kids won't be far behind.  With free Free FREE season's passes for next year (Carl does the mountain's website) for the whole family...there are no longer any valid excuses.

I went with my friend Camille.

She shreds! (see, I picked up some lingo when I was up there.)  Her husband Brian also came along.

He shreds too, but seems to be better at plowing through his brown glass bottled beverages carried around in his backpack.  I was giggling all day at the amount of alcohol consumption I witnessed on the mountain (not just my friends).  I guess all those people don't really care about physical coordination when they are flying down the side of the mountain at high rates of speed.  Me...I needed all the strength I could muster. A lot has changed in the 10 years that I have be out of the loop.  For one, people wear helmets now? I still haven't figured out how to look cool in mine yet.  Also, I was pretty sure that the rental guy had me mixed up with someone a foot shorter than me when he handed me skis that I was much taller than.  They are so much shorter that the ones I grew up on!  And the tickets are now attached to your ski coat by a little zip tie...no more metal hangers.  Each time I skied up to the chair at the bottom of the mountain I was scanned like an item at the grocery counter.  Freaky.

I completed the rite of passage that each new skier to the mountain must complete...I touched the bomber wing of an airplane that crashed there years ago.  It is supposed to be good snow mojo or something like that.

I also ran into a sign that my peeps back home would appreciate :)

Great view huh?  That is the Columbia River in the background.  It looks like a painted backdrop.  The weather was fairly clear. It was a great day and I am not too regretful today.  I wasn't sure that I would make it out of bed this morning, but I am surprisingly not sore!  Maybe it'll hit me tomorrow?  So, I did make it up for the first time in a long time, on the last day of the season...can't wait until next year!