Scrapbooking Squares

Merry Christmas and all that crap.

Thanks for being born, Sweet Baby Jesus, so I can have a day to be with my family (which includes my mom and step-dad this year). I get to watch them open presents and play and be happy. It’s also an excuse to eat cinnamon rolls and a bacon/egg/cheese bake and drink Starbuck’s Christmas Blend coffee. I think I’ll even attempt to make a turkey this year with some easy fixin’s.

It’s also a day I will be scrapbooking for relaxation (“relaxation” also means accomplishing something to me, but that will all change someday and I will “retire” and take naps and learn how to be still with myself and go for long walks and watch every movie ever made like my dad does)!

I discovered scrapbooking right after I got married in 1998, but I slacked off on it. If I had known that simply finding a way to pee alone and having to write “take a shower” in my planner would become issues, I would’ve worked my butt off back then on getting the backlog scrapbooked.

I used to always get doubles of photos so I could give a picture to someone else in the photo besides my kids. The problem was that I had WAY TOO MANY leftover doubles that were not great, were a little out of focus, etc. I had been happy to use them in my albums (those pictures are of my BABIES and I have trouble doing away with even ONE of them), but what to do with the doubles?

So I got out my Creative Memories square maker (like a punch), which has two sizes, and started punching out things like Joel’s little feet hanging out from his high chair, a cute side view of Michael’s face, Callie from behind picking up a pumpkin. You could also use a circle maker or any shape you want. I just like the way the squares all go together.

Someone gave me a top-loading album (which I don’t normally use), and I decided to make it a “My Favorites” album and used the squares to make some border pages to begin new sections:

Joel's section:


Michael's section:


Callie's section:


One problem with digitals is that, because I only get the photos printed that I need, Eva will only have a page like this at 12 cents per print! But you know I’ll have to find a way to make her one.

Chris is probably having a fit right now … I’m pretty sure she just pops in digital photos from her computer into a nice layout on the computer screen and then somehow prints it out or else takes it somewhere to be printed.

I seem to always make my crafting harder than it should be. This is evidenced by the number of projects I have going on right now, which we’ll go into tomorrow.

Aunt Cathy Recipes

Holy crap! I served you guys BAD yesterday! (that’s slang for “I verbally kicked your butts”). I apologize. But we’re friends, right? That’s why I know you’ll let me make it up to you by posting my Aunt Cathy’s Snicker Cake recipe.

You, too, can be “voluptuous” like me!!!!

Never mind. I can’t find it. It’s floating around somewhere “on my desk” (translation: it’s either on my computer desk or the kitchen desk or in a stack of papers and I’ll definitely find it AFTER this post has been published).

Alright, then. How about her Dilly Dip recipe? Let me say first of all that I so totally DIG my Aunt Cathy. She is always understanding when my kids melt down at her house. She is sweet and kind and I don’t give a crap that she is divorced from my dad’s brother. She will always be my aunt, and I will always love her. When I got married she gave me a bunch of recipes. Since she is arguably the best cook ever, I’ll share a couple here.

Dilly Dip
16 oz. sour cream
2 T fresh minced onion
2 T Beau Monde or Bon Appetit (a spice)
1 pint Hellman’s mayo
2 T dry parsley
2 T dill weed

Mix above and let set overnight. Serve in a hollowed-out round loaf of pumpernickel bread. Serve with broken pieces of pumpernickel.

Broccoli Salad
10-12 strips crumbled, cooked bacon
½ cup raisins
¼ cup red onion chopped
1 pkg. fresh broccoli flowers

Blend the following together before adding to the rest:
1 cup mayo
½ cup sugar
2 T vinegar

Marinate one hour, then serve.

Merry Christmas Eve!!! Now I gotta go wrap a buttload of gifts from "Santa."

If you have small kids, check this out: noradsanta.org.

A Surprise, Unexpected, Accidental Mistake (Pregnancy)

Dad Warning: this post may not be a good one for you to read!

Women Warning: you’ll probably all be offended, too. I don’t want to get hate mail on this topic, so just know that I may make your blood boil today.

I loved the book Table for Eight by Meagan Francis (reviewed yesterday). My only problem with it is on page ix, where the sentence reads,

“Maybe you were surprised with a series of unexpected pregnancies.”

Then she talks about the author (Leslie Leyland Fields) of a book titled Surprise Child: Finding Hope In Unexpected Pregnancy saying how she “admits that her fifth and sixth pregnancies were the realization of one of her biggest fears. She writes that she was crushed to have to start again at the beginning …”

That’s funny. MY biggest fear is being too dense to realize that pregnancy is caused by sex, especially after I’ve done it FOUR times.

I’m trying to figure out how to NOT freak out here. Where do I begin? I guess some of you will be shocked to learn that I am pro-choice … the CHOICE being whether or not to have sex.

First of all, please do not EVER refer to an unplanned pregnancy as a “mistake” in my presence. A mistake is when I do something mindless like put salt instead of sugar in a recipe or when I call Joel by his brother’s name, NOT when I have sex and make a HUMAN BEING.

Secondly, what about this thing called Feminism? Didn’t we fight to be the hot shi* we are now? So why can’t we take responsibility when something happens in our lives? How is a pregnancy unexpected if you had some sex, ANY sex? This is an insult to all the women who are unable to get pregnant either on their own or with the help of science.

Third, never have I had a pregnancy be a SURPRISE. Um, I pretty much know when I’m having sex, unless I’m asleep for the whole thing, and I’m SURPRISED this hasn’t happened a few times being as how I’m exhausted every night at 9 p.m. So if I’m a big girl and know that the equation is “sex can equal a pregnancy” … then how is it a surprise? That being said, it WOULD be a surprise to me to become pregnant with, say, sextuplets without using fertility drugs.

Fourth, referring to a pregnancy as an accident is asinine. Here’s how I see it going down, and I’ll try not to be too graphic: I have just taken a shower and am naked. My husband walks in, only he TRIPS on his way in. He falls ON TOP OF me just the right way and … voila! He impregnates me! Stupid, right?

Bottom line: Even if you are using a titanium diaphragm, are breastfeeding day and night, your man is wearing the strongest condom ever made AND had a double vasectomy, and you are on 5 kinds of the Pill (including the ones where you don’t bleed for, like, a YEAR) …

Although there are many scientific ways to figure out when you are fertile, IF YOU HAVE SOME SEX, YOU MIGHT GET PREGNANT.

Class dismissed, and please NEVER ask me if I know what causes my large family!

I still love ya’ll, and tomorrow I’ll make it up to you for putting up with my yelling and ranting.

Girls, it’s like I always tell my husband (something stolen from Judge Judy):

Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.

Googlebot Searches That Lead to My Blog

Dawn over at Because I Said So does this, so I’m gonna copy her.

Consider this an early Christmas present from me: the gift of you knowing you are normal!

Here are some interesting Internet (Google and otherwise) searches that landed readers here:

“freaky things to do in bed”
What’s possibly more disturbing is that either more than one person is searching this or the same person keeps coming back over and over.

“NFP and the wedding night”
Glad to be of service on the Natural Family Planning front. Use it. Love it. It works.

“Nighttime wetting”
Yep, we’ve all done it and probably will again someday.

“Primerica IRA”
Hate them. No secret.

“Deep questions for online friends”
Sorry to disappoint on this one. I really just want to know why Caillou has no hair. Anyone?

“Where can I hide my diapers from my friends?”
Tresa wrote a comment once about me hiding money in my diaper pail, but otherwise I don’t need to hide my diapers from my friends. I’m not TOO worried that they will steal them.

“Extra breasts”
Shouldn’t you be searching for “plastic surgery” instead?

“spanking and Roman Catholic confession”
Sounds like a personal issue in need of therapy to me. I was just writing a clean Thanksgiving post.

When Your Grandma Dies

Last week both Aron and Ambre had to deal with the death of a grandmother.

After we found out, I looked out the window and all I could think of was, “Who the hell cares if the neighbors never get their house painted more than the halfway it is now? Who cares if I never get time to work on articles? Who cares if I have a few pounds to lose? Who cares if the laundry piles up?”

None of that matters.

So I’d better quit with my “the roads work both ways” crap with my grandma and just put our 5 butts in the van and make the ½ hour trip to go see she and my grandpa. They did so much for me growing up; who cares that I made some decisions when I was younger that she didn’t agree with? Who cares that she tries to guilt me every Christmas because I decided to celebrate it at my own home with my own family? Who cares that she doesn’t like it that I do family bed and nurse my kids forever?

None of that will matter when she’s dead. If she doesn’t realize that, at least I do. That’s going to have to be enough for the both of us for now.

Aron and I have been together 13 years and haven’t had to go through a death like this yet. I don’t know what to do for him, so I do what I know makes him happy: I clean. Order helps him relax. I got all my crying out so I could focus on him. Then I offered to take the kids to the indoor play area. He was thrilled to have some time alone. I made sure he understood that I still have FOUR grandparents left, so he’ll be doing nice things like this for me many more times than I will for him. My poor husband; how does he put up with me?

Ambre’s grandma was always cool. You can read more about her here.

Aron’s grandma Della was practical, kind, down-to-earth, had 11 kids (two who died before I even met Aron; her husband also died before I met Aron), lived on a farm, had a great sense of humor and was sharp-minded right up until the end. You always felt comfortable around her.





I will miss these two grandmas.