Selling

Well my daughter is selling her home and probably moving to BC. I will be losing my granddaughter. I don't know how that's going to go over. I'm not looking forward to it. Why is it that everyone renovates for resale instead of renovating for living in it. I don't understand it. She should have done a little maintenance when things needed to be done. She seems to think nothing really has to be done. Wrong... I've been pulling up hardwood that has to be replaced and replacing cupboard doors. Honestly she just thinks it can be sold as is. Wouldn't that be nice. But alas - work needs to be done. Some people should not own, a little too used to having someone else do the maintenance.

I read somewhere that women's brains shrink during the pregnancy and usually doesn't return to normal until the baby is about 8 months. So my daughter's should be back to normal by now. I don't know what it is, she's in a state of "duh". Can't seem to get out of her funk. And refuses to see a doctor. She goes back to work on tuesday, that can't be anything to look forward to that's for sure. She's been off eleven months now and is not very happy about the prospect of leaving her baby. I've offered to babysit on saturdays, and her husband will be doing tuesday's so there's only wed to fri. But I'm thinking she won't last two weeks before she packs it in.

For the past year I've attempted to talk her into allowing me to train her to do bookkeeping, but that doesn't seem to be exiting enough, but who knows...she may change her mind. I work only 4 - 6 hours a day and make more than she did working 8 - 10 hours. But I quess restaurant management is more exiting. I don't see why - all that standing. That's something that will be hard for her to get used to again. Oh well, I quess we'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.

Birthday party

Ellise's 2nd birthday party

I just love this cake. It was chocolate and very good. The quilt was a last minute idea. The party was Thursday and I finally decided on Wednesday what I was going to attempt. I believe it was around 10 PM. I cut out the flannel pieces from scraps and sewed them together, with much trouble. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with my friggin machine. The tension was so screwed up. Nothing worked, so I finally gave up and went to bed around 1 am. I woke up around 5:30 (a wrong number on the phone) but since I had "things" to do I got up anyway. I made coffee trudged down the basement stairs and had another go. Well it must have been the coffee or something but I finally figured out that I had to take the machine apart and clean it. You see I've been sewing alot of flannel (with two babies in 10 months, what else would I be sewing) and the gunk and broken thread iin the bobbin thingamagig was amazing. We;ll after much tweezer use and blowing everything finally came out and the sewing resumed. After I finished (the back is a lime green polka dot, really cute) I had alot of regret in giving the "baby doll blanket" away. I had some squares leftover from the first attempt of cutting 0out the squares so I made a small pillow. I was really pleased at how it all turned out. And the birthday girl seemed to appreciate it, by dragging it around. So now I have to make one for my own granddaughter.

But the cake, what can I say it was great. Should have been larger so some of us could have taken pieces of it home. I mean how often are there no leftover birthday cake pieces to unload on the guests.

Apple Brown Betty

A funny thing happened on my way to making an Apple Brown Betty. I was lurking around blogs today and was inspired to make a brown betty. I even went so far as to throw the hard brown sugar in the micro to soften it. I discovered that I only had one apple-all be it a huge apple, but only one. Then I remembered the frozen rubarb and the frozen blueberries. So I figured I'd make a fruit brown betty. So I got out the baking dish and buttered it up and started peeling the apple and even got out the other fruit out of the freezer. But then after slicing and coring the apple I got another inspiration. There was half an avocado from our BLT's from lunch sitting on the counter getting brown, and I only had a little hunk of cheese left, again from our sandwiches at lunch so I decided on this dish instead. I poured two glasses of wine and I'm heading upstairs to share. My husband thinks he's getting hamburgers, Oh well... this is probably better for both of us anyway.