Category Archives: Sean

Feb14

Icy Valentines

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Snow!My two guys had the worst time chipping away all the ice and stuff from the cars and trying to clear the drive today. Brian’s whole back was soaked with sweat when he came in over an hour later. The wind is suppose to whip up even more, continuing havoc, especially with the temperature.

We didn’t go out to dinner (of course) so I made the fellas a spaghetti and meatball dinner and more bread. The bread was herb and cheese and the top fell in when it was baking. I don’t know why as the bread yesterday did pretty well. We ate it anyway.

I got Bri the Beatles ‘Love’ cd. Isn’t that the show in Vegas? He now has most of the Beatles ‘newer’ releases. He got me a little sapphire and diamond heart-I have one already and I think he gave it to me last year. (Not too many stores in this immediate area for last minute shoppers). I’ll take it back and chose something else-when I can get out. He also got me a flashcard (hmmm) for the new camera and cute red sockies. I’m hard to buy for, what can I say?

Sean gave us a lovely Victorian decorated card and the verse was so touching. Ahhh…sweet guy. He bought us dinner this past Saturday. 

I hope everyone was able to spend quality time with their loved ones today.

Enjoy the video player ‘pod’ I added in my sidebar. It’s spankin’ new by wordpress. Took a while to figure it out, but it’s cool!

Feb11

Farmers Market

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Brian and I went to Booth’s Corners Farmers Market yesterday to give me a change of scenery. There must have been a lot of people with the same thing in mind, as the place was crowded. We went to the big store at the end and I got a few cute things-ceramic birds in a nest, crackle finish Easter eggs to hang on a little tree, some candy, that sort of thing. Sean wanted some sesame sticks from one of the Amish booths. I also got him some macadamia nuts as an added treat. We hit Aunt Annie’s homemade pretzels and headed home for church. We did look around some antique stalls on the way out and I got some cute bisque pixies. Four men hemmed and hauled about what to charge me for them (at another booth). I said ‘yes’ to what they said, but I should have haggled a bit. Brian haggled for some VHS tapes that he didn’t even buy. Our final stop was at the Goodwill to drop things off. We did go in and I got some tiny birds in a nest salt and pepper shaker set (that go with the above mentioned decoration so well); a Portal rectanglar shaped poster of moon and stars and some aqua glass conductors from telephone poles. And a book of poetry by Edgar A. Guest from 1916.

After church we went to a Chinese restaurant that we hadn’t been to for years. We probably won’t be going back. The food was bland and they gave Sean the wrong thing (which he wouldn’t send back and hardly ate). Also, their cc machine wasn’t working and we had to scrape together the money for dinner. Either Sean or I felt good today-me around 4am, but him after he ate his breakfast-we think from the Chinese food. He is plum tuckered out over math and chemistry. He is having trouble with trig and may have to get some help. The roast beef is nice and brown as I type this. I need to toss on some potatoes for a nice dinner.

Trivia time-
Booth’s Corner also attracted some of the country’s most famous entertainers. Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s famous sidekick, was once a colorful pitchman hawking gadgets in the Market midway. While Bill Haley, of Comets fame, was a popular guitar-playing entertainer. Incidentally, Bri and I lived in the same apartment complex when we were first married that Ed McMahon and Dick Clark had lived in when they worked in Philly.

The Raggedys and little pals

I left my little collection of Raggedy Ann and Andys up-I may eventually take down the tree. The little fairies are a market find.

Feb2

Early spring?

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Groundhog day Old Phil the groundhog, up in Punxsutawney, PA didn’t see his shadow, so that may mean we have an early spring this year. With the rate we are going, it seems we are just ‘catching up’ to winter. Next week is suppose to be a doozie-arctic cold.

I’ve been a bit blue because of an accident that happened last Friday. A young lady named Blair, barely 20 yrs old was killed in a car accident on the next road down, one of the roads we all travel all the time. We know her boyfriend from church. Blair was in the class under Sean and he really didn’t know her. Her parents wrote a lovely statement in her obituary. I couldn’t get over it-so heartfelt and an everlasting tribute to Blair.

I knew Barbaro the race horse would be all over the local papers. There are some great stories about him.

I want to thank all you bloggie people who are stopping by here. I hope you come back again. I’m glad you like my music too. That is a fun music site and I recommend it. I’ll be changing the jaunty tune soon, but it seemed perfect to pep us up from this blah weather.

I need to go shopping or something. I failed miserably in the bread baking department yesterday. I tried a recipe and the bread didn’t rise. I used all purpose flour and even warmed up the milk and butter a little-not too much. Maybe my yeast was too cold-it had been in the frig. It needs to ‘wake up’ first I guess.

Have a great weekend!

Jan31

Second Harvest Helper

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Contributors to Barilla Cookbook
Barilla pasta has a free ‘celebrity pasta lover’ cookbook available free here.

Kristin Davis, one of the contributors was on The Conan O’Brien show talking about it. I am printing it out-34 pages-some color intensive. When a cookbook has a Harrison Ford recipe, well I have to have it too!

The good thing about downloading this cookbook is that Barilla will donate $1 to Second Harvest to help the 38 million people (almost half are children) who don’t get enough to eat each day.

It’s a sunny but cold day here. Sean will be home soon and I will hear some complaining about Trig. He’s never had it before and is getting stuck on some problems. I hope he asked the teacher or his cousin Sierra (who is in his class) for help. He has a ‘math brain’, so hopefully he’ll catch on soon.

Jan27

Definitely cabin fever…

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…and hormones. It truly stinks to be my age, I’ll tell you. My weekend is a waste as I’m not up to par from lack of sleep. That happens a lot and it’s not unusual for us older chicks. I’m trying to get crafting on my mind. There’s something that is on my Kirigami calendar that I want to make, but do you think I can find my stash of watercolor paper? Do you believe in praying to St. Anthony to help you find something?

Brian was telling Sean he’s going to miss him when he goes to State College. It’s something I don’t want to think about until a month or so before it actually happens. If he keeps it up for 8 months, he’ll drive us both crazy.

Got a goodie in the mail-a camera case for our new camera from an eBay seller (good price). It’s a Samsonite and really nice-everything fits but it’s a bit weighty. Now I can go ‘walk it off’, whatever it is, at Longwood Gardens and other places around here. I don’t mind going alone sometimes. I figure if I go enough, I’ll get to know people at the gardens.
Darn-I forgot all about Photo Hunt this week. I may surprise ya later after my nap.
Back to looking…or sleeping.

St Anthony

St. Anthony of Padua
Patron Saint of Lost Items

Dianne, Dianne look around.
Something’s lost and must be found.
I’m praying that you find what you’re looking for.

Jan25

Giada’s recipe

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Between 10-1 most days, I ‘fish’ around in the freezer looking for something for dinner. I just happen to find a package of tilapia which is a tasty white fish. If you haven’t tried it and aren’t crazy about fishy, fish, this is a good choice. I pulled down a few cookbooks as I am trying to utilize my vast library a bit more and neither Rocco or Martha had tilapia recipes. Then I remembered that Giada (ja-da) DeLaurentiis did in the cookbook that I just received as a Christmas gift. So I’m trying it tonight. It calls for chopped up sardines (Bri happened to have a can-I’m still up in the air about if I really want to use some, maybe a smidgen). The rest of the ingredients are citrusy.

Update-Couldn’t do the anchovies-too weird looking. They were for the sauce. Giada also wanted you to fry the fish. I baked it and poured the sauce over top. I think next time I would reserve some of the sauce for serving. Also had baby carrots and Couscous.

We’re looking to have snow squalls or showers in a few hours. Just when my fellas are headed home. I wanted to go look at vacuums for mom (I’m taking stock in the Bissell company as she seems to blow one out every two years). I also wanted to pop a few items up for sale on eBay as it’s been over a month since I’ve done so. I found a few things in the ‘storage’ that Sean received at gifts that he never opened. I will give him the money toward his loan payment. Seems that he (or us) have to start paying it back before he’s not even out of college. Doesn’t seem fair, but there’s that new twist-just paying on the interest of the loan. Not that it’s new I guess-we are doing the same thing with our H.E.L. (abbrev so appropriate).

Below is our dessert tonight-Raspberry Chocolate Mousse from a package (bought at a store called World Market which is online too).
Raspberry Chocolate Mousse

Jan23

Flying the coop

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Sean was online picking out dorms for the fall semester at Penn State. He’ll be a junior and will be at University Park campus in the middle of PA about 3-4 hours from here. Gulp-a college ‘junior’ already! I can’t fathom it. He had to sign up for Chemistry this semester as he would be below the 60 credits he needs to transfer. He has to get up at the crack of dawn, but home by 1 pm. He’ll have to take a couple of classes this summer. I had a feeling taking a few semesters of only 4 classes would catch up with him. His stomach has been a little funny tonight. Guess he has a lot to think about.

I went down to my mom’s today. I tried to fix the belt on her fairly new vacuum, but it broke again. The brush part is broken-one of the ends of it was missing. I went to a vacuum store around the corner from her and they wanted $25 for a brush. I told them I could get a new one, an entire vacuum for $30-35 at Walmart-so there! We dropped off stuff at the Goodwill and went inside to look around. Mom is not allowed to buy clothes (in my presence anyway, but she better cut it out). I found a few little things for Easter and eBay. When we were leaving, I noticed a lady had bought something I dropped off, a pinball machine of Sean’s. It’s not everyday you see who acquires your discarded items. I have a little surprise for one of my online pals and will mail it to her soon. It’s a Goodwill find and I know she’ll like it. I’m not telling.We went to the nearby mall and had a nice pasta dinner and shopped in Macy’s as I had some credit on a gift card. Mom went and bought a top behind my back when I was undies shopping (no short task)-she’s bad!

Jan22

The white stuff

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Snow is on the ground-like a coating. Sean is hoping to miss classes-Sean just went back to classes last Tuesday! He acts like he’s in 5th grade again. : ) I think he may be worried about driving on bad roads-that I don’t blame him for one iota.

I ruined my roast last night. I took it out of the oven too soon and it was still red in the middle. I sliced it up and stuck it back in as my potatoes and parsnips were done. Why I cooked the veggies so soon is beyond me. I should have waited a hour or so. I like my roast beef when it’s really brown and almost getting a ‘fall apart’ texture to it.

I guess I was preoccupied with cleaning off my bedroom bookcase of lotions, etc and dusting it. I found a plastic shoebox of nail polish under my jewelry cabinet that was as old as the hills. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the middle of a project, I just hate stopping it to do something else like cook.

 ; (

The potatoes and veggies were good. Used the ricer (and am using the ricer-thanks to Von’s recommendation). I think I’ll make the chicken fingers that both Carole and Zoey made for their Sunday night din dins tonight.

Jan16

Sitting here anxious

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I’ve heard nothing about my uncle’s operation. The poor man (he’ll be 84 in June) has been through so much this past year. He’s got a lot of spunk like his mom did.

~Update-My uncle had his operation about 2 this afternoon. Looks like he’ll have to go in the rehab home again which cost him so much. Mom said he sounded ok, but groggy.

I did take a photo of my acquired JoAnn goodies:
jgoodies.JPG
I especially like the trees with the button and spools for bases. They aren’t straight up and down, but that adds to the cuteness of them. The other things are basically natural looking ornaments.

Sean went back to classes today. He only has to get up early 3 days out of 5-smart thinking. His first class is at 1. He’s a little nervous, but he’ll get back in the groove again.

Jan14

Run around

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Sean and I decided to go down to my Mom’s and to also drop off my brother Ken’s birthday gift (his b/d was on the 8th). So we got there and Mom was just beat. She is getting herself in a terrible stew over her impending cataract surgery coming up on the 25th. She isn’t eating well and since her shopping excursion with us on Wednesday, she’s been mainly laying around. So we went over to Ken’s and he liked his amber guitar lamp I got him even though mom said little Kenny already had one. What’s the difference, I was giving it to big Ken! Ken got the family a new Mac computer with a 22″ monitor-wow-it’s big! I like what we have, though I saw on the screen capture of my old blog that my header was too short which I didn’t even know. Ken put on James Taylor music on the stereo for me which I thought was cute.
Mom didn’t want to go to a nearby shopping center, so we bid her adieu and I went to JoAnn’s and Sean went to Circuit City. Here JoAnn’s was having a big sale (looked like you needed a coupon), but I got adorable Northern Woods ornaments (natural looking) for 75% off. Their pink ticket items were further reduced 50% off. I got an embellishment style cross stitch kit of a koi fish pond for only $5. I think I spent $50 on 30 things-so you know I got some decent buys. I believe the sale is on until tomorrow. I hope to photograph some of the goodies I bought.
We had to drop food and medical stuff off at my Uncle’s before dinner, so we drove in a 50 mile circle going through many towns we haven’t been in for a while. There are a lot of new shopping centers and developments going up. We passed the  restaurant where we had our engagement dinner, a seafood place called Bobby’s 24 yrs ago. Now it’s a Japanese restaurant!
My Uncle is doing okay. Sean thought he didn’t look as good as he looked at the end of December. I had saved and froze for him some portions of chili and spaghetti and Colleen sent him a goodie basket of snacks and cookies plus homemade soup.
Tomorrow is my big dental appointment. I hope to get on here later in the afternoon to update ya’ll.