| Busy much?!?! |
So this won't be an exciting blog post-- just to prepare you for the let down :)
Life is busy for everyone this time of the year. It is especially busy for me this year because work is crazy busy. As most of you know I handle all the brand marketing and graphic design for a company here in the Seattle area. We have two large tradeshows that we prepare half the year for- and since we have been rebranding the company of the past 10 months- everything for the tradeshow needs to be altered and designed to our 'new look'. EVERYTHING.
I'm talking from the brochures, flyers, folders, to the signs, banners and videos. My big projects were the custom turning banner above our large booth, all the signage on the inside, brochures, flyers, folders, shirts and videos. There is so much more involved when sending something to a professional print press as opposed to uploading photos for printing to your customers. The process has been grueling and made some very long days for me at work and many missed lunches. But it's all on me since I am the only person who handles the graphic design.- so I push on. :) The main items have been ordered and will be on their way before we know it.
Next week I'm working on the internal and external signage and then the remainder of the time before the show will be dedicated to taking video of our equipment, reviewing it, editing it and setting it to some snazzy music. I know exciting right?! I have large bottle of tylenol in my desk drawer for the back pain. I'm too young to feel like this!!! Then a trip to Las Vegas the third week of January and it will all come to a close. YAYY!! I'm only going for one week this year- so I'm happy about that.
As for everything else... we're busy. Makena is out of school for Christmas Break. I'm so glad her school refers to it as that- it is not a 'holiday break' but is actually a Christmas Break. She has been at my parent's house for the past few days. It's made it nice so that I can be busy working w/out having to worry about her at school. We have all of our Christmas shopping done YAY! and presents are being wrapped and are under the tree. I have a few more in the car that I'm going to go bring up in a few minutes. It's 8:20 so I am watching tv, I have the dishwasher, washer and dryer going... it's a Saturday at the Stoural's. lol.
I spent a weekend making our Christmas cards, they're still in a pile on my desk. They haven't been labeled. Actually the hold up is that I took some pictures of Makena and PJ and I and can't find the Compact Flash Card they were on. I have to dig around today for that.
Okay- gotta run. Taking Makena to see Santa Clause FINALLY today. She hasn't seen him yet... it's usually something that ends up being last minute for us this time of the year.
So much to do- so little time.
Best to you and yours! |
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| GREAT ARTICLE - for the working mom! |
By Lisa Kogan
(Oprah.com) -- The love of my life is seeing other women. It started innocently enough, a bite to eat, a stroll through the park -- the stuff I never have time for. Then came the private jokes, the pet names, the stolen kisses, the bubble baths.
At first I was crushed. What did these women have that I didn't? Sure, they're gorgeous, but I happen to look very nice in navy; and, yes, they're bright, but I scored unbelievably high on the SATs ... if you don't count the half with all that math.
I told myself it was just a fling, but a blind man could see that wasn't the case. The truth is this: My daughter, Julia, would follow Dina Sotomayor, her nanny, and Lidra Basha, her babysitter, to the ends of the earth, and the feeling is more than mutual.
For a while, I worried that with Julia's grandparents living so far away and her father -- that would be Johannes, my boyfriend of the past 6,000 years -- working in Europe for long stretches, Julia's world would be pitifully small, but then along came Dina with her arroz con pollo, and Lidra with her Kosovar lullabies, and everyone's life took a major turn for the better.
They say you can't pick your family, but Jules and I would beg to differ. I spent a lot of time picking caregivers who would cherish and respect my little girl, and, as a result, my little girl fell head over heels for both of them.
To be honest, I was afraid she preferred them, that because I'm at the office all day, she wouldn't understand I was the one who pulled her through the croup of 2004, the one who managed to come up with last-minute Dora the Explorer at Radio City Music Hall tickets, the one who taught her to quit putting grapes in her ear.
It turns out I needn't have been concerned. She gets it. Kids have a way of figuring this stuff out. They have a primal understanding of who their mother is -- but what about the aunts and uncles, the cousins, the brothers and sisters, the people who give you a place in the world ... and occasionally drop a gummy worm down the back of your T-shirt just for good measure?
My aunt Mollie was my grandmother's youngest sister. Perhaps Mollie and her five siblings were a touch sensitive, but after being on the receiving end of several rather unpleasant pogroms, they began feeling somewhat less than welcome in Russia.
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So in 1919, with nothing but the clothes on their back, they made their way to Detroit, where my aunt Mollie met and married my uncle Clyde, a good solid soul from (I'm not kidding) Tightfit, Tennessee, and gradually became the family matriarch ... which is to say she had a swimming pool in the yard and filled it with cousins every summer.
My tante Annie would show up with homemade elderberry wine, though my uncle Izzie preferred to lounge poolside with a tall glass of pickle brine as my brother and cousins and I looked on in horror. My uncle Sam quoted Shakespeare, and my aunt Minnie did needlework. Everybody argued in Yiddish and laughed and snuck table scraps to the dogs hanging out under the picnic table. I loved those days and I loved those people, but they're all gone now, and Sunday afternoons are for doing laundry. Julia never did have the pleasure of their company.
Still, I know that in years to come, my daughter will remember eating Albanian cabbage pie with Lidra's parents (whom she calls Mrs. Mommy & Mr. Daddy) and summer evenings at the Botanical Garden with Lidra and her sister and brothers. Jules will look back at her trip to Sesame Place with Dina and her husband and two sons, and she'll realize that -- just like her mother -- she comes from a great big, slightly offbeat, seriously funny family who would literally do anything for her.
Now, I'd gladly leave it at that, but I can't very well talk about the village it takes to raise Julia without talking about the e-mail that came across my desk yesterday. You see, I recently wrote a column in which I mentioned that one of the things people need most is good, affordable day care for their kids. Here is the response I got from a 30-something Nebraska woman: "I have great news for Lisa Kogan -- 'safe, healthy, fun, warm-hearted day care for kids' does exist. It's called parents. By actually raising the children we choose to bring into the world, we can give our kids all this and more."
Oh, Miss Nebraska, what am I going to do with you? The old me would've simply ignored your letter (if one considers consuming 33 mint Milano cookies, two Snapples, and a 6.6 ounce bag of those little Cheddar Goldfish "ignoring your letter"), but a funny thing happened on the way to turning 45: I took a deep breath and decided I'm much too old and way too tired to keep nursing my adolescent obsession with being loved. The need to please has at long last atrophied and set me free. So, lady, this one's for you:
I will resist a smart-ass reply congratulating you on being one of the 11 remaining members of society who can get by on a single income, especially given the forecasts that 15 years from now (when my daughter is ready for college), four years at a public institution will run somewhere in the neighborhood of $129,788.
And should Julia be smart enough to get into an Ivy League university, we're looking at roughly $279,760. Fortunately, she recently spent the better part of an hour with her little head stuck inside a shoebox, so affording Harvard may not be an issue.
But I can't help thinking how incredible it must feel to be unfazed by this prospect. I envy people the ability to stay home with their kids, and there are plenty of days I wish I could be home with my daughter. Miss Nebraska, I, too, am a believer in quantity time, and I certainly agree that if you choose to bring a baby into this world, you'd better be prepared to raise it. But I also think that there's more than one way to raise a child.
I've never really believed it's possible to have it all. But I know that with a strong support system (i.e., nanny, sitter, Grandma, day care, doorman who doesn't drink, or some combination of the above), you can have a career and a baby if that's what you need or want to have.
Will that baby eventually become an adult who requires the services of a very wise shrink because you screwed up? Of course! That's what parents do, whether we work or stay home -- we screw up. We try our damnedest, we love our hardest, and then we force them to wear a coat over their Halloween costume and all hell breaks loose.
We want to be better than our parents were, and in certain ways we are better and in certain ways we're not, and that, my friend, is just the way the cookie (which was not made from scratch, because, hey, this is 2007) crumbles.
But I don't want to fight with you, Miss Nebraska. I've had enough of red state/blue state, your god or mine, tastes great versus less filling. The planet is divided enough at this point, so I'm officially calling for a cease-fire, a moratorium on snarkiness, or at the very least a modicum of tolerance.
We are better than this -- we are women. We crave potato products, we read witty novels, we notice shoes, we follow our gut, we try to keep men from becoming violent, and believe it or not, Miss Nebraska -- there's one more thing we have in common: When all is said and done, we both want the best for our families.
By Lisa Kogan from "O, The Oprah Magazine," January 2007 |
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| WHAT!!!??? |
Okay as I'm up this morning i'm worried... oh gees- what did I write about last night?!?! So I have to see before I head out the door. Everything makes most sense until the end where I discuss my personal trauma vs. work. WTF?! I don't have ANY personal trauma!!! And about face to the stars?! Bwahhhhahahaha. Hellleeewww AMBIEN!
Gotta get to work...
love your lucidity. ;) |
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| A post, by my friend Ambien..... |
Okay so I'm nearing comatose and just finishing up some wokr stuff I need to do. The battle is just this... work from home... get my mind rolling so i can't sleep. OR get up early and go to work and work HARD to get things done.
How about a compromise.... I have already been working from home updating our website etc... But now, the medicine is coming in and I realize I am going to be heading to bed to wak eup earl y and go slave away on my projects. WHICH by the way I'm totally excited to be doing. This is my job... just trying to balance my 'single mom' roll w/ my full time working roll. it's hard, and i hate it when makena is the last child to be picked up. Here I go with the tears.... UGHHH anyways. i'm about to head to bed. I have done one load of laundry and one load of dishes who are in the dishwasher and ready to come out. i even wiped all th ecounters down an d swept. everyone that knows me would be proud. I am making it day to day despite all the trauma that seems like it is going on in my personal life. I like to keep that seperate from work at all costs. it's mandaotry. don't mix the two right? Well, here i am mixxing them. damn it all.
I'm so not even lucid at this point and i'm arguing with myself....
Loonie toons here is exiting left and about face to the stars and upstairs to a comfy bed. PJ will be home to save me from my own demons....
peace |
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| Christmas Shopping in my pajamas |
I'm a shopping MANIAC! I went to the mall, for the first time this season. It will probably be the last time I go LOL. Wanted to get my shopping done though- so I was tempted. I do have to say- I just get so flippin' overwhelmed when we're shopping. I tried to go specifically to pick up wallflowers at bath and bodyworks. but i couldnt' decide on the scent. we left. they didn't have scratch and sniff stickers, which they should have. b/c it doesn't make sense for me to have to go scout out the scents in the store to determine which one I wanted. it was too much work - like a scavenger hunt.
Anyways- saw this was on woot.com yesterday! NICE idea! Just about everyone has an iPod so this is neat.
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| Gardening Lights |
Saw this... thought I'd post it. I didn't write it- but it's more of a note to self... buy these. The End.
Ultra-Bright Double Spotlight
I’ve said it before, I have a soft spot for solar. The idea of us having so much grief over energy when the surface of our planet is being constantly bombarded by solar energy just seems so absurd on so many levels. Now, I understand that for a whole heck of a lot of applications solar is just not a practical solution. Panels that put out any kind of REAL power are expensive to make and therefore expensive to buy. But that doesn’t mean that we should do everything we can to capitalize on this relatively free energy whenever it is practical.
Like garden lighting; a host of companies are making practical, usable pathway lighting at reasonable costs. Until recently, however, most of the solar powered spots were a bit lacking. I have a friend who installed a pair of bargain basement garden spots on the side of a building to light up a sign. He carefully measured out and mounted the spots, aimed the solar panels at the sun, and that night walked and looked up at the sign. I won’t repeat what he said but let’s just say you could sort of tell they were on but that was about it.
These 16 LED equipped spots show promise, however. They light from dusk till dawn, and are bright enough to actually be considered spots. In addition, unlike the cheap ones you find out there, you can put the solar panel up to 15 feet away so you can even put the spots inside and have the panel outside. In any case if you need to light up statuary in your garden, or need to light up the inside of your shed. This might just be the eco-friendly solution you have been looking for. The Ultra-Bright Double Spotlight is available from gardeners.com for $89.95 |
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| Made these, they're good |
Couldn't remember if I posted these already or not...can't keep up from down these days :)
MINI-HAM PUFFS from SEASON’S BEST RECIPE COLLECTION Spring/Summer 1997
1 pkg. (2.5 oz.) processed ham, chopped 1/8 tsp. ground black pepper 1-1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 small onion, chopped (about ¼ cup) 1 pkg. (8 oz.) refrigerated crescent rolls 1 egg
½ cup (2 oz.) Shredded Swiss cheese
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Finely chop ham and onion using Food Chopper; place in Classic Batter Bowl. Add cheese, egg, mustard and pepper; mix well. Lightly spray Deluxe Mini-Muffin Pan with vegetable oil using Kitchen Spritzer. Unroll crescent rolls and press dough into one large rectangle. Cut rectangle into 24 pieces using Pizza Cutter. Press dough pieces into muffin cups using Mini-Tart Shaper dipped in flour. Fill each muffin cup with filling using small Stainless Steel Scoop. Bake 13-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Yield: 24 servings |
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| A funny thing about kissing |
 A funny thing about kissing….
PJ and I have become very aware of what is on tv, now that Makena is nearly 6.5 – we’re super careful about her seeing dead people and people making out. So, last week we were watching tv… warning- kissing scene seems to be coming. Immediately we tell Makena ‘cover your eyes.’ Now let me paint the picture- she was sitting on the floor, slightly in front of me, so w/ her eyes covered she couldn’t see in front or to the side of her. Her eyes were covered- both hands over them. I snuck quietly up in front- and there she was- PEEKING through her left hand!!! It was pretty funny b/c she was soooo- busted AND she was startled when I caught her. PJ and I laughed pretty hard.
Labels: Makena |
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| A different Christmas Poem |
A Different Christmas Poem
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light, I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight. My wife was asleep, her head on my chest, My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white, Transforming the yard to a winter delight. The sparkling lights in the tree I believe, Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve .
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep, Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep. In perfect contentment, or so it would seem, So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near, But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear. Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear, And I crept to the door just to see who was near. Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night, A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old, Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold. Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled, Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear, "Come in this moment, it's freezing out here! Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve, You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift, Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.. To the window that danced with a warm fire's light Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line, That separates you from the darkest of times. No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me. My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December," Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ', And now it is my turn and so, here I am. I've not seen my own son in more than a while, But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag, The red, white, and blue... an American flag. I can live through the cold and the being alone, Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet, I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat. I can carry the weight of killing another, Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all, To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall." "So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright, Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least, "Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast? It seems all too little for all that you've done, For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret, "Just tell us you love us, and never forget. To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone, To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead, To know you remember we fought and we bled. Is payment enough, and with that we will trust, That we mattered to you as you mattered to us." |
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| I can't cook... but I can follow directions! |
Well- this morning started out great! (Polar Opposite of yesterday) and I decided to cook the apps that I had planned on for T-day but when we had too much food I didn't make them.
Ham and Cheese Puffs (very similar to queches)
2.5 oz chopped ham
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup of shredded swiss (I used shredded and seasoned mozerella)
1/8 tsp of pepper
1 egg
1.5tsp of dijon mustard
1 container of cresent rolls ( i used low fat)
Okay- so here you have it. Use your pampered chef or small muffin pan.
Spray w/ pam of some sort
unroll the cresent rolls. They tend to come apart. but if you're careful you can pull them apart in rectangles (set of 4 each put together w/ 2 triangles)
Cut them into 6 pieces w/ a pizza cutter - you will have 24 pieces total (Squares)
use your tart shaper coated w/ flour to push them into the mini-muffin pan
Mix all ingredients and spoon into the cresent roll lined muffin pan. Cook 350 degrees for 13-15 mins.
ENJOY!!! I don't have my camera right here otherwise I'd take a photo. Maybe it's because I'm hungry- but they were really good and not too messy in the kitchen! :)
*this was a Pampered Chef recipe from my friend Andra |
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| The first snow & staying up |
 So I woke up this morning as usual at 6:30. Yesterday- rumors were swirling about snow. Sure enough- I looked out the window and it was almost (keyword) a white winter wonderland. But it was only about 1". It didn't cover 'everything' - but it was a nice cover that I think Makena will have fun enjoying. I'll send photos when the sun comes up. Right now I'm focusing on cleaning the house and organizing. We let Makena stay up until 11pm last night watching the Lizzie McGuire movie. It was pretty cute. I feel another 'Hannah Montana' moment coming on. She seems like she's really growing up lately. - Off to clean. More later today.  |
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posted by 2Kais at 
