rachel's continued ramblings

I’ve written about smoothies a couple of times before, here and here . my posts evolve, as my smoothies do. but after a discussion last night about making good smoothies, I decided to document the one I made today. (still enjoying it, btw.) I generally make them with whatever fruit I happen to have around, and I always keep fruit of some sort in the freezer. adding frozen fruit to smoothies is just absolutely the best idea ever because you don’t have to add ice cubes if you want that cold, frothy, shake feel to it. generally, if I’m just making a smoothie for myself, I do it in my magic bullet. if I’m making more than one, I use the huge, loud, clunky blender. their mixing abilities are about the same, and I prefer the easy cleanup of the bullet when it’s just for me. since I found out that I have a dairy allergy or sensitivity and that yogurt and whey were very high numbers for me, I have not been able to add any yogurt. I used to always put in some plain greek yogurt, just for th...

hopefully this is the final episode. last night, DADDY had a little chat with layla. he basically told her, “you have to do your chores.” I love how stuff like that is more effective coming from him… so this morning, layla was up in plenty of time. she did sleep in her clothes again, and I think we’ll stick with that unless she asks not to at some point, and then we may TRY a night in jammies and see how the morning goes. tuesday is a band morning, so I have to take the little kids with me to drop off shane. (after a freak day in sweatpants, shorts guy is back in shorts. thought you’d like to know.) when we got back to the house, told layla to get busy. she didn’t really say much, but went in and looked at her chart. the first card was ‘get dressed’, so she kind of giggled, and moved it over. the next one was ‘make bed’. she whined and complained and told me that she didn’t want to have to do it. I reminded her that she needed to do it and it wasn’t that hard. she’s done it herself p...

my friend, louise, gets the best stuff over at momstart . she has a dress giveaway going on right now that I am just in love with! shabby apple makes the cutest stuff ever. I’m in love with ALL of it. vintage-inspired dresses for ladies and little girls, SO CUTE! I want them all! and make sure you check out their swimwear too. it’s straight out of 1940’s hollywood pictures. I could go on and on, but for real, go check out this giveaway! shabby apple dress giveaway @ momstart!

I’ve always been into smoothies. but I kind of go in phases with them. there will be times that I have the ALL THE TIME, and then other times when I’ve forgotten about them and don’t have them at all. right now, I’m on a major smoothie kick. I was reminded of their sweet, wonderful yumminess a while back when I read a post on the pioneer woman’s site about smoothies . of course, she’s all photography-savvy and has a clean kitchen and whatnot, and I don’t, but this is my take on smoothies. actually, it’s just today’s take on smoothies. it changes daily, depending on what I have on hand or what I’m in the mood for. as you’ll notice, it’s also a shameless plug for my 3rd favorite kitchen appliance. (the first being my coffeemaker, obviously, and the second being my coffee grinder.) so today’s smoothie consisted of the segments of 1 clementine (I have a 5 lb. box that I need to use up before they are not so good… plus, I figure the vitamin c will not hurt me any.), a BUNCH of frozen raspb...

I’m going to rave about something here, you’ll have to forgive me. I find it kind of funny that the thing I’m raving about is something that I don’t actually own. it belongs to my parents. I just use it. allow me to explain. I do cleaning for my parents at their house approximately 3 hours a week (generally, 1 hour, 3 mornings a week when I’m there dropping shane off anyway). nothing major, just maintenance. I clean the bathroom, kitchen dust and vacuum the living room, do some laundry, etc. just to help them out (oh, and they pay me, too). my dad does a lot of gardening. they have a cat that goes in and out all day long. my mom complains (legitimately) that the floor is always dirty and wanted me to mop it EVERY time I was there. well, that’s a pain. I’m not really that fond of mopping. you know, the whole bucket and a mop (and an illustrated book about birds… sorry, it just came out) thing, and the dumping dirty water down the toilet, and lugging a big bucket around, and the floor ...

…to try Project Life ! as you know, I’ve started using PL for this year, and I LOVE it. if you didn’t know that, you can read all about my love fest with PL here . I happen to like doing the photo-a-day method, with each page featuring a week of our life, and the completed book will be a a concise chapter of our family’s life for the year 2011. I think it’s awesome. it alleviates SO much guilt I was feeling about NOT scrapbooking or doing anything to organize, document, preserve, and display all the pictures I take of my family and the stuff we do as we live out our daily lives. I’m doing it as it happens. I print pictures EVERY week. and put it in and journal about each one, so I don’t get behind. altogether, I’d say I spend MAYBE an hour per week on this project. I LOVE doing it this way. BUT… you don’t have to. I follow becky higgins’ (the creator of PL) blog, and today she had a post featuring some of the many different ways people are using project life, to fit their own...

hopefully you recognize that as a pretty woman reference, and don’t just think I’m being profane. I know I should be packing and cleaning and tackling all of the 400 things on my to do list today, but I just have to take a quick break to write this down. I just had the most hilarious experience. I’m still chuckling. about a year ago (give or take) one of my pearl earrings popped off its post. I have no idea why. I just opened the box one day and instead of being attached, it was not. so I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for awhile, but I’m a procrastinator. this would require actually DOING something about it. or worse, making phone calls. dave and I are leaving tomorrow at o dark thirty for california, and I really wanted to be able to wear my pearl necklace (and earrings) to the wedding. so I bit the bullet this morning, and called marci jewelry in bellevue, because that’s where the box says they’re from. (they were a graduation present a million years ago, which is why I hav...

I know I’m one of those people that, when I get excited about something, I get REALLY excited. it is one of those things that dave and I like to tease each other about. he’s so even-keeled, that it drives me nuts when he’s not jumping up and down about stuff he’s supposedly excited about… and he thinks it’s odd that I have reactions of ecstasy over things like… really good strawberries, for instance, or when the daffodils push their little green heads up out of the ground (which they are doing right now, btw. **you can’t see it, but this is me jumping up and down**) at any rate, I’m SUPER excited about something right now: project life! mary turned me on to this, and I was totally skeptical at first. I didn’t get it. she started this last year, and kept raving and raving about how wonderful it was and all that… so, of course, I was intrigued. I started following becky higgins’ blog , and I started to get excited about the prospect of doing this myself. SO, what is it? well, it’s ...

no pun intended… i’ve had this vacuum cleaner for almost 6 years. i’ve been ready to be done with it for about 5. i have the dirt devil ‘jaguar’ bagless vacuum. we only paid about $75 for it at target, which, in vacuumcleanerland, is not very much. still, it’s $75. i tried to find a picture of it on the dirt devil website, but apparently, they no longer sell it, which is probably a good thing. so i had to take my own picture, which is probably better anyway. if you think it looks a bit ‘off’, that’s not just the perspective of the picture. it is a bit off. about a year after getting this vacuum, the latch that keeps it standing upright broke. so, any time you want to NOT be holding onto it (as in, any time it’s not in use) it has to lean against something or it will fall over. ANNOYING! but livable. and then, more recently, THIS happened: that’s a picture of the bottom of it,from the back. note the missing wheel. yup. a wheel broke off. so now, when using the vacuum, if you wan...

just kidding.  but i just have to take a minute to RAVE about this.  we get our milk delivered every week from smith brothers.  we love it.  it's great tasting, hormone-free milk that is delivered to your door.  tomorrow is milk day, and our milk man, kasey has been coming earlier and earlier lately, often before i get up in the morning, and since our bill was due this week, we needed a little less milk than usual, AND i wanted to leave some christmas cookies for him, i wanted to make sure i put all that out before i went to bed.  so when i got home from stitch & bitch at around 12, i wrote a note and a check, and packaged up some of the cookies i made this afternoon.  as i opened the door to put the stuff out in the milk box, i hear a car pulling up in front of my house.  i look and it's the milk truck!  talk about timing!  and out jumps the milk man with our crate of milk and runs it up to my door.  i eloquently say, ...

well, it's almost time. we are leaving tomorrow morning to head south to portland for our first, family camping trip. pathetic, i know. when dave and i got married, we put all sorts of camping gear on our gift registry. we got sleeping bags, air mattresses, a tent, a camp stove... stuff like that. not to say we haven't used it - well, not the stove - but never at an actual camp site. we've done the backyard camping thing, just to appease shane a few times. the sleeping bags have been thoroughly used... even peed on and puked on a time or two. lovely, i know, but hey, that's life with kids. i got the cool cookbook i ordered in the mail yesterday. i can't wait to try it out. http://www.schallertel.net/~rmasters/ yay. meal plans without scrounging through a million cookbooks and trying to figure out what we can actually eat (before 5:30pm). one more aspect of daily life i'm trying to organize.

i'm coming up a bit dry this week, so i thought i'd take a little bit different approach. 5. cheesecake! doesn't that just make your mouth water? oh i love cheesecake. it has to be the right kind of cheesecake though. a really good crust is just as important as what's on top of it. and don't go trying to give me any of that lemon or key lime stuff either. mmmm.... cheesecake with berries or cheesecake with chocolate. oh yeah. 4. soda. especially dr. pepper. about 2 years ago i made a sort of decree that we would no longer keep soda in the house, so i don't buy it and it's a very rare occasion that there's soda in my fridge. i will have it when we're eating out or whatever, but i really wish this stuff were the equivalent of drinking water. it's great. darn that stupid high fructose corn syrup! darn it all to heck! 3. weed killer. as i'm pulling out weeds and, at the same time, watching my garden shrivel up, i'm starting to think that my ...

1. markers. i loved markers as a kid and i still do. now layla is appreciating the entertainment value of markers. paper and markers can keep her entertained for hours. seriously. very little else can keep her occupied that long, but the child loves to draw, color, scribble, "write letters" and whatever else she can come up with to do with her markers. i think we should buy stock in crayola since i'm pretty sure we'll be going through a lot of these! 2. in-n-out burger. this place rocks. dave has totally converted me. i get so excited when we go to california so we can eat at in-n-out. double-double... yum. 3. roomba! yes, i love my vacuum, so i had to put it in my top 5. holy cow, my floors are clean! right now it's just so fun to use that i use it all the time. did i mention in the last blog about it that my kids named it 'john'? yeah, i know. i don't get it either. they decided it needed a name so shane goes, 'let's call it john!' ok...

i am so excited!!! i am now the proud owner of the coolest vacuum cleaner ever!!!! seriously, i can't believe i actually own this thing! it's the iRobot Roomba 550 vacuum cleaning robot. you put it in the room you want to vacuum, turn it on and it vacuums the room for you. it gets corners and under furniture and everything. you don't have to do anything! it has these little lighthouses that come with it that act as virtual walls so you can block off a doorway or whatever if you don't want it to go in an area. it will do carpets and hard floors and will go back and forth between the two and adjust automatically. it's so stinkin' cool! it will shut itself off when it's done in a room, or if it's cleaning in the room where it's charger is, it will just go to it and dock on the charger when it's done cleaning. you can set it to vacuum on a certain schedule, up to 7 times a week.... so it could potentially clean all your floors for you every day while...

i'm back! and so is the top 5. having spent the first week of our trip back in napoleon, i am dedicating this to some of my favorite things about my favorite midwestern farm town! 1. yes, walmart . i cannot tell you how much i have missed this place! now before all you west-coasters start turning up your noses and saying eeewww, yuck... as if!, let me just tell you that walmart out here is not the same as walmart out there. the napoloen walmart is actually a very nice place - not remotely gross or scary. and stuff is stinkin' cheap!!! 2. bermuda shorts. okay, well these aren't exactly related in any way to napoleon, except for the fact that i purchased a pair of these while there at, you guessed it, walmart! i love them. they're not the same as the ones in the picture - different color scheme. let me tell you why bermuda shorts are so incredibly wonderful: YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE SUPER-SKINNY, FREAK OF NATURE, NO CELLULITE, NICE KNEES, SUPERMODEL LEGS TO LO...