Hitting the Jackpot and preparing for a Birthday Party

                                                              Today's pasta salad

                                            My girls on the Tree.  For their special day.  They are irish twins born a few weeks apart in June of 2001 and 2002.  The last one was a surprise.  My ex had his vasectomy scheduled for two weeks away.  Too late!  ha ha.

A cute section of the mud room.  One year, I screwed in a bunch of coat hanger hooks along the edge of the lower part of the wains coating.

One of my small quilts I made years ago and my mother's little blanket that her nana had made.

 The part of the pantry where I keep my food.  Most of my food is in their pantry as I'm here all the time. I rarely eat anything except for a snack at my house.  I've got two canning jars filled with orange peels and vinegar for that homemade cleaning stuff and the other one has a homemade sugar scrub.  I love the pantry.  It's a long skinny room that has all kinds of stuff in it.

Right now this basket has odds and ends, but soon I will be using it to dry my mint and other herbs.

                                   
                                        Here is Julia finger knitting.  She does a good job at it.  She figured out how to do this herself with my tip on showing her the Pinterest picture of someone else doing it on five fingers and she figured out her own way to do it.

Here is what she made.  A legging for her webkinz.

Well, those are today's pictures.  Now onto the story.

Yay!!  I hit the jackpot.  I found a collection of change!  Ha ha.  And you probably thought I really hit the jackpot.  But don't you just love it when you find enough extra change somewhere and it's enough to buy a cup of MacDonald's coffee or a donut at Dunkin Doughnuts?  I do.

Yesterday we were cleaning up the house for today's birthday party.  We've got my Sister and her husband and their three kids coming up and my Dad is coming with them.  My brother and his wife had plans and couldn't come.  Just as well, as that would be a full house.  The girls are having a Pizza Putt party with a few of their school friends coming and the cousins.  My sister has a girl one year older than Mollyanne and then twins a boy and girl a few years younger than Julia.  So right now we are waiting for them to arrive.  They are coming from Maine and have a five hour drive.

So, yesterday the girls, Sean and I got cleaning the downstairs.  The studio or now "the girl's room is one of the two dumping rooms.  The other one is the room next to it that used to be the toy room and now it is the has been toy room and old computer room.  That's where their big computer and the printer is.  And there's a huge football shaped bean bag taking up half the room.  And then there are just old toys in there.

And the studio is now a major mess.  And I have a section for my stuff that I use when I'm at their house.  So I am also a contributor.  But, the girls way of picking up is tossing everything in little grocery bags and then throwing it in there.  What I need to do is go in sometime and organize it a little bit.

So, I got cleaning the mudroom yesterday, and in the corner by their sliding door, I discovered my old bag of yarn that the girls had wanted two years ago, when I had decided I was done knitting for a long time.  It was a pleasant surprise as now I'm going to use it instead of the girls, who left them untouched.

So, I weeded out the bag and found a bunch of spare change hiding out at the bottom.  Jackpot!  I was able to scrounge up close to $4 and went to some yard sales early this morning.  I didn't find too much to sell today.  I did find a framed Vincent Van Gogh reproduction of Starry, Starry Night and I might decide to list it. Found a pair of socks.  We always need those.  How many times do we find ourselves throwing out a holy pair?  I did last night.  I bought a few lace doilies to use in crafting, painting projects.

Pinterest had a neat picture of someone using them to get  a lace effect on a blank canvas.  Maybe I will try it to paper.  I've cut loads of cereal boxes to make a journal or something and I don't know how I'm going to decorate them yet.

I also got suckered into a fun thing in a bag toy for my cats.  Should be a fun conversation piece later today.  Once you get it going, it won't stop.  It kept vibrating on the kitchen floor this morning and Sean came up from the cellar as he could hear it really loud down there.

I also found a blank scrapbook which I might just use to paste in different Pinterest Tutorials and before I left  I discovered this really pretty fabric book cover.  I'm thinking I am going to sew the bottom together and halfway up the side and I will have a little container for my HTC tablet.  And there are small sections sewn up inside where I could stash the pen and maybe some small knitting needles.

And before that yard sale I went to a moving sale, which was junk.  I don't know why she called it a Moving Sale.  It should have been called a Tool Sale as that was just about all she had there.  Not very impressive unless you are a man.

And the last sale was the one who had the doilies.  So we got talking about Pinterest and another woman was interested in knowing more about the site.  And then the seller and I were trying to figure out how DYU was spelled.  And I started to say DUI.  Which of course nobody wants that!!

So, after giving her my last dimes, I headed back to the kids house.  And I got started on  a pasta salad for all of us to eat later tonight or tomorrow.  And my ex went grocery shopping this morning so the fridge is full.  We shouldn't be lacking food.  The girls were requesting Krave cereal.

There was a nasty fight about it last night as Julia got the last of the Krave before Mollyanne had a chance to get any.  And when she discovered she was only going to get four pieces she got so upset and then as Julia was getting into the fridge to get the milk, Mollyanne closed the door on her by accident, making her spill all the Krave.  So, with the five second rule, she picked them up and put her milk in and Mollyanne was still upset so I told her that Dad or Mom would buy some more for tomorrow.  And just as they were calm Dad came home and solved the problem and said he would go get more groceries.

And he came back and loaded up.  As I was finishing up the pasta salad to serve either hot or cold, I could hear him filling up coolers with drinks.

We still have a few hours to wait for the family to arrive.  And we did get a little surprise from Gramma as she has arrived early and is cleaning the bathrooms for the company.  She said she has entered a different house!!  It's so clean and my ex cleaned the floors.

And now Julia decided to finger knit for some photos.  The girls are excited now as they just got a new PS3 yesterday for the upstairs living room.  Before they had to fight for time with Sean for the one in the basement.  They were allotted a certain amount of time until Sean wanted his privacy.

And as the guests arrive, we will all be sleeping over and having a good time like we always do when everyone gets together.  Just add the fact that we're separated.  That's all.  Nothing else has changed. The whole family gets together for the cousins birthday parties too and it's just an action packed day.  Like old times.  Just minus Mom.

And this coming Tuesday marks the eleventh Anniversary of her death and this year it is actually on the Tuesday of her passing.

So on Tuesday, I am prepared to blog all day about her and have a day of remembrance.


Today's Pasta Salad, Italian Style

Elbow noodles
3-4 tbsps olive oil
4-6 garlic cloves (finely chopped)
One small can fire roasted diced tomatoes
One larger can diced tomatoes italian spices
I use the liquid too.
Two or more tbsps of fancy greek spices
Two to three tablespoons of pesto spice.
I used the fancy glass jars (McCormick I think)
A small amount of parmesean cheese.

I shook a generous amount two times and mixed it in.
And to top it off with an extra kick, I used a few tablespoons of the Ortega Guacamole dip for your tortilla chips.

Mix it all together and either serve warm or cold.  I'm thinking in a little bit, I might add some shavings of mozzarella cheese.  Don't add when warm unless if you want a different texture.

And my sister and I will later be asking the cousins if Bloody Mary is going to show up for the party this year.

Last year's party, all the girls and their friends slept over and at one point they came down into the dining room and were chanting, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary."

My sister and I laughed and said, "You know, girls, Bloody Mary is a drink."

"No, it's a person."  Evidentally, they all made up a haunted girl and she lived upstairs.  So at night, they were afraid to go upstairs by themselves.  And one girl ended up going home at 11PM.  Bloody Mary was a fun spoiler in the end.

I remember my slumber parties were a blast too.  We never made up a haunted girl, but we told a haunted ghost story about The Monkey's Paw.  My cousin, Michelle told it to us.  Leave it to her to do that.  And then we were taught by Mom to have one girl lie down in the middle and all of us got around her and put two fingers underneath her and we tried to see how high we could lift her.  We never got very far, but a few times we got maybe three or four inches off the ground.

Mom was the one who taught us how long to stand on a can with one foot.  How to drop clothespins into a jar and the one who got the most in won.

And then after she went to bed, one of us got the idea to fill up a glass of water and mix some mustard into it and we had fun dipping my sleeping cousin, Monique's hand in it to make her pee her pants.  Didn't work.  All that happened was that she woke up and was mad that we were pranking her.

And then later on, my sister's slumber parties got a little wilder than mine.  I remember Mom or Dad coming out to tell them to be quiet in the middle of the night.

And the same goes for my girls.  They get loud.  But as far as I'm concerned it's so much fun listening in.  I got lucky and got to have six friends sleep over.  The girls usually can choose one or two a piece and they always get their cousins.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted June 23, 2012

Here's the little book cover I got at the yard sale today.  Will be sewing this after this post is done.  After I clean up my little pile on the couch.  People will need to sit down.

Here's the little desk I bought at a yard sale last week.  And then one day this week, I started gluing my photos on them and then added some coats of good quality gloss sealer.  After I dabbed and brushed in some gold glitter glue.  I'm tempted to do more to the other parts of the desk, but the girls don't want me to do anything else to it.  And silly me glued the photos backwards.  You can see the little drawer.  I should have had the photos facing the same way.  And when I was done, Mollyanne pointed this out to me.  By then everything was glued into place and I didn't want to wreck it by tearing them off.

I love these little sizes for my photos now.  I used to make my handmade greeting cards with the larger size photo, but now I'm liking them with the little size.  And I love how you can get nine of them on the page to have more than one photo.   I'm due to print out some new photos soon.  And I might print some on regular paper for my handmade journal idea with the cereal boxes.