So yeah. Okay. We went to Melting Pot last night. And now we’re that much further from our goal. ($200 down, $1800 to go!) I’m sending out some fliers today to pro photographers, in hopes that it’ll help me get some steady business with the wedding album design. Fingers crossed!

Also there’s the garage sale on Saturday. Must sell lots. Sell, sell, sell! (Getting myself psyched up.)

Going to see Ren and Gary and Alison this weekend too. Have I written all this already? I saw Alison six months ago. I’ll bet she’s driving by now. Kids. They grow up so fast. Here she was a year ago. (She’s the one in the middle. Ha!)

What a stylish kid in her pink and brown and her fur-lined cape. (Faux, I hope.) And those cheeks…don’t you just want to eat her up? Can’t wait til they move down here, Alison and I are going to be bff.

I wonder if my ads will now be about cannibalism?

Yes, I have a problem. I made more bread last night. MORE BREAD! And pizza dough. But dang, that was good pizza! Seriously, I’d better slow down or I’m going to burn out. And before I burn out, I want to learn to make bagels, english muffins, more foccacia, cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls. Yum. I wonder if this is some kind of mental backlash against my 10-day attempt at the South Beach Diet back in January? Hmmm.

Also, note to self: don’t store plastic things in the oven. And if you do, take them out before you turn the oven on. There go my plastic pouring shields for my mixer. Ah well. I never used them anyway.

This weekend is the neighborhood garage sale. I hope to make lots of money for Mexico trip. And get rid of crap. Garage sales are genius. As long as I don’t hit up the other sales for alternative crap. Hmmm. Must be careful about that. And then after the garage sale is the annual Mowing-of-the-Lawn! And sometime in there will be Seeing Renny and Gary and Hopefully Alison Too! It’s gonna be a great weekend!

(I will say here how serious I am about saving money for trip to Mexico. I told George we had to turn down an invitation to the Melting Pot, my new favorite restaurant, since the $100+ we’d spend would be better saved for our Trip to Mexico(TM).)

Yay for a nice new brown kitchen!

I also made some wheat bread and a Chocolate Guinness cake that was a big hit at a party we went to this weekend.

Wow, exciting.

I think I need to stop baking. I’m becoming obsessed. Last night I made a Guinness Chocolate Cake – though, in my defense, it wasn’t just for fun, it’s for a birthday party we’re going to tonight. Oh my…a pound of butter…cocoa, eggs, flour, four cups of sugar…and two cups of Guinness. Ew. But it turned out pretty well (I made a cupcake out of leftover batter so we could taste it.)

Tonight I will melt three bars of Ghiradelli chocolate and mix it with two cups of heavy whipping cream to make the icing. Dear sweet heaven.

Speaking of chocolate, tomorrow I’m going to paint the kitchen chocolate brown. It’s gonna be purty. I’ll do the dining room later, but I’m just itching to do something. And it’ll force me to scrub the kitchen top to bottom. That’s a good thing.

Next weekend (on the first) is our neighborhood garage sale. I am so looking forward to getting rid of a LOT of crap. Yay getting rid of crap! And making some money at the same time! It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Wooo! Shout out to the Easterling family! I will bring you back sand from Mexico. Yeeeah!

Last night we went to dinner at my cousin Lisa’s house. It was fun. We had steak. Now George is more determined to get a grill. Woo! Because he can’t get a grill until he mows the lawn. Only about 10 days until I get a nicely mown lawn. Only problem is, the only lawnmower we can borrow is a riding lawnmower. If you saw the size of our lawn, you would see why this is funny. Whatever. I don’t care.

So anyway, I brought some of the focaccia to Lisa’s house and her son Eli was alllll about the bread. V flattering. I wanted to bring him home with us, because he made us bananas foster for dessert. I’m usually not a fan of bananas, but woah. Yum. And he’s only 13.

Focaccia!

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve been busy. Baking out the proverbial wazoo. This weekend, I made beer bread (bland), pear muffins (from Weight Watchers and not even yucky!), and hamburger buns (recipe had rave reviews, but I thought they were kind of bland too.)

This weekend, I have big plans to make a Guinness Cake for a friend’s birthday party and maybe some focaccia. (The recipe I have calls for potato. Isn’t that weird?) I’m also going to paint the kitchen, I think. We’ll see. I’m just itching to get started. Not literally. Har!

We’re back in our old offices again. It’s good to be back! I got to rearrange my office so it makes a bit more sense, and now I can see out the window…such a lovely view. Yay!

Looky what I made last night, from scratch!

I am baker extraordinaire!

Also, I’ve lost 5 lbs in two weeks on WW. Whew! Let’s hope I can continue at this rate. Not if I keep baking bread like that. Hmmm.

Uh oh, must remember to wear green today. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Poor George, he’s still sick from a cold. He might not be able to have Guinness today. That’s about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

Woah. It’s been a weird week. Not in a bad way, just out of the norm. Monday, after work, I raced to the gym, ran a couple of miles (only had 32 minutes for my entire workout), then raced home, showered in record time, and then raced to my cousin’s house. I was babysitting her son Max from Tuesday morning at 6:15 until last night at 11 pm. Of course, I had a break in there to go to work. Anyway, Monica had to fly to Illinois for a meeting. Yow! Did that paragraph even make sense?

Anyway, because of the early start, I spent the night on Monday. We went to Frankie and Johnny’s for dinner (yum shrimp poboy!) and then she kind of showed me the ropes with Max. I hadn’t babysat him for quite a while, since before Katrina, and he’s grown up a lot. Awww, dang, he’s so cute! He talks a lot now. We were having fun last night naming animals in one of his books and the monsters in Monsters, Inc. The kid is a Pixar expert, no kidding. Two and a half and I’ll bet he could recite Finding Nemo word for word.

Anyway, so here it is Wednesday, and I’ve only seen George for about ten minutes since Sunday, it seems like. Yesterday I was so tired I drove all the way home for a thirty minute nap after work and before going back to Monica’s. Zzzz.

So. Project Runway finale. Tonight. Going to make some homemade pizza for the occasion. Did I say I was getting sick of pizza? Ehhh. I even had pizza last night from Whole Foods for dinner. (Mine’s better. But now I am inspired to use some portobello mushrooms on the pizza tonight. Wish I had some goat cheese. Mmmm. But I do have fresh basil.)

What else? Yesterday, the first piece of our exciting Pottery Barn purchase arrived. I’m so excited to get the second piece so we can put it together. I thought it was going to be delivered tomorrow, but apparently not. Anyway, I’ll put a pic up when we get the whole thing up. It’s a tall, narrow wine cabinet. Pretty! Storage! My favorite thing, storage. Of course, having a pretty piece of cabinetry in our otherwise hideous kitchen (excepting the new dishwasher and fridge, they’re pretty too) just makes me more eager to paint it a nice, warm, neutral color and to refinish the stairs. All in good time. Man, and if we could replace the white formica countertops, I’d be in heaven. Must wait until my new website takes off. Yeah.

Okay, off to work! (Am not re-reading post before I upload it. I am just a little too sleep deprived for that. So apoalogies if it’s gibberish.)

So who was surprised by the best picture winner last night? Yeah, yeah. I was more surprised by that big monsterous thing that was on Charlize Theron’s shoulder. Well, maybe frightened is more accurate. Sheesh. That was scary.

I have now discovered a new talent of mine. Pizza making. Yes indeedy. Who’s have thought? I made pizza dough from scratch this weekend and it was insanely delicious. My second batch wasn’t quite as good as the first (note: pastry flour is NOT to be used in pizza crust, but where was the bread flour at Whole Foods?) but still yummy. If I wasn’t slightly sick of pizza right now, I would totally try to find some bread flour (as opposed to all-purpose flour) and make another batch, but I don’t think I can. Oh wait, I think I will on Wednesday night for Project Runway. Woo! Project Runway finale!

We also drank green beer yesterday. That’s a first for me. I have a problem with artificially colored food/beverages normally, and by that I don’t mean foods that are artificially colored normally. We went to “Friendship Day” on the levee near our house. It’s really a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, but I’m not exactly sure why it’s called Friendship Day. Whatever. Free beer and sitting on the levee getting my first minor sunburn of the year. It’s good stuff.

Also, I channeled my inner Pottery Barn decorator and did this in our kitchen:

(inspiration from PB:)