havocandmayhem.com

We still have a decent amount of snow from the snow falls on the 6th and 12th and 15th of this month. We were finally able to buy a new sled for the boys yesterday. 5 dinos worth of snow and nothing to sled with! Now there is barely half a dino’s worth of snow out there but it’s still good sledding We found some pear flavored sake while shopping this week I bought some groceries Made a sock dog And dealt with computer hackers For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by! I’ve just installed the Disqus commenting system due to recent excessive anonymous spam. It might pop up and ask you to join Disqus. You do not need to do this to comment. You can just complete the name, email, URL fields and comment that way as a guest. It should remember you in the future. I apologize for the inconvenience. If you have any problems please let me know at havocandmayhemATgmailDOTcom.  Thanks

I haven’t done much sewing lately and I am fairly hopeless at following sewing patterns but Lizzy at Lizziemade posted this tutorial for making a sock rabbit last week and the idea has been floating around in my head ever since. Mayhem has been on my case about a crochet dog he’s been wanting & I’m just not up for the time investment right now. A sock dog though could be managed. Challenge #1 – Finding socks I failed to notice where Lizzie said she used a baby sock and instead went to 3 different stores in search of women’s socks that would make a neat looking dog. Apparently women only want ankle length socks these days. Socks with cuffs, that don’t say “HANES” on the bottom, and are not all shamrocked are hard to come by. Which I already knew sort of because I like socks with cuffs that are not white and don’t have shamrocks (or Xmas trees or whatever cutesie seasonal decor) on them and you just can’t find them, except as the near hosiery style trouser socks. Plain cotton

During our 2 week hiatus from school the boys spent a lot of time talking about battles and war. Havoc is fascinated by WWII and we have a couple DK Illustrated books about it out from the library. They also took the opportunity, when outside, to refight the battle of Hoth. The clones and the dinos fought many battles with one another and the plastic army men. But their favorite battle was the Pumpkin War. The Pumpkin War is illustrated. Havoc drew this. Pumpkins from the blue side dropped from planes onto the red side ship to fight there. The red side is currently being reinforced from the air as well. They are mostly very happy about it, except for that on in the sea. Mayhem drew a picture of that one’s fate These are the pumpkins clinging to a life raft, with their ships off in the distance. Notice only the one green one on the right is smiling. The rest look concerned or unhappy. There is a reason for this. For those of you that can’t read Mayhem it says “EEW

This past weekend, finally having a few hours of peace, I took some time to revist the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and see how I am doing at meeting them. My primary goal this year is to take control of my photo processing workflow by using Lightroom, makings sure to tag new photos & delete the bad ones as I go. I’m doing great on this one. I may not tag them immediately as I import them, but I do tag them as I rename or edit them. All the fuzzy, too dark, and weirdly chopped photos are deleted as I go. So far so good on goal number one. Goal number two was more commenting on blogs, layout and photos. I’ve discovered that I have to pick & choose to make this work. Last week I was good about blogs and photos but commented on no layouts, the week before that was photos and layouts but not many blogs. Goal number two still needs work but is coming along. My last goal was to accept in my heart & mind that veggies are not just a side dish. Yeah.

A few from this past week Valentine’s day roses My to be read pile The source of drama this week Monthly self-portrait For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I’ve been so busy printing layouts and photos I have not done much scrapping lately.  Simply Scrapbooks had a sale superbowl weekend and that was when I realized I have not printed a darn thing, except my 365 photo books, since early 2007. But I have done a few layouts I’ve done in the past month. Some new photos Some photos I found while sorting them for printing Some photos I have been scanning

So the stove…. The ick factor of the stove Tuesday morning cannot be overstated. I cleaned up the pee. Pulled out the burner pans & burners, scrubbed them with Lysol disinfectant & surface cleaner, scrubbed the stove top and the stove wells with disinfectant then wiped it all down with vinegar & water. I still felt the ick though so I hit it all again with Clorox kitchen cleaner & another rinse of vinegar & water. That lasted about 30 minutes before the ick got to me again It had been cleaned & disinfected but I was thinking it needed more. So I loaded the burner pans in the dishwasher & ran it on sanitize. Then I scrubbed the burners and the stove with bleach. Lots of bleach. And rinsed again with vinegar & water. I need to buy more white vinegar When the dishwasher cycle was completed I reassembled the stove and contemplated dinner. But I could not bring myself to cook on the stove. It had been cleaned, disinfected and sanitized but

Disclaimer – this is not about snow or school or parenting Monday night I was making chicken positano which requires all of my stove burners to be in use, even the back left one, which never gets used. I put a pot of water on it to boil and turned it on high boil then moved on to pounding the chicken breasts out flat. Soon the burner was smoking a bit. No biggie, my burners sometimes smoke a bit from a bit of food that smeared on them that I didn’t notice & wipe up. Turn the vent on, let it burn off & keep going. Then the smell started. OMG! THE SMELL!! Gagging in it’s awfulness. I rush over, turn the burner off, move the pot to another one and begin fanning the air with my dishtowel. It smelled like burning cat pee. No lie. BURNING CAT PEE SMELL. My first thought is ammonia in the stove cleaner. I don’t use that back burner much and it’s possible that last time I cleaned the stove I got some cleaner on the burner & failed to wipe it off and that was causing t

I spoke too soon about the kids having a week of school. It started snowing around 2 yesterday (it stopped by 5) and they closed school 45 minutes early. Then they announced a 2 our delay for today and then this morning at 6:30 they cancelled school. *sigh* Then I was cruising the interwebs last night and I learned something It seems that those of us who were and still are hoping that our kids return to school sometime in the near future are, to some people, terrible mothers. Why did we ever have children if we were going to bemoan having them around and talk about how we can’t wait to get them out of the house so we can have 5 minutes to ourselves again. Children are a blessing. What’s the point of being a mother if you are so selfish you want to eat your lunch in peace? What is one of the biggest pieces of advice mothers are always being given? TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF You read it everywhere. Experts, friends, family, strangers, they all tell moms “you should take some tim

They have school today!!!! For the first time in all of February! Saturday there was a bio diesel spill near the high school & the emergency warning system said the area would be blocked off for clean up but I guess they got it all cleaned yesterday. It might snow today but the chances of it are diminishing, so maybe there might be school TOMORROW as well!!! Dare I even hope that there might a …a….FULL WEEK of school?!?! The first FULL WEEK of school in all of 2010 so far?? The make up days for the two weeks off are today, March 12 and June 9. Yes, they missed 10 days of school  and they only have to make up 3 of them. This is because days 1-2 were ‘built in’. Days 3-5 are what I have mentioned and days 6-10 are ‘banked days’. I don’t know what banked days are but apparently the school system has figured out a way to actually save time from one year to another. The next time we miss school we lose a day of Spring break, then add another day to the end of the year, repea

We were expecting 4-8” more of snow on Tuesday but the storm blew east of us and we only had half a dino’s worth. (Click here for last week's snowpocalypse photos - 5 dinos worth of snow!) It was this guy’s birthday The truck’s fuel pump died and we had to tow it out of the driveway, turning it into a muddy quagmire Havoc making faces For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

My grandfather, in his new service uniform, holding my mom. This was taken in mid 1939. I’m having trouble with my feed, so if you see this please comment so I know it’s fixed. Thanks

I’ve been slacking on posting my 365 photos. Some have made it into Weekly Winners or other posts but these haven’t been posted before. 35/365 – I’ve started a cross stitch project 36/365 – Gnocci with beef & sausage ragu 38/365 - Havoc 40/365 – It was his birthday. He wanted brownies instead of muffins.

(In anticipation of having either no internet or no electricity or gods help me - BOTH - Wed as a result of Snowpocalypse part Deux, I am reposting an entry I originally wrote in June 2006 but was reminded of today in the grocery store. Male readers who don't have women in their homes might want to move along.) I was in the store the other day, facing the giant "Wall of Feminine Hygine Products", scanning the boxes, when I noticed how desperate their makers actually are to make themselves stand out in the crowd. A quarter of a century ago, when I first faced the Wall, it was not a Wall. Your choices were small. Stayfree, Kotex or Tampex. The pads that stuck to your underwear & did not require a belt were a new innovation. Then one day there were "wings" on the Stayfree and Always joined the brands. Then the pads got thin. Then they started coming in assorted absorbancies and thus a Wall was born. For the majority of those 25 years I stuck with Tampex & f

The boys are in the living room watching TV. They’ve been inside about 20 minutes. Mayhem: Where is the hot chocolate Mama? Me: I’m in the middle of something. I’ll make some if you go outside for an hour. Havoc: We already went outside for a half hour. You said we’d get hot chocolate if we went outside for a half hour Me: I’m altering the agreement. Pray I don’t alter it further.

Friday Feb 5. There is already 4-5” still on the ground from the snowfall on Jan 31 and Feb 2. Supplies had been purchased Thursday including a pot roast, gnocci, milk, bread, and 4 kinds of animal crackers 6am – School is cancelled. Shocker!  7:30 – DH clears the porch of existing snow & ice and salts it then plows the existing snow from the parking area 7:45 – A fine wet snow begins to fall 8: 20 – Havoc outside for a half hour 9:30 – I start eggplant roasting & meat browning for ragu 10:15 – Havoc outside for 20 minutes. Begs Mayhem to join him. Mayhem, the snow hater, is having none of it 11:00 – 5/8ths of an inch of snow have fallen. 1:45pm -  Boys sent outside with bribe of hot chocolate if they will stay out for an hour. 2:30 – 1.25” of snow. 2:45 – Boys back inside 3:00 – Hot chocolate all around. DH calls to say he’ll be leaving the office in a half hour or so 3:30 – 2.75” of snow. So far I am not impressed with this storm 4:45 – 4” of s

It all began last weekend with a 4-6” snowfall Then came the Tuesday 1-3” snowfall The dinos enjoyed it, once they bundled up warmly They had a snowball battle And played king of the mountain. Or maybe Rex of the mountain How much snow did we have on the ground on Wednesday? About one dino’s worth Then the storm hit Friday and Saturday Apparently we had more than 3 dinos worth of new snowfall by 2pm on Saturday, giving us a grand total of almost 5 dinos worth of snow in places and it was still coming down. For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by! Check back tomorrow for an exciting account of 20" accumulation, 7 hours without power and medieval attempts at cooking in the dark on a woodstove!