havocandmayhem.com

It was Memorial Day weekend here in the US, a 3 day weekend,the unofficial start of summer. Saturday I spent all my time from 1pm until 3am eating sushi, drinking wine and reading chick lit or watching Firefly. It was glorious! The males went camping & I’m told it was equally glorious. But really. Sleeping in the back of a mini van, in the woods, with all the humidity & bugs versus watching Nathan Fillion in air conditioned splendor, lounging on your own tempur pedic mattress, while stuffing yourself with salmon rolls washed down red wine. Who had the better Saturday? Sunday afternoon the males returned and we cooked out but ate in because it was too damn hot to eat outside. The pool was filled and blasted with chemicals Monday there was lots of outside play but none in the pool due to the chemicals and icy cold nature of the water. (This was a parental decree, the boys were perfectly happy to turn a really bleached out shade of blue if we’d just let them in the p

I am behind this week on getting the photos off my camera so I only have a few to share. Batman has joined the Republic Clone Army This guy needs to cut back on his caffeine intake I love the colors in this bouquet For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Yesterday morning the Big Brown Truck of Joy dropped these off on my porch I was putting the dough in the fridge to chill as they arrived. An hour later I assembled my stuff I’m not Martha so elaborate icing is out. Colored sugar sprinkles are in. I’ve got a couple suggestions for people using these cutters. There are many nooks & crannies in the images. It took me 3 trays of cut outs to get it sorted. The dough kept getting stuck in the indentations & the cookie would cling to the cutter. 1. Roll the dough out to a quarter of an inch thick. Get a ruler to check it. This is important for making the impressions properly. 2. Dust the cutters with flour or powdered sugar before cutting & pressing the cookies. Dust the dough too. 3. Press FIRMLY on the plunger, especially if the dough is very chilled. 4. You want the dough to be really chilled. 5. Roll it out between waxed paper right out of the mixing bowl and put on a metal cookie tray in the fridge to

The Holy Lunching Friars of Voondon claim that just as lunch is at the centre of a man's temporal day, and man's temporal day can be seen as an analogy for his spiritual life, so Lunch should (a) be seen as the centre of a man's spiritual life, and (b) be held in jolly nice restaurants~Douglas Adams-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Yesterday was International Towel Day, a celebration of the life & works of Douglas Adams, my very favorite author of all. I would dearly love to be a Holy Lunching Friar. In the days before children I almost actually was. We went out to lunch almost every day at my last work for pay job. Arbys and the Pig Pit don’t really count as ‘jolly nice restaurants’ because one is fast food & the other a pit BBQ place, but they were our only options besides Sheetz (a gas station that makes good sandwiches) and Mc Donalds. I’ve always said that, apart from the money, it was lunch I missed most as a stay at home mom. The money to g

  Ah Mondays. Potluck is useful to me in so many ways this week. I have no idea what to post about and I have no idea what to serve for dinner either. DH is working 3 hours away from home all week, so he leaves at 6am and gets home at 8pm. Just me & the boys for dinner and I have a hard time cooking meals I know won’t be appreciated by boys (like steak & pierogies) when DH isn’t around to appreciate them. Perhaps I will get a rotisserie chicken tomorrow and serve it in various ways all week. Rotisserie chicken, chicken sandwiches, chicken salad, chicken hash & eggs, and then chicken soup. Actually now that I read it, it’s not too bad with the right side dishes.   Obviously I am not rocking in kitchen right now. I’m in a dinner slump. But I came across these on the web Friday and it was this major epiphany experience. I went from not knowing they existed, to knowing about them, to possessing them in less than 60 seconds. I couldn’t not buy them. (possessing i

Once a month, on the 20th, I take a self-portrait. This month proved to be a challenge. I was up for a quick – hold the camera up and shoot- type photo. My camera though had focusing issues I couldn’t do this deliberately if I tried So then I held the camera sidewise thinking it would give less non-face space to focus on. But I leaned too far back and took the shot too early Oh hai Finally I got a decent shot For more weekly winner please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by

A couple of weeks ago my friend Mel at I Speak Melsh signed up for an All About Me class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. It’s a free class. She thought it might be fun if a bunch of us took the class too and then posted out projects online. I checked the class out. It’s paper. I’m digi. I am always reluctant to confront my nemesis – The Scissors. I’m even more reluctant when it’s likely to involve his sidekick Mod Podge and his little glue stick minions. I lack basic kindergarten craft skills. Give me a computer program of any sort and I am all over it. Scissors and glue are much too complicated for me.  Last time I had the Mod Podge out I glued my pants to my leg, then glued the cutting board to the desk. Plus, I didn’t understand the instructions for making the fold out album. It seemed fraught with peril. So I thought maybe I’ll just do a single page or turn the project into a couple pages for the AAM album I am working on all year. Then I remembered I owned a Maya Roa

School photos… a rant. They are not my favorite thing. The boys’ school has 2 photo sessions every year. One in the fall & one in the spring. The one in the fall requires payment upfront, before the photo has even been taken. Who pays for photos that haven’t been taken yet? Still? In this day and age? How does that business model even work anymore? Frankly given digital technology I expect them to email me my kid’s photo for my approval within minutes of having taken it. OK, I’ll give them an hour or so to get enough photos for a bulk download and email. Heck, I’ll give them 2 days to retouch and then email. And it can be low res and have SAMPLE printed across my kid’s face in watermark fashion to make sure I don’t sneakily print it out myself for nothing. I would pay for that service. That would be worth the price these companies charge for photos. There is no reason on God’s earth these days why anyone should find paying for photos sight unseen acceptable. S

That’s me. I’m full of ideas that would be wonderful for other people to carry out. I can’t carry these ideas out for a variety of reasons. Mostly variations on incompetence. Someone ought to drag our deck back 3 feet so we have more room for the pool this summer (the deck is freestanding). I can’t do this because I have no idea how leverage works & would chain the wrong part of the deck to the wrong part of the tractor and end up breaking one or both of them Someone needs to get cracking on building that mud room off the kitchen we’ve been talking about. I can’t do it because I am spatially and algebraically impaired and figuring out things like square footage of siding versus the amount of 2x6s for framing is beyond me. And I am afraid of the circular saw. But hand me some precut boards and tell me where to hammer them and I’m all over it. Someone needs to sand down the wooden top of the island in the kitchen so it can be resealed. I can’t do it because I get carrie

I’m enjoying the randomness on Mondays. Takes the pressure off having to come up with a coherent post. From jumping around other potlucks I’ve seen some topics I want to use & have some of my own so I made little buttons to remind myself to keep my randomness from getting to random as it were.   I’ve been doing more baking this week. I made more peasant bread and I came across this post at Bakerella and immediately got up from the computer and made them right then. This week I am going to make this chocolate cobbler recipe which I came across while the cookie bars were in the oven. Otherwise I would have gotten up from the computer and made it right then.     You may have read earlier where Havoc accidentally brought a toy gun to school & was suspended for half a day . Yeah. I am still in a full on panic about that. I keep constant track of all the Nerf guns in the house now. Even when I know they are not in his backpack I still have to go around and fin

I’m behind on getting my photos out of my camera so I only have a few this week I baked some bread It rained And some toys were left outside For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

When I posted the last post yesterday, one of the You Might Also Like options at the bottom was for a post i did on Mayhem’s 5th birthday last year. I clicked on it because I didn’t remember what I had written. In it were these two photos Mayhem on his 4th birthday And Mayhem on his 5th birthday Then I clicked over to his 6th birthday post with this photo He is wearing the exact same shirt in each photo! And. That shirt? Belonged to Havoc for 2 years before Mayhem got it. This means one of two things. Either I am hopeless at getting clothes that fit for my kids, or Mayhem just hasn’t grown that much in three years. It still looks too big on him. Look where the shoulders are. But he has grown 6 inches in that time! And it doesn’t look any bigger on him in the first photo. How does that work? And what about that Wal Mart quality? Yes. That is a Faded Glory brand shirt in it’s 5th year of small boy wear.

Had the meeting & it went well. Apparently we were lucky to get the meeting today because it will be late next week before everyone can meet again & Havoc would have missed 7 days of school, putting him over the 10 he is allowed to miss & still pass 1st grade. The school system has a zero tolerance policy but they also have a sense of perspective. Havoc very honestly admitted the toy was his & was in his backpack & that he hadn’t brought it to school intentionally, it had just been left in there from the weekend. This apparently made all the difference. The whole situation was gone over in the meeting, everyone agreed with the series of events as related. They explained to Havoc why toy guns are not allowed in school, his perception being that it’s just against the rule, with no understanding of why.  I think mostly they were concerned that a rumor would go around that some kid had a gun on the bus and parents would be calling them up freaking about it (Natu

Havoc accidentally took a toy gun to school Monday among all the other toy crap in his backpack. The backpack is a bottomless pit (or was until about 5pm Monday evening). I don’t know how he or anyone else finds a damn thing in there, but apparently some other kid was digging through his backpack on the bus ride home (why?) & found it & then the bus driver saw and that sort of thing can’t be ignored. He went to school Tuesday & the principal called me to tell me about how there has to be a disciplinary committee meeting & I’ll be getting a letter. At the very least he is suspended half a day today. We go to the meeting at 11am today to find out the full punishment. They understand he is a first grader & it was unintentional but policy must be followed. Probably he won’t be expelled but he could be suspended for a week. I’m waiting to see how it goes before I have any reaction. Because my gut reaction is humor and it’s no joking matter. This is serious. B

It’s Monday and I am so wishing it was another weekend day. DH went camping Saturday night and I never sleep well when he is gone. The boys were up at 6am as usual. They made me breakfast which was really sweet, but I didn’t actually get up until 7am, so that  was some soggy cereal. I should plan my weekly menu but once again I am just not feeling it. I know I want to make lasagna one night & steak and pirogues. Havoc wants tacos too. Probably I should make something with chicken one night but I am so tired of chicken. In baking news, Saturday I made the Pioneer Woman’s chocolate sheet cake. (I’m too tired to track down a link but it’ll pop right up if you google it). It was really good but apparently ‘sheet cake’ is a different size in her neck of the woods. Where I live it means 9x13 pan. Other places it means more like 12x15. So consequently l had to cook it twice as long. It was still delicious though. I made butter cream icing which I hadn’t had in years. The butter

For Star Wars Day (May 4th) we had blue milk with dinner   General Grievous tried to take over the train but the dinos were having none of it And the Jedi took to the high seas in search of separatist pirates. For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I had another encounter with my nemesis the scissors this week. I decided it was time to make a new & better fitting camera strap. I used to be a quilter. I had a rotary cutter, a large cutting mat, several large quilting rulers, all things to make the cutting of fabric as easy as possible. It’s been 5 years since I last made a blanket and 7 months since I cleaned the junk room.  I can find the mat & I can find spare parts to the cutter. But I cannot find the rotary cutter itself or any of the rulers. I have to use scissors to cut anything & that is always a recipe for disaster. But surely even I can manage two 12 inch cuts and 2 3 inch cuts right? Especially if I use a regular ruler to draw the line and then pin the fabric together. Then I sewed the two strips together and ironed on some fuseable fleece for padding Can I just say that the lighting in my craft room sucks? There is the bright light over the craft table that makes you cast shadows on what