Le Sigh

It's the end of an era, Jessie is going back to school. yessss........ However, this means that I started to get the baking itch, I wanted to send her back with some cupcakes. Now, to back it up a little, Star and I were in Portland the other week and she took me to Powells to see The Book. The Book is the ultimate (in my world, that is) book of cupcake recipes, also appropriately called Cupcakes!. She'd gotten one a while before and now I had to get one so that we could bake the recipes together, even though she's two hours away. I'd already baked Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes (p. 64, Star) and something about their warm cinnamoniness plucked a few heart strings. Everyone loved them. Afterwards it was deemed that the Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes were not in fact cupcakes proper because they didn't have any frosting (a. This was said with a bit of an eye twinkle and b. I don't like frosting which made this recipe even appealing) so it was decreed by the less than silent masses that I make another batch of real cupcakes, complete with frosting. Thus the White Christmas Cupcakes were born (p. 128, also Star). I didn't use their frosting because I didn't have any of the ingredients. The Joy has plenty of sugar/butter/egg based frostings that are pretty easy. I think I blew the frosting anyway though because it came out on the liquid side of things. Ah well, I'm not going to be eating these, and they sure look purty.

Here are your cupcake pictures Star!

Old Time Religion

Jessie caught Monty and was doing the coma-bunny routine last night. I always think it looks like one of those religious awakenings where the man in the robes tries to exorcise something or calls upon the big kahuna to solve a problem (see the movie Benjamin Button to figure out what the heck I'm talking on about).

Merry Christmas Eve

The Schommers came over for dinner last night. We had a turkey-lurkey, an apple pie, some potatoes and bread and things. Very tasty.

Jessie wandered around, taking myspace-esque pictures. Heeerrreeee's Jessie!

And the dead turkey man. Sigh...

Jessie and I Decorated Those Sugar Cookies

Egads! A Moose! A Mice! A MOUSE!

Last night Jessie and I were watching TV. I was knitting and looking at something by Monty's cage when I see a little black thing run and sit by the couch. I thought "Now, that's weird... how can Monty's ear be moving there if he's in the cage..." and then it dawned on me "Jessie! There is a mouse. There is a mouse by your water glass. Oh no! HO Oh no!" Jessie made an appropriately loud screech and jumped up onto the back of the couch. The mouse disappeared and I went to get Dad. "Well.... we don't have any mouse traps so I guess we'll just have to wait until the snow melts to get some." That was lame so Jessie and I tore things up trying to find it and trap it in a little pencil holder. That didn't work. We went back to watching something, I fell asleep and then eventually wandered back to my room to do some real sleep, none of this curled up on a couch clutching the remote next to my face business. The second I get into my jammies and crawl into bed Jessie screams "Hannah! HE'S BACK! That mouse is right here! Oh god oh god EEEeeeee....!" I jump out and throw my door open. Jessie is huddled on the couch staring at the bookshelf where mister mouse is hiding. We look and look and look and find nothing. I know he's there somewhere. At this point it's 11:30 and I'm getting a little fuzzy and sleepy. I decide to call it a night a second time, walk over to my room look in and there he is, sitting next to my bed staring at me. "OH shit! he's in here!" He looks enormous and black and scary-fast. I lunge at him with my Tupperware container (Jessie and I raided all of the cupboards in the house for Tupperware to trap things) and miss. He scurries under the bed to a pile of pillows on the floor and hunkers down. With a bit of adrenaline helping I chase him into a corner. "Jessie! Get in here NOW. I. Have. Him. Trapped. Behind. The. Yarn." She gets in with a Tupperware in each hand and one in her armpit. We spent a good half-hour chasing him back and forth behind my desk. He kept disappearing and we had to figure out what nook he was hiding in THIS time. At one point he wedged himself under my bucket of yarn (that thing must have had 1/8 inch of clearance) and then flew at me when I pulled the drawer out. Finally, at midnight, I managed to trap him under my plastic box and we dumped him into a larger Tupperware with some hay in it and a lid. Mom and Dad were no help so we decided to go show them our prize... at midnight. That was popular. Jessie flicked on the lights in their bathroom and Mom groaned "Whaa... you brought the mouse here? No Hannah, it's not cute. You can't keep it. No more pets Hannah." And then she put her glasses on and after some serious squinting at a corner in the box, "Oohhh, he a pretty cute shape! Oh look at his little tail... and those beady eyes. He is pretty cute, wait, is that bedding you have in there? No Hannah, no more pets!" It was decided that we would decide what to do with it in the morning, until then he could stay in the Tupperware. After a bit of rustling around I figured out that mister mouse was really more appropriately name Miss Lola the mouse because of her lack of man-bits.

Miss Lola spent the night with me in my room. You've got to admit that after all of that fuss, she's pretty sweet.And here she is this morning, before being released into the woods down the road.

Poor mousy-mouse. I don't think she's going to do very well. But in the end anything is better than poison.

The trees looked so pretty on the way back to the house. Poor mousy-mouse.

It Snowed Again.

We decided to try and escape today. Dad and I went out at about 10 and started shoveling. And shoveling... and shoveling. I finished a bit from the garage to the front door only to turn around and see two fresh inches of snow covering up everything I'd just done. I cleared out part of the driveway before Dad got the tractor out. The tractor, unfortunately, had water in the bucket before the snow and now it had a block of concrete from somewhere, some rocks AND ice all piled up.After hacking at it for a while everything came out and some of the snow could be pushed around.

Enough to let us get some chains on the subaru and make it out to Sandy for more food. The crazy part is that when we went to get into the subaru we had to push almost two feet of snow off of everything and then up to two inches of ice off of all the important bits, like doors. Dad and I went to the store and after a crazy bit we got back in one piece.

(I found this wine at the store and I thought it was pretty funny. Funny enough to take a picture and then spend some time posting it. So there.)Sandy was a mess, there was about 8 inches of packed snow on the plowed roads and for a while we had to snow plow our way out of our road. Jessie spent some time sleeping, and playing tetris, and watching tv. Mom shoveled snow off of the back deck TWICE today (there was about a foot of snow on it the first time and about four or five the second time). Now, after spending a good chunk of the day shoveling things here and there I'm making some of this pretty bread and Jessie's making some sugar cookies. I've been baking and baking and baking some more!

The Evidence

Why are we still trapped in this house? This is why.

I think there were some cars under that snow. Anyway, last night we were eating dinner and trying to invent some things we could make with what food we have (we're down to two eggs and 1/4 gallon milk so I've been making this AMAZING vegan cookies and everyone's stayed happy... so far) when mom started trying to figure out when we last left the house. "Tuesday," I said, because that's the day I tried to go to Twelve Mile Market and it was closed. "Nooo... I think it was Wednesday, because that's the day I went to the store. I think. Maybe," Mom thought. We all thought about this for a while and then decided that it's been too long if you can't remember the last time you left.

It's been 6 days since I've left the house for sure. SIX DAYS. I've got plenty of yarn and fabric to mess about with but Jessie is going mad. After spending the last couple of days on the couch playing Tetris she surfaced upstairs lastnight at 8 and wanted to build a snow fort. Since she couldn't hang out with her friends in Gresham they wanted to try to do the exact same thing at the same time. That thing: build a snow fort. I'm always game for things like that so we got into our snow pants and dug a pit in the snow. Not so much a fort as it is an ice crater because when we tried to get to a good place to build it we had to punch our way through 6 inches of snow, down to a thick layer of ice and past it to another foot of snow with each step. It was a lot of effort, in the dark, in the snow, in 21 degrees. Plus the snow was all loose and powdery and no amount of hitting it could make it stick together. So, we have an ice crater in our yard.

Walkies

We all went for a walk this afternoon to see how the road looked. Turns out it's pretty icy/snowy. Just in our yard the snow is almost up to our knees in places.

Willow keeps darting through the deep snow (it's up to her chest) and then coming back all bleedy. She's fine, it just looks terrible. I think she's hitting some sticks at supersonic dog speed and getting a little banged up. It's not stopping her at all.

Snow Does Funny Things

It's snowing here... again. It all melted yesterday so I thought I was safe when I told Star and Ben I could come meet them downtown for some shoppin' today. WRONG. I woke up this morning and it was snowing and had been snowing for a while. "Awww... I'm still good!" I thought. DOUBLE wrong. I got in the shower and by the time I got out it had gone to full scale blizzard. Still thinking I could manage, I got all bundled up and headed out the front door. It wasn't until I listened to my tires spinning uselessly in the snow that I realized I was trapped. I tried to back out three different ways, Dad tried to back it out, and all we were left with was my car blocking the Subaru, the only useful car in snow. I called Star and Ben to tell them I couldn't come and then waited while Dad tried to rearrange my car so that it wasn't such a problem. While I waited, this happened:

Ohhhh Jessie, in your shorts, in the snow. Of course I'm going to throw snowballs at your naked legs. Duh! Sucka...

Even the tree is wearing more clothes than Jessie. Sheesh.

All snowed in!

After it stopped snowing I decided to clear off the driveway to see if that helped with the cars. Who would use a shovel to clear a driveway when you can make a perfectly AWESOME snowman? Mr. Snowman can watch you all of the time, he has eyes on both sides of his head. Creepy thing.
If you were of a mind, you could probably find more pictures of snow and housy things here, at Dad's blog.

Hallow-Weenies

I spent Halloween at Star, Ben, Jame and Jenny's house in Olympia this year! I missed out on the sweet costumes last year but I'm sooo on the bandwagon this time around.

Star and Ben in their matching shirts Ben's aunt sent him.

Ohhh it's too good!
Ben made some wicked hand-cicles for the punch. If you fill up two rubber gloves with water and stick them in the freezer then remove the rubber you're left with these crazy ice hands! That's crafty that goes way above and beyond my brain skills.Hands in motion.
Star dressed up as a 12 year-old girl complete with flashing plastic jewelry and hello kitty backpack.Ben was working class complete with grease from black cocoa coated almonds I brought from Trader Joes.

Star and Ben.

Brian was all of the Beatles and Matt was The Dude.

Julian was a mouse...

Complete with cheese!

Evan was... himself but with a can of Dragon Joose. Dragon Joose, by the way, makes me die a little inside.

Jessie, Jon and Freddie came late tricked out with every piece of fluorescent colored 80's wear they could scrounge.

And then Harmony was a Crusader we assume. She made herself a SWEET beard out of spirit gum and either her own hair or her boyfriends'.

JESSIE ALLISON!

Moustache Tattoos

Someone has read somebodies else's minds my dear!

COOKIES!

So, I've finally found a chocolate chip cookie recipe that rocks my socks consistently. This is the second batch I've sent with Jessie to school so I think I'll call them Dorm Cookies but their real name is just as good: Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. I got them from Milk Eggs Chocolate which is a blog by another Portlander which I think is pretty cool. Ok, for you Corbin, not technically in Portland, but really, it's the closest big city and I'm going to say I am for the sake of convenience.

These guys are a little flatter than the originals because I ran out of flour (I even tapped the jar out over the bowl and wound up with only 1 1/2 cups) so I threw in some quick oats instead and that worked, but the ratio of flour to butter still isn't as happy as it would have been if I'd had the actual amount of flour. Oh well, they're still really tasty. Especially with Trader Joe's Organic Chocolate Chips. They're so much better than the regular store kind.

Jessie Visits

Jessie came home sometime yesterday afternoon for a short visitation. This morning when we went out for breakfast she spied the new hat I made from that pattern I bought (haven't even put pictures up until now it's that new) and asked "Hey... can I try that on for a second?" It's been on her head ever since and she's taking it with her as an early Christmas present. I'll just have to make myself a new one now won't I?

And then she wanted to hold Monty for a while and he was incredibly good. Usually he'll let himself be cuddled for a couple of seconds and then he's outta there but he lay there for a good long while before deciding he was mussed up enough for the day.
Coma bunny!

He kept getting limper... and more limp... until finally he was softer than a wet noodle.

Western Oregon University (WOU)

Mom, Dad, Willow and I went to visit Jessie at WOU today. I'd never been to the campus (that I can remember) so that was neat. Jessie seems like she's doing well. She's got class, new friends and all sorts of new stories about college life.

Her room of roomness.
And of course no college (or dorm) is complete without some clever condom dispensation method. See... gloves.... GLOVES... get it? Hehe....

And apparently Monmouth is where you can only buy half-pies. If you want the whole thing you'll have to buy two and smoosh them together on your own time because Roth's isn't havin' none of your craziness 'round here. I tell you what. Nope. It's only half a pie for you and none of your sass about it! Young people... and their whole pies.

Jessie with her loot standing in front of her dorm while Willie takes a break in the grass.

This is where the genius happens, right here in this chair. Pretty sweet, isn't it?

Until next time Jessie!