i don't have a stinkin title

so this is something i definitely won't and don't miss!! this is something that wasn't even on my original list!  but thanks to facebook and it's on today this is what you posted i was reminded of this this morning: definitely not going to miss being the bitch... i mean i am a bitch, don't get me wrong. but having to be the bitch is something entirely different. in the college years i had what my friends referred to as "the voice". basically the voice says i'm pissed off and you better not fuck with me. as a manager you have to have a certain amount of the the voice. but you can't have too much voice bc employees are delicate little beings. it is such a double standard and i'm so glad i'm not a manager any more. you have to hold your staff accountable and coach in the moment. but if you say too much they complain to your manager. ahhhh !! i'm getting so pissed just thinking about it right now. so you hire someone to do a jo...

Today little man is 13  months old! Since I didn't post about his awesome cake on his bday I'll tell you all about it now! But first the recipe. Blueberry Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature 1¾ cup granulated sugar 4 large eggs, room temperature 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 cup buttermilk ½ teaspoon salt 1½ pints blueberries Blue Food Coloring 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature 1 8oz package cream cheese, room temperature 3 cups confectioner's sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 9" cake pans with butter or cooking spray.  In a bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In another bowl beat the butter until light and creamy. Slowly add the sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, fully incorporate each egg before adding the next. Ad...

GINGER PEAR BREAD -1 cup peeled, cored, and chopped pears -1/2 cup white sugar -1/2 teaspoon ground ginger  -1/4 teaspoon ground cloves  -1/3 cup vegetable oil  -1 teaspoon vanilla extract  -2 eggs, beaten  -1 cup all-purpose flour  -1 teaspoon baking soda  -1/4 teaspoon baking powder  -1/2 teaspoon salt  DIRECTIONS Toss chopped pears with sugar, ginger, and cloves in a large bowl.  Set aside and let the sugar dissolve in the pear juices. Preheat oven to 325. Grease an 8x4-inch loaf pan. Stir vegetable oil, vanilla extract, and eggs into the pears. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Add the flour mixture to the pear mixture and stir gently just to combine.  Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. OK so firs...

DISCLAIMER: this post is not about any particular retail company. it is what i have learned/ observed/ experienced at 14+ years at XX, 7 intermittent years throughout college and post graduation at XX, kinda remember as a seasonal one year in college at XX, and barely remember for about a month at XX (bc i thought i could do 2 jobs at the same time and at the time i couldn't) these are my opinions about the retail experience and are not 100% based on one company so when i gave my 2 week notice i started joking around about how i wasn't going to miss this or that. then when i decided that i was going to start the blog again a decided that i was going to have a feature (or several) about what i wasn't going to miss about retail. before i left i decided that the #1 thing i wasn't going to miss was the music. and while this was decided based  on the awesome  music i got to listen to on a daily basis  it is not solely based on that job. i have several issues with the musi...

Now that I'm a mom I've learned a few things.  Today's lessen... Rocking the baby to sleep isn't good for you.  Sometimes you really really want the baby to nap so you can do the dishes or eat or take a shower or poop.  But really when you rock the baby to sleep you make yourself tired and all you really want to do at that point is just take a nap yourself...

I know I know...I said a few years ago I was going to write more... then I didn't.   Well things have changed. I mean really really changed.  The mr and I had a baby! The little man is going to be 1 in a few days.  So that really changes life.  I was very lucky that I was able to take 6 months maternity leave from my job! Then when I went back to work mom and dad put their life on hold and came out from the east coast for 6 months.  I also got lucky that my first day back ( as a retail manager) was the day after the day after Christmas! I missed all of the holidays, so that was an extra bonus.  The next step was trying to find a day care that could work with my schedule, which is different every week and I find it out 2 weeks in advance. This proved to be extremely difficult.My work has a life assistance program and I called them several times to try to source day cares. They came back with a list of about 4 each time that didn't 100% meet our ...

Stumbling upon way to many people who feel the need to over share and make themselves feel super self important seems to be par for the course these days... personally I've pretty much stopped posting anything on the Facebook and I don't have instagram or twitter. I've realised that I don't need to post my fault random thoughts so that people can validate them by liking or reposting. That being said I do have this lovely blog which I barely remember to post on..although I have written numerous posts in my head when I can't sleep or I'm driving. Anyhoo.... that main point of this rant is that I now feel the need to share with you all some of the random shit I've found on line. Back story of today's installment.... The hubs and I are back east for a long over due visit to the families...we are currently trying to figure out where to go for breakfast since a diner we frequented back in the day burnt down a few years ago and wasn't rebuilt. Que me goin...

how oh how has it been almost 3 years since i've written anything??? i know i've composed many many many posts in my head and i guess i just never got around to actually typing and posting them... so much and so little has happened in the past few years.  the most important thing is the addition of mr. dickie barrett to our lives!! no i'm not talking about this dickie barret   i'm talking about this one!! look at the little face!! ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! and how can you not die when you see that little face!!! i have it on good authority the dickie aka puppers aka little richard is the cutest puppy in the world... my nephew said it... and you know kids don't lie! ( well until they get a little older) that is the biggest news i must share with the interwebs and any of you random peoples who might just boringly stumble onto my little rant and share space.... but i swear i'll start posting more!! i have home improvements and recipes to share!! but for now ...

so not only has it been a long time since i've written anything of substance, but its been an even longer time since i've posted a recipe. so last week i was on vacation bc i had a friend come to visit (hi colleen) so we were sitting around one morning kinda hungry. i had bought some blueberries be they were 10 for $10 so i kinda had to buy them...$1 for blueberries! plus blueberries are the #1 super food. there was about a 2 month period where every time i talked to my mom she would tell me that she was on a total health kick. and you want to eat good foods..and there were super foods which were super healthy for you. and could i guess what the #1 super food was?? blueberries !!! anti-oxidants and other healthy stuff... (hi mom) so anyway..sitting around..had blueberries. so i googled... originally i was just looking for a blueberry pancake recipe, but it felt like too much work to make pancakes. so i switched to muffins... every time i think about making muffins i googl...

at least i have a reason for not posting the past week.. i'm on vacation!! after colleen leaves i'm going to do some serious yard work so i'll post pic's for the garden... it's HUGE!!!!!! soon we'll have tomatoes for days!!!

oh so before i head out to the garden for some garden time, i owe anyone who may actually read this a little hello... hi! ok, i'm going now jk..... but seriously, the past few months have been a little busy for me. got a promotion at work!! which meant the training process and a whole new location, oh and lots more responsibility which of course means less time. and then there's the house... you saw we started the kitchen (i swear i'll put up after pics for the kitchen and maybe even someday the bathroom..its just a matter of remembering to take pictures after i've cleaned the house bc generally after i've finished cleaning taking pictures is not the first thing on my mind..) and you saw the no-longer-there front porch. we'll in between that i've been cleaning up the house and mess, mowing the lawn, and generally doing the yard work. i figure if the mister can build i can garden... i've got to have my dad's and grandfather's green thumb...

so much has been going on in the house since the mister brought home the kitchen cabinets! he decided to rewire the kitchen outlets while he could rip up the walls and discovered some electrical issues and random wires. so there are a few less outlets including where i used to plug my laptop in. he discovered the back of the house was completely termite damaged (not active but in the past) when he went to hang an upper kitchen cabinet. he found the stud but the screw wasn't catching anything. so he ripped up the siding and the back of the house is covered in plastic. then we got a letter from our home owner's insurance reminding us that we had to "fix" the roof on our front porch. upon further inspection by the mister it was decided to replace rather than fix and i came home from work to this: oh and i forgot to mention he took down the cypress trees in the front one day too. so the permit process and the rain delayed stuff and here we are a few months later.....

so i don't know if i mentioned it, but something my husband is a very well connected man... well not really but that sounds better than right place, right time! so he was able to get us some fancy smancy kitchen cabinets! i don't know if i ha mentioned that our current cabinets are kinda crappy? the one set of uppers is falling apart and i can't put more than kitchen towels in there..so essentially they are empty. wasted space so i don't want to say where he got them for fear of getting in trouble- not  its not illegal!! they didn't "fall off a truck" and if they did they probably would have fallen apart or at the very least gotten severely dinged up. anyways... we are not re- doing the kitchen....kinda i had already painted so the pyramid gold is staying. sadly we might loose the avocado...like i had sad the paint didn't come out right- its sticky and how long ago did we paint it??? so..wanna see the cabinets? this is in the dining room go...

2010 is going to be tough to top!! how do you beat buying a house? or even better..getting married? 2011 is going to have to be amazing! i hope you all have a happy and healthy 2011!!

remember the blue moon house ? its back ! and not blue at all!! bummer... i kinda wish they would have kept at least a little blue...

so i'm addicted to house porn. well before we ever started looking for a house i was watching house hunters and hgtv. i would also frequent assorted online real estate sites. when were where looking at houses i would go online and look to see if anything new had been listed multiple times a day. i would also look at the million dollar homes and even homes that were just out of our price range. on occasion i would be chatting with a friend from college on facebook (hi colleen) and i would send her the links to the million dollar homes. she told me i was sending her house porn. now i know i'm not the only one out there who is addicted to house porn. don't all speak up at once... so anyway, last week my husband and i were having a discussion about a set he had worked on. (he builds sets for tv shows) he was referencing something and so of course i googled it. sadly i could find no real pictures of the set although i did find tons of video. i just don't really have the p...

lately i keep hearing baby got back on the radio a lot and not even on the the old school rap station (which fyi i LOVE except they play opp too much) so late night i'm driving home from work and there's nothing better on the radio so i have to leave baby go back on... driving in complete silence until at the top of my lungs MY ANACONDA DON'T WANT NONE UNLESS YOU GOT BUNS HUN then i looked around luckily i was in the car alone only car on the road no one was witness thank gawd yet i feel the need to share that's it... but you know you've done the same thing don't lie

so i have a friend from college, let's call him bob. he's a writer now. (he is also magic, so let's call him magic bob)  he recently sent me a link to a article he had just published (although he mostly writes fiction). its about national novel writing month. it got me inspired to try to write a blog update everyday!! ok, everyday is not really realistic bc i'm kinda boring so once a week. yeah, i can do that!! CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! then i did nothing. i suck. so here i can trying to make up for it now and even sharing the link to magic bob's article! you should check it out. and maybe even try to write a little something everyday or at least once a week! you still have over half a month yet. as a matter of fact, so do it. now i need to take my own advice. and mentally writing s blog update does not count unless it is typed and posted for all to see! and actually i should have some recipes coming up to share, as we are hosting our thanksgiving in out new house!!...

this time last year i was sitting numb and tired in baba and dedo's living room. i had just spent the night flying in from la and with 2 delayed flights i was tired to begin with...and baba had just passed away. i can't believe its been a year already. its so weird to think of where i was at this point last year and where i am now. i'm now married and have a house with my awesome husband. last year we were enagaged (for a mere 2 years..) but hadn't starting planning anything wedding-wise, and we had been house hunting for about 5 months with a few submitted but rejected offers. i'm now sitting in our house that we've had for only 5 months! a lot can happen in a year, and it did. i just wish that baba had been around to be at my wedding, although i'm sure her and mom-mom were together watching over the day. that's the only way to explain the perfect weather and how everything managed to some together even when it looked like traffic might ruin the day.....

we did it!! got married yesterday... blogging to resume in a bit now that this wedding insanity is over...