My Cat Called Peanut

I think it's time that you guys met Peanut.

 Juuuuussstttt kidding. :) ha

This is Peanut! ^^^^

She is sweet, annoying, adorable, silly, relentless, cuddly, antisocial, sleepy, hyper, day sleeper, night owl, hair kneader, feet attacker, laser lover, balcony lurker, getting chubby, grey ball of fur.

But we love her! Scott tries to win her affection with food. I still think she’s upset for ditching her for 3 weeks during the wedding fiasco. (I ditched her with a friend but she would have froze in Utah!) She doesn’t meet me at the front door when I come home from work as often. Sad day…

By the way, from experience, do not try to walk your cat. It doesn’t work. [She] will most likely just lay there, not really knowing what the heck is going on. And you end up trying to drag or carry the kitty and everyone looks at you funny. Also, you probably shouldn’t take your cat out to join in on a lunch date. But seeing the cat still will most likely be amusing nonetheless. And you will probably have to save your cat from hiding under a bush.



Here are some more Peanut poses! Please enjoy J

P is for Painting!

I love the arts! Mostly creating it. Over the last year I have gotten into painting and I've been painting for a little over a year now. I still have a lotttt to learn.

Things have been super crazy though, after getting married and the holidays, but this past weekend I was finally able to make it back to Sundust Gallery! They moved locations from Mesa to Gilbert which is great for them! But they are further away from me...so it's hard to make it in especially since they close at 6. Anyway, I love places like this! They have a gallery and an open studio where you can come in and paint whenever the gallery is open. You purchas a canvas from them and then they provide the paint and other supplies. All you have to do it show up! And on top of that, the staff is great! I just wish I lived closer! 

Here is the painting I'm currently working on (I think it's on a 11x14) and the progression pictures I've taken in between sessions...And if you check back a little later, I'll have the finished product! Once I finish it that is...

 

You can also check out this sweet morph video of all the progression photos that my dad put together!! Super awesome! Click me!!

Peace & Love

Crayon Art

So while I was on pinterest the other day, I was looking through my lovely girlfriends pinboards. AND stealing all of her pins. (I'm not very good at exploring the world of Pinterest.) But anyway. I came across this blog! And I decided to be a little crafty! See here!

I don't really color too often anymore so I don't think it would really be that bad to destroy some of my crayons Besides, this looked like fun! My hubby and I went to walmart to get some canvas and then I also grabbed this cute little wooden frame. The canvases were 11x16? So glad I grabbed the wooden frame... It's much smaller. 

Monday night after we got the supplies, I found my crayons and took the paper off every shade of green I had in my box. Only 5 colors though. I couldn't find my little tee light candles so I just found a normal one. Bad idea. Tee lights work the best because you don't want to dip the crayon directly into the flame or else it will blacken the crayon and you won't get the pretty vibrant color! I was getting frustrated with the black crayon spots, so I put up my protects until I could find my other candles. Last night after my pottery class I was still feeling pretty crafty, so I whipped out my project! And my hubby found my tee light candles! 

Let me teeeeeell you. This is the most tedious crafty project ever!! And it takes forever!! And another negative that I found is that once you heat up the crayon to make a dot, if you hesitate, it dries. So fast too!! And I'm a bit of a perfectionist sometimes and I like my dots to be nice and smooth. A lot of the times the crayon dries too much and my dot is messy. An ugly dot. So after awhile I made my own solution. I got my long pointy nose lighter for candles and just held the crayon and lighter over my piece and let the crayon drip. So much faster!! However, you may not want to do this if you want to make a picture rather than randome colors everywhere. 

My final product! I didn't feel like covering the entire thing with crayon (though it would have been pretty sweet) but that takes a lot of effort..and if you do what I did, you may want to consider painting a base coat before you start melting so the spots that are wood would be a matching color to the crayons. It's up to you really. I think it looks pretty cool! And Scott wants it for his office! Funny thing though.. He's color blind to the color green. So he doesn't really know how awesome it looks! But oh well. I love it! 

(I'm not really sure how smart of an idea this would be to do with kids...so I would suggest you try it out first and then decided for yourself.)


Enjoy!

Pineapple Salsa

First of all, who doesn't like salsa, am I right? I mean like come on. There are a bazillion different kinds of combinations you could throw together to make a scrumptious salsa exactly to your liking! Sounds great, right?

Me, being from Tucson and all, I should love Mexican food, right? Wrong. I know, I know, it is pretty hard to believe. And all the places which I have lived have been full of Mexican food whether it's authentic, americanized or tex-mex. Don't get me wrong, I am trying to expand my food liking horizon! I also am a wee bit of a heath nut and a bit particular about...mmm… everything. (bless my husband's heart) But anyway...I don't like beans (at least the mushy ones), or too much cheese, or greasy grossness, or tomatoes. Those are the worst. I wont even touch them let alone cut them up and put it in a salsa.

Which brings me to pineapple salsa! A bazillion times better than tomato salsa! And the best thing about this is that it is both sweet AND spicy! So delicious. And colorful!




Here is what you will need:

• 2 Tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
• 1/2 small onion, peeled
• 1/2 small red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 Tablespoons (5 g) fresh chopped cilantro leaves
• 1/2 lime, peeled
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 jalapeño pepper
• 1/2 pineapple, peeled, cut into large pieces

I don't like cilantro, so I am not going to include that. It has such an odd
flavor that I'm not too keen of. I also added a red pepper along with the red bell pepper to give it some more flavor.

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients into the Vitamix container (or ninja or whatever you have) in the order listed and secure lid.
2. I have a vitamix, so I start off at the lowest variable.
3. Turn machine on and slowly increase speed to Variable 4.
4. Blend for 15-20 seconds, using the tamper to press the ingredients into the blades.

(Remove seeds and membrane of the jalapeño for a milder salsa. You may also substitute fresh mint for fresh cilantro.)

BTW. So I got a little excited and added the pineapple first when I should have did it last. Don't make this mistake! Really, all I think it does, is make it a little more juice since the pineapple gets blended a lot more, being on the bottom and all… Still tastes really good! Also, if you like it more spicy, find a bigger jalapeño pepper! :) 

Obviously, if you have a different machine, you may need to make adjustments to the Variable Speed, processing time, and/or ingredient quantities. My parent's really old blender thing they had when I was younger had a million buttons and I would always just press all of them, one at a time, until whatever I was making became the consistency I wanted.

Anyway... voilà! Get some chips, eat and enjoy!