We totally DIDN'T cheat!

This is sooooo gonna come off as us two being cheaters, but we totally DID NOT CHEAT! That being said, Andrea, over at Finding Fairytales won the giveaway! Here's the part that you're gonna think we cheated. If you go over to her site, you'll see that I won HER giveaway.

We both used http://www.random.org/ to select our winners. So if you need someone to blame, it's them please say you still love me!!!!

I have some other things to bitch talk about. That, unfortunately will have to wait till a little later. Our office is in the process of being audited (I've had to sit with the auditor and answer LOTS of questions: I know nothing! I swear!) , AND my desktop at work STILL has the nasty virus. Kill me now.

EZ Combs Giveaway!

It's Spring Fling at SITS y'all yes, that is my best Britney Spears impression. Anyway, The Dude and I were up late one night flipping through channels. We got sucked into an infomercial channel. On came the add for EZ Combs. Sweet! I have super thick, coarse hair. Finding clips and stuff to hold my hair is a challenge. These seemed like a great idea. The Dude suggested I run to the computer to order them straight away and I did. I think I was too excited because apparently I ordered 3 sets (Ooops!).

None of these pictures are of me you wouldn't believe how hard it is to take a picture of the back of your head by yourself!

Ok ok, so this is for 3 ez combs: one black, one brown, one crystalish whitish. You can do all kinds of hairstyles (even ponytails!). They work for thin or thick hair because twisting them not only gives it a cute look, but tightens up the hold. Click on the ez combs link to see videos.

Comment for entry (I'm not gonna ask you to follow me for extra entries or crap like that cuz I only want you to follow if you enjoy my blog!

**I will also send along the DVD with full instructions. Not that it takes a rocket scientist or anything, but ya never know. Enjoy the Spring Fling!

I love the smell of oranges in the morning!

The weekend in South Louisiana saw beautiful weather. It was the kind of weekend where you throw open all the windows and spend the day outside. Glorious I tell you.

Lil' Pickles played a little golf.

Twin A played Supergirl by catching a ride on Mommy's unmanicured feet.

Twin B lounged around on a blanket, watching the clouds roll by.
When I opened my kitchen window in the morning to let the breeze pass through, the overwhelming scent of orange blossoms took my breath away. I was used to smelling them in Southern California, but not so much around here. One of my neighbors has a tree or two, they must.
I glanced over at the enormous bag of California navel oranges on my counter and starting thinking. Mmmmm, honey orange pancakes sounded delightful!

I added the zest of one orange, replaced 1/4 Cup of the liquid with fresh squeezed orange juice, and approx. 1/2 Tablespoon of honey to our pancake mix.

Oh they tasted glorious and very SPRINGY. Is springy a word? It is now, note it in your dictionaries.

They smelled amazing while cooking too. I fell so much in love with the orange taste, I later whipped up a batch of my great grandmother's sugar cookies, with the addition of the zest of one orange and 1 tsp lemon extract. YUM!

No one ate just ONE cookie. It was more like three or four at a time. When I get home, I'll add my great grandmother's Lazy Day Sugar Cookie recipe. It is the best sugar cookie recipe I've ever tried (and I've tried A LOT!).

EDITED TO ADD RECIPE

Grandma Katcher's Lazy Day Sugar Cookies

1/2 Cup butter

1/2 Cup shortening

1/2 Cup granulated sugar

1/2 Cup powdered sugar (sift me please!)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/4 Cups flour (sift me too!)

Cream butter, shortening and sugars in large bowl. Add vanilla and egg, mix well. Sift together remaining ingredients, then slowly add to butter mixture. Roll balls of about 1 tsp. dough. Put a few Tablespoons of granulated sugar into a small bowl. Dip the bottom of a flat bottom glass into the sugar and flatten the cookies. Re-dip glass after flattening each cookie. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.

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Let's not forget that tomorrow is the SITS Spring Fling! I'll have a small giveaway to join in on the festivities, so remember to stop back by.

Oh oh!!! We had a crawfish boil yesterday. I have loads of pictures and will pop up a recipe for ya so y'all can try a boil yourself (you can boil any shellfish using this recipe. Works well with crabs and shrimp too).

Move Over iPhone!

If the F-bomb, or any cuss word, offends you, do not watch this video. If they don't, watch on cuz this is HILARIOUS. It's from The Onion. If you haven't heard of that, you need to Google it and school yourself. Happy Friday!
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work
I'm fairly certain most households in American have one, if not several, of these items.

The Silver Lining

Last weekend, I had to gleefully attended my sister in law's bridal shower. It was supposed to be a "floating" shower I know, I didn't know what the hell it meant either. According to my understanding of this type of shower, one was free to drop in, or "float" in I guess, at one's discretion, drop off the gift and float on out. I dragged went with The Dude's aunt (Fifi). We floated on in, about a half an hour after the shower was to begin. Mmm-kay. UNCOMFORTABLE. We walk in and realize we're horribly under dressed. We thought "church clothes" would suffice...apparently not. See, The Dude's sister and all of her friends have these delusions that they are akin to Carrie Bradshaw and the other gals from "Sex in the City." They dress in fancy, fashionable clothing, sport pearls, and ridiculously high heels. All of these girls are young and newly out of college. Their tiny apartments are decorated like they're the queens of Sheba. Some are still living on Mommy and Daddy's dollar. In fact, the shower was held at the Maid of Honor's Mom's house. Where was I going with this? Oh yes.

The only redeeming part of this event was the unbelievable strong Mimosas. Well, that and the super-fab pasta dish that was served. I poked around the food table and was truly unimpressed, until I spotted IT. I knew each of the bridesmaids had each brought a dish. A quick scan of the girls and I KNEW which one had brought the only good tasting dish. Amongst the waifish dolls stood one slightly plump girl. BINGO! I sweetly asked who had made the pasta dish and she shyly raised her hand. Ha! I knew it! 'Atta girl! Mmmmm, chicken pesto pasta dish, you were divine. I had two platefuls, washed down with, the tiniest, slice of fresh fruit Doberge cake (never let the skinny girl cut the cake slices...geez).

I knew I'd have to replicate it, and the flavors weren't that hard to figure out. Just to be sure, I asked the girl what was in it, and floated on outta there. It should be noted that no one else was doing any floating on out. Everyone just sat there, doing nothing...very odd.

Here it is folks:

The ingredients (not pictured is the pepper, which is simply to taste).

1lb Penne pasta, cooked and drained

1 Cup mayonnaise

1 Cup(ish) basil pesto *I was lucky enough to get that big jar of pesto from my friend! Thanks! P.S. I have your helping of the pasta dish in my fridge, so stop on by)

1Cup dried cranberries

1 Cup pecans (goody for you if you noticed I have walnuts in the pic. I was out of pecans)

3/4 minced celery

cooked chicken breast, chopped or shredded. Add as much or as little as you want.
In a good sized bowl, mix the mayo and pesto.

Add the cranberries, celery, nuts and chicken. Toss with pasta. Chill until serving.

A couple of tidbits of info. regarding this here post:

A.) I had to dig through this mess, sometimes called my purse,

to locate the thumb drive containing my memory card for the camera in order to shoot these pics. There was a lot of cursing involved.

2.) While I had no pecans with which to make this dish, I did have an unusually high stash of walnuts.

Go ahead, count 'em. Four, FOUR bags of walnuts! Why, I ask you, why?! I'm no big walnut fan, in fact, I don't even recognize the walnut bag on the far left. I have never seen that bag before. Weird. I must have little gnomes that stock my cupboards with walnuts in the night. Hey, at least it's better than the ones that refill mayonnaise jars (eeewww! Yeah, I TOTALLY just went there!).

Handbasket to Hell, party of one!

I try to steer clear of the whole idea that there is a "good" twin and a "bad twin." I used to chastise people who asked me which of my innocent darlings was the bad one. I'm starting to rethink my standpoint. Not that I would ever, ever admit this to anyone aside from you people and if you try to pin this on me I'll deny, deny, deny! , and I'll probably be sent straight to hell for thinking this, but seriously. After this morning's tirade, I seriously considered changing Twin B's character name on this blog to Rhoda.

Common people: Rhoda Penmark...the ORIGINAL bad seed! I totally own a copy of "The Bad Seed" and watch it a lot.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh. She's not really that bad. She's just the difficult chi....holy moses! It just occurred to me why she is that way! She's (technically speaking) the middle child! Ding! Ding! Ding! Bells and whistles!! Hmmm. Not that this makes dealing with her during her meltdowns ANY easier, whatevs.

Just this morning we were having the shoe struggle...yet again. Twin A and even Pickles (well he tried) put on their shoes and socks and were ready. Little Rhoda Twin B ignored me, trotted upstairs and refused to come down. The Dude finally carried her down where she still refused shoes. After loading everyone up I came back for her. I find her standing there with her arms crossed with that "I'm not going to do a single thing you say" look on her face. Don't lie, you know you know that face!

After hysterics THE WHOLE WAY (2 blocks) to the sitter I ask her what the deal was. "You didn't let me brush my teeth." SERIOUSLY?! She's won again, dammit.

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Our office is being audited next week. F-U-N! So in preparation, we I was getting all the necessary files ready. Fifi "tries to help" by pulling on some files above my head. Two problems here: I am taller than her so why is she doing this and she's pulling on the bottom folder which is under eleventy-million other folders. I look up just in time to see file folders crashing down. PAPER CUT TO THE NOSE! Who gets a paper cut to the nose? I do, that's who.

Ok, ok, so it doesn't look bad in this picture. Camera phone picture, what can I say. Maybe I'm just whining.

They Hate Me

The computer gods that is. I FINALLY got my work PC back up and running AND the Internet connection repaired. That being said, my Internet is working at about the speed of dial up.
Uh. Remember those days, pre-high speed Internet? How did we live?! I know, right?
Last night The Dude and I were watching the boob-tube (holla atcha Popscicle!), when a commercial came on advertising satellite Internet. I've heard tales of areas of the country that only have access to dial up to this day. Could that actually be true though? I thought it only tales told to frighten children and gamers. Apparently not. The commercial was specifically directed at people still using dial up.
Those poor people! Can you imagine waiting for your daily dose of YouTube videos to load? I mean my gosh! Can you imagine trying to surf through your favorite blogs at dial up speed? I shed a tear for those dial up folks. Poor souls. I had a nightmare about it, and this morning, my nightmare came true, sort of. All I know is that this crap better be fixed BEFORE the big SITS Spring Fling.
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Now, on to more important business. My best girl, whom you know as My Shasty (aka Sassy Pants Wifey) has gone and created something wonderful. She's always trying to find ways to help people out. She has started a new blog called Care Across the Cities and I am so honored that she has asked me to be a contributor. The main point here is to help people! We all read blogs where the author seems to be a bit down. Maybe they got some bad news, stress at work, something. We want to cheer them up! We want to create a network of people willing to send cards, love, prayers, good vibes, comment love...ya feelin' me? We'll see where this all leads, but perhaps one day it will be more.
There will also be little suggestions on how to do more for your fellow man/woman. This country (and others for you bloggers from far away) could use a little more love and encouragement.
Spread the love people. Pay it forward.