Coffee Catastrophes, Catnip Bananas, Curtains, and an Axe Murderer at the Window...

Good lord! Has it really been over a month since I last posted to my blog? Time really does fly, doesn't it? Very little has been going on around here recently. Time passes, days toddle by, and life goes on I suppose!

Lets see, in recent news, about a month ago, Matt came in to wake me up for the morning. He's almost always up earlier then I am, and generally makes a glorious and much needed pot of coffee then comes to fetch me. That morning however, I was greeted with the worst words in the world to a grumpy bear who's just awoken...

"No coffee today... The coffee pot is broken..."

In all honesty, our little Mr. Coffee was around 4-5 years old by now, a Christmas gift from my parents when Matt and I moved into our first apartment years ago. My family at least has always had horrible luck with coffee pots, and even though others have told me theirs have worked for years and years with no issue, I'm surprised our little coffee pot lived as long as it did.

So the next morning (Cause I need to be prepared to do stuff in the morning when there's no coffee!) off we went to fetch us a coffee pot from Walmart! We hurried straight back to the kitchen aisles and were met with great disappointment at the serious lack of selection they had. Sure there were at least twenty different varieties, but most of them were sold out, and at least half the ones left were just color variations of the same pots! What's worse is that we had a little 5 cup pot, and wanted to get another of the same size since I'd already stocked up on filters for it!

We debated our options, and settled on another 20 dollar Mr. Coffee, a 12 cupper. Went home, made coffee, problem solved!

Until two mornings later.

The water pump in the new coffee maker went out, less then a week after we bought it. Seriously? TWO coffee pots die on us in a weeks time? How does that even happen?

Fuming, I immediately went to the internet and googled the pot, only to discover that the thing had horrible reviews! Anything from the water pump breaking, to the heater sporadically coming on and shattering the pot, to the water line breaking and flinging boiling water all over the kitchen! In fact, pretty much all of the fairly inexpensive coffee makers have terrible reviews and are prone to breaking. A lot.

So we bought a Keurig.

DRINK ME.

We'd debated getting one of these before, when they were being hyped all to bits, but seeing as we already had a coffee pot, and these are rather expensive, we never did. I gotta say though, I LOVE the thing. The coffee is delicious, the packs of fancy coffee aren't all that expensive after all, we bought a little reusable cup for is so we can continue to have lame ol' Folgers in it too... And being a one cup brewing system is really, really nice for us! Matt often wants coffee before I'm, but I want fresh coffee once I've gotten up too; it's awkward to brew partial pots in a Mr. Coffee as you have to put in slightly more water then you need so it doesn't steam out and leave you with less coffee then you wanted. Now we can just go in, pop in a packet of coffee, stick the cup under it and in a few seconds have a steaming, fresh cup of coffee! Yum!

Matt even looked up how to make things like caramel macchiatos with it. For the cost of one of those from Starbucks, I can make dozens of them at home! Woo! Here's hoping for Pumpkin Spice coffee's in the fall- I'll be enjoying so much deliciousness I won't be able to sleep!

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A few months back, I finally invested in a weather radio. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a little radio device that monitors for weather alerts, like Severe Thunderstorm Watches, or Tornado Warnings, and sounds an alarm when it receives one in your area. Since Matt and I sleep with fan, and me with earplugs on top of that, we're definitely not going to hear a Tornado warning at night, and without TV we're not necessarily aware of storm watches either.

Every year, I never remember to buy one until the first big tornado outbreak, and then it's too late and everyone in the whole state is sold out! Kind of like trying to buy a jug of milk the day before a snow storm- it ain't gonna happen.

Well, not too long ago, Matt and I were enjoying a Saturday night playing games online with our friends. The weather alert had gone off a few times over the evening, warning of thunderstorm watches and then thunderstorm warnings. Neither of us thought anything of it; it wasn't thundering, no lightening that I could see out the window, nothing. 

Nothing that is until WHAM!...Something slammed into the window from outside.

Matt and I jerked around in our computer chairs, throwing off headsets and standing up in a rush. "What the hell was that?" Matt demanded. I moved towards the window wondering aloud "Did someone throw something at our window?" just when two more loud and violent somethings crashed into the window, and my brain jumped to the only conclusion it could come up with in a split second: Someone or something was trying to break through the window!

Surprise!!

"Someone's trying to break in!" I yelped, backing away from the window, just when- All. Hell. Broke. Loose. Hail, like I'd never experienced before (At least not in our apartment in the city) began PELTING the complex. I nearly tripped over Taco, who is normally calm during storms, as she vaulted out of her cat bed, dashed around the corner and shot under the bed to hide. I could hardly blame her as Matt and I both skittered out of the room and away from the windows as well.

I was terrified the hail was going to break our windows in, and it was hailing so loudly I didn't know if we'd even hear the glass break if it did! After two or three minutes, the hail calmed down, and then a few minutes later the rain stopped completely. As soon as the rain stopped, I grabbed a flashlight and my hoodie and ventured outside to check to see that the windows were intact on my car, which thankfully they were.

I hope that sudden and startling storm is not telling for how the rest of the tornado season is going to be!

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Beyond those two little stories, nothing much else has happened. I've been trying to see if there's some way at all to put up curtains on our other windows. The bedroom has a place for a tension rod and it worked out wonderfully!

See a few years back, we really went to a store in Stillwater that was going out of business called Linens and Things. We bought two packages of really nice, and super discounted curtains. Neither of them matched, one of the sets was longer then the other, and I have no idea why we bought them anyway. I'm sure I insisted, but it was stupid to buy them! The long, brown curtains look lovely in the bedroom. The short, grey ones sat in a drawer in the dresser until today.

See, our apartment is painted with this ghastly glossy white paint. I despise white walls anyway, but the paint is designed to resist scuffs hence the gloss. The glossiness unfortunately, makes it nearly impossible to stick anything to the walls with tape or glue. Matt and I lack the tools to hang up proper hardware to install curtain rods, nor are we keen to be putting any major hardware up on the walls!

So what to do? Nails and string of course!

It's not fantastic, but it works in a pinch! Hopefully this will keep the heat down in the computer room during the summer, as the curtains are quite thick. Plus, the cat won't be letting God and country look right into the room when she decides she must look out through the blinds at night. Speaking of the cat...

She loves the curtains.

She's spent all her time since I hung the curtains up in her new 'cat-tent-sauna' lounging in the sun. I think she really likes being able to 'hide' in the curtains and lay across the table while she looks out. The curtains are a win on all accounts!

And that's just about everything of interest here. We're fairly boring people!

~~Brunn~~

Spring Cleaning!

So I've been hearing all about my parents house recently. They've been all a bustle cleaning the house, and redoing/finishing a lot of the interior, especially now that they've gotten the foundation repaired. I had the pleasure of visiting the other day whilst I was in Stilly for an eye doctor appointment, and the house is lovely!

Unfortunately for me, the currently house-less, this has inspired a need to 'nest'. I want to make my home happy and comfy! Now that I'm grown up, I've had a sudden hankering for furniture that 'matches' and things that 'look nice'... It's very bizarre to suddenly go from not caring in the slightest about whether your furniture matched to being excited when you buy a new TV stand. Kind of like the sudden switch from wanting action figures and lego's for Christmas to being excited for socks and new pillows. The problem with renting is that there is very little in the way of alterations I can do to the place. I can't really paint, can't put up new trim, change the carpet, none of that. So I was a little depressed coming home, as there's just not a whole lot I can do to spiff this place up. 

Undaunted, I decided to do a bout of Spring Cleaning anyhow, especially because my parents brought down a lovely bookcase and dresser they were getting rid of. I gotta say, I'm pretty pleased with the results! First up was our small hall closet- I had previously been using it as a bit of a catch all for my extra kitchen bits, and all my cleaning supplies, plus the toolboxes. It was a pit, so I pulled all the cleaning stuff out of there and made it into a kitchen overflow closet solely.

Now my teapot, kettle, large serving platters, dutch oven, and whatnots can all be safe and sound (And out of the way!) in their own little space! But what did I do with all the cleaning supplies you ask? Two words: 'Shoe Pockets.'

I've seen this tons of times on the internet, using an over-the-door shoe storage thingy to keep all your cleaning bottles and things out of the way tucked behind the door.  I finally broke down and gave it a try, and it works so well that I bought a second set of 'shoe pockets' to keep all the extra shampoo bottles and other bathroom things in our Master Bath!

After that was the bedroom. With getting another chest of drawers in there, it really gave me some more options for storage, and an excellent excuse to go through all the stuff in the closet and better organize it all! One side of the closet has a box of my plushies, and another with all of our old video game systems and Ipod players in it, neatly stacked. And the other is....

Finally empty enough to put my laundry baskets in! No more storing them against the wall towards the foot of the bed! I cleaned out so much stuff from here. Please ignore the finger prints on my mirrors, I'm getting posters to put on the mirrors soon! Old pillows I had kept 'just in case'. Several plushies I just don't need anymore. Lots of old clothes that were either thrown out, or moved into the new dresser. I even found a trash bag from our last apartment in which I tossed some last minute odds and ends that didn't make it into boxes, including two old pairs of shoes, a CFL light bulb, a box of earplugs shoved down in one of the shoes, and half a roll of trash bags. For some reason I'd never emptied it out? Beyond me.

After the bedroom, I tackled the Office closet, which has been heaped full of stuff since we moved in. Unfortunately it's still heaped full of stuff, but in a more organized fashion. It's all things that we hardly ever use, like Matt's extra computer bits, or my newly added boxes of fabric, so it doesn't much matter that it's full.

Even better, I fixed the broken shelf in my bookcase that sits next to this closet, letting me reorganize the books a little! So nice to know that the shelf won't fall through at the back anymore!

After that I moved on into the living room, which by now had a huge pile of 'stuff to toss' in the middle of it. I'd already decided the new bookcase would go into the dining room, as there was simply no other place to put it. So in it went, and after a very frustrating battle with the shelves, I got it all set up. 

After scootching the clock over a bit, and hanging up a few puzzle underneath it, I filled the top couple shelves with my cookbook collection, our Dungeons and Dragons books, coloring books, and my puzzles, which freed up the plastic box the puzzles were in for use for some stuff in the office closet! It really looks nice and homey over there now, a little game space.

By this time, I had quite the heap of stuff in the middle of the living room floor. Amidst the pile was a cork/dry erase combo board that had been stuck in the closet since we moved in over a year ago now. While both a cork board and a dry erase board can be quite handy, I really didn't have any use for both of those combined into a great big board. I wish-washed over tossing it for a while, then decided to see if I could break it in half and salvage the two seperate bits- and I did! No, I literally broke it by setting it against the side of the couch and leaning against the top until it ripped in half. Probably not the safest way, but it was pretty flimsy.

I've wanted a dry erase board for inside my spice cabinet for ages now, to jot down quick notes while I'm in the middle of cooking, or to make note of when I use up a spice or need to buy more of somethings. The dry erase half of the monster board fit perfectly here and hangs up just fine with some double-sided tape! A thumbtack and some ribbon hold a marker for it handy and it worked like a charm!

The cork board however, presented problems. Being in a frame when it was part of the monster board, the edges weren't finished at all. I was worried it'd flake all apart if I just hung it up, and it frankly looked kind of ugly as a piece of unfinished cork. I decided I'd need to cover it with something to make it look nice to use it.

I found this little bit of fabric in Walmart's fabric department today, and thought it was super cute! A little mod-podge and a bristol board back to cover the fabric edges and it turned out quite nice! Especially since I had no idea what I was doing. I double-sided taped it up to one of the cabinets in my kitchen, where I tend to put recipe notes on sticky's up a lot. It adds a bit of fun color to our drab, white walled kitchen and is useful to boot!

Last, but not least of my spring cleaning bender, I finally got an over-the-door hanging rack for my ironing board and iron. I don't tend to use them a lot, and didn't really have much of a place to put them... The boards been hiding behind the office door, waiting to fall on you if you bump the door into it too hard, and the iron's been chilling wherever it finds a resting point. Nice to have them all together and out of the way! I love these over-the-door storage solutions. Great way to use up that little bit of space you can't do much else with!

I've still got more to do. I'm in the process of acquiring posters for the mirrored closet doors at the least, and I really want to get some more general art pieces to break up the white walls. Of course, there's still some minor things to tidy up as well. What I've done so far though... it's really made the place seem nicer. Not to mention ridding ourselves of some junk to boot! I still can't wait till we have a house of our own, but in the meantime, I think I can make this little apartment a home.

~~Brunn~~

Puzzling Puzzles and Storage Solutions...

One of the fun things about getting a home together is finding furniture. Or rather, dealing with your awkward mismatch of fun hand-me-down furniture! Trust me, I LOVE my hand-me-downs (Most especially because a lot of them are both very nice, and were very free!) but sometimes they make things like storage awkward. We work with what we have for the most part, and I'm constantly shifting things around the house, trying to get things set up the way I want. Here's a shot of our original dining room when we first moved in...

Ugh! That's not pretty! The table was a hand me down card table I got from my parents and two or three matching folding chairs. It shook horribly when you nudged it in the slightest, which made sit down meals a precarious thing! For Christmas that year my parents were kind enough to purchase us a proper dining room table...

Much better! When we ended up getting new desks for the computer room and a new TV stand, we managed to buy them (by accident, mind you!) in nearly the same color as the table, so we're starting to get somewhere! It's a color scheme!  

But here's the problem. There are several activities we do at the table. It's where we have our fancy meals, like for guests, or when we're eating something special. It's where we game at, things like board games and Magic: The Gathering.  And it's also where I do puzzles at when I'm of a mind too... And it neeeeds storage in there. This is what I managed today-

It's not pretty, but it works! For the last two weeks, the table has been covered in Magic cards, dice bags, and boxes, whilst the actual plastic storage bin we keep ALL the Magic stuff in has been sitting on the floor in the computer room. My puzzles had been shoved in the closet just to get them out of the way, but it made it annoying to fetch them out to use. Now at least, those boxes are in the corner here for easy access, right next to where we actually use these items at!

Matt and I both want to buy some sort of shelf unit to put against this wall for storage. But what to buy? A bookshelf? A cabinet? Should we keep the game type things here, or move the extra kitchen ware I have stored in the closets into a cabinet into the dining room and put the gaming stuff in the closets? Should we try and find something now, or just wait until we have a house first? Blargh!

Homemaking is hard!

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Anyway, I  had decided I wanted to gather my puzzle things in the dining room so I'd have less issues getting to them to use. Before I had to dig the big box out of the closet just to see if the puzzle I wanted was in there. If it wasn't I had to look through all the closets in the house until I came across the storage tubes and the puzzle boxes. It made it obnoxious to find the one I wanted to work, and with them out of sight..... Well, they were out of mind as well, hence the not having worked on a puzzle in a year at least.

This is "Jack and the Beanstalk" a 1000 piece puzzle by Master Pieces. This thing is a dream to work on- the cardboard used is very thick, the pieces fit together smoothly, and the printing is clear and crisp with bright colors. I love a well made puzzle! I had a bit of a snafu when I was unrolling it. I started it to far down the table, underestimating how long the roll was, and the back end of the fabric and the inflatable tube (which had half the edge pieces stuck to it) went flying off the table! Oops.

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In keeping with my working towards a better running home, after my trip to Half Price books a few weeks back, I decided it was time to reorganize the bookshelves! They were a jumbled mismatch of stuff books I'd half organized when we very first got moved in, and odds and ends that had ended up stuck on the bookshelf.

This is now my 'active reading/fantasy' bookshelf. All my favorite fantasy books are on here, which of course includes all the new books I just bought the other day. The bottom two shelves are a bit of a catch all. The last shelf slat is broken so you have to be careful about how you arrange things on it, and the lowest shelf is just too far down for me to want to put books on it until I have too.

And this shelf has become a bit of a catchall... Our D&D rule books, my R.A. Salvatore collection, manga and graphic novels, Matt's Stephen King books, over-sized and cook books. It's a bit of a jumble, but it looks way nicer now then it did before! I did have to move the little box full of cat nip toys and the 'cat fishing pole' to the other bookshelf though, as I came in the room one day to find Taco attempting to scale the shelves to get it...

You know, I think I'll just get a bookshelf in the dining room. Then I'll have en excuse to get more books to fill it!

~~Brunn~~

Hot Pads, Books, and a Lovely Weekend!

Howdy all! Happy Monday! :D

Anyhoo, before I get to my fantastic weekend, I wanna get this little tidbit out of the way as I keep forgetting to post about it and I'm rather pleased with myself over it! A couple weeks ago, whilst doing folding the kitchen towels and putting them away, I was struck with an idea- I've got to move these darn hot pads! See, in one of the drawers in the kitchen, I keep all my hot pads and towels. But all the hot pads were all heaped on top of the towels making it really obnoxious to get them out... And seeing as I have a white wall in the kitchen that looked kind of drab...

Not really the decorations I was hoping for... I have some 'fat chef' paintings I want to put up, but they're rather heavy and I'm hesitant to go nailing things up to this wall when I don't know if there's a stud or not, and being a galley kitchen, I worry I'd back into them and knock them off the wall! But it keeps the hot pads closer to hand, and I can get my towels out of the drawer easier! Yay!

Anyway, onto the FANTASTIC WEEKEND! 

A week or so ago I got an email from Half Price Books with a coupon for 20% off my whole purchase! Cha-ching! I had just been browsing a few 'top twenty fantasy books' lists online, so the coupon came at just the right time- I jotted down a couple books I wanted. This was just after starting the first Wheel of Time book "The Eye of the World", and seeing as I've been enjoying it (Despite my sordid past with the Wheel of Time series) I wanted to make sure I got the second in the series as well.

So my weekend plans consisted of 'go to Half Price Books'- at least until I glanced at my phone and saw that it was my Grandmother's birthday this last Saturday! Omg! Friday night I told Matt that I needed to go to my grandparents house and the bookstore on Saturday. He looked at me and with that forced smile only a spouse who loves you can give said "Sure Babe. I'd love to go to the bookstore and such with you!"

"The book store sounds great..."

Needless to say I felt sort of bad making him spend his Saturday off browsing a used book store with me, and then going to see my grandparents... So Saturday morning, after getting out of the shower I offered that maybe he'd like to stay at home and play video games instead, since I'd be spending so much time at the bookstore... He agreed that perhaps this would be best!

So off I went to the bookstore! I found several of the books I needed, and even two bookmarks as well. Did you know that bookmarks there are only .49 cents? I love to collect bookmarks, but the nice ones to buy are often three or four dollars a piece, and I hate spending that much. But two for a dollar? I think I may end up buying one or two next time I drop in too!

My Bookmark hoard...

Anyhoo, I got a lot of the books on my list, but a few that I was looking forward too were not in the store, most notably the second Wheel of Time book. (I actually wasn't surprised about the WoT book, as the last of the series was -just- released and the Sci-fi/Fantasy book worlds been going a bit crazy!) So with mild disappointment I headed on to Walmart to buy some flowers for my Grandmother's birthday!

I'd texted my mom earlier in the week asking if they would be able to make it down this weekend, and what she thought I should get my Grams for her birthday, but they weren't able to come down at all, and I was met only with a *shrug* for my troubles. I've always been rather horrible at finding presents for people- I never know what they want! After wracking my brain I came up with the brilliant idea that my Grandmother loves flowers! Ha-HAH! No one else will have thought to get her those!

I arrived at my grandparents with my prize, walked in the door and- 

Drat.

I'm sure you can tell which set of flowers were mine.... My parents, unable to come down, made up for it by sending that gorgeous arrangement! One uped! Curses! The flowers were both beautiful and my grandmother loved them. We went out to our family's favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner, and had a wonderful time together!

Matt and I spent the next morning and afternoon playing video games with friends. By late afternoon we were ready fora break, so I went and showered and we talked about what to do. "Well, they gave me back my coupon to Half Price Books... We could go up to the one in Edmond and see if they've got the second Wheel of Time book and the few others left on my list?" I said. Matt thought this over. "Sure, and we can stop by Best Buy and look around. Maybe get that remote to the PS3 we've been wanting and then something to eat!". And off we went!

As soon as we walked into Best Buy I made a beeline for the 3DS section. Even when I have no intention of getting anything, I like to see what they have available. And there it was- on sale for $19.99, half off!

ZOMG! This game came out last November, but we didn't really have the money for it when it released, and ever since then I've been passing it by in the store thinking "Hey, I really want this game! But.... eh, I don't wanna spend $40 on it right now." But for half off the brand new game! Heck yes! I snatched it off the shelf and ran around the corner to find Matt walking over with the $20 PS3 remote. We ended up picking up a 16GB flash drive for me as well as they were on sale for ten dollars. then headed up to the front, while Matt used his phone to spend some of our Bets Buy points to get us a coupon- which ended up being one for $50 off!

We get to the checkout counter and our total before tax comes out to be three cents less then $50, meaning we can't use the coupon at all. Drat. We regathered our stuff and headed back into the store. "Were there any other games you wanted?" Matt asked. "Not for the 3DS... Maybe they have a copy of Uncharted for the PS3? I've been wanting to try it." I replied. And they did- a two pack package of the first and second game for only $30. So we ended up spending about thirty two dollars total, but still, we got over $100 worth of merchandise for thirty bucks!

After that we headed to the other Half Price Bookstore, and happily, they had the second Wheel of Time and two of the other books I was looking for as well! So I managed to get 8 books and 2 bookmarks this weekend for only $28!

While we were there, I also traded the green bookmark for one without a messed up tassel. I didn't notice till I'd gotten back home on Saturday that the tassel on it was missing the tie off string... I'm not usually too very concerned with the tassels since they always fall apart eventually, but I didn't want to get one that was already on it's way to becoming a pile of useless strings!

Aren't they pretty? :D

After all the goodies we came away with (Or mostly -I- came away with, though Matt's been enjoying Uncharted) we finished off our wonderful weekend with dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Nothing like a juicy rare steak to make your evening tops!

So the weekend was nice, and I'm hoping to continue the trend this week! I'm loaded up on books, and 2 recently acquired video games and my art is going, somewhat slowly but surely so far! I'm going to try and hit it hard this week, get some things accomplished. I'll finish off this post with two photo's from my sketchbook- and you can see what else I've got posted at my deviant art page here: Brunn's DeviantART.

~~Brunn~~

Celebrating the Superb Owl!

As I'm sure some of you are aware, today there was a sporting event of minor consequence- of which I cared absolutely nothing about! Really, I don't like football in the slightest, and don't even get me started on college sports (big waste of resources and money that should be spent on education and the arts). About the only sporting events I'll watch willingly are basketball and soccer, preferably the English Premier League.

But why waste a good excuse to cook delicious things? So from now on, I will be celebrating the Superb Owl on Superbowl Sunday!

I got out my 'new' cookbook to pick some recipes. You see, a week or so ago, I went and got all my old Food Network magazine and set about dismantling them, saving just the recipes I wanted. Once I'd salvaged everything, I put them all in plastic sheets in the binder where I keep all the recipes I print off the internet. Not only does it give a lot of color to my book, but it puts the recipes someplace where I can browse them without all the magazine adds! Anyway, after a bit of browsing, I stumbled upon these two recipes to give try:

A delicious chili and some tasty bread! Chili is a staple of Superb Owl Sunday after all. And yesterday I tried to make some fresh bread using a package of already mixed ingredients. I followed the recipe on the box exactly, but I guess the yeast never activated and it sat in the bowl like a lump of wet flour and refused to rise. So when I came across the bread recipe and realized I had everything I needed but for a packet of yeast, I decided to give it a try!

Here's the links to the two recipes I cooked today, both of them fantastic!

Savannah Tailgater Chili

Almost Famous Rosemary Bread

Off to Walmart I went, and picked up all the ingredients I needed. I think I managed to get the last bag of Fritos in all of Oklahoma! When I got home, I immediately started preparing the dough for the bread- only to realize I don't actually have any Rosemary for the rosemary bread. I had checked for all the other spices before going to the store but forgot to look for Rosemary; and when I thought about it in the store decided "Oh, I always have rosemary on hand, I don't need to buy any!" Hah!

I substituted in Oregano instead, and went along with it. Roll with the punches, right? Here's a shot of the dough rising in the bowl, having already doubled in size:

After getting the bread going and waiting a while for the dough to start rising, I began work on the chili. It was pretty darn simple, and smelled fantastic once everything started cooking. I was really excited for this one, as the only chili's I'd previously made involved seasoning packets of some sort, and hardly any vegetables. This one had corn, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes!

Once I got everything for the chili combined, I went to check the bread recipe again. I always, always read the recipe through before starting, because it's best not to be surprised in the midst of preparing a dish. But I had somehow managed to miss that after the first TWO HOUR rising time, I had to let them rise for a second two hours! Drat!

We ate our chili frito pies while the bread dough, newly formed into four little balls, rose a second time. The chili was spectacular, and I highly recommend the recipe. The corn and bell peppers really make it pop, at least compared to the other mostly meat and bean chili's I've had in the past. Plus it was super simple to make. Yum!

A while later, the breads finally finished. I had to bake them two at a time since our oven is rather small, and I spent the second batch's baking time dancing around the kitchen with glee at how great they turned out! Look at them! My very first, completely made from scratch yeast breads!

They were super duper tasty! I was a little disappointed in myself for not having the rosemary as the flavor was a little off from using a different herb, but it was still fantastic. I can't wait to try these again with the proper herbs, and a more practiced hand! Maybe I'll end up with more evenly sized and rounded loaves? I'm still beyond excited that my first attempt at a yeast bread from scratch came out so well! As my friend told me earlier: Achievement Unlocked!

~~Brunn~~

Tuesday Tidbits...

A couple weeks ago I made my way down to Stillwater to visit with my parents. It was a twofold visit, both to enjoy a nice dinner with my parents for my Birthday that would be the next week, and also to meet their new pooky dog! Molly is a sweetheart, and also reminiscent of a crocodile in a border collie outfit! She took a few good nibbles out of both Matt and I, but I love her to pieces!

While we were down there, I had my dad get down a bunch of the boxes of my stuff that they'd stored away. A few years ago when Matt and I first moved into an apartment together, my parents dismantled my bedroom, and stored everything in cardboard boxes in the garage so they could  turn my old bedroom into a guest room (Full of BOOKS I might add!). Well, it was high time I went through them; even if I didn't take the stuff home with me, I could still condense the boxes, right?

And condense we did! We took about eight or ten boxes and turned it into 2-3. One of them wasn't even mine, but was an assortment of old kitchen dishes and doodads that fell to my parents last round of spring cleaning!

While we were in the garage, my dad is rooting around through things, and pulls out a mound of stackable paper organizers. You know the kind, they sit on your desk in you office, little shelves for all your papers to get sorted into? They always have them in the office section of stores, inexpensive and made of plastic.

Dad holds them out to me. "Take these too." I gave them a skeptical look; they'd been sitting in the garage a long time, and were covered in dust. "No thanks" I said "I don't know what we would do with them."

Dad offered them again. "Well, take them anyway. I'm just going to throw them out."

"But I don't know where we'd put them!" I argued.  Matt chimed in "We could find a use for them." I glowered at him. "We don't have papers to sort though!" I protested. After a round of 'find something to do with them's, they ended up getting tossed in our box of 'stuff to take home', and made the trip back to Oklahoma City with us.

After I got home and sorted all the stuff from the boxes out, the paper stackers sat on the table in the office for weeks, piled on top of the other junk that had accumulated there. Until a few days ago when I was struck by a brilliant idea!

That is one of the stackable paper sorters. Upside down. Under my monitor.

You see, I've always had a problem with space on my desk. The outriggers that hold up my computer monitor are rather large... they take up a lot of space! And the way our desks are designed, the hole for all the computer cables to go through is actually at the back of the desk top, right in the center. That means that I could only push my monitor back so far before it ran up against those cables. That meant a lot of limited space for me, especially when I happened to be eating at my computer desk, or trying to use my drawing tablet.

I was suddenly struck by the fact that if I flip one of those paper keeper thingies upside down, it's a shelf! And there are gaps along the edges of it that allow me to feed the cables through it. This gets the monitors struts up off of the cable hole, letting me push it back as far as it will go, tidies up the cables, and even give me a bit of shelf space to set my keyboard up onto when I need the space! I've never felt so brilliant! Matt even came home and did the same to his computer as well. So I suppose we did find a use for those darn things after all! Thanks dad!

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So this last Friday, my friend Lance and I planned for him to stop by so we could chat about his plans on perhaps attending OU. I was very excited to get to host, and while we chatted back and forth on IM, I proposed my plan.

"Lance... Do you want to have a tea party?". And the nearly immediate answer was "YES."

And tea partied we did! I laid out a spread of sharp cheddar and pepper jack cheeses, summer sausage and salami, fuji apple and watermelon slices, Tea and crackers. It was quite delicious, and we had a merry time chatting and munching! We finished off with some sliced lemon cake for desert. Fantastic!

Will definitely be doing that again! Although next time I need to get a hat. Can't go wrong with a good tea party hat.

~~Brunn~~

Reborn the Monster!

Friends of mine my age will get the name, but for those of you not in the 'know' it's from a TV show/Trading Card Game called Yu-Gi-Oh!. In it, there's a special card called 'Monster Reborn' that lets you re-summon a monster that has died to fight for you. And because the show is translated from Japanese they don't always get the syntax for things quite right.... Hence "Reborn the monster!!!". I tried to find a clip of it from the show on YouTube  but there are only videos of people complaining about how the Monster Reborn card is banned because it's over powered. Sad pandas.

Anyway, why the awkwardly phrased opening? Well, I'm basically casting Monster Reborn on this blog, and some other things in my life too! It's been too long since I posted here and there's a lot to discuss!

My last post was In October. We didn't do anything for Halloween at all really, so no news there. At some point after Halloween I think it was, I got en extremely excited call from my mom. The insurance company who covered my car at the time I had someone stop short in front of me (Read the post HERE!) a few months back had finally decided I was NOT at fault for the accident! So we got our $750 dollar deductible back. A very tidy sum indeed which we immediately put towards our credit cards.

After that came Thanksgiving; I look forward pretty much all year long to the end of the year for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I super love holidays and getting to spend them with family! This year though, I got a text from my parents two days before Thanksgiving, whom I was beyond excited to see as I hadn't seen them in months, that one of my uncles on my dad's side had passed away and they wouldn't be able to come to Thanksgiving. Super sad, although we did get to spend half of Thanksgiving with Matt's side of the family too which was loads of fun!

So with Thanksgiving having fallen through, but Christmas right around the corner, I excitedly put up the Christmas tree!

 Obligatory "Lit Christmas Tree with House Lights Off" shot.

The last photo is of the my first tree ornament, one that my mom made me last Christmas I believe. Isn't it gorgeous? The rest of my tree is decorated with little colored balls; I have a fondness for more traditional ornaments. Our friend Lance did get us some lovely new ornaments this year though, a big green pear for me, and a ball with a reindeer painted on it for Matt! I wish I'd thought to egt pictures before I'd put them up...

Anyway, about a week before Christmas, which for me was even more important as we'd been missing family members for Thanksgiving, I get another call from Mom. My grandmother had slipped in the shower and broken her hip. I was very upset, not only with worry over the health of my grandmother, but the not getting to enjoy Christmas with my family. (Family get togethers are even more important to me now as my grandparents are starting to get up there in age, and they won't live forever! If only we were immortal!)

Matt consoled me that we would at least get to see his side of the family for Christmas, which did cheer me up! Then it blizzarded Christmas day. -_-;  Not even kidding, we had a small blizzard, and although it didn't get too very bad here, we still couldn't risk driving anywhere and getting snowed/iced in. Not the greatest Christmas in the world!

So the holidays were a bit of a bust. I did get to spend a lot of time with my Hubby however, so that was great at least! New years was nothing special. I was off, but Matt had to work so he was on the clock right up until midnight. No kisseys for me! 

And now it's back to regular everyday updatey stuff. After the loss of our family dog last year, my parents have finally gotten a new puppy! They've named her Molly, and you can read all about her on my Mom's blog HERE! Matt and I went to see her last weekend, and she's the cutest little alligator in border collie's clothing! She's still a bit of a biter, but she'll get out of that soon enough!

My birthday was a couple days back on the 16th. I'm 25 now! O.o Doesn't feel any different. I had a birthday dinner of country style ribs with my parents when we were in Stilly to visit the new Molly-wog. Earlier this week, my mother-in-law brought me a check from them for my birthday (Thanks guys!) Then this last Friday I had some Beef Stew with my grandparents and Aunt; Stew is my favorite dinner, so Pawpaw often makes it for me! And then last night Matt and I finally had the chinese feast and anime I'd decided I wanted earlier in the week, and I bought myself a new 3DS game! Awkwardly spread out, but good birthday! It's hard to do family stuff when everyone lives in different towns!

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Now that the regular updates are done, it's time for the second part of my 'monster reborn'. I've been pretty unhappy at work for the last few months... And I'm still not sure this whole 'librarian thing' is what I want to do with my life. It's a big cost investment for the degree (It has to be an ALA accredited degree to get me a job, and the only school in Oklahoma that offers the accredited MLIS program is OU; not exactly cheap), especially when I'm not sure I'll even like it well enough in the long term. I don't just want a 'job' I drag myself too, I want a career, a life. Something I'll enjoy doing and be excited to do everyday. And I honestly can't be sure of the long term availability of well paying Library jobs. Technology is quickly changing the way that library systems work; While I LOVE research, what I wanted to do was work with books. On top of that, the areas here are saturated with MLIS  graduates, since OU is here. And in terms of pay amount versus cost of the degree, a MLIS doesn't pay off real well.

All in all, I'm really struggling with where I want to go with my life. So I'm going to be putting more focus on my art right now. I want to improve and maybe move into that. I'm a decent artist, and I know I'll be able to excel if I put dedication and effort into it. Maybe the dream of being an illustrator I gave up years and years ago and then substituted Theater with  can still come true?

As such I've been going through artworks and such. I have three pieces I've been working on, 2 linearts that need colors and one sketch I'm working on turning into a lineart. From there I'm going to be doing some life drawing, animal studies, anything I can to improve  And I gotta get into Photoshop, since it's the industry standard... Oh, previews!

Finished lineart that needs colors...

Small preview of a larger piece I'm working on doing the lines for from a sketch...

And another finished lineart!

And a little character sheet doodle I did a while back for fun! I realized I'd never posted this here!

I'll leave you guys with that then. Updates soon!

~~Brunn~~