huge family concern

I made breakfast burritos this morning. They were quite good, if I do say so myself. Tessa and I were eating happily, and I had set aside Ted's for when he got done getting ready. We recently discussed how he had become a little bit burnt out on cold cereal every morning, so I figured he'd be pretty excited to have something different.

He came downstairs and saw what I was eating. He hesitated, then said, "I'm fasting today..."

I paused mid-bite to wait for the reason, admiring his tenacity when eggy, meaty, cheesy goodness was right in front of him. In all seriousness he continued,

"...that Bristol Palin doesn't win Dancing with the Stars."

Do you think we're perhaps a bit too invested? Nah....

On the cooling rack: Apricot Window Cookies

I've been on a kick lately of borrowing cookbooks from the library. It's a win-win. They're free (if you return them on time, ahem), you get only the recipes you want without cluttering up your kitchen, you can preview it before committing to buy, and it gives you the chance of trying something you normally might not.

These came from Martha Stewart's Cookies cookbook. I tried SEVERAL recipes in that book, but I think Ted was getting tired of every single one of them containing chocolate. What can I say? It's not a real dessert unless it has chocolate.

So he took over the book and made these apricot windows because he likes fruity things.. heh.. They were perfectly made - crumbly shortbread-type crust paired with just the right amount of apricot preserves melted right on top and the meticulous piping job. (Scientists make the best bakers, I'm telling you) However, there was no chocolate, so I ended up enjoying them for breakfast with milk. mmmmm....

Dancing with the Stars finale.....TONIGHT!!

Are you an avid watcher this season? I've been. The drama keeps unfolding because

THAT HORRIBLE NON-DANCER PALIN KEEPS MAKING IT THROUGH, WEEK AFTER WEEK.

I've never been so bored watching someone dance before. She has no oomph, no spice, and she confessed in one of her interviews that she didn't even want to do it anymore. I think the American people need to take that into consideration and STOP FREAKIN' VOTING FOR HER. It's gotten out of hand. This is a dance competition, people. That means you vote for the best dancers. I say that, knowing that people who make for good entertainment are going to get through better than others, but Bristol is neither dancing, nor entertaining anyone with her bland facial expressions and forgotten routines. I'll admit she was never painful to watch, like a certain Michael Bolton I won't mention, but I feel for her partner who has to take her to clown classes just to get a smile out of her.

Gag.

If you have been voting for her, please stop. She's hurting my face.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming of cute children and baked goods.

Winner of Brownies

It's about time I posted a winner for the captionless picture, don't you think?

Maybe it's because the winner knew that's what his daddy does all the time.

Maybe it was the only caption I read while fully awake.

Maybe it's because it was put to the tune of a Primary song that appealed to my naughty-with-the-nice facade nature.

In any case, the winner is clauss house. Congrats! Hopefully you'll share them with your husband and only gain half the poundage! Yay!

To all who participated, thank you. I had a couple of doozy captions myself, one of which was "Dude, those aren't handwarmers", but so many others were possible that I thought it'd be fun to open it up to anyone else. We enjoyed it!

Giveaway! Bragging Rights and Brownies

I'm not one to do giveaways often, but I was trying to come up with a way to get as much input as possible. You know how sometimes you have pictures for which you can think of absolutely no captions? And then you have pictures that could feasibly have, like, 20? This is one of the latter.

So let's have it. Shoot me your best caption for the above (unstaged!) picture, include your email address if I don't have it already, and next Saturday, Nov 13 at 11:59pm (Eastern time), I'll announce the winner according to the one that makes Ted and me laugh the hardest. Here's the bonus: I'll send you a batch of homemade brownies (unless you live in Australia. Sorry).

On a different note, that's the first time I've noticed how long my nose is.

There's $50 I saved

It's no secret I love Dancing with the Stars. Seriously, it's the best show on TV. Everything about it works, including the fact that both the competition and results shows are live.

There have been some fabulous moments: Mark Ballas' love for Michael Jackson and dancing to his songs whenever possible, Apolo and Julianne's cha-cha to Salt N Pepa's "Push It", Shawn Johnson's freestyle dance, and basically every time Maksim bares his chest. Yum.

Even the results shows are great because they usually pull in cool acts and have the pros dance during the chorus of the song. Hello, pros dancing the paso doble when Def Leppard performed "Pour Some Sugar on Me"! A personal favorite for me was seeing Heart a couple weeks ago, too. If the music is just meh, I can usually count on the dancing being stinkin' awesome.

Tonight, the dancers couldn't redeem the mess that was Taylor Swift.

I get it - multi-platinum Grammy winner, talented songwriter, hot and smokin', blah blah blah. But the girl cannot stay on the same pitch if it's longer than a quarter note. I can't even remember who danced to her song because her voice was so bad. And it didn't look like a fluke - she wasn't sick, the mic was working just fine, her band did everything right.

Guess who won't ever buy a ticket to watch her live?