So we decided to make our own vanilla. If Ethyl can make vanillin, so can we! And we’ll save tons of money!!

#1 – Buy vodka. As it turns out, newly-voted-member of the mission committee at church Queen B. hunkers down next to the floorboards of the truck, while Honey purchases two fifths of their best vodka. Current savings: -$34

#2 – Buy vanilla beans. Go to Good Food Store and purchase $28 of organic vanilla beans from Madagascar, along with various all-natural supplements to assist with weight-loss, and glass bottles (no doubt organic, because they’re in the Good Food Store) to put the vanilla in. Followed by lunch special of tofu egg salad made with vegan-aise, organic hokey-pokey, dried apricots from the bulk section, and a bag of raw milk cheese curds that were eaten while shopping. Current savings: -$136

#3 – drive to Queen B’s house because she has the tools – funnels, kitchen shears, and homemade brownies – in Honey’s 13 miles-to-the-gallon truck. Stop for gas on the way. Current savings: -$170

#4 – Sample the vodka for freshness. This involves closing all the blinds so that any other members of the church mission committee don’t witness it.

The church mission committee

#5 – Bottle the vodka with 4 vanilla beans in each jar until we run out of beans. What do we do with the extra vodka?

#6 – Sample a little more vodka, to celebrate our frugality and good sense to make our own vanilla. Toast the impending ruin of the propylene glycol farmers. We could probably sell our vanilla on Etsy. Toast our future success as entrepreneurs.

#7 – After some toasts, Queen B. admits that she was known for her vodka fruit shooters in college, and would like to pass down the traditional recipe for future generations.

#8 – Out comes the blender, and the perfecting of the recipe ensues. Oh Honey we really shouldn’t let this vodka go to waste, besides, we need to drink all the evidence before your father comes home. 

#9 – First try at fruit shooters. This is good stuff, but we need more pineapple juice.

#10 – Second try at fruit shooters. This is seriously yum, next batch needs more orange juice

#11 – Third try at fruit shooters. OMG this stuff is frickin’ amazing, add more vodka!

#12 – After six tries, we have the recipe just the way Queen B. thinks she remembers it.

#13 – Dad (Left Brain) calls on his way home from work, Queen B. gets the giggles and hands the phone to Honey who tells him to pick up Chinese because we’re too drunk to get anywhere near the stove to cook. Current savings: -$212

Bonus Feature: Queen B’s Perfected Fruit Shooter beverage, circa 1977.
Quantities are a little fuzzy, but we’re sure this is very close:

• Half a can of frozen orange juice consentrate (although orange-mango or Orange-pineapple can be substituted)
• 1 fifth of vodka
• Coconut extract
• 1 can of pineapple chunks in juice
• Ice cubes
• Lots of little plastic swords
• Maraschino cherries (optional)

Pour your preferred quantities of OJ, vodka, and pineapple chunks in juice into the blender. Add a couple drops of coconut extract and ice, and blend until frothy. Stab pineapple chunks and cherries with plastic swords and add to the drink – if they land on the floor just throw them in anyway, the vodka will kill all the germs. Drink with a straw for additional effect (sucking all the vodka off the bottom).

Note – Change of business plan from Queen B. and Honey’s Etsy store – scratch selling vanilla extract, we’re going to sell frozen fruit shooter kits. This stuff is awesome!

PS – We were going to take a picture of what we did, Pinterest-style, but Queen B. wouldn’t get off the floor – she had her face plastered to the sliding glass door that had snow on the other side, trying to get rid of the gin blossoms before we took a picture, where she fell asleep.

Its a very high-census ICU that has some majorly sick patients (hem/onc) which should be incredibly challenging. I’ve never worked intensive care – I’ve worked trauma surgery and on a step-down unit, but ICU is a whole new game for me. I’ve always said that my best days as a nurse could be described as hair-raising, but now that I think about it, I was young in those days and I drank a lot…lol

Passing the time waiting for a trauma case!

But anyway – I bought navy blue scrubs in size Tent and more of my favorite Smartwool socks, dug my white Birkenstocks out of the closet – and tomorrow is my first day! Cue the nervous diarrhea, and I’m crossing #19 off the list!

Marmot and Max on Max's memory foam dog bed!

I had heard a rumor that there was someone in town who did canine massage, so I Googled it and found her, and she came out to the house a week later. She spent over an hour with him and the next day, he obviously felt fabulous because he was running in the yard again! We’re thinking that with how great he seemed to feel afterwards, we might do regular visits with her!

We realized this year that between the two of us, we’ve been on every diet known to man. So as a public service, we are going to share our vast knowledge in order to help you decide which diet to do for 2012.

Atkins

HB: Well that is the diet of cheese, and I love cheese.

QB: Except that cheese binds you up, and you only lose weight when you poop.

HB: Yeah, and its a doozy when you do. Like make sure you’re at home, its going to be a three-flush incident.

QB: Oh no, you can’t poop at a friend’s house when you’re on Atkins. If you’re going to clog a toilet, you want to do that at home. In fact you should just carry the plunger with you every time you go to the bathroom, just to be safe.

HB: But on the plus side, its all-you-can-eat bacon.

QB: But after a couple tries on Atkins, you can burn out on bacon. Heed my warning, because I’m off bacon until at least 2014.

HB: And don’t forget the carb withdrawals, I wanted bread so bad that I would have eaten cardboard if it was dipped in sugar.

QB: But remember the sugar-free gum? I ate three packs of it in a day and had a bowel malfunction.

Weight Watchers

QB: Oh yes, this is my personal favorite.

HB: Until you go to the meeting, and someone gets a lifetime award for losing 12lbs.

QB: Anybody can lose 12lbs. I had a 12lb bowel movement on Atkins once.

HB: Well I’m still paying the monthly fee that I signed up for last year if you want to go again this year.

QB: Why do you have to pay even if you don’t lose weight? There should be a money-back guarantee. If you gain weight, they give you the judge-y face.

HB: Oh yeah, that time you gained 8lbs in a week. Judgmental bitches.

QB: It was fruit! They did NOT say that fruit in syrup is not actually fruit. I had 14 cans of peaches in heavy syrup, and drank the syrup. I was being healthy!

HB: Well I can’t afford to go anymore unless they start giving credit for buying crap. I have the measuring cups, scales, cookbooks, granola bars the size of postage stamps, water jugs. I have an entire Weight Watchers room in the basement.

Grapefruit and Cabbage Diet

HB: Did you know if you eat too much grapefruit, that the acid will burn your bum hole when you poop?

QB: That’s if you poop. When I tried it the gas got so bad from the cabbage, I was afraid to bend over and risk shooting grapefruit seeds out my ass like a machine gun.

HB: And the canker sores from the acid, its no joke. I had canker face.

QB: I didn’t want to say it then Honey, but you looked like a walking herpes outbreak.

Nutrisystem

HB: I looked at the food online once, and have been psycho called by their customer service department for a year and a half.

QB: That food isn’t even real. I had one of their ho-ho’s, which I think was actually plastic.

HB: Oh Mother, that’s because you were binge-eating next weeks food in the middle of the night and ate the ho-ho with the wrapper still on it.

QB: Is that what that was?

Alli

QB: I can’t afford Alli, unless we’re going to cover all the furniture with plastic. Last time you did Alli, I had to buy a new office chair.

HB: Ohhhhh, the office chair. Well my thinking was, if taking one Alli pill was good, taking two is better right? And I had gas….. But it wasn’t gas.

QB: Yeah think again. You ruined my office chair! You were popping Alli like candy, ripped one, and next thing you know we were dropping the office chair off in a midnight Goodwill stealth donation.

HB: The best part about Alli is going off of it, you can once again fart confidently.

HCG Diet

HB: The only good thing about that diet is the loading days where you eat yourself sick, on purpose.

QB: Five hundred calories a day is insanity! I can pick that many calories out of my teeth after a meal.

HB: That was the diet that you called me crying from the couch because you couldn’t eat anything and all the joy had been sucked out of your life.

QB: Speaking of sucking, we should do liposuction.

HB: Remember that liposuction cream that I had an allergic reaction to?

QB: That was Preparation H.

So this years decision is……..drumroll please……..we’re going all-organic. Stay tuned.

I find all my crockpot recipes on Pinterest, which is second only to Farmville in best ways to procrastinate on homework. I have an entire board dedicated to bacon, and can quite honestly say with all the cooking I have done lately thanks to Pinterest inspiration, I am a domestic goddess.

Speaking of domestic goddess, I must admit that I may have set the bar quite low in that category. When I made crockpot chicken and dumplings, Marmot said it was the best meal he’d ever had. Mildly embarrassing that the hardest part of the best meal that Marmot ever had was opening the can of refrigerator biscuits. Mom, are you proud??

Best Crockpot Recipe of the Week AND Marmot’s Best Meal Ever – Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings

Put 4 chicken breasts in the bottom of the crockpot, and add 1 diced onion, 2 cans of cream of chicken soup (no water) and 1 can of chicken broth. Your choice of spices- I put thyme, a bay leaf, a clove of garlic, salt and pepper. Cook for 6-7 hours on low. Shred the chicken with a fork. Open 2 cans of refrigerator biscuit, cut into dumpling size pieces. Cover and continue to cook on low until dumplings are cooked, about 45 minutes. Voila!

In other (unrelated) news, the TV is acting up again.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Fast Forward Four Months…

Week After Thanksgiving: Oh shit, I forgot to order the Christmas cards! I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.

First Week of December: Oh shit, I forgot to order the Christmas cards! I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.

Second Week of December: Oh shit, I forgot to order the Christmas cards! I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.

December 16th: Stand outside and freeze ass off with whining husband (who just loves living in the godforsaken Arctic tundra) while sister Apple tries to take a picture in which Marmot doesn’t look pissed and I look 40lbs thinner. Upload pictures in horror.

December 17th: Take the most pitiful picture (ever) of Queen B. and I standing by the garage, although mercifully the picture does not show her slippers. Its so f-ing cold that our scarves could pass for burqas. Blog Christmas card fail.

December 18th: Talk to blog design goddess and find out she’s booked out through January. Blog Christmas makeover fail.

December 19th: Buy $500 of pine cone stamps at the Post Office to ensure that you don’t have to fight that mob again until December 2015. Call Mom to brag, she informs me that the price stamps is going up in four weeks.

December 20th: Go to the site where we got cards last year. $102 for Christmas cards, thats highway robbery! Google cheap Christmas cards, get distracted by site with cheap calendars, then go upstairs to find 2012 calendar, decide to take a shower, and then get into bed and read. Laptop left on all night, sitting on coffee table.

December 21st: Get online to order the Christmas cards. If I overnight them, I can get them out by Christmas Eve right?

December 22nd:  Fuck it, they’re going to be New Year’s cards. I’ll order them first thing on Monday.