The Ballad of a Subcultural Mother

Indoor Seeds

2012-02-01T16:54:00.001-07:00

I started my seeds two days ago. No sprout as of yet.
Day three:

Currently Reading

2012-02-01T16:28:00.001-07:00

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Still Reading...

2012-02-01T12:41:00.001-07:00

With a little help from Giovanni.
This may be my least favorite Harry Potter book. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Currently Reading

2012-01-29T18:29:00.001-07:00

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Currently Reading

2012-01-29T18:28:00.001-07:00

I want to start doing this for books I am reading. So for yesterday, and this morning, I was reading this:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Delta Library Book Sale

2012-01-29T18:26:00.001-07:00

I was so lucky finding all these great books! We got all seven hardcover Harry Potter books. Only 25 cents each. They are not in that great of condition, but the words are all there, and that is all that matters. I lost my copies somewhere at some point in time in my life, and I can't remember where. Now that the kids are older, I wanted to get them again, so I can eventually read the series to them. So glad I got them for such a great price!
And I got The Help in amazing condition and hardcover for 25 cents, and a bunch of pocket YA horror books that I used to love when I was a kid. I got the kids a ton of books, and three VHS movies.
I only spent $5 which was awesome!

Happy Birthday Little One

2012-01-10T18:13:00.001-07:00

Mariana is four years old today!

Mariana of the Day

2012-01-02T21:14:00.001-07:00

Fun fact number four:
Four Halloweens. First year she was a bumblebee. Second year, a dragon. Third, tinkerbell. And this year, a baterina. So I will leave you with two Halloween pictures.

My 2011 Reading Challenge

2012-01-01T12:04:00.001-07:00

I completed my challenge, by far, reading over 100k pages, and 356 books. My goal was 200 books, so I was happy with that. I upped the ante for 2012's challenge to 300 books, so hopefully I can stay on par with that.

Mariana of the Day

2012-01-01T11:46:00.001-07:00

Fun Fact Number Three:
Mariana has horrible teeth. Absolutely horrible. She has had to have quite a bit of dental work done of the years. She is going in on January 9th to get even more done. A couple of weeks ago we had to go to the dentist as an emergency situation as she was saying her tooth hurt. They ended up having to pull her tooth.
The thing is, she doesn't have a ton of cavities or anything, just super weak enamel. The dentist says that sometimes it just happens.
I pray that when her adult teeth come in she won't have this problem.

Mariana

2011-12-31T08:09:00.001-07:00

Fun fact number two: Mariana was potty trained during the day at 15 months, and completely by 16 months. She took to it so easily, and in the two and a half years since then, has probably only had a handful of accidents.

A Mariana a Day

2011-12-30T23:35:00.001-07:00

Until her birthday!
Here is all 10 lb 6 ozs of her on January 10th, 2008. She was born at 39 weeks 5 days via csection.

Also going to do a fun fact everyday as well.
Fun fact number one: Mariana started walking at eight months old! Eight months! Walking from place to place like she had somewhere to go!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T20:19:00.001-07:00

Santa

2011-12-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

Giovanni is not a very happy Santa.

I Did It!

2011-12-21T12:10:00.001-07:00

My goal has been met!

Babysitters

2011-12-19T10:20:00.001-07:00

Tonight will be our annual hire a babysitter night. Chris' work is having their Christmas party tonight. One of the ladies that he works with volunteered her oldest (19) year old daughter to babysit. It works out because she happens to be the one who babysat for us last year.
Besides the random grandparents watching the kids once every three or four months, this is kind of all we get.

Damn you autocorrect!

2011-12-17T09:19:00.001-07:00

Shakes fist*
Enjoy this little gem from Jen:

Getting close!

2011-12-17T09:17:00.001-07:00

Massimo

2011-12-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

I took Massimo to school this morning across the frozen wasteland. Seriously. It was that kind of wispy snow that blows around on the road.
Anyways I guess I haven't taken him in to school for a while because there was all kinds of new things hanging up in the hallway.
To explain, Massimo would like a geoboard for Christmas (which he is getting) so that is why his papers say he is dreaming of geoboards and wants elastics for Christmas haha.

Ricotta Cookies

2011-12-15T15:21:00.001-07:00

Preheat over to 350 degrees

1/2 pound butter
2 cups sugar

Cream butter and sugar

2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 lb ricotta cheese

Add eggs and vanilla to butter mixture, and continue to cream, then add ricotta.

1/2 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Sift together and add to butter mixture.

I usually wet my hands with warm water a little, and form the dough into small balls.
Bake for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

To make frosting, put a little powdered sugar in a bowl and mix it with a small amount of milk. Add food coloring for the desired color.
Dunk top of cooled cookie in sugar mixture, and put sprinkles on top. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-12-15T11:00:00.001-07:00

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 cup can pumpkin
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg

Cream these four ingredients together

2 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp milk

Mix ingredients together, and add to pumpkin mixture.

Add 1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips

Spoon onto cookie sheets and bake about ten minutes.

Technology is a beast sometimes

2011-12-15T10:53:00.001-07:00

Do you ever have those days where nothing seems to work right? And you keep trying? It just needs to.
A few days ago I started having problems with email retrieval on my iPhone, and so finally today I hunkered down to figure it out. A million hoops and an hour later=fixed! Yay!
Score one for me.
Put music from iTunes onto new iPhone? No problems. Woo!
Sure the internet was going slow, but it got done, and that is all that really matters.
Then, I may have pushed my luck.
Why not update my iPad to 5.0? I have been avoiding it for some time now.
Estimated time is three hours. Okay, that seems fine, it is a big update. One hour later? Crash. Internet connection is lost, need to restart later. Sigh. I guess I will do it another time.
And then I was looking through my email for an HTML code for this here blog, and suddenly can't find it, even though I know for a fact that I put it jn my save folder.

Anywho, that was my morning. Hopefully it gets better soon.

Some new pictures

2011-12-13T17:32:00.001-07:00

First iPhone post

2011-12-13T17:03:00.001-07:00

Just seeing if this works okay

Book goal

2011-12-09T10:01:00.001-07:00

So far this year, I have read 95,084 pages. I want to read 100,000 pages before the end of the year. That gives me about three weeks to read 5,000 pages.

-your lovely subcultured mother, Handcuff Betty.