Pizza Party For 2 - Baltimore, MD. - March 2012

Four years ago, In my second post, Pizza Party For One, I mentioned that my favorite delivery pizza of all time is Domino's thin crust with pepperoni, mushrooms, and black olives, To this day it is my favorite and I could and on some occasions I have actually eaten an entire one by myself.

 Tuesday at about 11am I got a text from one of my best friends on Earth, Sarah, who lives just over 1,000 miles away (and according to Google Maps 18 hours and 1 min) away from me. The text read "Ordered you lunch. Should be there by noon."  I was confused and excited!

Just before noon there was a knock on our door. I opened the door to reveal a cheerful pizza delivery girl with a piping hot Thin crust, pepperoni, mushroom, and black olive pizza and an order of cheese bread! What a surprise and what a treat!

Turns out this is the Monkey's favorite delivery pizza as well.

(Just like her mama, sneaking toppings when she thinks no one's looking.)

Thank you Sarah for loving on us from so far away. The only thing that would have made it better is if you'd been here to share it with us!

Till next time,

Bon Voyage!

Feeling the Puj - Baltimore, MD - May 2010

So here we are, big city and not a whole ton of space to store the entourage of baby "stuff" that is somehow now a necessity when our mothers and grandmothers did just fine with out.

One of the things that drives me the most crazy is the baby tub; a necessity, but giant, plastic, cumbersome, and for the most part difficult to store between uses and after baby grows out of it. For the last couple of weeks I'd been on the hunt for something a little more "low profile" so that once Baby Sticks is ready for the big tub, we don't have this crazy giant plastic thing hanging out somewhere waiting for baby #2.

I stumbled upon this last week,

...And it arrived today!

It's the pujTub by puj (pronounced: pudge).


Ben and Katie are a husband and wife design team that met in college, married, worked for competing design firms and eventually began designing products "to make your life easier". Everything puj makes has come from their own experiences as parents and designers. Their website is http://www.pujbaby.com/.

I already LOVE this tub! Not only does it look great, meaning it's not in neon or electric primary colors, it soft, safe, the material is antibacterial/antimicrobial, it folds flat, yes FLAT to store, and about the easiest baby gear I've learned to operate thus far. And on top of all that, it's affordable, which can't be said for a lot of the products out there for baby care!

I can't wait to rub-a-dub-dub our little one in the tub.

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!

All Aboard!!! - February 2009

Note to Reader. As I’ve said a hundred times before, I really don’t feel like I am a crafty person, but once again I’ve boarded the crafting short bus and produced something far too cute not to talk about.

In an effort to save money, since we have a million friends getting married and having babies this spring and summer, I decided that I would try to make at least the baby gifts. So I started searching the blogesphere for crafts and I didn’t have to go far. Back in August, one of the blogs I follow, SabbeSpot did a tutorial on an Easy Baby Quilt and I thought to myself, “Self, you could do this!”

So after spending 4 hours with two of my BFFs, at the brand new Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts, picking out my fabric, then chickening out and putting it all back, and then forcing the Hub to go out there again a week and a half later to get what I’d chickened out on and put back, I had all the tools necessary to finish this project.

Additional Note to Reader: I need to say that although I got the idea for the project from Mrs. Sabbe Chic I did take a few creative liberties to put my own spin on it.

I used the following
1 yard x 42” Printed Cotton Fabric (Large print old fashened trains)
1 yard x 42” fleece (Red Tie Die Fleece)
NOTE: Prewash and iron all of your fabric. (This prevents it from doing funky stuff when you wash the assembled blanket for the first time.)
1 yard x 42” quilt batting
2 packages of COTTON Double Folded Bias Tape
1 spool of COTTON thread (color should coordinate with the tape)
1 package of 6 thread string.
1 can of spray adhesive

Step 1: Sandwich the batting between your fleece and printed fabric and pin. (I used a spray adhesive that really helped keep things together till I could get it all pinned)

Step 2: Sew around the outside of the fabric joining the top print and the bottom fleece together.

Step 3: Take the double folded bias tape and pin it around the edges that you just finished sewing.

Corners and Junctions
The corners were a little tricky. I folded and pinned them instead of cutting and sewing them back together. Either way works just fine. Since my blanket was a little bigger, I also had to join two packs of Bias tape together. HINT: A trick I learned half way through was that it was a lot easier for the machine to go over the corners and junctions if I pinned it going the same direction I was sewing.
Step 4: When you have everything pinned, begin attaching the bias tape. Try to sew as close to the edge as you are able, maybe a quarter of an inch) Make sure that you are covering the stitching below on the top and underside of the blanket.
The final step is to knot the blanket.
Step 5: I first cut a piece of the 6 thread string that I felt was long enough to do all the knots and used a needle with a large enough eye to fit the thread. HINT: Make your knots by making one stitch from top to bottom and then back to the top. Tie a square knot and clip the remaining string to leave a quarter of an inch or less of length.
NOTE: Your batting will indicate how far apart the knots need to be. Mine were every 5 inches, so I alternated spacing so that every other row lined up and that alternating rows were in the middle.

That’s all there is to it! It literally took about 5 hours start to finish, but it must be said that I am a novice sewer and wrestled with setting up my machine for 1 of those 5 hours. I hope the mommy, daddy, and baby like it.

Giving Credit Where it’s Due:
I have two people to thank for the completion of this project.

One is the rockin’ sales assistant at the Jo-Ann Store who prevented me from buying the wrong thread, the wrong binding, the wrong batting, the wrong material to do my ties, and pretty much everything except the fabric that I had to swap out because I’d gotten it all wrong.

Second is my friend Sarah, without whom I would have never gotten past threading the bobbin wrong. To you both, Thank You! Thank You!! Thank You!!!
I am so happy with how well this turned out and I am inspired to make a few more for some deserving mommies and babies. In fact, the hub liked it so much that he has requested one in camouflage!!!

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!

The Birthday Hurrahs – January 2009

Note to reader: Okay, I know it is about a month late, but I wanted to wait till all of the festivities were complete before I posted about it. So, finally, with out further delay, I give you… “My Birthday Hurrahs!”

As I’ve mentioned before, my birthday is my absolute favorite holiday of the year… except for the Hubs Birthday. So this year, I pretty much celebrated the entire month (with a little bit at the end of December thanks to my mother-in-law whom I LOVE oh so dearly. (Our birthdays are only a day apart.) Anyhow I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family. I believe if I am counting correctly I had a total of 10 birthday celebrations. So I’ll try to say a little bit about each and more about the ones that have more to be said, and post pictures of the ones I was allowed to capture on camera.

First, as I mentioned, the celabration started at Christmas time when I got new make-up from my MIL. YAY!!!

Second, was lunch with my big sister at Pei Wei. This is where I received the Remebery Tea.

This brings me to my actual birthday. I went to lunch with my good friend Amanda at Papa Pia. I was completely obsessed with their lasagna for about two weeks. As you will see below, I ate there several times!

That night, the hub, at my request, made his famous J-Rod Pizza...and below is a picture of this year’s Birthday cake! Mmmmmm! So delicious!

Later that evening I checked my voice mail for a message that I knew with 100% certainty would be there. Every year my mother calls and sings “Happy Birthday”. This year even with laryngitis, she made the call and left the message.

Friday is when Things got a little odd with the maternal parent. We received a package from her for my birthday that contained… 24 cans of chicken noodle soup. I don’t even know where to start with this story, so I think I will just post the pictures and leave the rest to your imagination. However, I will leave you with these thoughts before I move on. One, in college, I existed almost completely on chicken noodle soup and crackers, because that was all I could afford, but now I can barely stand the smell of it cooking in the microwave. (It must be said, in her defense, that I don’t think she knew this little fact… she reads my blog, so… she does now.) Two, I turned 29… not 24!? Three, do you know how heavy 24 cans of chicken noodle soup weighs and how much it must have cost to ship it?! Okay, I could go on, but… no… I’ll leave it at that and leave you with these pictures. Kitty Sticks and I are still counting cans. I’d love to know your thoughts… Please!

Next, for my birthday the Hub got me a shopping spree and the best part was that he was my shopping assistant! What a trooper! From about 9:30 in the morning till about 4:30 in the afternoon he hung in there by my side. Oh and I forgot to mention the CARD! see the video below.

Note to all guys: This was an AWESOME gift!

Sunday evening brought a call from my incredible wonderful dad, who had inadvertently forgotten my birthday. Lord love him, he’s got so much going on right now I wonder how he remembers to eat. Anyhow, along with a million apologies, he said that he would be in town in a few weeks and he would take me to lunch. YAHOO!

Work had been absolutely nuts, so it took a solid week to find a day that we all could negotiate a group lunch, A MONSTER thank you to Banana for treating me to my birthday lunch, and salad at Papa Pia!!! =)


This brings me to the last Hurrah which was this Tuesday when I had lunch with my Daddy ant one of our favorite spots in town. An old fashion drug store that serves lunch and the BEST freaking malts I have EVER had.
Thanks to everyone for all of the wonderful 29th birthday celebrations!

It’s funny, now that I look back at this list almost all of my hurrahs revolve around food or eating. Not sure what to think of this, but hey you only have one birthday a year… (or TEN!)

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!

Remembery Tea – January 2009

Note to Reader: I don’t know if she’ll even remember it, but when my baby sister was pretty young, maybe three or four years old. She used to call the matching pictures game “Remembery”. It was one of her all time favorite games, and even now to be silly, I sometimes refer to my memories as “rememeberies”.

Additional Note to reader: This may get a little sentimental, in fact I’m getting a little misty as I sit here and type. I smelled a smell this week - the kind of smell that reached deep into the archives of my mind, into files I’d thought were long forgotten, or ones I’d never even known were there in the first place.

I’m sure on a lark; for my birthday, my older sister gave me one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received. A jar of home made spiced tea. She’d said that she’d searched the Internet of all places and taken bits and pieces of recipes and had finally, after trial and error been able to recreate the spiced tea that we grew up on. The anticipation was too great and before I knew it, I was unscrewing this Mason jar lid and breathing in it’s incredible aroma.

Without even knowing it, she took me back to our childhood. Right there in the passenger seat of her SUV, a flood of memories poured in from all corners of my mind. Cold winter nights where the two of us were allowed to sleep on the living room floor next to the wood burning stove because it was the warmest spot in our drafty little house. Coming in from playing in the slushy snow and being soaked to the bone but warm from laughter. I can say, without a doubt that I’ve never so strongly been able to link memories to scent. The power it has had to take me back to a place in time has been beyond amazing.

So each morning since the day we met to partake in an early birthday lunch, I’ve taken a bit of time to have a cup of what I am so fondly calling “Remembery Tea”.

This morning, as the sweet and spice rose to my nose as I nestled into what we lovingly refer to as the “Man Chair”, I walked through my memories into 1987 and our carpeted dining room in bare feet to see two red headed little girls sitting at the dinner table. For no reason at all, they were exploding with laughter every time one looked at the other, laughing so hard that their bellies ached. It was visibly driving their parents up the walls. There’s a baby girl of about two in a high chair. She’s too little to understand the laughter but she’s just old enough to catch it, and she too erupts into laughter.

The mother, pregnant with the forth, is furious that things have gotten beyond her control. She screams at the father and sends the giggling girls to their room. I can still remember the feel of the floor as it changed from carpet to hard wood as I followed the memory into the bedroom that my older sister and I shared for so many years. If I close my eyes tight I can see us, on the top bunk buried under our matching strawberry shortcake bed spreads, still in fits of silent laughter.

Dinner is over for everyone now and there arguing still fills the air, and even now as I sit in my living room, in my home, breathing in the fragrance of this tea, this “Remembery Tea”, willing myself to continue remembering, my eyes prickle with tears for those three little girls. This was a crazy volatile time for our little family. A time where the memories were not always good. I have memories of praying that our parents would divorce to stop the fighting, and then when they finally did, I can remember praying that it hadn’t been my fault.

But looking back, and knowing that hind sight always seams 20/20, I know, as certain as I am sitting here in my husband’s old ratty, and oh so comfortable chair, that those girls… all three of them were and still are so deeply bound together by that laughter and understand it's healing power. And what I realize as I place my favorite mug into the dishwasher and glance over at that small, unassuming jar of what was meant to be just spice tea, is that we knew it then, and I still know it now, and it’s something that that angry mother didn't, still doesn't, and probably never will understand.

I can’t resist spinning the top off to smell of it one more time, knowing full well that they’re not all going to be good memories, and I’m okay with that.

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!

My Sabbe Chic Original - November 2008

Note to Reader: Okay I have been trying to post this for a week, but due to computer problems, I have been hindered to say the least!

So, about a week ago I went to meet a friend for free Starbucks coffee and was surprised with my very own Sabbe Chic Original bag!!! Totally made my day… Week… Month!!! But I must say, when you aquire a Sabbe Chic Original hand bag, really your trouble has just begun. The decision of what to put in this Sabbe Chic Original bag is HUGE. You are so proud of it that you want people to see it, but you also don’t want to look like you are bragging… (when you actually are! =)…) So here’s my story!

First of all, upon receiving the OH SO BEAUTIFUL bag. I promptly returned to my office and SPEED DIALED my Hub. The conversation went a little something like this…

Wandering Lili: “HUB GUESS WHAT!!! GUESS WHAT!!!”
Hub: - (phone three feet from his ear) “What?”
Wandering Lili: “I just met Mrs. Sabbe Chic for coffee at Starbucks and…”
Hub: “Did you pay $8 for a cup of Carmel Apple Cider!?”
Wandering Lili: “No it was Iced Tea and it was free because I voted… Anyway… I just met Mrs. Sabbe Chic for coffee at Starbucks and I am now the PROUD owner of a Sabbe Chic Original!!!”
***Pause for effect***
Hub: “What is that?”
Wandering Lili: “It’s a bag… A VERY pretty bag, with striped fabric in the inside and rick rack!”
Hub: “What’s that?”
Wandering Lili: “hmmm… “Well it’s kind of hard to describe it’s like… fabric on top of the regular fabric that looks like a lot of M’s all strung together.”
Hub: “Like zig zags?”
Wandering Lili: “Yes like Zig zags… sort of…” (I say while examining the BEAUTIFUL rick rack on the sides of the bag… tracing each zig and zag.) Oops… did I type that out loud…
Hub: “Well that’s good. What are we having for dinner?”

That afternoon, I showed ALL my co-workers who promptly asked where they could purchase a Sabbe Chic bag. And me replying … “Well I’m not sure, I’m personal friends with the designer…” (I have ALWAYS wanted to say that!!!)

Then at the end of the day I collected my things and went home to try to decide what to put inside my new bag!!!

As I said, this was NOT an easy decision, but as always, with most big decisions, I had help! Let me introduce you to my assistants.

Mal - Expert on all things pertaining to bags.

and
Kitty Sticks - Pretty much the boss of everything (especially the Bag expert).

Together, while the Hub cooked dinner (Curry Rice with veggies and shrimp) the three of us got busy figuring this one out.

I thought first about using the bag for my bible study things: books journals, pens, and McDonald's happy meal toys., but upon picking up my current bible study bag I quickly realized that the stuff inside would be too heavy for the Sabbe Chic bag.

The Second thought was as a every day purse, but this idea was quickly nixed because my Sabbe Chic bag is a pretty big bag and would afford WAY too much room to haul things around. As far as purses are concerned, if I carry one at all, I really like to keep it simple wallet keys chap stick and cell phone... you get the picture.

Sitting on the side of my bed completely perplexed about what to do, in jumped my assistants... LITERALLY.

Mal: "WoW Mom this is Awesome! A Sabbe Chic Original Cat Carrier. It has a pocket and it comes with... Ooooh... Magical
Powers!!!" (Check out those eyes!!!)

Well not to be out done, Kitty Sticks had to try.

Kitty Sticks: "Mommy, if he gets a Sabbe Chic carrier, I want one too! This pocket would be perfect for treats and theirs a ton of room in here for toys!"

Hmmm... good thought, but the practicality of this idea really isn't there.

Think, think , think...

And then it occurred to me... I knew exactly what I would put in this rockin' bag!!!

I dashed from the room, to return about 30 seconds later with two XXX Mart bags (I know... shame on me, but they make for great pooper scooper bags, so I've always got a few around) containing my newest hobby, crocheting!!!

I layed all of my materials out on the bed, looked them over once, then twice to be sure, and started packing the bag.

Kitty Sticks: "Look mom, your hook things would go great in the treat pocket!"

Mal: "And all this yarn fits perfect in here!"

So there it hangs, My Sabbe Chic Original bag, on the closet door, containing all of my Crocheting needs, ready for use at a moments notice. And really it's totally fitting that my crafty stuff goes in a bag made by such a crafty person! Thanks Mrs. Sabbe Chic!

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!

Happy Nanner’versary to US!!! - July 2008

Today is our 3rd Anniversary and I have to say I think I got the coolest gift for my Hubby on the planet… except for the coolest gift that he got for me.

The 3rd Anniversary is the leather anniversary, which poses a certain amount of risk. There is a FINE line of what we can give each other without being corny or having a gift that is SUPER expensive. I for one think we both did a GREAT job.

He got me a leather bound Writers Journal, which, for those of you that know me, is the PERFECT gift for me. (Photo Coming Soon!)

However, I had a little more of a difficult time picking something for him. After a great deal of online research, some of the contenders were:

1. Wallet (generic)
2. A desk Calendar (even more generic)
3. Boots or Shoes (we don’t have that kind of money)
4. A leather bound first edition of his favorite book (I don’t even know where to start with that one, and again we don’t have that kind of money?)
5. A motorcycle hat (that would be one for my father-in-law, but not my husband)
6. A Photo Album (seriously these people don’t know my husband)
7. Belt with his last name on it (are you serious?)
8. Chaps (Okay lets not go there!)

All joking aside, about 5 weeks ago I was seriously in a panic because I had no idea what to get him. I mean I know it is just a gift, but I really try hard to make gifts unique.

Well in the middle of the night, about 4 weeks ago, it occurred to me like an Atam Bomb. I knew EXACTLY what to get him. It was unique, not terribly expensive, he would LOVE it and most importantly it was made out of leather. Can you guess…?

Okay I will not keep you in agony. I got him a BASEBALL!!! This is not just any old baseball. This baseball has a map of Boston around Finway Park and in case you didn’t know it, my Hub is a MONSTER Red Sox Fan! Check it out!!! (See Pic to the left) He totally Loved it!!!

Next year is fruit or flowers... maybe I should start planning today!

Till Next Time,
Bon Voyage!