frustrating

I spent some time on the teen's Christmas (hopefully Valentine's?) sweater today, got a good solid inch in and realized that I'd dropped a stitch. Back about where I'd begun. So I had to rip it all out, because with yarn this fine, there's no way to weave a dropped stitch back in - way too obvious. I'm so ready to just put this sweater away, but I know she'll love it, if I ever finish it. We'll see. Probably won't be Valentine's Day at this rate. I'd just like her to still be able to wear it this winter.

Have a doctored-up frozen pizza in the oven. Cheese with added garlic, red bell pepper, chorizo, and chicken. It smells delicious. Can't wait for dinner!

sooo sleeeeepy

Brad's 40th birthday was last night, and the party was a rousing success. Should've been - we worked our asses off getting ready for it. But... no one ate much of anything (aside from the ice cream), and too many people brought beer. There's a small chance we ended up with more than what we started with. That's. So. Wrong.

As I mentioned, the ice creams were extremely popular. I made three: the vanilla/bourbon/candied pecan, the chocolate with cayenne and cinnamon, and the nutella. The nutella was fantastic - you couldn't taste the hazelnut at all, but instead, it tasted like a really, really awesome malt cup. I'm surprised we have any of that left. The vanilla/bourbon/candied pecan was as fabulous as I remembered from last weekend. Brad's comment was that it was just tipped to the correct side of too much/right amount of bourbon. And the candied pecans were a killer addition. Of course, the chocolate/cayenne/cinnamon was great - but previous batches and Sebastian Joe's already told me that would be true.

People stayed until after one, and I cleaned up afterwards, so we were up until 3. I'm pretty wiped out today, but it was completely worth it. I'm sipping the last of the leftover margaritas, and there's a pot of white bean/ham soup simmering on the stove. It's a good Sunday night.

40th, part 1

Today was Brad's 40th birthday. I don't know why, but having both of us in our 40's suddenly makes me (and him!) feel much older. We both realized that last night, and let me tell you, it was a mood killer.

Despite that, I think he had a pretty decent day. We're looking forward to the party Saturday. Looks like we might see over 30 people in our little house...

caramel martini? uh... no thank you.

Salted. Caramel. Martini. Three lovely, lovely words.  Together? Not so much. We tried a couple of different recipes, but this drink won't be at the party Saturday night. And although I love me some Bailey's, the caramel Bailey's doesn't get high marks for deliciousness. It's a very artificial caramel flavor. So I think that we'll stick with the tried-and-true chocolate martini for the party. I think some of our friends would be sad if we didn't.

um... what happened?

I think a weekend on my feet in the kitchen, cooking up a storm, totally did me in. I was so wiped out by early evening yesterday, and I had to keep going until almost nine. After that, all I could manage was a little web surfing and a viewing of "Starman." Which made me laugh almost uncontrollably a couple of times. I love Jeff Bridges, but that movie did not age well. The special effects had to be a little bit laughable even in 1984. But it was fun to watch having recently seen Karen Allen interviewed about Bridges' performance.

Tonight, I helped the teen rewrite an English paper. So. Freaking. Painful. I definitely earned tonight's glass of wine.

productive day of party prep

Spent the first part of the day running around collecting ingredients for party food/cocktails, and I've spent the latter part of the day creating tasty concoctions out of said ingredients. The margarita recipe we found is a winner, for sure, and Brad pronounced the Sazerac as "really good." Me, I took a sip and almost gagged. Not a whiskey girl. At. All. Although I found the vanilla bourbon pecan ice cream I made earlier this afternoon unexpectedly delicious. I also made two different puff pastry apps, and sometime after we make dinner, we'll take a stab at salted caramel martinis. It's been a pretty fun day.

One of the places I went on my errand trip was Heartland Market over in St. Paul. I've eaten at the new Heartland since Lenny moved it, but the market had closed by the time we finished dinner, so today was my first visit. Lord help me, it won't be my last. There were so many, many tasty treats to choose from. I barely even looked at everything in their meat/cheese case. And if I didn't have lunch waiting for me at home, you can bet I would've ordered one of their sandwiches. The banh mi sounded awesome, and I'm a sucker for a banh mi. I debated over the homemade catsup and chutneys and mustard, and I walked around the vegetable tables twice (SO nice to see everything was locally produced!), but in the end, I didn't buy that much - wild boar chorizo (went into one of the apps), duck fat, butter, garlic, a tiny slice of luxuriously silky chicken liver pate, and a chocolate chip cookie for the teen. I wish I lived a little closer - it's definitely a haul to get over there, but I badly, badly want it to succeed, so I'll be making that trip again and again. And highly recommending it to everyone I know. So go.

this weekend

I've been doing a lot of knitting in the last few days, which is great because I still owe the teen her Christmas sweater. But this weekend, I'm hoping to switch gears and get back to jewelry. Or writing. Or cooking. It's going to be damned cold her in Minnesota, at least Saturday, and if I don't have to leave the house, I'm not leaving the house. We also have a few good movies to watch, and I want to do some baking/cooking for the big 40th birthday party next weekend. Oh, and I probably need to shop a smidge for the birthday. So now it already feels like the weekend is going to be far too short, and it hasn't even started. Sigh...

is it bedtime already?

I've never been good at going to bed. When I was little, I fought it every night. As a tween, I'd take a flashlight to bed and read under the covers long after everyone else was asleep. I learned as a teen that my dad fell asleep watching the news pretty much every night, and if I sat quietly, reading or watching TV, I could stay up another couple of hours while he snoozed in his easy chair. Once I was on my own, with no one to push me off to bed, I had many, many late nights. It doesn't matter if I'm asleep or half-asleep on the couch or in a chair - it isn't giving up until I actually go to bed.

I'm still like that. No matter now tired I am, how ready I am to go to sleep, I fight having to actually climb the stairs and get into bed. It's become kind of a joke between me and my husband. He feels fairly strongly about us going up to bed together, and honestly, I do like that, too. Sharing quiet conversation in the dark, drifting off to sleep together - it's a very intimate thing and a small piece of our day that, corny as it sounds, really adds to our marriage.

So now I'm back to where I was when I was young - it's a huge treat to stay up extra late, and I feel a little better when my husband travels for work or a guys' weekend, knowing that I'll be able to watch crappy TV and play video games and read and eat popcorn and snooze on the couch into the wee hours of the morning...

out with the girls...

I had a long put-off evening out with a couple of friends tonight. We all have busy schedules, and we've been looking for a date that worked for all three of us for almost three months. They wanted to meet at 5:30, which is an ungodly early dinner hour for me, and I was sure that we'd all be home by 7, but I was wrong. They left almost grudgingly at 9:30. It was a lot of fun and much needed by all of us. I'm hoping we'll do it again soon.

revisiting those resolutions

I feel like I still have many of my list of 2011 resolutions in my sights. I haven't given up on anything yet, and I feel good about embracing more of my leisure time and taking life a little more slowly. I think I've been most successful in that, in continuing my knitting, in adding to this blog almost daily, and in watching less TV.

I've been knitting a little every day, but this project is so time-consuming and frustrating that I often put it down shortly after I pick it up. I think I need to be working on something else concurrently. Otherwise, I find that I put down the sweater, pick up my laptop, and noodle around for an hour, just wasting time. I'll find another knitting project to start on or get my cross-stitching going, so that I can go back and forth between the two.

I'm doing a lot more reading, now that the TV is off more. That's fantastic, but I'm ruining myself for nights like this. I already mentioned it before, but once you start watching less TV, when you do watch it you realize how many, many commercial breaks there are, and how much really bad programming there is out there. Tonight, being a Monday, I really just wanted to veg out and watch some mindless TV for an hour or two. I could only find two or three programs I even felt like watching, and it turned out that I'd seen all of them before. Plus, it felt like I was bombarded by ads every 5 minutes. So, off it went again. I did another 6 rows on the painful sweater, paged through a knitting book and a cookbook I picked up from the library today, and now I'm sipping wine and noodling again. And it feels pretty good.

more wine, please

I'm tired, I'm not enjoying watching this football game, and I'm feeling very unmotivated, now that dinner's been cooked and eaten. I'd very much like to just swill wine, nibble on some chocolate, and watch a movie. What I should be doing is guzzling caffeine and knitting. Nine-fifteen is far too early to be giving up on a Saturday night.

free weekend

My parents were planning on coming up this weekend, but there's enough of a threat of snow that my dad doesn't want to drive. So now... I have a free weekend. What to do, what to do....

I think I'll work on some more of the rings, watch playoff football, knit, read, cook, and spend as much time as I can with my husband. That's my idea of a happy winter weekend.

rings from grandma's jewelry

The ring bases that I ordered arrived today. Before I could even to bother putting groceries away, I was upstairs at my desk, pulling apart Grandma's earrings and necklaces, and gluing them to the rings. I worked to the point where I'll need wire cutters and files and made myself stop there. I already have two completed rings, and I can tell I'm going to have a hard time giving any up to my aunts and cousins. So many of the pieces remind me of Grandma, I'm going to want them all. But then I think about what a happy surprise they'll be - maybe Valentines for all the ladies?

jeff bridges, american masters

Awesome, awesome show. I'm always inspired by highly creative people, and damn if he isn't highly creative. I think I must get my hands on his photography book.

step away from the book.

I could do it again if I'm not careful - read a book in a day. I love the book I started on the bus this morning. It's a contemporary Finnish novel - When I Forgot, by Elina Hirvonen. Whoever translated it did a fantastic job. It flows beautifully, and there isn't a word out of place. I love it, and I'm devouring it so quickly, I'll be onto another one by Thursday. For the time being, I'm putting it down. I have a date with the knitting needles tonight. Ready to get back to the sweater.

not doing any knitting tonight. nope.

I had every intention of knitting through the football game, but the project I'm working on is for my teen, and she's bugging the crap out of me tonight with her teen drama queen act. I've been good at taking the high road overall and not taking the bait and getting into it with her, but I guess I just don't feel like doing anything nice for her, either. So. There.

Instead, I'm going to read a whole book in one sitting - Armistead Maupin's Mary Ann in Autumn. Oh, yeah, it's fluff, but having read all the Tales of the City books, it's like spending the evening with friends. And I'm drinking wine, too. Plenty of it.

allowing myself to do nothing

I was reading today about the Italian expression 'bel far niente,' which means 'the beauty of doing nothing' and is a cherished Italian ideal. It made me think about Americans and what an American thing it is to work so many hours and week and so many weeks a year and how even in our downtime, we feel we must be accomplishing something.

I am as or more guilty of this than the next person. I'm not very good at sitting and doing nothing. At all. In fact, my husband and daughter make fun of me for it. Honestly, I don't know why I embrace that way of life. Although I do get a certain satisfaction after a productive day when I've been able to check a lot of things off of my ever-changing, never-shrinking list of to-dos, constantly being in that mind set certainly doesn't make me happy.

Before I even encountered 'bel far niente,' I'd been starting to think that I'd like to get off my self-propelled treadmill. Thinking that I should be using some of my days to do things that are just for the sake of pleasure, not to get something done or check something off that imaginary list. I feel like I've done a fairly good job of that this weekend. Yeah, I worked on laundry and did a bunch of make-ahead breakfasts to take to work this week, but I also read and took myself out for a cup of coffee and kept the tv off and read some more. As a result, I've had a pretty relaxing, happy weekend. It would be great if this were the start of something permanent. And there's no reason it can't be.

planning

Today I ordered supplies to make rings, bought floss to do cross stitch, and have been researching buying wool felt for the Christmas ornaments/stockings/wreaths. Getting things ready so I have more things to work on during the week.

I also made a trip to Dogwood Coffee in Calhoun Square. I've heard great things, but I hated the coffee I had.  My own fault, though. I've never met an Ethiopian coffee I liked, but I tried again. Yech. Next time, I'll ask if they have an Indonesian.

haute dish

Since I'm finally feeling like myself again, we decided to celebrate by going out to dinner. We haven't been to Haute Dish yet, and it was at the top of a number of Twin Cities' Best Restaurant lists this year, so we decided to try it. Boy, are we glad we did.

Seriously, we were happy from the moment we got out of our car to the moment we got back into it. They have valet service (which is terrific in a low-parking, high traffic area of downtown in the winter), but when we arrived, there were several cars waiting, so we had to pull over just ahead of the valet sign. Within moments, someone got to the car and apologized for not getting to us sooner. We were escorted into the restaurant, which was warm and inviting, all honey-toned woods and brick, and a smiling host at the welcome stand. Although we arrived a little early for our reservation, we were immediately led to what looked like was the last empty table in the comfortably narrow, very long restaurant.

Our server was friendly and knowledgable about the menu and bar offerings. They listed about 7 beers on tap and had about as many seasonals that the server described for us. I happily ordered a Sierra Nevada Celebration (a favorite, and I love when I can get it on tap!), while Brad opted for a Sazarac (rye whiskey, lemon, and absinthe).

The menu has been described as updated classics, and that's what we both wound up ordering. I had the General Tso's Sweetbreads with fois fried rice. I've never had sweetbreads and have been tentative about trying them, and this was the perfect way to test the waters. They're poached and deep fried and tossed in a classic Chinese-American sauce. The piece of fois gras that sat upon the fried rice was a silky medallion that melted in your mouth. I couldn't have been happier, down to the housemade fortune cookie.  Brad had the Tater Tot Hautedish, which was a deconstructed hot dish plate of braised short ribs (so tender they fell apart at just the touch of his fork), crispy young beans, a porcini mushroom sauce, and what can best be described as mashed potato croquettes - fantastic crispy puffs that oozed mashed potato once bitten/cut into. I ordered a side of extremely rich brussels sprouts casserole - sprouts tossed in a cheesy, mushroomy sauce, and baked/served in a small cast iron pan. Brad started with the evening's soup, a white bean/ham concoction in a light broth, with smoked tomatoes and sausage, topped with a bit of grated cheese and some crispy kale. As Brad said, it was exactly the soup you'd want on a cold January Minnesota night.

It was a great dinner from start to finish. I know we'll be back (because I have to try the mac and cheese with crab and truffle!), and I'd highly, highly recommend it.

wasted time

I spend at least ten times more time thinking about and planning things I want to do than I spend actually doing them. I'm working on changing that.

Knitted a couple of inches onto teen's sweater. A big step forward, after days of piddling. Felt good.

knitting fail

Tried to start a new project tonight, for a fun little collar of eyelash yarn that looked, in the pattern, like a quick win. Wispy eyelash yarn on size 11 blunt-ended wooden needles - nightmare. I wasted away half an hour before I decided that both the pattern book and the yarn are going in my donation bag. Ugh.

But I did get some inspiration from the felted Christmas craft book I bought (I swear, one of that handful of books I bought after my resolution not to). I had so much on my plate for the holidays this year that I didn't even consider making anything out of it, but there are a bunch of ornaments I want to do, and I'm hoping to make new stockings for us for next year. I still have a lot of outstanding projects on my list, but my plan is to pack my weekends. I should probably just focus on the projects I know during the week. The night gets away from me too quickly for me to consider starting something new. Learning my limitations...

got a box full of letters

Ten years ago, when my grandpa died, I promised myself that I would write a letter a week to my grandma. With a few exceptions, I did. And she saved all of them. After she died last year, my mom and her sisters sorted through all her correspondence and returned letters and cards to her kids and grandkids. I got a flat box about the size of our piano bench, stuffed full of cards, letters, and notes, dating back to my college days. Back to high school, actually. I found one letter I wrote to both my grandparents right before my high school graduation, thanking them for everything they'd done for me to that point.

I've moved the box up to my office, which may have ben a mistake. As I try to spend time organizing my space, I find myself drawn to the box and spending too much time reading letters and getting lost in my past. Happened again tonight. And I still found a little time to knit and to recycle the bead off an old tank top to use in an upcoming project.

back to the grind - tomorrow

My 11 day winter break comes to an end today. Despite spending the bulk of it battling the worst cold I've had in memory, it was great to be around the house and just relax. I did manage to stay on the go most of the day today - laundry, light cleaning, errands, reading, and even a movie IN a theater - The Fighter, which Christian Bale owned. Managed to knit a little, so I'm still on track. Woo hoo! Three days! We'll see how it goes once I'm at work eight hours again.

(we're) still fighting it

The cold, that is. I have a cold sore that feels like it's taking over my face like some alien from a bad 80's movie. Congestion is abating, though, and I'm feeling like I might actually be able to exercise and/or leave the house tomorrow, my last day of winter vacation. I spent the bulk of today reading Steve Martin's new novel, An Object of Beauty. It's extremely well-written and lovely overall. When I purchased it (yes, I know, not supposed to be buying books, but I got a gift card for Christmas), I was struck by the fact that it's printed on such high-quality paper. I've discovered that it's for a reason - the book revolves around the art world and has a number of photographs of paintings in the book. It's making me wish, once again, that I'd delved deeper into art history than my one class. I did also work on the teen's sweater, fulfilling my obligation to create something everyday, which was my biggest resolution but the one I didn't put in writing yesterday because I'm so sadly sure I'll fail. I'll eventually post pictures, but now, I'm having one more glass of wine and considering bed.

New Year's Resolutions?

My husband doesn't believe in New Year's resolutions. He thinks that since most of the goals people set at the New Year are almost unachievable, we're better off not setting ourselves up for failure right at the beginning of the year. In a way, he's right. And I'm probably one of those people setting unrealistic goals.

There are two times of the year when I seem to take stock of my life and try to set goals for things I'd like to do: the start of the new year and the start of the schoolyear. Despite the fact that I've been out of school for more years than I'd like to admit, I still get a rush right before September, remembering that feeling of new beginnings and new possibilities. I often find myself purchasing new writing utensils and/or notebooks, despite the fact that just about everything I do now is on computers.

So here we are at the beginning of 2011, and I have a whole list of things I want to work on:
Learn Italian (this has been on my list every year for a LONG time)
Get back to jewelry making
Write/finally set up a blog
Downsize possessions
Work toward living more simply/locally
Keep pushing toward eating more locally
Knit more (not just at the Christmas rush!)
Craft more - set up Etsy shop for jewelry/crafts?
Give more to my job
Change my exercising (I'd love to add in blading)
Reconnect with friends
Get out and try new restaurants
Watch less TV

I look at this list, and it certainly seems like I could/should integrate all of this into my life. The trouble is, life seems to get in the way. I'll find half an hour of free time and decide that it's not enough to give to anything on this list, and instead, I fritter it away on something that's not really important to me.

I follow someone on Twitter who talked recently about setting a resolution for each month instead of having a list for the year. So I'm thinking that if I think about this list in terms of the whole year and tackling things in smaller steps, maybe I'll finally be successful at making all of them a permanent part of my life. It's worth a try, isn't it?