I recently came across a suggestion that you use bed sheets to create window treatments. I tried this once, and ran into some problems. They looked like Strawberry Shortcake and kokopelli took scrubs from a children’s hospital nurse. Or, they looked like we stole them from our bed, plain and simple.  Sometimes bed sheets just look like bed sheets and are too theme-y.  

The answer for me may be in getting some custom valances so things don’t look so slapdash.  I like things that coordinate without being matchy matchy, but they can’t look like our home is a tent in the Sahara, thanks to our white bedding. 

This one reminds me of the furniture store I worked at a few years back. Similar items with butterscotch check mixed with the pattern was paired with a painted ceramic rooster and majolica spaniels.  It really pulled the fake room together.  There was a customer at that store that I really remember well.  She didn’t understand that “custom” meant you picked out the fabric from what they had, the fringe, and the style/dimensions.  It does NOT mean that you can choose from something that doesn’t exist at any fabric mill in the entire world, like 2×3 inch raspberry colored Indian elephants with a green polka dot background.  She didn’t want the beige fabric with the African elephants because that species have larger ears, and she wanted small eared elephants, because it looked too “safari”. I am not making this up.

Our friends at Priority Windows are having a sale right now, where you can get 10-20% off of your order depending on what you spend. There are five bajillion (translation: over 470) fabrics, so you should be able to find something.  You can create custom window treatments in the style and fabric you choose. 

If you are like me and want something that is luxe, but are flexible, they have semi-custom treatments.   You get fewer choices, but you end up with something that looks like it was hundreds of dollars!  I initially looked at the custom choices and I was multiplying the price by the number of windows in my head and it sounded pretty unobtainable.  When I flipped over to the semi-custom stuff, it is very doable instead of having to save up.

Do you have a “uni-room?” If so, what did you do with the window treatments? Did you get something custom for all the different sized windows? Is every window different? Or, did you strike gold with another idea?

We were in the grocery store last night and came across an Apple Pear.  In fact, we bought one, as it was amid the Fiji apples and I think we did so by accident.    From my previous post, The DillVinci Code, you know that if the code on the sticker is give digits and starts with an “8,” the fruit is a hybrid. This baby had the four digit code of conventional fruit, which really confounded us.

Apparently, there are Pear Apples that are hybrids, and there are Apple Pears.    Apple Pears apparently occur naturally and are not apples at all.   Rather, many varieties of pears from Asia do not have the bottom heavy shape that European pairs do.  Hence, they are apple shaped pears. I don’t know why they couldn’t have just been called something else. It is kind of like the same conundrum we had as kids when crayola had both orange-red and red-orange and yellow-orange as colors in their stable. It caused many, many misunderstandings when we asked eachother to pass us a crayon, because there is “the crayon you meant” versus the “crayon you mentioned.” Visually, you knew you rather have the red that had a tinge of orange in it, rather the orange that had a bit of red in it, but you could never keep them straight.

Most grocery stores would never have a Pear Apple and also have Apple Pears, so I can imagine being sent off to the store with a request for them, and someone being upset because they wanted an Apple Pear, and you were just supposed to leave it there if they only had Pear Apples. There would have been many moments of doubt, with you wondering if you had misheard them, or were being too literal.

Can you guess, in the photo above, which is the Pear Apple or the Apple Pear is?

Okay, you’ve twisted my arm.

In the middle, it is actually a variety of pear, even though the color would have made you think it may have some apple in there. At right is a gala apple. Plain and simple. No tricks there. The Apple Pear is actually the fruit at left. Would you have guessed it if I hadn’t told you?

If you can guess which particular location it was, then wow me and I might just give you a special gold star of that you can brag about on your report card.   Maybe you will shock me so much, that I will give you other special prizes.  Who knows. Since this is a kidnapping story, detectives, private investigators and crime psychics are not excluded from participation.

Just as we were about to walk out the door, where our friends were waiting in the driveway to pick us up for church, Aunt-in-Law called, asking us about Sunday Brunch.    Even though technically the brunch could occur at a moment that was after the service was finished, Aunt-in-Law has no concept of Space and Time.    If church usually got out about 11:30, 11:45, and we weren’t going to rush out the door (we would inevitable stay and chitchat with different people and wouldn’t dream of rushing the friends that drove us), a time machine would have still been needed to make a noon brunch.    It took fifteen minutes to get home from church, plus it was another 45 minutes from home to the brunch location.

I almost left out the fact that at 9:30, Aunt-in-Law had not made any motions to walk out the door or probably still had rollers in her hair.  She was also more than 100 miles away from us.

Instead of saying “NO,” my husband said:

“We are going to church. Sorry, we aren’t going to be out until at least 11:30.  You can call us later if you want, but we won’t be able to make something that if it is at twelve.”

Most common sensical people would have taken that as us giving our regrets, but just being polite as heck about a scheduling conflict that we much rather attend.

No, no dear readers, Aunt-in-Law interprets such things as a glimmer of hope.  She is a “figure of speech fundamentalist.”  ”Call me later” does not mean: “You are welcome to phone us later and tell us how it went.”  Rather, it is an appointment or an insistence to be called later.  The secondary meaning is:  Call when you are on your way to pick us up because we technically would be finished with what we are doing by then.

My husband did not think anything of it, and we made our way home from church at our very leisure.  We stopped one place and our friends dropped us off.

We got in the door of the house, and I no sooner took one of my shoes off and was about to kick off the other when the phone rang.  I could sense the disturbance in the force, so I went to where my husband was on the phone.

It was Sister-in-Law screaming:”They are at the corner and will be there any minute so go outside now and you better be ready and we’re driving ahead of them so we can get a table and they won’t wait for you because we are on a time schedule and if we don’t make it there by one o’clock they will give our table away and brunch is only until two and we’re all going.”

“Who is ‘all of us’,” my husband innocently asked.  (I would have said, “Who are THEY?”)

“You, me, mummy, Aunt-in-Law….WHO DO YOU THINK?” SIL barked off the laundry list.  She never thinks the request for a body count indicates that my husband is calculating how many/which vehicles need procurment, but rather takes it as a sign that he doesn’t want to go if someone specific is going.  There would be six of us in all.

“Okay, okay, stop yelling at me!”

I will confess that I was tempted to bail and let my husband go by himself, but since he was still recovering form being in the hospital I didn’t want him to be vulnerable.  Nice that Sister-in-Law wasn’t even involved in the “plans” at first.  They added her on, and, as usual “took over.”

So two seconds later, a horn honks and the OTHER Sister-in-Law is there, and I barely have time to even go to the bathroom, and certainly had no time to change.  The dogs are all discombobulated that we acted like we were “home” and then walked right back out.    By this time it was 12:52 and they had changed their reservations to 1:00 P.M.   We knew by the time we got there the last of the cream cheese would’ve been scraped off the cut glass serving plate and it would’ve been called a day.

Aunt-in-Law decided that it would be “fun” to at least “go and see the restaurant” even if we were there and only had five minutes to eat.   We could just “look” and go somewhere else if they wouldn’t let us eat.   She said this as if we had been invited to see the President’s Private Residence, or were allowed to look through any scrolls never seen by the public that was saved from the library of Alexandria before the Romans and others destroyed it before the Dark Ages.   One would still have gone and seen one of those even if one only had 5-15 minutes.   In fact, you would have something to talk about for the rest of your life.

We had a pleasant enough ride.   Part of it, of course, was an argument about the stupidity of driving 45 minutes to go to something we wouldn’t be able to make, nor did we have to, and then the rest of the conversation was quite pleasant.

My husband had an ephiphany:

“Why don’t we eat somewhere else?”

Yeah!  Let’s do that.  Even Cracker Barrel with the high ceiling that magnifies the voices of screaming children, and the prospect of good desserts but “eh” food sounds like a utopia by this time.

Aunt-in-Law quickly vetoed that, “Sister-In-Law and Mummy will be waiting for us.”

(By the way, she really referred to Sister-In-Law by her given name, but she referred to her sister as “Mummy,” much like my Grandfather would call  my Gramdmother “Grandma,” in front of me and my cousins when many of us were in the 2-5 year old range.    Aunt-in-Law’s two nieces and one nephew in their mid 40s or early 50s - plus me, her niece-in-law in her early 30s were all definitely past the 1-3 year old identity issue age where they don’t understand mom has a first name).

No sooner was it mentioned that we should just go to Olive Garden, no matter if there was little on the menu someone with salt restrictions could have, the phone rang.   Of course it was Sister-in-Law who always seems to know when someone is trying to thwart her.   Sister-in-Law #2 handed Aunt-in-Law the phone seeing who it was because she didn’t want to talk to her.

“We’re IN.  We’re SITTING DOWN.  WHERE ARE YOU?”

“We’re Five minutes away.”

We were more like ten I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

In the meantime, my husband’s customer called and invited us all to a pool party, and because he is not a rude man, invited all who we were with to come too.  Under my breath I said to my husband,”We’ll see,” because I could just imagine what would unfold and wanted to assess whether everyone could handle that (if he could handle them and vice versa). Aunt-in-Law sounded delighted.

We made our way into the restaurant, and the hostess told us that we only had twenty minutes.

If this was Panera, or another similar place, I would have said that twenty minutes was plenty of time to get our food and eat.   Not at a leisurely Sunday brunch.

Since we didn’t see Aunt-in-Law very often, my husband replied, “We can do a lot of damage in twenty minutes, that’s fine,” to avoid any arguments.

So, down we sat.   I got my salad, a plate of entrees and sides, dessert, and another plate.  We looked like gluttons because we tried to get everything we thought we would eat and just pick it up all at once.

Among the dishes I sampled:

Pasta with Clams.   Penne with a creamy clam sauce.  The bits of clam were not just all cartilage!
Chocolate Cake (of course)
Cream Cheese and Lox on Rye (I was thrilled - you just can’t find that around here.). Capers were sprinkled across the Lox. I skipped them.  I just decided I hated capers.
Steamed Veggies - Summer Squash and Green Beans.  Summer squash is a very underrated vegetable.

Mimosa was included, but I was surprised I wasn’t carded.   Oh well, end of an era.  Unless they just were sick of is. Normally, I pass on alcohol, but I like mimosas, the champagne ratio is low and with the present company, I sure needed it.

I was pretty quiet during the meal, especially since we were sort of on a mission to eat enough before they put the food away.   Meanwhile, Mother-in-Law (for more lowdown on her, here’s another article,) who is an insulin dependent diabetic and shouldn’t be drinking excess amounts of orange juice and liquor got skunk drink.  There is not a lot of alcohol in a mimosa, but too many is too many.   The immediate, unpleasant side effect was that she blurted out at the waiter, “Come here and clean the table now!”  My husband did an almost Tex Avery double take.

“It’s okay, nobody heard me.” she said.  When you are drunk, you have no concept of sound amplification.

Later, she started talking a bit incoherently in the lobby.   My husband facetiously said to her, “Drink more!”   Despite the health concerns, it was an improvement, because normally she dished out the guilt trips and the crocodille tears at the drop of a hat.

I excused myself to go the bathroom, and when I returned, half the table was standing up and in a defensive position.  The moment I had left, all heck broke loose.  Sister-in-Law was yelling at my husband about me and how I talked or didn’t talk enough during the meal and what was my problem.  Like I wasn’t methodically eating like everyone else was.  Should I talk with my mouth full now? She also brought up that two weeks ago my husband didn’t answer the phone when she called.   Everyone in the restaurant probably would have said that he had good reason to not want to.

Abuse? Salt Bloat? My husband would have take salty Olive Garden food anyday.

When the invite to the pool party was mentioned, Sister-in-Law barked at my Mother-in-Law that nobody was allowed to go there, as she had to go to Lowes and everyone had to help her or tell her what she should do when she bought a shower curtain.  Maybe its just me, but I thought she had much bigger problems, as she decided to tear apart and renovate both bathrooms at once.   Maybe that is why she was such a tool today.  She had nowhere to “go.”   So i guess she decided that we shouldn’t have anywhere to go either.

So, Sister-in-Law carted Mother-in-Law out and my husband and I had a wonderful hour or two, totally abandoned at the hotel with nowhere to go.

Oh,  I forgot to tell you that I can’t drive.   Also, my husband can’t drive for another 5 months to medical reasons.  That would have been a crucial element earlier on in the story, to create more of an element of tension.

We took a walk to a nearby horse farm and fed the horses apples and oat biscuits.   The only other things we had on us was a church bulletin, eyeshadow, a Halloween pen with an eyeball that moved around on it, gum and $21.72.     MacGyver would have had us flown to Hawaii and back on that bounty of supplies.   But MacGyver was off that day.

That’s the story that we will embellish over the years about how we had been kidnapped and were held at the Hilton.  Not at any sort of gunpoint, but there had definitely been a standoff.

(for more stories of the characters herein if you are a total glutton for punishment:)
Mother-In-Law:
Burnt Offerings
Eww.  Who Drinks Pepper Water?

She tells me she has never heard of them, and is just talking about the casino buffets. Can you imagine going to the complete other side of the country and not as much looking at a Las Vegas Phone Book once you get there to be a little adventurous? I could see going there once and being overwhelmed by all the goings on, but if you are a “regular” I can imagine the usual places would get old. I have to push her out of the culinary nest, I guess!

The language was different too.   At least you think that from the perspective of an eight year old.

The kids kept talking about going to the Bubbler.   Or they warned me, “Watch out, you’re the new kid.  One of the fifth graders might sit you on the bubbler!”

What was this ‘Bubbler’.      I imagined that there was this object somewhere in the school that was this big fountain like at the Detroit Zoo, except bubbles came out of it instead of water.   Or I thought it was plastic, and had a bubble wand.   The third idea was that it had a beaker and it was really hot and the purple water bubbled out like a science project.

Maybe I did want to go to the bubbler just to see what it was.

Nobody ever sat me on the bubbler.  In fact, I was extremely disappointed to find out it was just a boring old drinking fountain.  I don’t think I drank out of it from that day forward, at least not the one in that hallway.   I didn’t want to drink from something that someone put their butt on.    Back in “those days” there was no vending machine where I could get bottled water so I leaned my head under the sink or I just suffered.

I don’t know why that memory fell out of my brain…

The event was such a great way to promote domestic seafood and the unique flavors that will knock your socks off if you haven’t ventured away from your fish sticks.  Growing up along the Great Lakes, I could name at least 10 varieties of edible fish that the family regularly ate, by the time I was five.   Looking at the stores shelves as an adult, I am stuck with salmon, cod, grouper, or “fish sticks.”   I can see why people don’t experiment!

You may take it for granted, but I have flipped over the packages at the grocery store of local varieties of fish, and notice so much is from or packaged in Thailand or China! They are also injected with solution and “spices” that do not all have to be disclosed.  I couldn’t help but wonder just how long that fish had been sitting before it came into the store, and it just seems unnatural to raise fish that are not native to ship back to sell in their native land.  It just can’t be as healthy, and they all start to taste the same.  With the local seafood that kept me healthy during my childhood, I not only knew what lake or river they came from, but I knew the name of the person who caught them too!

Since it takes me years, it seems, to decide what to order at a restaurant because there are so many things that I like, I knew that this would be no simple task for me.    I was torn between choosing a cook off recipe I personally would like to eat, and what I thought was truly original.

Here are the two I have neck and neck and that I will agonize about all day long before I vote:

- Colorado Striped Bass Panzanella from Colorado’s Paul Anders, but I was a little uneasy about the choice of using hybrid bass.  Maybe it is a false assumption, but I assume since it says “hybrid” and not “fish from an inter-fish marriage” I would imagine it was farm raised. That is a no no for me. However, if this recipe is “that good,” I may be able to substitute for a similar fish if I was making it myself.

- Texas Shrimp. They just “grow em bigger” in Texas like everything else! The whole state of Texas (and the recipe comes from Texan Mark Holley) seems to be in here.  You have Gulf Shrimp, hominy, pricky pear juice, and more.  Could I actually make this dish, even though I love shrimp?  Finding a few ingredients near me may be a bit more of a science project.

Visit Greatamericanseafoodcookoff.com and cast your vote for your favorite! Write in and tell me what you chose!

Yesterday, we got out the peppers, and my mother-in-law drank the “water” right out of the jar. I thought it was very rude, as there were still peppers in the jar and she was not at her own house where she would be the only one eating them. Secondly, I wondered how the heck it could possibly taste good or be that great for you. Vinegar is not bad for you at all, but in this case, it is not a salad dressing but a preservative.

Apparently, she has been doing this for years, just not in front of me.

This is just not normal, at least in my opinion.

Does anyone know if this is part of an “old wives’ tale” and there are great uses for this leftover water, or should I get ready to take her to the nut house?  Either way, she won’t be doing it at our house.

I legitimately want to know, do you have any recipe or health claim that would back up my mother-in-law’s beverage choices?  It is obvious that her etiquette choice, on the other hand, was less than “how you should act at someone else’s house.”

That’s right. You can’t scrawl your name on a crystal goblet or wine glass with a magic market like you can do to your styrofoam cup at a BBQ. By remembering the charm that you dangle around the stem of the glass, it unsures that you won’t be swapping spit with your brother-in-law’s friend’s girlfriend’s roommate who always seems to have walking pneumonia every time you see her.

Think you can’t remember? Choose wisely. If you go to a person’s house often enough, it is like always wanting to “be” the hat or the racecar when you play Monopoly (Don’t make me be the thumble!) and never forgetting “who you are.” FunWineGifts.com has some cute sets that aren’t just little generic stars and hearts. They have a dog themed set with paws and doggies, sports themed sets, and many others.   You can even decide if you want a silvertone or goldtone finish to match your preference.

I wonder:  What if you buy two of the same set because you want everything to match, and then you have enough guests where you have to use the same charm twice.  What do you do then?   Well, you don’t have to just get the same set twice.   I saw over 30+ charms and you could just order two different sets in the same color and no one would know.   You could just buy the travel charms with airplanes and stuff and buy the Hawaii ones that have beach chaits and Aloha shirts.

I think I would demand to “be” the lemon out of this seat.  I just think its the cutest one.  I imagine that I would fight someone over it:

I always wondered if discontinuing a color was because of needng production space to not mix the different colors in the firing process, or was it because store shelves only held a set many and stores wouldn’t want to carry an unlimited number of colors. One of the verified reasons is that with every new color, the overall palatte is adjusted so that more colors compliment eachother and can be mixed in a table setting.

My personal style is to have one piece of some colors just as representative.

Right now, it is a good time to purchase any pieces of Persimmon that you might have been wanting.  Some retailers are sure to be offering it as a discount while supplies last.   Sites like Replacements.com may have the color for years to come, but you will be paying a premium for them based on demand.

Sometimes I think there is just someone sitting back there in some room, coming up with the most outrageous diet they can think of, and marketing it just to see if people will jump in and do it.

There have been some pretty silly diets over the years.  In fact, “Weird Al” even wrote a song: Grapefruit Diet.

The most consistently promoted diet programs are Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. There is so much publicity over their spokesladies that it obliterates what the company actually does. Weight Watchers used to be all about the points. In fact, I have a cousin who was quite annoying one holiday looking at her booklet to determine if she could eat a cucumber slice. Come on, now!

I have been reading the thefatlossguru.com and was shocked that a diet oriented site would actually mention that calorie deprivation was bad for you and even dangerous. In fact, the site advocates eating essentially like a diabetic: eating at the right times of the day. I have known that for a long time but do I always do it?

“No,” says daytime healthy eater/night time Cookies N Cream Ice cream hoarder (me).

If that is old hat, then what is the big deal? Apparently, the site, if you sign up, has a formula for what particular foods to eat at particular times and in what combos that help you burn fat in the most effficient or natural way. I agree with the eating style so far, but am of course, intrigued by the mysterious combinations.

If you try it, let me know what you think!