Wonderful Bird-day wishes from my girlz!

I came home today to a gorgeous and fragrant bouquet of flowers and this after already receiving a fantastic Incredible Edible arrangement from my two favorite daughters in the world.

You guys are so precious to me. Thank you for the remembrance & for being the wonderful girls you are. My B-day has lasted a whole week! YAY!
Momma

Happy 55th Anniversary to Grandma & Grandpa C!!!!

YAY!! We love you and wish we could be with you today.
Art & I send our love & wish you 55 more wonderful years together!!

Art & I are going to Plaza III on Saturday night for my birthday. It is where he proposed with the ring! So that's is sort of an anniversary too. Unfortunately I'm 20 lbs fatter, so I can't wear the little slinky number I wore that night. Then again, I'm 53, so probably shouldn't be wearing any "slinky numbers" anyway! I can't wait though!

Here's to GREAT marriages. I've lucky to have one now, Jessica's got one and Lanie's got one too! & Grandma & Grandpa C have the mother of all great marriages.
YAY!!
Happy Anniversary to you both! Loads of love,
Caren & Art

BTW, in case y'all were wondering: Lanie and John have "paper" for their gifts this year; Jess and David wood; Art & Caren wood.

G&G EMERALDS!!! WOOT!

Who Knew??????????

Ok Grandma C. I guess you "suggested" to me once that these were good, but seriously. They are INSTANT mashed potatoes. Couldn't be "good", more like "passable" right? I totally dismissed the idea. Well guess what. I'm in Dallas, and needed something different to make other than the rice we've had two meals in a row now. I'm on the phone to Lanie who suggests the "Hungry Jack" instant potatoes that YOU recommended to her sometime back that she now swears by and by the way, she has in her cupboard, so I don't have to run out. Hmmmm. OK, I think, if I make these and they taste as bad as I expect them too, then it's Lanie's fault, right? The cook won't get blamed, so it's a win-win.



Guess what? THEY ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!! How is that even possible? We are talking dehydrated flaked food here. Plus, and here's the really amazing thing, they take about 3 mins, start to finish.

I'm buying a truckload as soon as I get home. And stock in the company. I made pork tenderloin pillards in rosemary wine sauce with Hungry Jack mashed potatoes. The best meal I've had lately. Restaurants included!

I'm a believer! Call me Mom, when you get a chance.
Love,
Caren

Updating is a pain

Well, we are thrilled with the remodeling so far. But we are sick of living in a sawdusty, no running water kitchen, go out to dinner every night life. They seriously are doing a super job though. Couldn't be happier with the transformation so far. We think it will really help with being competitive on the market, but what a pain!

As everybody knows by now, Art is a total neat freak. I'm slowly converting to his religion, but it has been a SLOW GO. Anyway, this torn up phase is even getting to ME, the queen of slovenliness.
Anyway, the countertops (engineered stone product) are AMAZINGLY beautiful. I'll post some "after" pics soon, but we have to get the wallpaper stripped and change out the green diamond tiles, but after that we should have a showcase kitchen.

Glitter Graphics are Baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Grandma C loves Grandpa C!

The Garden

Finally Grandma!!! I'm getting the pictures up of the garden. I've decided Moussaka needs to be a staple at our house. Art loves it! It's a perfect use for the eggplant and supposedly freezes well. We also love eggplant breaded in fresh bread crumbs and parmesean and fried until it's creamy inside. We almost made ourselves sick on this dish! Next I want to try Eggplant Lasagna & after that Eggplant Parmesean. We are eggplanted to death around here!

The garden:



The bellpeppers that ultimately will be red:



The eggplants (some of them):



The tomatoes (these are called "super fantastic" variety, but I'd say more of just "pretty good":



The cherry tomatoes which really are "super fantastic". Almost like candy!

















And more eggplants:



The harvest:



And for the non-vegetable category: these are the Black Eyed Susans that really took off this year!



So that's it for now. Wish you could come over for some Moussaka! Love you, Caren

The Wallpaper

I guess wallpaper is "out". Too bad we've got about 10K square feet of it and it's got to go before we can "downsize", aka sell da house.






So here we go. Someone just shoot me please.



I'll post some after picks if I survive it. :-) The good news is that when I go OCD on a remodel job, I forget to eat. YAY for my 2 lb weight loss in less than a week. I should be 100# in no time!

BTW, formica is also "out". I let you know how that turns out. Momma