Pssst!

A while back (don’t ask me when, my brain doesn’t work that way), I signed up for General Mills’ Pssst… program. It’s been a busy couple of months and I sort of forgot all about it… but General Mills didn’t forget about me (which, when you think about it, is kind of nice of them).  In my mailbox last week was a package from those nice folks and inside the brown wrapper were TWO meals, each serving 4 people!  PLUS there were a handful of coupons to purchase more or pass on to friends.

So on Wednesday night, when 2 of the 4 kids were off doing other things, I made this meal:

Romano’s Macaroni Grill® Chicken Piccata

The green beans were my own addition.

I was asked to share my opinion with friends, so here it is:

+ I found the flavor to be pretty good and not too salty.
+ I doubled the chicken amount because I feed hungry boys, but we had plenty of leftovers, so I really didn’t need to do that.
+ It was truly ready in about 20 minutes, as promised by the advertising on the box.

- The sauce was a little too strong on cornstarch.  I understand the need to thicken a sauce, but it shouldn’t taste like you thickened it, KWIM?
- It was lacking in what I’ll term “improved healthy choices”… meaning, it could have been whole wheat pasta instead of pale white pasta.  I’m a whole wheat kind of gal.  But I suppose you could skip the angel hair pasta and use your own… that would certainly be easy enough to do.

Overall, it’s okay as a quick meal.  With some imagination, I could come up with this on my own, but for someone who needed to reach for a quick meal in a hurry, it serves its purpose.   I confess I’ve never eaten at a Macaroni Grill, so I can’t tell you how it compares.

I haven’t yet made the Wanchai Ferry® Orange Chicken.

I’m waiting for another night when I am looking for a quick meal for 4 people.

You, too, can sign up for General Mills’ Pssst… program:  It’s easy, it’s free, and you get freebies! I’m having personal technical trouble giving you a direct link, but feel free to put in a quick search (google, bing, whatever) for “General Mills pssst” and you’ll get there.

And, hey! Yesterday was my 365th post. Who’da’thunk it?

Still reeling

Mary Alice has written the post I could not write.

Ever have one of those moments?

when you just want to throw in the toilet paper towel?

This is what I saw when I passed by the bathroom an hour ago.

Funny thing: the kid who has been driving me most crazy lately is the one who DOES change out the old roll and put in a fresh one.  He is also the one who notices if the cat needs water or food.

I guess that is nature’s way of making sure each kid reaches adulthood.

Halloween

Too cute for words: 

Thematic Photographic: RED

November 2, 2009   On the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park

A red knapsack is a good idea 2 days after the opening of hunting season, even if you are hiking in a National Park.

To see more hiking/camping pictures here, you’ll have to wait a few more days.

To see more red, check out Carmi’s Thematic Photographic challenge this week.

AWOL

I spent Monday getting high… about 4,000 feet above sea level high…

…and here’s the proof!

Kilroy SnakeMaster was there, too…

In fact, we took the whole family along!

Stories to tell and pictures to share, but we still have camping gear to put away and dirty clothes to wash… and school in the morning. Our 4-day weekend has come to a close.

I’ve got a pretty full schedule the rest of this week — several meetings, a class to teach, a final home football game (therefore, a final night of FEED THE BAND), plus the normal wear-and-tear of taking care of my family — but I’ll try to get another post up before the weekend.

A Room With A View

Home.

When we chose to live where we do –far from my husband’s work– it was because of the location (quiet), location (good schools), location (space around us).

The picture that started it all and inspired this post

I was picking up boy-tossed clutter in the living room, straightening pillows on the sofa, minding my own business… and I was once again blessed by the view outside my rather dirty window.

The hummingbirds have flown south for the winter, but I still like to rock gently on this love seat and admire the view:

Yellow Roses in October

Come along with me and we’ll open the sliding glass door and peer into the back yard…

The tree that holds the rope swing has already lost its leaves and the others will soon follow suit. Put one foot out and look to the right.  If it was evening, we could watch the sky turn into swirls of sherbet color.  This time of year, the daytime colors are warm hues of green, red, and gold:

The tall shrub on the left gives us shade in the summer for a late supper on the deck.

kitchen window

I sometimes miss the kitchen garden window from our last house, where I kept a few houseplants, candles, and seasonal decorations.  It was a large window that let in a great deal of light, but I was always aware that someone might be looking in at me; the neighbors were close by with windows facing my own. Here? No worries.

These 2 pictures (above and below) were taken looking out my front room window. [We don't have a formal living room, although the house was designed that way.] Our home faces north toward a meadow; we often see deer in the very early morning and again after dark. When we bought the house, the shrubs were much taller and dense enough to create a privacy hedge.  In the summer, the porch was humid and buggy; in the winter, it was dark; most of all, I considered it a safety issue — when approaching the house via the front walk, you couldn’t see if there was someone hiding on the p0rch.  We pulled out more than half of them and cut the rest back. SuperDad has kept up with the pruning and shaping, and there is oh-so-much-more light coming in now.

There are a few more rooms with a view upstairs…

The blue spruce blocks some of one child's view of the meadow.

I sat on the side of my bed to take this photograph.

The “master bedroom” closet area is strangely designed and could really use a remodel (ditto for the bathroom, but that’s another story).  However, the closet area DOES have a small window –the only window in the entire house that faces west.
This time of year, the view is truly beautiful [photos above and below].

Zoomed-in view of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Thank you for letting me share these photographs with you today.  I truly feel blessed to be able to look out upon such beauty, and I wanted to share it with you.

When I mentioned last week that I wanted to share what I look out upon each day,  I invited others to play along with my little “meme.”  So far, the following have agreed to share their own views with the rest of us:

Jodi Anderson

Harry Martin

allmycke

Reb

Melli

Farmer*sWife

Fritz

Quilly

Be sure to mention in the comments if you are playing and I forgot to link to you!

Sanctuary Blue

Jodi Anderson, who posts regularly over at The Women’s Colony, has issued another photo challenge: the color BLUE.
(Last week’s challenge was all about Orange.)
Of course, I jumped at the chance!  This is not the same as my previous blue post, since those pics were all from Google Images.  Today’s pictures are all my own:

a tiny bit of blue seen between gray storm clouds

little boy blue

summertime blue

birthday candle blue

BLUE and chocolate: does it get any better than this? I think not!

More

More excuses Apologies

This is how I’m feeling right now (well, minus the orange hair, LOL) … going a thousand miles a minute, at least in my head, and smacking into walls… walls of deadlines and events that I need to attend and details I need to take care of…  So much to do, so little time to accomplish everything on my “to-do” list.

I did have a good visit with my mother when she was here (thanks for asking!) and she took me out to lunch twice (so I gained a little weight, but I’m pretty sure the peanut soup at The Red Fox Inn was worth it). 

By this Sunday evening my week will  have encompassed 2 home football games (last Saturday’s homecoming game was rained out/postponed to Monday), daily marching band & cross-country practices, several special events at church, and a Very Big Deal marching band competition 3 hours away (so we’ll be getting home around 2am on Sunday morning).

I truly miss blogging; it is my creative outlet and the source of some wonderful friendships.  It may be another 5 days before I can return.

I get on the computer to check my e-mail and realize I have yet another responsibility.  I deal with changes in plans (my apologies to the pizza man, we no longer need 70 pizzas tonight, only 20 pizzas…. but I’m still waiting for the 1.75 inches of rain that was  forecasted to mess up that order!!) and discover even more activities to post on my Google calendar (because I am too busy to go write it down on our regular calendar).  If our power goes out, I am in Big Trouble.  Or I’ll have lots of extra down time!

Now it’s back to working on this month’s church newsletter (my unpaid gig with MS Publisher, a labor of love) and purchasing more supplies for feeding the band (because they need paper plates and napkins to go with all that pizza we are feeding them) and oh, yeah… my family needs more milk to drink (we go through about a gallon a day).  Guess I’ll be hitting Costco instead of my computer.  Oh, well.  The game is likely to be a rain event and I’ll come home early to get some hours in on the newsletter.   Just thinking about all that made me feel a litle bummed, so I’m going to leave us (you and me) with this:

Anyone up for a photo challenge?

Next Wednesday (October 28th) I will post pictures taken from various windows and doors in my house, looking out.    I’d love to see what you see when you look outside! Let me know in the comment section if you are playing along, and I will link to all who participate.

And hopefully by then I will have been by to see your latest updates!

WWC #106: Sit & Fall

I need to apologize to my wonderful & faithful readers. The posts you have been reading are mostly pre-scheduled (with a tiny bit of last-minute editing) because I have been so very busy.  And because I have been so very busy, I have not been able to reciprocate by visiting your blogs for the past few days.  Can I blame my mother?  LOL  Actually, I have been extra busy because my mother has been here visiting me!      She leaves tomorrow morning and life will return to our normally busy schedule.

In the meantime…

It’s Tuesday!

FALL is my favorite season and I love all of the warm, bright colors found in nature (which is kind of funny, since orange is not my favorite color).

Here is a pile of my volunteer “baby pumpkins.”  I threw out some old mouldy ones last FALL into the compost heap, and we got a nice little crop this year… not counting what the deer ate.

Our leaves are truly beautiful this FALL

and sometimes the weird fungus that attacks leaves and looks/feels like spikes!

Speaking of weird…

Ditch Decoration created by SuperDad

Ella was too excited to SIT

Last Wednesday, I met Melli for lunch to return Ella to her rightful home.  We had a lovely lunch at Brio.  Ella enjoyed the crispy Italian bread…

…and then she ordered a scrumptious lobster bisque!  Mmmmmm….

I think only lobster could inspire Ella to SIT still for so very long.

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This week’s words were SIT and FALL.

Next week we will be exploring   F and  ALTERED.

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The Weekly Words Challenge continues to be brought to us each week by the now non-blogging Tink.   Jay manages the blogworld side of things while Tink is hosting over on facebook … and then there’s always flickr.
So many choices, so many views, and so many creative minds, and always on Tuesdays!  Join us!