I am not necessarily fond of cold weather and Winter snow, but there are two things I do love – sweaters and cold-weather food. One thing in particular that I enjoy making and eating when the temperature starts to dip low is chili. There are so many different ways to make it, and some day I’d like to try some Cincinnati chili, but the one I make now is pretty simple. I used to make a Cajun style chili but since running out of the proper seasoning, I went back to the very basic recipe.

Although I like a little kick to my chili, neither of the kids would eat it (Breanna would try but she can only take so much heat and Hayley would balk at the first bite). Instead I make it mild for the sake of family eating. First I cook up some ground beef with garlic and onion powder, then drain any fat (today I had medium ground beef so there was a fair amount; if it’s extra lean I don’t usually need to bother). Then I take two cans of beans and rinse and drain them. Sometimes I use one can of red kidney beans and one of white, but I prefer what I used tonight, which was two cans of mixed beans. It’s more interesting that way. I toss those in, and then dump in a large can of diced tomatoes with the juice. I usually put more garlic powder in, along with a generous amount of chili powder (it’s not hot at all) and a little pince of cayenne.

While it simmers, I cook up a pot of rice. I never ate chili with rice at home but George did and after I tried it once I was hooked. It adds to the meal. By the time the rice is ready, the chili is usually nice and thick; if it’s still not thick enough I throw in a spoonful or two of flour to speed it along.

The kids eat theirs as is, and tonight George and I boosted the heat factor by adding some Calypso Hot Sauce from Trinidad & Tobago to ours.

It’s fast to make, it’s easy, and it tastes great. And it helps make the colder weather just a little more bearable.

Care to share some of your favorite Winter recipes?

Hayley didn’t have school today but she’s just as tired as she would have been if she had. That could have something to do with the fact that she doesn’t get the joys of sleeping in. On a school day I usually have to drag her out of bed at 6:30 am and physically deposit her in her seat at the table. On a day off, she wakes up by 7 and is raring to go. Drives me crazy. Can’t she at least sleep until 8 o’clock?

So she was home all day and full of energy and wanting this and that and also those and please please please. On the flip side, Breanna was so stuffed up for the past two nights that she tossed and turned and snored like an old man who drank too much bourbon, so I didn’t get much sleep for two nights in a row. That meant I couldn’t keep up with her and she was ticked. Breanna was also ticked, mostly at her stuffy nose but since you can’t smite your own nose, she took it out on me. It didn’t help that Hayley found a piece of wood and decided to do “construction work” in her room, banging around, right next to the bedroom where Breanna was napping. The nap lasted 30 minutes.

They’ve both been tired and cranky and crazy today and I’m so glad that it’s now almost ten at night and they’re sleeping. In celebration I’m going to make some tea, root around the trick or treat bags for any remaining chocolate, and sit down to watch A Mighty Heart. I write PittWatch and have talked about the movie extensively so I think it’s time i actually watch it, yes?

(The picture at the top has absolutely nothing to do with the entry. I took it at about 7:50 am the other day after I took Hayley to school and I love it so I just wanted to share.)

I don’t think I did. Last year I signed up to do NaBloPoMo and I did it again this year. Basically what this means for you is that I will be posting something to this blog every day in November. Every day. Every single day. Even if I have absolutely nothing worth saying. Which means some days you will get nice posts with photos and stories, some days you’ll get some funny snippets of conversations, and some days you may get stuck with me whining about how I have nothing interesting to write about and yet I must write something because I said I would. Doesn’t that sound fun? Of course it does! And if my daily post is boring as all hell, you can go to that site I just linked and check out the randomizer to find something else to read.

So! Halloween was awesome. Breanna had a fever on the 30th and still had a low grade fever at 7 am but then it broke and she was her normal self so we all got to go out trick-or-treating with some friends. Breanna managed to remain calm enough to wear her pumpkin costume.

Hayley was thrilled with her Orca costume and was even more thrilled when we were walking along and she bumped into a little boy from her class. They were so cute and the way they kept laughing and hooting together was awesome.

As for me, I dressed up as myself before I have my cup of coffee in the morning.

HA! Just kidding. I dressed up in last year’s Hermione Granger costume but since I have somewhat shorter hair than I did back then, I wore a witch hat too. Mostly because I just can’t seem to make myself go out without dressing up at least a little (though not as elaborate as the year I dressed my pregnant belly up as a fishbowl).

We got an obscene amount of candy which is good because that means we get to hide it, dole out a more reasonable number of goodies, and George and I can pork out and eat the rest ourselves. As it is, I already ate several tiny chip bags and this morning I ate five mini chocolate bars with my toast for breakfast.

Who says trick-or-treating is for the kids? It’s actually for the parents of the kids who are too old to go trick-or-treating themselves.

Trick or treat! Happy Halloween!

About a month ago Hayley told us she wanted to be an Orca for Halloween. She told us she had seen an Orca costume at the dollar store, so we went to look and it turned out it was the end-of-summer clearance sale on swim stuff and it was just a small inflatable Orca for a pool. She was really disappointed and I said that there was just no way I could make her one.

Fast forward to last week. Hayley had finally decided to just be a vampire since they were doing some sort of age-appropriate Dracula project at school. Great, that’s easy! Dressed in black, a cape, some plastic fangs, and a bit of creative make-up. And then I saw a picture of a cat costume on some web site. It was black with a white belly and I suddenly thought how easy it would be to modify the black and white cat outfit to look like an orca. So the wheels in my head started turning and you know, it’s almost like a genetic quirk that I inherited from my mother where I can’t help but be crafty from time to time (though she is far better at it than I am – remind me to tell you about the Oscar the Grouch costume she made for me once which then got recycled into a Bookworm costume).

I couldn’t find any cat costumes in black and white so instead I bought her a pair of six dollar black stretch pants, got out my brand new black hoodie, an old white t-shirt, some cardboard and black tights, and I set to work. (Clicking the image will take you to a photo with notes on it.)

I cut out a white shape to attach to the front of the sweater, which will be paired with a white turtleneck to make the white underside of an Orca. I also cut out two white ovals to sew on either side of the hood, which will be the trademark white patches Orcas have on either side of the head.

I wanted to sew the white parts loosely so that I can hopefully remove them without leaving any damage since I’ve only worn the sweater twice. Luckily I suck at sewing in general so I couldn’t sew tight stitches if you paid me anyway.

I also cut out a piece of cardboard to make the shape of a dorsal fin and a tail, then wrapped them in chopped black tights. Those will be pinned to the back of the sweater and the pants. Since it’s my sweater it’s just big enough to fit a light jacket underneath.

Hayley was so excited this morning that she had to try the sweater on after she got dressed for school. She loves it and I think it’s gong to be a hit with her. I’m sure some people will think that she’s a penguin or a panda, but that’s okay. We know what she is, and since she’s so good at imitating Orca noises, she can just do that all night long. All I know is she loves the movie Free Willy with a serious intensity and she is thrilled to be dressing up as an Orca tonight.

(Can I just take a moment to be irate and point out it was just after 7 am and yet look how freakin’ dark it still is at that hour through the blinds in our window?!)

Have a safe Halloween! I look forward to eating Hayley and Breanna’s candy!

Win a Dyson “Pink” Vaccuum in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! I would LOVE a Dyson so I’m hoping to win, but if I can’t be the winner, I’ll settle for knowing YOU won it. Hurry, contest ends soon!

The interesting thing about toddlers is that as much as we try to understand them, sometimes we just really don’t know what the hell they’re thinking in that noggin of theirs. Like fears. I can hide behind the couch, jump out and roar, and Breanna will jump three feet in the air and collapse in a heap of laughter, thrilled to have been scared by her mom.

She’s developing some fears though, and they occasionally make sense. And they occasionally do not. She is scared of loud noises that don’t consist of me saying “BOO!” at the top of my lungs. I think the steam rollers started that and now every loud bus, truck, or car missing a good muffler freaks her out as she asks, “what THAT?!” Living on a fairly busy street, that’s a fun one. Still, I get that one. It has also morphed into a fear of the vacuum (she won’t cry but she will run out of the room as fast as she can and when I finish she peers around the corner asking, “all doned? All doned bacuum?”), the blender, and the electric mixer.

Downstairs, right in front of our front step there is a weird plant growing out of the crack in the cement. Hayley touched it one day and discovered it’s prickly and hurts. When Breanna went to touch it the next day, I said, “no don’t touch. Prickly! Hurt.” She took that one to heart and now freaks out whenever she sees it even though it’s perfectly easy to avoid it by going up the step on the opposite side. She’s also afraid of a cactus that we have inside even though she’s in no danger of accidentally touching it. She will now point at it and ask “what that?” in a trembling voice. When I say, “a prickly plant” she will jump back and say, “AHH!” very dramatically. It’s funny but sad at the same time.

She laughs at the ghosts in the haunted episode of the Backyardigans but she was afraid of the silk leaves I put out on the table with the Halloween decorations until I finally got her to touch them. Today, Hayley brought home a construction paper witch that she had assmebled which was about as tall as she is and I taped it in the hall. After an hour I had to move it into her room because Breanna refused to leave the room because she wouldn’t walk past it.

I try not to laugh because I know it’s serious to her but sometimes it’s hard.

Breanna loves pumpkins though. LOVES them. She screams with delight when she sees them and loves to hold the plush ones we have. We bought two pumpkins today for carving and she was ecstatic, hugging them and yelling about the “pumpkin patch”. So when we went to Zellers for a moment to get something for Hayley’s Halloween costume (I’m making an Orca costume for her, I’m going to be so happy and excited if it works out as well as it does in my head), and I saw a toddler-sized pumpkin costume, I grabbed it thinking, “what a perfect costume!”

You see where this is going yes?

She freaked right out when I came near her with it. I wanted to get her to try it on to make sure it fit and was loose enough for a warm coat underneath, but you would have thought I was trying to stick a hot poker through her skin. I managed to get it on her and she yelled, “OFF! ALL DONED! OFF!” but then she let me hold her for awhile. After she calmed down, I stood her on the bed so she could see herself in the mirror and she started laughing. She bounced a bit and when she saw how the pumpkin bounced around, she laughed harder. Eventually I took it off but then we put it back on to show George later and she was okay again.

I think it will be okay on Halloween night. Besides, she’s going to be pretty distracted by the activity around her. Granted, she may also be terrified by the activity around her, but at least her pumpkin costume will be the least of her worries.

And she sure looks cute in it!

Ah well. Just file this one with the rest of them under “never saw THAT one coming”.

This is a wicked tutorial on how to make a very cool play kitchen out of an entertainment unit. I wish I had the space to do this. We kind of need our entertainment unit but I would be willing to buy a used one from the Salvation Army or Craigslist just to have an excuse to make this! (Via Kerflop.)

It’s been linked pretty well everywhere, but in case you missed it, if you have a daughter, see this Dove video called “Onslaught”. It made me cry a little. Talk to your daughters.

Last week, Hayley was home from school for two days. The first day, she had a sore throat and quite the sneezing, sniffling, dripping cold going on. She stayed home and was miserable, moaning about how horrible she felt. I was glad I kept her home because she either would have made her entire class sick, been traumatized like she was when she was sick on her second day of school and we’d be back to persuading her through her tears to go back, or she’d be in the nurse’s office while the school secretary called me to pick her up. Or all of the above.

The second day, she seemed to still be feeling crappy so she stayed home again, but she was practically jumping off the couch by ten and I was wondering why I hadn’t sent her crazy ass to school.

She still had a dry cough but she was more of less fine, so she went to school last Friday, went out for a walk in the woods with us on Sunday, and was fine at school on Monday through Wednesday. In fact, getting her to school has been going exceptionally well. I have trouble dragging her out of bed at 6:30 and I have to remind her to please eat her damn breakfast, but once she’s dressed and on her way, she’s happy and lately she’s been going into the school with some of her friends, either classmates or kids in the other Kindergarten class, and often she runs across the school yard and into the building, not even looking back to make sure I’m waving at her (I am). So that’s been nice.

But then on Thursday, George woke me up while getting ready for work and told me Hayley had a sore throat and a fever. He carried her in and put her beside me and it was like someone had placed a furnace in the bed. She was really not well. I called the school and left a message to say she wouldn’t be in and although none of us went back to sleep, Hayley spent the entire day lying on either of the two couches, moaning and cycling through fever spells.

She was still warm when I gave her some Tylenol on Thursday night and she was warm and sweaty despite a comfortable room temperature when I checked on her after she fell asleep, so I told George we’d keep her home again; he called in this morning. She’s better in the sense that she played more, including making a mess in the living room, her bedroom, and scattered papers and markers all over the kitchen table, but in between, she pulled out a sleeping bag, placed it on the living room floor, and she would lie down, feverish again, to watch a movie. She also hasn’t been eating much, partly because her throat still bugs her, and partly because she doesn’t have much appetite, not even for ice cream.

And you can tell she’s not faking it:

It sucks. She caught something directly on top of her previous cold. Breanna’s dealing with a minor cold (and also molars, yay) and the humidifier is going non-stop so she can breathe and sleep. I’ve been sick since Saturday and it’s not going away because Mom doesn’t get to rest what with taking care of sick kids and housework and cooking and work. I’m not sure how George is feeling since he has allergies and sneezes all the time anyway, but I know he’s tired all the time and works too hard and sleeps too little.

We need a vacation. A germ-free, restful vacation, even just a weekend. It’s times like this when I’m tired and cranky and dealing with snotty tissues all over the floor and being tied to this laptop all the time that I really wish it was two years ago and we could just hop in the car and go to my grandmother’s house for a weekend away from everything.

I need a cottage in the woods to visit in times like this. I’d take my camera and leave everything else behind. Maybe bring some reading material and just read books all weekend, in between being outside with nature.

That sounds nice right now.

Hahaha! The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Songs. Absolutely hilarious.