Frankenstorm is coming!

So if you are anywhere near theeast coast at all you know it's all about getting ready for Hurricane Sandy right now.  Isaac already has school cancelled for Monday and Tuesday (as usual, my school district is still in session, despite the govenor declaring PA to be in a state of emergency). 

I learned a new fact about Ryan: he is obsessed with being prepared for extreme weather conditions.  He was concerned that I have no flashlights in my house.  Then I remembered that my mom had made me and Isaac 72 hour kits as a Christmas present about 5 years ago and I had only a vague notion of where I had store them and no idea what was in them.  So we drug them upstairs and went through them.

These are what they look like:

I believe most of these things were ordered from a website called The Ready Store.  Like I said, they were a gift from my mom, so I am not too sure about pricing or anything like that. 

 I will show you what we discovered in the kits. 

Panchos, hand warmers, candy (I am assuming to keep your blood sugar up, but the candy in my kit was all melted), little flash light, matches, emergency blanket,  a card with survival tips. There was also water purifiying tablets, but I don't see them in this picture. Then  the top the photo are pouches of drinking water and, this gross block of lard or something that you can break pieces off and eat every few hours. 

SO GROSS.  I would have to be in some serious dire straights to eat that. 

The only thing in the front pocket of the backpack was this whistle.

The other backpack was FILLED with all kinds of supplies.  There was this little tent.  Who knows how to set it up, but I guess if we really needed shelter this could do in a pinch...

There was this candle that burns for 100 hours-- could be pretty handy to have this week as I am sure we will lose power at some point.

This backpack was filled with food...

More candy... tons of MRE in those brown boxes and lots of random little foil packets of foods.  The one pictures above is "fortified snack bread"... whatever the heck that is.  I am sure if I am hungry enough, I would eat it.

Most of this looked totally disgusting... but I was kind of excited about those little squarish packets on the top right.  They are COOKIES.  Does my mom know me or what?  There were also lots of these little kits baggies with napkins and plastic silverware.

 More first aid supplies...

More handwarmers...

And finally, the ever important roll of TP. 

I was feeling rather prepared when Ryan discovered another rolling suitcase in my garage that turned out to be a part of the kit too.  BONUS.

The outside pocket had another roll of toilet paper.  And this is what we saw when we opened it up:



It looked like food we might actually WANT to eat!!!

Unfortuneatly, pretty much all of the food was expired.  This is the pile of stuff we had to throw out: apple sauce, Chef Boyardee, granola bars, juice boxes, cereal, canned tuna and chicken salad. The next picture shows the stuff we were able to save:

Pretty self explanatory except for the little bottle. 

So I definitely need to replace the food that actually looks APPETIZING that expired.  Ryan and I also discussed adding a heavy duty flashlight, a change of clothes for each family member, possibly some cash in case ATMS are down, and some additional batteries.

What do you do to be prepared in extreme weather?



A few randoms

* Ryan and I were so proud of ourselves for getting his brother and sister in law the seven piece cansister set from their registery.  They texted Ryan tonight that it only came with four canisters.  Oops.  #awkward.

*We went up to Dorney Park for the last of the season this weekend. We have sure gotten our money's worth out of our season passes (thanks Ryan!) They had Boo Blast during the day and then at seven at night it turns into Haunt (super scary).  Isaac and I were taking off around 6 (a full HOUR before it was supposed to switch over to scary) and we stopped to use the bathroom.  When he came out there was a crazy looking man in a costume who absolutely terified Isaac.

 He began to cry right then and there and it took about 20 minutes for him to calm down.  He tossed and turned in his bed until after midnight that night until I finally let him come sleep with me.  Poor kid. 

* We had waffles and eggs for dinner the other night.  I'm broke and lazy.  It was a huge hit.  No points for domesticity were scored, but we all enjoyed it.  We also had dinner with my parents on Sunday.  Then my mom came in last night (Tuesday) and watched Isaac so Ryan and I could have a date night.  We have a Groupon that expires soon that we have been trying to use for AGES.  Everytime we go to use it something happens and we can't.  Same thing happened last night.  So we decided to just go out to eat and we stuffed ourselves SILLY at PF Chang's.  So yummy and delicious.

* We went swimming at the Y the other night on a whim.  We usually go on Friday nights, but decided to change it up and go on Monday.  We had so much fun.  It was the kick in the pants I needed to finally get Isaac signed up for swim lessons again.  He is not a bad swimmer but he could be stronger.  He starts lessons again next week. Add a point to the "good mom" column for me.

* We sent parent teacher conferences home the other day.  I can' believe this school year is almost a quarter over!  October is always a nice lull between in the insanity of September and the craziness of gearing up for holidays.    It is already time to think about Christmas shopping and where we will be spending holiday meals and how we will share the kids.  I love it though. 

 

We have been trying to get our holiday decorations in order.  We had a few small pumpkins left over from a Fall Fest at Isaac's school. 

 

We took the girls along and they made pumpkins too.  (Does Gabby look EXACTLY like Ryan or what?).  More fallish things are on the agenda:  tonight is the Pottstown Halloween parade, which is always fun.

 

Lucky me-- my mom showed up four more pumpkins.  We will have to find some time  for carving soon. 

 

Have a happy Wednesday!

 

try it tuesday - eyeshadow tutorial

This is an eyeshadow tutorial I pinned on Pinterest. I have both the Naked and Naked 2 Eyeshadow palettes. I love those palettes-- the colors are so pretty and the shadows are highly pigmented. BUT I feel like I always use the same one or two colors, the same ways.  Here was the inspiration picture from Iworeyogapants.  She also uses one MAC color as a highlight, but I just blended Naked and Virgin from the same palette instead.




She calls it an every day eye look.  Personally, I am far too lazy to do liquid eye liner as an everyday look, but I tried this look for church this past Sunday.  (I also pinned her smokey nighttime look, using the same palette, but I haven't tried that one yet.) 

 



It was pretty hard to get a picture of my eyeshadow that wasn't embarassingly awkward (all of the closed eye ones I attempted were pretty humiliating).  Overall, I liked the way it turned out.  The darker brown in the corner and crease didn't really come across on camera but I thought looked quite pretty in real life.   Ryan gave me a spontaneous compliment on my makeup, so I guess it was a step up from my usual Sunday look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linking up with Jamie.

and the world can live as one...

Tonight when we were driving in the car, Isaac said to me, "Mom, do you know that song that goes 'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one?'"

I was pretty surprised, because I didn't think Isaac would have any frame of reference for the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. I told him I did know the song and proceeded to look it up on my phone.

He continued on, "It is by that guy from the Beatles. The one that looks like Harry Potter."

 

You know what? 

  I totally see it. 

 

Just when I think I know him inside and out, he says something like that totally catches me off guard. 

 

LOVE that little boy.

 



a pair of pinterest recipes...

 

I have been on the search for some super easy crockpot recipes. It is sad how long I have had my crockpot and how rarely I use it. With the hecticness of long school days and soccer I figured it was time to dust it off and start building up an arsenal of go-to recipes.

This recipe from Six Sister's Stuff seemed promising-- only three ingredients and serve it over rice.  I also have a rice cooker I use on occasion, so it was pretty much, like, the easiest recipe ever.  I really liked this one and would definitely make it again.  The only thing is it was a tiny bit spicey, so if you don't care for that, maybe this isn't the recipe for you. 

Saturday night I went to a party where we were expected to bring some food to share.  There are so many fun "fallish" dessert recipes floating around Pinterest, I figured I would try something new.  This image was what caught my eye; they are applesauce cookies with caramel frosting.

Here is the link to the recipe.  The cookies were very light and yummy-- almost too light.  I wasn't sure if I had done something wrong because the dough seemed more like pancake batter and the baked cookies almost had the consistency of a muffin top--- very fluffy and soft.  In scrolling through the comments on the post though, I see that almost everyone else had the same result.  It isn't a bad thing necessarily, it is just different.  While I rate the cookies as just okay, the caramel frosting was AMAZING.  The author says that it is her new favorite icing and it is not hard to see why.  I will definitely use that recipe again.  Also, as a heads up, the cookie recipe makes TONS of cookies (and you really only need to drop a tiny spoonful of dough as it really does expand) but not that much icing. 

See my other pinterest completion post here.

Linking up with Jamie....

crazy busy...

This was another crazy busy weekend filled with celebrations with friends and family.

You know you are starting to go a bit loopy when you almost put soy sauce on your waffles instead of syrup... that was a close call.

 

 

 

The check engine light came on in my car earlier in the week, and I did what I generally do when that happens-- nothing except cross my fingers that it is just a loose gas cap.  Turns out I wasn't so lucky this time around and Ye Olde Alero needed a brand new battery.  Thankfully it died at soccer and Ryan was with me to manage jumper cables and whatnot.  We drove it to Autozone before it gave up for good.

 

 

 

But what do you expect when you have a car with this many miles on it? 

 

Friday night Ryan and I picked up the girls and took them to the rehearsal for his brother's wedding.  I just sat and watched.  These were tucked into each pew which I thought was so clever...

 

 

 Saturday night was a little backyard bonfire to celebrate the wedding of my friends Max and Selena.  They married themselves on a beach in California. 

 

 

 It was a casual affair with tons of great fall foods, sparklers, and roasting marshmellows.

 

 

Ryan and I loved sitting by the fire so much, that he immediately began scouring Craigslist for one of the free standing fire pits.  

 

 

 

 

Sunday I picked up Isaac and we went straight to the wedding of Ryan's brother Patrick to Debbie.  It was a beautiful ceremony...

And a lovely reception. 

 

 

What were you up to this weekend?

 

 

 

 

Two things

1. Not too sure about this shirt my dad picked up for Isaac from a sample sale...  It is sort of funny, but I think I might have to pitch it.  

2. I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo sick of being sick.  This is the ninth day that I have woken up snotty and rundown.  I ended up taking a sick day Thursday when I had fever and chills to recover, but somehow I am *still* not 100%.  No one wants to be around the coughing girl who leaves a trail of used tissues in her wake.

Happy Monday!