Melarky

A peek into the inevitable future (sorry Welly, you’re parents are blind as bats, you have no chance).

We have posted about cheap glasses in the past, but we recently went wild and ordered a whole messersmitz of glasses from 2 different internet sites and thought we would put some pics and our thoughts about them up really quick in case anyone else is looking for some glasses on the cheap.

We started off by ordering a few pairs from zennioptical.com. We have ordered from them in the past and were pleased with them, but wanted a few new backups and some prescription sunglasses. They charge a flat rate shipping of ~$5 per order (whether you get 1 pair or 100 pairs, it’s ~$5 to ship the whole thing) so we got my dad, sister, and brother-in-law to join in on the order so they wouldn’t have to pay separate shipping since they wanted to get some new glasses soon too.

As you can see, we went a little crazy, but when you consider the average price of each pair of glasses was ~$10, it’s not that bad really

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I’ve never been much of a pie maker. But recently, I’ve been making them more. It started with making a meat pie, then a lemon and a banana cream. The fillings have all been good, but my crust needed help. Serious help.

My crust was never flaky, I struggled with rolling them out, and getting them into the pie dish without them ripping. I had no idea how to make decorative edges.

I turned to Heather, author of food blog Nine Plates, mother of 7, and my sister-in-law. I’ve always considered Heather to be a good cook, but after trying her apple pie (specifically the crust) I consider her to be a pro when it came to pie crusts.

I asked her, okay, actually my husband Mark asked her (he’s is really into me learning how to make pies for some reason). Heather happily agreed and came to my kitchen to give me a little lesson on pie crusts.

Heather is so cute and brought a “sexy”-retro apron, she had sewn, FOR ME TO KEEP! I was so surprised! We both made a pie crust at the same time and I basically just did what she did. She gave me tips as we made the pie crust, rolled it out etc. And it was very helpful! She showed me how to get the pie crust into the dish without it ripping. And I learned two different ways to finish the pie edges.

The pie I’m holding is a meat pie (so good! great with a side of mashed potatoes). The crust turned out awesome! It was flaky, buttery and perfect. Thanks so much Heather! It was so fun to spend some time with you and have you come to my house for a visit. And of course Mark thanks you too!

I got a bit stressed out today. I was “in no mood” and sent Welly to his room. I said, “Don’t come back in my room until you can listen”.

A few minutes later he came back in with a pull-up on his head and looking so sorry and said, “I’m listening now Mom.” Hilyard who was on my lap started laughing, then I started laughing too. I realized that what I had sent him away for wasn’t that important after all. We laughed for a minute and I told Welly how funny he was. I love my boys, they make me so happy. I really need to take a minute, take a break, stop sweating the small stuff, be silly, play more, have a good laugh and enjoy them more.

I knew if Hilly was anything like Welly I wouldn’t get a good nights sleep for over a year. And yup, he’s just like his brother.

P.S. I never take a nap. Obviously I am taking a nap there, but that was some crazy wonderful fluke. Thanks Barb for letting us crash on your couch.

Mark’s favorite pie is Lemon Meringue. When we were first married I attempted to make one for him. Being newly married we didn’t have a lot of pots and pans so we just had a cheap dollar store sauce pan. This resulted in black flecks coming off into the lemon pie filling. I can’t remember why I finished making the pie with black pan flecks in it but, Mark, being so sweet, still ate it. I’m sure it wasn’t good for him or good tasting for that matter, but he ate it.

Fast forward 6 years, and I still hadn’t attempted the pie again…Until last week.

Forever now, Mark has raved about his Auntie Loraynes Lemon Meringue Pie. It’s apparently the best he’s ever had. When she still lived in Logan, I meant to ask her for the recipe, but I kept forgetting. Time went by and she moved away (far far away) to Sweden. My husband happened to talk to her on the phone a few weeks ago and he asked her for the recipe. I knew he was really excited to get it. A little while went by, and she hadn’t emailed it yet. We figured she just got busy. Her family has a large dairy farm in Sweden where they live a REAL farm life (milking cows, making cheese and butter, cooking on a wood burning stove, the whole nine yards). So I figured I’d just find a recipe that looked good online and give it a try, heck maybe I’d get lucky and it would be as good as Aunties.

Mark was really excited when I called him at work and said, “Guess what I’m making?”. I made the crust, the filling, the meringue all by scratch. I was pretty proud. It looked really good. Until we cut into it.

Anyone what a drink of pie?

During the cooking process (specifically stirring the filling) I got distracted. I was supposed to be continually stirring it, but my three year old was being naughty and my baby was heading for the toilet, so I turned off the heat and stopped stirring it. I figured it was okay. I guess I was wrong.

It was kind of funny because we took the un-cut pie over to my in-laws to share it and what they got was lemon meringue soup instead. They were all very sweet about it and ate it right up and said it tasted wonderful (I love my in-laws).

I was determined to try again. I wanted Mark to get his pie. But this time I needed THE recipe. Mark had remembered that his brother had a few of his Aunts recipes. He emailed him asking for the Lemon Meringue recipe, and he ended up sending a bunch of other incredable pie recipes with it (thanks Rob). When Auntie Lorayne gave the recipes to Rob she made special notes in her handwriting in the margins, giving tips and changing things in the recipes, making them perfect. When Mark saw this, he made a cute, very nerdy reference to Harry Potter and the book that formally belonged to “The half-blood prince” that had notes and corrections that yielded better results than the other students textbook instructions (to his defense, he did just watch all of the Harry Potter’s with Welly a little while ago).

So I finally had THE recipe. I made sure and sufficiently ignored my kids while I was stirring. I tried my best to follow the recipe exactly (except the eggs we had were so small I added an extra one). I did also add two or three drops of yellow food coloring for fun, although I don’t think it did anything. And guess what Auntie? It turned out great!

Mark was so happy. I was so happy it turned out. My in-laws came over to try it again with us, and they were so happy they didn’t have to eat lemon merienge soup. Thanks so much Aunite and Rob, you’ve made Mark the happiest man and me the happiest wife because I could finally make his favorite pie.

In another effort to try and support our community through sewing, we’re meeting to make baby blankets to donate to CAPSA. If your not familiar with CAPSA, it is a community center, where they provide a safe and confidential shelter, advocacy, and support for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Some sad stats: CAPSA serves about 450 people annually. Between July 2006 and June 2007 CAPSA sheltered 371 individuals (including 6 men, 138 women and 227 children), took 5,500 calls on the crisis line, assisted over 3,100 clients out of shelter, responded to 543 mobile crisis team calls, and received over 400 rape-related calls on the hotline.

Read more about how you can serve your community

Do you ever have times where you just don’t feel like cooking? Well last Friday night was one of those times for me. I had planned on making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, in honor of my sons new favorite show, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. But after picking up my husband from work the appeal of getting out of the house for a bit, not cooking or cleaning up afterwards was greater than that of meatballs. My husband suggested trying a new pizza place in town. I love trying new places! Especially when it comes to good pizza. Mark had read a glowing review of Jack’s Wood Fired Pizza in the local paper that day at work and so it was decided-PIZZA NIGHT!!!

We had seen it before while driving down main street, but just barely. Their signage isn’t very good. I’m assuming they know this and for one reason or another they can’t get a bigger, more visible sign up yet. As you can see from the picture it’s kind of under an awning, hiding a bit. But their lack of a more visible sign from main street doesn’t stop people from coming in, lots and lots of people!

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Welly loves to do projects with me, and if we’re hanging out together you can usually hear him say “We’re doing guy stuff…”. Doesn’t matter what we are doing, it’s “guy stuff”. He has also started referring to any hardware store as the “guy stuff store”.

Yesterday we went to my dad’s garage to visit Scotty (he was finishing a project that I’ll let him post about, but let’s just say it’s incredible and I can’t wait to read about it on his blog). We stopped by Cal Ranch first and picked up some little leather gloves so he could have gloves just like daddy (he’s pretty dang cute in those “glubs” as he calls them).

He was really good the whole time we were there, and put his hearing protection on while Scotty was using any power tools. It was getting a little late, and we were about to head out when I looked over and saw Welly crouching in the doorway nodding off then snapping his head back up (while the orbital sander was blaring). I quick woke him up before he could get a power nap in before bed time and we said good bye to Scotty.

I love doing guy stuff with Welly, and I can’t wait until Hilly is old enough to join in.

UPDATE: I just went to my brothers site and saw that his wife posted about the project he was working on. Go check out the Adirondack Chair Scotty made.

We sent some pictures of the amazing Pac Man blanket Mark’s sister, Holly, knit for our son to spritestitch.com (spritestitch is a video game inspired craft weblog). Check it out!