Melarky

Heather made a post a while back about browning ground beef, then freezing it in bags to make dinner-making a little easier. I’ve done it twice now, and it’s so handy. I just get one of those 5lb.packages, brown it all up, and it usually comes out to be about 4 or 5 bags. I’ve made spagetti, stroganoff and tacos with the already prepared meat. Thanks for the great idea Heather. To read Heathers post about time savers click here!

I like a good pot pie now and again, but they always take forever in the oven, not so anymore. Banquet has a great microwavable pie, and in ONLY 4 minutes, you have a delicious pot pie! They are great for a quick lunch or hearty snack. Try them! I love them.

Mark and Valentine’s Day usually mean a bit of disappointment, but not this year. With a little help from the CNC machine and Gary, he built me a beautiful oak jewelry box. I love it. It has one of our wedding pictures on the top of it, a scroll design around each four sides, hinges, and a beautiful stain. These pictures don’t do it justice. I was so surprised and so happy when I got it all filled with dollar store jewelry (that was an inside joke). I know valentines was a long time ago, but I just wanted to post some pictures of the box because it’s so fun and it’s pretty amazing to see what the CNC machine can do as well.

I have 15 more weeks left! Marky junior weighs approximately a pound and a half now and is about 13 ½ inches long. Im sure his head is getting bigger (to take after his dad). He is getting some baby fat and his wrinkly skin is beginning to smooth out and looking more and more like a newborn. His hair is probably recognizable now (in color and texture), although both may change after he’s born. Mark and I as babies both had blonde hair.

We got our crib today, but its going to sit in the box until we have room to set it up. I’ll make sure and get a picture of it when Marky is done assembling it.

Check out a few baby blankets I’ve made so far. I’d like to do a few more with scrap fabric I have. Click here to see more pictures.

Mark was able to find a coupon code for me so we could get this poster. It is a bit strange, but Mark and I both liked it for the baby’s room. The baby’s room has a kind of bee theme to it, plus the poster has French in it and something about chocolate (“perfect!”).

Mark and I got this yellow jumpsuit off of ebay the other week. It’s a 6-9 months, oink baby brand, but it looks on the small side. I’m so excited for our little guy to wear it. He will be such a nerdo!

This summer has been filled with rides on the scooter. Mark is in love and I’m pretty fond of it too. Its a 1965, Honda C200. It originally had a 90cc engine, but when we bought it, the engine was cracked, so we took the 70cc engine off of our other blue scooter (1981 C70), and put that on this scooter. Thanks to brother-in-law Gary it is up and running, registerd and licensed.

Mark rides it to work and whenever he can. I like to ride it around the condo’s and occasionaly for longer rides. It’s very easy to ride and to handle and so fun! You have to shift, but it’s an automatic clutch (so you don’t have a clutch lever, you just shift up and down through the gears with the foot pedal, no hand grip required). It can go 45mph (with a nice flat surface and a nice tailwind behind you ).

We did buy a different engine for the blue scooter, but it is still being worked on so is out of commision currently. Funny enough, the 70cc engine works better on this little black scooter than it ever did on the original blue scooter. I don’t know if the blue scooter weighed more or had a different wheel size to rear sprocket ratio or something, but the blue scooter only ever got up to about 35mph on it’s best day. The replacement engine we got was a used 110cc engine mark found through craigslist, and we will probably take it to a mechanic to track down the remaining problems.

Mark also has a larger motorcycle in the same style of this scooter (actually, he has 2 now, but one is in pretty rough shape and won’t be running anytime soon). Mark plans to replace all of the gaskets in the motorcycle engine with brother-in-law Gary (to stop an oil leak) and replace some cables, but other than that, the bike is in good shape. I can’t wait for him to have that bike going so that we can ride around town in twinner bikes (him on the motorcycle and me on the scooter).

My sister Barbara gave me this recipe after she made it for Carrie’s birthday. I made it the other day at Heidi’s baby shower and there were no leftovers. It’s summer-y, easy, light, and quilt-free.

• 12 oz. thawed, cool whip
• 3.4 oz. instant pudding
• 8 oz. sour cream
• cubed, angel food cake

Fresh Fruit (this is what we used)
• 3 Kiwi
• 1 c. to 1 1/2 c. pitted, cherries
• 2-3 nectarines
• cubed, fresh pineapple (about half the pineapple)

Mix sour cream and pudding mix together, add cool whip. Mix thoroughly.
Layer ingredients as follows from bottom of trifle bowl to top; cake layer, fruit and cream mixture.

This is has to be my favorite chocolate ice cream. It has chunks of chewy brownies and swirls of chocolaty fudge. Its a chocolate lovers dream ice cream. If you can, get yourself a carton. I obviously have ice cream on the mind ever since Marky got me some to “help” me recover.

Tell us what your favorite kind of ice cream is? and Check out the new ice cream poll. “Come on chocolate!”