I'm Keepin' On Keepin' On, as they say

I know that I have been MIA (again!) and I'm sorry about that.  I've been figuring some things out with my family and we're still getting settled in.  We've also started some of our projects for the new house, which is a huge undertaking to say the least.  We've got the hallway painted mostly, which is no small feat when you have two children (boys, no less!) under the age of four.  After today I think that I should be good to go and be able to get back to some semblance or normalcy and routine.  To say the least I am quite excited about that. 

Jagger at Church last Sunday Night!

My In-Laws have already had their Thanksgiving.  For the past few years they have done Thanksgiving the weekend before the actual day of Thanksgiving.  This year was no different, which I actually don't like but it's not my decision.  It was my first year preparing a dish for their Thanksgiving meal though, and I was beyond happy when I was asked to contribute.  My Mother-in-Law tends to not take Justin and I seriously as married adult parents, and I've never before been invited to cook or included in the Holiday meal preparations for Justins' side of the family.  I felt like this was such a big step in us being seen as independent adult parents and a legitimate married couple.  This is mostly about my Mother-in-Law who refuses to accept or respect the fact that I am indeed Justins wife and that he is actually old enough to be a married man with children.  She has laid claim, if only in her own head, to not only my Husband but my two children as well.  I think you all have realized by now how bossy she is, and if you haven't then chances are you are exactly like her.  She tries to control all situations and thinks that no one is able to make a sound decision without her advice, opinions, instruction and demands.  So I felt like being asked to prepare a dish for their Thanksgiving meal was a good first step in being recognized as not only part of the family but as the capable, adult wife of her Son.

Aiden at Church last Sunday Night! (Do you like this photo effect?  I used it on both, but am not sure if I like it or not so if you want to give your 2cents then feel free!)

I spent the day with our little family and waited around on my Daddy to come pick Aiden up.  They always spend Saturday and Sunday at his second home in Virginia and playing on his property there and usually run some errands on the weekends together as well.  I'm sure that didn't sit well with Serena (the Mother-in-Law) but I am not going to disrupt my Sons patterns and routines and his special one-on-one time with his best friend aka his Grandfather just because Thanksgiving comes early around here.  After my Daddy and Aiden left I decided it was time to start cooking.  I was making my homemade Baked Macaroni and Cheese, which is Justins favorite food in the entire world ever.  Then we all got cleaned up, dressed and ready to walk next door and spend the day with our extended family and all the Aunts, Uncles and Cousins that had come in for the pseudo Thanksgiving activities.

Emma & Andrea each wearing one of my boots!

Every year I end up getting two little shadows who follow me around and want to sit and talk to me.  This year was no different.  I spent most of the evening with Andrea and Emma, taking pictures, watching Andrea do her cheers she learned in Cheerleading and listening to Emma tell jokes and just be a silly little girl.  It always makes me realize just how badly I want a little girl of my own some day.  Andrea and I did pedicures that night, and she wanted to do matching colors which she thought was just super cool.  I had a great time hanging out with my baby cousins and doing girlie things for a change.

Our toes with their sparkly green polish!

Other than that I have been working on my Home Management Diary, as I call it.  Some people refer to it as a Homemaking Journal, Household Management Binder and probably about eleventy hundred other names.  I've been reading a lot of new blogs and really trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with The Vintage Housewife.  Oh, and I was asked by my bestest best friend Kristy to co-author a blog with her based on our old website Sweet-Sale.com and I, of course, thought it was a great idea and said yes.   So I'm not working on a third blog, but thankfully I have her help and don't really have to put in as much time as I do here.  This will always be my main blogging focus, as I've met some of the most lovely and wonderful people through this blog.  Sweet Sale is more like a creative writing project for Kristy and I, and it's more humor driven than this blog or The Vintage Housewife is.  Feel free to check it out, read our About Kristy and About Ashlee pages and check out some of the posts we've go up.  I'm sure for the people who have been reading this blog for a while that one particular seminar I posted here will be quite familiar, but Kristy has put up a few new posts and I highly recommend her Top 5 Womens Products That Totally Aren't Stupid Or Anything (although I don't agree that Vajazzling should have been in the number one spot, but it's not my list) and the really odd letter that we wrote back to someone who was spamming Kristys' email account in 2008.  I've got another post going up on The Vintage Housewife later tonight.


How do you plan to spend your Thanksgiving?

It's an honorable goal

It would be fair to say that I am a bit more than a bit domestic.  I like domestic activities.  Truly, I do.  I even occasionally do my vacuuming in heels.  Which just automatically makes me way more of a dork awesome than everyone else I know.  It dawned on me a few weeks ago that while I have this freakish obsession love of all things domestic, I can not cook very many things from scratch.  What I mean by that is I can only cook one thing from scratch.  So I've been attempting to learn to cook, all on my own with no outside help.  It's been going really well, actually.  Except...for the whole baking thing.  I remember that my Granny made basically every baked good that she and her oven ever produced from scratch.  I want to do that.  First though, I should probably learn to not burn the boxed supposedly "super easy" version of baked goods from scratch.  This part, well...this part of my challenge has been a bit harder for me.  I have been successful twice though!  Chyeah!  *high fives to everyone who reads this*  Yep, I'm that excited about it!

I produced some totally tasty yellow cupcakes that managed to make it out of my oven looking like *gasp* yellow cupcakes instead of weird deformed hybrid yellow cake on the top funky rock hard chocolate cake/brownie on the bottom.   That means I did not burn them!  Not in the least!  I was so proud of myself that I tried something I have never been able to master.  The stupid rolled dough cinnamon rolls from Pillsbury, the first time the bottom was a tad browner than the top.  My husband and my 3 year old ate them like they were starving and told me they were good, bless their hearts.  The second time though, I mastered the premade cinnamon roll!  Yay!

These are some of my cupcakes by the way!  I put food coloring in the icing for my son.  I even used my Granny's plates to sit them on.  (=

So now I think I'm ready to actually try to bake something from scratch.  It's probably not going to be pretty.  Okay, my first attempt will more likely not be edible or pretty more realistically.  I somehow have gotten this very rare "skill" of being able to read a recipe, do everything it says exactly and have it still turn out tasting like...WTF.  Yeah, don't ask me how I do it.  It's a gift!  I'm determined though.  I don't know what my first attempt will be though.  I'm thinking that maybe I should go with the easiest thing I can find and work my way up to the harder stuff, so I've still got some research (read: googling) to do on that.  I would try peanut butter cookies, because  I used to help my aunt make them when I was little, and as I recall that is probably about as easy as it gets, but unfortunately the hubby and most likely my oldest son are allergic to peanuts.  (I only say most likely because we haven't had a formal allergy test yet, I'm about 99% sure he is allergic, we're awaiting a referral to get his tests done)

So wish me luck in my quest to be able to bake at least one thing from scratch and have it taste at least moderately good and not burn it into a state where it is unrecognizable. I'm probably going to need all the luck I can get.  No really, I burnt corn on the cob once a few years ago.  I am completely serious about that too.  *sigh*