Jealous

The purpose of this post is to make you jealous. First, I know that you all wish that your love seats were in this many pieces on your basement floor. Ryan has embraced this project since the last post about upholstery and has been using his super Google skills to find obscure couch fabrics and materials that we never knew existed.

Next, here's our Sunday dinner. Ryan got some special Indian seasonings from my parents for Christmas and we made...(drum roll please)...chicken tikka, tandoori naan and black dahl. I found the black lentils at an Indian grocery store I discovered in town. By the way, the owners are my new best buddies. We chit-chatted about India and our favorite foods for a good long time. If you ever need to make black dahl, black lentils look a little like small black rocks and take about the same amount of time to cook, but it was worth it.

The third thing to be jealous of is this nice lounging chair that Helen takes three of her meals in. Life just isn't fair.

Meacham Visit

This weekend the Meacham's came to visit so that Ryan could interview at UNMC. It was great that Max came along to play with Helen. He even taught her how to grow a tooth; he was already an expert after two successful eruptions.

I have to admit most of Helen's "milestones" have been approximated to the closest month in her baby book. But we were able to pinpoint the appearance of her front left tooth to between 10:15 and 11:17 am on Friday, January 16th. I know that she didn't have one before she went down for her nap and it was definitely there when she woke up.

Sarah taught us a new recipe for Ryan's sizzler pan. Now we can have brownies and sk'ookies every other night.

We went to the Omaha Zoo on Saturday. Helen made some friends while we were there.

Christmas Banner

On this day, January 14th 2009, I completed my very own Christmas Banner. My mom made one of these when we were little kids. I have fond memories of shaking hers so that the bells would jingle while we sang Christmas carols, that is until I got in trouble for making too much noise. Now that I get to be a homemaker, I had time to make one of my own, similar, but not identical, to my mom's and sisters'. Here is a close-up of Ryan's favorite square.

We are all ready for next year's festivities. I haven't decided when I am going to pack it away yet, it might make it until Valentine's Day. I certainly don't have a Valentine's Day Banner to replace, but I do have enough felt left over to make a banner for all major holidays.

New project

This week we started a new adventure together. We are reupholstering our couches. Ryan was very reluctant about tackling such and ambitious project. But I told him that all the successful couples I knew did projects together and then suggested some different options that I knew he would never agree to (quilting, cake decorating and preserving jellies) and all of a sudden reupholstering wasn't so bad. One of the first things that we had to decide on was the color. I thought that one of these colors would be a lot of fun.

But Ryan was more interested in one of these colors. We compromised and are getting one of the colors in Ryan's batch, "new mocha," but I can make the pillows as wild as I want. Not a bad arrangement.

The first rule of thumb when starting a project is to get lots of help.

This is particularly important because it appears that the people who did the original job were paid by the staple. Our love seat is now in about 20 pieces and 1000 staples all over the basement. This is going to be a good time.

Mom's Cheese Sausage Soup

4 medium potatoes
1/2 stick butter
1 onion
3-4 carrots
3-4 stalks celery
1 lb. sausage, cooked and drained
1 lb. Velveeta
3 cups milk
salt & pepper

Combine first 5 ingredients. Cover with waters and cook; do not drain. Add sausage, cheese, milk and seasonings. Heat, but do not boil.

(I would probably saute the onions, carrots and celery in the butter. Then add the potatoes and water.)