Well, the title is misleading. I did not accomplish all of the things I wanted but I was on orders from Mel to take things a bit easy since I hadn't been feeling right all week and it continued into the weekend. On the house front the family room and the front room are almost to the standard I like. I need to vacuum and finish dusting but its a vast improvement. Mel got some shop time in working on tool maintenance and he was much happier to have time in the shop. I got half way through the cleaning of my studio before I finally just stopped. I was tired, it was warm and well, I was running out of time to get to the house meeting. Things went very sideways for me on Saturday and I managed to only break one wine glass and spill a bunch of stuff thus mel telling me to take it easy.

I made banana bread with the standard recipe and then added chopped up figs and dried pineapple. It also had a partial fail. Mel watched me use the cake tester on it and it came out clean. I pulled the pan out and when it had cooled I flipped it to get the bread out and the middle sank and was undone by quite a ways. So, I got it back into the oven to finish baking. The top came out a bit browner than I like but it takes good. Looks bad but tastes good which I guess was par for the course. I made Porter Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream frosting. The nice thing is they are tasty...the bad thing is I didn't fill things well and they came out a bit odd shaped. The frosting was nummy and I got it from a cupcake cookbook I got for xmas from fibergeek and wow was that easy to do. Next time I will get fancy and use a pasty bag and frost them nicely. I do think I should pick up liners which would have made them a bit prettier and easier to deal with. I should have followed Top Ten Cupcake Baking Tips. So I will probably make these again this week. They are fun and it would be nice to bring them in for my one team at work. But I need another cupcake pan since having 1 breaks the rules and really, it makes more sense. Mel was all about having me make more of them plus with a baby I'm sure toddler years will involve cupcakes.

I didn't spin at all over the weekend and I kinda feel lame but again I was tired and knitting was more fun. I got the cuff done one of mel's mitts and I cast on for mel's dad's cowl. I had made him one for xmas but it was too small and he uses it as an ear muff. While practical, I really wanted him to have the cowl too so I cast that on as well. I'm very much with the really quick knit projects right now.

I picked up my bike on Friday and I didn't ride...I'm gonna fit that in this week some how. Maybe when I get home from the gym I'll take it around the block. I tried getting on it in shorts and flipflops and that was a fail...I forget I really need my shoes to give me the extra height. I did manage to take some pictures that I need to annotate for bertana when she and I were tweeting back and forth about my hands fitting my gear shifts. I couldn't describe what the issue was and pictures work way better. I hope to get that up today.

Today I start Stage II of my workouts. Lots of things I haven't done before in the gym. I'm okay with that. I've still been dropping weight...I'm down to 2 pounds from pre-pregnancy weight. I also am wearing pants I haven't worn since september and that feels fabulous. I' have missed my standard work pants and in the summer khakis versus jeans is way more comfy.

So it wasn't a bad weekend just didn't manage to get my studio back in shape or any fabric cut out. I still have some time for that but I don't want to waste time. I hope to work on the room throughout this week and get it in shape for some weekend sewing.

Man, this entry is random and bouncing around...I'm sorry.

Friday night we had a really nice evening with Tati and Mingo. We had homemade pulled pork sandwiches and then played Carcassone. Which is the precurser game to Settlers of Catan. It was fun and entertaining and we hadn't had a nice quiet evening dinner with them in a really long time. It was good for both of us. Benton was trying to screw his schedule up more by not wanting to nap or go to bed correctly. We learned that he doesn't get a blanket if we put him down still awake. He will invariably pull it up over his head and get frustrated that he can't get it off. So, we go and cover him up when we head to bed and that works well. Sunday he was much more his normal self. We could tell he grew cause his ducky jammies that he's wearing here at the retreat are now not quite long enough. He's lost a bit of his chins too so that shows he's getting bigger as well. He was a doll at the house meeting and ate really good and even napped a bit snuggled up with scribe_ari.

All in all a nice weekend, not exactly how I had planned it but it was nice.

Well, my hopes for last night was to get all of mom's gifts done. Yeah, not so much. Now, I can either stay home from knit night and work on them or just send her two packages...with the second not getting there till after the holiday. I think the easy way out would be good for me. Less stressful. I hope to get home tonight, get the gift number 1 unpinned from blocking...take a photo of me wearing it and then mail it off. We shall see though if its dry. The blocking is really helping it though. (I'll post a friend's locked post to show it off btw, don't worry). So, I think I've made my decision.

I did manage to make dinner last night though with some pretty good pantry kung fu. I took london broil and chopped it up and added it to the dutch over where I had sweated garlic and onions. I cooked the meat with cinnamon, fresh ground cumin, dried diced jalapenos, pepper and kosher salt. Once that was cooked I added a can of corn and a can of crushed tomatoes and let it simmer until it thickened up. I added a bit of cornstarch to thicken it a bit more and it was nummy.

Pour mel found out when he went to get his cavity fixed that he needs a root canal/crown. That is scheduled for monday am. Poor guy. Course he's lucky. He's never felt a problem at all in the tooth and I guess that is a blessing.

In the rash of weird...I got one of the speeding tickets in Phx when american_knight and I came back from Kingman. That is a bill I wasn't expecting. It was right where the speed limit drops on I-17 to 55..I was going 71. le sigh. Oh, well.

And more in the random file. The commercials from Sunmaid about "fruit and sunshine!" being the only thing in them are LIES! Seriously. they should say "fruit and sulfur dioxide and sunshine!" Asshats. All this means is that I will be heading to trader joes for my fruit cake supplies, like I expected but I was kinda hopeful I could have knocked that off my list last night too. Oh, well.

Time to crunch down and get things done at work.

1) You keep seeing stuff that would be perfect for this person and that and you already bought stuff...
2) You start getting the urge to buy yourself cool things
3) Having to wrap all of the gifts...its fun for the first few but after that...uck.

BTW, argent_lupin We have not finished for you guys until you move...course that means it might not be there in time for xmas...unless I order from amazon so update you list..hint...hint.