Power of the Purse & a Craftastic Saturday

I went with ScrappyGirl last night to a charity event for Girls Inc called Power of the Purse. This was so much fun. We ran around in fake pearls and ogled pretty purses and bags I could only dream of owning. The atmosphere was buzzing with excitement but the food was tiny with the exception of the dessert which was my demise. This morning I awoke feeling as if I had been drawn & quartered, magically had my limbs attached and then been drug through the mud. After a short morning chat with ScrappyGirl we came to the conclusion that it was the dessert that killed me. (She is feeling fine and dandy.) Word to the wise...avoid the chocolate mousse cake with extra chocolate icing or else you will suffer the morning after death by dessert feeling I have. I rustled up some dirt flavored coffee to try to perk myself up but could only suffer through half of the tiny Styrofoam cup before dumping it down the drain. I am hoping my veggie-fide lunch can bring me back to the land of the living :)

I thought this purse was so cute. It wasn't in the auction but I thought it was crazy cool that the designer, Jayne Dearborn, has had some of her bags featured on Ugly Betty.


ScrappyGirl fell hard for this bag and despite my crappy camera skills you can see why. That rich brown leather was so lush and I found the design to be absolutely amazing.


When I noticed this beauty I thanked my lucky stars Miss B stayed home with the Mr. The girl would have bid on this purse with every bit of what is in the bank....and then some.

Finally here is the purse I dreamed of taking home with me. I think it was made from lambskin. I touched the pretty pink purse and I swear it was like buttah. I wanted this sooo bad and I just watched it float away on a cloud to the winning bidder.

Shoshana Bean singing a Wicked song. She has appeared on Broadway in Hairspray and Wicked. Loved, Loved, LOVED this part of the evening!


****Tomorrow ScrappyGirl will be hosting a Mom & Me crafting event and has room for more. For any of you local Moms interested it will be: this Saturday from 2-5pm and cost is $12 per family or $8 if you come w/o kiddos in tow. Click HERE to see her site and let her know if you are interested in coming. I will be there with Miss B!!!

Blending In With the Rest of Them

Yep. It was me today walking in downtown Portland today carrying:
2 purses
1 backpack
1 extra set of clothes
1 plastic bag with stuff in it
And talking to myself about how I looked like a bag lady.

So there you go. I was the crazy lady walking down the street, carrying a ton of crud, and yelling at no one in particular.

Weekend WhazZup?!

It is so NOT fun to term my talking about my weekends as updates so I have decided to name my weekend update posts as "Weekend WhazZup?!" and because I think of my WhazZups in bits and pieces I will probably break things up into list format.

Some Terms that might help you:
Rew - Rewind
FF - Fast Forward

Rew: To start my wacky weekend off, I jankied up my leg. I was going upstairs and wow, wow, wow the Pain. My achilles tendon and the heel of my foot were hurting like mad. For the rest of the weekend I wore an ankle brace and hobbled around like I was in desperate need of a cane. FF: We all had to dress up in the office here at Computer Co today and crazy Kally thought it would be okay to wear heels. I wasn't all crazy I brought a pair of flats just in case.

Rew: We took Miss B to a birthday party. My word! This was one of the strangest tween parties I have ever attended. The girls ran around the house, screaming at the top of their lungs while one of them chased the others with a Teletubby. During cake time there was a rousing discussion on how much they hated the Jonas Brothers. Followed by more screams. (I had to agree with the tweens here. I think there should be a law against boys owning a flat iron and skinny jeans.) Then the party became a tween girl hatefest. They all "hated" Jo Bros, Twilight, Hanah Montana's new hair, and many other Disney Tween things.

Rew: Wacky Weather: Now you can't have a proper wacky weekend without involving the weather. Yesterday we had a rain cloud over our house. (I am not speaking figuratively here either.) The rain was falling right outside my house and once I was 2 houses away the sun was out and shining bright enough for shades. About 30 minutes later I noticed little pieces of sleet beginning to fall. Then in no time at all we had full blown hail falling from the sky. This was not Oklahoma type hail, this hail was much smaller but it covered the ground like a layer of snow/ice/whatever. FF: This morning we had snow. It didn't stick but a ton of snow fell. Then the sun came out. This pattern repeated twice. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was back in Oklahoma with all of this indecisive weather.

***I guess I'll end with a B-ism.
When we had our guests over for dinner last week, the Mr thought he could be funny and get her to say something cute so he said "Miss B, what is it we say? If mama isn't happy...."
(of course, the girl never acts upon command)
B: (wild, crazed, scared look across her face) HIDE!!!!!

Once again, thanks a lot B.

Mmmm Cake and More

Dinner last night went off great!!! I did have to make an adjustment/shortcut to my applesauce cake because of time constraints. -I didn't get to do it from scratch so I went the sorta home made route. (I just don't get how Rachel Ray can do a dish in just 30 mins. Am I doing something wrong here? It took me a little over an hour to get my food finished.) For those of you interested in a Super Duper Easy way to make an applesauce cake when you have a limited amount of time, here you go.

1 & 1/2 cups of applesauce
1 box of white cake mix

*Don't follow the directions on the cake mix box. All you have to do is mix the above 2 ingredients together. Non-stick spray your pan and throw it in the oven @ 350 degrees for 30-40 mins. (I left my cake in for 35mins.) And Ta-Da!!! You have a cake.

***For a topping I made a glaze. Of course, the Mr complained because he thinks all cakes are supposed to have icing on them. This cake is so versatile you could do just about anything with it: top it with sugared strawberries or any fruit of your choice for that matter. I think the next time I do this cake I am going to put some dried apple slices in the batter, then top it with a fruit and serve ice cream on the side. Does that sound yummy or what?!?!

This weekend I am taking Miss B to the mall and then a B-day party. I have been asked to bake something for some business peeps coming to Computer Co next week. Any suggestions??

Watching AI on My Terms

I am an American Idol cheater. After the tremendously awful episode last week I was extremely wary of what was to come this week. So what did I do? I recorded Tuesday's show on my DVR and watched it the Kally way (Hmmmm, this guy is boring. Thank goodness I have fast forward!!!) I ended up ff-ing through about half of the contestants and since I didn't really feel a connection with any of them I wasn't worried about missing last night's results show. I still wanted to know who would make it through because I really liked Scott and a few others. Then I got smart and realized I am in PST and AI has to air for other time zones before mine sooooooo I went on the Internet and googled AI results and -badda BING-o!- I knew who was getting through and wild card contestants without having to endure all of the Seacrest drama: "And the person going through to the Top 12 will be.....announced after this..." -It was so nice not to have that going on and to top it off I gained an extra hour to do whatever I wanted. w00t!

Tonight I am having friends over for dinner. I am cooking the Mr's favorite pasta dish/casserole, a side, and an applesauce cake. I have to make dinner magically happen in about an hour so let's keep our fingers crossed that everything turns out and I don't have to cook the man way......ordering pizza :)

ETA: I must give Props & Snaps where deserved. When I commented on cooking "the man way" I did not take into consideration the above awesome cooking style of Mr E of the E Family. His cooking creations are fabulous! I even dream about his Mexican dishes some nights :)

OMG! in a Cup

At your average office happy hour means drinks. At Computer Co it means ICE CREAM baby (Ben & Jerry's to be specific)!!! Imagine my disappointment as the boys gathered to run out of the office in their normal hungry heard style and I knew I had to stay in and finish work tasks. Thank all that is good and ice-creamy that the Mr went along on this run and brought back....wait for it.......Triple Caramel Chunk ice cream!!!! This was the most fantabulous of all ice creams: a creamy vanilla base with streams of caramel running through it and the best part of all was the chocolate chunks with caramel filling. Ahhhhh paradise. Don't worry about the cals. You could be eating something much worse for you that doesn't taste half as good. Go ahead go for it!

My Dad

So when I told y'all about the Saturn Bootie Bump, I totally forgot to tell you about what my dad said when I called him and told him all about it.

First off you need some background on Dad. He is a total hypochondriac, over protective, over reactive. I lovingly think of him as the Drama King at times.

He called me late Friday night while I was running on my treadmill. The Mr took a message and forgot to tell me until Saturday night. Bad Daughter that I am I forgot and didn't call until Sunday afternoon.

Here are some snippets from our conversation:

Kally: Sorry Dad. Forgot to call yesterday because we were running errands and got rear ended by some Bungalow Joe in a blue mustang.

Dad: What?!?!!!! Iseveryoneokay?!!!! HowisMissB?!!!!! (He seriously talks like that when he is worried. It sounds like one big sentence word.)

Kally: She is fine. We all are fine. Car is okay. Don't worry.

Dad: Are you sure? Maybe you should go to the hospital. You know, that is why I called you. I just had a bad feeling. You know? Like something happened and I should call you.

Kally: Oh mah gosh, Dad. Nobody needs to go to the hospital. We are fine and Nothing happened Friday night. We had the accident late Saturday afternoon.

Dad: Yeah, well it was a feeling. I was tuned in..... Like a premonition. Well, what was that guy doing anyway that he hit your car???

Kally: I don't know but he obviously was NOT paying attention.

Dad: He was probably worrying about his girlfriend instead.

I love my Dad.

Weekend Happenings

I just thought I was going to have an uneventful weekend. I should know by now any time I announce how things are going to be 9 times out of 10 the complete opposite happens.

Saturday morning the Mr informed me of his desire to take B hiking Sunday afternoon. (They are outside people like that. You know the whole camping, sleeping on the rocks and roughing it stuff kind of peeps.) We all hopped in the car and after a quick lunch at DQ we headed to the nearest sporting goods/outdoors store. While we were stopped for a pedestrian to cross the entrance to the parking lot ***WHAMO*** some guy in a blue mustang rear ended us. (This was NOT the excitement I was hoping for.) --Thank goodness we were all okay and the rear bumper of our little silver Saturn only has a few tiny blue scrapes and scratches. When the mustang whomped our car bootie, the first thing the Mr & I did was ask Miss B if she was okay. Her reply to us was simple: "I'm okay but I think the dilly bar I ate was shaken up all over my stomach."

Sunday it rained. No hiking happened so B and I went ahead with the bread pudding. This was my first try at bread pudding and I didn't really like this recipe. It ended up tasting more like a souffle and not as dense as I usually prefer. The sauce that was to be drizzled over the top was fantastic though. The Mr said it smelled and tasted like french toast to him. In case you are interested in a yummy sweet sauce to drizzle over a cake, bread pudding or anything here is the recipe.

1 cup corn syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter

Combine all ingredients (except butter) in a medium saucepan. Cook, medium heat. Once sauce is thinned add butter. Stir continuously until butter is melted. Drizzle over your favorite pastry/baked good.