Giving my guests the finger!

Dan and I are throwing a murder mystery dinner party in a few weeks. It's been on my whimsical "to do" list for a while now because... A.) I wanted an excuse to use the "good" china and attempt to whip up something gourmet, B.) I used to love the campy movie Clue and thought it would be fun to have my own version, with lots of drinking involved, of course... and C.) wanted to throw a Halloween party, but our house is a bit too small to have a raging fiesta.

I know, I know... some of you are probably thinking, "Hey, you forgot D.) You are totally cheesy", which I am, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, I just wanted to update you all on my fun invitation I made for this dinner party. As the oh-so-cheeky post title indicates, I did indeed give my guests "the finger", except not in the "Get the *&%$# out of my lane!" kind of way. Instead, I borrowed this invitation idea from Martha Stewart:

Isn't this a spooky spoof on the old "tie a ribbon around your finger to help you remember" adage?

Anyway, last week, I decided it was time to get crafty. I bought rubber severed fingers, black boxes and ribbon, and red shredded paper from Michael's. I hot-glued a black bow around each of the fingers, lined the boxes with red, set the finger on top, and wrote the date of the dinner party along with "Don't forget!" on the top of the box. Of course, I also sent descriptions of each character and the description of the Mafia story.

The below photo didn't come out very well, but here it is:


Stay tuned for more about this par-tay, as well as an update on new "just do it" challenges" that are coming soon!

Martha Stewart image from here

The "word" list

"You got that right!
Word to your mother!"

- Vanilla Ice
"Ice, Ice Baby"

"A word is dead when it is said, some say

I say it just begins to live that day!"

- Emily Dickinson

Sundays in our household are a time for laundry, church, grocery shopping, grading, wiping away disgusting hair follicles from sink (do men ever clean up after shaving??), swiffering, folding, hanging, planning dinners for the week, and in general becoming cleaner, more organized human beings. At least, that's what is supposed to happen. Except, these days usually end up looking more like this: Dan watching Redskins, sulking over defeat, both of us taking naps, going to coffee house together, and wasting endless hours on the Internet.

Today, during one such hour on the Internet, I found www.wordle.net, an amazing website where people can enter their blog URL or a post, and it will create artwork with your most used words.

I absolutely love anything to do with words, from collecting interesting quotes and playing with the magnetic poetry on my file cabinet at school, to teaming up with Dan to beat our family's asses at Scrabble and Taboo. And I'm all about words that are pretty, despite what they may mean. In fact, during a lazy lunchtime last year, my very bored colleagues and I talked about words that we thought were beautiful ("tiramisu", "cantaloupe", we even had a general consensus that the word "chlamydia" was way too pretty to be a term for an STD!) and words we hated to say ("moist", "puberty", one colleague for some inexplicable reason hated the word "trousers"?)

Of course, being all about words, I was curious of what the word art for this blog would look like.

Here it is...


And, it can easily be put in different shades!



Some of my top words? "List" (to borrow an early 90's quote... "no, doy!"), "make", "create", "Dan", "going", "bake", "simple", "summer", "teacher", "need".

Pretty neat, huh?

I'm just glad my word art didn't include words from this post. I don't think anyone would have understood if "chlamydia" or "puberty" had been in my wordle! Yuck.

Go check out your blog word art! www.wordle.net

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"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
by any other word would smell as sweet"
- Romeo and Juliet

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The pumpkin recipe list

I am a freak for all desserts with pumpkin flavor! Need a pumpkin fix? Read on!

Pumpkin pie dip
Very easy and cheap to make, addictive, seasonal, yummy treat!

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese- softened as much as possible

2 cups powdered sugar

1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin pie filling

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

garnishes- cinnamon sticks

Beat cream cheese and sugar at medium speed with electric mixer until smooth. NOTE: This may take a while. Add pie filling, 1 t. cinnamon and ginger, beating well for as long as necessary. Cover and chill 8 hours. Serve with gingersnap cookies, apples, and pear slices. Prep- 5 min. Chill 8 hours.

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Pumpkin Pie Bars

Cold and delicious! The tray will be empty by the end of the night. By the way, I know there are quite a few ingredients, but this is so simple to make!

2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup apple juice
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
2 eggs
Frosting- cream cheese frosting

Heat oven to 350. Grease 15 x 10 x 1 inch pan. Beat bar ingredients at low speed. Spread batter in pan. Bake 20 to 30 minutes. Cool completely (1 hour).

Frost- refrigerate until set- about 30 minutes. Store in the refrigerator.

Cut into 8 rows by 6 rows. 110 calories. 45 fat.

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Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I haven't made these cookies myself yet, but a colleague swears by this recipe!

* 2 1/2 cups flour
* 1 tsp. salt
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp. ground clove
* 1 pinch of ground ginger
* 1 stick butter, room temperature
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 egg, room temperature (??- this one was weird to me... why leave the egg out so long?)
* 15 oz. can of pure pumpkin
* 1 tsp. vanilla
* 1 1/2 cup of milk chocolate chips (or chunks from a candy bar, or butterscotch chips, or white chocolate chips)

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 375
2. Sift together in a small bowl: flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger
3. In a large mixer bowl, beat together butter, brown sugar, and regular sugar
4. Add pumpkin and vanilla and mix until incorporated
5. Add egg
6. Beat in flour mixture gradually
7. Stir in chocolate chips/ chunks
8. Drop rounded spoonfuls onto baking sheet that has been greased and floured
9. Back for 13-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for 2-5 minutes. Then, move cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Photos courtesy of here, here, here, and here.

*****

Lastly, if you aren't into baking, but you're still craving pumpkin flavor, I have two more options for you:

Pumpkin Sammies: Buy Ben & Jerry's pumpkin cheesecake ice cream (seasonal, of course) and a bag of large, soft, ginger cookies. Put a small scoop of ice cream on cookie and make sandwich by putting another on top. Freeze until firm, and then indulge. This could not be easier, unless you decide to just go for:

Coldstone's Pumpkin Pie in the Sky ice cream: Go to Coldstone's, order this, insert spoon, swoon! I like this lazy-ass pumpkin fix. :)

"Pick-me-up after long day" list

At first, my day went like this:

Fussing at students
Writing detentions
scrambling to copier
calling about said detentions
teaching, teaching, teaching
lesson totally bored the kids
iBooks not working during testing
strap broke on favorite pair of espadrilles
flu shot after school

But later...

Cuddling with Dan
hot apple cider
cold, homemade pumpkin bars
cream cheese frosting
The Office wedding
cracking up at Andy's crotch injury
watching hilarious wedding video on You Tube ,
(if you watched The Office, then you know why)

It's been a good day!

(If anyone wants it, I'll post this easy recipe for pumpkin bars tomorrow.
The above picture is from here because, while mine were delicious, they weren't as pretty as these!)

The "Halloween Decor" List

(Scary Hitchcock picture from here)

Why are birds so creepy when they're in huge groups?

I've remember feeling pretty nervous when I was suddenly surrounded by menacing pigeons at Trafalgar Square during Dan and my visit to London. They surrounded me like an angry mob and made all kinds of crazy coohing sounds. I actually remember barking something like, "Take the damn picture already!" to Dan when they started fluttering near my face. He proceeded to take his time and crack up over my bird hysteria.


So in the same vein as Hitchcock, I decided there was no better way to decorate for Halloween than with a scary bird motif! I love Poe's creepy poem "The Raven" and was so excited when I saw there raven silhouettes at Michael's for $4.00 per package. When I was playing hooky from writing class yesterday, I decided to do a little decorating. I removed all of the wedding photos from the frames in my dining room and filled them with the raven silhouettes. The whole operation took about fifteen minutes and a few sticky tabs to finish...

I tilted some of the pictures so that it would look like some of the bird silhouettes were trying to peck their feathered friends free from the frames:



Here's my dining room before:


And after my creepy bird invasion (sorry for the awful quality of the pictures- I desperately need a new camera!):





To finish the look, I put a few shiny, red delicious apples into a branch bowl to resemble "wicked" apples and added some black skulls from the dollar store on the table:
We're throwing a murder mystery dinner party later this month, so I just wanted to play with the set-up of the table.

Is anybody out there all about Halloween too? Please share! Oh, and enjoy our other Halloween decor pictures:

Stairs before:


Stairs after:



Mantle with gourds from supermarket:


Cinderella pumpkin that my sister bought for me (Can you believe this is a real pumpkin?? It looks so perfect!)

The "playing hooky" list

I had no real excuse to skip my writing class tonight. If I had been a good little student, I would have inhaled a Lean Cuisine for dinner, rushed through VCU traffic, and sat through two and a half hours of listening to everyone's ridiculously amazing stories (see last blog entry), praying that time would run out before anyone had a chance to workshop my essay.

But I just didn't feel like it.

* I was tired.
* I was hungry.
* I had received seven mass e-mails from other class participants today, having rather pretentious debates about what makes a story worthwhile to read.
* During one such e-mail, the teacher talked about how Harry Potter (as well as any fantasy, romance, or mystery books) "should have no claim on the time of thoughtful adults" because they are full of "simple words for simple minds". Judge, much?!
* Those discussions made me worry about my own story NOT being worthwhile to read.

and...

* I wanted to actually eat the enchiladas Dan made for dinner!
* I wanted to actually take the time to write, rather than talk about writing.
* I wanted to catch up with friends.
* I wanted to go for a run.
* I wanted to blog!
* I wanted to bake.
* I wanted to decorate my house with the Halloween decorations I bought this weekend.
* I wanted to surf Banana Republic for cute tops.
* I just didn't wanna go!
* I wanted some cheese with my "whine". (Bad, cliched pun...)
* I wanted some wine with my "whine"!

Don't even say it! I know I'm bad for skipping! How will I ever make up for not following this writing version of a "just do it" challenge? By writing several blog entries this week!

I'm not giving up on this writing challenge. One thing I have learned from this (suck-my-energy-and-confidence-away-slowly) class is that ideas breed other ideas. The teacher told us to write and be creative in every way possible because that will in turn make us more creative and better writers.

So feel free to check in often during the next week because I'm going to try to write as much as I can.

Unless I just don't wanna.

(Picture of fellow slacker Ferris Bueller from here)