You’ve all seen the annoying commercials.  Either you love ‘em, or you think they’re the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen.   I’d venture to guess that many of you, whether you’ll admit or not,  secretly want one.  It’s the oh so cozy  blanket with sleeves: the snuggie.

I’ve secretly wanted one for years, but never had the guts to buy one for fear of being ridiculed by my fellow man.  This winter I’ve decided it’s high time I embrace my secret yearning for a snuggie. So here’s my proclamation to the world…

I WANT A SNUGGIE!

And not just any plain old snuggie, a zebra print one, thank you very much.  If I’m going to snuggie it up, I may as well do it in style, right?

So guess who else has succumbed to their hidden snuggie desire…

Weezer, that’s who!

Weezer’s lead singer Rivers Cuomo, may have summed up the strange Snuggie phenomenon best. “Snuggies are just this weird cool product that everyone seems to like,” he said. “They’re really popular and you can’t figure out why.”

Seems Weezer, best known for  The Sweater Song,  loves the snuggie so much, they have designed their own line, naming them Wuggies, and are selling them as a set with their latest CD, Raditude.

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Snuggie even had a fall fashion show with the latest in snuggie designs.  I’m being completely serious, here.  Would I joke about a snuggie? The fall 2009/winter 2010 collection show “showcase’s the latest colors, fabrics and patterns and features the sexiest looks in blanket-wear, for not only adults, but kids and canines as well.” You read that right! Canines as well, can snuggie it up this season.

And if the Wuggie and the fashion show aren’t enough to convince you that it will soon be socially acceptable to own a snuggie, maybe this will…

Yep, that’s Oprah in a pink  snuggie. And beside her is Tyler Perry in the zebra print that I’m longing for.

Also the cast of the Today show (including Matt Lauer, who said he, “wouldn’t be caught dead in a Snuggie.”)

If you want to give in to your secret snuggie yearning, here’s a link to the snuggie site: https://www.getsnuggie.com/flare/next

Or you could make your own with this snuggie pattern and instructions.

Make your own snuggie

Snuggie it up this coffee break!

~Kate

Betcha didn’t know…

this tip for reversing winter weight gain. Soak up some sun to curb cravings.  Without enough sunlight, your body’s production of the feel-good hormone serotonin dips dramatically. That may trigger cravings for chips, cookies, ice cream and other refined carbs, which have the power to raise serotonin levels, too, but for a price: calories. But sitting in the sun (or even a brightly lit room) for at least 10 – 15 minutes a day can do the same thing.

~Woman’s World

*Leave a comment on this, or any, post and be automatically entered in this week’s giveaway.

It’s been more than a month, now, since I blew out my knee on my icy street. Between you and me, my knee still hurts. In fact, it’s still quite swollen and has caused me to tone down my training at Operation Athlete. Needless to say, my knee is on my last nerve.

And considering the fact that we’ve had snow and ice on the roads more days than not over the past month or so – and considering that today is the second snow day this week – I figure we could use all the help we can get when it comes to getting around in this stuff.

To that end, I thought I’d share some tips for walking in the snow and ice – without breaking a leg!

• Toss your purse, laptop or other personal belongings into a backpack. Carrying things in your arms or slinging a purse on your shoulder will throw off your balance.
• If there is a mixture of snow and ice on the ground, try to walk in the snow as much as possible.
• Take baby steps.
• Look ahead – watch for shiny or dark spots on sidewalks and roads, which are likely nice little sheets of ice.
• Pretend like you’re a skater.  Ted (Operation Athlete) taught me this one while escorting us to our cars. Too bad the advice came about 2 hours after I blew out my knee… Think about it. You’re expecting to slip and slide, anyway. So just glide your way across the ice. Trust me on this one.
• Wear shoes with a textured sole – better yet, invest in a pair of golf shoes or YakTrax
• Shovel porches and walkways before the snow turns to ice. Get rid of any ice with an ice melter or kitty litter.
• And my favorite piece of advice: Stay inside by a nice fire, with a mug of hot chocolate and your favorite Snuggy!

Happy snow travels! (Or something like that…)

-Liz

Yep, that’s what I told myself over the weekend after I let my son convince me that we needed to try Buddy the Elf’s favorite delicacy, spaghetti with syrup.

“We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.” ~Buddy the Elf

Somehow last year I was able to avoid fulfilling the oft repeated request until the Christmas season was over and Buddy the Elf’s strange eating habits were lost in the shuffle of the New Year.

This year I was not so lucky.  My son caught me at a weak moment, and before I even knew what had happened I was standing at the stove cooking some spaghetti noodles.

He added some syrup and topped the dish off with a crumbled brown sugar poptart. Sounds pretty disgusting, doesn’t it?

He gave it a thumbs up and actually ate most of the plate. And then he begged me to taste it. Really, really begged. Pleading puppy-eye begged.

Guess what? It’s not totally disgusting. I didn’t even gag.

Enjoy getting ready for the holidays. Here’s a few of my very favorite Buddy the Elf quotes to help you get through your day.

Buddy: I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.

Buddy:“I’m sorry I ruined your lives, and crammed eleven cookies into the VCR.”

Buddy to Jovie:I think you’re really beautiful and I feel really warm when I’m around you and my tongue swells up.

Buddy to the fake Santa: You stink. You smell like beef and cheese! You don’t smell like Santa.

Buddy: The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.

[On seeing the mail room]

Buddy: It’s just like Santa’s workshop! Except it smells like mushrooms… and everyone looks like they wanna hurt me…

Kate

Related articles

• Bob Martin: Making Elf into a Broadway musical (thestar.com)
• Holiday: Andy Griffith Show Christmas Episode (americanthings.wordpress.com)
• Watson’s Top 10 Christmas Films (superdps.wordpress.com)

I wrote about this last Christmas, and since it is the season, let’s re-address it. Looking for a way to keep your kids in line year-round? Here’s a little trick you may want to consider (Liz says with a tinge of sarcasm):

Get a shelf elf. That’s right. A shelf elf.

Every night, when the kids go to bed, move the elf to a different spot in the house, making it appear that the elf sneaks off to the North Pole to report to Santa while your little angel sleeps, and returns to “spy” on another area of your home.

When the kid gets into trouble, you present their options, for example: either take a time-out or go tell the shelf elf what you’ve done, so he can go tattle to the big man in red. (Kinda brings new meaning to “don’t be a tattle tale,” don’t you think?)

The elf has other rules, too. While your children can talk to the elf freely, the elf is forbidden to speak to the children. He (or she) is, however, granted any and all communication with the parents and North Pole.

The shelf elf (or Elf on the Shelf) even has its own website, if you can stand it.

While I’m all about the most wonderful time of the year, and even though I still believe in Santa (you better believe it!), this whole elf-on-a-shelf concept seems just a little creepy.

First, it’s always watching you. As if it has eyes in the back of its head or something. What about when you’re taking a bath? Is it watching then, too? EEWWWWW!

Second, these elves, as presented on the above website are tiny. Which makes me wonder if they perhaps are not elves, but goblins (which, as we all know, is what happens when gnomes and leprechauns get drunk… on a beach… at night…). I have to wonder if they’re really bad seeds – not elves at all. And if that’s the case, why in the world would I want one of these in my house? Watching my every move?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my third reason for skepticism would be the notion that some of these parents seem to count on the elf to incite good behavior in the first place, which is a whole other roll of wrapping paper as it were.

Moreover, I should probably watch every word I utter. Because the elves are watching… The elves are always watching…

-Liz

Be sure to tune in Friday as  our Craftdown to Christmas continues!!

Related articles

• What Happens To An Unemployed Elf? (momblognetwork.com)
• The Elf on the Shelf: DIY version (enviromom.com)
• The Elf on the Shelf surpasses Presidents and A Wimpy Kid to claim the #1 spot for a second straight year. (prweb.com)

When I got out my Christmas decorations a few days ago, I discovered that one of my favorite old wreaths was looking a little worse for wear. Many of the berries had fallen off and the greenery seemed to be smashed beyond repair. I decided it was time for a new wreath. Hooray for computers and Google, because I found wreath ideas galore. So many, that I had a hard time choosing one to make. This is the one my husband and I absolutely loved, so here is it…

Cookie Cutter Wreath

Supplies:

• metal cookie cutters, about 16 – 20. (I used 18, which came in a little tub from Walmart.)
• glue gun and glue sticks
• a ribbon or bow to put on top

Directions:

Arrange the cookie cutters into the general size of circle you’d like your finished wreath to be.

You will have to spend a little time re-arranging the cookie cutters to get them to fit together like a puzzle.

I discovered as I started to glue the cookie cutters together, the pieces would shift and need to be re-positioned constantly. Solution: Trace an outline on the inside of the wreath onto a piece of posterboard or large paper. (I pulled the cookie cutters away from the outline so I could take a picture to show you.)

Notice where the cookie cutters touch each other and apply hot glue to those spots.

Work quickly to attach cookie cutters before glue cools and set. Continue gluing until wreath is complete.

Let glue dry completely and attach a bow to the top.

Hang and enjoy!

Halloween is just days away, so in honor of one of my favorite holidays I’m going to teach you how to make this disgustingly disturbing dish…

Creepy Tapeworm Sandwiches

Ingredients:

Hot Dogs

Barbecue Sauce

Hot Dog Buns

Directions:

Cut hot dogs into long strips. I cut each hot dog into thirds, and then cut each third into thirds for a total of 9 hot dog pieces per hot dog.

Put hot dogs into frying pan and add barbecue sauce. Heat through, stirring frequently.

Put warmed “tapeworm” hot dogs onto hot dog bun and enjoy!

~Kate

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Do you know who we owe this great (often misquoted…does bubble, bubble toil and trouble ring a bell?) Halloween diddy to??? It’s none other than Mr. William Shakespeare.

I love the month of October…the crisp air and crunchy fall leaves…the pumpkin patches and corn mazes…the apple scented candles and Fall break at school.

But most of all, I love dressing up for Halloween, and most years you’ll find me in some variation of a witch costume. I think my witch thing started just after I was married, when I dressed up as a witch out of desperation because we were struggling newlyweds and the only costume-y thing I owned was a witch’s hat. I won a witch cackling contest that year and the rest, as they say, is history.

Luckily, I live in a place that seems to embrace my witchy side. This past weekend an estimated 10,000 witches gathered for Witches Night Out at Gardner Village in West Jordan, Utah, for two nights of spell binding fun. Did you catch that number? Ten thousand ladies willing, dare I say even excited, to dress up as witches and go out proudly into the public and parade around cackling with wicked glee.

I was one of those witches. So were 4 of my 5 daughters. I have trained them well, have I not? (The 5th one was not able to come along because of a silly thing called higher education.)

Check out those pink fur boots.

This is what I want to be when I grow up…

So get your inner witch on this Halloween…I dare you!

And I’ll leave you with this -

Act IV, Scene 1 from Macbeth (1606) by William Shakespeare

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

.

Three Scottish witches are going about their business—tossing poisoned entrails, eye of newt, toe of frog, and such, into a cauldron—while awaiting a visit from the man they said would be king: Macbeth. “Double, double toil and trouble” is part of the refrain to their demonic incantation… The collective memory has clouded somewhat; often, this refrain comes to mind in the jumbled form “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” The witches are actually trying, with their spells, to pile up toil and trouble until they “double”—yielding twice the toil and double the trouble for Macbeth, presumably. enotes.com

~Kate

Enjoy your Coffee Break and Happy Halloween!

The kids found a recipe for these cupcakes and insisted we make them for Halloween. How hard could it be, I thought. I’m sure you can see this is gonna be a recipe and a rant, all wrapped into one post. What more could you ask for?

In order to delve into this one, I took the original recipe and began by simplifying the cupcakes themselves. As you will see, they aren’t part of the ingredients photo, because I trust that you people know how to purchase a cake mix and make a couple dozen cupcakes.

Anyway, in my opinion, the how-to’s of this project are all about what’s on top of the cupcake. So let’s start there with the nitty gritty.

What you’ll need:

• A couple dozen cupcakes, cooled (note: you may or may not have the stamina to make skeletons for all 24. Just sayin…)
• Small tub of white icing
• One package large marshmallows
• One package small marshmallows or white chocolate bark – yes, I realize they aren’t in the ingredients photo either. I’ll explain in a minute
• 24 sucker sticks (available at craft stores)
• Gel icing – Black
• White chocolate-covered pretzels

How to proceed:

Ice cupcakes as usual and set aside. This is probably a good time to take a deep breath. I put Hannah in charge of making the skeleton faces. At first, we tried gently smashing the large marshmallows to make them scarier. Not sure that worked, so we ditched that idea. Hannah grabbed the gel icing and made two eyes, drew a line for the mouth (funny – all her skeletons seem to be smiling. Weird.). Anyway, there was a hole in the top of the icing tube (how does that happen?), so all of a sudden, she had what resembled a big slimy black leach on her finger. (This project was quickly starting fitting in with Halloween.)

She ran into another problem, too. The icing wasn’t coming out in smooth thin lines. It was globbing up and smearing together. So she ended up getting a toothpick, putting the icing on the tip and drawing on the faces that way. I also happened to notice that she seriously needs to paint her fingernails. But I digress. At that point, I think she was on marshmallow head No. 2.

Meanwhile, I was assembling the white chocolate-covered pretzels for the rib cage. Except that the holes in the pretzels were about seven times the size of the sucker stick (not an issue brought to light by the original recipe).

Panic-stricken, I rummaged through the cabinets to find some way to fill in the gaps. This is where the mini-marshmallows or white chocolate bark come into play. I had both on hand, but for reasons of expediency, I decided to try the mini-marshmallows first. I mushed together two mini’s, and squashed them into the middle pretzel hole, then carefully inserted the sucker stick. Things got pretty messy at that point. By the time I had three pretzels on the first stick, the method got a tad easier. So that’s how we got the ribs to stay on the stick. And it almost gave the look of a spinal column, too. In retrospect, I probably would’ve melted the white chocolate and used it like glue to adhere the pretzels to the sticks. But why live in the past?

Anyway, at this point, Colton was running in and out every few minutes. While he didn’t volunteer to help, he  did offer to eat the first one, then went to his cousin’s to play.

Meanwhile, with rib cages attached to the sticks, and several marshmallow heads ready to go, we began the full-body assembly. Some had enough room between the head and first pretzel that we could grab the stick and insert it into the cupcake. But for the most part, we had to grab them from the top and squish the little marshmallow heads in on the sides in order to get the stick in the cupcake.

Once the sticks were inserted, some of them tended to fall to the side, so we had to finagle them in (which seemed to work). Many of the rib cages fell, too. So they may not be the prettiest skeleton cupcakes known to man. But all in all, it was a fun way to spend a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon a week before Halloween.

If you give this one a try (and why not?) let me know if you found other ways to attach the ribs or decorate the faces!

-Liz

Yep, I’ll admit it readers….I went to a demolition derby of my own free will.  No one bribed me, coerced me,  or drugged me, tied me up and dragged me there. No one even had to convince me.   I just hopped into my Outlander with two of my kids (the two young enough to still be malleable), and my husband who is not particularly malleable but loves demolition derbies, and drove down the road to our county fair.  I paid my money and walked right in, head held high.  I didn’t even try to disguise my identity with sunglasses or a hat. I’d  like to think I’m getting in touch with my inner redneck.  I’m sure I am officially an embarrassment to some of my kids with my brazen demolition derby attendance.  They’ll be even more happy that I’m writing about it to my millions of readers.  (Perhaps millions is a slight exaggeration, but give me a break here..one can dream, right?) In fact, most of my kids wouldn’t be caught dead (or alive) at a demolition derby…it’s kind of like going to the rodeo to them, and we all know how they feel about our yearly rodeo adventure.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the whole sport of demolition derby, and I use the term “sport”  loosely,  let me just explain what happens.  A bunch of old beat up clunkers with paint jobs courtesy of a few cans of spray paint, enter an arena barricaded with concrete barriers and then proceed to crash and bash into each other.  The top few cars in each heat move on to a grand finale round where they pummel each other until there is only one car left running. The winner gets bragging rights and enough prize money to go home and fix up his/her car to do it all over again.

I found myself a real bonafied demolition derby expert on the internet at www.hartin.com who accurately describes it as,  “Kind of like a WWE cage match, when you think about it. There are just a few rules in the interest of safety and fair play, although in my experience they tend to be enforced just about as rigorously as in the WWE.”

My first derby was last year.  I have to tell you that through the entire first round I kept thinking,’ ‘This is so, soooo wrong!’  My classically conditioned response to the sound of crashing cars is one of  anxiety, fear, and overall yuckiness. By the end of round two, I was desensitized enough to stop cringing at every crunch, and by the grand finale round I was cheering just like the rest of the crowd who I am guessing were also getting in touch with their inner rednecks (albeit a task easier for some than others.)

Will I be returning next year?  Absolutely, and maybe I’ll drag a few more of my kids along as well.  Come on…stranger things have happened.

Look at all these people getting in touch with their inner rednecks!

Now go out and have an adventure of your own. Enjoy your Coffee Break! KATE