Bla Bla Blog

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, what to blog, what to blog? I've had so much going on lately but my brain is a bit melted after all the focus I just put into my workout today. It was a milestone for me; the first time I have ever managed to do an entire hour workout video with the particular youtube trainer I like! I can't think of the last time I sweat that much but I had the windows open and I was a mess! It was fun though and I definitely think I'll do it again. You can click HERE if you are interested in trying it out for yourself.

This last week I suffered from really bad insomnia. Most nights I was going to sleep after 2am and one night I didn't go to sleep until 6am! Thankfully I found a cure and I'm finally drifting off closer to my regular time between midnight and 1am (I'm a night owl anyway). My cure came when Branden decided to stay up late and watch the Seahawks play the 49ers on Sunday night. The game didn't start until 11:30pm our time and by halftime, I was off in lala land, sawing some logs! Most people who know me, know that I loath American football with as much passion as a mongoose has for a cobra! As Branden watched on his laptop in bed, I laid back and pretended it was Thanksgiving, as I was full from some amazing food we ate at our Spanish friends' house earlier, and let the game lull me to sleep. Worked like a charm but I did wake up when it was over to find Branden as uptight as a small dog in a room full of stilettos due to the intense last seconds. He was happy that the Seahawks won though but this means I'll probably be drug along to watch the Superbowl for the first time in about 5 years...oh well, it will be at a pub most likely.

I finally took down our Christmas decorations in the house but now I have to find places for all the new decorations I made. We are seriously running out of space to the point that if you need to look for a pencil in a drawer it will look like a tornado ripped through the room along with you. We can't wait to eventually get out of living our whole lives in one room although these last (almost) 3 years have really taught me to not be a 'stuff' person.

We do have one more birthday video to share from a bit back. It was my bro-in-law's birthday in Dec and he is the biggest football fan I know (sorry Jared, please ignore my comments in the second paragraph) so we tried to come up with a football themed birthday video. This is what we managed:

Well, that's all my brain can muster up at the moment. I think I should go stretch again and spend the next hour on my hands and knees praying that I'll be able to move the rest of this week!

Happy 2014!

I can't believe it's the 6th of January already! Time to get back to writing! Here are some main points of the last few weeks.

• I survived the holidays, ate way too much tasty food, but my waistline seems to have come out of it quite unscathed and possibly even smaller. Wahoo!!
• Our nephews loved their needle felted Angry Birds that I made for them for Christmas and they totally believed that Santa picked them up from our house and dropped them off at their house. (A letter from Santa himself helped)

• I still have my decorations up with a hearty desire to keep them up because they are pretty and I like them. 

• I have finally realized that sugar is absolutely evil as every time I had a holiday meal and ate a significant amount of the wicked white stuff, which has been rarely part of my diet the last few month, it tried to kill me. Kill may be a bit strong but it zapped my energy and made me feel like I had a nasty cold and sore throat for 2 days after. I hate you sugar.
• Roast duck is a fabulous thing, even if it looked like a giant skinned bat.
• My new TV show addiction is My Cat From Hell and I can't get enough of it. I also can't get enough of cat shaming and you can click HERE to see my recent favorite compilation.
• We've had numerous wet and windy storms which would be called a 'hurricane' if we were Georgia and not Ireland.
• Branden and I got fabulous new glasses and we are really pleased with them. His are a dark greenish tortoise shell color and mine are purple and black. 

• I am still behind on all the recent birthday videos we have done so I'll leave you with Hunter's birthday video from November! 

Happy Monday and Happy New Year!

More proof that we are crazy

Tis the season for cold and sickness, bla bla bla bla bla, bla bla bla bla *sniff *hack

I am slightly afraid I am on the verge of getting a cold as yesterday I had a scratchy throat, had no energy at all, and thought my head was going to explode at any moment. Today I am actually feeling a bit better and I'm hoping it was just due to having way too much sugar at a birthday party on Sunday. Branden and I don't really eat much sugar anymore so I think my body is experiencing a 48 hour sugar crash.

Anyhoo, since my time away from blogland, we have had a number of birthdays in the family which means more crazy birthday videos!!! Today I'm going share our nephew Brady's birthday video that we made for him back in September when he turned three. He still loves for us to sing him "Little Bunny Foo Foo" but of course with our changes of dinosaurs instead of field mice, and the good turtle instead of the good fairy. Apparently my sis tried to sing him the original version and he corrected her and made her sing our version. For his birthday, Brady wanted a Cookie Monster theme so we adjusted our song to fit his birthday. 

Paperwork makes my brain go numb

Due to Branden finishing another chapter for his PhD, he's had time off so I have been MIA enjoying time with him and also ripping my hair out as we are messing with nasty paperwork and this year's funding for his studies. We also had a deep clean and thorough re-organization of our room which was much needed when all of our belongings and newly accumulated stuff has to all fit into one living space. It does make it easier to not buy new crap as there is simply no space, so that's a good thing. In between the chaos, the house has filled up again with our housemate from Botswana back from his Christmas trip, and a new housemate moving in who also happens to be a friend of ours and also an American. I cooked a big dinner last week of pork spare ribs (in Branden's own BBQ sauce) and then had sides of green salad, coleslaw, and focaccia bread (I didn't make the bread). It was great and it's nice that we can all get on so well. Another thing we've been up to is the making of another family birthday video!

My wonderful Mom-in-law turned 29 again this year (can't believe we'll be the same age in a couple of months!) and she is an artist so we made a very odd but somewhat artsy video for her. It's not the most flattering video, and it was very uncomfortable to shoot, but we had fun!



Thankfully none of our housemates were home as we shot this on our entryway floor and taped our video camera to the staircase rail. There was more detail at the bottom but with limited space and an unseen post that was in the way, you can't really see it. I did get the idea from that mom who would take photos of her sleeping baby after creating scenes around her with clothes, toys, and other random objects...it is definitely much harder to make it for 2 full grown adults!

Well, I have a load of clean laundry staring at me and smirking as it knows very well that I hate folding laundry...but I've got to leave soon so I better tackle the pile! (Oh goodie, socks! ...my favorite...)

New Year's Eve Update

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and are planning on a great New Year! I'm sorry I have been away for a while. After my last post, I was given the information that Granny's cancer doubled in size since October, despite 2 nasty chemo treatments. I basically shut down. Also having the 3rd Christmas in a row away from family, I just found it too emotional to write. We did have a wonderful Christmas though and I'm extremely grateful for all the friends who have taken us in over this holiday period. Last week included 4 days of Christmas eating, one just the two of us and the other 3 with friends...I may not be able to eat until Valentine's Day...

Tonight we are taking it easy and will be ringing in the New Year just the two of us. Our house has been empty for over a week, which has been fabulous, and I cleaned our kitchen the day the last housemate left. Now that all of the Christmas dinner cooking is over, I'm planning on tackling the fridge and cleaning the beast today. Our housemate from Botswana was wonderful enough to leave us his key to his room so we could use his big jacuzzi tub, as he's the only room with a tub, and it was fabulous to take a bath for the first time in over a year and a half...you can imagine how smelly we were  ;)

2012 was a good year, and I really don't have anything to complain about. Yes, there are/were some not so fun things going on but there will always be bad and good times, that's just how life goes. I'm just happy that I'm doing just what I know I am supposed to be doing and in the place I'm supposed to be. I do miss my family but after over 2 years of being away from them, it looks like we will be going back to visit in late spring or early summer. And speaking of family, Branden and I made a video for our nephews for Christmas. Since you all like seeing us make fools of ourselves for our precious nephews, here's the video:

And for those of you who would like to hear some real singing and see some real talent, here's a long awaited music video from our friend Noelle back in the States. I shared this song and another music video of hers a long time ago and I'm excited that this music video turned out brilliantly as the song is incredible! Way to go Noelle!

Happy New Year's Eve and I hope to come around and visit all of your blogs soon...after I finish cleaning the house with a toothbrush!

Translation or Proposition?

This morning found me wandering the streets with my friend Jo, looking for a homeless man that we were trying to give a manicure to. I suppose that sentence needs some explanation and background information.

Yesterday Jo saw one of the homeless guys that we used to regularly see when we were doing our homeless run (which we're trying to start back up). He's from Poland and he's tugged at all of our heart strings as he is such a gracious man who just wants to find work. Jo took him to lunch and tried talking to him with the 5 words of English he seems to know and she noticed his fingernails were extremely long and needed to be trimmed. She tried to communicate to him that she wanted to trim his nails but it wasn't getting through and it came down to him saying that he would be at 'his spot' tomorrow if she wanted to see him again.

She had phoned me to see if I would go with her and I was happy to go and see him again. Branden also just bought his new winter coat so we decided to give the man his old waterproof Colombia coat. Before I left for Jo's, she sent me a text saying, "Ok...so I am using google translate to explain to *homeless guy's name* what Maggie and I want to do (cut his nails). Thank goodness I re-translated back into English. First time had "temptations with hand cream". Got to get the word "temptations" outta there. No fantasies with hand cream. Second time had me applying the cream for cancer! (how did hand cream become so deadly) Oh Lord, please let the right message go out. Has me in stitches anyway."

I was in tears reading this to Branden! The homeless guy has always been respectful to us women so I could imagine him blushing terribly and being very embarrassed if we handed him a note, our faces beaming with smiles, and him reading that we have temptations with hand cream! We loaded Jo's bike trailer with some apples, hot chocolate, hot water, bowl, towel, soap, and Mary Kay's Satin Hands. Jo and I ended up going to 'his spot' and he wasn't there so we wandered around the typical places in town we have seen him or would expect him to be, but still no sign. We did managed to give two guys begging on the streets some hot chocolate and being such a cold day, we at least felt like we helped someone. As we headed back home, we ran into an old friend of Jo's who is Polish and he read our note...and told us to never use google translate! I gave him a pen and he edited the note for us. Apparently the word used for 'cutting his nails' needed to be changed to 'trimmed' as the word on the note meant to cut off completely, or sever! Maybe it was a good thing we didn't find him!

Oh well, we tried, and I'll carry Branden's old coat with me in case I run into him sometime. I would just advise all of you to be careful trusting online translation programs as you may find yourself in quite the blush worthy scenario!

As promised yesterday, here is the video we made for Hunter's birthday. Branden did pretty much everything to make the robot head...and he had way too much fun making it! Hope you enjoy!

Date Day & Taking Birthdays on the Chin

With a busy weekend behind us, yesterday was our 'weekend'. Branden and I slept in and then made one of my favorite breakfasts, cornbread pancakes. My mom has sent me Jiffy cornbread mix (which I love and miss!) and we made the pancake recipe that's right on the side of the box...with the exception that I always add about 2 big table spoons of honey to the batter! Then we headed to the cinema and saw Frankenweenie, which was cute, funny and my kind of 'scary' movie!

After enjoying the film, we headed to a nearby pub that brews it's own beer and had just hosted a beerfest over the weekend. They didn't have any beers from the festival left but we still enjoyed a pint of their regular stuff, which was a bit of a big deal as my tastebuds are only just warming up to the taste of beer. We ran into some friends of ours when we headed back into town and had a bit of a walk and chat with them. Then we headed to another pub that was supposed to have a live band playing. The Jazz Festival was in town this weekend so we were hoping to listen to a bit of music on the last day of the festival. When we arrived at the pub, it was packed and the band wasn't so great, so we left and noticed a new store across the street. It was an 'outlet' outdoor store but their prices seemed pretty dang expensive. Branden did need a new winter coat and we did find one that was priced alright, but we headed to the nearby TK Max (UK and Irish version of TJ Max) and actually found a nicer coat for over 20 Euros cheaper!

It started to get dark and we started to get hungry, so we headed home to make dinner, stopping briefly to pick up a cheap white wine to use in the fish pie I was going to make. After using some of the wine for the white sauce I put in my fish pie, we drank the rest while we nibbled on crackers and cheese with dates and capers (we didn't mix the dates and capers!). Dinner was the best fish pie I've made yet and I suppose I'll have to post a recipe sometime as it's super easy to make.

Branden and I had a great time together and enjoyed every bit of our relaxing meanderings together. It looks like we have another busy week ahead so yesterday was a perfect way to prepare.

Now to tickle your funny bones! This is the last in our recent series of birthday videos, although Hunter will have a birthday in a couple of days so we'll be making a new one soon. The video below is the video we made for my Mom's birthday. It was a bit tricky to make as trying to get both of us to fit into the video was really tough and I do sort of move out of the shot a bit at the end.



For those of you who don't know, Sasquatch is also "Big Foot" or "Yeti", and more sightings of Big Foot are reported in Washington State (where we are from) than any other State in America...but I don't think Branden's chin contributed to any of the sightings   ;)

You found me from what???

As promised earlier this week, I have a new list of Search Engine Hits to share with you! Thankfully they aren't as creepy as some past lists, but I still think I have a "healthy" dose of questionable characters running through my cell...how appropriate I suppose.

short arms men
Odd fetish?? Attempted self diagnosis?? How the heck did you end up here? If you are trying to diagnose yourself as a short armed man then I'm pretty sure that if you can look in a mirror and still don't know so you have to look it up online, you are normal.

sexy woman smiling eating breakfast
Flatterer! And the reason I'm smiling is because Branden still brings me breakfast in bed almost every day. *cue "Awwww!" now

watercolor paintings of unicorns
Ummmm, my watercolor painting looked nothing like a unicorn and heaven forbid you'd find it what I panted as a unicorn horn!

coconut milk farts
Unofficially the worst kind ever (besides dog farts) and if your canned coconut smells like a fart, don't eat it!

padded cell straight jacket quiz
Are you hinting that I should start having crazy quizzes? What type of questions would I ask? Maybe something like, "How many concussions have I had?" or "What irrational fear do I have while swimming in pools and lakes?"
(Answers: 3 & sharks)

homemade sexy girls
The store bought ones always look cheap and usually fall apart easily  ;)

bavarian decor
I'm glad you came to me for guidance. As far as I know, having "Hamsters Cry" on a banner above your bed is very Bavarian.

hairs like lady gaga how to make
I had no idea Yoda was a Lady GaGa fan and had enough hair to style in a bow!

You may not want to ride this bus...

Our youngest nephew turned two at the end of last month so in typical, crazy Auntie Moo and Uncle B fashion, we made him a silly birthday video! Now, I am being extremely nice to all of you to let you even see this as I look like more than worse for wear. I had been out on the streets with my volunteer group until 4am, so only had a few hours of sleep and had on no makeup whatsoever.

I hope you liked it as much as he did (which he apparently cried when my sis had to tell him that he couldn't watch it over, and over, and over again!).

International Feast and a Bizarre Birthday Video

My cold is technically gone but it has left me with some nasty left overs that just seem to cling around and refuse to go away. Yesterday our church has its annual International Feast, which is a massive highlight and this year it was huge! There were over 70 dishes from over 20 countries. I made the same thing that I made last year, chocolate peanut butter balls.

It may sound normal, but peanut butter isn't a huge thing over here and all of the Spanish housemates we've ever had have thought the smell and idea of peanut butter was just nasty beyond belief. One of our pastors (who's Irish) even mentioned that the idea of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was just weird to him. I used to eat them every day after kindergarden and Branden still likes them. We estimated that I made over 80 peanut butter balls and they were all gone before the feast was over, so maybe I converted some people. There were some other amazing dishes as well. As I stayed at the American table with my dish, Branden loaded a plate with little bits of stuff and then brought it back for both of us to try. He did this 3 times and we still probably only tasted 1/3 of the dishes!

Our wonderful and tasty event even landed us in the paper which you can see HERE

Branden and I have a busy week ahead of us but I will be posting more weird and wonderful search engine hits, sharing our bizarre birthday videos we send to family, and a favorite recipe we like to make for lazy breakfasts.

To kick off the bizarre birthday videos, here is the recent video we made for my sis's birthday earlier this month. The inspiration for this craziness is from my sis's recognition from the Facebook group Muscle Mom. She's not a body builder or anything like that, but she has ran more half marathons than I can count, and keeps herself toned and fit...which should be helpful when chasing around my two nephews! So here's the video; we didn't practice or write out a script (which should be pretty obvious) and this is our only take.

If you are totally jealous of my 'sock hard' six pack abs, I'm not telling you my secret   ;)

Double Whammy!

Yesterday was not only Father's Day but it was also my Dad's birthday! I was my Dad's fishing and hunting buddy, he always changed our oil and took care of our cars, I had a blast screaming for him and video taping his vintage motorcycle races (he was really good!), and nobody barbecues salmon like he does! My dad put up a lot with my sis, my mom, and me, like the time we dyed his whitey-tighties pink and hung them on the clothes line outside. 

But when I got my pony for my birthday, he put up all the fencing and made a shed for her, if the dog got sick and pooped all over the garage (where she slept at night), dad shoveled it out while we all pressed our ears to the door and giggled while he loudly gagged, and if it snowed, he would make amazing sled runs with jumps down our hill. He'd send us flowers sometimes when we were high school because he knew how much we loved it, and then we'd carry them around all day for everyone to see.

My dad's the one who taught me that I never have to grow up, he's the one I get my bright blue eyes and long eyelashes from, my stubbornness, my soft heart, and the wisdom that I don't need money or things to be happy. As long as I have God, I will have true joy and everything else will be provided. Thanks for showing me that Dad. I never would have realized then how much it would mean now!

Since today is Music Monday, you are all going to get a peek at a family tradition that my Dad does whenever it's one of our birthdays. He always sings (a slightly modified version) The Beatles "Birthday" song. Branden and I made him a video for his birthday, and I actually think it may be less embarrassing than last year's video! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!