LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

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Laurenburg

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I’m not sure anymore if Laurenburg means Lauren city or Lauren mountain, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of those two. Unfortunately, Laurenburg needs more visitors if it’s going to thrive and prosper in 2008. I don’t know what the future has in store for Laurenburg, but I’m assured that the more people who visit the city the faster it will grow. So lets get those extra credit points rolling and send annoying email to all your friends and add a link at the bottom of all your emails and put a link on your websites and tell your coworkers at the water cooler (assuming your water cooler is connected to the interweb). You can make your own city here.

I think she lives in that shack.

Window rant

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Happy Birthday, Mom Royuk!! She’s our ‘between’ birthday girl!

Ok, I’ve been keeping this topic secret for awhile, but I’m ready to come out in the open with it. My obsession with temperature has reached a new level. A couple of weeks ago I started to put that shrink-with-a-hair-dryer plastic sheeting on the windows at the top of the stairs. I finished one window, then got out the handy-dandy thermometer to check the difference between a plastic-covered window and a regular window. I wanted to feel the satisfaction of stopping the heat in the house from leaking outside.

Guess what? No difference. None. Exactly the same temperature as the other windows. I felt betrayed!!!! Sure, if the window is drafty, the plastic will stop the air from moving, but we don’t have such drafty windows. This problem required some thought.

You should know that I’m not a fan of curtains. The only curtains we have are the ones in the living room that came with the house. I’ve read about how having heavy drapes that seal off the windows can stop heat loss, but I wasn’t about to go out and spend money on curtains. So…. here’s the first test window.

Is it snowing in here?

Yes, that’s a comforter. Can you say ‘trashy’? Laugh all you want, but it’s for science, not for beauty. This ugly thing is currently blocking sixteen degrees from leaving the bedroom.  Cozy warm side:
Toasty!

Here’s the reading behind the curtain… er, comforter:

Freezy!

So, in conclusion: Get curtains for the winter!. I have other windows in various stages of experimentation (pictures available upon request), but even having regular curtains (or ‘towels’) on a window can make a significant difference. Block the gaps at the top & bottom, it’s even more efficient!

I’m glad that Lloyd hasn’t kicked me out yet. I’m also glad that we don’t have people dropping by that would judge me by my window coverings. It’s good that I’m going crazy now while I can still enjoy it.

Just like a rancher

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I’m turning into Becky Home Ecky on the weekends. It was snowy, so it was another good day to just stay inside. I puttered around the house cooking and making cookie dough – not the roll-out kind. (I’m part of some guild of ladies that makes baked goods for students at Concordia. I told them right off the bat that I can only make chocolate chip cookies – no cakes. That seemed to work out, and I only have to do it about once a year.) Anyway, I was so gung-ho with this cookie thing that I also made a half-batch of a coffee/chocolate shortbread recipe from the internet. I haven’t baked it yet, and I’m saving the details for it’s own post. The recipe involved chopping some chocolate, to my very great joy.

I’ve told you how much I love to chop, right? Onions, celery, apples, nuts, garlic, chocolate – whatever. But there’s a problem. I’m not the most careful person. I don’t ‘clean’ my cutting boards very well after each use as much as give ’em a quick wash and swipe it dry. (Except for the plastic cutting board for meat – that one gets sanitized in the dishwasher. Meat germs give me the jibblies.) Consequently, sometimes my apples smell a bit like onions. I’ve often thought that I should mark one side of the board for onions and savory stuff, leaving the other side stink-free for sweet things. But how? Carve ‘onion’ into it? Hack a chunk out of one edge and just remember? Brand it?

Brand it?

Brand it.

Oh, yeah. Getting dangerous with hot metal! (I used tongs. I’m not completely insane.)

My dad made these cutting boards for me. I love them, and now they’re permanently mine.
Whew. These probably smell like onion.

It’s a little salt shaker I lost the plug to. No comments about the tragic state of my drip pans. Those don’t get cleaned very often at all.
Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

Burn, baby, burn.

Hot!

“O” is for onion. and ocelery. and ogarlic.

Crazy cookies

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So I finally got around to rolling and baking some of that cookie dough from a couple of days ago. I just have to say, rolling and cutting cookies is way more trouble than it’s worth. I even did the thing where you roll it between sheets of plastic wrap, and I still didn’t have fun. The only reason I wanted to do it was so I could decorate them my crazy way. I came up with this during my Martha Stewart-worship days when I wanted to learn how to decorate cookies that would be so beautiful, they’d make you cry. Yeah – that didn’t happen. After much frustration I just dumped all the icing together in the bowl and started dipping cookies into that, letting them drip, then flipping them over. I loved it!! They look like they’ve been tie-dyed.

This year I goofed up, though. I tried to be stingy with the icing since I didn’t have enough, and I had it too thin on the plate. It has to be deeper, so the cookie can gather enough to drip. Here’s a ‘before’ shot, with too little icing on the plate, which also creates bubbles:

pretty, but nothing to blog about

Here’s the Jackson Pollock frosting assembly. Go nuts, with it, people!

I can taste the colors.

Here’s the final batch, much more swirly and pleasing. Lloyd is pointing to the one he thinks turned out the best.

Dude.

Of course, you have to replace the icing after a while, because it all muddles to gray (and nobody likes gray icing). I need a good sugar cookie recipe, though. I got this one off the internet, and I’m not thrilled with it. Of course, when am I ever going to make these again?

Move over, Starbucks.

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I felt productive tonight. Dinner, laundry (seems like I’m always doing laundry), cleaned the upstairs, took out the trash, unwrapped the sheet from the truck (which was much harder than taking the one off the car), made cookie dough (thanks to Peggy’s influence), and also some hot chocolate. Lloyd didn’t have school today, and he isn’t quite recovered from his cold, so I made real hot chocolate – milk, a handful of chocolate chips, a splash of vanilla and a bigger splash of coffee just for kicks.

mmmmmm.....chocolate calcium...

I grated the chocolate with a cool little microplane from my sister. It’s wicked sharp, and it always smells like nutmeg or chocolate because I never wash it. I’m too afraid I’ll lose a fingerprint. I can’t seem to load the picture of it, and I’m sick of trying. You’ll just have to imagine it. Sorry.

Tang Tea

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Nothing great happened today, at least nothing photo-worthy. We’re expecting some ice and freezing rain……wait….halting ..posting ..process…..

(Time passes)

Ok, we’re back. As I typed that, I realized that earlier in the day I had covered my truck’s windshield and doors with a sheet so getting the ice off would be easier. (We don’t have a garage). Just now I told Lloyd that we should go do that for his car, too. The rain is already coming down, so this picture is taken from inside my coat to avoid getting the camera wet. “Good night, Honda.”
The sheet is dark blue. Go figure.

Ok, back to the dumb tea thing. Boy, now it seems like I’ve wasted two posts here, but I’m plowing on. When I was little, my mom would make ‘Tang Tea’, also known as ‘Russian Tea’. The original recipe has all kinds of ingredients – unsweetened tea, sugar, lemonade mix, Tang, cinnamon & cloves. Nowadays I just cut to the chase and put lemon tea mix & Tang together and shake in some spices. This year it was particularly hard to make, since the lid on the Tang wasn’t put back on correctly and the good ol’ Nebraska humidity has turned this into one giant Tang pellet. (scrape, scrape, scrape) No measuring involved, so it always turns out differently every time. Hey, it’s hot and orangey, and that’s what I’m going for!

Drinkin' my memories. Sounds like a country song.

UPDATE: I’ve been up since 5:08, when Lloyd got the call that his school was closed. I can never sleep on these days, because I get all worried fot no good reason. Anyway, I’m waiting to hear when I should go into work, and I wanted to show the success of the sheets. Peeling them is like using a giant Biore Pore Strip for your car. I was a little worried about hurting the windshield wipers, but going slowly worked well.

Better than trying to chip your way in.