Showing posts with label Frozen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frozen. Show all posts

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Letters To Elsa

So, I found this posted online a few days back:
well all right then? 
I debated over whether or not to try this with Sydni; she has an incredible memory, and if this didn't work, I'd be left feeding her some story about how it got lost in the mail or something to that effect. I dug a little into Google and found several user-submitted photos of people who've taken advantage of this, and decided we'd go ahead and shoot for it. If it doesn't work, well.. we'll cross that bridge when it gets here.
love. love love love her. 
There ya have it folks. We've written Queen Elsa, and I'll let you know if/when we hear anything back. Fortunately, Sydni's caught up with the Wii and hasn't asked anything else about the letter, so my best guess [and small hope] is that she'll put this on the back burner until something comes back in the mail for her.

I'll keep ya posted, parents! In the meantime, I'm going to go reflect on the fact that I just stamped an envelope addressed to Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Yeah. That happened. #parenthood.

G'Nite!

xo | cmd

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Easter Eggs & Kites!

I slept on the couch in our greatroom last night, and I don't regret that decision at all. This house, the house in which I grew up, boasts an open greatroom with gable windows, and when the sun rises, so do you.. in a great mood. I was up and moving before the rest of the house; the first thing I did was step outside onto the deck. The trees have yet to sprout their full sets of leaves, but that barely detracted from the beauty that always surrounds this place.

** Deck morning pic

My mom is a machine. I think we'll all be shocked if I actually outlive her. Haha. Seriously, though: My mother is the definition of a healthy woman, and I'll never get over the fact that she can run circles around us. She had us up and going as soon as her feet hit the floor this morning, and we haven't looked back since. ;)

|| ONE ||

First, it was an Easter Egg hunt & the unveiling of Easter baskets.
[The Easter bunny was busy this year!]
egg hunt...... go!
basket o' eggs
nana & pappy!
With all the eggs collected, we noticed there were some strange prints on the deck... [yes, this Easter bunny walks, like a human... haha]
where did he go?
easter baskets, of course!!
ransack.
easter basket goodies!
Showcasing some spoils:
new sock-shoes? lol (:
ninja bunny here....
little capsules that become sponge animals
|| TWO ||

We survived the explosion of Easter basket fun and gathered ourselves together for a trip to the new and still in-progress development of Mt. Vernon's Foundation Park. They still have some big work to do, but it's already beautiful and I'm excited to come back in a few months to see how it's finished.

Our reason for the visit today?
butterfly kite!
I didn't realize until today that my mother has never before flown a kite. Never. This won't sound like much to most, but today will stay special if for no other reason than the fact that I was with my mother and my daughter for their first time flying a kite. How.. awesome (:
she's good!!

she insisted she could do this herself ;)

but finally enlisted mister rob's help ♥
heading out to get started
my girl ♥♥
mom!!!
showing mister rob how it's done ;)
she's a pro now!
mama, reeling it in after an hour of flight time (:
We flew that thing for almost an hour before finally bringing it down. Luckily for us, we also brought snacks... and bubbles.
snacks with pappy
bubbles with nana

ribbons!
Soon it was time to go...
getting chilly ... zip up!
my love...
... and the love i most admire ♥
|| THREE ||
We headed home after the park; Dad, Rob and our neighbor Fred got together to switch out the dryers and hang out for a bit, and Sydni and I took to the yard.
in love with today
her snarly monster face
if you guessed that she's singing the frozen soundtrack, you're not wrong...
more bubbles!
This picture, which is now one of my favorites:
baby girls being raised right ;)
Before long, it was time to settle down for dinner. Mom, as usual, outdid herself and left the family with bellies so full we didn't know what to do with ourselves. Dad's solution? Teach Sydni chess. 
ok, so maybe it wasn't by real chess rules, but hey, it's ok!
After dinner, we forced Mom out of the kitchen and took away all her dishtowels and parked her in a seat with the family to watch................. you guessed it.. Frozen. I'm fairly certain my parents are were the only two remaining people in the U.S. to have seen this movie. Haha.
it's movie time!
hey pappy! dooooooo you wanna build a snowmaaaaan?
They loved it. She recited it. We just laughed watching them the whole time.
Oh, and when you're here at the Dren Lodge, this is how you end Saturday movie nights:
homemade chocolate & caramel sauce!
Whoa. Saturday = SUCCESS.
We're aiming for the same thing tomorrow (:

xo | cmd

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Backseat Sessions with Sydni : The FROZEN Edition

All right, Disney. This one is definitely stuck. I thought perhaps we wouldn't ever see the end of Tangled, but Sydni's fascination with that one faded a lot faster than I expected. Frozen, on the other hand, is still on loop at our house, and the soundtrack has basically replaced any other form of sound in the car.

I will be singing "Let it Gooooooooo," for the rest of my life, I'm pretty sure. Sydni will be singing it until you, Disney, come out with the next big hit (:

That being said, here's what the car rides home typically contain. And yes, before anyone says anything, I realize she looks like she has a mullet. For the girls out there, if you can tell me about that childhood of yours in which you didn't attempt to cut your own hair, well, I'll be impressed. In her credit, at least they're still on her forehead; when I did that, they were barely even sprigs. One centimeter is not an acceptable length for bangs. Hers are manageable. ;)




^ I love my car rides with her. This, folks, is how they have been nearly every single time since she saw the movie. If you can't appreciate a little girl singing her heart out, well, it's beautiful (:

With love from us on this NON-rainy Tuesday!! ♥

xo | cmd

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Happy BIRTHDAY, Sophie!!

We call each other's children our "nieces," when in reality we're what, 2nd cousins?

.. Yeah, nieces is way easier.

So, TODAY is my niece Sophie's 2nd birthday!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sweet girl!!!

She's. So. Adorable.... It Hurts. 
happy birthday, sweet sophie!!
Anyway, rewind to the road trip up to Columbus - a short little jaunt, complete with pony talk and princess music. We really were there in no time at all (:

syd & her mlp's
In a few short hours, we were rounding the last corner in Easton and headed for Target, to pick up a couple last minute things. Maricor met us there, and we followed her back to the house to find Chris with the girls. The cousins are finally back together, after what has seemed like forever!
three little dresses for three little girls ♥ 
literally, princesses everywhere .. haha
Maricor and I had every intention on catching up on our own after the girls had gone to bed [Chris, you lucked out this time, haha], but that didn't quite happen as planned. Plus, the weather here in Ohio has again decided that it's not done with its winter crap, so after a spout of rain, this happened for a few hours and completely derailed any desire to venture anywhere:

seriously?
.... enough!!!
So instead of dinner & a movie out, we saved ourselves some of the hassle and added some awesome to the mix with homemade Adobo and multiple rounds of Frozen.
mission: convert adobo into an air freshener.
^^ It's been way too long since I've had adobo. Especially straight from the pot. This, my friends, is called a Filipino problem, if there ever was one. I was drooling from the second the house started smelling like sabaw (broth) to the second we were eating it as though we hadn't actually downed Chipotle less than four hours prior to that. Whatev'. (:

Anyway, we're here curled up on the couch perusing NoMoreRack, with our girls dancing and singing to Anna and Elsa a few feet away. This is just about perfect, if I must say so.

Tomorrow's a birthday party for the birthday baby.. and I can't wait!

xo | cmd

Friday, March 28, 2014

Friday With My Girl ♥

Rob left around noon today to head back to Illinois for the Supercross weekend, so that meant Sydni and I had Friday night all to ourselves. These are some of my favorite nights, so there of course was no complaining.

We started off our girls night with some shopping, because well, it seemed fitting. Okay, so maybe I also waited until kind of the last minute to shop for Sophie's birthday present, so that was part of the reason we found ourselves at Target after work, too.

And, because for some reason, we didn't own this until today:
how dare i.
So now we, along with half of America, own this movie, and are currently comitting its soundtrack to permanence in our minds. I'll be singing these songs until my brain physically gives out, I'm convinced. Or, it could be because of other adult-geared trailors like this:


This made me laugh just as much as that satirical little Olaf in the movie.

Anyway, if you really must know, the rest of our night has consisted of dinner, light packing for tomorrow's outbound trip.

Oh, and I just created an mp3 collection of all the Disney songs for us to play on loop all the way to Columbus tomorrow. Haha.

Tomorrow and Sunday are gonna be big days. I can't wait!

xo | cmd

Thursday, February 13, 2014

TBT | Salmon Recipe

I'm slowly catching up with the social media world; today I caved in and downloaded Flipagram, which is basically a way to create .gif stuff for Instagram or wherever else we choose to post our daily meanderings. I dug up some sequential photos from ... 2004? & decided I had to share. So, to honor #TBT, here's that time when I was a Ginger Ninja [... Ginja?] & Enjel went bowling. Oh.. and I was still in my skate shoe phase [thank you, Journeys... RIP Globes haha].
On the topic of videos, after Sydni and I had an all out jam session on the way to Mindi's this morning [to music from Frozen, of course], I bumped into this remake. I think 1] this little girl is phenomenal, and 2] The African influence kind of makes this seem more summerish than wintery, which is juuuust fine for me right about now. I'm not perched on my snowboard on a slope all day, erego I'm done for now with this weatherrrrr...
Love. (:

Back in the real world, the day wore on as usual, and I got home in time to get dinner put together, trying out a variation on a salmon recipe. We're all about amino acids in this place.. haha.

Anyway, here's a simple salmon recipe if you're into that sorta thing:

Ingredients:
* Salmon steaks
* Olive oil
* 5 tbsp honey
* 6 tbsp honey mustard [I would really recommend honey mustard, too.]
* ½ - ¾ c fresh-squeezed orange juice [the original recipe calls for 1 full cup of OJ, but even ½ was a lot for 2 salmon steaks]

First things first:
➊ | Preheat oven to 375°. I chose not to broil these, but if you are set on broiling, go for it. Spray a baking pan and lay in salmon. Add some salt & pepper, and a thin layer of honey on the salmon. Put it in the oven for about 10 minutes.
 ---- Note: I made green beans and cous cous as sides for this. I would recommend getting the green beans going before the salmon if you are using fresh beans. I boiled mine down some before they hit the skillet just so they'd cook a little faster. The cous cous takes like, 8 minutes from start to finish, so that should be bad. 
salmon & green beans [& some fresh tea brewing!]

➋ | While the salmon is baking, squeeze out your oranges, measuring out however much juice you prefer. Like I said, I chose to use somewhere right between a ½ and ¾ cup of actual juice, even though the original recipe calls for a full cup [it's just.. a lot]. And no, I'm not sure if using regular OJ from a jug would be as good or not. I think I used 4-5 medium sized oranges with no juicer [sad face] to get mine done. Add the honey & honey mustard to the juice and stir well.
 
➌ | Add the juice mixture to the salmon once it's been baking for that first 10 minutes or so. I think mine cooked for about 13 minutes or so before I got back to it, but it wasn't bad.
orange juice + honey + honey mustard + salmon
➍ | Let the salmon bake again with the mixture in the dish for another 5-8 minutes or so, so everything can absorb. If you're doing a side and you time everything right, it should all come out at the same time. I'm no professional at plating food, but here in the privacy of our own home, I'm really not overly-concerned about appearance as much as taste-tester approvals.
yummmmm!
➎ | Devour! And, if you're like me, take notes on what you'd do differently the next time around. I might actually, if I do this again for just the two of us, use even less juice and maybe a little less mustard. I am all about salmon glazes, so while the soupy consistency of the juice blend was still delicious, I'm bent on finding a way to carmelize it. There will definitely be some orange marmalade in this the next time around. Oh, and next time I probably won't make tea at the same time as dinner; I'm not a huuuge fan of lukewarm iced tea, even with ice cubes. Haha.. Oh well.  
delish!
The crowd decided this was a good one, so we'll bookmark it and bring it back in a couple of weeks with the revisions.
 
For now, I'm parked on the couch about to watch Soul Surfer with my favorites before we put Thursday to rest. 
gosh, i love them.
 That's a wrap, blogbots. ♥

xo | cmd

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Movie Night with Sydni

We ran into some last-minute scheduling yesterday that postponed our movie date to tonight, but it actually worked out just as well. I'm not sure who was more excited, me or Sydni, to go see the newest Disney release, Frozen.

I snagged Sydni after work and we headed home to pick up Rob & Becky before landing ourselves in an otherwise completely vacant theater for the movie. I may be an undying fan of the classic Disney flicks, but I do have to admit that the satirical humor and creativity of the newer releases are still adorable.

While Syd's favorite character was one of the humans [I'm trying to omit as much spoiler stuff as I can!], I think mine was definitely the snowman, Olaf. I found this clip online that is more of a trailer introduction than a spoiler... so enjoy ;)

I very much appreciated the fact that we had free reign over the seats in the theater tonight; Sydni did such an awesome job of staying put during the movie that I couldn't resist letting her have some self-expression time during the closing credit reel. I give you a regrettably grainy rendition of Sydni's interpretation of the closing credits ("Let it Go" by Demi Lovato):

It also included a grappling match in efforts to get her shoes back on.. haha.
[sorry about the quality!]
miss becky, syd & mama - wrestling match!
From the theater, it was on to Graeter's for some ice cream to round off the night. Yumm!!
goofin' around with my loves... & a free sundae! [yiiie!]
ice cream monsterrrrr ♥
fun times with miss becky!
.. And now we're home, safe and sound. Sydni's tuckered out and I'm sure it's going to be a quick, painless request for bedtime ;)

G'Nite!

xo | cmd