Whale Tongue Tales

Okay, yet another new favorite.  I have been meaning (and attempting!) to visit the Paddywax factory store for quite some time.  I don’t think I realized exactly what it was other than I knew it sold Paddywax candles, which I love, that they have sales every once in a while, and that it is about 5 minutes from my house.  I’m not sure what inspired me to go today but I finally made the trip and am oh, so glad I did.

The store isn’t marked at all from the front so I really wasn’t sure I was at the right place until I was at the door and saw a little “Paddywax” logo and an “open” sign.  When I walked in I was hit head-on with all the strong candle scents, which is a good thing because I have a super-sensitive nose so I knew I wouldn’t be able to dawdle and spend more money than I should.  I started checking out the prices and about fell on the floor…almost every candle in the store was less than $10!  If you’ve ever seen Paddywax candles in the little specialty boutiques, or any other “fancy” candle, for that matter, you’ll know they are no where near $10.  Apparently they are the rejects that didn’t pass the quality test, so they never made it to the boutiques.  I couldn’t really tell that anything was wrong with them so I scooped up 3 lovely candles and was on my way…having spent about 7 minutes and $22.  Not too shabby.

Here were my favorite scents….very appropriate for the season:

Wassail Song!

And it’s 100% preshrunk cotton perfection.  Be very jealous.  Thank you, Charles.

I think it is a fairly well-known fact in my friend circle that I made the horribly stupid and horribly expensive mistake of accidentally donating our entire wardrobe of snowboarding clothes to Goodwill.  I’m not gonna go into the sordid details of how it happened, just know that it did and it SUCKED when I discovered my  blunder.  It’s really a wonder I am still walking around with all my limbs and nary a scar on my body.

We finally ordered some new clothes to replace the old ones and to try and save a little cash, decided to shop online.  I never shop online for clothes…or in catalogs either because I always need to try clothes on.  So, I shouldn’t have been surprised that when my brand new snowboarding outfit came in the mail today, I tried it on and nothing fits.  The jacket, a medium, is just barely too tight around my hips and the pants, large, are too big.

The problem is, I am a Largium.  Or perhaps a Mediurge?  Or an X-Medium?  Whatever.  I am perfectly in between a medium and a large but being that snowboarding clothes come in the standard XS, S, M, L, XL size range, I’m kind of screwed.  I guess I can decide to lose or gain 15 pounds and maybe I’ll be closer to one or the other.  Given the season and the lack of any kind of exercise lately, I can guess which it’ll be.  Blurge.  When I become rich off my domain name money I will get a custom-made outfit to fit this small-chested, large-rib caged, small-waisted, big-hipped and bigger-butted body.

The clothes are cute, though.  See?

Thanks to a friend of a friend, I have been introduced to my new favorite website, Etsy.  As the site explains, it is THE place to buy & sell all things handmade - from purses and jewelery to paintings and photography to ceramics and glassware.  I love it, love it, love it.  Be warned, though, if you are attempting to be even slightly productive in any given day, you may want to hold off visiting the site until you have some significant “down time” to devote.  Seriously.

Here is one of my first purchases.  Surprise, Erin!  Here’s what the necklace looks like that is all yours if you like it (Merry Christmas!).  I am not posting my other purchases as they are gifts for people I haven’t accidentally blabbed to yet.

Happy shopping!

It’s done, kids.  I’m officially “moved” and not only just switched over to Wordpress, but Charles set me up with my very own .com address.  Pretty neat.  I’m secretly hoping the cool new trend in 5-10 years will have something to do with whale tongues and I will be offered millions to give up the domain name so I can retire to the various homes I would immediately purchase and live my days out with drink in hand and smile on face.  You better stay close to me, friends, so you can benefit from all my future wealth.  Anyhoo, here I am now.  Hope you come and check on me every once in a while.

I am gonna try this wordpress thing out and see how I like it before I make the leap and dump my old blog into this shiny new space.  As evidenced by my many months of blog neglect, I would like to re-launch my blogging endeavors and think a new site with a new look may be just the motivation I need.  We’ll see, right?

p.s. - you would think when you ran spell-check on a blog-hosting site, the words “blog”, “blogs”, “blogging”, “blogged”, “bloggiest”, “blogtastic”, etc. would not be highlighted as misspelled, yeah?

A delicious find if you love ginger, which I do very much: Ginger Chews from the ginger people. A strong burst of that yummy, spicey-sweet flavor in a fun-to-eat chew that sticks in your teeth like crazy. But when it tastes so good it’s kind of nice to keep it around awhile…even if between two molars. You can definitely find them at Target, not sure where else. Plus, the little mascot is adorable.

I’m a pretty lazy gal so instead of spending time writing a mediocre review of our Thursday trip to Athens for an amazing New Pornographers show, I will let my husband do it…except his is great, not mediocre like mine would be, just to clarify. BTW - he’s started updating his blog again (and switched from blogger so update your links!) if you want to add it back as one of your “procrastination destinations”. He also took this pic of the marquee outside the show….well done I think.

I will just add this about the show: it was the first time I have known every song start to finish and I realized there are two things that make me smile uncontrollably: amazing music and roller coasters. I end up sporting a seriously silly, enormous grin on my face that I absolutely can’t get rid of….and why would I want to? Anyway, it was truly fantastic and 100% worth the drive and shock that ensued when the alarm went off Friday morning. We are like so rock star and stuff.

Hiya. So, as my grandmother reminded me this week, it has been quite a while since I last posted. All I can say is trying to keep up with life has me exhausted every week night and spending weekends catching up on everything I didn’t do during the week due to the aforementioned exhaustion. I know, excuses, excuses, right?

In my time away from my blog, I have been on countless work trips, one very fun personal trip to congratulate Dr.Hofer in Nashville and have baked lots and lots of bread. I’m still finding myself very affected by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and have made some small, positive changes in my eating & purchasing habits. I am baking at least a loaf or two of bread every week, eating a ton of vegetables (and trying to be wise about only choosing what is in season), buying fair trade coffee, and I even planted raspberry & blackberry bushes, have seeds growing on my back deck (lettuce, collards, turnips, peppers, tomatoes, etc) and just tonight purchased a half dozen eggs from a lady in the neighborhood that raises chickens & ducks in her back yard.

There is still a ton I could be doing but I am taking baby steps for now. Oh, and I finally broke open the cheese! Zach, ever the jet-setter, was in town between stints in Costa Rica and Spain (yawn) and wanted to see it. I had almost forgot that I had it aging in my liquor cabinet so I showed it to him and figured we should try it out….totally forgetting about his epicurean background and highly sophisticated palate. All I know is, I thought it tasted pretty darn good, so did he (at least he was nice enough to tell me it was), so did Charles, so did Erin and so did Kerry & Mark even though they were VERY drunk when they tried it. All in all, I think it was a great success. Now that I know it is edible and you don’t die from eating it, I think I will take another stab….assuming I can find another 5 hours to devote to cheesemaking.

The Simmons’ April calendar is ridiculously busy but I am looking forward to an upcoming visit from one of my favorite cousins, a visit from a far-away friend (a couple far-away friends, actually!), multiple fun parties with new friends and ending up the month with our family’s annual cousins weekend in Mississippi.

Charles and I are feeling out of control at the moment on many levels so I am hoping a calmness can come over us soon and we can feel a little more stable & organized.

I will try to update more but no promises Momma Dot!

Here are some pictures of my food endeavors.

braided white loaves

can you guess which are store bought? the big blue one is a duck egg