Move over American Idol

You gotta check this out, left Simon Cowell speachless, gobsmacked, his expressions are priceless and the other judge is bawling, introducing Paul Potts:-








Britain may have bad teeth but they definetly have talent.

American Idol - you gotta vote!!

Alright so many of you know that Eric and I do not have cable or any other such kind of TV service and believe it or not we actually survive. There are a few shows we miss but most can be viewed online, and the rest, I just figure I'm putting my time to better use - if blogging and reading other blogs counts as better use that is!! Anyway, the one show you cannot view online that I really, really, really want to watch? AMERICAN IDOL. I watched the 1st couple of seasons and to be honest year after year its kinda the same so I wasn't missing it too much but this year, BROOKE WHITE is on so I just have to watch. She's in the Van Nuys Ward, good friends with some people I know and a great singer, and I met her at someones house for dinner and can say honestly she is really just a good all around person so I broke down and bought rabbit ears. Its quite funny, I have to have the piano bench on my table and the ears on top and you can see the reception I'm getting. But hey! its all good I can hear it real good and see enough to know whats going on. Love it, love it, love it, great season but remember you have to call, so tune in and vote for Brooke. My other fave David Archuleta, so cute and so good. Watch and vote people, watch and vote.

Brooke White and David Archuleta

Greenthumb?

So there really is no green thumb here but I have plenty of enthusiasm and effort and I hope that counts. I'm really getting into this gardening thing lately, maybe its my need to produce a tangible product at the end of the day, I'm not entirely sure but anyway, here is what this Brit and my half Brits do on rainy afternoon's, we begin our garden:-

Here is one monster root of a tree/shrub thing I pulled out. I asked the gardeners to do it and they took their chain saw to it leaving an annoying stump that's kinda right in the middle of my planting area so I took a shovel and saw and went at it myself, I think it weighed more than Sara!!

Sara really likes to get into it, this is how it goes:- she plays in the dirt and then promptly goes inside to wash her hands leaving a nice trail of dirt in her wake, then she goes back outside and the whole thing starts again. She usually gets her clothes wet during the washing hands stage and so this particular day she went through at least 3 sweaters. She also likes to eat the dirt (we do discourage this behaviour) and so in most pictures you will see a ring of the stuff around her mouth.

So these are the rainy days pictures, the earlier ones were last weekend. My two little garden crusaders. Sara can say 'shovel'.

So we may have a yard but most of it is concrete and so most of my planting is going to have to be in containers. I found these awesome whiskey barrel containers at The Home Depot, they have similar ones at Target for around $49 but at The Home Depot they are $20!! great find and they are huge, in this one we are growing strawberries.

And no room for a monster container? check out the tip that Victor from Home Depot gave me (he was awesome BTW if you ever need gardening advice go see him) poke some holes in your bag of dirt and sow your bulbs, seeds or seedlings right into that. We are attempting onions in ours but he was telling me that people in NY do this on their balconies with tomatoes, you may only be able to put in 2 tomato plants with their cages but hey, its a start. The rest of our seeds: arugula, sunflowers, carrots, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes.

Oh and my peas and sweet peas, here are the only planting areas in my yard and up the fence I am planting sweet peas and actual peas, sweet peas are more of the flowering decoration plant and they go in between each pea plant, apparently they go well together, the sweet peas attract good bugs that eat the annoying bugs that will eat my peas. I'm also planning on putting my arugula in here too.

And I can't forget my amazing husband who comes home from work (working to support my gardening habit!!) to dirt all over the yard and no housework done because we have been outside all afternoon making the yard a mess, and does not complain but just takes the girls and gives them a well needed bath. Love you babe, your the best.

so cute, so funny..

Kate made Eric and I laugh yesterday, she was doing her sticker book in the car and was on a page that was all about before and after. It was Cinderella so it had a picture of a pumpkin and she had to match the carriage to it. Anyway, the last picture was of Cinderella in her raggety dress and the matching picture was of Cinderella in her beautiful ball gown, when I asked Kate what Cinderella's raggety dress turned into she paused for a brief moment and then replied "an itchy dress!!"

Happy Valentine's Day

Kate has a little party tomorrow in her class and so today we made little valentine's to give out to all her classmates, I saw this cute idea and adapted it a little to supplies I had on hand. They turned out cute, I tried to have Kate do as much as possible, she needed to make 13 so that meant cutting out 26 hearts, she actually cut out about 20 and wrote her name by herself. I think the craft would have been really good if she had only needed to make a few but it seemed to get old real quick. Kate's friend Madeline came over to craft too and I'm not sure my girls were the best behaved so appologies to cute Madeline and maybe just a play date next time. Needless to say we made a big mess but I did have a genius idea and layered my table in paper so that at the end all I had to do was roll it all up and throw it away.

Last night at enrichment we did cake decorating, we have an amazing chef lady in our ward, she brought along another great baker/cake decorator friend and she wowed us by making these frosting roses, Kate really wanted to eat it today.

Sara loves cake/anything with sugar in it and so just couldn't get enough, when I was tring to snapshot Kate and her rose Sara decided to cut herself another piece of cake!!

Found these cute tee's at The Children's Place, cute tee's for my cute girls. If you can't quite tell

from the picture Sara's says - I love being a Lil Sister and Kate's says - I Love being a Big Sister.

Put my foot in it

"the man who never made a mistake never made anything"

Love that quote, it always makes me feel better about screwing up. I had a kid leave church on Sunday just before class began as some of the kids were teasing him, I'm not 100% on what happened but I spoke to one of the moms of the kids, not to assign blame what I intended to say was whatever they were doing may have seemed like fun but it offended one of the kids and to maybe be a little more sensitive in the future. Anyway, this mom just sent me a strange e-mail and obviously whatever I said came out wrong and she seems pretty offended by me. I feel so bad, I would never purposely offend anyone, it sucks big time to screw up and I'm not sure how to make things right and not feel uncomfortable, needless to say I called and left a message appologising. Anyway, enough with the rambling that doesn't make any sense, if I have ever offended anyone I never meant to, I'm not that kind of person, I know I get crabby when I'm menstrual so here is a big SORRY to anyone out there that has ever been offended by my crazy loud and untactful mouth, one of these days I'm just going to learn to keep it shut!

Saturday night in

Just watched with Eric tonight - what can I say, fabulous, utter brilliance, don't think there was one thing I didn't like about this movie. How have I never heard of it before?!!

Happy pancake day

When I was speaking to my dad the other day on the phone he reminded me that Feb 5th was pancake day. A lesser holiday known to us Brits, those in Australia and Canada as Shrove Tuesday, I guess all you yanke's have Mardi Gras instead. Anyway, it marks the day before lent begins and every shrove Tuesday my mum would make copious amounts of pancakes that we ate with lemon and sugar. Absolutley delish, my memories are of her standing in the kitchen turning out pancake after pancake with us four kids in a line ready for the next one hot from the frying pan. We really didn't eat pancakes any other time of the year and it is such a fond memory, so yesterday for dinner we ate pancakes. They were good, in England we have 2 kinds of basic flour, plain and self raising, the plain flour is used to make the pancake batter. Whenever I make pancakes they aren't quite like the ones my mum made, they end up a little thicker due to the all purpose flour but they were still tasty and the girls enjoyed them. And why do we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday? Here is what Wikipedia has to say....

The reason that pancakes are associated with the day preceding Lent is that the 40 days of Lent form a period of liturgical fasting, during which only the plainest foodstuffs may be eaten. Therefore, rich ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar are disposed of immediately prior to the commencement of the fast. Pancakes and doughnuts were therefore an efficient way of using up these perishable goods, besides providing a minor celebratory feast prior to the fast itself.

Et Voilà!

Here is my rendition of The Golden Plates, Eric was very dubious of my idea at first but I think it turned out pretty darn good. I have since hidden a stash of candy inside that my primary kids can choose from if they memorize their monthly scripture.

Girls night

Tonight Eric is gone, he is camping with the boy scouts so the girls and I decided to have a girly night. A few of you may have heard me say that my girls are just not girly so tonight I decided to promote some girliness. We rented Cinderella and on the way home we stopped off to get some nail polish. It was so fun, Kate loved it, she especially loved having her nails painted, its the first time I have ever done it. Mostly Kate's nails don't grow well, she looses them quite often and slight bumps to her nails will result in blood blisters forming underneath until the nail eventually falls off. Anyway, bad nails aside I decided we'd do it, after I painted her fingers she asked me to do her toes, what can I say? her toe nails are very hard to describe but I painted whatever of them I could and she just can't wait to show them all off to her daddy when he gets home tomorrow. Oh! and I rented the movie Waitress for myself - a little chick flick alone time to craft in - cute ending but hard to describe the beginning and middle, not too many redeeming qualities. Oh well.

More girliness, Sara loves beads but unfortunately this day she looked a little more gangsta wearing her bling than girly!! and Kate in her dress up, she says the top is too itchy, it must be her skin as her friend Madeline wore one of her dresses sans an undershirt and seemed fine in it.

Project - candied orange peel, it turned out O.K., its maybe a little on the bitter side so I need to try it again, think I may even try grapefruit peel next time. Also stay tuned for my current project, I'm trying to make a box look like the golden plates that the kids pick candy out of as they pass off their monthly scripture.