Better!

So who's tired of looking at my Wii-injured eye? I AM. Therefore, I'm updating my blog to push that photo down a little. Incidentally, my eye is much better now. I can use my eyebrow pencil without crying.

Some recent excitement (that doesn't involve bleeding or bruising... yet) is our lovely new toy. Some friends sent us a Target gift card a couple of weeks ago and I knew exactly what we needed. We needed to pulse. We needed to chop. We needed to blend, shred and liquefy. We needed an Oster 12-speed blender/food processor combo.



Ta-da!!

There is no end to the fun we can have with this new toy of ours. The first day, Julia and her friend Angel came home from school and we made Thin Mint milkshakes. Oh, YES. They were grand. The next day, the girls came home and we looked around the kitchen for stuff to make a milkshake with (since all the Thin Mints were consumed the day before.) We found bananas, chocolate ice cream and a Hershey bar. So we made Banana Chocolate-Chip milkshakes, which were even better than the Thin Mint ones.

But at this point, I started to get a little nervous. I got a gym membership a month or so ago, and I realized that daily milkshakes might undo everything I was getting accomplished at the gym. So I decided I should fire up the food processor attachment and make something healthy. My friend Katie gave me a recipe and, a quick trip to the store later, I was enjoying hummus on wheat pita bread with roasted red peppers. YUM. (OK, a different kind of "yum" than the milkshakes, but still yum.)

We're excited to see what all this thing can do. The other day, Julia pureed some fruit, poured it into a cup, froze it and later said it was the yummiest thing she had ever eaten. This appliance is life-changing, I'm telling you!

Just so you won't think I'm spending all my time blending things or getting socked in the head by the Wii remote, here's my latest article from Arkansas Life magazine. It was a lot of fun to research and write (I got to interview some Arkansas celebrities, including Jancey Sheats -- a Baytown girl) and it helped get me motivated to start working out regularly. Hey, if I can do it, ANYONE can.

Another cook in the kitchen

Julia, our resident Bobby Flay fan (although she thinks he's a bit arrogant), has been making us omelettes in the mornings. She does a great job -- even on the tricky fold-over part. (She's still honing her cooking skills. This morning she forgot to turn the burner on and wondered why it was taking so long to cook.)

Over the last year or so, Julia has become quite the foodie. Food Network has replaced Disney Channel as her favorite thing to watch, and I have a feeling we will be shopping Williams-Sonoma instead of the Target toy aisle for her birthday. We're planning an Iron Chef birthday party in our church kitchen, where kids will be given some random ingredients to make into dessert.

Speaking of food, I'm getting to do something really fun AGAIN for an article I'm writing for this magazine. I get to go to this place and interview the owner today. Watch for the story in the November issue!

One more thing: for a pre-Halloween scare, go to my dad's blog and read his column about the haunted house he used to live in. And go here to read my old blog post about the same house.