Fairwell 2010

          2010 has been the best year of my life and I have reason to believe that 2011 will be even better.  I could go on and on and on about why it was so amazing, but I think I'll just say that I found stability in almost every avenue of my life.  I got to spend more quality time with my kids.  I stayed financially capable.  I found the love and respect of a great man.  I did not get to spend as much time with my friends as I would have liked, but my true friends know that I love them and respect that my priority is my family.
          We have big plans for 2011.  I plan to continue to keep my finances in order and even try to pay off some old debt.  I plan to work out more in order to stay healthier and more fit and tone.  I plan to continue finding ample opportunity to spend quality time with my kids and my man.  I want to get engaged to solidify to everyone that this man is truly the love of my life, and we will spend the rest of our lives being ridiculously happy.  I plan to spend more time with my friends, but not at the expense of losing time with my children.  I plan to keep my house a little neater.  I want to get a new dog, but not until I get my house clean and my carpets cleaned. 
          What are your New Year's Resolutions?!

Buddy

Richard and I recently made the decision to give my tiny toy poodle up for adoption.  We loved Buddy, but he was he was too much maintenance.  We want to get another dog after the carpets and laundry is done to minimize the smell of Buddy in the apartment.

Buddy was much loved in our house but poodle coats require constant grooming, and their eyes require constant washing.  I knew I had to let him go when his hair began to get matted, his eyes were draining onto his face, and his coat began to look yellow rather than white after a bath.  I gave him regular baths and even attempted to keep his hair cut and his eyes washed out, but I was seeing the effects of my neglect and gave him to a stay at home mother of two little girls.  She and the girls will have more time to tend to my baby than I ever did.

I really wanted to get a Yorkie or a Yorkie poo as a replacement, but both of these breeds also require a lot of maintenance.

We quickly ruled out Maltese as well for the same reason, but I insisted I wanted a long-haired dog, while Richard insisted we needed a short-haired one.

It only took him seconds to rule out Pomeranian for the same reason.

Richard suggested something like a Boston Terrier or Pug, but I quickly ruled out those two breeds for their relationship to the bulldog.  Their more stout with a strong jaw, so they're not much for me to cuddle with, and they might be able to break skin if they got nippy with the kids.

I'm not much for the Jack Russell Terrier either, because I think they're too hyper for an apartment, and we had already ruled out all large breeds due to size and room restraints.

When Richard suggested Chihuahua, I was ready to make a compromise, but I was still favoring the look and feel of long-haired dogs.

 Then I did a little research on long-haired Chihuahuas.  Their coat is longer, but does NOT require constant grooming, only bathing and brushing.  Their jaws are very weak, sometimes too week to consume hard food, so even though they're known to be nippy dogs, he won't do any damage if he bites.  They have proven to be trainable pets.  They are very self-centered dogs who love attention.  So, in a few months, after we gets things here back in order after the holidays, we've decided to get a long-haired Chihuahua and I'm already so excited.

If you have any suggestions about a pet that might fit our needs better who we didn't consider, let me know!

2 pies in only 20 minutes of prep time!

This is a little holiday tradition of mine.  I love pumpkin pie, cheesecake, and pumpkin cheesecake during the holidays!  Making two pies at once does take a little more concentration since they don't have exactly the same ingredients, so it's easy to get confused, but with some practice, you can double your fun making a pumpkin pie and cheesecake simultaneously.

You will need:

Pumpkin Pie:
1 (14)oz. can of pumpkin
1 (12)oz. can of non-sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 dash of salt
1 pinch each of: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove, allspice
1 (9) in graham cracker pie crust

Cheesecake:
2 (8)oz. pkgs. cream cheese
1/2 cup of milk
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 dash of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 (9) in graham cracker pie crust

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Soften your cream cheese by microwaving on High for 20 seconds, and place into a medium size mixing bowl.  Put pumpkin into a comparable sized mixing bowl.

Add your condensed milk to your pumpkin bowl, and your 2% milk to your cheesecake bowl.

Add 2 large eggs beaten, a cup of sugar, and a dash of salt to each bowl.  Add vanilla into your cheesecake bowl.  Add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and clove to your pumpkin bowl.  Now that all the ingredients are in their proper bowl, mix both of them with a mixer or in a blender.

Now, this part is a little tricky.  After pouring both mixtures into a pie crust, place ONLY the pumpkin pie into the oven on the middle rack.  Cook at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350, put the cheesecake into the oven.  Bake both pies for 45 minutes on the middle rack.  Remove from the oven and let cool, then you can eat them, or put them into the refrigerator to chill.

For a pumpkin cheesecake, opt to get 3 smaller pie crusts, after filling the pie crusts, combine the leftovers from each bowl into your third pie crust to make your pumpkin cheesecake.

Precious

          I had some mixed feelings about this film prior to seeing it because although it won several awards, it got some very negative reviews from some people who saw it.  After seeing Precious, I conclude that if you hated it, it's because you didn't understand it.  It is based on the book, Push, by Sapphire.  The first thing that you need to understand is that this book is written from the point of view of an illiterate 16 year old girl, and the ignorance and innocence transcends into the film.  A lot of people said there was too much profanity and the hardships that this girl was faced with were just unrealistic.  I think all of those people are very lucky to have never had to experience or witness a life so full of tragedy, but they're extremely naive if they think such people don't exist!  I will agree, however, that this movie is not for the faint at heart.
          The story starts in Harlem in 1987, and follows 16 year old, Precious Jones.  In the beginning of the movie, Precious is being suspended from school for being pregnant for the second time by her own father.  A lady from her school tells Precious about an alternative school she may be able to attend, and wanting to better her life from that of her mother, Precious goes.  In the beginning, she reads and writes on a 2nd grade level (but to be honest, my 5 year old reads and writes better).  Her mother seems like a heartless, angry woman, who makes Precious do all the cooking and cleaning while she sits watching television all day.  Her mother is also physically abusive.  She is supported on welfare for Precious and for her first child, Mongo, who is an adorable little girl who suffers from down syndrome and lives with Precious' grandmother.  She only sees her daughter when the social worker comes around, and her mother allows Mongo to come over so that it will appear that she lives there.
          In the beginning of the movie, Precious is very quiet.  She conforms to the things in her life for the lack of better knowing.  After a few months or so at Each One, Teach One (the alternative school), you can see that she gains confidence and happiness (as much happiness as a person in her situation could experience).  She begins writing in a journal every day to her teacher, Ms. Rain.  Her story begins to touch the teacher and she starts giving Precious advice and inspiration in her return letters.
          After giving birth to her second child, Precious returns to her mother's house where they get into a physical altercation, after he mother tosses her newborn baby into a chair.  She is upset about losing her welfare after Precious told her own counselor that Mongo did not actually live with them, and that her mother had lied in order to get welfare.  Precious defends herself and her child and goes to the only place she knows she is safe, Each One, Teach One.  After trying for hours to find a place for them to go, Ms. Rain allows Precious and her newborn to stay at her house with herself and her female life partner.  Precious gets herself into a halfway house with her teacher's help and it seems that she is on the road to get her life together.
          Precious' mother comes to visit her at her halfway house to inform her that her father has died, and that he had died of AIDS.  She tells her mother that she should get herself tested and walks out of the room.  Precious reveals in the next scene that she has tested positive for HIV and that she will die.  Ms. Rain convinces her to continue to write and tell her story so that she can help other people in similar situations.
          At the end of the movie, Precious' mother asks her counselor to reunite her with her daughter.  Precious agrees to the meeting.  The meeting is a little odd as you realize that this woman is not heartless, just broken by her own life.  She admits to hating Precious for taking her man away.  She reveals that she believed that no other man would ever love her, and he was loving Precious instead of her, that Precious had stolen her man away.  She was upset that he had given Precious more children than he gave her.  She truly breaks down in a tearful jolt of mumbling, some of which makes little or no sense.  After her mother leaves, and returns with Precious' daughter, Precious takes her daughter and her son and walks away from her mother, never planning to see her again.  She wants to create a better life for her children, while knowing she will not be there to raise them.
          The movie was not glamorous at all.  There were no special effects.  The dream sequences were a bit outrageous.  But I got the impression that all of that added to the real, deep, dirty truth of Precious.

Splice

          I can't tell you how excited that I was when Rich said he picked up the movie Splice from the Red Box.  I have been so excited to see it and didn't even decide that it was complete and utter SHIT until the credits rolled at the end, so no one can say that I didn't give this movie more than a fair chance.  

          It is a movie about a young scientist couple, specializing in splicing animal and plant DNA for medical and pharmaceutical uses (and they have a title like splicologists or something), who is trying to get permission from the board who funds their program to approve introducing human DNA into an experiment.  When the board refuses, Elsa and Clive create this animal/human hybrid splice in private.  Elsa obviously wears the pants in the relationship and Clive does everything that she asks and she is the one who pushes the whole thing, and you find out later that she uses her own human DNA which only allows you to believe that she has serious mother/daughter issues, since she doesn't want children at all, just pets with her own DNA.  As they become completely consumed with their hybrid pet/child thing, their lab (N.E.R.D.) is failing miserably at the task that the board has given them to find where the protein is coming from that is so helpful (which is the reason for the whole experiment).  They are experimenting on Ginger and Fred who are a male and female pair of plant/animal splices that look like big nasty blobs of flesh.  They had noticed that Ginger's estrogen levels had dropped, but didn't realize until their huge science conference that Ginger had actually turned into a male when Fred and Ginger kill each other and splatter blood on a crowd full of other scientists (not a very good impression).

          After the major set back, the lab is being taken over by the big bosses who are funding the program and in order to protect their secrecy, Dren, their animal/human hybrid (whose name, btw, comes from their lab's name backwards) has to be moved to Elsa's farm, which used to belong to her dead mother (there is DEFINITELY a weird, fucked-up back story which I kept waiting for them to explain, which they NEVER did.  Her mother was crazy, and now she's dead, and Elsa has issues, and that's all they EVER let you know!)  Dren is growing at a rate of days in minutes, so her life is rapidly progressing before their eyes.  They have by this time discovered that she can breath under water, and has wings hidden away under her skin, and blah blah blah.  In earlier days, Dren had favored Elsa, like you would a mother, and despised Clive, who did actually try to kill her once and tried to talk Elsa out of ever creating her in the first place, but as she reaches what would be her teenage years, that is if she aged in years, she begins to resent Elsa and favor Clive, but not like a father.  She seduces Clive, and Elsa walks in as they're having sex.  Elsa is disgusted that Clive has cheated (and with something that wasn't even human) and they have a big fight, but agree to settle their differences and deal with Dren.  They return to the farm to find her sick and dying.  She dies soon after, at which time they dig a hole and bury her, only to have her come back to life as a man, at which time she kills Clive, rapes Elsa, and then gets killed by Elsa.

          In the last scene, Elsa is giving the board the right to further the study.  They offer her a lot of money, which she accepts, then she stands to reveal she is pregnant, which insinuates that furthering the study would mean studying her unborn hybrid incest child which I find absolutely disgusting.

          The acting wasn't great.  The story line was flaky.  The details were a bit outrageous.  They didn't define the characters well at all.  You never understand where Elsa's mother issues come from, or why Clive is a freak who likes hybrid women (I say she seduced him, but basically she kissed him and he pulled his pants down), or how Elsa can forgive her boyfriend of 7 years for cheating with her half random-animal daughter in one conversation, or how Dren thinks or feels at all, or why Elsa was so adamant about keeping Dren to herself, to study by herself, but she's willing to sell her unborn, inbred child for science.  Even in a science fiction movie where the plot is unbelievable, the characters should be believable.

I give this movie a 1 out of 5.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

We just watched the first episode of the Starz series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand.  It was racy, saucy, and sexy.  There was a lot of blood, some power struggles, lots of nudity, and several sex scenes.  We were going to watch the first 2 episodes, but by the end of the first, Rich was practically attacking me!  I recommend this show to anyone :)

Charlie St. Cloud

Last night we watched Charlie St. Cloud.  It wasn't terrible, but I was the only one who stayed awake, if that tells you anything.  Spoiler Alert!  If you haven't seen the movie already, this will ruin the ending for you!  Its a very cliche depiction of a guy who has everything going for him and loses it all, blah, blah, blah.  On the day of his high school graduation, with a sailing scholarship to Stanford waiting, Charlie gets into his car with his little brother, Sam, without the permission of their mother.  On their way to wherever it was they were going (Charlie wants to go to a party and Sam wants him to drop him at a friend's house on the way) they are struck from behind by a drunk driver, and then t-boned on the passenger side by a semi-truck.  They both die, but the paramedic miraculously brings Charlie back, while his brother dies beside him.  After the funeral, Charlie makes a pact with his brother's ghost to meet up every day in the same spot in the woods by the graveyard where Sam is buried.  So, the kid gives up everything to be near his dead brother so they can play catch every day at sunset.  Charlie gets a job working for the graveyard, so he's close by Sam all of the time, and occasionally, he even sees, and talks to, other ghosts as well.  Everyone in town has him rumored to be crazy of coarse.  He runs into a girl who had a crush on him in high school and they seem to hit it off for a brief moment before she takes off to test her sail boat out for her big 6 month long sailing trip around the world.  She returns to the cemetery where Charlie works, and where her father is buried, to have yet another well-played out conversation with Charlie where he offers to make her dinner.  Having her leave and come back being the only way that he could still meet his dead brother Sam for their sunset game of catch and conversation.  At dinner, Charlie and Tess really hit it off and they do the dirty, or so you gather since they don't show anything :( and he awakes in the cemetery only to find Tess has taken his old sail boat out.  They get out on the water together and everything is all romantic until Charlie realizes it's almost sunset and runs off into the woods to meet Sam.  Tess follows, finding out that Charlie spends his sunset every day with his dead brother, of coarse, makes her think he is a little crazy and has some issues to work out, so she tries to help, but Charlie sends her away, drinks Jack Daniels all night to wake up with a hang over, needing some coffee, which he gets from a local diner.  While Charlie is trying to kick the headache, some local law enforcement announces that Tess's boat had never returned after she took it out into the storm for a test 3 days ago, and thus she had not returned either.  As this is going on, Tess takes her dog out for a walk in town and realizes that Charlie is the only person who can see her and that she doesn't actually have a reflection.  It is a surprise to them both that Tess seems to be one of Charlie's ghosts.  At first, he believes that she is dead, but soon realizes that she is just lost and is coming in and out of the "in between world".  Charlie takes off to find Tess, and he finds and rescues her while missing his sunset date with his brother.  Sam finally crosses over, and Charlie and Tess recover from their icy cold adventure.  Charlie sails up to Tess's dock in an old sailboat he bought and she tells him that she has been dreaming about him.  As she recalls parts of the "dreams", Charlie tells Tess they are actually memories and then recalls some of their very intimate conversation to convince her.  They sail into the sunset where you assume that they live happily ever after..........

 

Labels

I have decided that since I have drawn a blank about what I am supposed to "blog" about, I've come up with some fun categories to keep this thing going.  Maybe after a few posts, I'll really get the hang of it, and then this whole thing won't seem so difficult!  I must admit that some of my ideas were inspired by other blogs, such as http://onemetwomonsters.blogspot.com/ -  and here they are:

Fun with Food (where i share recipes and cooking experiences)

Crafts with Kids (where i share the things that the kids and i create and how we create them)

Lists (random lists of things)

Date Night (where i share saucy details about how romantic my love is)

Whoores (where i rant and rave about customers and other hooter girls)

Spoilers (where i talk about movies i've seen and ruin them if you haven't)

What do you think?  I'm sure more will come to me, but if I concentrate on sharing these things, I'll probably have more than 3 posts in the next month, don't you think?!

Chicken and Dumplings

You will need:
4 lb. Chicken (whole chicken or chicken breast)
(1) 14 oz can of chicken broth
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons corn meal
2 teaspoons sugar
a pinch of salt and pepper
5 tablespoons butter
1 large egg
1/2 cup of milk

The first thing I did was fillet 3 large chicken breasts equaling 4 lbs and placed them in a large pot and brought them to a boil.  I kept them on a slow boil for the entire time it took me to prepare the rest.

I put 1 can of chicken broth and 4 same size cans of water into a large pot and placed on low-medium heat as I prepared the dumplings to go into it.

I combined the flour, corn meal, sugar, salt and pepper, egg, and butter into a medium-sized mixing bowl and worked into a ball.  I added about 1/2 cup more of flour as I kneaded the dough to make it tougher and kneaded into a tight ball.

I used the rolling pin to roll the dough flat to about 1/8 inch thick.

I used a pizza cutter (you may also use a knife or cookie cutters) to cut the dough into even squares.

I finished by adding a layer of butter to the square dumplings to prevent sticking.

I placed the dumplings one at a time into the chicken broth and water and allowed to boil while I tended again to the chicken.

I removed the chicken from heat, drained it, and cut the breast fillets into smaller pieces, then added them slowly into the broth/water/dumpling mixture.

Finally, I reduced heat to low and let simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Christmas 2010 Pictures

We got our pictures back today and we are SO excited.  They turned out so nice!