This was taken this morning but I keep forgetting to post things. If I look tired it’s because I was still recovering from the munchkin’s party. It’s part of Self Portrait Sunday meme. See what everyone else is doing this week by checking out the Self Portrait Sunday entry of the day. I had a pretty relaxing day though which I needed after the hectic week. The munchkin had fun running around the yard naked and bouncing in his paddling pool, and actually had a nap today because of that which was good too.

I’ve been editing and reworking some fanfiction that I wrote a while ago, and can hopefully now finish some things up. I can’t post anything until Tuesday though because the new fanfiction.net account is frozen for two days to prevent spam.

The munchkin wanted in on the Self Portrait Sunday this week, and decided he wanted to show off. It’s hard to believe in just under two weeks he’ll be TWO. My baby’s disappearing into a strange little child.

To see how everyone else is fairing this week check out this week’s self portrait sunday post, which isn’t up yet. I’ll be checking back to see if I guessed the link correctly.

Anyway, now the munchkin is napping I’m going to see if I can’t get going on the new layout I want to do for this blog and another one that I have. I got a great commission from DuskFalls, my friend who did the wonderful lady for my tarot site so I want to make sure I can find a framework which will do it justice.

So, here I am rocking the self portrait again this week.

This was taken last night after Mum and I got back from taking the munchkin to a local restaurant to eat. We spent four hours (at least) yesterday re-doing my hair with Nuclear Red, Pimpin Purple and Blue from Special Effects and Paul Mitchell respectively. Hair dye. Yes.

The pink was starting to look rose and orange, so it was time to get things going again. I have to say that I absolutely love Special Effects hair dye. It’s not every dye that you can leave on your hair for almost an hour and the hair is light and fluffy and fresh and clean rather than stripped and nasty when you’re done.

See what the others are doing with their self portraits this week, by checking things out at MidLife Musings. It’s still hosted by Cass, don’t worry, but just on a different blog!

Happy Easter.

This was taken this morning while I was making wontons for our Easter dinner at my FILs. The munchkin saw me get the camera out and asked to be picked up. So, here we go. This is my first Self Portrait Sunday on this blog for a while because I was using my now defunkt photo blog for them.

Anyway, it’s been a pretty busy day so I wouldn’t be surprised if things are slow on this week’s entry but I’m going to stop by and check them out.

So here’s the Four Foods on Friday entry for this week. I missed last week and almost missed today because things have been so hectic and plague-ridden over here, but here we go.

#1. What’s your favorite form of potatoes?
That’s a tough one I really like potatoes pretty much anyway they can be made. Especially if they’re scalloped and covered in spices, and everything, or french-fried. How about my favorite way to have them is any way that I don’t actually have to make them, LOL.

#2. Pie crust. Premade or from scratch?
Pre-made. Definitely. I suck at pastry. Unless I cheat and do almost pre-made and get the kind that you get frozen and actually have to roll out, but don’t have to mix.

#3. Vegetables. Fresh, frozen or canned?
I lived with canned veggies for a while, but those are now only kept for hurricane emergencies and things like that. We mostly have frozen and occasionally fresh around here, depending on how quickly they’re going to get cooked. Frozen tends to be best/most often used.

#4. What one dish do you wish you could prepare better?
Hm. I think I’m pretty good at working out how to do anything very well. There’s not been much that I’ve tried to make that hasn’t been edible. I guess pies would be something *L* pastry. I’m a bit daunted by some of the Italian recipes my husband’s relatives gave us…but I can’t really say because I haven’t tried them all yet.

This is more of a family portrait really. Nimue was snuggling with me and the munchkin came over to pet her, so I decided to try and get a portrait of all of us. Not going to mention how many tries it took to get all of us decently in the photo where you could actually tell what’s going on.

Cass is using Midlife Musings to host Self Portrait Sunday now. Check out this week’s entry to see what’s going on with everyone who participates.

We have our own personal good news this week. We adopted a kitty from the Humane Society. Her name is Nimue Caledonia. Nimue for the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legends and Caledonia for the ancient Roman name for the Scottish areas that my family hails from.

As you can imagine I’m very VERY happy to have this new addition to our family. My husband surprised himself and me being also happy about the cat. He has allergies to cats and couldn’t be around my old cat Ani for very long at all, but given we have the filter and the allergen reducer on the A/C unit and tile floor and I found a light haired cat who wanted to come home with us we thought it might be okay and so far he hasn’t had any allergy attacks despite the fact that she’s a very lovey-dovey kitty and likes to climb up on everyone and lick and nuzzle with them.

Nimue had a little bit of a sad story before coming to us. She wasn’t abused by any means but she was born at the shelter and had been taken home by another lady and then brought back. The lady had been calling the shelter and her vets office every day complaining that the cat was too noisy and was keeping her up and couldn’t they do something about the fact that she meowed too much. The workers at the shelter told her that perhaps it was best if she just brought the cat back to them and they would hopefully find someone else to take her. The munchkin and I came in two days later and she came up to the bars and stretched out trying to touch me. The workers had been telling me about another cat called Tigger who we had met on the previous Friday while visiting but he had longer fur and I felt that we were meant to have a female cat.

When “Angelina” as they were calling her came up to the bars and I found out her name I had a feeling she might just be our cat, and then when I heard what had happened and saw how lovey and gentle she was that was it. She came home with us.

I’m always amazed at how much good work the humane society does. Leesburg Humane Society is a no-kill shelter, which means if an animal doesn’t get adopted they’re at the shelter until they die of ill health or natural causes. The shelter is often over crowded because of this as most people want to adopt puppies and kittens or will go to a shelter which does kill the animals because they’re saving them.

I also know from working there that they take a huge loss on every pet they adopt because they charge only $50 for dog adoption and $40 for cat adoptions no matter what age the animal is. They have either already spayed and neutered the animal or will give you a certificate to get that done for free from your local vet, and cover all the animal’s shots for the first year, which means on each animal they adopt they lose at least $150 dollars. Add to that the fact that the shelter operates entirely on donations and it’s really hard for them to keep up.

They do have a thrift store in town which sells clothes and other items (like a Goodwill does) to help with their financial upkeep but that’s all they have other than people’s generous donations. They would have closed down a few years ago were it not for a very kind man giving them a stipend out of his will.

They have a large area of land and as well as rescuing cats and dogs of all shapes and sizes also rescue larger animals and farm animals. When I worked there they had a huge boar, two shetland ponies, several goats and a horse, right now they have two horses, rabbits, birds, cats and dogs. Many of these animals will never be adopted but remain at the society where they’re loved and cared for until the natural end of their days.

Here I’m all happy because hubbie’s said that it’s okay to get a kitty cat for our anniversary. I meant to have this up on Sunday so that I could enter Cass’s new version of Self Portrait Sunday on MidLife Musings but I got behind as we were very busy over the weekend going back and forth in preparation for the kitty being with us.

Here I go with my entry for Four Foods on Friday meme.

#1. What type of m&m is your favorite?
I like just the regular M&M’s the dark chocolate ones are nice but I can’t find them any more. I’m not too keen on the peanut or almond flavors though.

#2. Peanut butter. Smooth, chunky, creamy. How do you like it?
Smooth. I don’t eat much of it any more either. I used to have toast with peanut butter and jam or marmalade every morning, but I haven’t eaten it in a while. I particularly don’t like peanut butter mixed with chocolate. Reese’s Cups or things are right out. My husband teases me about this failing on my part, but not too much, because it means he gets to eat all of those types of candy if we’re given them at Yule tide or for Easter or something like that.

#3. Do you usually drink out of glass, acrylic, Tupperware type or paper cups?
For the most part lately I’ve been drinking directly out of cans. I will use glasses if I’m drinking water or something. We also have plastic and styrofoam cups at our house too for when our friends are over gaming, and because my husband maintains that hot drinks keep their heat longer in styrofoam rather than mugs so whenever he has coffee or tea he drinks it out of those and I drink it out of a mug.

#4. Share a chicken recipe.
Hm. Well, I’ve shared a few recipes in the past few weeks that use chicken. Let’s think what else I can…oh, General Tso’s chicken. That’s actually fairly simple, LOL, because I cheat with it a lot so I can make it quickly.

1 cup of rice per person eating.
1 lb pack of chicken breasts.
1 bottle of General Tso’s sauce. (I usually get the Iron Chef kind).
Birds Eye Microwaveable Steam Broccoli.

Chop the chicken breasts into bite sized pieces and fry them up.
Set the rice to cook with one cup of water per cup of rice either in a rice steamer or in a pan on the stove.
Once the chicken is browned add the General Tso’s sauce.
Once the chicken is thoroughly coated, steam the vegetables and then add them to the mix.
Serve.

There are ways to make the General Tso’s sauce for scratch, but any time I’ve tried it’s always come out tasting absolutely horrible, so I go for the cheat way. The sauce is usually about $4 but it’s worth it to not have the hassle of a horrible meal.

Be sure to check out the Fun Crafts and Recipes blog for a the Four Foods on Friday round-up.

I don’t normally catch the morning news because I’m usually running around like a mad thing or the munchkin and I are watching educational programs after breakfast, but this morning was a late start because my husband and I had been up talking until 1 a.m. the munchkin had woken up and hubbie had taken care of him and had Fox 35 news on when I came into the room.

They were talking about a school in our area and showcasing all the good things that that they’re doing for their students. Apparently this is a weekly feature that the news broadcast does as part of their morning line up, and I thought that it was such a great idea, too often the news bits that I catch are really downers, students going on rampages, schools losing money, parents going on strike and CPS being called on them, but this is a wonderful feature and I was happy to see them complimenting both the students of the school for their attitude and intelligence but also the teachers for the important work they do for the community.

Teachers are so often in thankless jobs. I have several friends who work in teaching and they tend to get a lot more abuse from both students and parents than they do compliments, which is a shame, and here the news broadcast is making sure to boost everyone’s attitude about both learning and teaching. I thought that was wonderful. Fox 35 Cool School of the Week program features Lyman High School in Orlando this week, and has voting up for next week’s cool school.

I thought as the broadcast came to an end how this was also in line for the program that my friend Skeet does weekly, her “Share Some Good Stuff” meme.