[organize: Spring Cleanup.]

Ok ... before I start ... I'm desperate for spring, thus the new header and spring-y feel for this blog.  At least I can create some "rain free" space on here - even though it's pouring rain outside.    AND - while I'm at it - let me wish you the merriest of Valentine's Day ... a day where we get to tell the people we love, that we love them can't be a bad thing *smile*.  Although, I think that holidays that segregate people and make some feel lonely are lame.  I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's day ... but I'll wish you a good one anyways *wink*.

Alright ... now.  On to what I wanted to write about ...

I hate chaos.

I mean .... HAAAAATE it.

For me, living in choas brings my brain to chaos.  I can always tell how my mind and insides are doing when I look at what my space around me.  Craziness inside = craziness outside.

Like, my van.  Oh I hate my van.  I do.  I want a jeep.  I've always wanted a jeep.  And now I'm too old to drive one without people going, "hey - that lady thinks she can drive a jeep.  Someone should tell her that she's not 18. Or 25.  Or 30."  *grin*

But that's another post all together.

Here's the thing ... my van gets messy.  MEH-SEE.  Kid's papers and toys and wrappers and coats and snacks and coins and and and ... makes me CRAZY.  So - every week, I clean it out.  Seriously.  And when it's clean, I am happy.  For those two minutes.

Same with my house ... I just finished cleaning out my mudroom/laundryroom and it's like I lost 10lbs.  I then cleaned out the coat closet and I felt like I lost another 10lbs.  So ... chaos and things not in their right place ... they have to go.

And - as  bonus - I find that when my house gets cluttered with junk, by body gets cluttered with junk.  When I deal with the crap and toss away/give away/ donate ... my house and body both lose weight.  At least that's what I've found ... 

So.  Bring ON the spring cleaning - even though I realistically know that things only stay clean and tidy for a short time *boo*.  Here's my list for this week.  It's not everything - but it's a start.

Monday:   all bathroom drawers and cupboards (bandaid wrappers, half-used-travel-sized containers, bobbypins ... you name it:  wiped out and gone.)

Tuesday:  Katia's clothes (it's time again ... bring out the next size, and donate the old one ...)

Wednesday:  tupperware cabinets, baking drawers (so.much.stuff.)

Thursday:  Mattias and Josiah's closets (it's amazing what decides to live in there ...)

Friday: the grand finale ... downstairs.  Toys.  Toys.  Toys.  We are making 3 piles:  home, grandparents and donate.  I am hoping to downsize what's down there by 50%.  It's CHAOS down there.  One million toy cars and three million race track pieces and five million building blocks and twenty-five million bits and pieces of broken junk.  GONE.

That's this week ... And I think I'll go around with a garbage bag or box and just randomly put things in it too to donate.  We have collected over the fall and winter ... and I'm going crazy.

Anyone else feel the same???   Hmmm ... maybe I'm the only one.   And I think that if my house loses 25lb, I could physically lose the last 7lbs that I need to.  Here's to hoping.

Have a great one!

[make: Toy Story Birthday Cake with Woody, Buzz & Rex]

So.  Josiah's birthday is January 1st ... yup.  He was the New Years baby for our city ... born at 12:14am.  Trust me ... if I could've, he would've been out earlier *grin*.  I tried.

It's so hard to believe that was  four years ago ... and here he is, my little man, full of spunk and light.  He's the witty one in the family ... he's super intelligent and knows he has the charm to knock someone's socks right off ... 

And here it is, February, and we're finally getting around to his kiddie birthday party.  I've had to remind him that he's not turning five *grin* ... he thinks he's having another birthday, rather than just a late party.

Every birthday, for every child, I try and create a special cake.  Now - this is just something that I just decided was important to me ... I am far from a cake decorator.  I've made an aquarium cake, a broken road Cars cake, a Cars racetrack cake, a Mack the Truck cake, a ladybug cake ... and they are all special to me - despite their obvious imperfections.

I should preface this, with fondant and I are not friends.  I know moms who create the most spectacular cakes with fondant.  Me - I prefer buttercream frosting and props.  I find it so much easier ... because it is *grin*.

Josiah's party theme is "Toy Story" ... I had to persuade him to change his mind from Cars for the third year in a row.  But coming up with a cake made my brain hurt.  Because my skills are limited, I like to create "scenes", rather than making a single character ... 

So ... I started with two 10x2 round cakes.  One vanilla, one chocolate.  

Then ... I stared at them for about 10 minutes.  No joke.

I decided to try and create Andy's bed ... and cut the edges of the vanilla cake, to make a square and use the leftover pieces to make a pillow.  Then I cut the chocolate cake in half to make the head and foot board.

... as soon as I did that, Josiah was crazy excited.  He loves watching things being created out of nothing.

I made some simple buttercream frosting and tinted it blue for the bed cover.

I made another batch of buttercream frosting and melted chocolate wafers to turn it into yummy, brown chocolate frosting ... and then I grabbed the bag of coloured star candies that I bought at Scoop and Save (and had no clue what I'd do with them at the time ... ) and began a pattern for the bed cover.

Then out came the props ... the Woody, Buzz and Rex are Siah's and the star badges and Bullseye were borrowed from a friend ... 

I added the candles, looked at the clock and realized that it was late as I was finishing up the last details. But Josiah and Mattias were desperate to see what it looked like ... so I let them out of bed *grin*.  It's not like they were going to sleep any time soon ... 

I had some black liquorice strings ... and I thought it would look good to outline the edges (totally a quirk of mine).  The liquorice wasn't soft, though ... and a bit twisted - it didn't really want to do what I wanted it to ... and the lines it made weren't perfect.

But hey.  It's a FOUR year old's bday cake, not a wedding cake, right??

... then I added some writing, "Happy 4th Birthday Josiah" in red gel.

I say this every time, but I think this one's my favourite.

Happy birthday, Josiah - again *grin*.  Now, Mattias is saying he wants a Bayblades birthday cake ... oh dear.  At least I have until August to figure that one out *grin* ...

Have a great one!

[make: Yummy Baked Chicken]

Ok.  So I named this recipe ... and Yummy Baked Chicken is all I could come up with *grin*.

I'm always looking for new recipes, especially BAKED chicken recipes.  I love preparing the recipe hours in advance, and setting the oven timer.  It means that dinner can be prepared in the morning, and clean up is  a cinch if I foil the pan.

But there actually aren't too many "baked" chicken recipes.  Well, there ARE, but they're all so close to each other that I get bored.  I make a dill chicken, with sour cream; a sticky baked chicken with preserves; a mushroom chicken with onion soup ... so I decided to mix them.

I had my folks over for dinner last week and served it to them - I figured we could all be guinea pigs *wink*.  And MAN.  It was goooooood.  And fall-off-a-log simple.

Here's the recipe. 

Tawn's Yummy Baked Chicken - serves 4

4 large chicken breasts, halved (I like smaller portions ..)

2 cups lite sour cream

1 cup preserves (I used orange marmalade - but had thought it was peach jam *grin*)

1 package of onion soup mix

Directions:

- foil a baking dish (9x9 or 9x13  (whatever works for you)

- place cut up chicken in the pan (see ... this is triiiiicky)

- in a bowl, mix the sour cream, preserves and soup mix

- spoon over the chicken

- cover with foil

- bake at 300F for an hour ... 

If you try it, let me know what you think. 

Enjoy!!

[talk: Me.]

This past weekend, I had the privilege of helping out with the worship at a Women's Retreat outside at Harrison Hot Springs.  I say privilege, because it always is ... although the first night was stress.full.  I have only one word:  theworstsoundsystemever.  Ok.  So I made that into one word.

I learned a lot of things this weekend ... one being, I MUST get my own sound system.  Praise God that my friend, LHF, was there.  Her sound system saved the day (after a long drive and gracious people going to pick it up).   I guess the problem is, is that I've been completely spoiled at our church and other places - all the boys love to help with sound *grin*.  So, us girls just sit back and let them do it.  Even when I was with a worship band that did a little bit of traveling here and there, the boys did the sound ... and now I wish they would've taught me instead of blessing me with their work!

Ah well.

It was a great weekend ... I did a photography workshop - basically "Photography 101" ... I did a 6km run ... I lead worship ... I took photos of different happenings that were going on ... and have come home pretty tired.  OH! ... and I was able to finally get some updated pics done for my new RHP website.  It's hard to find pics of just me - that aren't me in my running gear, or wearing a ski mask, or carrying one of our kids.  I pretty much only needed one pic - so it's such a gift to have a few to choose from!!  So - thanks NWR for taking time in your afternoon off to help me ... I so appreciate it.  

SO, where am I at today?  Well, I still need to "debrief" from this weekend ... I received lots of encouragement and am trying to process some of the dreams I have and figure out how to let Him open the doors without me kicking the door down.  Not sure how that works ... so I'll just keep waiting and asking.

Anyway - I'm off and running.  Literally.  Bundled up and off to do however many km I can ... and here are a couple of the pics that NWR took for me ... it was fun to "re-do" my "all about me" page of my RHP website ... I'm a little addicted to tweaking that site *grin*.

Hmmm.  I'm kinda all over the place this morning, aren't I ... 

So, be encouraged today, take another step towards your dreams, don't be afraid to push yourself or ask for help and most of all - know that His mercies are new every morning.  Man.  Am I glad for that.

And have a great one too *smile*

[talk: Fester Schmester]

This has been such a strange week for me.  My brain has been full of ideas and thoughts - and blogposts - and then ... nothing.

Writing, for me, is so so needed.  I've written dozens and dozens of journals - in really great times, and really, really hard ones.  It was a way for me to process things, to remember things.  I love reading them now and seeing how I felt about things and how I feel now about them.  But now - I don't journal so much.  I blog.  But even then - I don't spill my innards out into the blogging world ... and I don't spill them out onto paper either.  My mom used to say to me, "Be careful what you write ... you don't want to get hit by a car and have someone find what you've written and you aren't there to explain it."  Morbid, but wise *grin*.

I don't like things festering in my mind or soul ... and writing is one way that I can put it out there, re-read it and get some perspective.

My hubby's been gone all week ... and although I am a pretty independent person, it has actually been quite lonely.  I'm kinda craving a hug ... I haven't been "held" all week.  And I'm actually kinda surprised by that, because I know many wives who have husbands who leave for weeks on business, or are on shift work and they are like ships in the night passing by.  I don't know how they do it.  My hubby is more of a 9-5 guy - so his absence in our home is so noticeable.  Not having someone to "debrief" with at the end of the day ... it's been a bit sad.  And no hugs ...  gee - I think I'm really a huggy person *grin*.

My hubby comes home on Sunday ... and these next two days might have been the hardest and loneliest, but instead I'm heading to a Woman's Retreat.  I'm one of the worship leaders for it - so I should've known this would be a hard week, just because of that *smile*.

I say that, not to give credit to the Enemy - or to speak defeat over myself - but looking over these last few days I can see how time has been spent elsewhere instead of where it could've been.  I had plans for the "free" nights that I had with my hubby gone - songwriting, digiscrapping, watching a movie or two.  But instead, I was drained by the end of the day.  So thank goodness for His mercies that are new every morning ... I am looking so forward to some balance in my mind and being vulnerable with the Holy Spirit this weekend.  This time away is perfect timing for me ... 

I think 2011 is going to be a big year for me ... January has been full of so many crazy emotions, new ideas and possibilities, big dreams and big defeats ...  that it actually makes me excited for what God has planned for me.  I have a few questions I want to set time aside for this weekend to have Him to answer.  "Why did such-and-such happen?", "When will this and that happen?", "Where were You when I needed You for this?" ...  "Thank you for helping me with this ...".  You know what I mean?

And can I just debrief about this weather for a moment??  It just sucks the life out of me ... grey, grey, grey.  I actually think it triggers something in me ... I'm a very sentimental person.  I hear a song, and I get thrown right back into the moment.  I'll be walking by the perfume counter in a mall, and smell something that puts me at a different place immediately.  Or I'll drive by a house that I once knew well and feel like I'm 15 again.  I truly cannot control it.  It just happens.  And I think that's what the greyness, raininess of January does to me.  Shalom's funeral was a grey, January day.  It's when I miss her the most.

*sigh*.  Ok.  Let's change this up a bit ... 

On a COMPLETELY different note - I am down 4.5lbs this week.  I took sweets/dessert out of my diet and I cannot believe what the scale is telling me.  Ok.  So I did run one 5km and did the Shred workout twice ... but still.  It just proves that sugar is my enemy.  Now - that's not to say I'm at my goal ... I was up after New Years, so I'm now point5lbs from my lowest since having Katia.  But.  That's still  7lbs until wedding weight.  I have to be in a bathingsuit this weekend at the Women's Retreat ... all pastey and stuff - but I guess we all will be *wink*.

This summer - I want to be in the best shape of my life (I kinda already am, which really isn't saying much *laughing*).  Ok. This summer - I want to run a half marathon.  

Oh.boy.  Sounds like an impossibility ... 

* * * *

My hubby just Skyped me ... that.felt.lovely.

Have a great one!