Shopping Excursion

This weekend I went on a little shopping spree with my friend Cara. I got a good amount of stuff for a reasonable price. I noticed after examining everything that I got two of everything. Two dresses, two shirts, two pairs of shorts, and two pairs of shoes. I only spent $45 of my own money, but used our (the Chin family's...meaning my mom pays for it) Old Navy card for most of the clothes. They had one of those 20% off Stuff It bags, but I didn't get a coupon in the mail. So at the register I asked about the bag/coupon that was supposed to be mailed to me and the woman said that she'd give me the discount since I did have a credit card with them. I explained to her that we have a joint account and all of the billing and coupons go to our home address. She wouldn't let me use a gift card and then put the balance on the credit card. So, I spent a fair amount of money at Old Navy. Thank you Mommy :). For the record, I have been paying for my own clothing lately and haven't used the Old Navy card for almost a year.

From Old Navy:

I got these in silver in the clearance section.

Imagine this shirt in without the beads in bright blue and one in a darker purple. I think the sleeves of my shirts have a little more flowiness to them too. I couldn't find the exact shirt on the ON website.

I got one pair in this navy blue color and one in gray.

The length actually fits!

Forever 21 dress for $15.50:

The length of this dress is very good also.

Madden Girl Mary Jane's from DSW:

These are very comfortable. I've been wearing them all day and I even walked to work and the bank. The only thing is that I just found the online for $19.99 and I paid $29.23 after tax. They were even 30% off in the store on the clearance rack! I guess after tax and shipping from that particular website it would have been about the same, but I think that it would have been slightly less.

Check out this headline

Edward sent me this link today while I was at work. Check out the headline. It cracked me up.

Awesome Headline

Doozer update

When we were home last time Emmy had been nibbling at a little spot by her rump. At first we thought that she had hurt herself while practicing her racing skills my backyard, but then Julie's vet said that he thought it was a reaction from her rabbies vaccination. The vet gave her some antibiotics and sent her on her way. We were hoping that the little furless patch would start growing fur again once we got back. It hasn't grown back yet and has been scabbing up on and off. I wasn't sure where the moisture for the scab was coming from since there was no wound or anything. Our vet thinks that moisture from her body is just seeping out of her skin, which is kind of gross. When we see her licking, we try to get her not to fuss with it, but since we aren't home for a good chunk of time during the day, we don't always catch her. I've been wanting to get her groomed and have the underfur trimmed since it's getting warmer, but I wanted to have her hole checked out first. I don't trust the Banfield vets anymore so I finally made an appointment at the place Neil takes Josie the Celery dog. Note: I always say "Josie the Celery dog" because I don't want any confusion with Josie my human cousin...not that there really could be any if you read the names and events in context.

We went this morning and our new vet said that the hole looks benign and the skin doesn't look like it's too damaged so the fur should grow back. He took a little sample of the crusty skin around the hole and found that there was some Staph, but no infection. I told him that when we were home that Julie's vet gave her some antibiotics. I didn't bring in all that paperwork, though I guess I should have, but he said that he was pretty sure which med she was given since it's pretty common. He gave us a new antibiotic that is a little stronger and may take a few weeks longer to get rid of the bacteria. He also gave us an ointment to put on her hole so that it doesn't irritate her as much. We will start this regiment tonight with her dinner.

Another reason we made the appointment was because the Concord Banfield doctor gave Emmy a bunch of Heartworm medicine, which my mom paid and arm and leg for. Since he was a total goober, I wanted a second opinion. I've read and heard that if you give your dog the wrong type of Heartworm meds it can kill them. I guess it's a reaction to the medicine or something. We would be devistated if something happend to our little girl. This vet said that it should be okay. I just wanted to make sure that it was safe. Everything checks out so we'll start giving her the meds and start the flea and tick stuff since the last frost is over. However, now I just found this article about the risks of Heartworm medication. We don't appear to be in a high risk area, so I'm going to hold off until we go to the vet again for her two week checkup. Ah, this stuff is complicated. I do have to say that I can only remember getting bitten once while living here...all the other times were in Georgia. Those gosh darn mosquitoes loved me. If we were home or down in Georgia I would definitely give it to her. We'll have to see though.

In case you don't remember Emmy's little fur hole here is a picture:

Demo of Julie's Baby Shower invites

Inside of card

Front of card

Back of envelope.

Front of envelope. Addresses will go in the green spot.

July 17th!

Check out the new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailer. I'm so geared up to wear my robes! I got chills while watching this. If you take a close look at the movie poster I think that the reflection of Dumbledore is a pivotal part of the movie and series. I am SOOOOOO excited.

It's still Allison's Blog!

Hello family! I know a lot of times when I change my blog you don't know if it is still me or not (Mommy). I've been bored with the template so I've been changing it around lately. I went back to my old template briefly, but realized that it is a little difficult to read. I'm experimenting with what works the best. Please let me know what you think of this one. I change the entire template or just the colors and font...pretty much everything. I can change it accordingly for your viewing pleasure. I'm not sure if I like these colors, but it's a start.

Making rounds

Lately when Ed has a soccer game I've been running around the track. I hit a record high of 4 1/4 miles running non-stop and 1 mile walking. I started out with power walking 3/4 of a mile, but then the muscles in my shins started burning so badly that I had to switch to running. My coworker, Dave, gave a good explanation for this. The little muscles in your shins flex every time you take a step because of the exaggerated movements your feet make. (If you've never seen a power walker do his/her thing, their butts swing all over the place and they lift and flex their feet really hard.) The burning sensation, which is unbearable mind you, makes total sense. I've been noticing that the muscle has been getting bigger lately, but I thought the pain was a minor form of shin splints. It just didn't make sense that my shins didn't burn when I was running. Anyway, so I ended up running most of the way. The sad thing is that even though Edward doesn't run for his whole game, he probably burned more calories and fat than I did...and probably had more fun, though I don't really mind going 21 laps around a track. Sprinting is a much better workout than long distance. Oh well. It's a competition that I have with myself to see how much I can improve. Last time I went a total for four miles but did half walking and half running. I'm improving and I feel good about it, which is what counts. Plus, I sleep sooooooo well afterward.

On Monday I weighed in and I gained weight! I'm convinced that I'm not gaining that much muscle with all the cardio I'm doing, but man, it's disappointing. So I did a double workout on Monday with cardio and weights. At least I can try to tell myself that I'm actually gaining muscle weight. Heheh. The little muscles in my shins can't weight that much!

Easter

Originally I wasn't going to have an Easter dinner because I wasn't sure if I felt like cooking. After I spoke with Julie, it took her about two minutes to convince me to have one. All she had to say was:

Julie: but you and Edward love ham.
Me: I know.
Julie: Hams are on sale.
Me: I know. Okay, I'm having one.

And so there you have it. I was convinced to have an Easter dinner. We had ham (of course), Sheppard's Pie, mashed sweet potatoes, Guinness veggies (that actually weren't that good because I forgot to add salt and pepper), rolls, rosemary and garlic potatoes, ice cream with Abby's hot fudge sauce, a fruit platter that John brought, apple pie (compliments of Scott...he brought the ice cream too), and plenty of beer. It was a great success. We didn't have that much left over, which makes me wonder if people were really as full as they said they were. Oh well, we still had a lot of fun.

Jon giving Emmy her Easter ham bone

I don't think she was actually baring her teeth, but it sure looks like it! I think she was probably chewing or something. I'm glad it's blurry! She looks so scary with the teeth and red eye.

It looks like a field of peas and carrots.

Sheppard's Pie center







Mmm...

This year's Easter eggs turned out pretty well. It took me a long time because I wanted the colors to be dark, so I did things in between sets of eggs. I was quite proud of myself.








Last, but certainly not least, Edward got me something for Easter that isn't related to technology. He had gotten these on his cruise this past Christmas and said that he was waiting to give them to me at a good time. I was in the kitchen preparing for the party and he had me call Emmy. When I did I just said hello to her and turned back to what I was doing. Then I realized that there was something attached to her necklace. He had put the earrings on an index card and rubber banded it to her necklace. I got so excited that I didn't take a picture of my little carrier doggy. I think this is a plot to get me to take out my plugs because these spokes are too short to go through my plugs. Tonight I'm going to try to get them out in the shower. This is a big thing! If Edward gets me jewelry, I'm going to wear it! I tried putting them in next to the plugs, but they just looked silly. So I guess I'm going to have to get these plugs out. Since they're flared, I have to stretch them in the shower first otherwise they won't come out. This is goodbye to my undergrad days I guess and hello to grinning about Edward's thoughtfullness.

Catfish and Sausage soup

This week I made a catfish and sweet sausage concoction. It was soooo tasty. I did it in the crockpot, but I'm sure you can just make this in a pot too.

Allison's Catfish and sausage soup

4 catfish filets, chunked
1 red bell pepper, chunked
1 green bell pepper, chunked
1 onion, chunked
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pack of loose sweet sausage, crumbled
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp fresh ground pepper
2 tbsp red pepper flakes
2 28oz cans crushed tomatoes

Add all ingredients to the crockpot and cook on low for 9 hours.

Grade: A

I made a cake for our friend Cara's birthday and I swear that the frosting waged a war against me. I was talking to Julie about how I could spruce up a plain old Devil's Food cake. I had a can of dark cherries at home so I decided to use that. I mixed some cherry juice with canned cream cheese frosting in my Magic Bullet. The frosting came out to a pretty purple, but it was a big mistake. I put it in the fridge to harden overnight, but did it harden? Nope. It was all liquidy and I only had half an hour to frost the cake, get dressed, and get to work. So I was frantically stirring in powdered sugar to the purple mixture, but it wasn't doing much good. I ended up having to get rid of the frosting. I had already filled all of my little piping mechanisms with the purple stuff the night before because I was "thinking ahead" so I had to rinse one out to try to use the remaining part of the untouched cream cheese frosting. I had put the little tub of frosting in the fridge so when I was trying to pipe my little flowers it was really hard to squeeze out. I put the frosting the the microwave for a couple of seconds and that helped, but then the excess water from rinsing the container started sputtering everywhere and making a mess. I was so frustrated that I just spread the frosting on top of the cake and put the cherries on. Since I didn't have the height or squishiness of the flowered piping all of my cherries rolled off when I put the cake in the car to take to Cara's place. I had to take it to work with me because I thought I was going to go to her place in Albany right after I had a meeting at St. Rose. It was pretty warm yesterday so I brought the cake inside (after much venting to Neil and Dave) so that the frosting wouldn't melt in the car. It was a good thing too. As it turns out, Cara stayed in Troy after her class. I still had to go out to Albany to have the meeting with my poetry prof so the cake went along for the ride. The meeting was only half an hour, but by the time I got the cake home, it was all drippy with frosting and bursting canned cherries. It was a frosting nightmare. I would have been better off with just dusting the cake with powdered sugar. Nevertheless, even though I thought it was a disaster and had said "It looks like a five-year-old made it." Cara was suprised and kept saying how beautiful it was (I didn't tell her that I thought it looked horrible). So the mission was a success in that aspect and now I know not to alter ready-made frosting with something other than food coloring.

It looks normal!

The cherries kind of look like grapes.

I was trying to be all artistic with putting some of the puprle frosting on the platter, but I ended up just wiping it all off because it looked awful.

Happy Birthday Uncle Davie!

Love, Emmy Dooz

Allison's Whopper Cookies

Found poetry is a form that requires that you "borrow" work from someone else and make it your own. You can take a quote and switch around the words so that it becomes your original work. Ta-da! It's now your "found" poem. These are my "found" cookies. I followed the Price Chopper chocolate chip cookie recipe almost to the T. I put in the package of vanilla pudding like last time, but I also added 1/2c of powdered Whoppers (I used my Magic Bullet) and 1c of crushed Whoppers (I smashed them in a ziplock). Edward seemed to like them, but Dave and Neil loved them.

Allison's Found Whopper Cookies w/ Robbin's eggs

PC chocolate cookie recipe
1/2 c crushed/powered whoppers
1 c smashed whoppers
1 small box of instant vanilla pudding

Preheat oven at 375 degrees. Follow the instructions of PC cookies bag. Add pudding in the butter and sugar creaming stage. Add powdered and crushed whoppers when adding flour. Do not add chocolate chips. Bake for 15 min. Cookies will spread.

You can probably use any chocolate chip cookie recipe for this. I think they are generally all very similar.

Hola from Troy, NY

This week I was completely Ebay happy. I bought three dresses, a pencil skirt, and a pair of jeans for less than $50.00. The actual shipping was much more expensive than the actual articles of clothing. The cheapest dress was only $2.51! I couldn't believe it. I also just got myself an inexpensive sewing machine so if the dresses are long I can take them up. Usually I fit the clothing on the upper regions of my body. It's the length I have worry about.

I also got a dress pattern that I am attempting to make. It is pattern number 2653. For some reason I can't directly link that pattern to the blog. Anyway, so I was trying to start the dress on Friday night. I was concentrating so hard on the directions that Nadeem asked if I needed help. It's supposed to be an easy pattern! I was very confused and trying to figure out what the directions and pattern were trying to tell me. I cut out the body of the dress pattern paper and held it up to myself. It looks like the biggest size is what I want, but I'm confused because I'm not a big person. How are bigger and taller people supposed to make this dress and fit it? It's a junior's size pattern so it's not like I'm making kids clothing here. So I have yet to actually try to make the dress. I'm going to start on a piece of scrap that I have first and make the shirt. At least then I'll have an idea of how to do it and how it will fit. Joann's was having an Easter sale and a nice lady in line gave me a coupon so my fabric was pretty inexpensive. I had printed out a coupon for myself that was 40% off of one item that wasn't a sale item. The nice lady gave me a 20% off my entire purchase including sale items coupon because she had extras and they were going to expire in a day. Joann's must put out a lot of coupons because every person in line had one! I bought two different fabrics each for about $12 for two yards. If I can manage to do this it will be much cheaper than buying dresses.




I don't know if I mentioned it, but during spring break when Edward was gone I would come home from work and Emmy wouldn't be there to greet me until I got into the house. This is unusual. I recently found out why she wasn't there. She sits on the chair by the window and looks out at the people who pass by (barks at them too). We had a swivel chair in the corner because one of the wheels falls off and is kind of dangerous. We put it there to discourage people from sitting on it, but haven't gotten rid of it in case we need extra seating, in which case Edward or I will use it. I replaced that chair with a non-swivel and sturdier chair. She seems to like it just as much, if not more. Before she had to fight to keep her balance when she jumped up to it and off of it. Now she even uses the chair when we're home. It is so cute!

Daddy! You're squishing me!






This is the purple bone that she got when we adopted her. She was playing with it when we were at the farm checking her out. The adoption lady said that she could have it because she had taken a special interest in it. She likes to pull it out every once in a while and go around the house squeaking it.


I made myself a very tasty breakfast burrito. There is salami, mozzarella cheese, scramble eggs and ketchup in there. I just warmed up the tortilla with salami and cheese in the microwave. If you do this, put a paper towel between the plate and tortilla so that the moisture doesn't make the tortilla soggy.



The Easter Bunny came a little early this year. We ended up driving to the 24 hour Walmart last night at midnight to return 007 and get Call of Duty: World at War instead.