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Cat Ladies & Dog People

By Kat on 8/30/2009 3:55 AM

Do you know what would absolutely just make my LIFE? If someone were to come across my blog because they googled “Caty Lady” or “Crazy Cat Lady”. Yes, that would make my life complete.

I must, must become the resident expert on cat ladies without becoming one myself. How do I do this? Perhaps I need to move in with a Cat Lady for a while. Nah. Can’t do that, I have allergies. Maybe I need to become friends with a Cat Lady. Our neighborhood Cat Lady is seriously NOT AN OPTION. She’s crazy!

We added a new puppy to our family this week. Her name is Jolly Rancher but we call her Jolly. She joins the ranks of four year old Pixy (Pixy Stix) and the dearly departed Reese (Reese’s Pieces). Don’t worry, we may be dog people but we’re not all weird about it like Cat Ladies are weird about cats. I mean, we do personify our dogs and put captions under photos pretending that we can read their thoughts but we’re not crazy or anything.

It's just not like that.

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Dishwasher Dirt

By Kat on 8/29/2009 1:13 AM

A dishwasher has a purpose. It’s purpose is to clean dishes. Other than the occasional bottle of dishwasher cleaner, one might not think about the maintenance required to keep a dishwasher clean. When we bought this house (brand new), the kitchen and laundry appliances were “thrown in”. I can personally tell you that they have cost us far more than just buying our own appliances in the beginning. Since we’re discussing the dishwasher, I’ll tell you that this bottom of the line GE dishwasher sucks. We call it our dish sanitizer because it certainly doesn’t wash anything.

At least once a year I scrape the walls and the dish racks clear of the calcium and/or lime deposits that are a result of our extremely hard water. This is always a pain and hardly alleviates the standing water in the bottom of the machine. In the past year it has started leaking during loads. First it was just a few teaspoons of water trickling out and last time it was about a cup or more of water. “Lucky” for us, we don’t have a kitchen floor right now as a result of our air conditioning flood so now we can fix it or replace it without ruining our existing floor. In fact, I can just run it and it won’t matter because there is no flooring to ruin. Yay!

After the sticker shock we experienced while looking at dishwashers online and in-store, my husband decided to fix it himself. We argued a bit because remember, this thing doesn’t even wash dishes! Even when it was brand new it didn’t. He still went for it. He’s taken it apart piece by piece and here is what he found:

Gross, right? You might want to look under those traps and baskets in your dishwasher too! Who knew! I’m pretty sure that some of these things are growing... So much for sanitizing right? That darn water swisher has been useless this whole time!

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The Burb Blog - Life in a Suburban Neighborhood

An American Hen Night (aka - A Bachelorette Party)

By Kat on 8/28/2009 8:42 AM

While I was discussing bachelorette party plans with my sister’s bridesmaids, the British counterparts were not familiar with a bachelorette party. Once we all began passing information back and forth online we discovered that is was their version of a Hen Night.

Keeping in mind that the bride had been diagnosed with a severe case of mono the day before, we set out for a wicked Wednesday of low key fun that would put the bride in bed before she turned into a pumpkin. So, we headed out to dinner at the Huntington Beach Beer Company. I had a whole list of locations within walking distance that we could stop in for various drink specials and entertaining events but we knew that after dinner we should probably get the bride home.

Luck for all of us a young lifeguard walked in and invited us to the bar three doors down where the lifeguards were hosting a fundraising night that included auctioning off dates with themselves. We hung around, had some drinks, danced and laughed. Oh, did I mention that we all had penis headbands on? It was really easy to find the other’s in our party. All night people came up to me and said, “Do you know you have a penis on your head?” or “Are you part of a bachelorette party?” My responses were equally smart alecky.

At 10pm the lifeguard auction started. It began with Travis, a 24 year old 12^th grade teacher that wanted to “teach the ladies a bit about love”. The opening bid for Travis was $50. I raised my hand and bid $50. Opening bid right? Poor me. They couldn’t get anyone to bid even 50 cents higher. Going once, going twice. I won! Oh crap. I didn’t have $50.

When I won, they asked me to come up to stage so they could see how we fit together. Never did I think I’d say this, “Thank God for penis hats”. I was easily able to locate a group of the girls who just happened to have cash. 50 dollars to be exact. I handed it to the auctioneer and pushed the bride to the stage where she posed for photos with the lifeguard. He returned to our corner table with the 20 of us and posed for a photo. We donated him to my friend Kyleen (who contributed the most to the save my butt fund). They have a date set for this week! The rest of the lifeguards went for about $10-$30 each. At that rate we could have had three of them for $50!

So yes, this is the story about how I accidentally bought my sister a man for her American Hen Night! And, as her new sister in law said, (in an English accent) “We wore willies in our hair!”

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Tea Party Bridal Shower for Barbie

By Kat on 8/27/2009 4:15 PM

In case you can’t tell yet, my little sister’s name is Barbie. She is named after my grandmother and has fully embraced the name. Some people say, “What were your parents thinking?!” but really, she loves her name and takes full advantage of the paraphernalia with her name. The closest things out there to Kat are cats themselves. I hate cats.

For her bridal shower I began an inspiration board a few months ago. From that inspiration board I focused in on a few key elements that I wanted to bring to her bridal shower. I settled on a pink candy buffet, pink donuts (I wanted to do cupcakes but since cupcakes would be a part of the wedding, I didn’t want to/couldn’t compete with them). My sister in law and I made pendant flags to decorate with. I spray painted a large tree branch and hung it with bagged cotton candy with custom labels and pink beaded necklaces. The idea was to use pink crystal rock candy but my shipment was delayed.

Thank goodness for all of the breast cancer research fundraising products out there; I found pink Oreos, pink whoppers, pink pixy stix, pink Twinkies AND starburst has a bag with just PINK AND RED flavors in it. Add that to Twizzlers, candy necklaces, pink and red ring pops and you have a beautiful buffet! Ideally I would have had larger glass containers to put these items in but keep in mind I was traveling with ONE bag from the Midwest to California.

I served a 6 foot Subway sandwich with toothpicks complete with the Barbie logo, shoes or purses on them. Also with logo stir sticks I served tea, pink lemonade and a vodka drink called the Pink Cotton Candy. Delish!

When I was to be married five years ago, my sis wanted to throw a shower for my where all of my friends would bring mismatched tea cups and saucers as gifts. That not really being my style (I mostly like things to match), I nixed the idea. Good thing because the gift idea was perfectly suited for her style!

The invitation read:

Barbie & Richard both like tea time in a special spot,

so we’ll shower the bride with tea cups and saucers or a pot.

They needn’t be new or to a matched set,

and if there’s a story, please write it down so she won’t forget

Because she is moving to England with her English gentleman, I also asked guests to pitch in a few dollars for shipping the treasures to her new home.

Barbie received adorable tea pots, cups, saucers, creamers, sugar dishes, aprons, tea collections and wonderful stories to accompany the treasures. Most touching were pieces from friends grandmother’s china sets, hand painted tea pots and wonderful stories!

Her England girlfriends had never experienced a bridal shower (apparently, not a tradition in England) so we played some crazy bridal shower games. It was really fun!

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