currently {link-up} cupid, not homemade pop-tarts

This homemade pop-tart thing was happening (in my mind) until about 9pm last night. I was in my kitchen, standing, staring at the pop-tart recipe and it looked easy enough, and they looked yummy and all that, and I realized there was no way I was going to make homemade pop-tarts... at 9pm... on a Wednesday night. Instead, I watched American Idol and then ran up to the grocery for the makings of a Valentine's breakfast for Ot. A ridiculous cream puff, kiwis cut into heart shapes, strawberry pretzels, raspberries, organic lollies, a pink smoothie, and some red flowers that might secretly be a little gift to myself. I'm excited to wake him up for this fun breakfast in a couple hours!

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the sweet Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Loving watching Otto as he put together his homemade Valentine's for his class. A three day process, quite impressive for a 4 year old! He was so meticulous decorating each and every one and then hand-writing everyone's name on the back of their card. He wrote "Otto to Rio" on one without even looking at the name list. Reading and writing, people! Oh Em Geeeeeee!

Dreaming of summer and sunshine and picnics and warm skin. Dreaming of stealing Otto's cream puff that won't stop staring at me as I type... but I won't. But I do wish I'd gotten a second for Rob and I to share. Also dreaming of finding some vintage Frye boots (brown, campus style) for a steal on Ebay. That last is a pipe dream, it seems I am not the only one dreaming that dream and they are going for $150-$200/pair, yeeks! That is so far outside my budget I can't even cry about it. Perhaps I will get lucky at the thrift? One can only hope.

Admiring the fearless. How vague is that? But really, I've been inspired to take on some new challenges and launch some new projects by looking at the people around me who've gotten to amazing places in their lives. There seems to be a few things they have in common, fearlessness being at the top. I could use some fearlessness plus a side order of confidence. Working on this.

Kissing my loves. Loretta will lean in for a kiss now if you say, "kiss?" and open her lips just slightly. If she is grumpy, she will rudely reject any kiss requests! It's super cute.

Gifting well because we are still rocking this "nothing new" thing I tried to keep my Valentine's gifts strictly in the food world this year. I cheated a little on the potted plant, but I know that little guy will bring lots of brightness into our kitchen until I somehow manage to kill it with my black thumbs of tragic plant death.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:

taking, giving, teaching, learning, looking

Little Note: something seems to be going wonky with my linky. If you enter your URL and the link doesn't show up here, visit http://harvestingkale.blogspot.com/ and it should show up there. I've re-installed the code twice, but alas! Sorry #s 7 and up!

love notes

These two ♥

I am trying to think of something sweet and meaningful and EASY and not expensive and yet fun and wonderful to do for these two for Valentine's Day. Ideas? What are your fun traditions? It's a weekday this year so making an ombre pile of pink to red, heart-shaped pancakes or anything like that is kind of off the table at Chez Muth. Loretta wakes up about two minutes before I leave for work in the morning, Rob about five minutes after, and Otto is a crap-shoot.  Maybe a special lunch with a special love note inside for Otto and then something fun in the evening for the fam? My thinking cap is on... I have been meaning to make homemade pop tarts for a while, perhaps this is the right moment to make heart-shaped ones the night before? I think it may be.

This weekend Otto is painting a Valentine's painting (pictured above) for his classmates. We'll take a photo of it today and have prints made for everyone in his class. We got some washi tape and puffy sparkle paint to decorate each print... they'll be craptastic and (hopefully) amazing.

This will be Loretta's first Valentine's. My little sweetheart. She is 11 months old! Pushing the boundaries of babyhood more and more every day.

And after what feels like many months of jam-packed crazy, this weekend has been pleasantly blah. We did a trip to Target, cleaned the house (a bit), made veggie tacos and playdoh pizzas, and walked around the block after dinner yesterday. Today will be for more cleaning, a fundraising walk in the park this afternoon, and maybe even finally cutting and dying my hair! So boring. So nice! Boring is so nice sometimes.

just a little to-do for valentine's day

things worth waking up 45 minutes early for (even on a workday)...

♥ eggs in a heart basket, love-ly cinnamon french toast, strawberries ♥

♥ toddler smiles ♥

♥ garbagey adorable goodies ♥

♥ art appreciation ♥

♥ sweet gifts from sweet boys ♥

a really short story about my flowers...

rob and i agreed to not do a thing for each other this valentine's day. that we'd just do a little breakfast for Ot and call it a tuesday. but late last night while he was out buying "study food" for his midterms which are this week, he spotted the clearance flowers at albertson's. so he bought nutter butters, soda, just horrible horrible stuff for himself to get through the tests, and then the $2 half-alive bouquet you see here. (how the cashiers must have been judging him, haha! some lucky lady has got herself a winner with this one!) anyways, after breakfast this morning rob was running the garbage outside and came back in with the flowers he'd hidden in the car. i was getting ready for work, so Otto came running into the bathroom to give me the flowers. i was like, "oh, Otto, these are so beautiful thank you so much, my little valentine!" and Otto says, "don't look at me, daddy found them outside."

bahahaha!

anyways, it was a really special morning and i loved it and love my $2 flowers. i really do have a winner with that one. i hope you all had equally sweet little valentine's days. 

xoxo,

lindsey

How I Got The Black Lung

First off I'm writing this while sipping bourbon so just go ahead and be jealous. I got Rob a bottle of Woodford Reserve for Valentine's Day and ladies/gentlemen, I feel like I should be wearing a crested housecoat and smoking a corncob pipe or something. I need a crackling fireplace and hounds by my feet. Chauncey?!! Where are my hounds, Chauncey?!! *Taking a sip to help me simmer down* Awwwww yeah.

So a few of you asked about the housefire we had the other day. Hahahahaha! (Things are always so much funnier on bourbon.) But really, it was a kind of funny story, except for how I got black lung afterwards and Otto got booger-eye for like 3 days.

It went down something like this. Our dryer sucked to begin with and always took 6-8 hours (no joke) to dry a load. So I had had the dryer going for a few hours, Otto was at pre-school, I was in my office & Rob was back in the back of the house in his office and...

So I went back to work. Then maybe an hour passed. Then...

So at some point I decided to take a break from work and investigate the smell. When I stepped out of my office (aka the gloomy batcave) and into the sunlit kitchen I realized the whole house was filled with a haze of smoke and the smell was, well, just bad. So like a genius I opened the (on fire) dryer and this happened...

And that is how I got the black lung (last week). Seriously unfunny side-note: I have the black lung.

Things that are good: Otto was out of the house when this happened and once I shouted, "fire! fire!" Rob sprang into action and we managed to stop the fire (which luckily just meant turning off the dryer) and air the house out. We spent a good day feeling the dryer to make sure it wasn't particularly on fire (or you know, hot, or whatever) and it wasn't. We're thinking this was some kind of electrical fire or something. Anyways, we're moving in a few months so we decided "eff it" we're just going to the laundromat until we move - not fixing or replacing or whatever. So I wrote this note on the dryer just to solidify that it's dead, and just in case some weirdo tries to salvage it from the appliance graveyard where it'll probably end up shortly.

I should have added the skull and crossbones.

ps. Otto is totally fine but he did have boogery eyes for like 3 days afterwards. Poor little guy :( We're thinking there must have been a little smokiness left in the house. He's super-sensitive (he has my grandma's delicate coloring and sensitive skin) but as of today his eyes were totally fine. Thank goodness.

Also in February Laundry News! The washing machine ate one of our pillows. This is like a Stephen King short story, no?

So other than daily neti pot what does one do for the black lung? Also, I'm seriously fine just coping with a case of extreme dry throat and almost-sexy raspy voice.

xo,
Lindsey

Happy Valentine's Day!

xo,
Lindsey and Otto