I made a gluten-free chocolate cake last night for Buffaloberries in downtown Sioux Falls.  This is officially my favorite cake ever. I love the fall flowers, these are all of my favorite colors.

On Saturday I’ll be at MeadowSweet Market in Sioux Falls with some gluten-free Cranberry Cake and some mini Orange Apricot cupcakes!

Next week I’ll be teaching Hy-Vee gluten-free baking classes. FUN!

I know you’re thinking, Don’t you have enough babies? In a word, yes. Considering all the kids, pets and other random animals around here, some may say we do not need to add to the bunch.

Let me state for the record, however…THIS WAS NOT MY IDEA. I try to remind Eric of this whenever our new little furry creature is obnoxious, annoying, whiny or otherwise. And he is all four of these on a fairly regular basis, but man is he ever CUTE!

Yesterday was Emily’s birthday. She finally made it to double digits, wow! How scary to think we’ll be hitting the teen years in the not-too-far-off-distance. I hope she’s nice to me as a teenager (Lord knows I don’t deserve it though!).

On Thursday I helped with Luke’s school Valentine party and I made Rice Krispie Hearts, aren’t they cute? The kids thought they were pretty cool.

Also for your viewing pleasure, I wanted to post the panels Eric and I made to go above our bed.  I couldn’t find anything I liked until I saw something similar in a magazine ($400 for the set of 3) and figured we could made them way cheaper. We did and we love them.

First Eric made the panels out of wood and painted them red. I thought the red was a little too bright, so I slopped on some coffee colored paint we had hanging around. We had found a huge stencil (12″x12″ maybe?) at Hobby Lobby and it was perfect for this project.  The rest of our room has reds and browns, so it looks really nice in here and we saved a ton of money.

I was tagged from a friend on Facebook. Here’s my list of random things about me.

1. I was born in North Platte, Nebraska. Home of the North Platte Canteen. Look it up, great story!
2. New England is one of my favorite places.
3. I wouldn’t want to live without dental floss.
4. I (try to) wake up at 6:15 to read and write. I love the total silence at that time of the morning.
5. I’m an indoor girl.
6. Except for walking. I love to power walk outside in the morning. Except when it’s 30 degrees or lower.
7. I’ve lived in Kansas, Texas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa.
8. I need to get out of the midwest, me thinks.
9. I am looking for a traveling buddy.
10. I like museums, book stores, sight-seeing. Anywhere I can learn something.
11. I am reading Happy for No Reason.
12. I am currently taking a class on Writing Your Memoir.
13. Mine and Eric’s wedding was postponed a week due to the bomb threat at the Olympics in 1996. He was in training in Georgia and had to be bussed to Florida to help secure the place.
14. I love alternative healing type stuff.
15. When I was pregnant with Emily, I was taking a Mpls city bus to get to class. I had morning sickness, so I had to get off one bus, throw up on the side of the road and get on the next bus. I don’t remember the last time I had as much fun.
16. I’m a closet social butterfly.
17. I love Target, so I try not to go there.
18. I love to think about what I’ll do when I grow up.
19. I really appreciate excellent food.
20. I met Billy Mays (OxiClean commercials-really annoying) at a Menard’s in Minnesota. I said, “Wow, you look just like that guy on those commercials!” He said, “That’s probably because it’s me.” Oh.
21. If I didn’t like my eyes so much, I’d consider getting Lasik. I’m afraid of a botched procedure.
22. I have 1 rooster and 14 guineas, most of which have frostbitten toes.
23. I really love my baby kitty, even though I’ve run him over with my van and shut him in the garage door. Luckily, he has a few lives left.
24. I’ve been home for 10 years.
25. Please kill me.

This is a picture of my beautiful Dyson vacuum cleaner that Eric bought me for Christmas. It’s the purple “Animal” model. Sweet, huh? Read on.

This morning, as I was cleaning the house, I noticed that it 1) didn’t sound right and 2) wasn’t filling up. This is the second time in a row that it didn’t seem to be picking up properly. Our dog Moose is very hairy and I need the proper equipment for the job. Namely, a really good vacuum cleaner.

As I turned the vacuum upside down so I could get a good look at it, this is what I found:

GROSS! The entire beater bar (is that what you call those?) was completely wrapped in dog hair, probably half an inch thick. You can see where I cut the hair with scissors right in the middle. I had to cut and pull all of the hair out. It was disgusting.

And another picture for your viewing pleasure:

So I got to wondering…shouldn’t the vacuum cleaner be sucking this up instead of wrapping it around the bar? Of course it should! I got out my handy dandy vacuum cleaner manual and looked up the Dyson phone number. This is what the lady at Dyson told me:

1) “The ‘Animal’ model is not specifically for pets, it’s just the model name”. Which is fine, except in the commercials they say “Animal” and show dogs and cats, with a lady vacuuming. Okay. Fine. I can live with that. (But Eric probably wouldn’t have bought that specific model if he didn’t also think it was made for pet hair).

2) “The Dyson machines, by nature” (what does that even mean? Does a vacuum cleaner have a nature? I digress…) “are more maintenance”. What?! Why?! Where does it say that? Who would ever buy a vacuum cleaner that was high maintenance, especially considering how expensive they are?!

3) “We’ve received several calls about this issue and the only thing we can do at this time is suggest that you cut off the pet hair from the roller once a week or so”.

Uh…..NO. A vacuum should vacuum without any work on my part except pushing the thing and emptying the thing. Fine if I needed to clean up a part here or there every six months or so, but not once a week and especially not since that’s why I have a vacuum cleaner…for dog hair! What’s the point of having a nice vacuum cleaner if it doesn’t perform a basic function?

4) Her suggestion to fix the whole situation? “Vacuum twice. Once with the Bare Floor Setting and then again with the Carpet Setting”. You’re kidding, right? At $400, this machine should be making me dinner and it’s not even sucking up the dog hair!

Momma’s not happy.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Dyson Is Really a Piece of Shit, but They Are Really Pretty and Have a Great Marketing Plan!

EDITED TO ADD: These pics were from several weeks of vacuuming, not just once! That would be super gross, lol.

Life is back to normal, if there is such a thing. I made a birthday cake for a little girl turning 6. She wanted a brown and pink cowgirl boot. I had a lot of fun making it. It’s not the best lighting I’ve ever seen in a picture, but you get the idea.

Several days ago, I asked the kids to clean up their rooms and bring their clothes to the laundry room. These are just two of the bizarre items they threw in the basket:

The item on the left is obviously a skein of yarn. The item on the right is a pair of doll pajama pants. Since when do these two things need to be washed? Was the doll playing outside and got her pants dirty? This doll has never seen the light of day, so I knew that wasn’t the case. These are the crazy things kids try to get away with I guess. I’m sure I did similar things. I remember wanting my plastic straw to be flat, so I ironed it. Uhh, it didn’t work very well. People…don’t try that at home. Straws don’t go flat, they go gooey. And they never come off an iron. Fantastic science experiment.

Next cool thing: This hot air balloon landed behind our grove of trees; we could see it from our driveway. We all went to get a closer look. It’s amazing how quickly a balloon deflates and also how quickly they can get the whole thing folded up. It might be fun to go for a ride someday.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to upload Luke’s first wrestling video here and then weird things started happening. Apparently, that Internet Explorer virus thingy got me.  I needed to reinstall Windows XP, but I couldn’t find my disc. I’m convinced Best Buy didn’t give me one when I bought my computer 3 years ago. Anyhoo, I took it to a computer place to have them do it, but it would have cost $125. That’s not bad, but considering I could do it myself, I didn’t want to pay that much. Sooooo, I ended up ordering another disc from HP for $28 and fixed it myself. So satisfying!

I just got home last night from being in Omaha at the hospital visiting my Grandma. They don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but her stomach isn’t digesting the food the way it should. They’ve done a few surgeries and it still isn’t working. Not sure what they’ll do next…

While I was in Omaha, school got out early because of blizzard conditions. My in-laws were in Sioux Falls, not expecting the kids until 3:30. The kids came home at 11:30 and couldn’t get ahold of their grandparents, so they bundled themselves up and walked 1/2 mile to the neighbors. In the blizzard. They said their faces were really cold because of the wind, but they made it just fine. How crazy is that?! I may never leave home again! The school sends out an email when school lets out early, but I obviously wasn’t at my computer. My in-laws don’t carry a cell phone. I do, but it’s a tracfone that I just keep in the van. Now they at least have Eric’s cell number, which they didn’t have before. Sheesh. That could have been a real nightmare.

We’re sort of house-bound today, which is fine I suppose. We had plans with a friend, but we’ve bumped that to tomorrow-we’ll see how the weather cooperates.

Eric, I hope you’re enjoying TEXAS!

TIME magazine came out with their list of the Best Inventions for 2008.

My first favorite: www.23andme.com, which is a genetic saliva test to find out your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions. It identifies 600,000 genetic markers. This is awesome because you can find out if you’re predisposed to develop osteoporosis, for instance, which gives you an opportunity to correct it before it becomes a problem. Not cheap though at $399, but think of all the medical expenses you’d save in the long run! Where are you Santa?

Second favorite: www.hulu.com. You can watch all sorts of free tv shows and movies. If you miss your favorite episode or you don’t have a certain channel, look for it here!