Great Find: Your Family Centers

This was sitting in a free box outside the antique store in Kenton and I grabbed it based on a quick flip and some pages that had to do with building things. The bulk of the book, though, rambles on about each center in a home.

I guessed the date nearly correctly (was one year off) based on this photo, especially the blue and white checkerboard coach and the way the plants were hanging. What year do you think this was published?

More clues. Velveteen couch! Also that blouse and hair combo.

How about this breakfast bar setup? I feel like a yellow version of that dishwasher was in my life at one time.

What about this entertaining space?

Did you guess 1981? You guessed correctly!

When You Fashion Your Own Sick Time

My company gives us PTO in a lump. There isn’t separate sick time. This bugs me, because how much vacation do you really have?

When there was a lull, I made my own way to track sick time. I give myself 5 hours of vacation and 1.67 hours of sick time per pay period.

I can also use this sheet to plan out when I have enough PTO for vacations.

My Current Favorite Frozen Pizza

The loss of PB Max after a few glorious years of my adolescence has taught me to not get attached to any manufactured food. But there are some things I could theoretically recreate at home including this Cuban inspired ham and swiss thin-crust pizza that is a product of Germany.

So I took a picture of the various parts that it consists of.

Matt’s New Wedding Rings Have Arrived

Having not worn a ring before, Matt didn’t love wearing his metal wedding ring. It was also a little big. So he ordered three silicone rings from Enso and they arrived today. He was out of town, so I modeled them.

I’m going to get his metal ring sized down to my size (which is also his finger size, as it turns out) and retire my current ring. I like my ring, I just like his ring better.

The Fast and the Furious Finally Gets Matt on Board

(Hee. Pun.)

Matt is at GenCon, a board gaming convention.

Well, it took the manufacture of a board game and Matt’s trip to Gen Con and the board game company sending people to demo the game, but Matt finally loves the Fast and the Furious. Or at least one part of it.

The Big Party Aftermath

I entirely guessed wrong about how much ice would be needed. That was a month of preparation task I didn’t need to do. Also, too late I realized I could have emptied these outside and let the melting ice water the garden.

The Watergate Cake with Impeachment Frosting was the big winner of the three cakes. It also might have been cut and served when the most people were there.

The Pink Cake was also enjoyed. Once of the guests told me that it was literally the best cake he had ever eaten. I feel the same way about that cake.

The poor Goober Cake didn’t get much play. By the time we cut into it at 8 p.m. we were down to five party attendees.

I thought the 9/11 remembrances turned out well. I enjoyed reading where people were on that date.

We didn’t get a lot of traction on singing, unfortunately.

People were all into the both and plan for celebrating anniversaries. I voted for May.

It was fun to realize that some of us had known each other for a very long time.

The Big Party had the most number of signatures in the party retrospective lineup.

But we had good turnout for this one.

And this one. The 40th birthday party was the biggest party prior to the Big Party.

Happily, cleanup didn’t take very long. Sadly, Burt and Laurie, who were the witnesses for the wedding, couldn’t attend because Burt was ill.

The Big Party Setup

Unlike the blogging heyday, I took no pictures of the party during the party. So here are a bunch of set up pictures.

Early morning buttercream frosting creation and cake frosting. Making real buttercream is one of those magical cooking experiences. Also, I finished up the lemonade and limeade.

There is a mid-party photo! I took this because Deborah won the drawing, but had already departed. I texted her the picture.

The kitties take advantage of the quiet early morning on the catio. They stayed in my bedroom once the party got going. Notice the very clean porch that my brother pressure washed.

A lot of staging, but not quite ready. On the refrigerator you can see the paper where we kept track of RSVPs.

The party-ready incarnation of the refrigerator.

People came in via the back yard, so we oriented a lot of things there.

On the way in, people could initial which parties they had attended over the years. Plus say how long they had known either of us, and vote on when we should celebrate our anniversary.