A Daily Day - Brain Dump

It's Friday, friends, and isn't that a good thing?

1.  There are days when the only thing I cross off the Mother Load is something I accidentally wrote twice... and today wasn't quite that bad ;D  At least I downloaded photos, updated my calendar, made sure Tate paid for his yearbook (because the price goes up soon), and made jam.  Yum!

2.  And there were errands.  Gunnar and I finished all his schoolwork yesterday (hurray for four-day homeschool weeks!) and clumped all our errands together.  We had to kill some time (waiting for the consignment store to open so we could drop off some things,) and found a hard-bound Richard Peck book we didn't have at the Sal's Arm for a whopping 27 cents.  Isn't that a bargain?  And I love Richard Peck's stories.  Now we have The Teacher's Funeral - A Comedy In Three Parts.  I read the whole thing this evening!  I think the Grandma Dowdel books are my favorite, but this is a good one, too :D

3.  Chickie.  For those of you concerned for my friend - thank you! - she's doing just great!  Of course, it's going to be a long row to hoe for her, but she's surrounded by a "great cloud" of family and friends to encourage and help.  And seriously, she personifies her name - Chickie.  Like a perky, cheerful chickadee.  I feel so lucky to have the family and friends I do!

4.  The oven...  earlier this week I needed to get the oven up to 450.  I haven't really been paying attention, but it has seemed kind of slow, so that day I really watched.  It took an hour.  That just isn't right.  But tonight?  It heated right up, no problem.  Flush with success, I baked cupcakes right on the heels of dinner, rather than waiting until tomorrow.

5.  Yes, there was baking...  while other people create culinary masterpieces, Gunnar saw this at the store today:

He insisted we need to make this.  I think it was the orange frosting that caught his eye, as we're getting together with friends this weekend.  I love hanging out with my friend Ginny, and Gunnar enjoys her boys - Ben and Sammy.  (Sammy is the one he babysat for two years.)  Those boys are slightly obsessed with the color orange. 

I think Gunnar thought there was actually frosting in the box of cake mix, and had a moment of concern before I assured him that I myself, all on my own, could make orange frosting happen.  My larger concern was that there was absolutely no way I could mix the colors like that without the cake looking like mud, so we came up with a creative alternative.  Therefore, this afternoon we (and by "we" I mean "I") mixed up four colors of cake batter, froze them in ice cube trays, and made camo cupcakes with the semi-frozen cake batter (three cubes each seemed to do the trick), and we'll frost them tomorrow.  (And by "we"...)

6.  Gunnar and I are so excited!  We're going to a concert!  His violin teacher happened to mention that Jay Ungar and Molly Mason are coming to our neck of the woods, and we wasted no time and purchased tickets that very same day!  The concert also features a Scottish fiddler and a cellist that I've not heard of, but it sounds wonderful... a Fiddler's Feast.  Gunnar has been working on the Ashokan Farewell, and we'll get to hear it by the ones who wrote it!

7.  I may not have accomplished much from the list, but I have a great excuse...  I'm working on a new quilt!  Because isn't that just a ton more fun than tracking down insurance cards or folding laundry?!  And I have all of tomorrow to make progress.  Hurray for the weekend!

What are your plans?