Time to Break Out the Red, White and Blue

Every year for the 4th of July, I break out the red, white and blue.

While I no longer show my pride in my pedicure, one of my favorite ways to show the red, white and blue spirit is by making this patriotic frozen delight (pictured left). So, in the event you are looking for a fun drink to serve at your 4th of July party, I've decided to share the secret behind my USA spirit:

Ingredients:

1. Bottle of Rum

2. Bottle of Malibu Rum

3. Bottle of Blue Curacao

4. Two Bottles of Pina Colada Mix

5. Bottle of Strawberry Daiquiri Mix

6. Ice

Directions:

1. Prepare a blender full of Pina Coladas following the instructions on the Pina Colada bottle, but use Malibu Rum instead of regular rum.

2. Prepare a second blender full of Pina Coladas, and add about 3 shots of Blue Curacao, until desired shade of blue is achieved

3. Prepare a third blender full of Strawberry Daiquiris following the instructions on the Daiquiri bottle.

Serving:

You can either serve each drink in a separate pitcher and let your guests pick their favorite flavor or make their own blend, or you can pre-layer each glass as follows:

1. Pour the blue mix into a cup (fill a bit less than 1/3 of the glass with the blue mixture)

2. Pour the white mix into the cup (again less than 1/3 of the glass should be filled with the white mixture), to keep the white layer above the blue layer, pour the mixture over the back of a spoon.

3. Repeat step 2 for the red mix.

To ensure better layers (and not the messy one's pictured), you also may want to consider using more ice for the blue, and then lessening the ice in the mixture for the white and the red. (Sadly I don't have pictures from when I perfected the method).

A Whole New Challenge (and Entry)

Arranging flowers has been a passion of mine for a long time. I blame my mother, for always filling our house with beautiful fresh flowers (which, of course, caused my constant urge to be surrounded by flowers). However, since I don't have the cash flow to constantly make my husband order flowers for me from fancy flower shops (like Mark's Garden), I tried to figure out to arrange flowers on my own.

Eventually, my husband caught on to my new interest, and one day he came home with a couple of bunches of flowers, and he "challenged" me to prepare an arrangement with the flowers he picked. After the first challenge proved to be a real hit (this was pre-farmers market days, after all), he continued to surprise me with sporadic challenges. Note that some challenges proved to be harder than others (leave it to my husband to pick out purple irises, orange roses and baby's breath), but it was always incredibly enjoyable (and as a special bonus for my husband, he quickly realized it was a cheap and easy way to have a very happy wife; it also granted him video game time as I am not very social while arranging--but I am sure the happy wife part is why he started the challenge).

While my husband always humored me (telling me that each arrangement was the most beautiful arrangement he had ever seen--yes, even the crazy one with the baby's breath), I always felt like I had no idea what I was doing (although I always did manage to have a great time regardless of my clueless-ness). For the past couple of years I've been searching for a flower arranging class, but for some reason these classes were always held at unrealistic hours for a person who worked like I did or across the country.

I had almost given up on my dreams of learning how to arrange flowers in a proper way, until today, that is. Today, I wandered into a bookstore (which is my version of a candy store), and came across a section of flower arranging books. I was in heaven, and for the next couple of hours I searched through all the books to determine which ones wanted to come home with me.

Which brings me to the point of this blog entry (queen of tangents that I am), I have decided it is time for a new challenge: From now on, once a week (or if more realistic, once every other week), I will challenge myself to pick out flowers from the local farmer's market by my work, and I will try to use a new skill or two to make an arrangement. From time to time, I will post my successes and failures on my blog, and you can be the judge as to which are which (I also openly invite you to help me name my challenge).

In the meantime, I have a lot of reading to do!

Inspiration Calls

Today I had a little too much fun making a flower arrangement for my mother.


But, since I traded blogging time for flower time (and because I am ashamed of how little I've blogged during my time off . . . let's face it, I have too many hobbies these days and even without working there just isn't enough time in the day), I figure . . . why not kill two hobbies with one stone:



Materials:
1. 1 block of floral foam (make sure it's the kind for real flowers)
2. Rectangular container
3. 6 Green Hydrangeas
4. 2 Green Mums (instead of using the mums, you can use 8 hydrangea stems or you can use 8 mums and forgo the hydrangeas)



4. 1 dozen pink, orange or other bright hue of roses (I used pink roses with an orange hue, pictured below)

Directions:

1. Prep the Foam. Soak the floral foam block in water for about 30 minutes (until there are no longer bubbles in the water). If you don't have a floral bucket (or any kind of bucket for that matter), you can close the drain in a bathroom sink, and use the sink to soak the floral foam. Note that floral foam has a tendency to want to float on top of the water, so I usually place something heavy on top of it to keep it under the water (when I'm being lazy about it, I use the actual container that I will but the flowers in to hold the foam down). When the floral foam is properly soaked through, place it securely in the rectangle container

2. Prep the Flowers. Cut the hydrangeas and mums, leaving about 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches of stem. Cut and prep the roses, leaving only 2 inches of stem (make sure to remove all the leaves from the rose stems).

3. Arrange the Frame. In starting with the outer layer, place the hydrangeas around the edges of the container, on a 30 degree angle (as pictured below, the stems should be inserted into the sides of the floral foam towards the bottom of the foam). peel off the leaves that will be on the "top" side of the hydrangeas (leaves should only be at the bottom of the arrangement)

The shorter side of the rectangle should each have one hydrangea, and the longer, is arranged in the following order: hydrangeas, mum, hydrangea (of course, if you choose to use the same type of flower around the edges, any order will do).

4. Add Rows of Roses. Once the frame is complete, start arranging the roses in three rows (each row should have 4 roses). Try to keep the smaller roses in the center and the larger ones on end. Since the roses will not likely all be the same size, you may want to do some adjusting and trading places until it looks right.

5. Present. Find the perfect place for your arrangement, and if you are like me, take tons of pictures of the arrangement when the flowers are fresh...this way the flowers last forever:)

When Did I Get Old?

I'm not sure when it happened, but I am officially an old person. That's right, I am now irritated by the little things that my mom used to complain about. I now ask my husband to turn down the TV volume, I generally think clubs are too loud, and (most recently) I don't appreciate it when people stand up during an entire concert in a section where everyone else is sitting down.

True, we could have just stood up behind them (although we no longer have the energy we once had), but given that everyone behind us was screaming "sit down" to the dancing couple in front of us, we thought it best to stay seated. While we could hear the music perfectly, unfortunately, for most of the concert (until the couple eventually also succumbed to peer pressure, after almost getting into a fight with those yelling at them), this was our view:

An All Time Low

It's official, I've sunk to an all time TV-watching low: Yesterday, I actually watched "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" (and even worse, I liked it). True there are slim pickings these days for good TV (and let's not forget I am probably not alone in finding Japanese game shows to be strangely entertaining; after all, the Japanese Human Tetris Game Show did get a lot of Internet play), but that probably is no excuse. While I have a feeling it will get old soon, for now, it'll just have to be my guilty pleasure (that is, until Big Brother starts up again in July).

BTW, if you missed the human tetris video that floated around, check it out:

My Husband is 5

When I told my hubby about the little egg experiment my brother and I conducted, he didn't seem that excited. So, you can imagine my delight, when hours later, I found him trying to get an egg to stand on it's end. When it didn't work, I pointed out that it was already dark outside and the longest day of the year was now over.



Defeated by the fact that he would not get to witness first hand the way and egg and stand on its end, he decided that he would just have to succeed at another experiment. So, the poor egg that wouldn't stand on its end for my hubby was placed into a bowl filled with vinegar. The next day, my hubby proudly showed off the now rubbery egg. He tossed it like a ball, squished it and played with it for about 10 minutes, until, crack, egg and yolk pierced through the rubbery shell all over our white carpet.



Stained carpet aside, it is moments like these that I see the charm I fell for over five years ago.

A Little Eggie Told Me: Summer is Here

Just in case the 112 degree temperature didn't tip anyone off--I now have proof that summer is officially here:

That's right, it's officially the summer solstice! And today, my brother and I finally tested out the old myth that you can stand an egg on it's end during the summer solstice (something about special gravitational pulls).

I am happy to report that we were able to confirm, that, yes, the egg will stand on June 21st (and we took plenty of pictures to prove it; and, yes, I know, I am easily entertained).