A Good Day

I'm pretty fortunate. I come from a very close knit family and I have a great relationship with my sister. I've been kind of on my own a lot the last several days and was itching for some sisterly fun! Lucky for me my sister, Amy, knows her way around a kitchen and is quite the crafter. What a great person to have around as I attempt to make some progress in the crafting and cooking department!

When I got married a few years back, I registered for and received a bunch of fun small kitchen appliances. My kitchen was quickly filled with all sorts of goodies...food processor, griddler, immersion blender, mandoline slicer, etc, etc. Cool, right?! Ummmm yeah, only if you have a clue how to use any of those things or the patience to read the manuals. Which of course I did not. So yes, these small appliances were all shoved into my corner cabinet and never touched. It was my "I have absolutely no clue how to use those things" cabinet. Instead of figuring out how to use those things, I manually did everything instead. Let me tell you, if something in the kitchen is supposed to take 5 minutes, it takes me triple the time. At least. A normal person would say forget taking the time to do everything by hand and use that time to learn the darn appliances. Have I mentioned that I put everything off and am a HUGE procrastinator?

So anyway, my wonderful and very patient sister came over and decided to break open the cabinet to teach me how to use my food processor. HELLO!!! Who knew that thing did about 100 fancy tricks?! Geeze, if I would have known it chops, purees, shreds, etc, I would have been all over that two years ago (ok, maybe not, but we can pretend). We (she) made some yummy chicken club salads with a creamy avocado dressing (thank you food processor!). Definitely a keeper. Now, let's see how long until I use that darn thing again.

After making lunch, we decided to forgo staying inside to watch the possible tsunami hit (yes, we are strangely and not so embarassignly obsessed with natural disasters)and instead took my nutty dog, Jamie, for a long walk. She had a blast and loved prancing around in the deep snow. She's a cold weather dog so playing in the snow is her version of heaven. Following a brief glance at CNN (the tsunami was not near as bad as anticipated-don't get me wrong, this is a good thing!), Amy busted out her digital scrapbooking materials and got to work craft-ifying me. I made a scrapbook page from my honeymoon in Hawaii and really enjoyed the process and how "simple" it was. I have tons of real scrapbook stuff, but it's such a pain in the butt to drag it all out and make such a mess, only to have to put it all away and start all over the next time. Digital scrapbooking is much easier and less messy! Now that I've invested $100 in photoshop, digital scrapbooking here I come. :)

It's nice to have a sister who's a jack of all trades! Hoping she rubs off on me a bit.