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Matt and I recently indulged in a much needed, overnight "date night". His work's Chirstmas party [a few months late] was on a Saturday night in downtown Marquette, so Matt jumped on this opportunity to have a special night together, KID FREE! [It would be my first night away from Miss Corabean]. The kids had a sleepover at Grandma's house, and we hit the town.... with bells on. We call it a "stay-cation". He booked a hotel room at this new place near downtown [within walking distance]. This particular hotel is designed for extended stay guests, so our classy and clean-lined room was even equipped with a stainless steel kitchen! Vending machines? Try a "Pantry" where you can buy actual food and snacks, milk, etc. Pretty cool. You're all probably thinking 'Ooo la-la... sexeh time for those two love birds', but really I'd call it 'our most expensive FULL NIGHT'S SLEEP', and no doubt worth every penny. But I'll get back to this a little later. His coworkers had planned this fun event for our group to do this year. Have you heard of these "Escape Rooms"? They popped up in big cities around a year ago, and now Marquette has one. You have to watch Conan's bit on them- hilarious! Anyway, it was a hoot! There were fifteen of us, split into groups of five, all competing in three different themed rooms at the same time. [Brief description: You are given your first clue, then locked inside of a room until you figure out how to escape by finding the remaining clues within the room]. You could sort of hear the other groups muffled through the walls, so we would yell and cheer as loud as physically possible, just to keep them thinking we were getting close to escaping first! My team came in last, at 48 minutes, but it was still really fun, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an "out of the box" group activity. [Pee before you go inside]. After that, we headed up to a private art studio to mix and mingle and snack and drink, until we later hit up the bars. [Bars... oh, the good ole days]. We did a little bar hopping, [I] drank a few too many, and we hiked it back to the hotel in the bitter cold around 12:30am. I'm told I was hungry once we arrived, and immediately set about a mission to find this "Pantry" that I had read about in our room literature. Matt bought me a bag of Doritos. I was in heaven. Now the story gets a little hazy. Fast forward to Lauren sleeping like a baby. Drooling, no doubt. Then I'm awoken around 8 in the morning by Matt, who's just dying to tell me this next bit. Apparently around 4am, Matt woke up and had to pee like a racehorse. Only problem was, he didn't make it to the bathroom. "OMG - he must have peed in the corner of the hotel room", you think. Hilarious, right!? Yes. And he would probably love for that to have happened. But, that didn't happen. Let's back up just a bit to learn four key backstory points that come into play here: 1) Matt is basically blind without his glasses or contacts. 2) He sometimes sleepwalks when in strange environments. 3) He always sleeps with some sort of clothing on. 4) Lauren is extremely hard to wake up if she has consumed alcohol. Where were we? Oh yes. 4am. So all of a sudden, Matt finds himself without his glasses, in the hotel hallway, completely and utterly naked, and most definitely locked out of our room. Ummmmmmm. Yup. Once he came out of it, he notices the outlines of the plaques near all the doors and remembers we were at a hotel, and thankfully remembers our room number! He manages to find our room, and begins to knock on the door. [Oh dear. Knocking, I assure you, will do nothing in getting me to wake up]. His knocking has most likely awoken the guests in the room directly across the hall. Luckily, this guest is a man. Matt hears the door begin to open, and jumps to the side to hide as much of his nakedness as one can. The door opens. Matt apologizes profusely and the man's response: "Dude...I'm a sleep walker too, but this has never happened to me before!" Can you imagine!? He graciously hands Matt a towel and lets him use his phone to try and call drunky wifey over in la-la land. ZZzzzzzzzzz. Matt begins the journey from the fourth floor down to the front desk to beg to be let back into our room. No ID, no pride; nothin' but a towel. Still has to pee like a racehorse. Contemplating purposely and very coherently, to pee in some corner of the hall at this point. This chick working the front desk must have witnessed some of the evening's entertainment [on a rather large flat screen TV located over the front desk] on a security camera, because they crossed paths with one another on his walk down and her walk up. Hallelujah! Now Matt's apologizing profusely to this poor, and by this point, clearly underpaid employee, and she replies with a "Well, you'd be surprised". She thankfully lets him into our room. ZZzzzzzzzz. Matt finds the toilet, then starts shaking me to get me to wake up so he can tell me all about his grand adventure. ZZzzzzzzzz. He's so mad right now that he decides to go sleep on the couch for the next few hours. ZZzzzzzzzz --> [Lauren, sleeping with feelings hurt]. He finally wakes me up at 8. "Yaaaaawwwnnn". --> [Lauren, after actually sleeping for more than three hours at one time, in over a year]. He tells me everything. I obviously think he's joking. Like...' who does that'!? I see the look on his face as I'm laughing at his funny joke. I quickly understand that 'Matt does that. My Matt did that'! So, as we're laying there in bed, in silence, he says "I mean... we kind of have to tell people about this, right?" "Yes, honey. We most certainly do". Bahahahahaha. So we chuckle, and decide to go enjoy the continental hot breakfast downstairs. Place is packed! Like where did all of these people come from? [Always gets me when staying at a hotel]. I jokingly ask Matt "So, do you see the guy who gave you the towel?", but Matt is so blind without his glasses that he has no clue what he even looked like! Then a few minutes later, in walks a mother and son. The poor kid, probably three or four years old, is just having a raging meltdown. Waterworks, yelling, the whole nine yards. I overhear the mom ask her sweetie-pie what in the world is the matter, and he sobs "I MISS MY DADDY". His voice sounds just like Jay's. I start crying while eating my omelet. Matt is just laughing. Matt got an email the other day. "Please tell us about your recent stay at the Staybridge Suites in Marquette". Ummm, thank you for not calling the cops...? And if you could just go ahead and delete your security footage from the fourth floor, that'd be greeeaaaat. How would I sum up our recent date night? Epic. xoxoxo .... and this could be why we don't do this sort of thing more often. 
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Do you love a clean house? Who would say 'no', right?
But then life happens. And all of a sudden it's the following week and you don't remember how many days it's been since you got the vacuum out. And your brain no longer sees those little handprints on the front of the oven. Been there. Because I'm such a freak when it comes to organizing things, I've actually taken the time to create a cleaning schedule. Please know that I don't always follow the schedule, and then the above happens all over again. BUT, it works wonderfully as long as you stick to it! [It's not really that I'm a clean freak about germs, but I'm trying to be MORE of one, with the kids getting into everything and having a dog and cat. The hair that I empty out of the vacuum each week is pretty eye-opening]. Broken up into timing categories: DAILY-morning, DAILY-night, WEEKLY-for each day of the week, and MONTHLY. DAILY-morning:
WEEKLY
MONTHLY- pick a few to do each week when time permits
Seems like a lot, and you're right... it would be a lot to do all in one day. But when you stick to the plan and commit around 30 minutes every day, you know every room in your house has been cleaned within one week's time, at any given time! The key to the weekly part is trying to pick tasks that will take you the same amount of time to tackle. If you made Tuesday's tasks twice as long as Monday's..well, I'd probably be guilty of skipping Tuesday's list altogether. Also, make sure you plan around your trash pick-up day so you don't have trash sitting around for longer than needed [ours is Friday morning, for example]. Hope this helps someone out there feel a little more confident in what they can accomplish with just a little planning, and see that it's not too intimidating to keep a tidy house with a busy schedule. Happy cleaning! Instead of clumping random finds in with makeup picks, I decided to break up my "looks.likes.links" this time around. You'll find the non-style components over here for a change.
I've been using a Bluetooth wireless speaker at my desk that was gifted to me from a business affiliate around the holidays, and really enjoy streaming Pandora during my work day. I usually switch up the stations, but today I picked "Lite Rock Songwriters Radio" and it was just what my ears were longing to hear. Talk about a chillaxin' mood setter for the win. I'll definitely play that over and over. I'm also buying Matt and I a similar style speaker to use at home. We play tunes during dinner every night through the iPad, so it logically makes sense to just get a small speaker for the kitchen. If I had a need for Bluetooth enabled earbuds, these would be my pick! [But alas... I don't]. Do you find that in the world of digital photo capture, you kind of miss holding an actual pic in your hand? Like you're the "if only I had this one print to hang on the fridge or put in the baby book..." type. Not the "I miss the photo books with yellowed cellophane pages" type. Well, if you're the former type.... Voila! You'll really enjoy it. I surely have. Think about high school for a minute.
I bet there was at least one subject where you simply could have sat in a chair and faced the wall for the duration of the class, and honestly, gained the same amount of knowledge at the end. For me, that was history. Fast forward to today and oddly enough, I absolutely love watching good documentaries on TV centered around history and/or prominent historical figures. It's sort of a shared guilty pleasure that Matt and I have. One thing's for certain: I retained little to no knowledge from those high school history lessons. Eeek! [And slightly embarrassing]. Do names of wars sound familiar? Sure. Could I tell you in detail, or even a broad overview on the why and who and where of the vast majority of historical events? Surely not. That's what I now want to gain in my brain... a sort of cliff-note version of history; American history, world history, brief biographies on historical figures, etc. I had a professor in college (R.I.P.) who was SUCH a fascinating storyteller, and also a really big history buff. He was an expert on our beloved U.P., in particular, and one of my favorite teachers (maps, soils, other geography classes) I've ever had. Even a topic that would normally make you wish you had stayed in bed recovering from your hangover, his enthusiasm on the subject matter and storytelling capabilities would suck you right in and get you excited about topsoil even while nursing your dehydration headache at your desk. I also remember many lectures with the lights turned down low. Perhaps a wise teaching strategy at the collegiate level [especially for those Friday classes]. If I take a moment to really dig at the root of my new(er) itch for history, I'd have to owe it to Dr. Anderton. Anyway, I'm challenging myself intellectually this year to try to scratch this itch for knowledge. I'm not expecting to enter twenty eighteen as a history buff, but to have an adult-like understanding of historical events and know why they are so important. I'd like to be able to link an event that took place in the US in the fifties, and without researching, connect that to something that happened across the globe in the same time period and understand why and how the two are related. I just ordered this book today to jumpstart my curiosity. I realize it was written for children, but let's keep things simple as I enter this hopefully non short-lived phase! I love that it's so visual. Besides, maybe the kids will benefit from it one day. Am I becoming a nerd in my thirties? In all honesty, I do need to schedule an appointment with my eye doctor to talk about the possibility of reading glasses... If the shoe fits? I know. I KNOW! I'm only now jumping on this podcast trend, which probably boomed over a year ago? I'm not entirely sure, but I figured it's time to give 'er a go.
First impressions? Sort of hard to figure out what I want to listen to. I think that after I take the time listening to a little of this and a little of that, hopefully then I'll get more into it (?). There should be like a "Pandora" of podcasts that you can either thumbs up or thumbs down until it devises a tailored list of podcasts you might be interested in. That would be great- and if there is such a thing, please clue me in! Here's what I want to get out of my podcast listening experience: I want to listen to little news snippets from reliable (if there are any) news sources for a few minutes everyday. Sort of like a "Good morning, Lauren; please listen for the next 10 minutes (while you do your makeup and brush your teeth) as I fill you in on today's news worthy stories". Bam. Exactly what I want. [Yes- I want to have my cake and eat it, too]. Suggestions? The app I'm using (for Android) is Podcast Addict. So far I've only listened to NPR's All Things Considered, but each 3-5 minute segment is only on one news topic, but I'm ideally searching for something that streams through all topics in the same segment. What do you like about podcasts and what are some of your go-to's? I hope this post finds you happy, healthy, and ready to start twenty seventeen out with a spring in your step.
I heard a radio ad from the Michigan Ad Council on my drive into work early this morning that got me thinking. "Don't almost give. Give". I will admit that this has often been one of my greatest flaws... Amost giving. Intentions are good, but follow-thru can be horrible. Prime example: I went through the kids' old clothing and got some bags together that I wasn't planning on listing for sale, but rather to donate. They made it into the paper grocery bags, and down on the futon in the basement, where they have continued to live for over a month now. These clothes could have been worn on the first day of the new year by kids in need. An unfortunate missed opportunity because, well, I'm lazy. I'm not fond of the word resolution. but would rather think of priorities for the year. I have a few that need to make their way into the top ten on my list, and giving is one of them. Another would be setting and completing short term goals. I LOVE the bigger picture. I'm good at bigger pictures. I'm not very good at the immediate, littler tasks needed in order to acheive that big picture. I tend to save up everything that I need/want to do until the last minute, and then do it all at once. Overwhelming, slightly rushed, but man do I give it 110%. This procrastination habit I have has given me more "avoidable" stress in my life than any real and legitimate stress I think I've ever had to deal with. And for that, I'm thankful. However, this year I think I'm ready to really try to tackle my short-term goal lists. One of those goals is simply to take a few minutes at the end of each day to grab my little laptop, reflect, and start typing. I look forward to writing more and hope you'll enjoy the opportuniy to read what these fingers have to say. Cheers to this year, folks! What's for dinner? Possibly the most annoying of any daily rhetoric question, and arguably the hardest one to answer. I'm a planner. A list-maker. A binder-for-everything kind of gal. Do I always carry out and fulfill the things on my list? Hell no. But the joy I get from simply making a list is hard to be beat. The technique I'm about to share with you only works if you fulfill and stick to your list. [Spoiler alert]. Not only will you soon be able to answer the dinner Q for tonight, but you could also tell the inquiring mind what you'll be eating three nights from now. If you're like me and find you normally don't arrive home from work any earlier than 6:30, we just don't have the time or luxury to do the cooking on a weeknight. With this plan, you won't need to. Everything is done in one day. I picked Sundays. *Steps 1 & 2 are totally unnecessary, but I find them to be very valuable. If you feel that "crazy" might not be a part of your middle name, by all means, feel free to skip to step 3* STEP 1 A little back legwork if you'd like to share the title of Crazy Binder Lady... I love cookbooks. The colored pictures, the glossy pages, the index. That being said, I only end up cooking maybe three things from most cookbooks. Seriously- who makes all the recipes from a cookbook? Am I nuts for not finding everything appealing? Anyway, what I like to do is once a recipe is tried and true, I will either make a photocopy of the page or type my own super-shortened version of the recipe and print that, put the recipe in a protective sleeve, and file it in a three ring binder divided into categories according to the type of food. My tailored-to-me binder then becomes "The Brintlinger Cookbook". STEP 2 On the front cover of the binder lies the Master Meal List; a full page of meal options (titles only) which are dishes you like to prepare and are categorized in the following way: MAIN- Chicken, MAIN- Meat, MAIN- Other, SIDES, SALAD, BREAD, DESSERT, BREAKFAST [A picture of my own Master List is at the bottom of this post, to get you started]. STEP 3 First, grab a blank Menu List. Objective: Pick one MAIN meal from each of the three main categories- so one CHICKEN, one MEAT, and one OTHER. Now pick up to two side dishes to go along with each main; pick one salad-type option (could even be just celery or carrot sticks); pick one bread-type option; and pick a dessert. You don't need to make three desserts for the week [though I won't tell anyone]. I believe only making one big breakfast on either Saturday or Sunday is sufficient in our household, but you could do both mornings if you wish. My outlines are merely suggestions for a family with two adults and one hungry toddler. The idea of three meals in a week is perfect for our family. We alternate meals and end up eating the same meal twice in a week- the beauty lies in that it doesn't have to mean eating the same thing consecutively two nights in a row since ALL of this food will be prepared and in your fridge. STEP 4 Pull the recipes for the menu items you’ve written on your Menu list and cross check ingredients you'll need against what you already have in the pantry. Jot down the items you'll need to buy today on the side of your Menu list. STEP 5 Go to the grocery store. Don’t buy out the store- stick to your list! STEP 6 Throw the produce in the garbage can now vs next week. Order a pizza for dinner. NOPE! STEP 6 Come home and crack open a beer or pour a glass of wine. Now turn on the tunes and the oven. It takes a little getting used to, trying to plan your next few hours in the kitchen. It is rather odd going from baking cookies to the smell of pesto, but trust me, it can be done. STEP 7 Once your food is all cooked and cooled enough for the fridge, start your puzzle masterpiece. You'll really get to know your fridge like you've never before. Remember- most shelves are adjustable. STEP 8 Go about your crazy-busy work week but come home to multi-course meals just waiting to be heated through. ENJOY your family and don't fear dinner time. STEP 9 Repeat steps 3 through 8 next Sunday. Side Note: I could write at least 3 blog posts worth of my absolute, hands-down, favorite baking dishes, but for now I'll just leave this here for you for starters.... Temptations! Happy cooking!
"I would NEVER want to own a camper. I can't believe sleeping in a mini-home is called camping! I'll always only tent it ". Then I had a kid. Then we bought a camper. This camper, to be exact. This 1975, all original, HEAVY, son-of-a, cute-as-a-button, Prowler. We bought it for one thousand buckaroos, from a broke college kid who had knocked out his front tooth playing football. Can you guess how much money it cost to have his toofers fixed? Nothing worked, except for the interior outlet and the gas stove. It was perfect. No plumbing, no heater. We used the bathroom as storage. It smelled like it was forty years old, no matter the number of air fresheners spread about. There was one busted [missing] window above the main couch bed, and the open screen provided the precise right amount of cool breeze while we slept below. Still to this day, some of the best nights' rest we've ever had have been on that couch bed! We used it for a summer and a half. We had some great times, and some terrible, mosquito bitten times. I'll never forget the weekend at Anderson Lake, when Jay was six months old and had his professional six month pictures scheduled for the following week. His face looked like his chicken pox, had chicken pox. Did you know that mosquito bites don't itch until around two years of age? What a life saver. That, and digital photo editing. And the Mother of the Year Award goes to.... So at this point in our camping career, Jay is immobile. Not crawling, not walking; just sitting where we put him. It's a good thing too, because most of the interior walls were starting to flake off. I can only imagine the side effects of eating forty year old camper paneling. Plus, I now see the benefit of having a fridge to ensure his milk and bottles are kept cool... And washing bottles and pump equipment would be a helluva lot easier with running water... Upgrade! 2001 Trail Lite Bantam Hybrid 22 footer. We got a great deal on this little unit from an internet ad in Escanaba. The guy actually got a higher offer than ours, but liked us much better than the other lady. He was super friendly and very thorough with "teaching" us all the ins and outs of the camper. I did lots of research on different camper styles before we drove to meet him and see it, and I loved the idea of sleeping under the "tent" parts, as is the style in these hybrid models of campers. I don't have pictures of our particular camper with the beds down, so here are a few I snagged from the web. Please note that the interior of ours is not as new looking as in the photo. Running hot water, a toilet and tub, a fridge, tons of wonderful storage space, a heater, A/C, microwave, a huge awning, a kitchen that actually slides out increasing the floor space, a queen size bed for us, and a full size bed for the kid(s) when they're older. It's perfect. Wait... didn't I say that before? As it turns out, popping the bed down when we get to our site should really be a two-person job, so one person doesn't have to keep running in and out and in and out. Oh wait... now Jay is mobile. Sorry honey, but you're on your own with this task- I need to entertain and look after Jay. Also, the tents are not sound-proof by any stretch of the imagination. Did you know that bonfires get real fun and the beer starts to flow right around 8:30 or so in most campgrounds? It's one of the best parts of camping! Guess what time Jay goes to sleep? We also have our dog, Penguin, with us when we camp. She's very good at barking because she's a watch dog, and she's not very good at listening to us when we tell her to quit barking. It's a packed campground with people everywhere. And there's our dog, lying on our bed, literally looking at people walking/biking roughly eight feet in front of her... Upgrade! [Though this time it's actually a "same grade" money transaction]. 1999 Jayco Lite Eagle 211 Fifth Wheel. Time for the most hideous, in my opinion, of the campers out there - a fifth wheel! I honestly think they are ugly and unappealing from the outside, but I do appreciate the concept of the fifth wheeler - better tow on the truck, completely hard-side body, permanent bed [love this] which takes up less space since it's elevated and over the truck bed. As I was scrolling through an online listing of campers for sale, trying to find my post on our Prowler that we sold, I stumbled upon a fifth wheel that caught my eye and was located in Baraga [about an hour's drive]. I showed the listing to Matt, and he was on board. I reached out to the seller and we went to look at it a few days later. It was a steal because it included the hitch, normally an eight or nine hundred stand-alone purchase. After numerous [like twenty or thirty, no joke] phone calls in to Toyota and our local RV dealer, we were reassured our truck was capable of the task at hand, and we brought home the winner. This one truly is perfect for us, and we are super excited for campgrounds to open! Here's some pictures of our little/big camper that we will surely have for a very loooong time. Happy camping! Today is my hubby's birthday. This is my very first blog post. The end. [kidding] Our birthdays are so close on the calendar, that every year we get ourselves some sort of joint present. We've never really been elaborate gift-givers [aside from my present when I turned thirty last year, but that's another story]. We usually choose an item we need for the house [this toaster won in a previous year, which I love], and this year is no exception. About a week ago we re-arranged the items in our semi-finished area of the cold basement, to better serve three purposes; a play area for the kids, a music studio space for Matt and I [mostly Matt], and the office space - really just a desk and file cabinet. Our home is relatively small, at under 1300 sq ft of actual living space [including said basement], so physical space I'm finding to be essential for the toys. Oh, the toys. I'm seriously very conservative when it comes to our accumulation of toys, too! But I digress. The basement has two heat vents. Literally, two. It lacks insulation and has painted barn wood covering the white block walls, at least in the "finished" area. Needless to say, it's a tad bit chilly during these winter months in the great white North, when the outside temp peaks at 20 degrees on any given day. On the flip side, the basement is a marvelous hang out during the summer months since our home has no air conditioning. I feel like our new arrangement of space will be perfect for the next few years, and we will actually spend quality time as a family down there. Why am I dragging out this basement talk? Our present this year: new ceiling tiles! These, to be exact. The previous cheap tiles were there when we bought the house, complete with rogue water stains, etc. We're upgrading a little at a time. Cheers to another year young, honeybun!  Happy birthday, my favorite rock star. Love you |
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February 2017
All product reviews and opinions are my own, and I have not been compensated in any way.
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