How to be happy

So the other night, at a time of unusual leisure, I asked Amy what she wanted to do. She replied with an apathetic "I dunno." I asked her what would make her happy and once again she repeated "I don't know."

I proceeded to ask what would not make her happy, to which she freely gave the following answers:

Get eaten by a dog

Do a handstand

Throw up

Get lit on fire

Get stuffed in the refrigerator

I theorized that, and logic confirms, if doing these things would not make Amy happy, then doing the opposite of these things would make her happy, so I offered her the following suggestions:

Eat a dog

Do a footstand

Throw down

Get lit on … ice?

"Come out" of the refrigerator

Because of time and resource constraints, we were only able to accomplish three of the things on the list, but as expected, it did make her happy.

a little of everything

Here are some things I've done this week:

No, I didn't have a baby. ;) A while back, I offered to take pictures of one of my friend's kids because I wanted to practice my photography skills and learn how to use my camera better. We haven't done it until now because of busy schedules, but she thought this would be a good time because I could help take pictures of the new(ish) baby, Amy (sort of named after me!). This is an edited version of one of the pictures (hopefully it's ok that I'm putting it here, I didn't ask permission...but I'm not identifying her other than by first name). I liked it even with the pacifier.

Brian and I went to Hayden Run Falls yesterday. It was much prettier than the last time we went (a lot more water). Not a great picture, but I couldn't really get far enough back to get everything in. Meh. At least Brian's in it to make it look good. ;)

These are some ducks we saw at the falls. I thought they were cute, so of course I had to take pictures of them with my zoom lens.

I've become crafty lately. Or at least, I've decided lately that I like doing crafty things. I think I found the idea for these cute little magnets on Pinterest, though I'm not a member. I just glued scrapbook paper on the back of large-sized mermaid tears (I'm not sure what they're actually called, that's just what I call them). I think the original idea used Mod Podge, but I wasn't about to buy a bottle just for one project - though I'm sure I could find more things to do with it - so I just used white Elmer's glue, which I already had. Once the glue was mostly dry, I used a stronger glue to attach round magnets to the back. Voila!

More crafty things. I've discovered that I love making cards. These ones just use scrapbook paper and blank cards left over from our wedding thank you notes. I liked the first one so well that I had to make more of the same kind until I ran out of brown paper. I do similar things with other ones using blank white cards. Sometimes I use cute stickers as well.

My mom gave me this yummy recipe when I was up in Michigan for Spring Break this week. My sister-in-law had given me a bunch of chocolate chips (and other kinds of chips), so my mom figured this was a good way to use them. I made them tonight and we just tried some a minute ago. Very rich, but oh so good.

clean air

I've been meaning to change our furnace filter for several months now. In fact, there's been a notice from our landlady on the fridge since we moved in, which says to check the filter regularly. We haven't done it since we moved in a year and a half ago....

So I finally got around to looking at the furnace the other day to see what size filter I needed to buy. I took off 2 panels on the front and couldn't find the filter anywhere. I felt pretty stupid but figured it shouldn't be that difficult to find, so I enlisted Brian's help. He couldn't find it either. With no other ideas of what to do, we called one of our neighbors/friends to see if he had ever changed their filter (we were guessing they have the same furnace because they're in our building). He explained where it was supposed to be, and we realized we couldn't find it because it wasn't there! So we've been living here for 1.5 years with no filter on our furnace. We're guessing the guys who rented before us decided that changing it wasn't worth the hassle, so they just completely removed it. Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. I'm actually really surprised that we haven't been sick much more often.

Speaking of being sick, Brian caught some sort of mild cold a few weeks ago. It wasn't too bad, but his cough sounded pretty horrible. He seems to be mostly better now, but that cough is still lingering. However, we decided that might actually be from allergies, especially since I've been waking up with a raw throat but haven't actually gotten sick. We recently got him a new dresser (the old one literally fell apart) off of Craigslist, and the previous owner had a cat. I wiped the dresser down when we first brought it in the house, but Brian seems to have more problems with coughing in our bedroom, so I decided to wipe down the whole thing more thoroughly (and also re-wash all the clothes he's had in there). We brought it down into the kitchen last night, and I wiped the drawers out individually with bleach, as well as the whole frame. It was actually nice that we took it apart because I discovered that 2 of the drawers had loose bottoms, so we were able to glue them before they fell apart. Anyway, we're hoping the allergies will get a little better, although the early spring (summer?) probably isn't helping.

save me

...from myself. I made cinnamon rolls even though I knew I shouldn't. They may not look that pretty, but they smell incredible. The recipe I use is called "The Cinnabon Rolls." Last time I made them, Brian agreed that they were about as good as Cinnabon's. Yum!

Fortunately, I haven't succumbed to the temptation to eat any yet. That may be because it's 11:30 PM and I'm still extremely full from dinner. We had friends over and made BBQ pulled pork, sweet potato fries, and artichoke dip. Our friends (2 separate families, a total of 4 adults and 3 kids) brought baked beans, homemade macaroni and cheese, and a delicious dessert bread.

For those of you who don't know, Brian "finished" our basement - covered the walls and ceiling and put down carpet - basically so that we could have large groups of people over for dinner/parties. The largest group we've had so far is 14, including ourselves (2 of those were kids, but that's still a big group). Every time Brian suggests that we have people over - which happens every week now - I have this urge to resist because I think of how much work it will be to prepare all the food and everything. We've had potlucks every time, so that takes some of the stress off of us, but we always provide the main part of the meal (thus far, grilled chicken the first two weeks and rice and chicken gravy for Hawaiian haystacks the third week). The funny thing is, once we've actually invited everyone over, I get really excited about cooking and usually end up overdoing it on the food prep (as in, I make more than we originally planned on providing). I suppose that's not a bad thing, it's just funny that I resist even though I know from experience that I'm going to enjoy the cooking and the company.