Ok, so here’s where the guilt will rip at my stomach. I love that the Cuppow people thought up such a smart thing and then had the gumption to create it and market it! Kudos to them!! Bravo!!

With that being said…. er, Cheap Girl tried to prototype her own version.

(Hangs head in shame for not financially contributing to entrepreneurs’ success.)

(Lifts head in small amount of pride for spelling ‘entrepreneurs’ correctly on the first try.)

Honestly, I’m never going to take this jar out of my house – I have plenty of thermal travel mugs for that. If I bought a Cuppow it would be one more thing that sat around here for years and eventually would go to Goodwill. I’m trying to be resourceful here, so I tried some homemade options.

Warning: Do not try my homemade options. Buy the Cuppow instead.

Option One: I just need a top with a hole. Hello, Beer Lizard! Let’s damage some lids.

Good in theory, and it did work, but while the top had a smooth surface for drinking, the underside is skin-slicingly dangerous. Not good for washing and re-using.

Option Two: Find a lid. I don’t have pictures of the various lids I tried to see if they’d fit without modifications. As it turns out, the wide-lid jar size is almost universal. Almost. I had a few things I could have tried, but they all would have leaked.

Eventually I found that the lids from the set of ‘disposable’ sippy cups that I kept on hand for when little kids would come over fit pretty darn well. I sliced off the outer edge, cut out the inside of the sippy part, smoothed the cut edge with the magic of fire and – viola’! Something I could clamp down, leak-free!

I took it to the Gebhardts on Sunday where there were some stares and the phrase, “Is that a sippy cup?” was uttered several times (from both adults and children). My ego took some blows, especially since no one noticed the sock. *sniff*

I have since lowered the profile, as you can see in the banner photo. I balanced the cut part on top for the photo below so you can see how much I cut off, but it still has sippy-cup-like proportions.

Oh, well. At least it was an afternoon of puttering fun. I do so love to putter.

The downside is that my internal clock was confused and within an hour after getting home I was completely ravenous, and it was still early in the day. Lloyd heated up some t.v. dinners, but that wasn’t enough food for my angry belly. I wanted some dessert. I’ve had a box of puff pastry sitting in my freezer for the longest time – I don’t even know why (or when) I bought it. Now seemed like as good a time as any to try something with it.

I hacked off a frozen end, broke the folded pieces apart and let them thaw on my disgustingly discolored cookie sheet while the oven heated.

Baked ‘em up, then slathered them with lemon curd (which I also can’t remember buying) and added some sliced strawberries for a flaky, sweet & sour sandwich. Worrying about the top not feeling pretty enough, I used up some of Brad’s gross skim milk and made a glaze. Brad – new rule: Drink up that gallon before you leave Nebraska.

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Tomorrow I won’t mess around with the t.v. dinner. Straight to dessert for me!

I have two new ideas to try: I’m going to put a sign in the shower so hopefully I’ll remember before I get in. This has a couple of things against it: the letters will have to be huge because I’m blind and also, I shower by the light of a nightlight. (It helps me feel like I’m still in bed and not really having to wake up so early.)

Should the sign not work, though, I have a backup plan to keep some pills in the shower. Food Sucker to the rescue! I made a skinny envelope and heat-sealed some waterproof pockets for the pills.

I couldn’t get it to seal after putting the pill inside. Turns out you have to roll up the end to get it inside the ‘vacuum’ area. Lesson learned.

Heh. All this talk about ‘rolling’ and pills – I wonder what kind of spam this post will will draw.

Food Sucker plastic is impossible to tear, so I’m attaching a clippers to it in case I actually have to take out a pill. Hey, as I write this, I think I have the sign figured out, too:

Does anyone know if that nail clipper is going to rust?

Every time I listen to the show, I think, “Well, of course I should make that! It’s just throwing (main food item) together with (some secondary item) and (some seasoning) and then (method of heating). It sounds so scrumptiously healthy yet deliciously decadent!”

Then I pull into Burger King and order a Whopper Jr. meal (with cheese).

This time I was lured into a story about a woman who had an abundance of lavender, and Lynne Rosetto Kasper told her that she should use it to make lavender sugar and use that in a crispy sugar cookie recipe, and I was suckered in. “I have lavender! I could make delicate sugar cookies and eat them with tea – each scented by the light floral aroma of lavender sugar.” I could feel my “English-lady-for-teatime” self welling up, and couldn’t wait to rush home.

Well, I put a lavender twig in with my cheap sugar on Sunday,

and tonight I just opened the jar and smelled it.

Hmmmm…. it’s less ‘English Lady’ and more ‘Old English Furniture Polish’-smelling.

…. maybe I didn’t use lavender?

I’ll admit that sometimes in church I get distracted. (God loves me anyway – he made me, y’know.) Many Sundays back I was singing a hymn and the thought popped into my head, “Y’know what would be funny? A cake shaped like a clerical collar. Isn’t October Clergy Appreciation Month?” Great. The whole rest of the service was spent trying to put that thought off until a more acceptable time.

Fail.

I mentioned it to Lloyd after church and he thought it was funny enough that we stopped by the cake decorating aisle at Wal*Mart and looked at fondant. I’m a failure with fondant, so I hemmed and hawed and decided to wait.

A week later I went to Lincoln and bought some stuff, including something made just for me – edible construction paper!

A week after that, I actually made some cake. I lined the bottom of the pan with a parchment circle and even ‘crumb-coated’ them so when I put on the final frosting it wouldn’t make a big mess. Thanks, YouTube, for your educational services.

Ummmm…. then the cakes sat in the freezer – unwrapped – for days until I remembered to wrap them. (This project was slow going.) I was pretty sure they were dried out and inedible, but since I knew from the get-go that these were just prototypes, I sallied forth.

I frosted them, then cut the sugar sheet out. A paper cutter worked just dandy, and scissors cut out the notch.

I wound up frosting two cakes, but only making one into a clerical collar, and that was two weeks ago. We have three pastors at church, so if I want to do this for real, going by my timetable I need to start next June so they’ll be ready by next October.

Ahhhh….. Lauren’s world – where crazy ideas go to die. What am I going to do with two dried-up frozen cakes? Maybe cake pops….

So, if you were waiting to see the final product before turning your blog website into a book, I would say that it’s easy enough, and turns out okay too. It’s not perfect. The automatic software isn’t the best at laying out pages, so there are some pages that are nearly empty, but there are not many of those. Things that I would do differently…

• Take more time on the dust jacket. I should have put a title on the cover as well as the spine.
• Better proof reading. I have two spelling mistakes on the inside front cover of the dust jacket. The only thing that everyone is sure to read.
• The Sommerer Family Website has a fair number of posts about how to use the website. I can’t imagine that those are going to be interesting in book form.

Now I have to decide whether to mail it to him or keep it until the family reunion that starts on the 1st of July. Oh, and you’re all invited to attend.

Um, usually.

After a good hour of working at a desk, I looked up at the window.

That crummy old curtain was made from two pieces of cloth quickly stapled together when he first moved into that room. SOMEone was in a big hurry to cover the window and couldn’t be bothered to sew it. Hmmmm…. whoever could be so lazy?

Well, years later I thought I should fix it. With dry-erase marker!

There was some prototyping. I thought a checkerboard pattern would be cool, but that was tedious. I also thought other colors would show, but black was really the only workable option.

Nope. Swirls. Swirls were definitely the way to go.

Swirl. Swirl. Swirl. It just might be my favorite word.

I was hooked. Our footboard is practically screaming for a homemade version of this! I ‘built’ it several times mentally, and on Saturday I was ready to make it for real.

I went down to the basement and started to look for the pieces of wood needed to make this contraption: two narrow strips 20 inches long and a piece of thin plywood approximately 20 inches by 20 inches. I’d need to fashion a hook of some sort, and I’d need to get out the miter saw….

and look for some screws that were all the same size…..

I’d probably need sandpaper, too…..

and, um…..

I forgot to put on shoes and my feet were getting chilly……

Forget it. I grabbed a box instead.

Now, this was the point where I called Lloyd upstairs and told him what I was doing because I wanted some advice. He surprised me by not rolling his eyes and calling me crazy, but actually coming up with some ideas for a future, more-permanent installation. I told him to slow down – this was just a prototype. We decided on a ‘tunnel’ for a small fan instead of just a big hole for a bigger fan.

A little fan goes just under the tunnel. I made some channels inside to help direct the air.

The sheet goes over it, but here’s what it looks like from the bed side:

It’s a good thing it was so hot on Saturday because I tested it out for a bit. The air output is meager at best. I liked having air blow on my feet, but I’m pretty sure the BedFan probably has a better breeze.

Lloyd insists that his design will be better, but I’ve already told him, “I make prototypes once. On to the next thing!”

Warning: Those are not pickles. They are marinated squash, or ‘pumpkin melon’ as it translates, and they are gross.

We got home and I set to work. I happened to have the licorice tin, and once the lid was removed, I boiled some noodles and assembly began.

I would like the record to show that while I was goofing around making this ridiculous thing, it was actually time to make a real dinner and I forgot all about feeding us. Lloyd had a sandwich, and I ate the rest of the noodles (since I only needed one but boiled several) with Italian dressing (all praise its delicious name).

Assemble, assemble. Bake, bake (for longer than you’d think).

It was so cute! But you know – that first piece is always so difficult to get out of the pan….

I know it’s silly, but I’m glad I did it.

This is not new to Lloyd, however. Many, many years ago he complained that his nose would get cold when he typed on his computer, so I knit him a nose warmer.

“Lauren, I didn’t know you could knit,” I hear you ask. Well, the answer is, “Yes! I can knit!” I can knit nose warmers, and that is all. I know one kind of stitch, and I can make a very small something with that one stitch, and then I don’t know how to finish it and make it not fall apart. It was very useful for Barbie scarves as a child, though they unraveled quickly. (Once in college I finger-knit a scarf that went all the way around our tour bus. The bus thanked me, but I think it was just being polite.)

Oh. Back to the nose thing. Lloyd was cold last night and when I brought him the nose warmer he said, “I can’t believe you haven’t posted about this yet.”

You can see this nose warmer in a starring role in our video!

I’ve had a scrap of it for a few years, and every so often I cut off a little to use for a tiny present or something, but this little bit is all that’s left. (If you ever find anymore, snatch it up and I’ll pay you double for.)

Now, a different situation: Ever since the bat bug episode, our bed has floated in the middle of the room in a sea of paranoia, and I can’t use my wall lamp. Instead, I’ve been using a bare bulb that has a switch on the cord so I can turn it off from bed when I’m done reading. I like this lazy arrangement, but Lloyd has repeatedly pointed out how horrible it looks. Ok, ok. How’s this?

Now we can all be happy. For now.

I immediately thought: I gotta make that.

The cast of characters: A craft stick, and old Advent wreath candle from last year (I write the words on them for the kids), a jar, and some old good-smelling wax to throw in.

I set a pot of water t’boilin’, and broke up the candles into the jar. It was a woefully small amount of wax, so the Joy candle and a few tealights had to go in, too.

Boil boil boil, melt melt melt.

Narrowly avoiding some nasty burns, I took out the jar and inserted half of a craft stick (pre-dipped in wax to be more wick-like). Several things went wrong here, but let’s just say I went through a couple of craft sticks and leave it at that, shall we? I’d like to point out that I didn’t completely melt the candles, and that was cool because they held up my wick.

Next I went to the computer to look up how to do this.

Apparently you’re supposed to use a hardwood wick like ash or walnut – pffft.
You’re also supposed to let the candle cool for 24 hours before you light it. Double pfffft.
I don’t have that kinda time.

Finally I lit it, but realized that the wax had shrunk and now the wick was too tall. The how-to website said you could buy a wick trimmer. I assume they meant wire clippers, which is what I have.

The verdict? Well, if you turn the t.v. off and are very, very quiet – yes, you can hear a little crackling. Also, the occasional tiny spark flies off of it, which adds an element of danger to an otherwise boring candle burning, so there’s that.

All in all, it was an experiment involving fire, so I’m happy.

I’ve been wanting to buy a used George Foreman-type grill just to try it out, but that seems like such a lot of work: Buy it, use it, take it back to same thrift store. I started to think….. couldn’t something else work in a similar fashion?

Sure! Two plates that get hot and cook stuff – this will be swell! I cut the steak in half so it would fit. This, I believe, was the first of several mistakes.

The second mistake was putting the half-steaks in the waffle iron, closing the lid, then having no idea how long to leave them in there. Googling ‘waffle iron steak’ did not help at all. I set a timer for two minutes after they had been in there a while. Oops.

Do you know what is vaguely disturbing? The smell of steak combined with chocolate waffles. I think there is some batter stuck in that thing.

Third mistake? Eating it. It was super-tough, but edible. Well, mostly edible. I’m leaving half of it out for the stray cat that’s been hanging around the past couple of days. (It won’t let me near it, and it probably still won’t after this.)

Lloyd’s was cooked in a more traditional fashion, but he said it was still kinda chewy because apparently I’m Incredibly Cheap And We Don’t Buy Good Steaks.

Hmmph.

This year, though, I’m back at it. I never liked how the old bars turned out, and really wanted to make something more cookie-shaped. I had an idea (Finally! Time for daydreaming again!) that perhaps these filled cookies could be made using a ravioli mold.

Guess what Bed, Bath and Beyond doesn’t have? A ravioli mold. Garrr! Back to using multi-taskers instead of a uni-tasker! A rolling pin and pizza cutter would have to do.

So, in the interest of documentation: Chop up some dried apricots.

Cook them on the stove with some liquid (I used apple juice because it was handy) until they are reconstituted. Then blenderize with the stick blender and realize that you didn’t have to be so nit-picky about how finely chopped they were.

Oh, yeah, you should have mixed up a batch of oatmeal cookie dough and put in in the fridge to chill. Throw in some extra oats for Quaker-like goodness.

Now here’s where I considered naming these ‘Waste Of Parchment Paper’ cookies. Looking back, this could have been done differently, but it is what it is. Rip off a ginormous strip of paper and put some dough near the middle. I scooped out the dough with an ice cream scoop, but only so I could use the same amount for both layers.

Fold the parchment over the dough and start to roll it out. Then put a slightly dampened towel under the parchment so it doesn’t slide all over as you roll it out. This will cut down on the cursing.

Put this batch aside and do that whole process again for the other layer, using even more parchment paper. *sigh* You’re killing the earth with your baking, Lauren.

Now, grab the cooled apricot goo and parcel it out on the bottom layer. I used about…. 1/2 teaspoon for each cookie? I don’t know. This is where I told Lloyd, “If I ever wrote a cookbook it would be titled I don’t know….. some?”

Ok, now good luck with this next part. Flip the second layer of dough on top and smush it down around the goo, like you’re making ravioli – which I’ve never done before.

Here’s where I’d like to point out a mistake. I tried to preserve the rounded-ness of the goo while pressing the dough together, but it actually would have made the finished product turn out better if I would have mashed it down a little flatter before sealing. You’ll see at the end. This is when I told Lloyd, “I am never making these for you again. This is too much stupid work.” He sighed and said, “I know.”

Good grief! This post is going on forever! Let’s cut to the chase: After sealing, use a pizza cutter to cut them apart, then put them in some airtight containers and freeze them. I tried to redeem my wastefulness by separating them with some of that parchment paper.

When you need cookies, bake at 350 for…. 12 minutes? Maybe it was 14. I forget. Let them thaw a little before you bake them because that frozen goo is going to mess up the center of that cookie. See? They’re a little less brown in the middle. Bleh.

Dang. I really should have flattened them first.

If all goes according to plan, I can bake 5 of them on Sunday evenings and have a guilt-free week. At least for the next 28 school days, and after that I’m buying granola bars.

The stool that I sit on every second that I’m home when I use the computer has thoroughly scratched up the floor underneath it. The floors around here are all scratched up anyway, but this was getting ridiculous. I’ve tried those stick-on chair pads, but they keep falling off. Long ago we tried the nail-on kind, and guess what happens when one of those falls off? You have a nailhead that sticks out of the chair leg and really scratches your floor.

Back to the stealing. I saw these chair socks and thought they were the cutest thing ever. While I don’t want to shell out the money for those, I’m not above spending a few bucks for for some cheap-o baby socks.

They’re working out splendidly, though I have to pull them up every so often – just like my regular socks.

It’s construction should be exceedingly simple: a regular pie, but with some fantastically complementary second flavor stashed under a secret bottom crust, like so:

The problems were insurmountable, though. I either didn’t have time to goof around with it, or had the time but was too tired to try. This weekend, though, I had some time and was conscious. The problem – no pie stuff. I decided to make do and try a test run – a peach pie (made with canned peaches) with a brown sugar and cinnamon pop-tart-style bottom. It didn’t matter what it would taste like, since I wasn’t going to eat it. Peach pie = yuck. This was purely for science.

So, parts assembled: Pie crust made – check. Canned peaches turned into semblance of filling – check. Brown sugar & cinnamon mixed – check. Sandwiched in bottom layer – check.

This test was made in a cereal bowl because you only get two peaches in one can, and that won’t fill a pie pan. The crust was ugly and made in typical fold-over fashion.

Bake bake bake. Cool cool cool. Slice slice.

GROSS!

It’s a good thing I didn’t have my heart set on eating this, because you know what I had? A peach pie with a layer of raw dough in the middle. Blechh! I almost barfed just looking at it.

So, if I ever give this a second go – or if you want to give this a go and just send me a picture so I can pretend I did it – this would have to involve some sort of ‘blind-baking’ of the crust (to keep all layers crispy) and then filling it with some no-bake style pie. I’m thinking a Nutella pop-tart with a French Silk filling sounds good, but I’m sure not going to get around to doing it.

That’s right – I said bunions. Stupid knobbly feet that prevent me from wearing cute shoes. Stupid nerves getting pinched.

As long as I’m whining about shoes, lets complain about socks as well. I bought a pair of ‘no show’ socks, and honestly – they show all over the place. I’m not overly fond of wearing shoes without socks, so tomorrow I’m trying a new invention: Homemade insoles/liners that sit (and stay) inside the shoe like a no-show sock, made from a piece of 47-cent felt. They’re crazy long so they go around the back of my heels and over the toes a little. Hopefully walking around won’t make them bunch up into a ball in the middle.

If this works out, I’ll go global with it and share my millions with you – my three loyal readers.

Let me tell you of a Friday morning experiment. Because I no longer have unique ideas of my own, I am reduced to copying others. Megan at notmartha.org (as I’ve said before) is living the life I’m meant to live: she’s younger, more creative, travels the world, and takes much, much better photos.

Megan made chocolate surprise eggs by melting chocolate and pouring it into clean, hollowed, dyed eggshells. I wanted to take a stab at it, but in my typical rushed, non-direction-following, lots-of-room-for-expected-error way.

The beginning went well. Eggs drained, boiled, and plopped into dye.

I was having fun with the egg-drying photos. I took one from below for an ‘art-shot’ and realized with horror that I have never, ever looked at the bottom of my upper cabinets. Note to murderers: When cleaning up the crime scene, get the underside of the cupboards.

This one is taken after a quick swipe with a washcloth.

I came back to the eggs after running some errands, and here’s where the breakdown occurred. I’m too impatient, and let’s just say – if you want to temper chocolate, you should actually follow the directions. Not me – rush, rush! Melt! Melt! Throw in some chocolate chips – it’ll be fine.

I got to the fun part of loading the eggs. I had in mind to make giant ‘Reece’s peanut-butter cup’ eggs -thick dark chocolate shell, peanut butter candy inside, mmmmm.

However, after waiting around 45 minutes the chocolate still hadn’t set up, so I gave it up for a loss. Not a sad loss, though – I haven’t messed around on a kitchen project in ages, and it felt good. I tossed the eggs in the trash, poured the rest of the chocolate on the peanut butter candy, and we left for Omaha.

Coming back today, I noticed the chocolate on the candy was firm.

Hmmmmmm….. I dug in the trash.

Crack. Crack. Peel. Peel.

Relax, I didn’t eat it, but I did sigh heavily. As it turns out, it had hardened, but didn’t really have the *snap* of good chocolate.

Maybe next Easter I’ll do it right.

*snickner* Who’s kiddin’ who?

I’ve been to Scheel’s sporting supply and have seen these cool roll-up pillows filled with scrap foam that roll up into a little bag/pocket. “I could make that,” I thought.

Ummm, not really. Yes, I had foam. Yes, I had fabric. (Remember those napkins that I made? Turns out the fabric is slightly less absorbent than plastic wrap.) Chop, chop, sew sew. Re-chop. Sew. Dang. I started with foam pieces about as big as marshmallows, but they were too lumpy. I cut them into mini-marshmallow sizes, but didn’t have enough to fill it really full. I could have cut more, but I was already bored with it. The five-minute project turned into a twenty-minute project, and I was done by minute eighteen.

Bonus: When I rolled it into the handy pocket (that goes the wrong way), Lloyd said, “Oh. I see that it’s the same size either way.”

Whatever. I’m set for a nap at any moment.

Go!