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Penn State.

Scaredy Cat

What would 2P4C be without the cats?  It'd be 2 People and a Dream.  And we'd have no one to blame the cat food on the kitchen floor on, or the puke that seems to appear daily on the stairs, or the cat hair that seems to get on all of our clothes even though they're freshly washed and dried.  No excuses as to why entropy seems to take over our house.  Today we'd like to put the spotlight on one pretty little thing:

Camille is our oldest kitty, and only girl.  I know, we sound like she is one of our kids.  We probably treat her that way, except we leave the cats at home by themselves while we're at work.  Neglectful.   

Camille came into my life before I met Randy, back in 2000 when I was living in Harrisburg.  I was working in TV, and our noon show producer brought her to work for me on Thanksgiving Day.  We had to pass her around during the newscast, but she behaved pretty well.  She curled up on the director's lap and tooted on him.  She was so stinky, her nickname became "Poo".  I brought her home to my parents' for Thanksgiving dinner.  They were not too excited about Camille at first, but she was this tiny kitten with huge ears and paws and she was just too cute.  She did grow into those ears and paws; she is a large cat.  Runt of the litter, my butt.

Camille was my roommate in my little studio apartment.  It was nice because she didn't take up much room and never borrowed my clothes without asking.  She just trashed the apartment if I came home too late and teethed on every book I owned.

I used to have to work the morning and noon show, so I had to be at work by 4am.  Camille would wake me up in the middle of the night by biting my toes while I slept.  She also would walk around the apartment on her hind legs, like a person.  Fortunately she grew out of that disturbing-at-2am behavior.

Camille and I moved in with Randy back in 2004, and Randy and I thought she needed a playmate.  So we got her Keller.  More on him another time, this is the Camille show, but we'll explain someday why this was the catalyst for having four cats.  

 

She doesn't look like Public Enemy #1, does she?  Unfortunately she has earned that reputation at the vet's office.  There is a warning and skull and cross bones on all of her charts.   

Camille has her own patient file at CVS.  You think I'm kidding.  We have to give her valium, real people valium, to take her to the vet.  Imagine my surprise when I took her vet script to the CVS and they asked me for Camille's last name and if she had any allergies.  

She's just your typical lay-in-the-sun, likes-to-snuggle, sleeps-next-to-my-head kind of kitty, until she gets hungry.  Then she shreds paper until we get up to feed her.  

Camille has an overactive thyroid, which requires trips to the vet every few months to make sure her thyroid levels are in the normal range.  So on Monday, I gave her a whole valium (the smallest amount they come in) two hours before her appointment, according to her doc's recommendation.  Camille was acting like she was drunk, stumbling around, and was really snuggly.  Is it wrong to enjoy those moments and take advantage of her incapacity to clip her toenails?  So Randy and I got her in the crate pretty easily and drove her five seconds down the road to the vet.  When she was called into the examination room, my sleeping little monkey had become a hissing banshee.

No, I don't have a picture of that.

I'm not sure how many people it took to take her blood this time, but I know in the past there has been four of us to hold down a sedated 13 lb cat.  So the vet tech takes her back, recruits some help, and they take the blood.  She is pound for pound the worst animal ever at the vet.  From now on when we make an appointment, we have to say it's for Camille and they will make sure her vet is available and will take special precautions.  No joke.

Anyone else out there have any sweet animals that turn into full blown tasmanian devils when you take them to the vet?  Any Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes?  I sure hope we're not the only ones!

In order to clean up...

Randy:

... you sometimes have to make a mess.

So, I've been thinking all day about this post. Mostly, I've been thinking about that phrase. In order to clean up, you sometimes have to make a mess. There is a difference between a mess ("the cleaning up" mess) and a mess ("the reason we started this blog" mess).

Last week, Jodi and I were talking about this past weekend's projects. And I have to hand it to Jodi, she was right. She offered a few ideas for projects this weekend, and I thought that we could totally accomplish more.  She made me choose one, and I got to give the recommendation on where to start. We started in the guest bedroom closet. WHAT?! The guest bedroom closet? What a cop-out! And on most occasions, I'd agree with you. What you don't understand, because you're not here, is that our guest bedroom closet was the miscellaneous kitchen drawer of our house.

After 6 straight episodes of Glee, Jodi and I went into the guest room and looked at the closet. This is where we keep broken suitcases, spare pillows in case the entire 6th Battalion shows up, and boxes we haven't looked at since moving in.

We emptied the closet into the guest room. Step 1 was complete. And we did some cute things that will question my manhood like putting curtains on the guest bed so it looks like a honeymoon suite. Mostly, we just dumped stuff on the bed and floor.

Jodi:  Actually it was Randy's idea to hang the curtains this way.  We had these Ikea alvine spets curtains in the closet and we weren't really sure what to do with them.  It's kind of fun for the time being, but I can already see it is getting old - fast.  It's just something we tried and will probably change very soon.  Not everything works all the time.

Randy:  So what's the moral of this story?

I have no idea.

We are going to put a lot of Jodi's crafts stuff in the closet.  We are donating a lot of good stuff to charities. We are throwing out a lot of stuff that are just broken.  But we actually put things back into the closet that might actually belong in the closet.

Jodi:  We also found a ton of stuff from our wedding, which was fun to go through.  Remember here where we said my friend Megan was texting me pictures of engagement rings she liked?  Megan and Matt got engaged in Aruba!  So I can pass along some of the wedding planning stuff and recycle the old wedding magazines from 2006.

It doesn't look like House Beautiful, but it's a lot more organized.

Randy:  So what's the moral of this story?

We made more of a mess, but we actually cleaned stuff, and I did find my orange t-shirt.  I've been looking for this orange shirt for almost 6 years... which would make sense considering we didn't open the box with my orange shirt since we moved in.  What's special about this shirt?  Remember the bulletin board that used to be where the curtain and chandelier in the bathroom is now?

On the bulletin board among the vintage Penn State buttons and concert wrist bands, there used to be a picture of Jodi and I with our friends at their engagement party. For almost 6 years, I stared at myself in my favorite shirt while I was using the bathroom. For almost 6 years, I tinkled and asked myself, "where is my orange shirt?" I lost my train of thought. I don't know where I was going with all that. But I have my orange shirt! Hooray!

We also found Jodi's Palm Pilot from circa 2003.  We're not sure what to do with it.  Anyone want it?  It's free!

Did we finish the guest room? Not a chance, but we did finish watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7.  Now, our cats can't sleep on the guest bed.

Jodi:  Or so Randy thinks.

We'll fix that next.

Goodnight.

Happy Birthday, Amy

Jodi:  My friend, Amy, is an interior designer.  Not by job, but by education.  And she's an amazing one at that.  Amy and my friend, Crystal, came to visit me while Randy was in Germany on a business trip last March and we rearranged the furniture in the living room.  They also helped me pick out the rug at Bed, Bath and Beyond.  So Amy and Crystal are why the living room looks as good as it does.

It's not their fault that my bamboo fern is dying or that I put up casing around the windows and never primed/painted them.  We also need to paint the walls, hang some curtains and put up some art.  But you can see that it looks a whole lot better than a bunch of furniture against the walls in here.  It's a lot more homey and conversational.  I just don't have it in my brain to arrange furniture the way they do.

If you've ever been to Amy's house, Amy loves rich shades of brown and lots of texture.  Someday I'll have to crash her house or something because it is amazing what you can do with brown.  It's warm, comfortable and luxurious, but also fun and unexpected.  Amy also loves chocolate and peanut butter, so when her birthday came around (a few days before my dad's), I made her this chocolate cakes with peanut butter mousse icing.  I used crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy to add texture and make it unexpected.  Not as awesome as Amy's house, but yummy.  I melted some chocolate for the decorations.

 Anyone else celebrating a birthday?  Make any awesome cakes?  Anyone design a cake based on someone's house?

Hanukkah

So Randy and I have a new project:  The wall of things that make us happy.  Otherwise known as art on the walls going up the stairs.  Hopefully we'll get to working on it soon, but I'd like to put up stuff like this:

Or whatever we decide on, and I'm sure it will change.  It all started from our Hanukkah gifts to each other.  I painted 8 wooden signs and canvases for Randy with his favorite and motivational quotes, and he got me....

Voodoo dolls!  I know what you're going to say, aren't we trying to get rid of objects of the occult in our home?  Why, yes we are!  But these are positive voodoo dolls.  Like this little Freddy Krueger look-alike - he's for reducing stress.

This little hula girl helps you keep sunshine in your life and protects you from people who are trying to ruin your day.

You can probably read what this one does.

Apparently, Randy thinks I am late for everything.  Oh, he says he doesn't think I'm late for everything, he knows I'm late for everything.

So you're thinking, "How does this apply to the wall of happy things?"  And I will tell you, they don't  ...yet!  Since there are 8 of them and we don't want them spread all over the greater Philadelphia area, we're going to put them in some sort of display or shadow box.  Because they're cute.  And they're probably about as evil as Dr. Doofenschmirtz.  CURSE YOU, PERRY THE PLATYPUS!

Now on to our wall of things that make us happy.

We have.

Hard to do sometimes, and it's good to have a reminder:

Randy's catch phrase.  He pulls it out at the most interesting times.

We are Philadelphians after all.

This one is still a work in progress.

So overall it was a good Hanukkah and it gave us some good ideas for making the house more like us.  Touchdown!  

Actually, we were having a really hard time getting all of our candles to light on the last night of Hanukkah.  Kind of ironic, huh?  Everytime Randy would light one, another one would go out.  Maybe we would have done better with oil.  

A Tale of Two Cakes

Jodi:  Yesterday was my dad's birthday.  When he was little, my grandmother would make him a maraschino cherry cake each year for his birthday.  I used to make it for him with my mom when I was little.  It was just a white cake mix with maraschino cherry juice instead of the liquids called for in the cake mix.  Then Mom would ice it with store-bought vanilla icing and decorate it with cherries and walnuts.  This is the cake I always knew and didn't love, but it was Dad's favorite and we only made it once a year.

It has since become the bane of my existence.

The last time Mom and I made the cake together, it looked like this:

See all the toothpicks sticking out?  The cake mix cake was so moist, the cake couldn't hold itself together and the top literally split into three pieces.  Mom and I tried in vain to keep it together with icing and cocktail picks.

Randy: Let me be honest... it is very nice of Jodi to make this cake, but the cake is gross. Why can't Jodi's dad just like what I like?

Jodi:  When I started taking the Wilton classes for cake decorating back in 2009, I decided I was going to take on the Cherry Cake for Dad's birthday, but do it my way.  Based on the year before, I was going to make it from scratch so the cake wouldn't fall apart.  I made a vanilla cake and covered it with buttercream flavored with cherry juice.  It turned out like this:

Can you see the bumpy texture to the icing?  The cherry juice didn't mix in nicely with the butter.  Dad wanted to know why it was mottled, and complained that it wasn't the right cake.

I took a year off, and then last year, I went back to the basics and did the box mix (ugh) and store bought vanilla icing (double ugh).  I went with the Smurf motif since my brother affectionately refers to my dad as "Smurf" (he's 6'7").

Besides getting my hand in the icing when filling in the apples with red sugar, I forgot one major thing.  Can you see what it is?

Dad's beard!  You know, the one he has had since before I was born.

Oops.

And the cake was gross.  Way too sweet, and I hated the store icing.  So I'm starting to see why Mom and Grandma were both happy to pass along the birthday-cake-making duties, and I'm complaining to Grandma about this cake and she says, "There's a from-scratch recipe."  She adapted it to a box mix when Dad was a kid!  The sky opened up and angels started singing.  I swear.

Fast forward to Valentine's Day, Grandma's card arrives and inside is the recipe for the cake.  Hallelujah!

So Sunday night, I get the recipe out to try this cake.  I read the recipe.  1/2 cup spry.  Spry?  What the heck is Spry?  So I call Dad, trying to be all sly, sly about spry.  In the meantime, Randy googled it.  Guess what Spry is?

OK, so I mix up the batter and chop up the cherries and walnuts because they go IN the batter!

I even drain my cherries so they don't drip all over the cake (like in past years).

I make the icing and smooth it on the cake and I get this piece of loveliness.

Oops.

The icing called for more Spry and butter, so it was slippery and dried too fast, so my icing slipped and then got crunchy.  I tried to push the top layer back on top of the bottom and I got my fingers stuck in the cake.  The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got.  So I had to apply a tourniquet.  Not one of my prouder moments.

Randy refused to eat it.  He thinks it's gross and tastes like Sucrets.

Randy: Ok, I didn't really refuse to eat it.  I went to the bathroom after dinner and when I came back, Jodi was kind enough to not give me a piece.  I would have eaten it as a courtesy to Jodi, but the cake is gross. And do you want to know what's worse?  They eat maraschino cherry ice cream to go with it.   Seriously, that's like fruit cake with fruit cake flavored ice cream.  I ate potato chips and was happy.
But do you want to know the worst part?!  So Jodi is making cake, right, and she is complaining and all. She cuts off this edge and says, "Here, try it."  So I tell her that it tastes like cough medicine and she gets all mad.  So I call her a "hypocrite" because she always wants me to be honest with her about her baking.  And I love her baking... except for this cake.  It's gross.  Don't let anyone tell you differently.

Jodi:  But Dad loved the cake.  It was actually pretty good.  VERY sweet, but yummy.  It would be a good Valentine's Day cake, which I believe it was originally meant to be.  Don't worry, I won't be making one for Randy this year.

Super!

Randy and I are incredibly lucky to have some really great friends, and our friends are incredibly lucky because they have cute kids.  Specifically cute kids who love super heroes.  So I was on Pinterest a while back, and I got an idea from here to make super hero capes for all the cute little boys in our lives who LOVE super heroes, for Christmas.  

Randy and I went to JoAnn fabric and Randy found costume satin in bright red and royal blue and declared them perfect for super hero capes.  So I picked up a couple of yards and the appropriate colors in felt to make Superman and Batman capes.

I printed out the Batman and Superman logos from the internet and made templates using an exacto knife on an upside-down Dunkin Donuts crate from Costco.  Yes, we're real high tech here.  Then I pinned it to the felt and cut it out.

Then I stitched them together on the sewing machine.  As you can see here, my sewing isn't that straight, but I didn't think the little boys would care too much.  

 Don't pay any attention to the papasan behind Randy's head, I had to hide it somewhere while the Christmas tree is in its spot.

Then I made capes in the appropriate sizes for a 5, a 3 and a 1 year old.  When I made the Superman cape for the 5 year old, I modeled the cape on myself to make sure it was long enough and it would velcro properly around his neck (not too tight!).  I just finished the edges and cut a semi-circle at the top and used bias tape to finish the curved edge.  If you try this at home, avoid ironing on too high a temperature!  I melted some of the Superman fabric by accident.

Then I tried it on and danced and jumped around to make sure it fluttered the way it should.  Otherwise, what's the point of a fun cape?  I think this was Randy's favorite part, watching me dance around wearing a cape designed for a little kid.

For the 1 year old, I couldn't model the cape myself, so I enlisted another willing volunteer who was the perfect size.No, I'm not a crazy cat person who likes to dress up her animals, but Camille was very helpful and didn't get too annoyed ...until I took too many pictures.  

Look how great the capes turned out!  They even gave them laser eyes!

Totally cute, right?  And the capes are machine washable and I made them floor length so as the kids grow, they can attach the capes to their shoulders using the velcro.  The felt kind of sticks to their shirts as long as they're wearing a plain old cotton T like above.  Otherwise they can just use regular tape to attach it to their shirts.