A culinary United Nations

There are about 15-20 men from Italy who work at the airport building a helicopter. They are known simply as "The Italians".

These men come in two month increments and take over the place. They take up all the parking spots, take a good chunk of the hangar, use the ONE toilet that is designated for the women, smoke with the doors open and overrun the galley. I hate the Italians.

Which brings me to my story du jour.

Yesterday I was slicing fruit for my famous fruit salsa in the galley for Meg's Memorial Day BBQ. It was around 11 a.m. and one of the Italians came in and started to prepare lunch. I shifted my stuff over to give him more room (no need to be rude, even though I hate every fiber of your being)and he said "Oh no-ah. I have-ah enouf room-ah." So I smiled and went back to my slicing.

A few minutes went by and he said "Oh, you use-ah apples in your fruit-ah salad, eh?" So I quickly explained to him what I was making and what I put in it. Then he shocked me and said "I a Simone" (pronounced See-mo-nay) and we started talking.

As we were talking, a few more of the guys joined us in the galley and Simone introduced me, and explained everyone rotates kitchen duty: one person cooks, another sets the table and someone else cleans up.

When I finished my salsa I gave a little taste test for the men in the room. As I was leaving they said "Tomorrow-ah, you eat-ah with us, yes?" To be polite, I said yes and figured they would forget.

They did not forget. At 12:10 this afternoon Simone pops his head into my office and informs me lunch is in 5 minutes. SWEEEEEEEETTT! So I finished up what I was doing and headed down the hall.

It turns out these guys eat pasta everyday for lunch. At 12:15 on the nose they all sit down to salad, some kind of pasta meal, bread and coffee together. Every. single. day. The table is REALLY set too. Every chair has a plate, fork, knife, cup and bottle of water placed in front of it. Scattered amoung the table are things like olive oil, parm cheese, salt and vinegar.

Our entree today was penne pasta with tomato sauce and crab meat. I don't normally eat shellfish (it makes me sick, and I just don't really like the flavor), but this was AWESOME!!!! I pigged out and really enjoyed my converstaion with all of them. When everyone was finished the plates were cleared and I was given and teeny tiny coffee cup of "Italian coffee" as I was told. Turns out "Italian coffee" is basically straight caffiene. About 10 minutes later I was bouncing off the office walls, and Monroe was cursing the Italians for giving me that much caffiene.

When I finished I thanked them all and they all said good bye. :) As I was walking out to my car at shift change I thought to myself "Well, I guess they aren't really taking up all the parking spots. There are a few down there, at the far end of the building." I am a changed woman.

What's the moral of the story? Don't judge a book by it's cover- because that book makes a mean pasta lunch.

Always and Forever,
ME

Pour la visage...

I love make up. I wear a lot of it. Everyday. Rarely will I leave the house with out a full face on.

Now that I've become a master at gotten the self-tanning under control, I have a whole new make up regiment.

This is what I wear during the winter:



Starting from the left we start with my bright pink blush (I need color in those "winter white" cheeks of mine), shimmer for the corner of my eyes and under my eyebrows, eyeshadow, foundation, conceler, two brushes, mascara, liquid liner, chapstick and lip gloss.

Now that it's summer, its a slimmer set of tools:

A lighter blush (to give me that "flushed look"), I use eyeshadow as a liner, conceler, brushes, mascara, lipstick and a lighter lip gloss.

and there you have it. All my secrets are out there.

Always and Forever,

ME

leftovers= masterpiece... part deux

Earlier in the week I created this amazing masterpiece....

it's ok. Go ahead, roll your eyes. It's a little dull.

That was my problem with it. I wanted a darker color on the canvases to add drama to it. My thought was to add a chocolate brown boarder or some chocolate brown squares. As much as I wanted to do that, I could justify buying a $4 can of paint to only use about 2% of it (I'm cheap, I know).

And then yesterday I had an epiphany. The background needs to be darker for the squares to really POP! Also, if I want this to act as "headboard" it needs to be a darker brown to match the furniture we have in the room. If the background was darker, that more paint I would need.. and BOOM, I've justified bying a sample can of paint.

I know, I know. I'm pretty amazing.

So today I meander to Lowes and, after a long discussion with the totally uninterested man who works at the paint counter, I picked Valspar's Mudslide as the background. The blue and green squares are the same as before, and then I added the Jekyll Club Cherokee Tan squares for a little depth:

Now, I love it. I think it's going to look so great.

Once all the furniture is in the a.p.t I'll post all pictures, I promise.

Always & Forever,

ME

Perhaps I should stick to "ivory"...

It has come to my attention that some people were not happy that I didn't blog about my self-tanning experiment. My apologies, I didn't realize people were actually reading this, hehe.

I am naturally pasty fair skinned. I have "good Irish skin" as I like to say. I've come to accept this fact, but every once in a while I get the pangs of jealousy when I see a person with naturally darker skin. I ache to not blind people while wearing shorts or skirts. I REFUSE to use tanning beds (my claustrobobia kicks in), so I turn to tanning from a bottle. I've used them all: Dove, Coppertone, Jergens, some no-name brand. You name it, I've tried it.

This time around I decided to use Neutrogena's MicroMist Tanning (shown above). My thought was with a mist, there is no way I could produce streaks like I always do with lotion tanners.

I was wrong. Way wrong.

Below is what I woke up to the next morning:

First off I wore a tank top, and didn't think to remove the straps. In my defense I did this at 12:30 am after just getting off a 12 hour day at work. Cut me some slack. You can also see that I missed most of the top of my shoulder and my right arm is kind of streaky.

 

My elbow on my right arm was really the pièce de résistance. I TOTALLY missed this huge chunk of skin, and no matter how much a I expoliate or spray on more tan, I still can't get that to go away. Looks like it's long sleeves for me for the next couple of days. I guess I'm going to have to be creative in this 85 degree weather!




































And finally, my right foot

is signifiacantly darker then my left foot.

...aaaand since I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm going to continue to apply this tanner. I WILL defeat the stripes.

Always and Forever,
ME

Summer lovin'...

The spray tanning was.... well it was not a success. So instead I'm posting my ode to summer that I wrote in April 2006.

I am itching for it to be summertime.

I want to go to the shore house.

I want to walk the 3 blocks to the beach.

I want to fry my Irish skin to a crisp.

I want to go swimming and loose my top in the water.

I want to sleep in a sandy bed and watch TV on a sandy couch.

I want to have dinner from the grill on paper plates and then walk up to Aunt Ollie's for ice cream.

I want to watch the sunset on the back porch while drinking margaritas with my family.

I want to stay up until 1 am and have my ass kicked in a cut throat game of Rummy.

I want to spend Friday night planning out the yardsale route with my mom, and then get up at the ball crack of down to execute our finely tuned plan.

I want to spend the day at Bay Village, wondering the shops and not buy a damned thing (well, maybe some fudge ;-)

Most of all, I want to visit my one true love, Old Barney. I miss him.

I can't wait.

leftovers= masterpiece

Well, I am offically moved OUT of the storage unit in Langhorne! I wouldn't say I am moved into the a.p.t. yet, because I have to wait till JEGs moves in at the end of the month. But my stuff is no longer sitting in a storage unit growing mold. Ew.

So in honor of my big move, I am making some art for the boudoir. Originally I wanted to create a headboard, but after a lot of thought I decided it was a lot of work and a lot of money that I just did not want to waste. JEGS and I will be purchasing new bedroom furnature in the (hopefully) near future. We are using his bed which has a very very low headboard, so in leu of a headboard I decided I wanted some art to hang over the bed to resemble a headboard.

Once upon a time when I lived with my friend JD, we decided to make art for our living room. I purchased three canvas and we went to town, ending up with this masterpiece you can kinda see in the background of this picture:


Yeah... not really going to work in the boudoir . Maybe in a bedroom, but not a boudoir. .

After painting the a.p.t we had some leftover paint so I went to work. I started by painting the whole canvas Valspar Jekyll Club Cherokee Tan that was leftover from our great room.

(Yes, I was totally watching Design on a Dime while working, hehe)

Then... I was stuck. I had three canvases that I was sure I wanted to do one big scene that stretched across all three. I was originally going to do circles, but the bedspread has squares on it and I didn't want to make it too busy....so squares it is! I used Valspars Lighthouse Shadows that is the color of the bedroom walls:

The top right hand corner was looking bare so I added another part of a square:

I wanted to add an accent color, just for a little punch of color, so I attacked my mom's library of left over paint. I added some more squares in Benjamin Moore's Georgian Green leftover from my dad's man-cave.

I really love it so far, but I feel like I might want to add just one more color. Maybe a darker brown to warm it up. We'll see.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, I'm trying a new self-tanner!!

Always & Forever,

ME

ice. custard. happiness.

First off, I would like to say... thank GOD it is Friday. This was the longest week ever. Ever. Why is it when you are excited for something, it takes forever to get here? Even though my week was packed with cheerleading, birthdays, general fabulousness (that takes up a lot of time), work and moving, this week crawled by. Ugh.

Anywho, I got the honor of working with my dear friend Zacariah, aka 'Puddin Pop', today! It's always fun to change shifts and work with new people. On our way out to a scene today I popped on my iPod and we rocked out to a couple songs like "Krazy" by Pitbull, "Hammer time" by MC Hammer, "Faith" by Limp Bizkit and "Mary Moon" by Crash Test Dummies. There was even dancing- or as much dancing as you can do sitting down and strapped in with a 5 point harness.

Zac is not originally from this area- he's from Denver. Although he's been living in the Philadelphia are for almost 3 years now, he still hasn't experiences ALL things Philly. Today I decided to introduce him to wooder ice.

"Wooder ice?" you ask. Oh yes. wooder ice.

Now I don't have a Philadelphia accent, but this is the only time I will pronounce water as wooder. Because, as an iconic peice of Philadelphia cuisine, it deserves to be pronounce wooder.

For those who don't know what wooder ice is, it's kinda like a Sno-Cone, but more slushy. They come in delicious flavors like mango, root beer, and strawberry margaritas et al. They also serve gelatis, which is wooder ice, a layer of soft serve ice cream , another layer of wooder ice and topped off with another dollop of ice cream. Yum.

So here is Zac enjoying his very first Rita's.



and in case anyone is wondering, I got him mango- the best flavor, of course.

Always and Forever,
ME

lovin' on my Momma

Ever have one of those days? The kind where your boss calls you and wakes you up 10 minutes after you were supposed to be at work??

Yeah, I'm having one of those days.

Let me quickly tell you about my nightly routine when I'm on the day shift. Depending on what day it is I plop my ass on the couch and watch my nightly TV show. At 10 pm I head to the kitchen to pack my breakfast and lunch for the next day. I take a small cup of milk, say my good nights and head up the 'ole wooden hill. Take my medicine, brush my teeth, wash my face, set out my clothes for the next day and set my alarm. Then I call JEGs and settle in for sleep. I'm like clockwork.

None of this happened last night.

I started off the night like usual- snuggled up on the couch with ice cream and a new episode of NCIS ( I love me some Tony Dinozzo). About half way through I started getting tired so I layed my head down and the next thing I knew, Mommacita was saying 'why don't you go to bed, Liz?'
Holy crap... when it become 9:05???

So I went upstairs with the intention of doing my normal routine and just making my breakfast and whatnot in the morning. But for some stupid reason I got in bed first.

.......

...and then my phone was ringing. I thought to myself "what the...??" and I saw on the caller ID was the office. And then I saw the time. Oh shit.

I soared out of bed throwing on the first items of clothing I could find, grab my toothbrush and jetted. As I was running down the stairs I realized I never packed anything for myself to eat. Double shit! Ok, I'll just throw something in a bag and deal with it later.

When I got in the kitchen I saw a note saying:
"Liz, I packed you some cereal and a small salad. I hope that is ok. Love Mom"

THIS WOMAN IS AN ANGEL!!!!!

So thank you Momma for taking care of your little girl- again. <3

And so it begins!!

So after, oh, 10 years or so on the internet, I've decided to try this whole "blogging" thing. My life has changed a lot in the past 6 months, so I thought it might be fun to jot everything down as I live through it and see how it effects me. I truely believe your experiences mold who you become- thus creating a "Lizzie in Progress". ;oD

Anyway, a few exciting things are coming up:



1.. My birthday is in about a month. I LOOOVE my birthday. It's a day where it's all about me, and I love being in the spotlight. AND JEGs gave me the go-ahead to dress up like Holly Golightly. Now I just have to figure out where I want to go... suggestions??



2.. JEGs and I are offically moving in together. Pretty impressive. We've been dating for about 8 years now, and have had a long distance relationship. We live about a hour or so apart (he outside West Chester and I in Lower Bucks County) so we've only gotten to see each other on the weekend. At first I really envied all my friends who got to spend everyday with their significant others (even if they weren't living together) but at about the 5 or 6 year mark, I just got used to the situation. The fact that I'll see JEGs on a Wednesday is bizarre to me no

So here's to a new life, and a new blog!

Always & Forever,
ME