National Grilled Cheese Day!

Made a great Red Pepper-Corn-Tomato Soup to go with our grilled cheese! Check out the recipe here:

www.dinner-belles.blogspot.com

Spring... Will it ever be here?

Whether spring is here or not (snow/rain showers we got this week are not helping) I'm getting ready to plant a garden. I have been on a waiting list to get a garden plot in one of the city's P-Patches for a little under a year now and recently got a notice that I have a plot in the Picardo P-Patch! I'm very excited to have a plot in Picardo because I have a friend who is an expert gardener who also has a plot there and I intend to soak up as much green thumb wisdom as she can offer!

I've already started sowing seeds (geez I sound so gardener-esque) and am happy to report that a week later I see little green sprouts popping up! So far so good! My Pop-pop (my mom's dad) was an expert gardener especially when it comes to roses, so I'm going to channel him while I'm gardening.

To prove how green I am (and I mean new, not environmentally conscience, although I'm trying to be that too), when I opened the seed packets and began to put them in the dirt I couldn't believe how tiny they were. I called my expert gardening friend, Sara, and said, "are you sure I'm only supposed to put one of these in each container?" I couldn't believe I would get a whole head of lettuce out of that tiny seed!

Here's to more sun and a successful gardening season!

Stratego

A couple weeks ago Andrew had a few days off from school and spent his days with William and me. William was over the moon excited to have his 'best friend' back, in fact the first day we never left the house, they played and played and played all day long. (Only taking breaks for lunch and to go get Natalie at school.) The second day, after we dropped Natalie off at school, we went by my house to play with the army guys Ben and I have recently acquired. Ben requested a few months ago that we drop by a Toys R Us and pick up a cheap bucket of army guys, assuring me they would be a bit hit with William. Ben recounted numerous childhood memories of setting up scenes all around his parents house and spending hours playing with the troops. (Funny I'm the only daughter in my family NOT married to an 'army guy' now...)

The troops are a big hit with William, I occasionally find a battle scene on one of our bookshelves or in a corner long after we thought we cleaned everything up. William has even made up a game including dice. Here are the rules:

• Roll a 1 = You take out 1 of your opponents guys
• Roll a 2 = You take out 2 of your opponents guys
• Roll a 3 = You take out 3 of your opponents guys
• Roll a 4 = You take out 4 of your opponents guys
• Roll a 5 = You take out one of their larger weapons (a tank, helicopter, jet, cannon etc.)
• Roll a 6 = You die, your weapon has back fired

After the boys played army guys for a while I brought out one of my favorite battle games. Stratego. I played many many many a game of Stratego with the first boy I nannied, Sam, 10-ish years ago. Sam and I would get very competitive playing Stratego, I can remember being legitimately upset if I lost too many games in a row. I first discovered my passion for winning board games while playing a round with Sam. Ha!

Stratego is a lot like battle ship, each player gets 40 pieces representing an individual officer/soldier in an army, along with bombs to take out ones opponent and one flag that you need to protect the entire game. When you choose to 'attack' your opponent your officer/soldier needs to be a higher rank than the one you are attacking in order to 'win' the battle. Who ever 'captures' or finds his opponents flag first wins the game.

After I explained the directions to the boys I told them to set up their pieces on the board, it was very interesting to me to see their strategies. William, probably mostly due to his age, only retained the part that he needed to protect his flag so he surrounded it with bombs and then just put his guys out in random order all over the board. Andrew apparently goes big or goes home. He placed all his high ranking guys at the very front of the board intending to wipe out all of William's guys from the very start. At the very beginning of the game Andrew's strategy seemed to be working and William was getting very discouraged, his entire battalion was nearly wiped out. Then when Andrew honed in on the clustered of bombs that was protecting William's flag all his top ranking guys got blown away. Allowing William to easily 'walk' over to the other side and capture Andrew's flag because Andrew only had Scouts (the lowest ranking soldier in the game) left to defend his flag. William ended up walking away with the win, but Andrew and I were able to spend a few minutes after the game talking strategy for the next time we play!

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday...

If you haven't heard Rebecca Black's Friday then you're lucky.

Black's song is like a bad prank because it can get stuck in your head on constant repeat. With some songs that's not a bad thing but when the song's lyrics are as flat as:

7am, waking up in the morning

Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs

Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal

Seein’ everything, the time is goin’

and

Kickin’ in the front seat

Sittin’ in the back seat

Gotta make my mind up

Which seat can I take?

it can get pretty irritating singing it over and over again... especially because it's unintentional. Rebecca Black's song didn't start out on the radio it was originally only on YouTube but after gaining more than 77,000,000 hits it's now available to buy on iTunes. The ironic thing is its popularity isn't because it's a good song it's because it's bad.

Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Fallon explained that Stephen Colbert had lost a bet and would now perform the infamous song: Friday. Watch the video for explanation of the bet and for an epic performance of the worst song of 2011... so far...

American Idol Look Alikes

I said I wasn't going to watch it... but it has sucked me in. American Idol is back with two new judges and secretly I'm kind of liking it. It probably helps that this year they have the best talent ever! Don't that promote that every year? There are a few people I'm rooting for, I don't necessarily know how they'll break out into the real music industry; but for what AI is (a singing competition) I find myself excited over a few.

Last year we made a Top 24 Look Alike list (while staying up way too late with friends), I'm a little late for the Top 24 but as of right now I can do a Top 12. Thanks in advance for putting up with my silliness.

 Lauren got the look alike conversation going when Ben said, "she looks like DJ Tanner!"

 No wonder I love Stefano, he reminds me of my favorite Friend Joey Tribbiani.

 Jacob's channelling something, we think it's 80's icon Grace Jones.

 It wouldn't be an AI look alike list without a Muppet. Our Muppet last year took home the prize... will Casey? Wocka Wocka Wocka

 I really like you Paul - I hope you make better choices than our friend Jesse Pinkman. 

 Does Naima really look like Erykah Badu or just wish she was her?

 Look out Tina... we think Thia Megia could replace you and the WHOLE cast of Glee.

(Ask me what I really think of Glee Season 2.)

 For Pia I just google Kardashian... doesn't she look like she could fit right in?

 Haley looks like she's going back to Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion.

 Scotty in the Middle.

We didn't haven't to look too far for Karen's look alike, sitting right at the judges table Ms. Lopez.

James, your ears remind us of Ryan Hurst from Remember the Titans.

Did we get them right? Tell us your American Idol Look Alikes!

Feeling Lucky?

Yesterday William and I made some "Lucky Leprechaun" rainbow cupcakes. William has been playing a virtual baking game on his parents iPhone lately so he talks a lot about baking. I discovered this colorful recipe online and made it simple enough for a 4 year old to read. I told him he was the chef, and his was in charge so he needed to put me to work. He loved ordering me around the kitchen! He would 'read' how many eggs we needed, how much water and oil. Then we mixed the batter and had to pour it in six small bowls. Next he 'read' how many drops of food coloring we needed to make all six colors. Not only did we end up having a lesson on following instructions we also ended up talking about the color wheel. He couldn't BELIEVE that when you mixed red and blue you got purple. That was "AWESOME!"

 Proud Chef William

 After we layered all six colors in the muffin pan.

They turned out so big (as I was filling the pan with all six layers I added too much batter, making the cupcakes rise to gigantic levels) we decided a half a cupcake would be plenty. The cool thing about eating a half was when you cut into it you can see the layers that much more vividly.

William thinking, I could go for another half!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'll post the recipe on Dinner-Belles later tonight!