Boo !

Well the cobwebs building up around here on this blog are certainly apropos for Halloween, don't you think? This has been a pretty pathetic year of blogging for me.. so sorry about that.

October has been another whirlwind of a month for me.. lots of things going on. Mostly good or at least productive things going on.. a few not so good things, but everyone is healthy, hanging in there and doing their best so that's a plus.

So here I am on Halloween night and have no trick-or-treating costumes or stories to share with you because Anna didn't dress up this year and Maria is away at school. I do know she dressed up as a flapper for a Halloween party tonight and she did text me a photo that she also posted on instagram, but it's not the same as seeing her in her costume in person and taking my own photo. Then to top it off, we got ZERO trick-or-treaters at our door today! So sad...

Despite the lack of child involvement, though, I do have a few fun and festive Halloween photos to share.

This is a sunset photo that I took from the Home Depot parking lot a few weeks ago.

This is that same photo all dressed up for Halloween! I edited it right on my iphone using a really fabulous photo editing app called Rhonna Designs. I was lucky and bought it while it was offered for free but I think it's 99 cents now. Still a bargain if you're into this sort of thing.

Home Depot Sunset

Home Depot Haunted Sunset

I may have eaten a piece or two of Halloween candy before Halloween..

From where I stand at the welcome mat to our home..

Always a favorite time of year for black cats.

A house in my neighborhood with spook-tacular Halloween decorations. Even better up close in person and even spookier at night with creepy-scary music and sound effects. Yikes.

Trick-or-treat! I'm ready for the monsters to come!

There's something in the attic!!! (From the spooky house in town after dark.. )

I hope you had a safe and happy Halloween!

Do you have kids who dress up? If so, what were they? 

... still can't believe October is over already and 2014 is only two months away! Now THAT'S frightening!

Birthday Gift Winner!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by with birthday wishes over the last several days!

Rafflecopter has randomly selected a winner for my Belated Birthday Giveaway and the winner is....

Sonia! 

Congratulations, Sonia!

I hope you enjoy the facial kit, tea, chocolate and book and that it both relaxes you and brings you joy.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Summer wasn't quite over yet

I claimed summer was over last week on my First Day of School post the other day because school had started and there was no more summer vacationing to be done. Turns out I WAS WRONG! Shocking, I know. ;p Ha ha ha.

I couldn't be happier about this error, though, because it involved a gorgeous day at the beach, spending time with my best friend from childhood and her lovely family and bonding with my girls. My husband stayed home to take care of his dad and catch up on some work for his job, so this was a girls day out.

My dear friend from childhood, whom I know I've spoken of on my blog in the past {Surprise Birthday Celebration and Pit Stop }, called me last week to invite me to join her and her family on their last long weekend getaway at a beach house at the New Jersey shore. Not only could I not resist the opportunity to prolong summer a bit by spending a day at the beach, but most importantly, I didn't want to miss the chance to spend time with my girlfriend and her lovely family--especially since she lives two plus hours north of me in the beautiful Hudson Valley region of New York state, and it's just so hard to schedule time to see each other as regularly as we both wish. The beach at which she was staying was only an hour from us, so on Saturday morning, the girls and I packed a cooler, grabbed the sunscreen and beach towels and our cameras and headed to the beach.

We shared a picnic lunch of sandwiches, rolled up ham for my non-sandwich eating tween, grapes, pretzels and thin mints. I have a couple of boxes of girl scout thin mints stashed in the far recesses of the freezer for just such an occasion.

There was a whole lot of picture taking, sand rolling, boogie boarding, body surfing, jelly fish ... um... collecting?, frisbee throwing, sea shell seashell searching, sea gull chasing, sunbathing and girl friend hanging around going on...

my girl photographer

my beautiful girls

rolling in the sand

pet jelly fish

preparing for the surf

charge those waves

twins braving the surf, leading the way for their dad

riding the wave ALL the way in for her close up

my girl photographer in action

me and ange

I also managed to read a chapter of Seduction In Death by J.D. Robb somewhere along the line. Right before the nap. :)

Back at the house we snacked on some crackers with cream cheese and spicy jalapeno peach preserves that I made last week before we said our good byes and headed home. The weather was just perfect for a day at the beach and it was tempting to stay longer, but I missed my husband too much and wanted get home and have dinner with him. We ordered out Thai food, which was Ooo la la good. Curry Puffs and Pad Se Ew equals a happy me.

The only way this day could have been better would have been if my husband was with us, too. Other than that... a perfectly happy ending to the summer.

the end.

Now summer is over.

Clowning Around with 2 Kids and a Dog + Giveaway

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to a new-to-me blogger and YouTuber named Alexia through Kwana of Kwana Writes. I then spent the better part of an hour watching Alexia's videos and literally laughing out loud. I think you would too!

Here's a little background. Alexia is an American woman who lives in Rome with her Italian Sicilian husband and their two kids and a dog.

Alexia and her family make fun, quirky family calendars every year for their family and friends and recently decided to entertain the world with behind the scene videos of their escapades in capturing the perfect family photo. So much fun!

Please meet Alexia:



And for some clowning around :o)

... and teamwork O_o





I won a 2 Kids and a Dog Calendar from Alexia over at Kwana's blog --it's VERY cute, by the way-- and would now like to pay the fun forward and giveaway a calendar to TWO of you. I know, I know ... you probably already have your 2010 calendar by now, but you gotta see this fun and quirky calendar for yourself. Hang it by the water cooler at the office and stimulate some fun conversation.

Just leave a comment and I'll select TWO winners at random next Friday, April 30.

Giveaway open to everyone. :o)


2 Kids and A Dog blog

2 Kids and A Dog YouTube channel

How to onion your man

Not that I've ever had to resort to this (okay maybe I have), but just in case you do, this is an invaluable resource.

You may want to bookmark these instructions.

Two minutes before you expect your man to walk through the door, after he has just spent a long day at work and played a rigorous game of football, [REAL football, i.e., soccer ], do the following:

1. Heat a cast iron skillet on medium high heat until hot.
2. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil.
3. Add some chopped onion. Any amount over a handful works.
4. If you still have time, add two garlic cloves, minced to pan.

Within seconds, the kitchen will smell like the promise of a delicious dinner and you have hopefully succeeded in the art of 'How to onion your man.'

Then you'd better hurry up and think of something quick to go with those onions before he finds out he's just been onioned!

Some ideas:

1. Omelet: Add beaten eggs, diced peppers and cherry tomatoes or spinach.

2. Easy Stir Fry: Add cut up veggies like broccoli, snow peas, peppers, and carrots, tofu and or precooked chicken or left over steak, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and some broth.

3. Reheated left overs, just with extra onions.




For the record, my husband isn't the kind who demands or even expects dinner to be one the table when he walks in the door at the end of the day. In fact, he's very cool about those days that he gets home and I don't have dinner even started. So much so that if I even waited for him to walk in the door to suggest take out, he'd immediately offer to be the one to go out and pick it up. It is important to me, to have a nice home cooked meal prepared for my family most nights, especially on work and school nights. So sometimes... I have to onion not just my man, but my whole family! ;)

"La Cenicienta"

I love fairy tale romances. The young woman and her bittersweet story of loneliness and misfortune. A seemingly sweet story laced with danger and magic. The young man who either saves her or better yet, gives her the strength and determination to save herself. And of course, there's the happily ever after.

The following fairy tale romance may not be a unique by its nature, but it is very special, nonetheless. It was penned and illustrated by my daughter.

The Bumblebee and The Thug

Once upon a time (the other day) my tween dressed up as a Bumblebee for Halloween. On the day before Halloween, she went home for lunch with her best friend for pizza and to change into their identical Bumblebee costumes. They headed back to school for the Halloween parade and discovered a swarm of Bumblebees! At least a dozen other Bumblebees were there, too! Who knew Bumblebees were so IN this year?

The next day was Halloween, and my Bumblebee had vague plans to trick-or-treat with two of her friends later that day, but as the day went by, she started to come down with something. By late that afternoon, she decided on her own that she didn't feel well enough to go trick-or-treating at all. We stayed in and watched a movie instead.

Once upon a time (very recently) my teen had been going back and forth trying to decide if she was going to dress up for school at all let alone trick-or-treat. It was an odd feeling that perhaps for the first time since she was a baby of 6 months, there was a possibility she wouldn't even participate in Halloween? How could that be? She was my little ladybug, ballerina, Dorothy, princess . . . all those years of adorable costumes, and a few years of some scary and morbid ones, and all of a sudden she was potentially too grown up to dress up? :(

Then, on the night before they were allowed to wear Halloween costumes to school, I was cleaning up the kitchen while my teen was at the dining room table finishing homework, and I overheard her half of a telephone conversation with her best friend. This was at 10:30 pm.

Teen: "So are we dressing up tomorrow, or what?"
[pause]
Teen: "So what should we be?"
[pause ]
Teen: "A thug? . . . What's a thug?"
[pause]
Teen: "Well, how can we dress up as something if we don't know what it is?"

LOL! I thought that was adorably funny! She looked it up and once she understood what a thug was, they discussed costume ideas for few minutes, and then decided not to dress up for school the following day after all.

They did get dressed up on Halloween, though, and were the cutest thugs ever. They both wore dark jeans, black long sleeve shirts, dark ski hats and black gloves. They put some black face faint under their eyes and carried a pillowcase for their loot! They actually looked more like robbers, but still. Cutest thugs ever!

It turns out it was pouring by the time the girls and their friends met up to go trick-or-treating, so they hung out at one of the other girls' house for the evening and only came home with a handful of candy. I think this might be the first year we won't be bingeing on Halloween candy for days on end.

And that is the story of The Bumblebee and The Thug.

The end.

Puppy Love

No, we did NOT get puppies! As much as my girls would be in heaven with a puppy, much less two, we have four cats and that's just four cats too many more than enough for us. I will not be suckered in to adopt a puppy.

Other people, however, are much easier to sucker. Enter my friend.

There's a family in town doing this amazing thing of fostering puppies that have been rescued from puppy mills while they await adoption. Well, would you believe my friend let the foster family convince her to take both of these puppies home for a day or two in order to decide which one she'd keep? LOLOLOL! Are you kidding me? After a mere few hours with both of these creatures, she was in love with both of them. Duh. I could have told her that was going to happen! So here she is the new mommy to these cute things. They're both one of those cool mixed breeds of hypo allergenic dogs. The puppy on the left is a terrier type mix and is named Chestnut and the Shih Tzu mix on the right is named Oreo.

I helped her take them to the vet this morning for some shots and had so much fun snuggling them. Two words: Puppy Love.

A Volleyball Pumpkin Party

I mentioned a several weeks ago that my eldest daughter, who is a freshman in high school this year, made the volleyball team. The season is quite short, but no less intense with practices every weekday since late August, a few Saturday practices, and games 2-4 days a week. It's hard to believe the season will be over by this time next weekend.

Today we hosted a little pumpkin party for the team at our house. The team of fifteen girls crowded around the dining room table wearing fake vampire teeth and carved pumpkins.

One of the girls brought a white pumpkin and carved it in the likeness of a volleyball. Isn't it great?

Pumpkin seeds were saved for roasting:


Yummy treats were served, including these very delicious pumpkin cookies made by one of the moms that had both milk chocolate and white chocolate chips in it. Soft and cake-like. Mmmm. I've got to get that recipe!



Despite the fact that it's been rainy and unseasonably cold here for the last several days, the girls headed outside to toss set and bump a volleyball around in the yard after the rain had stopped. So dedicated.

By the end of the afternoon, we had this adorable team of pumpkins:

A Birthday Celebration: Cupcakes, Romance & New Blog Direction

Today is my birthday. Life is good. :)

My Happy Heart.
I usually get up on Thursday mornings at 5:30 am for spin class at my gym with my favorite instructor, and this morning I thought I'd sleeping in to 7:15 am because it's my birthday. But I reconsidered and decided it would be a much better gift to myself to be exercising--better for my body and better for my mind. So I went to spin class and used my new heart rate monitor (one of my birthday gifts from my husband), making sure I stayed in my optimum heart rate range. Which meant I knew when I started to slack off, so I knew when to push a little harder. What a great tool!

Cupcakes:
I'm now thinking that maybe I can go indulge in a cupcake today without as much guilt. I'm talking a cupcake from that cupcake shop downtown that has those cupcakes that are almost too beautiful, too sinful to eat. Look at these. If you click on the photo, you can see up close.


I took this picture a few months ago when the shop first opened, but I inhaled too many calories just walking into the place so I didn't even try one. It smelled so decadent. A birthday, though, sounds like the right day to make an exception and indulge. I'm going to pick up a few of these for tonight. Yum!

A Birthday Present for one of YOU.
A birthday isn't complete without gifts, so I'm giving away a copy of Can't Stand the Heat by Louisa Edwards! It's Louisa Edward's debut novel featuring a chef from a NYC restaurant and a sassy food critic and the first novel in her Recipe for Love series.

You can visit Louisa Edwards at her website at http://www.louisaedwards.com/.

I haven't read Can't Stand the Heat yet, but I did buy a copy for myself as well. I recently read a review for it at Jessica's blog, Racy Romance Reviews and not only knew right away that I wanted to read it, but I also knew it was the perfect book for me to giveaway on my blog because it would be a great way to introduce a new mission or theme I'm going to implement on my blog any day now. I'm still going to be blogging about books-- especially romance, but I'm also going to start blogging about food and cooking!

A New Blogging Direction.
I've been toying with the idea of starting a cooking blog for quite a while now, but couldn't decide if I should start a separate blog or just mix up cooking with books here. I also knew I wanted to post more about photography and gardening-- I'm really looking forward to revamping my vegetable and flower beds now that construction is (almost) finally finished. So after much deliberation and consulting with a few online friends, I've decided to just lump all of my blogging interests in one place here at the happily ever after. So I'm just letting you all know that the happily ever after may start to look more like a general personal blog than a book blog. I'm very excited about it and hope you end up liking it, too. For those of you who read my blog solely for bookish things, I hope you still stick around and enjoy reading about my other interests as well.

Book Giveaway Rules:

• To be entered in the drawing for Can't Stand the Heat by Louisa Edwards, leave a comment telling me what your favorite dish is. Food dish, that is! ;)
• For my followers from outside the US, this giveaway is open to you as well.
• Contest ends on Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 12:00 AM EST.
• Winner will be drawn and announced sometime on Monday, October 5, 2009.
• You must leave your email address in your comment if you do not have one shown on your blogger profile page.

Good luck!


Special thanks to romance author Elisabeth Naughton for inadvertently funding my recent book, magazine, coffee, and cupcake purchases. I won a very generous $100 Visa Gift Card from Elisabeth in her Stolen Heat contest this summer--the Grand Prize! If you haven't yet read her Stolen novels, you should. Fantastic romantic suspense. Plus she has a paranormal romance series titled Marked coming out in March 2010 that sounds great as well.

What I did over my summer vacation . . .

Today is the last day of summer in our little world as my girls go back to school tomorrow. My youngest is entering 5th grade--her last year in elementary school. My adorable baby. A fifth grader. And don't even get me started on the other one. My oldest is off to high school! High School?! I can't believe it. I grew her in my womb! Nourished her at my breast. And then in the blink of an eye, she's this beautiful young woman going off to high school! Poof! Just like that.

Whereas most of our summer was just how I like it--quiet, low key, relaxing, and lazy--parts were also exciting and adventurous.

Like going on an African Safari!

National Geographic is sure to be knocking on my door once they get wind of these . . .

Check out the eye contact I got with this cat! Scary!

Nothing like a nice mud bath to help you cool off in the heat of the day.

I think they spotted dinner? Left overs again.

Those wart hogs aren't interested in left overs. They're looking for something fresh!

Okay, okay, the truth is we went on safari at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Ha, ha. Did I fool you?

I just love the American Museum of Natural History and the newer Rose Center for Earth and Space that's attached to the museum. My first time visiting the Natural Museum of History was on a class trip when I was in the 4th grade, and quite frankly, I'm still in awe of the place to this day. The museum is so old and beautiful and the Rose Center for Earth and Space is fantastic. I love all the exhibits at both places and the IMAX films at Rose Center. I always learn something new.

This photo was taken from inside the Rose Center for Earth and Space:



We also journeyed to the center of the Earth World New York City!

In other words, we spent a day exploring Central Park in Manhattan on hot day in July. I've been to Central Park before, but I've always just been on the fringe of the park at the Central Park Zoo and along the upper west side along Central Park West and 59th St. I always wanted to see more of this huge and amazing park, so we did, but only covered about half of the park in one day, and even then, we didn't see everything there is. It's really an incredible park, and I had fun shooting photos while we were there.


What else? I rode 75 miles on my new road bike! It was over the course of two weeks, but still. Thanks to my husband, I have this awesome new road bike --it's actually a Quintano Roo entry level triathlon bike-- and I've been going on road rides ranging from 7 miles to 17 miles every few days. Between road rides a couple of times a week and continuing with spin classes at the gym, I'm hoping to do some 30-60 mile bike rides on the weekends next summer. It's very exciting.

I also broke some personal records this summer that I'm very excited about. For starters, I broke my own reading record in August when I read THIRTEEN books in one month! My average is 4-5 books per month, so I was so excited to have read thirteen. I wasn't even trying, it just happened.

The other personal record that I broke was my summer attendance at the gym. I work out at a gym regularly throughout the year from September through June, averaging 4-5 days a week (I love Zumba, spin, and kick boxing)! and for the last several years have only gone maybe 2-3 times in the whole month of July and not at all by the time the lazy days of August rolled around. Until this past summer, that is. This summer, I continued working out 3-5 days a week at the gym both July AND August. Except for one week during which I had hurt my back, but that was injury related, so I'm claiming excused absence. I'm so proud of myself for staying dedicated to exercise this summer.


My teen daughter made the High School Volleyball Team! She attended volleyball camp and clinics over the summer with plans of trying out for the high school volleyball team and she did it! She's been having 3-4 hours of practices every day for the last two weeks or so and has her first scrimmage game this evening--and school hasn't even started yet! This is going to be a great experience for her. Dance has pretty much monopolized her recreational activities since she was four years old, and she's been on the dance studio's dance competition team for the last four years, so participating in a team sport is so new and exciting for her. She's not giving up dance entirely. She's going to take a few classes a week after volleyball is over in November, but she won't be spending 14 hours a week there like she's been doing the past few years. Only six.

My tween daughter (10 year old) mastered the FIOS remote and menu!
PLUS, she may have set the record for watching the most Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez TV shows, movie specials, and YouTube Videos over and over and over. And a healthy dose of Taylor Swift, as well. (I love her!)

She's also a voracious reader and has been reading the entire Harry Potter series on her own since we saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the movies earlier this summer. She's reading that book now. She also spent countless hours at the computer typing away on her own stories. She's very creative. I sometimes help her pick out names for her characters, or names of towns, schools, teachers, things like that. She also had a lot of sleepovers with her friends throughout the summer. So cute.

Other highlights of our summer include continuing to settle into the house after the construction. (Still waiting to pass final inspections. Grr!) I finally finished putting curtains up in the whole house, which was quite the feat. All that measuring, buying rods, curtains and blinds, installing them, . . . phew! That was a big job, but everything looks great. I've also enjoyed getting my cooking groove back over the summer. I really love my new kitchen---everything including the kitchen sink! I love our master bedroom, too! Sometimes I don't want to leave it in the morning. Seriously. And the master bathroom. Ahhh . . . so nice. We also caught up with a lot of friends this summer-- some whom we see regularly during the year and others whom we haven't seen in a long time like one of my college roommates who I saw last week for the first time in 14 years! That was really wonderful.

As you can see, we really did have a fairly quiet, low key, relaxing summer with a little bit of excitement and adventure thrown in. So as another summer comes to a close and a new school year begins, it's time for morning alarm clocks, packing lunches, keeping tabs on homework, driving kids all around town, enforcing bedtimes, setting curfews and looking forward to Friday nights. Life is good.

What were some of the highlights of your summer?

In Blueberry Fields

Blueberry season is finally here in our corner of the world. 

My family loves blueberries. They're sweet, delicious and they're so incredibly good for you, too. What's not to love about these little blue beauties?

Yesterday, my daughters and I headed to our favorite local farm to pick some blueberries. 

Making our way to the blueberry field.

Let's start here and pick our way down this whole row . . .

Filling up the basket. 

An official "field" test. 

Luckily they passed the test, so we're bringing them home.  

Of course, the lovely outing isn't complete until there's some sisterly displays of . . . affection?

Definitely sisterly love and affection.  ;) 

Time to go home and eat our fill of blueberries. 

Blueberries by the handful . . . on cereal . . . in pancakes . . . in smoothies . . . and baked into some delicious blueberry treat. Our family favorite is Blueberry Pound Cake. 

The recipe is from the July 1998 issue of CookingLight magazine. I can't believe I've been making this cake for 11 years!