It’s another recipe post! It’s been a long while, well, a week anyway…so I thought I’d share what’s cookin’ in the Wittmann kitchen.

Put on some good music.

Gather your ingredients. I have bread crumbs pictures, but I ended up using a couple left over hamburger buns. You will also notice that I have 2 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of ground turkey. Thought I’d shake things up. Plus, we love us some meatloaf, so I made a “1 1/2″ batch.

I dump all of the meat mixture ingredients into my Bosch and let ‘er rip. While measuring the brown sugar, you will get the brown sugar on your hands as you pack in into the measuring cup. I like to take this opportunity to give myself a mini-manicure. I put the tiniest drop of soap and a very minimal amount of water on my hands and scrub until I can’t feel the exfoliating properties of the brown sugar working anymore, then I rinse my hands off. Instant manicure!

Form the mixture into two loaves on a cookie cooling rack that is sprayed with Pam. I put the cooling rack on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil. It makes clean up a breeze - well, at least breezier than it would be otherwise!

After the meatloaves have been cooking for about 30 minutes, take it out and add about 2/3 of the sauce mixture. Stick it back into the oven for another 30 minutes. Watch it carefully toward the end - with all the sugar in the sauce, it can burn if you’re not careful.

I’m serving the meatloaf this evening with mashed potatoes (see recipe below) and some of Nebraska’s finest sweet corn. Enjoy!

1) What in the world am I supposed to do with all these cucumbers? Mike likes the vinegar-sugar approach. Me, not so much. Does anyone have any good recipes that involve cucumbers and don’t taste bad?

I get this every day out of the garden. At least.

2) What is it about the Bee Gees that I love so much?

One of my favorite things to do to make our home “better” is to hang clothes on the clothesline outside. I can fit a good two and a half loads on there. I like it that I get just a little bit tan with very minimal effort. I like it as an “excuse” to get outside with the kids, and still feel like I’m accomplishing something. I like the crispness of our clothes, and especially the towels - which, by the way, are so much more absorbent from hanging on the line. I like watching them dance in the breeze.

I especially like it that I save between $1 and $1.50 on each load I hang outside. For us, it yields about $365- $547 in savings each year!

Also, since I’m super nerdy and apparently have oodles of time on my hands, here’s a video. Enjoy!

Check this out.

Here’s another round of Photo Friday!

The infamous Mine Piper.

My sweet Tess in the bathtub, the surefire way to calm her down. She splashes and “swims” all over the tub. Prepare to be soaked!

Tess is standing in her crib all the time now. I love the way she has her leg pointed out like a dancer. Follow this link to see a video of her standing in her crib.

Tess’s look is starting to be more of a toddler than a baby these days. She’s getting a bit of chubby on her, which means she’s getting ready to grow tall again. She’s saying, “Let me get this straight…” here. She is also signing “all done” and “bye-bye”. She waved to me, while standing in her crib, when I laid her down for her afternoon nap.

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We’ve been doing chores this week. I made up a chart for Peter and Elsie that has pictures down the left hand side and the days of the week across the top. Each chore that is completed gets a sticker, and each day with all chores completed gets a piece of candy - hershey’s kiss, licorice, etc.

Here’s a picture of what Elsie’s bed looks like after she’s made it. I think it’s a woman thing. She can make her bed so well!

I promise that I didn’t help her at all with it! She’s just good!

This Saturday evening, if Pete does the rest of his chores (teeth brushed, toys picked up, help set table for dinner) for the rest of the day and all of his chores tomorrow, then he gets $2. He is stoked. I’m not sure if we will give Elsie an allowance or not. Maybe 50 cents or so. She doesn’t have a concept of money yet.

It sure has been easier on me this week with them doing a lot of their own picking up. It’s also made me clean up better after myself. Pete asked me why there was stuff in the bottom of my closet…OUCH!

Elsie has been way less of a monster since Tuesday. No more bologna, thank goodness. I told her to show me her sweet smile.

Pete sometimes just looks at me like this, and it sort of freaks me out. It usually takes me a moment or two, but I finally realized the other day that this is him showing me that he has a happy heart, as evidenced through his smile. He’s such a good boy!

I had a hard time finding a potato salad that I had all the ingredients for, so I just made my own up. Here goes:

If for some reason I wasn’t a wife or mother I would have a career as a party planner. There is almost nothing in the entire world that gives me as much pleasure as planning a party. I don’t care if it’s friends coming over for wine and cobbler (wink, wink) or a sit down dinner with umpteen courses. I love the planning of it.

This weekend is the last weekend for two of the families involved in our Community Dinner group before they move. I am planning a BBQ. Now, I know that there is probably nothing less fancy than a BBQ…but then again. If you think that I’m going to have even a BBQ and not let it be fancy, then you might not even know me. I live for FANCY.

I also get excited about lists. And my list for this weekend has 4 pages front and back on a legal pad of sketches and articles clipped out of magazines and “Honey-Do” lists. I’ve got a great honey. This morning I made a sketch of our backyard so I would know where I’m going to put tables and lighting and chairs and candles and food. I drew a sketch of the serving table and how I’m going to arrange things. I made a mad list of everything I want done, from hanging Christmas lights to trimming bushes to throwing all the baby bikes and such into the garage.

I found these great decorations at Target when I went last night. They’re from Isabelle de Borchgrave’s Botanical collection.

That’s the table cloth. I also got a runner and some gift bags for a treat at the end of the evening and napkins. The best part? It was 75% off. Yay! I thought that getting the plates would be overkill on that pattern, so I got off white plates.

I found this board, for lack of a better term, in the top of our garage and it’s this primitive, distressed looking green-painted long board. I’m planning on serving off of it. On the one hand, it needs legs and sawhorses would do the trick, but I don’t really want saw horses at my party. On the other hand, if it’s either saw horses or not having a table, I’ll go with the sawhorses. I suppose that the table cloth would cover it.

I’m making Margaritas from scratch and serving them in a great sun tea jar with a spout on the end. I was going to get Cointreau, but it’s $40 a bottle. Yikes! I’ll stick with Triple Sec and hope for the best. I did get a nicer Tequila. Hopefully it will make up for the Triple Sec. I’ll have salt for the rims, and I personally can’t wait to try one.

Everyone who knows me knows that Elsie is just more than a handful.

This afternoon at lunch she hit a new low.

She was picking her nose, as usual, and I told her to stop, as usual, and she told me that she had to get the bologna out.

THE BOLOGNA. OUT OF HER NOSE.

I went and got the tweezers and it took me a good 3 minutes to get it all out. I probably gagged a good 3 times as well. When it finally came out, it was 1 inch long. I flipped it off of the tweezers onto her plate where Elsie proceeded to eat it.

The bologna that was in her nose was now in her mouth.

Here’s a picture of our little monster. Her brother wrote her name on the chalkboard and she drew a picture of herself in the middle of her name.

So, Mike and I are about as conservative as they come, but we’ve been doing some crazy things lately.

Like using canvas bags for shopping. When I go to Garage Sales, I try to snap up as much as I can. They usually go for 5 cents or so. This is after Wal-Mart the other day:

We also have a garden that we haven’t put any type of pesticides on. We’re starting to get real vegetables from it! We even put our grass clippings and discarded foods (apple cores, potato peels, etc.) in a compost bin.

Mike has been biking to work 3 days a week. We’re saving a bunch of money, and he’s getting in pretty good shape.

We also stacking our newspapers together and actually recycling them!

Now, if the Wittmanns can do it, I know you can!

Pete loves his “babies”, his stuffed animals. He has this one kangaroo called Violet. (He names his animals things like Anna, Alice, Meredith, Tiny, Yadier, Fro, Louis, Albert…I don’t know where he gets it!)

This afternoon, Pete and Violet were bouncing around the house and he stopped and told me, “Mom, I love Violet. She never flips you off…

[takes drink for a good 10 seconds]

…of her back.”

Didn’t know where he was going with that one.

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Also, Pete and his friend, Nolan, made up a game this morning.

Mommy: What is all that noise?

Pete: We’re playing Mine Piper.

Mommy: What’s that?

Pete: It’s like a video game, only this is just pretend.

Mommy: [Thinks to self: Mine Piper? Like this?] Mine Piper, huh? Well, don’t hurt anyone. And, Pete?

Pete: Yeah, Mom?

Mommy: Video games are pretend. Playing with your friends in your living room is for real.

Pete: Hi-yah! Hi-yah [crash, bang, splat]. Did you see that Mom?

Mommy: Yeah, Dude.