Three:am and I am still wide awake! I have a bad kink in my neck, which is probably from sitting in this chair and working in front of this computer for the last 3 hours. Yep, I bet that’s it!

I decided to change things up a bit, threw up a different theme that I’d customized once before when I first launched scribblescratch.com last summer. I still need to add the flickr plug-in and do a little bit of tweaking, but overall I am satisfied!

The site has been lagging a lot the last few hours, but I’m starting to think it’s more normal than not. I haven’t been able to finish up the wp theme page and I really don’t feel like bothering with it right now. Maybe tomorrow!

You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that my dad likes to hear himself talk. Why do you ask? Simple; if he isn’t talking my head off (which I generally do not mind if it isn’t the same story repeated or slightly altered to better fit / relate to something in the news), he’s walking around talking to himself. I am guilty of mumbling under my breath if I get frustrated with something or someone but I would never talk to myself like he does!! We’ve found it rather difficult watching tv or a movie in the living room. Usually, if he’s around, he talks to us throughout the entire program or movie! And nevermind trying to get in a word or actually have a conversation with him. It goes in one ear and out the other! I’ve tried carrying on with him several times and I can tell that when I start talking, he’s just thinking of what he’s going to say next! haha! But I love my dad, he’s great.. I could just do without so much talking!

Only about 2 more weeks and we’ll be gearring up for our trip to Calgary! I am excited and anxious but I’m also terrified! The biggest thing I’m not looking forward to (outside of the distance we’ll travel) is being so far away from my family and friends! I got homesick the last time I was there, now I’m closer to my family and friends than ever before! I’ll be ok though, at least until the newness wears off!! ;]

There was something else I was going to write about, prior to getting started but for the life of me.. I can’t remember! Pffthh.

I have not created the page for the themes because I haven’t completed the finishing touches on the last two.. but if you are interested in either of these, leave a note here or email me. They’re free for use, images included.

Tagged by Caitlin :

Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names. No tagbacks!

1. As mentioned in a previous post, I make a weird popping noise with my mouth, which sounds like Donkey on Shrek. (Sort of sounds like a tennis racket hitting a tennis ball)

2. I bounce my leg religiously.. mostly if I’m nervous or excited but really, it could be at any point in the day and for no reason at all.

3. I’m so afraid of airplanes/jets, that when I travel near an airport and an airplane or jet flies over me, I duck. I guess I just expect them to drop out of the sky or something!!

4. I refer to “sex” as “baking”. lol

5. When I was in gymnastics, we had a “dummy” meet where our parents could come out and see what we’d accomplished.. Suave Teresa goes tumbling down the mats, bounces off a mini-tramp and attempts a flip.. and goes nose first into the mats. I can only think of a handful of people that know that, 3 of them are my mom, dad and youngest sister.

6. At one of my birthday parties as a child (probably 8th or 9thish), a group of friends and I decided since it’d rained about an hour before the party started, we should go riding our bikes and four wheelers down clay hills… I, of course, decided to do this in a brand new pair of jeans my mom & dad bought me for my birthday, which I was soooooooooo proud of. After getting bored with that, we decided to go down these clay hills on our butts. How exciting, until my new jeans met a big root sticking out from the hill, which kindly ripped my jeans up the crack!! :]

7. When I was 10, I was walking to a friends house one afternoon, a man in an old car pulled up and asked if I wanted a ride. I knew better than to ride with strangers and said “No” and started walking quicker as I was still about 3 blocks away. He put his car in reverse and kept straight beside me and kept insisting I get in. Thankfully a cop rode by shortly after and he took off. We later found out he was a wanted child molester. Yikes!

8. I cannot whistle.. seriously!

9. I used to do track and field and was really good at the long jump. That could be because of my height and long legs, but either way.

10. I was nearly confined to a wheel chair at the age of 13.

Tagging: Nicole ; Helen ; Debbie ; Elyse ; Emily ; Stacey.

Am I the only person looking forward to the new season of Dancing with the stars? Probably!! lol I am looking forward to seeing if “Big Pussy” (from The Soprano’s) Vincent Pastore (sp?) can “shake it”.. Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila is also one of the “stars”. I wish Emmitt Smith could return. He just had this spark about him and seemed to get the crowd going. It was neat to see him go from a stiff football player to a ballroom dancer!

*shrugs*

Maybe I’m the only one that enjoys the show.. haha!

Well, we’re back up and running, again. I wonder though, will it last? Seems like several times each month (recent months), I have some sort of database issue. It’s very frustrating because I only use this site for blogging and without a functioning database, I cannot blog. Well, not using my chosen platform - ie; wordpress.

I got a really awesome surprise in the mail yesterday! I was graced with a rather large tube, addressed to me, here at my dad’s from deviantart.com!! I thought “Hrm, late Christmas from someone, perhaps?”.. I pop the lid off and look inside to see what appears to be two prints! Indeed, prints it was! Two really beautiful prints by Levi! What a sweet thing to do, thank you so much!!! I can’t wait to frame them along with the prints I got from Jason!! They’re all going to look fabulous!

You may have noticed on the sidebar, under my “dailies” that you can now change the themes! There are only 3 to choose from but the colors vary.

We finally got both of our income tax checks.. shewwwwwey!! One step closer to getting this move started!! The way it’s looking, we should be leaving around the second or third week of March. We pushed it back just a bit to allow time for those checks to come in, me to receive my passport (since you now have to have one crossing the border, regardless of “how”) and so that Jo can work a couple of extra weeks! We have a few things we have to get done before we leave and some of those things are going to be pretty pricey. For instance, the winter tires. I believe those will run us around $425. My mom wants to pay for half, as does my dad but I’m not going to insist they do that nor will I count on that happening because you never know what could come up for them (like with my grandmother’s illness)!!

I meant to post this recipe for the caramel cake over the weekend, along with pictures I took during the process of making it. Oooppsy, I forgot! Oh well, better late than never.. right?!

—– Cake —–

1 Duncan Hines, classic white cake mix

4 eggs

1 1/3 buttermilk

1/2 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla (or vanilla extract)

I did not follow box directions
Beat (or whisk) everything really well, I do this for about 4-5 mins in the mixer. Bake at 350 degrees in four 8 in cake pans (you could probably use the 9in cake pans if you wanted to, I just prefer the 8 in), until cakes are done. Every oven will vary in temperatures.

—– Icing —–

3 cups sugar

1/2 pint heavy whipping cream

3 tsps flour

1 cup butter

Melt 1/2 cup of sugar in a heavy skillet/saucepan over LOW heat; stirring constantly until golden brown (ie; the shade of caramel) and making sure there are no remaining lumps of sugar.

Set aside another skillet or heavy sauce pan. Mix the rest of the sugar (2 and 1/2 cups), whipping cream, flour & butter. Cook to 225 degrees on candy thermometer; stir while cooking. As this mixture boils, add the 1/2 cup of melted sugar from the other skillet/saucepan. Allow this to set. It usually takes about 2 hours, sometimes a little longer. When spreading the icing, I use a glass of hot water, which I dip the knife into occasionally to prevent the cake from tearing/crumbling.

Why am I up? Someone explain this to me! I have been up since around 5am. Why, why, why???! I just shot right up and have been wide awake since! For no reason at all. Didn’t get to sleep until midnight or later, no naps yesterday. Spent the day watching Tyler & Trent. Tyler came home early from school after he “injured” his right leg, though once here, showed no signs of said injury. Trent came over in the early afternoon, after being at my mom’s. When we picked him up half-way, he’d thrown up all in Tammy’s car. Just love those kind of greetings.. haha! Well, we stripped him down and put him in the back seat, strapped him in and asked “Trent, if you feel sick again, could you let Aunt Teesa know?”.. Of course, Trent can be a little menace at times (which is usually cute, when you’re not on the receiving end of his behavior lol).. and his reply was “No, I can’t do that!”.. Ergh. So I tried that a few times and when it didn’t work, I went to the bribing.. “Trent, if you’ll let Aunt Teesa know when you get sick.. we’ll go get a toy later on!”.. usually this works like a charm and thankfully, it worked again! He didn’t get sick during our 15 minute journey back to my dad’s! Thank goodness, I had just cleaned out my truck yesterday morning! haha!

I took down herbrokentoy.com, while I work on something new. Now that I’ve done that, I’m wishing I hadn’t. I worked up a draft design, started liking it and now I’m just like “pffffffffffth!!!”. I hate this part of the process!

I’m supposed to make my sister’s fiance a caramel cake today. He loved the one I did for my mom’s birthday Thursday night! Actually, everyone complimented me on it! It was an awesome feeling to know that this version of me was a success! hahaha! I think I’ll photograph the process of making it from beginning to end!

That’s about all I’m good for, for now! I need to go check on my kitties!

Oh, Stacey.. when you read this.. give me a call! I missed your comment the other day! If I don’t hear from you by tonight, I’ll give you a call tomorrow!!!

I’m trying to decide what I should make for my dad’s birthday dinner. It has to be extra special because his birthday is on Valentine’s day. I’m thinking of doing the stuffed manicotti dish but instead of the garlic chicken, doing lobster. My mouth is already watering!! I don’t know what I’ll make to go with it, with the exception of bread sticks. I guess I could just do some kind of salad because the stuffed manicotti is the main dish anyway! For something sweet, I’m thinking of doing that caramel cake, since he seemed to enjoy that so much (he ate almost an entire cake in about a day and a half)!

I think I’m going to make heart shaped fudge for my nephews and a heart shaped cake for my sister Nikki and her fiance. My dad has a key to her house, so I am thinking I’ll get it all together and set it all up for them on their dinning room table!

For my mom, who’s birthday is the day after Valentine’s day.. I’m thinking of doing something similar to my dad’s.. but just do the chicken because she’s not too big on the seafood thing. Cake-wise, I have no idea what I’ll do.

I need to figure out what to get them for gift-wise too. They’re both extremely hard to shop for because there’s really nothing they need and when you ask them what they “want”, it’s always “I can’t think of anything” or “Nothing”. haha! They make it so difficult!

My Valentine’s present = Canon Digital Rebel XTi (400d) and 50mm lens. Yay!

I should hop off of here though. I have a few things to do and then I’m heading to my mom’s for the night!

I have been so worried about my cats lately. In case you didn’t know, they’ve been at the kennel since December 18th. We took them there after we moved out of our house and left for Newfoundland. Well, they’re still there and we weren’t going to get them until we left for Calgary. Last night I got so upset because I just miss them so much. I mean, I went 3 years with Jynx sleeping beside me each night and almost a year of Bella sleeping on the chair next to my bed. Today I decided to talk to my dad about them and see if it would be at all possible to bring them here until we leave. I was prepared for a “Hell no” but instead, I got a “Sure, if it’ll help save you a little money!” So, next Tuesday, I’m going to bring my babies home!!

I really need to get back to sorting through photos from yesterday but I can’t pull away from the breaking news (as mentioned in the edit below) about Anna Nicole Smith. What a tragedy. So horrible for that little angel, the daughter.

Edit; I’ve been watching Fox News and they’re reporting Anna Nicole Smith has died. How sad. I’m not a fan or anything but considering what she’s been through in recent months, it’s just really sad. I wonder what happened. :[

Ok, Scribblescratch.com is really starting to frustrate me the last couple of weeks. I finally get the thing back up, after being down for about a month while I was in Newfoundland.. and now it seems that every single day, there’s lagging. It’s not even allowing me to log into my control panel right now and last week, the database was throwing a fit. I really wish these folks tinkering with things would fix whatever’s broken and if nothing’s broken, leave well enough alone! Pffth. I’m just about ready to start ripping out my hair. :[

Anyway. I had a great time with Jess yesterday! We spent about 6 hours doing our little photo shoot and the remaining time was spent catching up and being silly! I hope we get to do it again soon! I’m going to miss her when I move!

Guess I’m going to go on and submit a support ticket on this mess, maybe I can get it situated in a couple of hours!

Welp, I’ll be heading out soon! I’m going to spend the afternoon with my Jessy! Yay! Haven’t gotten to spend time with her in a couple of months, now I’m only about 25 mins away and I’m going to take full advantage of it! We’re going to do a photoshoot today. Aiming for something vintage like but we’ll see. May do more than one, who knows! She should be finished up at the dentist in about 15 mins, so I guess I’ll be heading her way in a few!

I haven’t been around much the last few days! I spent a couple of nights at my mom’s and man has she been sick! She has a horrible ear infection, which was caused by an injury to the side of her face/outer ear. My youngest nephew Trent head butted her, though not on purpose, it was in his sleep! Anyway, she hasn’t been able to get any relief, even with the drops and pain relievers. My grandmother has been sick too. She’s down with the flu but is slowly getting better!

Oh, forgot to mention.. I’ve turned into quite the cook lately. Surprise, surprise! haha! I made a caramel cake, nearly from scratch (well, I used the box mix but didn’t use those directions).. the caramel icing was made from scratch.. I swear, I think I could’ve poured a glass of that and downed it. hahahaha! Last night I made garlic chicken & ricotta stuffed manicotti. The stuffing, as mentioned, had chicken, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, sundried tomatoes and basil pesto sauce. Then I made a cream sauce to go on top, which had milk (obviously haha), parmesan (only about 1/3 of a cup) and some bacon chopped up in it.. poured that in a caserole dish over the manicotti and baked it.. and it was delicious (or as Trent says, uhhhhhhhhlicious)!

Well, I’m going to get going. I still need to throw something decent on and hit the road! Side note though, what I wouldn’t do for a French Vanilla Smoothie from Tim Horton’s.. Oh how I miss those! haha!