Blood, fish guts & random animal juices

It's been 13 days since I started my low-carb diet and I have lost a solid ten pounds. I am spending all of today cooking low-carb meals for the week. I got a whole load of veggies and meats from this awesome-looking Asian supermarket while I was driving through northeast Philly with Jack. He loved it - the whole ducks hanging from hooks, the strange-looking exotic fruits, the pig snouts & hooves - but he was bowled over when we arrived in the seafood section. Most everything was still alive or freshly dead - even the fish on ice were still opening & closing their mouths and gills. There were buckets filled with crabs crawling all over each other, even a bucket full of bullfrogs - I wonder how they're cooked? I guess it's a blessing that I'm not much of an animal activist because it all looked pretty horrible - all the tanks were stuffed to the top with fish, eels and lobster fighting for space - but Jack was riveted. We spent a good fifteen minutes in front of the counter where the Chinese men in white coats were chopping and descaling the fish. After a while, I realized that my ankles were wet and I looked down. We were standing in several inches of blood, fish guts and random animal juices and the bottoms of my yoga pants were soaked with the mixture. Time to go....

My big DIY job for this week is to reupholster the couches. I got a step-by-step tutorial off of pinterest and some fabric for an incredibly good price at a store that "lost their lease!". We shall see, it's probably gonna be a huge bust but I've been having some relatively good success with DIY projects off of pinterest lately so I'm optimistic. Here's a sample of a couple DIY projects I've done in the last few weeks:

Windowsill Herb Garden

 

After I painted, planted & watered, I covered the pots with plastic wrap secured with rubber bands. That's the trick that nobody tells you - it's a mini-green house - and once germination happens then you take the plastic off. If you've never been able to grow stuff from seeds in containers before, try it. And you're welcome.

 

 

Santa Handprint Ornaments

 



 

First I traced Jack and Kyle's hands onto some cardboard then I cut them out.

I made salt dough using this recipe:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1/2 cup or less of water

 

 

I rolled it out with a rolling pin until it was about an inch thick give or take. Then I put the cut-outs on top and cut around them into the dough.

 

 

I used a straw to make a hole at the top, put them on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the oven at 220 degrees for about an hour. The only paints I had around the house were oil based and that's when the whole project went from easy to pain-in-the-a$#%. Since it'd been so long since I'd painted, I'd forgotten that it takes forever for oil-based paints to dry. I should have just stuck them back in the oven for a bit but I was afraid that something would catch on fire or I'd fill the house with noxious fumes so instead, I practiced the little known art of patience. It took a full week until the paint fully dried.

 

On the back of each of the Santa hands, I recorded the boys' names and ages, and this little poem:

 

This is to remind you
When I have grown tall,
That once I was little
And my hands were so small

 

Not such a bad mom after all, eh b*%tches? :)