I'll take potpourri for $500, Alex
My cousin's wedding is this weekend so since all my relatives on my mom's side are going to be in the same place, there's going to be a baby shower for Bill and Kelly the day after. Kelly's sisters are also throwing a shower a week later but I won't be able to make it to that because it's in Minneapolis and mom says she doesn't plan on going because she's already planning on heading back there a few more times next month and she would have been my ride. I don't want to drive there up by myself because I would probably get lost or something and I would have nowhere to stay, anyway. For the shower with my relatives, my present is two books: "Where's Spot" and one of those touch and feel books about baby animals playing outside, then going to sleep. Obviously she probably won't be able to really use them until she's a little older, so I also got them a pink blanket that says "Love" and has a little chick on it. I put both gifts in a cute bag with a giraffe on both sides. For the other baby shower I bought them ten different colored baby bibs (they came together in one package). I put them in a bag with pink, green, and yellow pastel stripes. I used bags because the only gift wrapping I had was Christmas wrapping. I decided to send the bibs to the shower I wouldn't be attending because they're not as exciting as the other gift, but I think they will still like them. I bought two really cute baby cards. The baby card section was divided into two sections: one was for showers and the other was for congratulating parents on their new baby. I picked out one of the shower cards and it has a snail (or some animal, I don't even remember) holding an umbrella and saying "Happy Shower." There was a really cute card from the other section that had cute little baby animals on the front and it says "Congratulations on your new baby girl!" Since she's not born yet, I just wrote in "soon to be" in front of "your". See, it works!
I must be the only person in the world who can't get into the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. It took me forever to get into the first one, but I liked it better once we got into the story, so I was hoping since we had already met the characters, we could get right into the story of the second book. I started that one last March and could not get into that one either. At all. I decided to just give up on it when I got to page 350 earlier this month. I think these books are way overrated and don't get the hype. At all. Maybe that's why I don't like them...because I was expecting too much and was disappointed. Of course, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter were hyped up and I liked those. :::shrug::: Of course, they're not full of really boring computer jargon that nobody cares about. But then, Michael Crichton books have that and I like most of his books. Well, maybe I'll go back to it one of these days. I just don't want to waste my time slugging through a book I can't get into. Right now I'm reading Mini Shopaholic which I recently bought at Barnes and Noble. I love the Shopaholic series; they're my guilty pleasure. Usually I don't like chick lit because all the female characters are vapid and talk about guys and clothes. At least these books are fun to read and make me laugh. I just need something light to read right now. You can't get that with a Steig Larsson book.
I'm still trying new things in the kitchen. I was inputting all the ingredients I have into my iTouch (because I have no life and thus have too much time on my hands) and on the back of my oats box there was a recipe for oatmeal cookies and I saw that I had all the ingredients needed to make them and thought oatmeal cookies sounded good, so I made them. I even had chocolate chips, raisins, and cinnamon that could be added as extras. The dough tasted really good, but unfortunately the cookies turned out awful. They were really flat and stiff. Not at all chewy and soft. At least I still have some leftover cookie dough, so I've been eating that!
Another thing I attempted to make was a recipe from my cookbook, cajun fish soup. I like fish and I like soup, but I've never had fish in my soup, besides clam chowder. This was really gross...it calls for two cans of diced tomatoes. The last time I made something that called for tomatoes, I didn't like it. I need to stop making things where tomatoes is a big component of the dish. I should have only made a half serving because I only ate a fish bites out of one bowl and dumped the rest of the soup down the drain. I should have also used only one fish fillet, but I used two. I still had one leftover so I made pan-fry fish since I had the ingredients for that.