Martha Stewart, I Hate You!

Hate is a strong word- more accurately I hate Martha Stewart's website. I found this great recipe to make homemade bath fizzies! And I thought, "What a great gift for my friend Gabby," who is coming down this weekend for her birthday. Fun right? So i got all the ingredients- ordered a 5 lb bag of citric acid online and today I finally made them. I followed the instructions on the site- what I thought was perfectly and then I'm realizing that something isn't right... After you start adding the water/food coloring mixture it's supposed to dampen a bit but not fizz- well, mine was fizzing. Maybe my water to food coloring ratio was off but i had to keep spritzing the mixture or it wouldnt take on the purple color. So it just kept fizzing and fizzing and it's supposed to be 'packable'. Well mine was certainly not that; it was like, growing... fizzing higher and higher. Once I spooned it into the ice cube trays and it looked like this:

I knew somewhere in there I had gone horribly wrong.

So now I'm left with a nasty- although relaxing smelling- mess (lavender breeze) and no thoughtful homemade birthday gift for Gabby.

So here's what I'm annoyed about... the website doesn't have step by step pictures- and maybe because I'm a visual person this helps me more than it might others- but this is more complicated than it looks and I now am let with less than enough cornstarch and baking soda to give it another go :(

I WILL try again though. Soon. Because homemade bath fizzies are just too cute to give up on.

I'm boring, I know.

I'm home sick from work today so it's the perfect time to post! I wish I had something interesting to post about. Oh well. Last night I had two of my best friends over for dinner.. I had planned on making tortellini with chicken and homemade alfredo (a personal specialty) and garlic bread... but then when I was sitting at my computer at work I found myself craving cheddar buttermilk biscuits. I discovered these little beauties at a delicious restaurant in Napa called Farmstead... if you're ever there go to this restaurant. Anyway, because of that little craving I tossed the idea of italian, despite the fact i already had half the ingredients in my house, in search of something that would go with these cheddar buttermilk biscuits, aka: comfort food.


I thought about chicken pot pie- but I don't have those individual bowls to cook them in, I thought about shepard's pie- but it looks weird and one of my friends is allergic to peas, and finally landed on beef stew. I've eaten it plenty in my life but never made it and honestly I really wanted to bust out my crock pot again :) So I used this recipe from Paula Dean as a guideline and adjusted it with beef broth, onion soup mix... flour.. whatever I decided I felt like tossing in there. I was a little concerned things wouldn't turn out well b/c I was making 2 things I'd never attempted before.. BUT everything turned out great!! The stew was delicious, the biscuits were to die for, the mashed potatoes were of course yummy but they're easy, and well the salad was salad.


I also made individual pies in a jar for dessert but we didnt get to eat them b/c the boys wanted to go to the wine bar down the street. So we went and they were closing, then we went to main street and found a bar and continued to bar hop for a while- who goes out on a wednesday night?! Us apparently. I was so exhausted by the first bar I was tired and ready to go home, but no one else did... mhrrr. Oh well we had fun but at a price.. Staying up later than 10:30 (i'm apparently a 23 yr old granny) made the cold I'd been fighting off finally win- hence my sick day.


SO to make myself feel better I'm getting my hair done tomorrow and I'm going- wait for it.... BLONDE! It was between fire red and blonde, and since I went red this time last year I decided it's time to have more fun.


Is this not the most boring post ever? I'm tempted to just delete the whole thing. I'm too tired to think of something clever and entertaining. oh well.