No Green Beer Needed

I love traditions -- keeping up with old or making new, I LOVE them! As long as I can remember, every year my family has celebrated St. Patrick's Day with the Stalder Family. In fact, I think the tradition may have started before I was even born. But, when is not important -- the fun we have together is. Every year Cindy makes corned beef and cabbage and we eat just about every green veggie imaginable along with mashed potatoes and gravy and green Kool-Aid. And ALWAYS have Grasshopper pie for dessert. yummmmm! In the past couple years, us kids have made celebrating more difficult by going to college and moving away.

So, this year I decided to try making my own corned beef and cabbage. How hard can it be? Well, the picture above is definitely not my end result. It was ok -- it tasted like corned beef, but it wasn't the perfect, fall apart, juicy staple Cindy makes. But it's not the food that matters, it's the celebration. I had fun celebrating my Irish heritage (all 1/16th of it!) and I hope you did as well! :-)

Pillow Talk

About a week ago my husband asked “why is it that girls need to have a side of the bed?”

It seems that whenever we have slept together I’ve always held the left side of the bed – when looking at the pillows from the bottom of the bed – no matter which side of the room the door is on or if the bed’s against the wall or not.

I couldn’t give him an answer. But, I’ve been thinking about his question ever since…

I did some online research. I didn’t find much of anything scientific, but a couple other blogs that were discussing this same topic. There weren’t many people that said they didn’t have a “side of the bed”. I found it interesting that many people are exactly the opposite from us – with the woman sleeping on the right side. For some, it depended on where the door in the room was. They said the man slept on the side closest to the door so that if someone broke in, they could defend their girlfriend/wife.

I found one really interesting piece of information, too, on ask.metafilter.com.

Someone wrote: “I know that there’s some kind of tradition regarding walking beside a woman on the sidewalk. Men were supposed to stand between the woman and the street so that if any mud was splashed up by a passing carriage, the man would bear the brunt of the mud.”

I LOVE this idea! I’m going to start making Tanner walk street-side. :-)

So how about you? Which side of the bed do you sleep on? I’m thinking about mixing it up… trying out the right side. But, it doesn’t really make a difference for us; for the majority of our sleep time isn’t together, so we both get the entire bed – and both of us choose to sleep in the middle. :-)

Brownies!

I made brownies over my lunch break today that were such a hit at work (as you can see...), that I had to share them!  I got the recipe from my friend Heather. 

Heather's Easy Brownies
1 box cake mix (any flavor)
1/2 cup oil
2 Tbsp. water
2 eggs
1 bag baking chips (any flavor)

Combine mix, oil, water and eggs.  Add chips.  Pour into greased 9x13 pan.  Bake for 20 minutes at 350.

Enjoy!  :-)