Kara Wahlgren

wordsmith. grammar champion. picture taker.

Archives for November 2011

Why I’m Thankful for My Messy Life…

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I have a bad habit of stressing out about the rooms I haven’t cleaned, the projects I haven’t started, and the clutter I can’t control. But I’m still thankful for all those things I stress about on a daily basis. In the spirit on Thanksgiving, here’s why I’m thankful for my messes:
I’m thankful for the heap of dirty laundry on the bathroom floor, the footie pajamas piled up on the dry sink in the living room in lieu of real decorations, the baskets of hand-me-downs that I keep meaning to organize, and the lost socks collecting dust bunnies under my bed. It’s nice to know my kids and I have clothes to keep us warm.

I’m thankful for the frozen-veggie avalanche that falls out of the freezer every time I open it. It’s annoying, and some veggies hurt worse than other at the speed of gravity (eff you, frozen spinach blocks!), but it’s a lot easier than wondering where our next meal is coming from.

I’m thankful to have friends who don’t care if my house is cluttered and dusty with occasional spiders. Or I’m thankful to have friends who pretend not to care—either way, it’s appreciated.

I’m thankful that my to-do list is so freaking long that it takes up three Stickies on my desktop and gives me a minor panic attack every time I look at it. It means people are still hiring me to do things I love doing.

I’m thankful to have a husband who won’t nominate me for What Not to Wear, no matter how many times I beg him to, because he doesn’t think my situation is dire enough. That’s a pretty sweet compliment, especially on days when I’m still wearing pajama pants at 4 p.m.

I’m thankful that our walls have been gouged by Tonka trucks, our floors are sticky with juice, and our computer screens are covered in chocolate handprints. If my biggest worry is how to get Mr. Potato Head parts out of the VCR, I’m a lucky parent. I’m thankful that my kids are healthy enough to cause mayhem.

Life is good.

And last, I’m thankful that calories don’t count on Thanksgiving! Proven fact.

Happy Turkey Day! ☺

7 Reasons I think this Video is B.S.

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There’s a decent chance you’ve already seen this video, since it’s racked up a quarter-million views in the past four days. But I’m calling fraud on it. Watch it and see what you think:

Look, as the mom of two toddler boys, I’ve walked in on my share of messes. And it’s because I’ve walked in on my share of messes that I can spot these red flags in this video.

  1. In real-toddler-world, all five pounds of flour would be in a big pile in the middle of the kitchen. Once a toddler discovers something that can be spilled, the world stands still until every last drop has been dumped on the floor. I’ve watched my one-year-old sit at the kitchen table and shake juice out of a leak-proof sippy cup for upwards of ten minutes. I’ve found him in a mountain of wipes, but I’ve never found a trail of wipes throughout the house. Toddlers tend to keep their messes confined to their current location, a.k.a. the location where mom currently isn’t.
  2. I don’t see two kids running with a bag of flour, period. A toddler with a five-pound bag of flour is like me with a 20-pound bag — not gonna happen unless you’re talking about this kid. There’s flour on the couch — that’s over their heads. Could you hold a 20-pound bag of flour in one hand and casually toss flour over your head with another? On that note…
  3. What’s with the weird spots of flour on the picture frame? I’ve spilled a lot of flour, and I can safely say that flour doesn’t clump when it hits glass. Unless, say, you’re a fame-hungry youtube mom going for maximum shock value, so you spritz a little water on the glass first. Just sayin’.
  4. The TV has a light dusting on the edge. Very thoughtful of her kids to leave the most expensive thing in the room relatively unscathed. My kids, in contrast, have a magnetic pull to the most valuable thing in the room, which is why they’ll draw on my computer monitor with a Sharpie when there’s a blank notebook right in front of them.
  5. When I notice my kids have been unusually quiet, I don’t grab the video camera just in case they’ve decided to antique my living room furniture.
  6. If I ever stepped out of the bathroom and saw a trail of flour in the hallway, I wouldn’t mutter, “Oh…oh, boy.” It’d be more like, “GET IN TIME OUT RIGHT NOW! HOW DID YOU EVEN FIND THE FLOUR?! IT’S ON THE TOP SHELF OF THE CABINET! HOW THE FREAK LONG WAS I IN THE BATHROOM? DO THEY EVEN MAKE A VACUUM THAT CAN FIX THIS?!?!?” But, I guess you can’t just hand your boys a bag of flour, help them powder the room, and then yell at them — that would confuse them. Just sayin’ again.
  7. She disabled comments. Go figure.

So, what do you think — real or fake?

RECIPE: Slutty Brownies = the perfect storm of desserts!

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I want to tell you about the best brownies in the whole wide world.

Brownies + Oreos + chocolate chip cookies = wheeeeee sugar WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I think I have vertigo.

Disclaimer: This isn’t my recipe. In fact, let me start by explaining how I create the recipes I post on here. I have no cooking skills, so I can’t just “throw a few things together” in the kitchen because the outcome will usually be surprising in a really bad way. So instead, I start by Googling whatever I feel like eating (“mexican pork slow cooker”) and then skim a bunch of recipes to find ingredients I recognize (“corn!”). There’s usually a bit of follow-up Googling (“substitute for dill?” or “can you mix basil and cilantro?”) and eventually, I come up with a list of ingredients that will, most likely, taste okay when put together. My husband gets the lucky job of lab-testing the meals (“Welcome home, honey, I put jelly in the meatloaf!”) and then the ones that don’t suck (in my final and overriding opinion) wind up on here.

When three or four days go by without a recipe, you should really feel bad for my husband. Send him a lasagna or something.

But when I stumbled across this recipe, I knew it was solid gold. I ran out to the store at 10:00 at night to get the ingredients. I didn’t need to tweak, substitute, or simplify anything. So, I can’t lay any claim to this recipe — all I can do is bow down to The Londoner for sharing her stroke of culinary genius with the interwebs. I think she’s my new girl crush, but that could just be the sugar high talking.

She calls them Slutty Brownies — if that term makes you cringe, try to look past it, because these brownies will make you lose your moral compass.

Click here for the full recipe from The Londoner.

Short version: Line the bottom of a greased 9×13 baking pan with cookie dough batter (I used Betty Crocker bagged mix and added an extra Tbsp of water and an extra Tbsp of applesauce to the batter, like the recipe suggests). Then a layer of Oreos. Then pour brownie batter over that, and cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. It comes out looking like this:

Unbutton your pants because you’re going to want to eat, like, five.

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