I’m so excited to be going on a road trip this weekend. We are going to my college alma mater mainly to take pictures since I blog about the school, Mississippi State, for 451 Press.

It’s close enough that we can just take the car and not have to fly and worry about luggage or tsa locks. I loved taking road trips in college. It’s been a long time since we have just went somewhere without a real agenda. It should be relaxing and fun.

The reason for the trip is to get some photos for use with the blog because it’s really hard to find pictures that are free to use. Besides if they are my photos then I can do whatever I want with them without having to worry about copyright.

Tomorrow I have lots to do to get ready. Oh it’s going to be loads of fun!

We’re watching Stardust. It just started but I’m looking forward to it since I’ve heard it compared to the Princess Bride, not necessarily the same subject but the same spirit.

Apparently what looks to be the hero of the movie has just been transported to another world. If he lived in our time and reported a different world, he might be put in a drug rehabilitation program in a blink of an eye. He met a woman and now he has a child. Now we’re into the plot. It’s time to watch and blog later.

I found this simple recipe for Sugared Pita Chips and had to try it since it sounded yummy. All you need is:

Flat pita bread
Can of non-stick spray
1 tablespoon sugar

Split and cut pita bread into 8 wedges. Place on a baking sheet.

Next sprinkle with sugar.

Heat oven to 350 degrees and back for 15-18 minutes or until pita chips begin to brown. For my oven this was more like 10 minutes.

These were a nice treat especially while they were still warm. Once they were cool, I found them to be a little hard for my taste. Fast to make and fast to clean up. Definitely a nice little treat to make even with the kids.

Oh to find that much joy using the dryer..

Our local playdate group was planning to do colored bubbles at a recent gathering. Raegan loves bubbles, so I hated we missed it. Since we couldn’t make it, I decided that we could do colored bubbles at home. A quick Google search came up with the magic formula for colored bubbles:

Bubble solution
powdered tempera paint

Voila! That’s it. So, I bought some bubbles and couldn’t find powdered tempera paint. I just bought the regular kind and hoped that it would work, too. I first place the bubble solution in a jar and then added some paint:

I then stirred like crazy because the paint just didn’t want to mix in with the bubble solution. The next day we headed out to test it. Raegan, of course, took charge of it and promptly spilled it on the ground. This was taken right before the incident:

So, I went back inside and do it again. This time I added more paint since I was rushing to get it done. I just squeezed the paint bottle over the solution. Probably about a teaspoon or more of paint plopped into the jar. I then put the lid on the jar and shook it vigorously for a few seconds. The color was a darker red and mixed a lot better.

Now it was time for the test. I decided to use Raegan’s bubble blowing machine so I could get some pictures of the bubbles. They had a light tint to them. You might can see the red drop of paint that is at the bottom of the bubble. This has me thinking that maybe the powder paint is a better way to go:

I will probably try the colored bubbles experiment again when I find the powder tempera paint, which might be a craft store purchase.

When I bake a cake or cookies, I use my <a href=”http://www.geekyhousewife.com/?p=446″>spatula</a> to mix the ingredients and then use it to transfer the batter to the cooking pan. Batter has a tendency to stay on the spatula.

This is why I always use the back of a spoon to scrape off the batter from the spatula. Then I use the spatula to scrape what sticks to the spoon. Repeating this a few times usually gets all but a little bit of the batter into the cooking pan.

I don’t like to dirty up dishes unnecessarily but this method really speeds up the baking process for me.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is one of those shows that if you watch more than 2 minutes of any part, you are hooked for the rest of the show. Tonight’s episode is for an Alabama family that is very service oriented. They have six boys, the youngest who has Downs Syndrome.

Of course, the new house is gorgeous and meets all the needs of the family. I wonder just how they do it in 7 days? I know they do some work off site and beforehand but still that is a lot to accomplish in a week.

If they were to do my house, as long as my bedroom had a memory foam mattress it would be perfect. Seriously, as long as I have a comfortable place to sleep, everything else is just icing in the cake.

So I watched the very beginning of tonight’s show and had to watch all of it. At least it’s isn’t a tearjerker one. I would need probably the rest of the night to recover from all the emotion.

I’m anxious to plant some flowers. Since we haven’t hit our last frost of the year, I’ve planted some seeds in containers, so I can cover them on cold nights. Here is a picture taken a few days after I planted the seeds:

And here is how they have grown in just a few days:

So we are seeing much progress from the sunflower seeds. I get so excited to check on them each morning because it seems there is a new one that has sprouted up. Hopefully we will have a bunch of sunflowers this summer, which will make for great photo opportunities.

Congrats to Andrea who blogs at Scissors cut Paper. She won the Pirates of the Caribbean portable CD player through the Ultimate Blog Party. I got in the mail today, so it’s on its way.

If you would like to see the complete list of winners from the Ultimate Blog Party, it’s posted at 5 Minutes for Mom.

To say that my daughter loves bath time just doesn’t seem to describe how much she enjoys it. She has a ton of ducks and other bath toys. Her favorite by far -both inside and outside the tub - is the Smart Splash Color Play Penguins.

It’s a set of 6 penguins each with their own color ring. Each penguin has a shape on it’s top hat that matches their ring. Raegan loves to take them out of their tube and place them back in it during bath time. When she is not playing with them in the tub, the penguins can usually be found in her play doll house or even in her bed as she sometimes go to sleep with them.

The penguins have been a great toy for her. They have helped teach her colors and shapes. Plus she has so much fun playing with them with her other toys.

We just bought Rae a sand/water table that the penguins will probably migrate to this summer. They have been a very versatile toy, entertaining Rae for hours on end. Overall it’s been a fun toy for both bath and any time.