Eliza's Corner

I’ve spent the better part of 2009 reading both cooking and health blogs. During that time I realized that I didn’t have the equipment to try a lot of the recipes that appealed to me. Chris took matters into his own hands this Christmas and updated my cookware and part of my goal for January is to get the kitchen up to par. Anything that I find that is broken or has been replaced is going out to either goodwill or the dumpster.

I’m not planning on making Eliza’s Corner a permanent cooking blog but I decided I tend to get writers block or didn’t feel anything happened that was worth posting or wouldn’t have been smart to post so instead I decided to start focusing on year long projects to expand my talents in both cooking and some of my other hobbies in the coming years. I’ll continue to have an occasional post about other things going on outside the kitchen when the urge hits me but I’m hoping this stops my posting for a week or two and then disappearing for months on end.

I’m not a bad cook or even a complete novice but over the years I’ve mainly cooked from box meals and easy skillet meals with an occasional family recipe thrown in so my skills haven’t developed as well as some. So this year I’d like to change that by starting to cook more meals from scratch and try some more complicated recipes that I wouldn’t have braved in the past. 

Right now I’m starting out with a few cookbooks and magazines:

1. Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook ( the soft cover red plaid cover)
2. Make it Fast, Cook it Slow by Stephanie O’Dea (Christmas Gift from my awesome husband)
3. Gooseberry One Pot Meals (another Christmas gift from Chris)
4. and a few Food Network Magazines, some old Reiman publication magazines (Quick Cooking, Simple & Delicious, & a couple Taste of Home)

I have a few other cookbooks I want to pick up over the course of the year and I also want to try recipes found on some of my favorite cooking and health blogs.

Thanks 2009  for the inspiration and kick to make 2010 a year of cooking!

It took most of the evening but I finally finished my new theme design for the site.
Some of the new features:

• Sidebar is widgetized
• The top of the sidebar rotates breast cancer information
• My links have been updated to actually reflect the sites I visit normally
• If you click on the main site it reflects the same theme as the blog

In case you wonder what I’ve been up to the past couple of days I thought a short update was in order.

Rabbit: C called the Animal Shelter and let them know we found him in our area and to call us if someone calls looking for a lost rabbit. I checked the last couple of days newspapers and neither one of us had any luck finding the little guy’s owner. He’s been moved inside and he is now the resident of the second bedroom (office since it has all of our computers in it) since the mosquito population is out of control at night lately. House Rabbit Society has some interesting information about caring for a pet rabbit.

Website: the entrance to elizascorner.com has been updated but not finished. I plan to update the blog to look very similar.

School: I seem to be working my way through the longest terminology list. I’m planning on getting up early tomorrow and trying to work some extra study time in before C goes to work.

101 in 1001: revamp of list is almost ready and I plan to update it to the site this next weekend. The next step is to start working on my list so at the end of 1001 days I’m not stuck with a half a dozen things I could have done if I’d stop procrastinating.

Work: I’m currently working on doing some research into starting a VA business. I hope to be able to offer script installation, internet research, and other services I haven’t decided on at this time. I’m currently in the research and setting up phase and I’ll announce when I’m ready to launch.

In other thoughts C brought up that this year has flown by so much that it’s only 89 days until Christmas!

Yesterday would have been the blog’s first anniversary and during this past year I’ve only written about 136 posts. I enjoy blogging but my main problem is getting posts from my head at 3pm (or 3 am) to the computer several hours or days later.
I have some ideas of how I want to get in the habit of posting more each month.

• Write down that post in my head when I think of it and transfer it to the blog that evening.
• I’m presently working on a new fall template that I will hopefully be able to use in the next week or two.
• Eliza’s Corner is in October. I’m working on getting some posting ideas together now and some links to post during that time.
• I’m working on updating my 101 list. There were to many things that I know from our current situation aren’t going to happen. Travel out of state or the country isn’t going to happen due to C’s job changing and everything else we have going on right now.
• I’ve enjoyed participating in Favorite Things Saturday and I plan to participate more.
• I lurk to much so I’m going to try to post comments more on those blogs that inspire me.

Can you tell I like making lists? The problem with lists is the same as my posting problem. The lists get made and then promptly forgotten. I am also tackling that problem as we speak. Dishes, Laundry, and I have a lawn that has about a months worth of grass that needs to be mowed so I’m off to tackle those chores so they can be marked off yet another of my lists.

It’s official I can’t troubleshoot anything this week and get anywhere. It’s not just hardware or just software but everything and anything that can go wrong I can’t fix.

My voice/fax modem on my computer died yesterday (or it sounds good at this point) at work so all of the faxes we had come in came in chopped up or blank. I’ve already been trying to figure out what is going on over the last couple weeks when I had a few blank or chopped up pieces come through. The support department for the EMR software we use told me we needed a recommended modem (lucky me it’s only 30.00 from Newegg ) before they could help diagnose what is causing the problem. I went ahead and ordered it and it looks like I’ll be able to install it on Friday afternoon and then it’s wait and see if it improves over the weekend. Cross your fingers it works because working part time I lose time keeping up with records and scanning when I have to troubleshoot (unfortunately I normally enjoy troubleshooting better then the other but that’s another post and a whole other work type post)

On the home front I started working on integrating the front page of the site into the blog so you can go to Eliza’s Corner and be able to see the newest photo and last couple of posts in the sidebar. I also want to integrate my gallery and I’ll tossing the photoblog because it looks like the status of Zenphoto is far enough along I hopefully can work up or locate a template that will mimic the photoblog layout plus I’ll have one gallery and not several to keep track of when I upload photos. The coding of the layout for the front page is slowly coming along and I’ll admit I’m definitely not a expert on XHTML or CSS and if you looked at my source code it’s not the prettiest or even (more then likely) close to correctly coded but I’m having the hardest time getting the sidebar to stay without screwing up the background. It validates and any corrections I’ve made don’t fix the problem. I’ll keep working on it and possibly learn something but I was hoping for a quick facelift so I don’t spend too much time not studying. I’ve been trying to limit my working on the coding, etc to weekends and Fridays so the site may look a little off for a while. If everything eventually works out according to plan then I may also be adding back a sigtag a month to be requested so I don’t lose complete touch with my friends over at Graphic Goddesses and those that I still know from WOSIB.

I’m a little frustrated at work because beyond the hardware failing I can’t locate a cause or fix yet and at home because I’m probably staring the answer and I just don’t realize it.

A very humble apology to one of my best friends and hostee Shel for the downtime the last couple of days..one of the hard drives on the server we’re hosted on was failing so they had to take it down for maintenance yesterday. I’ll try to stay on top of things more in the future and try to let you know a little sooner.

More drama on the home front this weekend..not only did we find out we still have at least one mouse still in the walls but we had a clogged floor drain that soaked our front entryway and the carpet in the little closet in the living room. I made a batch of tea about 9:30 p.m. Saturday night and C thought he smelled sewer water and next thing you know we have water coming out of a pipe in the closet where the water heater and air conditioner are in the garage. It stopped without us having to turn off the water and our landlord had a plumber come out Sunday morning around 10 so everything is good now but I was really worried there for a moment because the water switch is in the ground out in the alley and it was really kind of disturbing with the bugs that had taken residence up in it. I’m happy to report after an hour and 45 minutes we now have one unclogged drain, a working disposal (ok I felt a little dumb about this one..how was I to know a quick turn with an allen wrench and the darn thing would be fixed?), and our toilet tank has been fixed. All is good in the water department in our house that’s for sure! LOL

We caught two more mice wednesday for a total of 4 so far. We also spent a little while walking around the outside of the house checking for holes the little critters could get in through. All three, surrounding pipes logically, are now blocked with steel wool and on Saturday this week will be filled in with caulk for extra security. I just may survive this little adventure yet.
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My kitchen is now organized with the help of some additional plastic containers for sugar, flour, and corn meal. I also got about 12 little square containers to hold my spices so now that cabinet doesn’t look like a disaster site. My project next week is to find replacement frames for our pictures and get them on the wall before the weekend is up.

C, poor guy, is currently fighting the crud going around town these days and I’m trying to get rid of some fluid in my ears (the constant popping was about to drive me absolutely nutty!) so I guess I better shut things down tonight and I know I’ll have a few updates relating to my 101 list in the next day or so. Wish me luck!

Note: Templates may change on Ramblings while I try to locate one that will work with my gallery2 install and that I can look at modifying in the future.

I’ve redone my main site so many times that right now I don’t have anything there! It used to house my tag gallery and IM stats but due to the copyright problems out there and I’m almost positive I’m the slowest person out there to fill tag requests I was ready to chunk everything and start over. Seeing that I have no idea what I’ll be doing from scratch I’m going to bring my other pages back into the site. Since I still have an Always list I’m going to move my tag gallery and current extra’s back over to my gallery from fotki. My current idea is to keep all my artistic endevours on that section of the site and my personal thought, etc. will show up here. So my pictures that are family related will be located in this gallery and my tags, C4D artwork, pixels & dolls will be found on the main site.

Crossing my fingers this works.

New name..thanks to my dear & best friend Shel! I managed to save my entries from the last time around so I reloaded them and we’ll see what happens. Need to hit the plug-ins and start adding back some of my favorite features.

I did manage to walk a little this week. The neighborhoods next to us form two squares that I can get a good 15-20 minute walk out of at lunch or in the evening. Between a little walking, moving, and weed pulling I’ve lost 4 pounds since we moved into the new duplex on the 15th of last month!  So that would be 4 down and about 21 to go. Oh well..you have to start somewhere!

I can’t wait until next weekend,this one is pretty much delegated to cleaning, tag requests, revamping my main site, because I get to start on some new batches of soap! I ordered an ACTUAL wooden mold to use with these batches instead of the old drawer organizers I used a few years ago. I need to get recipes together and buy some oil and lye.  I have about 5 batches that I want to make in the next couple of weeks.
Planned batches are:
Pumpkin Spice
Vanilla
Unscented with Shea butter
Oatmeal
Apple Cinnamon

I have a friend who makes gift baskets as a side business, matter of fact I’m working on a website for her, and I’m planning on giving her some and if she likes it I may start making some batches for her to use with her gift baskets. I already have requests from a friend of C’s and my father-in-law for a batch of the Unscented with Shea butter (to use when he shaves) and Oatmeal soap. I’m also making a some Vanilla for a co-worker who just found out she’s expecting a new addition to the family! She’s due in April so I figure pampering Mom now would be a cool idea. The other two scents I’m making for the upcoming holidays.

<center>I CAN’T WAIT!</center>

Well I finally made it out the door and walked my 2.5 miles today. I had a lovely conversation with two of the little kids down the block who were walking up to the park also. Still not to sure how to answer the do you have kids? Are you going to have kids soon? questions when asked so sweetly by curious little girls but hopefully I’ll be able to answer “soon” or “in a couple of months” within the next year. I managed to make it up there and back to the house before the latest storm attempted to blow in but as usual it took a detour around Lubbock.

Still learning my way around Wordpress and the various plugins but I added Asymptomatic’s Countdown plugin to list upcoming events such as the last Star Wars film, Birthday’s, and Anniversaries and Jeremiah’s Weather Icon Plugin. Seeing that I plan on plotting my exercise and attempt to lose weight I figure the weather might be a good thing to track. Closing things up for tonight and heading to bed.