Gen-mai cha

This is a really great tea called gen-mai cha from Japan. It has brown rice in it (and even some little pieces that look like pop corn) and green tea leaves. It smells more like rice than it tastes. I drink this when I'm hungry because it kind of makes me feel like I'm eating but I'm not. It works .... sometimes. By the way, I'm using an awesome strainer I got at Han Ah Reum.

Tray for Being Couch Potatoes

Chad and I bought this tray a long time ago at Ikea because we sometimes like to carry food upstairs to eat while watching TV or while sitting in bed doing work. Yeah, I probably shouldn't admit that we do that, but ... it happens. We try not to eat in front of the TV and that is why we don't have a TV on the first floor, but when we do choose to carry up dinner, or snacks, it is much easier if we have a tray. Well I think that this was the first time we actually used it! We've been so busy that we hardly even go upstairs to watch TV and most nights we just eat as fast as we can downstairs and then move to other areas to do homework or whatever we need to do. We need to go to Ikea again soon to buy our new table/desk. I have no idea when we can do that though ...

Monthly Birthday Muffins

Because there are so many people in our office, we can't possibly celebrate everyone's birthdays. Well, we could but it would be like twice a week we would have to celebrate. So now we celebrate all the birthdays in a given month on the last Monday of the month. To celebrate we have muffins on that Monday morning instead of bagels. I like muffins, but only if they are nice and moist. This is the coffee cake muffin I had this morning which wasn't very moist. I'm not complaining because I think it's really nice that we are recognizing birthdays, but I actually kind of miss the bagels when we have the muffins. Chad's office goes all out for each birthday, but they have fewer people. Heather said today that maybe next time we'll try having donuts instead of muffins. That would be pretty tasty!

Exploding Cattail

So the other day I noticed some strange things in the dried plant display in our bathroom. At first I just thought they were some plants I forgot we had, but then I started looking more closely and I realized that the dry cattail in there had exploded! I guess it is trying to spread its seeds all over the world. Isn't that crazy? It's kind of cool looking but also kind of creepy.

By the way, we actually went out and did stuff today with Aunt Beth, my mom, and Deb but I forgot to take pictures so I used this one (I've been saving it for a special day). I hate when I forget to take a picture of the thing that was the main thing I did that day, but ... oh well. Hopefully I'll get better at it by the end of the year!

Cleaning Up

So I spent most of the day cleaning because we invited my parents and our neighbors over to have cake and ice cream for Chad's birthday. I hate cleaning, but I love how nice it is when it's clean! We do it so rarely because, well, we choose to spend our time in other ways.

Unwrapped Presents

This is one of the reasons I hate wrapping presents. When the person has finished opening them, you are left with all this paper that pretty much is going to be thrown away (or recycled if possible). I hope Chad liked his presents!

Chad's Birthday Presents

I just finished wrapping these presents for Chad's birthday tomorrow. I hate wrapping presents but I love the way they look when they are done. I think the main reason I hate wrapping them is that I hate #1 wasting paper (you know there are always little scraps that get thrown away) and #2 using the paper. Yes, I hate using the paper. Why? Well, because once I use it, I can't use it again. And I pretty much only buy paper that I really like, so I don't want it to be gone. And you know you can never find the same paper again because most companies that make really nice paper are always changing what they offer. Why is that? It's so aggravating! Especially Ikea. One year they will have great paper and the next year it will be just okay. Just FYI, the black paper as well as the plain brown paper are from Ikea and the green paper is from Target (it is reversible so both types you see are from the same roll - pretty neat!). I'm really excited to give Chad his presents tomorrow. I hope he likes them! I think I like giving presents even more than I like getting them, I just wish I didn't have to pay for them! Haha.