Speaking of Fish.................how would you like to win some?

Nate and I decided to buy some very posh looking salmon with our costco gift card. It looks like this:Notice the pristine packaging and fancy description. In fact, it is so posh that you get to cook it on a the cedar plank that came with it!!!! The problem is that if we try to do this in our oven.....we might start a fire. Therefore we need a grill. We don't have one. This is where you gain......If you let us grill our fish on YOUR grill then you get to take a fish tax. We'll even throw in some of the apples that it comes with. The first one who posts a comment on this post is the big winner!!!! The only conditions are these:

1)You must live in Hurricane, Henderson, Vegas, or Cedar City (we don't travel anywhere else....)
2)You must comment by 6:00pm TODAY. We are leaving for Hurricane TODAY and we must know if we need to take the fish with us.
3) We must know who you are......you know people we've met at least once in person....
4) This is serious. We are not joking. Please comment to claim your prize!

If you would like to comment just for fun, please wait until after the first commenter has claimed their fish prize.

Thanks for playing!

To help get you in the spirit, here is a little video fun

Fish Dish

Sorry to those of you who don't like fish.....but fish is good. And I found out it is easy to cook. You put it in a baking dish, pour a bunch of delicious sauce (some you can buy or you can make your own easily), and bake it at like 425 for 20 min or so. Done. So easy. My mom has a good recipe for salmon with a sauce made from brown sugar and mustard....I haven't made it yet, but if I do I will post it. It sounds delicious to me. The salmon pictured above was made with a store bought lemon herb sauce. Fortunately, Ellie helped me prepare the salmon this time. She poured (I mean she dumped it on and a lot of it came out of the bottle) the sauce on, and it made it very delicious. The rice is out of a box. The company that boxed it is called Near East. Normally this box of rice would be expensive, but I purchased it on sale. It is fancy rice that contains orzo, which isn't even rice. See how they take care of you? The exceed expectations. To the left is zucchini fried with bacon. It turned out really tasty. Just add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, throw in some bacon and zucchini, cover with lid, cook on medium heat, and stir occasionally. When you run out of water, let the bacon fry a minute before adding more water. Repeat this process until the zucchini is done. Yes, I'm sure there is an easier way to do this.....but that's not how I did it...

Full Screen Blogs

Hi all! I figured out how to do full screen blogs. I've realized now, though, that it is difficult to make a blog design (full screen or small screen) that looks good on all computer screens. So if you want me to tweak something, let me know. I'm going to probably continue to be somewhat sporadic in my posting of new designs....so if you want a new design just let me know. If you go to www.shabbyprincess.com and then click on the free downloads section and let me know what paper you like and which elements you want, than I can get started. (You can mix elements and papers from different kits together. I have them all.) Or if you find some paper you want to buy and then you want me to design a blog for you, I would be more than happy to! Just email me. I would love to design one for you personally, but to design a whole bunch and try to anticipate tastes, is too much---so that is why new design posts on the bog will be sporadic.

I still am going to do some for the holidays coming up, I just won't do very many. Therefore, I may not post about it again on the Merinate blog, so just check into shabby chic blogs when the next holiday is coming up. ;) Again, let me know if you want me to do a holiday one just for you! (Let me know if you want an invite to the blog design blog).

My Clutterbag!

Hello all! Sorry that I have been out of commission. I have been on a major reading kick.

Now I have good news! Remember how months ago I mentioned that I was making my own clutterbag? Well it is finally finished!!!! With the help of my good friends Clair and Kaarina! I could not have done it without them. They deserve some kind of prize! Seriously, when I found out that clutterbags are like $60-$70, I was flabbergasted. Now that I've made my own, very labor intesive bag, I realized that those bags are worth every penny! And I had such good helpers. Thank you so much girls! Nate continues to entertain the idea that the bag is hideous, which I think is funny. Seriously, have you seen his collection of ties? What does Nate know about hideous? Just kidding Nate!!! I think you really DO have many fun ties.....I'm not really going to get rid of them.....promise......

Here are some pics:

Twin

I have always heard that somewhere in the world there is a person who looks just like you. I had always been skeptical until I went to Guatemala and found a bunch of people who looked like people I knew from Hurricane...only more Guaty.

I have finally found my double. A guy I play ping-pong with keeps telling me I look just like this guy, so I finally looked him up. Picture me with like 60 more pounds of muscle and 4 inches taller. This is how I would look.




Josh Barnett

The latest thing

Here is the latest version of Meridy's Favorite Song. It is written in her own private key signature or something. It always loses something in the recording, so I decided to add some stuff to compensate. I added a wahwah section and a gverb (like unto reverb) section. I would have to say that those are definitely my two favorite effects, at least when I'm composing my own music. Just for fun, I've also included a link to something I think is terribly funny. It makes me laugh heartily, and usually I'm in tears by the end. There is just something about that show that cracks me up to this day. Just follow the links:

Meridy's Favorite Song

Prometheus and Bob (Warrin, this one's for you)

I was going for That mustache feeling.

Unfortunately, my mustache is less suave than the Tick's. The low point came today, when I shaved off the chin beard and left the mustache to stand on it's own merits. All in all I still have to consider my latest facial hair experiment a success.

Here is a slide show so you can see the whole story.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

"Some of your songs deserve better than tunafish."

Meridy said that to me as I was making up some weird lyrics to some song I was playing. I decided to see if I could write more serious lyrics. I hope the results are not too serious. Just follow the link:

My ode to Las Vegas.

Still Alive

Things are going great. Mer's been distracted, so I figured I'd have to post something to let you know we're still here. I recorded the music today.

The second one is an Ellie and Daddy original, created on the fly. Ellie came up with the title. I didn't have enough new pictures to make another slide show, so I kifed one of Mer's scrapbooks.

Make a Smilebox slideshow Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Shabby Chic Designs: Interesting discovery

I just noticed that if you pull up the shabby chic blog on firefox, it cuts off the url addresses for the blog backgrounds. However, if you pull it up in internet explorer, it works. For some reason firefox is not word-wrapping the addresses. Weird huh? So use internet explorer. If you ever have problems reading an address, please let me know. I'm sure I can get the correct one to you somehow. ;)

Don't forget to watch Will's B-day videos below. They are funny. ;) I started the post, and Nate finished it. So when I refer to myself in the post, I really didn't. Nate did.