Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Fruit Smoothie Anyone?


I’m trying to eat a little healthier. I’ve been making my own fruit smoothies with frozen bananas, frozen strawberries or any other kind of frozen fruit I have on hand. Anytime I have excess fruit that I can’t eat, I’ll put it in a freezer bag and freeze it and it makes really yummy fruit smoothies. I’ll add whatever fruit juice I have and a little bit of water and blend away.

My daughter Rita recently gave me some kale that I juiced. I then froze it in individual containers and I plop that in my smoothie.

The other day I asked my husband if he’d like a fruit smoothie. He said, “Sure!” I put bananas and strawberries into his with a little juice. I decided to skip the kale juice after he saw me eating kale chips and wanted to know if I got those out of the compost pile. He walked away that day and mumbled, “My wife eats yard waste.”

I added kale to my smoothie.

After I asked him how he liked his smoothie and he said it was good, I asked if he wanted to try mine. I thought if I didn’t tell him what was in it, he wouldn’t even notice and tell me how good it was and then I’d surprise him and tell him he had some yard waste!

He took a sip, jumped off the couch gagging. “Egads, what’d you put in that thing?” Only ‘Egads” wasn’t really what he said.

“I added kale to mine.”

“That’s awful.”

“Oh no, it’s not. It’s good. You can hardly taste the kale.”

He was in the bathroom coughing and gagging. I sat on the couch rolling my eyes because really, you could hardly taste any difference. Then again, I might be used to green stuff in my drinks. He gags when he sees me stir Superfood in my juice. I guess it could be an acquired taste.

He sat back down on the couch. He shivered watching me sip on my smoothie. I said to him, “Really, it’s just like yours, only mine has a little kale added.”

He scrunched his face and said, “That’s like saying your chocolate malt is the same as mine, only yours has a little turd added.”

We both laughed until tears ran down our cheeks.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

I'm Here To Tell You...


The event on Not Your Mothers Book… On Family and On Being a Mom

was cool, but also on this mid-July evening in St. Louis the weather was cool - as 20 local contributors (Candace Carabus, Cathi R. Lamarche, Donna Volkenannt, Ellie Grossman, Jenny Beatrice, Laura Graf, Marcia Gaye, Mary Horner, PatriciaWahler, Renee Hughes, Sioux Roslawski, T'Mara Goodsell, Sheree Nielsen, Jamie Krakover, Laura Ray, Verna Simms, Melissa Fuoss, Victoria Nichols and myself) to the Not Your Mother Book series (On Family and On Being a Mom) gathered with co-editors, also local St. Louisan’s – Linda O’Connell (On Family) and Dianna Graveman (On Being a Mom).

Dianna and Linda

The book launch/signing/reading took place (7/15) at STL Books in Kirkwood, where owner, Robin Theiss talked about her store—a huge supporter of St. Louis writers and anything St. Louis, along with used, new and rare books. She introduced John Heithaus from Family Resource Center. Ten percent of all sales that evening were donated to Family Resource Center, an organization for abused and neglected children.

In addition to the local contributors, there were other local writers giving their support (Kim Lehnhoff, Teri Sanders, Lou Turner to name a few). I was happy to see my friend, Nancy. Her son recently opened a pharmacy in Kirkwood. My sister Sue and my two daughters, Jessica and Rita dropped in. I have such a good supportive family… as my cousin, Linda also stopped by.

Turns out, my sister Sue went to grade school with John (Family Resource Center) and after speaking with him, I realized he taught a PSR class one summer that my BFF and I attended. Small world.

That world got smaller when I realized Linda’s sister, Janice, used to work with Donna (contributor). Donna is also a great aunt to my daughter Rita’s boyfriend. Just goes to show, everyone seems to have some sort of connection with someone.

Linda, Dianna and Robin (along with other ‘behind the scene’ helpers) outdid themselves with tons of treats to eat and drink, and attendance prizes. Funny stories were shared and the event was a big success.

Be sure to stop in at STL Books anytime you’re in Kirkwood. If you have some spare change you’d like to donate, I’m sure Family Resource Center would love it if you helped their worthy cause.

Thanks Everyone!
Here I am in the middle of my two daughters (Left: Rita, Right: Jessica)

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

And the Winner is...

The winner to receive Well Versed 2014 signed by the infamous WWWPs is:

LISA
Congratulations! Send me your address via email at: lober13(at)gmail(dot)com

This time, what I did: I folded each name on a piece of paper and instead of picking them out of a hat, I flung them up in the air and said, "whichever one lands closest to my feet, will be the winner."

And don't forget to waddle on over to the book launch/signing event tonight, see previous post!


Thursday, July 10, 2014

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Want to Win a Copy of Well Versed 2014?


 About a month ago, there was a book launch for Well Versed 2014. Now’s your chance to win your very own copy, signed by the infamous WWWPs (my critique group – we are all in this book).  Oh, and how do you win a copy? Just comment below and your name will go into a drawing and I’ll announce the winner next week! 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Seriously...


For those of you who have been so kind to be tortured fulfilled in viewing my sketches every day for the past three months, I'd like to thank you. Yes, I blogged every day since April… I wanted to hold myself accountable to someone so that I would sketch every day. I’m pretty sure I got it down. So much so, I’ve decided to illustrate my own children’s book. I'm not sure if I have what it takes, but I'm willing to try. Oh baby. Since blogging daily and drawing daily takes up a lot of time, the only way I’m going to tackle illustrating a children’s book is by doing it. Something has to give. I’ll post once a week just to show you my progress… with drawing. Oh, and I still plan to tackle the thesaurus and drawing to the words, I’ll just be on a bit of a break from that for a while... I only have some 700+ words to go.

Until next week, enjoy and wish me luck!