Toys for Us & the Furkids

We started off our new year by undecorating the house, stashing the Christmas decorations back in the attic, and cleaning up. Amazing how those needles spread all over! And I found a good bit of cat fur on the tree skirt [eh hum, Chester I know that was from you ;) ].

After tidying up ourselves, Trent & I went out to spend some of those gift cards that are burning a hole in our pockets. :D My sister & brother-in-law gave me a copy of Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, for Christmas. Admittedly it's a cookbook for fixing healthier meals for kids, but, truth be told, I think it looks pretty good and could stand to have a little extra dose of "good for me" in my meals so I'm pretty excited about it. So much, I've already read up on the part about how to puree fruits & veggies. This is new to me. I own a food processor but have only used it maybe twice.

One thing I found interesting, was the mention of the "as seen on TV" item - the Magic Bullet. Dare I admit this? I've watched that infomercial and said "how cool does that look." Hmm...maybe I should have withheld that? Well, Jessica said Jerry ordered one and they use it. If the Seinfeld's own one does that make it cool? Perhaps. I also see the advantage of using it to quickly puree a small amount for the two of us versus dragging out the food processor. And there's the less to clean up part. Always a good thing in my opinion. Returning to my comment about the gift cards burning a hole - are you on to me now? I did a quick online search, grabbed a 20% coupon and we bought the one and only Magic Bullet at Bed, Bath & Beyond today.

We haven't tried out our new toy yet. I washed up a couple of the pieces and skimmed the cookbook it came with. The Iced Mocha recipe looks really good. Might try that in the morning - if I dare in 20 degree weather to drink an iced coffee.

After Bed, Bath & Beyond, we visited a few other stores including Michael's where I had a 50% off coupon and a gift card. I used that coupon for a Xyron refill and picked up some other goodies including patterned paper that was 30% off. Meanwhile, Trent did our necessary pet shopping next door at Petsmart. However, they did not have one item we needed so we visited Petco as well. And the kids ended up with an unexpected gift. I had been wanting to get a new cat "tree" for them. They have a small carpeted one in our dining room that I want to move into the scrap room. I bought it 6 or so years ago from Petsmart, but their newer cat furniture isn't as well made in my opinion. I decided to see what Petco had while we were there and we found a nice Petco brand piece that was on sale. Cali has already explored it from bottom to top. Chester, our scaredy cat, still isn't too sure about this "new thing." I think it looks good in our dining room and am curious to see if having the old tree in the scrap room will allow me to have my chair back. ;)