VGNO: The Vacation Edition

I haven't been participating in the Virtual Girls' Night Outs that Ann's been doing the last few Fridays, honestly, because I've got less naptime on my hands over here. Baby is officially taking one nap a day now, so I've lost an hour to an hour and a half of "mom time" and I'm still trying to figure out how to get everything done in a shorter period of time. But I've been wanting to participate! I've missed you guys!

This week, Ann's talking about vacation time. I haven't taken a vacation in a long time. I'm not entirely sure that I miss that, because I wouldn't want a vacation without my kiddo, and that would be a lot of work, surely. On the bright side, though, Husband is taking a week off very soon, and we'll get to have a bit of a stay-cation with lots of family time. Hopefully we won't drive each other batty.

The best part of him taking some vacation time is that hopefully I can have some vacation time, too, and get some things done, try some new recipes and handle some projects I've put off (like dealing with my closet!). And I have a feeling I'll wind up baking some super yummy donuts for breakfast here and there!

Ann's got a fun little game for VGNO...

"The Name Game"

Use the first letter of your name to answer the questions. Your answers need to be real places, names and things. Nothing made up :-> (You cannot use your name for #3 boy/girl "name" question.)

1. What is your name: Elizabeth

2. A 4 Letter Word: Eats

3. A Boys Name: Edgar

4. A Girls Name: Elyse

5. An Occupation: Elephant handler

6. A Color: Emerald

7. Something you wear: Earrings

8. A Beverage: Egg nog (ewww - here's an egg nog true story: as a kid, one Christmas, I woke up in the middle of the night to have a glass of milk, go to the fridge and there's already a glass poured, so I take a sip, and ewww! It's egg nog! I spit it all over the floor and had to clean it up)

9. A Food: Eggplant

10. Something found in the bathroom: Excedrin

11. A place: Edinburgh, Scotland

12. A Reason for being late: Earache (this is pathetic!)

13. Something you shout: Errr!

Virtual Girls' Night Out: The Birthday Edition

It's Friday, so that means it's time for another Virtual Girls' Night Out. My apologies in advance, all you blog hoppers, I'm going out for a girls' night out with some dear friends tonight, so I'll be checking out your blogs belatedly either late tonight or sometime tomorrow.

It's our lovely hostess Ann's birthday (well, almost, it's tomorrow), so she's throwing herself an early birthday party, with a neat birthday cocktail and Coldplay as her house party band. This week, Ann's curious who you would have play at your birthday party, if money were no object...

This one was tough for me, because I'm a total music fan. As a teenager, I'd plug in my headphones for just about every activity I enjoyed - reading, sleeping, homework, you name it. I always wanted to have a soundtrack to my activities. Now, I'm an avid iPod freak, and am constantly making new playlists. I realized that the best way to tackle this question was to look to see what's played the most on my iPod. Kind of funny.
There are only four artists that show up in my Top 25 on my iPod, and they couldn't be more random. Paramore, Linkin Park & Jay Z (one of my favorite CDs for exercising), Travis, and Jimmy Eat World. I think in a perfect world, I'd love to have like a Type-A-Mommy-palooza kind of celebration that included all of them. If I had to pick just one, though, I'm awfully torn between Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. If I could go back in time, I'd love to have The Cure, back in the 80's when they were absolutely awesome, perform for my birthday. I just love, love, love their old stuff.

So who would you pick? If you had a ton of money to spend on your birthday, who would be your artist of choice? I think music says a lot about a person, so I can't wait to see your answers. Happy Friday everyone!

Virtual Girls' Night Out: The Reality Show Edition

Woo hoo! TGIF! Time for a Virtual Girls' Night Out! Things have been hairy the last few weeks, so I've been a little M.I.A., but I fully plan to get my blog hopping on tonight!

Those of you who read my blog faithfully surely are aware of my addiction to reality programming. You name it, I've probably watched it at least once. And while some reality TV fails to impress me, a good bit of it is darn entertaining.

I especially love reality programming that's talent-related, like "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance." Ann, our lovely host of the original Virtual Girls' Night Out, reminded me of a reality show that's now defunct that was one of my absolute favorites - "Rock Star: Supernova."

The whole "Rock Star" thing started with "Rock Star: INXS," where a bunch of rock star wannabes auditioned to become the new Michael Hutchence (who was pretty darn irreplaceable, if you ask me). Then the next year, they had "Rock Star: Supernova," casting a lead singer for a brand new band called Supernova, made up of numerous band castoffs, including Dave Navarro, one of the guys from Guns n Roses, Tommy Lee, and one of the guys from Metallica. On "Rock Star: Supernova" there were two people who truly captivated me, that I rooted for wholeheartedly (neither of whom won, of course): Storm Large and Ryan Star.





After seeing the last few seasons of "American Idol" wind up with a few decent rockers, I've been mildly surprised not to see the whole "Rock Star" franchise not come back, but who knows, time will tell. It was definitely a good show, while it lasted, even if the bands it created or completed didn't exactly succeed.

And lucky Miss Ann actually went to see Storm Large live in concert!! I'm so jealous. She was celebrating her anniversary, and she's curious this week if you've met the love of your life, and if so, how did you meet?

While the story of how I met and fell in love with my husband is kind of complicated, the short answer as to how we met is that we went to the same college, and on the first day of my first spring semester of school, I was taking a class called Writing for Electronic Communication, and he was in my class.

So this week, I have two questions - what is your favorite reality TV program, current or retired? And have you been lucky enough to meet the love of your life, and if so, how did you meet? Can't wait to read your answers!!

Virtual Girls Night Out: The Pink Lady Edition

Wow, this week really flew by fast. Fortunately, it's another Virtual Girls' Night Out, hosted by the hostess with the most-ess, Ann of Ann Again...and again! This week, we're celebrating the start of summer vacation (at least for those of us with school-aged kids).

So, if you're anything like me, you've seen "Grease" more times than you can count. I even own it, though I haven't watched it since I owned it (thank you, TBS and VH-1 for airing it so many times that I got a little sick of it). This week's party game from Ann is Grease-centric, and it's called If I Were A Pink Lady...

Let's get our Pink Lady jackets and sew on our new names. Follow the chart to find your Pink Lady name.

A - D = Sassy Sue
E - H = Blogger Babe
I - L = Smokin' Molly
M - P = Naughty Nancy
Q - T = Hot Rod Helen
U - Z = Greased Lightning Gertie

I'm Blogger Babe! Woo hoo! So, what's your Pink Lady name?

If you want to get in on all the VGNO fun, make sure to go visit Ann to sign the Mr. Linky!

Virtual Girls' Night Out: The Flower and Fortune Cookie Edition

Super TGIF!! I didn't get to participate in VGNO last week, so I'm extra excited to do some blog hopping today/tonight. This week, Ann's thinking about flowers, because there's a rose parade in her town this weekend. Must be nice - I wish we had more parades here, I bet Baby would really get a kick out of that kind of thing. Plus, it would make finding plans for the weekend tons easier. As it is, we might take Baby to the big Touch-A-Truck shindig this weekend that's in a nearby city. That's as close as we get at the moment to a parade.

In light of the rose festival, Ann's curious what your favorite flower is this week. What's yours? Mine is tulips. I just LOVE tulips.
Ann is also hosting a neat giveaway, for a $50 gift certificate to spend at either Fancy Fortune Cookies.com or Giant Fortune Cookies.com. You can create custom fortune cookie messages and they come in tons and tons of flavors! So make sure to go visit Ann's website to enter in the giveaway.

So tell me, what's your favorite flower? Happy VGNO to one and all!

Virtual Girls' Night Out: The Memorial Day Edition

So it's Friday, and the official eve of Memorial Day weekend, so it's time for a special Memorial Day themed Virtual Girls' Night Out! Ann's hosting, as usual, and she's featuring a great recipe for Carolina Iced Tea (a southern version of a Long Island Iced Tea), so make sure to visit!

This week's question is about your Memorial Day plans. Admittedly, I don't generally have a very exciting Memorial Day weekend, outside of spending time with my family. That's what I'll be doing again this year, but unfortunately, Husband is away in D.C. and can't come home for the holiday. On the bright side, I invited my mother to come visit, which will hopefully be fun and not stressful. She's already insisted I take the night off from cooking tomorrow and she wants to treat me to Maggiano's (no worries for those of you who follow my menu plan, I'll still post my glazed pork chops recipe!). I'm not complaining, though I do kind of like showing off my cooking skills when she visits. So, I've got some dinner plans this holiday weekend, and I'm planning to try out some new workout DVDs I picked up at MovieStop this week. I love that place, it's so awesome to go in with a few DVDs to trade and walk out with some new ones for next to nothing (or better yet, nothing!!) What an exciting weekend, right?

Oh, and I'm cooking up the rest of my crab cakes tonight, so we'll see if refrigerating the uncooked cakes overnight makes any difference in my recipe, since last night's were only refrigerated for an hour. Now the crab cakes are indeed exciting.

So what are you doing this holiday weekend? Are you traveling? Cooking out? Making pulled pork (a.k.a. my personal favorite BBQ dish)? If you're making pulled pork, you have to share the recipe!!! Make sure to go visit Ann and celebrate the whole blog hopping holiday extravaganza!

P.S. - Ann's having a super giveaway for all of you popcorn lovers out there, so make sure to visit!

Virtual Girls' Night Out: The Sweet Edition

Oh, happy day, it's Friday, yay!! Thank goodness. It's been a rough week, between the teething and Husband working late and me feeling a little under the weather...yikes. But it's Friday, the best day of all days, and not only do I have VGNO tonight, but I have an actual Girls' Night Out to go to!!! I'm so excited! I can't remember the last time I went out with a bunch of girlfriends, so I'm looking forward to it. Stay tuned, hopefully there will be some fun stories.

Anyway, on to VGNO - this week, we're celebrating sweet things...and here's a party game to get us started!

Sweet As Candy

If you were to have a candy bar named after you what would it be called? Just for fun follow the guide below to create your candy bar name. Ex. If your first name starts with an 'A' and your last name starts with an 'H' your candy bar would be called "Sweet Confection". Try it out.

Your First Name
A - C = Sweet
D - F = Honey
G - I = Lucious
J - L = Sugar
M - O = Precious
P - R = Savory
S - U = Delightful
V - Z = Heavenly

Your Last Name
A - C = BonBon
D - F = Tart
G - I = Confection
J - L = Chunk
M - O = Honey
P - R = Blossom
S - U = Bits
V - Z = Buns

Let us know what your candy bar name is. I'm a "honey tart!" Sounds a little odd!

Now, since we're talking sweets, here are my top three dessert recipes (btw, it was very hard to choose just three):
1. Super-Duper Chocolate Chip Cookies
2. Husband Cake
3. Texas Sheet Cake

So how are you celebrating Virtual Girls' Night Out? Make sure to go sign the Mr. Linky at Ann's, and have a fantastic time blog hopping!

Virtual Girls Night Out: The Mother's Day Edition

Thank goodness it's Friday - I'm so ready for the weekend. It's been an interesting week, but given that Mother's Day is this weekend I'm not exactly feeling like the best mother in the world. Baby is toddling around today with a huge shiner - he fell, face-first, into the caboose of his ride-on train yesterday, and injured himself quite badly. He's okay today, outside of the shiner, thank goodness, but when I went out to Walgreens just now for a few odds and ends, I felt like everyone was staring at me (and Baby's face) and thinking what an awful mother I must be. Lovely. Oh well.

So, since it's Friday, that means it's time for another Virtual Girls' Night Out with Ann. She's picked an awesome song - Des'ree's "You Gotta Be" from the 90's. Do you remember that song? Go visit her to see the music video to jog your memory.

This week, in honor of Ann's new quest for personal fitness (and fear of the gym), she asks:
Have you ever had one of those visions of walking into a room and everyone is staring at you and you realize you tucked your skirt into your underwear? OK now, have you ever actually DONE something like that? Or anything along those lines?

I've definitely had visions of full-on personal embarrassment. Most were work-related, and involved either meetings with higher-ups that scared the crap out of me, or the first few times that I taught software classes at work and had to stand up in front of a group of people and seem confident and informed. The best part was when I pitched that the company needed to buy a new, $20K plus custom-built board room table, and I had to convince the COO and CEO of that fact. Yikes. As for actual personal embarrassment scenarios, I honestly can't think of any. Which probably means there's a really good story in my head somewhere, it's just buried under my millions of pieces of trivial knowledge, like song lyrics to cheesy 80's one-hit-wonders.

What about you? Any good stories of total embarrassment? You know you have one...share please! :) Oh - and make sure to join in on the blog-hopping VGNO fun over at Ann's!

P.S. - Don't forget about my comments contest - the wonderful visitor who comments the most on my blog this month will be featured in an interview with yours truly here on Type A Mommy at the beginning of June.

Virtual Girls Night Out: The Pot Luck Edition

It's Friday, so that means it's time for another Virtual Girls' Night Out - yay! Ann is our host as usual, and she is celebrating May Day today by preparing to have a party, so today's question is pot luck related.

I always love making things for a party. In fact, this weekend, I have booked my first paid baking gig - my neighbor friend is headed to a Cinco de Mayo party this week and has hired me to bake Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcakes for her. I'm usually the girl who brings sweets to a party. I don't have other party-related recipes, really. I've been pretty fortunate, my baked goods are always a hit (otherwise, I re-make them, witness the Elmo disaster from Baby's first birthday). There was, however, one book club meeting I went to some time back from my former moms' group, where I brought my super outrageous brownie recipe and no one touched them. Not a single one. Perhaps that's why I'm not part of their group anymore.

Have you been the one that brought the party dish that nobody ate? Please share! Ann's May Day party guests will read all the posts posts and they will select winners. The winners will receive packets of flower seeds to help celebrate this May Day. Aww, isn't that sweet? Don't forget to visit Ann to join in on VGNO and to sign the Mr. Linky.

Speaking of baking for parties, don't forget to visit my poll on what I should bake this weekend. And, just so you know, I'm also running a commenting contest this month, so if you're a blogger, you should definitely check it out.

Virtual Girls Night Out: The Disco Edition

It's Friday again, and that means it's time for a Virtual Girls' Night Out, hosted by Ann, as usual. This week's edition is disco-themed, in honor of the horror that was Disco Night on "American Idol" this week. Was anyone else appalled at the disco performances? Especially the group performance on elimination night? I know Paula Abdul tried to choreograph something that would make them look good, but to me, it just made them look clumsy and silly. But anyway...

This week's fun party game is a fill-in-the-blanks do-da. Follow the instructions below, and make sure to visit Ann to sign the Mr. Linky and do some super fun blog hopping!

After a long week working as an assistant trainer at the Jane Fonda Exercise Studio I was ready for a night out. I went to my closet, put on my polyester suit and headed out the door. I stopped to pick-up my friend Bob Mackie and we headed to Studio 54. This place was packed! I had just about sweated my glitter off when they turned on the lights and told us it was time to boogie home. Another great night. Can you dig it? :->

*Fill in the blanks by following the charts. If the First Letter of your FIRST name begins with an 'A' then fill in with "Polyester Suit", etc.

First blank/First Letter of your FIRST name:
A - E = Polyester Suit
F - J = Hot Pants
K - P = Platform Shoes
Q - U = Roller Skates
V - Z = Tube Top

Second blank, go by the First Letter of your LAST name. A - E will be Bob Mackie.

Second blank/First Letter of your LAST name:
A - E = Bob Mackie
F - J = Deney Terrio
K - P = Jimmy J.J. Walker
Q - U = K.C. & The Sunshine Band
V - Z = Liza Minnelli

Third blank, go by the First Letter of your FIRST name.

Third blank/First Letter of your FIRST name:
A - E = Glitter
F - J = Lipgloss
K - P = Blue Eye Shadow
Q - U = QT Tanning Lotion
V - Z = Sequined Headband

BTW, Jane is totally going to fire me from my assistant trainer gig when she sees how many cookies I just ate!

VGNO Part 2: Your name indicates your job...

Those of you who have checked in from VGNO, thank you so much!! You probably read about my promise to share a nifty, fun file with you, if I could figure it out....

Then I sat down to watch "Amazing Race" from Sunday with Husband and I totally forgot about it, until Ali just made a comment about it, so thanks Ali for the reminder! I would've gone to bed and totally left you all in the dark!!! I think I've figured it out now, though, so here goes nothing! Enjoy!

Click here to view/download Your Name Indicates Your Job

Virtual Girls' Night Out

It's Friday (I've caught up and I'm on the right page on my calendar now), so that's means it's time for another Virtual Girls Night Out! I actually got a live, in-person girls night out this week with my moms' group book club, which was really fun, so it's totally funny that Ann's fun party game for the week is finding out your librarian alter ego. Here's how it works:

Librarian Alter Ego

If your first name begins with letters A - E, your first name would be: Bubbles. Follow the chart to see what your Librarian's Alter Ego name is.
First Name=
A - E: Bubbles
F - J: Cookie
K - O: Pepper
P - T: Honey
U - Z: Pebbles

Last Name=
A - E: Featherbottom
F - J: Ivanabee-Queen
K - O: Rhea-Listik
P - T: Anitacocktail
U - Z: Mona-Lott

So....I would be Bubbles Featherbottom, nee Ivanabee-Queen. Isn't that a hoot? Who would you be? I love silly naming games like this, they're so fun. In fact, I'm going to try to post one that's really super fun, but it's a download, so I have to figure out how to make that work. That will be my project this evening...so stay tuned for "Your Name Predicts Your Job."

Happy Friday! I can't wait to see your librarian alter ego names!

Virtual Girls Night Out!

Hi everybody!

It's Friday, that means it's time for another Virtual Girls Night Out. Yippee!

This week's topic is Easter Candy. What Easter Candy can you not live without?

This was a toughie for me, because I'm not a huge fan of what seems to be the world's most popular Easter candy - the Cadbury egg. It's okay, just not my favorite. Ditto with Peeps. Actually, Peeps kind of creep me out. I can't explain that one.

There's actually a tie for my favorite Easter candy - the standard chocolate bunny and the Reese's peanut butter egg.

How can you not love a peanut butter egg, covered in chocolate-y goodness?? It's like a Reese's cup, only better. Darn those things are good. I know they're Husband's favorite, too. Anything involving chocolate and peanut butter are heaven for him.

So, Baby, being that he's only 13 months old and all, is not having an Easter basket this year (nor did he last year). My mother just asked me about this tonight, and she was mildly horrified at the thought of her precious grandson not having an Easter basket. She almost made me feel guilty about it! But seriously, he can't have chocolate (because the pediatrician said so), he'd probably try to eat the grass that you usually stuff an Easter basket with, I'm pretty sure jelly beans are probably a choking hazard...see where I'm going here? Just doesn't sound like the smartest thing to do. But then again, that's me, super-cautious mommy. I'm sure there are plenty of moms out there giving their two month olds a chocolate bunny. I'm just not one of them.

Needless to say, since I wasn't putting an Easter basket together for Baby this year, I've yet to buy any Easter candy, so thanks Ann for reminding me that I do indeed have to go to Publix tomorrow with everybody and their brother (because they're closed for Easter Sunday). Sounds like a blast.

Hope everyone's having a super Friday, and make sure to check out Ann's VGNO every Friday! It's a great way to find new blogs to read.

Virtual Girls' Night Out

This is my first Virtual Girls' Night Out, but I could definitely use it! Ann at Ann Again...and again is hosting her usual, and this week's topic is: the clothes you just had to have when you were 12/13. Eek.

When I was a teenager, I was a moody mess of flannel. It was the early 90's *yikes* and I was heavily into grunge, especially Nirvana and Soundgarden. Despite the fact that I lived in Florida, I layered my t-shirts with long-sleeved flannel shirts (which were hard to find in Florida, mind you). I was also a huge fan of wearing pajamas to school - I would wear oversized t-shirts with mens' plaid boxer pants. So very stylish, right?

So what did you wear when you wear a teenager? I'm sure it was totally embarrassing, too.

Happy Friday!