Linda thanks for the giggle...I have a vivid picture of your kitchen in my mind!

My kitchen is as neat and tidy as a pin which means I'm really behind the eight ball for Easter Dinner! We were at the cottage until Thursday PM and all the stores are closed today for Good Friday so no shopping of any type. Plus we gardened all day today. I am so far behind!

Tomorrow I have to get my act together big time, hot cross buns, boil the eggs for deviled eggs, prep all the veggies, make the baked beans, make dinner rolls, prep the stuffing for the turkey.

But first I have to do the groceries, buy the wine, get the kids stuff for their Easter baskets.......

Oh yeah and clean the bathrooms, clean the kitchen, because tomorrow it will look like yours does today, dust and vacuum , set the table...oh hell I forgot the silverware! Yikes!

Clive says he has to wash the cars.......grrrrrrrrrrrr!

I have been invited to dinner at a good friend's house and she told me to bring nothing! (Like that will happen!) I think I will make biscotti as I know she likes biscotti. A hostess gift.

I'm working on it...not the kitchen though. Clink..LOL!

Really though, I'm home alone for the most part this weekend and I'm trying to catch up on general cleaning and laundry...several weeks worth. Babysitting two cavaliers that are blowing their winter coats so there is hair flying around everywhere. As it stands now it looks like I'll be having a ham steak by myself for Easter Dinner. Wish it was a big bash this year but it's not happening due to many factors. Still think I'll make a carrot cake just because and I'd like to find and try a good rye bread recipe for some left over corned beef(my first) in the freezer. Guess I'll just enjoy dinner with y'all virtually this year. Oh well, that's the way things played out for this one.

Hey, the cars do need to be washed Sharon. Tell "himself" there is a truck down here that could use a good detail too. LOL

Y'all know my group so things could change at the LAST minute!

Hoppy Easter!!

David

LOLOL Linda! Poor you! I hope things are now all under control.

I tried to skip hot cross buns this year but... by 3 this afternoon, I couldn't stand it any more so hurried to make a dozen of them. Because I started the dough late, dinner was an hour later than usual. We had grilled salmon, spinach salad with orange dressing, and of course the fresh out of the oven hot cross buns. Waited for an extra hour, well worth it!

We may have my in-laws over for dinner this Sunday. They are in their late 80's and we never know if they are going to show up until the day of dinner. :-) Hubby is going to roast a chicken. If they come we will have company, if not, we will have a quiet Easter Sunday and a big dinner for just the three of us! LOL Regardless, we will have a good one.

Al

Hey, while "himself" is busy washing vehicles, he could stop on the way through and hit my Jeep with some soapy water, I've been fixing fence, which includes a path straight through the swamp, and it looks like I've been out muddin'! Mine's not all mud, though, about half of it is horse manure, LOL.

No cooking done at all here, I'll pick up the last few groceries tomorrow, do all the baking and cooking, put candy into plastic eggs for the Grandkids to hunt and boil eggs for devilled eggs. Oh, and put together the kids' Easter baskets...

But first thing tomorrow, I'm cleaning carpet, mine is awful and Cooper is shedding hair everywhere too.

Annie

Thank goodness I don't have a cat any more! Gotta remember to put the trash out of Chabby's temptation, Linda!

Two of my sons, their five little kids, and a dtr were here Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, so the house was already trashed! Hub and I spent today "recovering," which was very nice. Tomorrow I'll shop and bake for Sunday's repeat invasion, this time including four little kids, my mom, five of our six kids and three spouses. Come Monday I'll deal with the mess again....We're having roast beef, mashed potatoes, asparagus, cardamom bread (if I can find cardamom in the grocery - they were out the other day. Rats!), cherry pie made with cherries we all picked and pitted while on our annual vacation together last August and a chocolate cake.
Sherry

David....I've got an extra pan of buns and a bottle of Famous Grouse with only a little gone....And 2 cavaliers as neighbors...
You wipe my floor and I'll share!

OH Linda - my dogs did the exact same thing to me a couple of weeks ago. I no sooner cleaned up trash they had strewn through the living room (!), but they did it again while I was in the shower getting ready for work. I was not happy. I can just imagine the sight of your kitchen! At least you have some goodies to show for all of that!! :D

Lori

Sounds good to me Linda! I'm a strange dude that loves kitchen clean up if there is a DW...I can load them up better than anyone in my group. Same goes for laundry...just don't ask me to dust anything. LOL I'm enjoying the dogs and missing Ms. Lucy at the same time.

Annie, I love to go muddin', off-road, or boondocking in a jeep or four wheel drive. You still owe me a "topless" ride in that jeep!

David

Yes, David, I sure do. Come back to Michigan and I'll take my top off!

Well, you'll have to help me, but it'll come off!!!

Oh, and Cooper has never gotten into the trash. He much prefers to just chew up my shoes when I'm not looking.

Annie

Oh Linda!

I can only imagine that Miss Chabby was called Chabby-Bad-Dog more than once! LOLOLOL! But isn't that always the way? We get distracted by life and the pooches remind us they THEY are the ones in charge! LOL! Glad you got the baking done though, I meant to make the layers for your Carrot Cake yesterday and got all caught up with playing outside and never got to it. So today I am baking and cleaning and hoping that DH and I dont run each other over in the kitchen while he works on my new pantry/cabinet.

And like David, I will come mop the floor and we can sit and laugh about it ifter the fact!

A

I am sitting here laughing, Linda. Tell Miss C that if she gets intothe trash again, she may just go out with the trash. Just cross your fingers behind your back so she won't know you are fibbin'.

We are with friends that are more like family on Sunday, and I am bringing the cheescake that will double as a birthday cake for the host and a strawberry almond cream tart. Plus some deviled eggs that I may turn into a spread and by tonight my kitchen will be trashed too.

David, you can come here.

Reading your post made me so grateful that my entire plan for tomorrow is wake up, go to the gym, attend church, and come home. Maybe do a few chores. We don't have family near so Easter is normally a pretty quiet affair around our house. My only stated goal for Sunday is to remove the leftover packaged gravy (from Thanksgiving) from the freezer and decide how to incorporate it into Sunday supper.

Hope you all have a wonderful Easter.

Kate

Oh Linda - I used to have 2 rotties that got into the kitchen trash so often that we started keeping it in the garage. I can certainly sympathize.

David - when's the big trip to Destin?

Linda, it's only funny because it's not Cotehele! At best, Chabby didn't eat the carrot cake or hot cross buns. EVERY time I leave the house it must be doggie proofed first. Our goldens have gotten worse about foraging for food as they age. We quit taking her to the in-laws to watch while we are on holiday for this reason. Their house is overflowing with stuff she gets into.

Judy

AARGH...Peppi....I just remembered the eggs! there are 3 dozen...some to be just colored for a church egg hunt and others deviled.

Oh, don't we love our pets, despite the catastrophes!

When I was in the 6th grade, I baked and frosted my first, all-by-myself scratch cake. Feather Devil's Food from my mother's stand by cookbook with a rich chocolate frosting. Mom invited some friends to come down for coffee and cake to show it off. I set it on the coffee table, with plates, the nice napkins, forks, and the crystal sugar bowl and creamer etc.

Just before they were supposed to arrive, I went into the living room to check once more that everything was perfect, only to see our beloved mongrel "Lu-Lu" saunter nonchalantly past the coffee table and quickly edge the side of her nibbling mouth across the cake. She must have made this pass a number of times, because a good portion of the cake was gone from that side.

Well, we trimmed it and re-frosted the side, and our friends (pet owners as well) had a good laugh with their slices of oddly shaped cake.

They don't MEAN to try us, they just have different ideas about celebrating than we do!

Oh Linda, I'm so sorry! But at least you had a nice evening on the porch... :P Fritz has never gotten into the trash, I don't know what I'd do if he did. Probably have to repress some homicidal rage, that's for sure!

I feel your pain on the trashed kitchen though... My sweet husband bought a ravioli attachment for my KitchenAid on ebay and requested ravioli for dinner when it arrived. Of course, I couldn't leave it at one kind, but made two kinds of filling and two kinds of pasta. I don't think there was a clean surface in the joint. Flour all over the floor and cabinets (due to an unfortunate flour scoop incident), pasta filling prep stuff, sheet trays of ravioli everywhere, eesh! Fortunately it's cleaned up now and I'm going to mom's house for Easter so I don't have to worry too much about cleaning everything else today.

Good luck with the cake and with Chabby!
Bri

I was reading about all the trash foraging and coffee table surfing dogs and moments later I heard an anguished cry from Alice upon discovering that Snowy the Yellow Lab had eaten most of the breakfast she left for a moment on the coffee table in the family room.

I've lost count of how many times the dog has stolen her food!

After realizing that the open top kitchen garbage pail was really just a nice tall snack bowl for Snowy, I got a covered one with a roll top lid.

Sorry about all the messes, Linda!

Laughing about the tall snack bowl. Stew, my son and his family had a miniature poodle like forever...she was 16 when she finally got too old to walk at all. she had a trash can bent...and they bought covered trash cans for every where. One day Robin came home from work and opened the door to a very strange hollow, moaning sort of howl....Seems Shayna attempted to dumpster dive through the lid on the trash can and got her head stuck and was walking around with the trash can lid around her neck. She didn't learn from that...it just meant that now the trash can had to go into a closet!

Yes, my kitchen is trashed and I can't even blame it on the kitty. Little Rascal's been sweetly out of the way all day.

Started the day by making some sausage balls for the brunch at church tomorrow. Then took the balls up to the church and helped set up. We won't be here tomorrow as we are driving a few hours to see our little grand-daughter, uh, ah, I mean we are seeing the son, his wife and the little one. lol

Tomorrow is dh's birthday, so I've been baking a German Chocolate cake for him. The kitchen is strewn with toasted flaked coconut, flour, and dribbles of egg white.

Sigh. I love to cook. I certainly do not love to clean up after myself.

I'm fairly lucky that Dolly has not figured out the trash can yet. She gets to lick out the catfood cans before they go in and that seems to keep her happy. It is part of her routine to charge the cat area and snatch the empty can. Dumb dog has charged right past a full plate of fresh catfood to snatch the can up. She likes to sneak treats out of the kitty litter box which gets her put outside.

After eating a cushion off the couch Dolly got her own room. There she ate the floor and the door but it is still her room. At long last she passed the puppy stage and I can repair things. Still to wild to let her have the run of the house... herd dog instinct... go go go.

Easter is Dolly, the cats, and me. Three bottle of beer in the fridge... and lots of scotch.

: )
lyra

I want to move to your neighborhood....I can practically taste those hot cross buns! I've always had a dog and for the most part had to keep all food hidden and garbage safely tucked away or else, so I completely understand. My last dog would never think to go in the garbage or on the counter. In fact, you could leave a plate of food on the floor and leave the room and it would still be there when you got back. I have a new puppy and am busy retraining myself......but it's so easy to forget.