Thursday 13: Easter

I opened up a "New Post" window last week, wrote a few paragraphs about what we've been eating since my oven's on the fritz (is that the right expression?) and never finished/posted it. A few days ago, I opened up another "New Post" window and didn't even manage to get anything written.
Since it's Thursday, I'm going to force myself to sit here until I crank out some list of 13. Might be things I need to do before Easter. Hopefully, there's not 13 of those and so I'll end up adding other Easter things to the list.

1. Go to the Commissary- I bought almost all of my ingredients for a friend's grits recipe that I'll be making. Still need eggs and all of the ingredients for the fruit salad and stuffed French toast that I'm making.
2. Go to Tesco/Sainsbury- If I haven't mentioned it before, I love my town. Lots of positives about living "all the way in Thetford". (People act like I live on the moon! It's 17 miles from base, people! Branch out a little!) One (two?) of the pluses about living here is that I've got two "super stores" in town. Groceries, clothes, magazines, dishes, etc. All within 2 miles of my house. I need to check and see if they have Marscapone (sp?) cheese for my stuffed French toast. The Commissary won't have it and if they do, it will be costly. Better to buy the stuff imported from Europe in, well, "Europe". Our latest discovery is Nutella on crumpets, both of which are far less expensive on the local economy than on base. Besides Marscapone cheese, I need to get some of those big hollow chocolate Easter eggs filled with smaller chocolates. Need those. Need those badly.
3. Go to the BX. I want one of those griddle pans that goes over 2 burners at once. I'm not waiting for a Pampered Chef party anymore, because that's an expensive item and I only like to buy the expensive items when I really LOVE the person hosting the party. Ideally, I will acquire this pan before Sunday morning, and since nobody I really LOVE is hosting a PC party before Sunday morning, I'll probably save half of my money and buy a pan of similar quality without having to pay for shipping. IF the BX has one. If not... I guess I'll just go back to Tesco/Sainsbury and check.
4. Make an Easter Egg Parfait. I have a big clear vase thing near my fireplace and I decided to fill it up with plastic Easter eggs. Unfortunately, I only had 4. And the vase is big. I bought the last 5 bags of tiny Easter eggs from the BXtra yesterday. I might have had enough eggs to fill the vase to the top had I not practically been accosted by a woman who made me give her 3 bags of eggs. Because she has little kids and she NEEDS eggs to fill. Not my problem, lady. Besides #1-the only thing that can fit in the eggs is like ONE Hershey Kiss. And besides #2- depending on how little your kids are, you might be able to order plastic eggs online and trick them into believing that Easter is actually NEXT week.
Oh, so anyway, since my eggs do not fill my vase completely, I have decided to make a "parfait" layering plastic eggs and Easter grass. It's going to be beautiful.
5. Punch out a bunch of scalloped circles and string them together. I need an Easter garland. I wanted to make one like this, but the commissary only had pink bunny peeps and yellow chick peeps and I want my garland to be made of yellow BUNNY peeps. Besides, I don't have any spray polyurethane. I can't figure out why not.
6. Hide the good Easter candy and fill the candy dish up with the regular Easter candy. My mom sent us the most delicious Chocolate Malt Balls and Chocolate Covered Raisins in the world and we're having company on Sunday. I can't risk having to share those things. So they must be hidden.
7. Make some cute Easter bag toppers. One year, I invited a few friends over for Easter and I got the bright idea to give them each a "grown up" version of an Easter basket. I decorated and filled Frappuccino bottles. But first, I had to empty the Frappuccino bottles.  I absolutely detest coffee. But I also absolutely detest pouring money down the drain. So I drank every one of those dumb Frappuccinos. And gave myself a tummy ache. Now I am much smarter and rather than forcing myself to down nearly 98 ounces of what tastes to me like poisonous dirt, I'm just going to stick some candies in a plastic bag, decorate a bag topper, staple that thing on and call it an Easter basket.
8. Color Easter eggs. I must do this every year. Well, I didn't do it last year and that meant no egg salad sandwiches. So I must do this every year from now on.
9. Put out my Easter towels. I got a new one in a package from my Auntie. So now I have 2.
10. (If I use my time wisely, maybe just maybe I'll be able to...) Knit a pair of bunny booties or a bunny hat. Because a baby is coming to my house for Easter. And I want it to look like a bunny.
11. Prepare my house for company. Or get David to do it. Vacuum, dishes, dust, sweep...all of the things I despise!
12. Make some nests out of Chow Mein noodles. I think they are adorable. And I got some perfect chocolate eggs for inside.
13. Stick some cotton balls on the backs of my sock bunnies. I saw this cute idea in a magazine and spent last Saturday pouring rice all over the living room floor (hence the need to vacuum now) while making my own sock bunnies. I've got 5 little bunnies sitting on my mantle, but they all feel a little self-conscious every time they see a cute little cotton-tailed bunny hop around in the back yard. They need cute little cotton tails too.

Heh, well, turns out there ARE 13 things I need to do in the next 3 days. Luckily I work best under pressure.