Excuse me, did you see where I left my inspiration?

You know how you have those nights when you are exhausted, so you go to bed early only to have your brain argue with you? Suddenly the ol' noggin has decided that NOW is the best time to run through all the great ideas you have had that day!

Yeah I had one about two nights ago and wrote a blog post in my head. Felt all good about it so I fell asleep. It was a nice relaxing slumber (ok it was like 3am, whatever).

Do you think I remembered what it was that I wrote in my head? Nope.

So instead of re-writing it in an actual blog, I will just tell you that it was BRILLIANT! All about inspiration and where it comes from and what to do with it. Unfortunately, that's about all I remember. (I even have paper and pens next to my bed, I was just so sure I would remember)

Don't you wish that you could save up these random inspiration bursts and then just use them when you needed? Let's do this. After pamakana.com takes off, let's create a way to bottle inspiration and sell it!

Speaking of pamakana.com - wanna know a little secret? We are targeting to launch the Beta version on June 1st. Can you believe it? I am so excited I can hardly stand it!

Of course, this now means I have a LOT of work to do. I sure could use some inspiration! You have any I can barrow? Send me your inspirations in the comments!! (please?)

Homemade pesto and gift suggestions, sorry, no chocolate this time!

Sometimes it's the small things you do for someone that turn into small wonderful memories. or food. or both, if you are lucky! (as soon as www.pamakana.com launches you could even see how these awesome little things spawn awesome little thing things! awww so cute!)

and today - today I was very lucky :)

About a month ago, Johnny came home with a basil plant for the window sill and PROMISED to keep it watered so it would live. I kind of have a bad track record with this... so I fixed this by making it his responsibility. I know, not the most recommended solution but so far so good. and recently, even I have been remembering to water it when it looks sad. So maybe I can almost say it's life is a shared responsibility!

Anyway - it has been growing like crazy and smells SO GOOD that I finally gave in tonight and tried my hand at pesto. I have never made pesto but I knew it had basil, Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and olive oil. People keep telling me that in cooking, unlike baking, you don't need accurate measurements. I put this to the test by not even looking up one recipe.

Look at me living all dangerously...

Did I also mention that Jack's all time favorite food is pesto? I believe his quote was 'mmmm mmmmmm my FAVORITE!' when I just suggested pesto for dinner. no pressure...

I happened to have a hunk of Parmesan so I grated that (with help of course, two cheese freaks kept EATING it as I was trying to grate it!), picked off a bunch of basil, tossed in a few pine nuts and turned on the blender-processor thingy (technical term for smallish low feature food processor).

Then I remembered Johnny had also gotten oregano! And it was growing outside. Of course I asked him to get it for me because I was already busy boiling pasta! Besides he was all excited because I was using stuff he got for me (awwwww). Adding a bit of oregano was brilliant on my part, if I do say so myself. I also added a little diced garlic. YUM

I feel so ooh lala and it was just about the easiest thing ever. Literally took less than the 15 minutes to boil and cook the pasta.

And it's all Johnny's fault! He surprised me with fresh herbs to use and they have been inspiring me to try making new foods at home. There is something insanely satisfying when you make food from stuff grown in your own yard... hard to explain. *hippy sigh*

Next time you need to get something for that person who says 'don't get me anything' but you feel guilty not getting them anything - instead of flowers, go for herbs or a plant or something that sustains over time. And you can even give them a card from www.pamakana.com (which will be launching just in time for sharing all your summer produce!! like the gazillions of zucchini which I predict will be showing up as a result of four (yes four) plants in the back yard.) (i hope you all like zucchini!!)

so what do you think? appropriate use of parentheses? hahahaaa ;)

Happy Mother's Day to Me! (and YOU but it's over so can't really order you to have a happy day when it's in the past)

Can I tell you how much I loved my ENTIRE WEEKEND?

Because it was FAN TAB U LOUS!

1. Weather more beautiful than I could have imagined. Seriously, perfect.

2. Saturday my husband spent the day on yard work while the boy and I went out and ran errands. Yard look gooooood! ok looks better than it did, not winning any awards here, but he planted flowers and herbs. HERBS PEOPLE! I can make fresh pesto... i feel so domestic and green

3. Sunday morning I awoke to presents being flung at me by the cutest almost 3 year old ever

4. Opening presents revealed a framed photo of my husband and child. Husband actually went out and got this done all the while keeping it a secret and it looks GOOD! If I weren't already laying donw when I opened it, I might have fainted.

5. Also got a tiny digital camera that also supposedly takes movies. I think curiosity got the best of him and Mother's day was a good excuse. (it's cute and silly and fun, of course I love it!)

6. The three of us went to Starbucks for sustenance (I might be a little addicted, so not yet admitting it)

7. The three of us went to Home Goods/TJ Maxx types to look at random furniture because I am currently obsessing on the terrible state of my living room furniture and am convinced I can replace the seating for next to nothing. Do not try to argue, I will find the perfect thing for next to nothing! purchased a salt shaker/pepper grinder and a vinyl cloth for the patio table. I consider them part of my Mother's Day gifts

8. Insisted on going to new this place called Masala Wok 'a casual indian diner' that just opened for lunch. My husband claims to hate curry so I used today as an excuse to force him into trying something new. This is not normally his deal. He is pretty much against 'new' until he tries it and likes it. This place knows it's audience - they had a 'kids' menu with chicken nuggets and waffle fries. He and the boy split it and were stuffed. I could not finish my awesome awesome AWESOME Butter Masala with paneer. YUM. cannot say enough YUM!

9. Nap time

10. Headed to the aunt and uncle's place for family festivities.

The family festivities were fun. This included watching all the kids play 3 or more games over top of one another. My almost 3 year old spend about oooh 5 hours or so playing with his little golf set in the back yard. He hit one over the fence from which he learned to pay attention to direction and not hit them over the fence. He also spent a lot of time lining up his puts like they do on TV. He may be a tiny bit obsessed.

The older cousins were tossing footballs, random round balls, frisbees while others were hula hooping (I looked it up, that's how you spell it!) and others still making up their own games!

Seriously, I could not have ordered a better day. Just fantastic. I hope you had a great day!!!

be nice - be clever!

Apparently working full time and trying launch a website AND have a family leaves very little time for sleeping and relaxing. The crazy part is I am so energized! Once I wake up, anyway. The part where the alarm goes off and I have to actually get out of bed is not so much fun. Especially since we have had rain and clouds for the last ooooh 10 or so days. Today we had rare sunlight! I was never so happy to have meetings in different offices.

Last night, I didn't even get online. I know! It was weird, concentrating only on my son who would NOT go to sleep and that lovely show 'Lost'. Seriously that show drives me crazy. I hate it but I have to know what happens next! I literally shiver. I believe it's the sinister score because during commercials I stop shivering. Crazy television (no, not me, it's all the tv show). It is kind of fun to annoy my husband with questions though... so that's a bonus!

Anyway the point is, I slacked off and didn't get to ask you guys a HUGE favor!!

On the www.pamakana.com site we have set it up to flip through different clever sayings every time you login. We think we are all cool. Really it's just that since the geeks are working on the beta site in their spare time as well, it takes a little longer than we had thought... so instead of just twiddling our thumbs, we thought it would be fun to go ahead and add more clever sayings! Waddaya say? Post clever sayings in the comments! Be inspired by each others ideas!

Focus is around creating good - go for it! maybe best ones will get a prize ;)

pamakana today pop art tomorrow!

So now when people at work say 'how was your weekend?' I try to just play it all cool and go 'it was nice' and yet I am BEAMING from ear to ear because I am so freaking excited about www.pamakana.com!!!

So last night I tried to setup a fan page on Facebook. emphasis on 'try' because it took me HOURS which is just insane. there are groups and there are fan pages. And no matter which you choose, only one person is allowed to have a facebook account which means if you are a business and you want to keep it separate from your personal facebook you can't. Well you COULD but then they find you and delete you that's not good. And I suffer from compulsive rule following. ok not always but I wanted to at least TRY.

They trick you into reading their agreements by making it hard and when you are looking for 'help' files you accidentally read the 'rules' and then you feel compelled to 'follow' them. sneaky. totally taking notes on that one.

We went for a fan page, I decided to just do it with my account and it's not so bad! Didn't hurt at all mom! We even have 14 fans on facebook and 43 followers on twitter! woohoo!

shhh did you hear that? I believe it's the first sounds of some buzz... :)

So we have twitter, facebook, and a sign up page - what else are we missing? Where else do you hang out online that I should check out?

Next up - popartjohnny.com! poor site is all neglected... (dont bother clicking, nothin there - yet!)

What's done is DONE - A Whole New Everything

Changing things up a bit here and, well, I just like the name too much to really start over!  so I just deleted all the old ones.

*gasp*

oh yes I DID!  (felt sooo rebellious!)  

Now I am going to pretend that you care to know WHY - and tell you.

Over the past few months my fulltime job has gotten a little out of hand with long hours and lots of stress.  The economy has not helped.  But hey!  I have a job!  Yet, suddenly, that wasn't enough anymore.  I realized that even though I don't have buckets of spare time, I really want to spend those few mintues connecting with people and doing things I like.  

What's one of my favorite things?  Most simply:  People

I enjoy hearing about what people are going through in their lives, what they have learned what path they have chosen, why they made particular decisions.  Shocking that as soon as I discovered how to follow interesting people on Twitter I was suddenly HOOKED.  Ok maybe not so shocking.  

Then my husband FINALLY agrees to let me market his artwork while he will just create - BONUS!  So now I have a fantastic URL, but no site deisgned.  Oh of course I know programmers who would do it for me - this is not a complicated site I need.  But these web-designer friends are kinda busy at the moment on...

www.pamakana.com 

The startup that came to my sister in a dream.  I figured if she was going to dream it, we should at least give it a good go and try to make it happen... so that's what we are doing!  Of course we are on twitter as well... so go follow us there too.  It's very much a work in progress, 

Yes, that would be me working full time and starting two businesses.  And this blog is now to be my sanity and my outlet for things that just do NOT fit in the 140 character limit on twitter.   Plus, twitter still scares me a little, but it's getting better. 

I am posting again!  I have a general direction!  hmm anyone reading?