Taking a look at what search terms lead people to this site is always amusing. For some reason, most of our traffic doesn’t come from searches like “entertaining mom blog” or “hilarious blogging cousins” (I know, can you believe it?)… it comes more from things like “she looks so natural casket.”

True story.

Anyway, I always like an excuse to link up to Oh Amanda’s Top Ten Tuesday, so here are my top ten favorite search terms that have recently landed people on our little blog. Here we go.

10. “April fool’s kids fake strawberry cake.” Cake is not a joking matter!

9. “Baby peanut butter poo.” I can’t figure out which post this lead to, but I am 100% sure it was written by Jenny. (edited to add – I just figured it out, and of course it led to this post by the one and only Jenny Rapson.)

8. “Babywearing hemmroids.” Two words – spell check! Also, do you suppose that person meant that a baby was wearing hemorrhoids or that baby-wearing causes hemorrhoids? I recommend Motrin. Heh.

7. “Matching easter dresses for moms and daughters” and “sexy easter dresses.” Frankly, I’m not sure which one is more disturbing.

6. “How to answere the question biblically on how babies get into the mommy;s tummy.” Again, spell check, people! And secondly? Don’t come to us for sex ed.

5. “I accidentally hit my dog and he suddenly pukes.” Sounds like a serious problem. Maybe he was involved in this other search term – “Girls ipecac puke party.”

4. “Figure skating crotch hand,” “female olympic figure skaters crotch photos” and numerous other variations of the same idea drew a lot of people here. Something tells me my post wasn’t what they were hoping to find.

3. “Birth control makes me rage,” “birth control pills anger,” “birth control pills make me crazy,” and “the pill made me fat.” All of the above.

2. The most popular topic of the week – unfriending. “Why are people unfriending me on facebook,” “my child unfriended me on facebook,” “can my sibling unfriend me on facebook,” “should i unfriend relatives on facebook,” “how to handle in-law friend requests on fb,” and “can i unfriend my mother in law from facebook,” which was obviously searched by the same person who later searched for “facebook unfriending repercussions.”

And finally…

1. “Poop pants wii bowling.” Jenny, I’m going to let you take that one.

The other day, I heard Kate yell from the living room, “Mom!! We need to buy Wonder Hangers!” Then she came running to me and said breathlessly “We need to buy Wonder Hangers! You can hang FIVE shirts in the same space it takes to hang ONE on a regular hanger!”

Do you know what she’s talking about? These:

Apparently they show infomercials on Nickelodeon.

Later, I was bemoaning the state of her room, and she reminded me that her closet would be MUCH more organized if she only had Wonder Hangers.

She’s also convinced that her dad is going to buy her a Snuggie for her birthday.

A few days ago, she asked my grandma if she would buy her a BumpIt.

Because every five-year-old needs a beehive.

And so it begins. We can’t really hold her responsible for her inclination to be interested in anything marked “As Seen On TV!” The poor girl comes from a long line of people who are suckers for infomercials.

Case in point: Yesterday I actually considered buying her a BumpIt. (And yes, I can see you all cringing.)

I was somewhat concerned about the message I’d be sending to her if I did buy one, though, so I sought counsel from my BFF Jess. I emailed her:

Kate’s the flower girl for the Miss Basketball ceremony at the high school basketball game. The other day she told me she wanted a Bump It and I’m thinking of getting her one for tomorrow night, to give her a cute little hair do. Is that ok or is that crossing the line into cheerleading wigs and high school breast implants??

I knew Jess would give me good advice, and as I suspected she stopped me from hitting the “Buy It Now” button with her response:

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY THE BUMP IT! I think it’s a fantastic idea in theory, but those things are a piece of junk. I bought them and could not get it to work right and it looked so silly. You should try “making” a bump it by teasing her hair… look online or YouTube or something!

Crisis averted. I did not waste any money or risk taking the first step toward Kate’s debut appearance on “Toddlers and Tiaras.”

So as you can see, Kate’s predisposition toward getting ripped off is an unfortunate side effect of her genetic make up. Need more examples?

My dad is the proud owner of a Swivel Sweeper.

Andy’s mom has given us the Pasta Pro and the Moving Men (both of which we still use, I might add), and just this Christmas she was the happy recipient of a Perfect Brownie pan (I totally want one of those – I love corner brownie pieces!).

This little “issue” we all have goes back even further in the family tree – recently our grandma told Jenny she wished she had a credit card because they sell a lot of things on TV that she’d really like to have. I’ve made a mental note to keep credit card applications away from her and Kate.

Speaking of credit cards… where is mine? I really want an InStyler.

I seriously should not be allowed to operate a stove. Or a microwave. And especially not a crock pot.

It’s the new year you know, so I have been trying to get better about cooking dinner, bringing my lunch to work (although I started the new year off right by going to BW3 today), saving money, all that. So last night I did a google search to see what I could throw into the crock pot this morning, using ingredients I had on hand.

Eventually, I came across this, a recipe for slow cooker spaghetti chicken. The reviews were pretty good, and one of the only negative ones said it was “great for teenagers but not empty nesters who want something better.” I figured it would be perfect for us, since my pallet reflects the sophistication of a 15-year-old.

Let me show you the recipe so you can identify all the things I did wrong.

Slow Cooker Spaghetti Chicken (from allrecipes.com)
Ingredients
* 1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained
* 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
* 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
* 8 ounces processed cheese food
* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – boiled and cut into bite-size pieces
Directions
1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and set aside.
2. Put chicken soup, mushroom soup, tomatoes with green chile peppers and cheese in slow cooker over medium heat. Stir together and cook until cheese has melted.
3. Stir cooked chicken and spaghetti into cheese mixture and heat through. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for about 40 minutes.

After looking at this again, it’s worse than I thought. See those directions up there? I basically skipped 1-3. Oops. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Before omitting all of the steps required to make the dish, I also screwed with the ingredients. The recipe says “1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained.” Boiling the noodles seemed like an awfully lot of trouble to go through, so I did a little google search and found something that said it was ok to put uncooked pasta into a crock pot. Score! So, instead of using “1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti, cooked and drained,” I used 1 (13.25 ounce) package (whole wheat) spaghetti, uncooked and therefore undrained. I didn’t have “8 ounces processed cheese food” but I did have 4 slices of American cheese. Hey, the less processed cheese food the better, right? And finally, the “4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – boiled and cut into bite-size pieces.” Yeah. Boiling noodles was too much trouble, I certainly wasn’t about to boil the chicken. Cooking food is what the crock pot is for! So instead, I used 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, straight from the freezer and frozen solid.

So back to the directions. Let me refresh your memory.
1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and set aside.
2. Put chicken soup, mushroom soup, tomatoes with green chile peppers and cheese in slow cooker over medium heat. Stir together and cook until cheese has melted.
3. Stir cooked chicken and spaghetti into cheese mixture and heat through. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for about 40 minutes.

Yeah. I did none of those things. I broke my dry, uncooked and undrained spaghetti noodles in half and threw them in the pot. I then threw in the frozen chicken breasts and added the can of diced tomatoes. I shook the various congealed soups out of their can and right into the pot, and covered the creation with some Kraft singles. Then I put the lid on, set it too cook on low for six hours (what?? that’s only 5 hours and 20 minutes more than the recipe said!) and waltzed out the door to work feeling pretty domestic.

You’ll never believe this, but it didn’t work.

When I got home, this is what I found.

Doesn’t that look good??

It was awful. The chicken-soup-cheese part didn’t look so bad, but the noodles were a disaster. They were hard and stuck together and completely charred. Here’s a closer look.

Needless to say, we didn’t eat it for dinner. Instead, I went to Subway and let the sandwich artists create our meal. I should really leave these things to the professionals.

Cooking FAIL.