Remember whens-day - not cabbage patch

I was sitting here thinking about some of the dolls I had as a kid. Of course there were cabbage patch dolls and barbies, but what about the weird ones? Did you all have any of these?

Oh and Barbie and the rockers are in here for pure awesomeness. I mean, look at the outfits!! And the hair!! Boss.

So we have Rose Petal Place- a diamond was created from a tear or something. Thanks Autumn for helping me remember that a couple of months ago! They had to contend with a spider. Sweet Secrets- didn't they have lip gloss in them? I can't remember. And Dancerella- she had this crown on her head that looked like a juicer and you would pump the center up and down like a top and she would spin and twirl. That stupid thing never worked.

Any other obscure fads in the doll world you all remember? And no Jem. They were popular. For whatever reason...

Try it out- DIY felt flower pin

This was super simple. I completely forgot to take pics during, but it's so easy, I think you all will know where I am coming from. If not, Pinterest has a ton of them!

What you need:

Felt

Scissors

Glue gun and glue sticks

Pin with clasp that you can glue to the back of the flower

1st choose the felt you want to use. I did one color for the first and got fancy with two colors for the second. Cut one small circle out of the felt, about the size of a ping pong ball... Kinda small. Set that one aside. Next cut 8-10 larger circles, maybe the size of a tennis ball. You can use a glass to trace (ink or pencil marks will be eliminated soon!). After you cut those out, cut wavy edges or petals all the way around. Scrap booking scissors might have worked well. I'll have to try that next time!

Next take your small circle and set it on a flat surface. Take one of your wavy circles. Fold it in half and in half again. Grab your scissors and snip off the point on the bottom. Run a line of hot glue where you just cut the point and place it on your small circle. There really is no right or wrong in the placement, just snip the point and glue them down where they will fit. For the black and gray flower, I worked in circles and the white one was more random. If you need more circles, go ahead! You may or may not want to cut a smaller wavy circle and glue it in the middle. It made a really nice, full center. When you are done,turn the whole thing over and glue the pin to the back. Voila! I wanted to see how easy it was, so I got the old bead kit out and did a little beading. I don't love it, but I think with some planning it could look good.

I will definitely be doing this again! Mostly because I have 47 pieces of felt and a bunch of pins because you can't but just one of those suckers! Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas next year!!!

Monday- Bookworm

I have been trying to go through some boxes in the basement. Most of them are full of books. Some of them are mine, but most of them are old books that were passed down through the years on my dad's side of the family. Most of them are signed on the inside... Sam Rea 1870- my great grandfather, Lydia Ward 1907 a great great aunt, Mrs A.L. Ward 1899 great great grandmother... On and on and on. I have tons of these books with names like Albert, Cora, DeForrest, and yes, Charlotte.

The last time we moved, my poor brother in law had to carry all of these boxes in. He asked me if It was my lifelong dream to open a public library. I have too many books.

I have no problem giving away my paper backs, but these... It tears my heart out to think of getting rid of them. This is a slim connection to these people I never met. But I think I have to let them go. Number one, we just don't have the space, number two I have been carting these books around in the same boxes for 10 years since my grandmother passed away. Some of them longer than that. And third, some of them are in super bad shape.

Ok, so I keep some of them, but how do I choose? How do I choose between a great grandfather I have never met and a great grandmother I never met?

At the back of one volume is a quote from some biblical work, I think. "My mother looked upon my heart and found it brave and sweet- willing for the day's work and harboring no shameful hope." How do I not pick that one? It's like every one of the books is a piece of some mystery of my make up...why I like the things I like, why I think like I do...and if I read them all and find margin notes or underlined passages or special inscriptions, maybe it will tell me something. Something like

My mother looked upon my heart and found it brave and sweet, willing for the day's work and harboring no shameful hope.

Sunday- the week ahead

Ok, my big goal this week is to NOT find a cat that we have to feed and keep warm and then find a home for! If I can avoid all cats this week, then it's been a good week. (disclaimer: I love cats. Cats are great. But we can't have a cat and finding a way to take care of a cat who is sick in the middle of an ice storm when you have no cat goods or supplies is not fun.)


Four big goals this week:
-stick to the meal plan
-keep up with the workouts- tough because I am sick! But I'll do something!
-make minestrone soup to freeze- I'm not sure how much longer my rutabagas are going to last.
-laundry - I have to put it on here because we have soooo much of the stuff! I'm pretty sure the neighbors are sneaking their clothes in my baskets. I do not know where it all comes from!!!

I know the week won't be easy per se but if I can make it easiER that would be nice.


I want to limit the stress level this week so I can enjoy my evenings with my two monkeys.

Friday - accountability!

So, this isn't Friday. Oops. Last night was crazy town at our house. It seems that someone dropped off this very sweet old cat, who is clearly a house cat, considering he keeps trying to get in our house and has been chased out a handful of times. Last night we had snow and ice, so I went outside to try to find him. He has evidently been living under our front porch :(. And when i finally got him to come out, he yelled at me the whole time he was leading the way to the house. "what took you so long lady!?!?" So, I got some blankets, put a heating pad in between on low and let him spend the night in the garage. Dave fixed him up a bowl of tuna and a bowl of water and I patted the blanket and he ran right over and laid down. He started to purr juuussssttt a little bit. It was so sad! Like he didn't want to get too happy. We left the garage door cracked so he could get out. The first time I peeked this morning, he was still there, on the blanket, but he's not there now. I need to spend the day finding a no kill shelter for him. Annnnnyyyyywwwaaaayyy.... The week in review looks ok. I didn't do all that laundry, so that's on the list for today, I only got through one basement box, and I lapsed on the meal plan, but only once and it was just for the kids. Not too bad, I guess! Have a good weekend everyone!

Remember When's-day - safety first!

I remember riding in my parents' station wagon one time with my mom, standing on the front seat, of course. Pretty sure we were on our way to Buster Brown's or McCrory's or something like that. We went around a curve and the door flew open. My mom reached over and yanked the door shut, effectively keeping the air conditioning inside. I think she asked me to sit down after that, but I'm not sure.

My brother and I also used to ride in the "way back" of that same car, jumping up when we went over hills and rolling into the tailgate when mom hit the brakes. To this day my mom will throw her arm across the passenger seat when she hits the brakes, obviously saving the life of anyone sitting there. She has a super strong right arm.

WTH Mom!?!! Did you already have something strapped to the roof and we couldn't ride up there? You didn't want to mess with roller skates and a rope? I know these were different times but wasn't there some type of seat we could sit in?

  Now, ours was brown with the fake brown wood panel stuff, but this is close enough.  My parents loved it so much, they bought the same one twice!  I think the second one had seatbelts in the back.  Good memories...not really.

I saw it I did it

Well I made Dave do it. I saw all of these really fantastic NOEL signs over the holidays. They were in Pottery Barn and Southern Living... All over the place. They were expensive! So I saw a post on Pinterest (www.pinterest.com if you have no clue what I'm talking about!) where someone did it themselves. I rushed literally right out to my local Craft crack supplier, Hobby Lobby, and bought these very thin letters at 1.99 a piece, and a can of glitter green spray paint for about 5 bucks and told Dave to get to work. He glued them together with Popsicle sticks across the back, hooking the letters together basically. Small brackets or picture hooks would have worked but you would have to glue due to the thickness of the letters.

We let that dry and then laid the whole thing out on a tarp and sprayed. The glitter paint was a little difficult because it kept globbing up on the nozzle, but just wipe it off. Feather the paint in quick sprays, but make sure the paint stream is off the letters before stopping the spray. Makes a lot of sense huh? Trial and error worked really well and the errors didn't show up at all. Let this puppy dry outside because we all almost went stupid from the fumes!

We hung it on the wall with a small nail and painted the head with a little of the green paint. I love this! And I had never seen glitter spray paint before, so that was also pretty exciting. Most of the colors were out but it comes in red, green, gold, pink, silver, and black. There may be more but that's what my store had. I would love to make another one next year that says "joy" or something else holiday appropriate. Maybe "I'm broke" :-)

Sunday- the week ahead

I am already behind on my week. Not a good sign! I always have these huge Sunday plans, but then all I want to do is bum around on the couch! We are going to take the girls to see Beauty and the Beast 3d today. I am waaaayyy more excited about it than they are! I'm not stressing out too much about getting things done today. I'm home with the girls tomorrow so I should be able to catch up. Busy week this week. I have some on site training and some grant work due, the girls have swimming, tax season is ramping up, and we have meetings and appointments scattered throughout the week. Goals: - cook dinner every night- stick to the meal plan! - one load of laundry washed, dried AND PUT AWAY every night - go to bed early (ok, earliER) - stick with the exercise plan - go through 2 unpacked boxes in the basement (we have about a hundred. Gotta start somewhere!) - make some cute flower pins I saw in a magazine I'll start there. There are more things to do and be done, but I don't want to bore anyone with my to do list. These are the moral (and morale) victories I would like to experience this week!

Grrr...2nd post. For the 3rd time! My Blog Week

I was up late last night, patting myself on the back for such a successful second post.  I went to type the last sentence and it disappeared.  Minor freak out.  Ok, so I typed it again.  Not as witty in my opinion, but it worked.  You could definitely sense my frustration, but it worked also.  Went to post.  Nothing.  Gone.  At that point if I had been able,Ii would have thrown the blog into the road for someone to run over.  There are three things I don't have alot of: time, sleep, and patience.  This blog was cutting into all three!  So here it is again.  I may smarten up and start typing the daggone thing in Word and copying and pasting, but not yet.

My Blog Week

So here it is.  This is what I have decided my blog schedule will be.  Maybe it's a bit ambitious, but I am going to give it a shot.  It's pretty random and stream of consciousness, but that's sort of how I roll.

Sunday - The Week Ahead - Here's where I will lay out goals for the week: fitness, home, professional, craft.  Accountability comes later in the week!

Monday - My Day - I will post whatever I feel like talking about that day, whether it's kids, husband, shoes, books, good day, bad day.  It will be my creative writing exercise for the week.  Flex my writing muscles a little.

Tuesday - Try It Out/On! - Ok, I love clothes, shoes, and accessories.  So I will try out new things I have seen online (ok, on Pinterest) and post it here.  This is not a fishing for flattery expedition, I promise!  I just want to see how some of these things translate on real people, in the real world.  You guys totally should have seen the smoky eye tutorial I got from Pinterest...I gave The Walking Dead zombies a run for their money!

Wednesday - Remember When-sday - Haha.  See what I did there?  Clever.  This is the day I will post nostalgic items from childhood and young adulthood, both loved and not so much loved.  Hey, remember Old Yeller?  Good Times.

Thursday - In Fitness & Health - I'll post any awesome healthy recipes we've tried recently (hopefully with a pic) and any good workouts we've done.  This will keep me accountable and force me to change up my routine.  Let's hear it for muscle confusion!

Friday - The Week In Review - It's accountability day!!  I'll take a look back at the week and see if any of those goals set on Sunday have been accomplished.  Am I setting the bar too low?  Have I just set myself up for failure?  Tune in!

Saturday - Let's be real.  I am most likely NOT going to post on Saturday, so if I do, bonus!

So, that's the week.  That's the plan.  I hope that you all will keep reading...it will keep me on the ball if I think I have a deadline for other people!

And as last night was Thursday (when I originally started this post!) I was going to share a recipe, but that's when the trouble started.  It was Weight Watcher's Shrimp Quesadillas and they were easy and FABULOUS.  But, that's where my trouble started, so I am going to let you all Google it.

Have a great weekend!

First post!!! It's taken a while!

Hello out there! I am attempting this new fad called blogging, perhaps you've heard of it? I know, I know, I am seriously, and I mean seriously behind the times. I have actually had this blog for almost three years now and have never posted a single thing. I am not super happy with the layout but I will keep tweaking it until I am satisfied.

My main problem with this blog was, "what am I going to write?" and "who the hell will actually want to read it?". I'm still working those things out, so until I come up with a concept I am comfy with, whoever I hoist this upon will be subject to some painfully random musings!

So, why start now? I turned the big 35 in November. The age thing was not a big deal. What was a big deal was the fact that I am doing NONE of the things I said I would be. I am not a lawyer, and then later, a stay at home mom. I am not the weight I want to be. I am not the mom I want to be. I am not in the process of writing the next great novel. I have not travelled the world nor have I taken my kids any where more exotic than Disney World. I am not trying to invoke pity because life as I know it is pretty fabulous. Some of these things I can fix, some I can't. Some I don't even want to fix. Lawyer? Yeah right! I just realized that I kept waiting for the opportunity to present itself for me to be able to do some of these things instead of giving myself the opportunity. So, I've been exercising with a vengeance(and with guilt but that's a post for another day) and trying to get this thing back online so I can write. Maybe it's not exactly what I had in mind but it's a start and I have really missed writing.

So stay tuned. I might say something interesting, but you'll definitely get to see pics of my kids!