Award and a fabulous blog

Ashley from Domestic Divas Fancy has given me an award, the Sister Hood Award. I'm always amazed that people find my blog worthy of an award. So thank you Ashley.

If you are a scrapper or crafter, you will LOVE Ashley's blog, go check it out. Below are a few photos I stole from her site.
On her blog she features amazing scrapbook rooms every Saturday. Don't you just love the way these boxes look? I have those little round circles. Today I will probably spend most of the day labeling things.


Look at this jar she has next to her washing machine for when she finds change. Beside my washing machine is an ugly plastic container. This is so much cuter than what I have, and I probably have those same stickers somewhere in my craft room.

She offers inspiration to the crafters.

And she gives inspiration to the decorators.

And every once in a while, she has inspiration for the baker.


Go check out her blog, you will not be disappointed.

Cabbages and Roses

Too bad I'm on a spending freeze. I found this website Cabbages and Roses


I think I could break the bank there.

Pantry Storage Ideas

After reading all the blogs where they have cleaned out and organized their pantries, I have been bitten by the bug. I did a Internet search to see what kind of ideas I could come up with to make my pantry better. I found this picture at Paradise Closets. Nice, but my family eats other things than "blue". I think when they went grocery shopping they threw everything with a blue label in their cart.


This has to be about the neatest pantry I have seen. But seriously, who has the space to do this? And how much $$$$ did those jars come to? If this was my pantry, I think I would go in there everyday and just look at it.
I love this idea. A basket with all the ingredients you need for that night's meal. I don't have room for 7 baskets, but neat idea. And if I had 7 baskets, I would actually have to plan what I was going to fix that night. No more of hubby calling to tell me he will be home in 30 minutes and me running to the kitchen frantically trying to decide what to fix.


No matter how hard I try, my pantry will never be this organized.

Not wanting to spend $$$$$, I think maybe I should just go organize it. Maybe tomorrow I will post pics. Or maybe I should post Friday. I haven't posted a Declutter Friday picture in a long time. I'm off to start cleaning!

Nester's 10 ways to avoid a house you will love

Yesterday, Nester blogged about not having a house that you love, here they are,

1. Worry that it's never good enough.

Big problem for me. The minute I get done with a project, I'm ready to move on to a new one. Next on the list, the boys' bathroom. Ok, Nester would agree that this bathroom is NOT good enough. It needs a major redo. I know you all jealous of the toilet in the shower! As soon as Dave, my carpenter, can make it here, this bathroom is going to be transformed. The projects on the list are, painting, bead board, crown molding, framing the mirror, mistreatments (shower curtain).

2. Put off doing anything because you don't know where to start.

This is me. My husband is not a handy man so Dave, my carpenter, has a list of things a mile long he needs to do when he gets here. The problem, I only get Dave about 2 times a year.

3. Aspire to have a home just like the ones you see in the magazines.

This one is me also. I can paint, buy the furniture, have the window treatments made, but I can not table scape. My downfall is accessories and hanging pictures. I can not accessorize if my life depended on it. Magazines have stylist and everything looks as if it was made for that spot. Sadly this will never be my home.

4. Tell yourself you don't deserve it.

This one is not a problem for me.

5. Assume you can't have anything pretty because you have kids and not much money.

I use to have trouble with this one. Finally I found that if you make them clean what ever they dirtied, they are usually better at taking their shoes off at the door, or being more careful. (This goes for the main floor only, for some reason they don't care what their rooms look like). This is another reason why I love Nester, she uses what she has and spends NO $$$$.

6. Study up on all of those rules that the real designers tell you not to break.

This one is also a problem for me. I have more books and magazines then I have room for. Trying to remember all the rules gets so confusing.

7. Sulk because you are a renter.

This one is not a problem for me.

8. Complain because your husband won't do anything in the house.

I wish my husband was a handy man, but he is not, and nothing is going to change that. That is why I have Dave.

9. Be afraid.

This one I do not have a problem with. My house is painted just about every color. My mother tells me I have a puke yellow dinning room and a diarrhea green family room. (Sorry, I know too much information). I don't care what she thinks, I love it. Diarrhea Green
Puke Yellow

Now be honest, are the colors that bad?

10....what am I forgetting?

Two Awards and Hair Bows

Today I have received 2 awards. I am always amazed when someone gives me an award. There are so many really interesting blogs out there to read, and I always wonder why they gave the award to me. So Thank You Kimm and Tanielle for thinking of me.

The first award
Kimm at Reinvented has given me the Butterfly award. Go take a look at her blog, she is in the middle of a Master Bedroom makeover. I can't wait for her to finish.

Another award I received was the Sisterhood award from Tanielle from The Polka Dot Daisy. When I went to her blog to pick it up, I noticed she makes really nice hair bows. If I had a girl, I would be buying these bows, they are spectacular!
I hope she doesn't mind that I stole these photos from her blog, but I thought everyone should see these bows. Maybe it's a good thing I don't have girls, I would be broke!! If you would like to see all of her bows click here ----->Hair Bows Tanielle will do special orders, and work with you to create a perfect custom design.

Environmentally Friendly Lawn Mower

Photo found at HGTV

click on picture to see the full picture

If you have gone "Green" and are trying to keep your carbon footprint low, this is the lawn mower for you. Plus you might have a great butt and legs by the end of summer!

It's the little things that matter!

When my kids were in grade school I would find all kinds of things in their pockets. They would find an earring on the playground and bring it home for me to wear. Thanks, but no thanks. They would find hair barrettes, beads, plastic rings, stickers etc. You name it, they have stuffed it into to their pockets to bring home to me. So you can imagine my surprise when my oldest son, Zach, he must have been 2nd or 3rd grade at the time, was out digging in the dirt and found a rock. Yep, he stuck it in his pocket and brought it home to give to me.

He handed me the rock and I asked him what he wanted me to do with it. He said he was giving it to me because it was a heart.

I keep it in a little basket on top of my dresser. I pulled it out today and asked him if he remembered giving it to me. When Zach saw it, he couldn't believe I still had it after all of these years. He told me he remembered finding it, under which tree he found it and what he was doing when he found it. He didn't know I still had it.

I love my rock!!!

I have been tagged, What's in your bag?

Ashley from Domestic Divas Fancy has tagged me. I am suppose to post a picture of my purse and tell you everything in it.
First I had to run out to the car to get it so I could take a picture. This is my Brighton Bag. I LOVE Brighton, I have two Brighton bags, one for summer, a straw bag, and one for winter, my black leather bag. Every now and then you might see me carrying my red Dooney, but 95% of the time I have my Brighton. The cost, $285.00. I did get it on sale. If you brought in an old purse you got 10 or 25% off, can't remember. We live in a shopping wasteland, so my mom and I drove to the Pinnacles in Arkansas. We went on a Sunday, my husband and son were off somewhere racing motocross that day. My mom and I decided to drive down while their sale was going on to see what they had. My youngest son, Nick, did not want to go. My mom paid him some outrageous price to go since I would not leave him home alone. When I say outrageous price, I'm talking like $50.00. So whatever discount we got on the purse, we paid to my son. I know, I'm a bad parent for bribing my kid, but hey it works! He rode all the way down there, sat in the store and let us shop without complaining. Well, he probably did complain once or twice, what kid wouldn't complain in a purse store, but overall, he was a pretty good sport about it.

This is what I have in it.
My wallet
a Brighton coin purse they sent me free in the mail for buying my Brighton purse ( I say free, but for $285.00 plus the bribe we paid my son, I'm sure I paid for it)
Notepad with pen (was in my Christmas stocking)
Checkbook
Daily planner
hairbrush with a pony tail holder wrapped around the handle
3 lip glosses(one of them a Buxom Lips from BE called Candi) Love this stuff
3 pens
paycheck stubs
subway card (Just got home from eating lunch with my mom, I did not put the card away, just threw it in the bottom of my purse
straw wrapper, I was too lazy to find a trash can so threw it in my purse along with my subway card.

Now I tag you! Tell us what is in your bag! Here are the rules.

Post a picture of whatever bag you are today - not last weekend when you and your hubby went out to that fabulous restaurant. No cheating!!!
____________________________________________________________________
2. Tell us how much it cost. This is a no-judgment zone -- there will be no ridiculing or eye rolling here. And, if there is a story to go along with how you obtained it, I'd love to hear it.
____________________________________________________________________
3. Now tag some fellow bloggers and link back to this post so people know why you are posting pictures of your bag.

Easy Bookmark

This is so easy, I can't believe I never thought of it. I found this easy to make bookmark in the Martha Stewart Living Magazine. If I need a bookmark, I usually use post-it notes or use the subscription card out of a magazine. Isn't this prettier than using the subscription card?
You only need decorative scissors and an envelope. Martha used a pretty paper sack, this was all that I had. If you recycle, this would be great to do with envelopes you receive in the mail. I know I always get pretty envelopes with birthday cards, Christmas, etc. instead of throwing away the envelope, make bookmarks.
Just cut the corners off, simple!

Out of this world Valentine

I thought I would show you the Valentine box we made for my boys several years ago. It is on its last leg, we have used this box year after year. We have a bad habit of making things the night before we need them, and this is what we came up with. It was very simple to make. We used an oatmeal box wrapped with tissue paper that we cut to make to look like fringe, a funnel wrapped in foil for the top, and cardboard wrapped in foil for legs.
We used wire garland with stars, it is suppose to be smoke. The legs are cardboard, foil and stickers. We cut tissue paper in strips and then cut to look like fringe.
Instead of store bought cards, we made our own. The ones we handed out were similar to these but the space ship was red instead of blue. The inside reads, "Valentine, you are out of this world!" The stamps used were Close To My Heart.

Wild Life

Since I'm showing you all of the wild animals that come to my yard, I thought I would show you my fox. This little guy and two of his brothers or sisters would come sleep in my flower bed every night last spring. We could stand on the deck and whistle and they would come running. We haven't seen them for several months, I hope they are doing ok.

Goble-Goble

My blog is going to the birds. This is what I saw when I looked out my dinning room window this morning. We usually see 2 or 3 turkeys hanging around here everyday. But never this many. Today we had 23. These two guys, well, I think they are girls, were in the front yard. I'm surprised when I went out on the front porch they didn't run.
Sorry about the lamp reflection on the window. I was going to run outside and take their picture, but it was raining.

Bird Watching

I promise, this will be the last picture of our eagle, unless I get a really cool one of him flying.

Yesterday, we went to see if we could find him again. Yep, we did, he was sitting in the same tree where I spotted him the other day. While watching him, a man stopped to talk. He said that there are several in the area. Wow, we have never had eagles in our area and now we have several.

Cream Cheese Tarts

This is a repost, I thought with Valentine's Day coming, this would be the perfect time to make these. They are now my youngest son's favorite. In fact, I'm making them for him right now, and my mom is making 80 for the church dinner this weekend.



I found this recipe for Cream Cheese Tarts at Cheryl's Fascinating finds They are so good, easy to make and my kids loved them. I'm posting a picture that Cheryl used because by the time I got around to taking a picture of the ones I had made, they were gone. If you like them, go to Cheryl's blog and let her know how good they were and tell her how you found them. Even if you don't make them, go take a look around at her blog, she is very talented and her home has been in Romantic Country Magazine and is also Oct. Cottage of the Month.

Individual Cream Cheese Tarts
3 8oz pkgs cream cheese
5 eggs
1c. sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
Cream eggs w cream cheese one at a time, add sugar gradually, add vanilla. Spray cupcake liners with Pam Cooking Spray. Fill cupcake liner 2/3 full bake 30 min. @ 300
cool 5 min and mix the following ingredients. together and spoon into well of the cake
1/4 c. sugar
1 c. sour cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
Then add a dollop of pie filling, preserves etc. pop back in oven for 5 min then chill....Your family will love these!

Eagle?

On the way to town the other day, I was looking out across a field. I saw a large bird with a white head. It was pretty far away, I couldn't really make it out. I was sure though that it was an eagle. That night I told my husband that I was sure I had seen an eagle that day. We never see eagles around here so he said it was probably just a big chicken hawk. Well, this morning on my way to town I brought my camera along. When I arrived to the place I had seen it, I slowed down, it wasn't there. I decided to go on to town but take back roads. When I was about 5 miles away, I decided I was not going to see it. Well, just as I decided it was gone, guess what I saw. I glanced across a field, across a pond and scanned the trees. I saw a big white dot in the trees. I made my lens zoom as far as possible and looked through the camera, and this is what I saw. What are the chances that I would be over 5 miles from where I originally saw it the first time and I see it again? I could have turned on any gravel road, but there it sat on the path I decided to take.
The picture is not great, but what do you think it is, an eagle or a chicken hawk?

Edit to say, I showed my husband the picture last night. He agrees, it is an eagle. I told him it was.

Polyvore

Untitled - Polyvore.com

This site is addictive. I guess I should stop playing around and go fix dinner.

Polyvore

Untitled - on Polyvore.com


Isn't this a neat site? You can type in what piece of furniture you are looking for, the color, what store you want to shop , etc. When you find what you want, just drag it over and put it on your board. When you are finished it will tell you where to find the piece and how much $$$$. You can do this for every room. Will save you time from running from store to store.

New Awards

I received 3 awards this week.
The first 2 awards are from Debbie, her blog is Simply Cherished. This award translated from Portuguese means, "This blog contributes to and supports or believes in close friendships"
This award is a triple award and it is called the Sisterhood Award, it is also from Debbie. This award is for blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude! My 3rd award was given to me by
Catherine de the' Cups blog I am honor that these two ladies would think of me and I want to thank both Catherine and Debbie for passing them on to me. I follow and read both of these blogs daily.

The rules after receiving this blog are the following:

1. Put the award up on your blog.

2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.

3. Nominate at least seven other blogs. (This is not an easy task)

4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.

5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog

He saw his shadow!

6 more weeks of winter.

Let the Game begin

I found this on Two Peas Message board.

Ingredients:

The Field:
1 Pound of Guacamole
15 Oz. Queso Dip For The Steelers End Zone
15 Oz. Salsa For The Cardinals End Zone
2 Oz. Sour Cream for the Field Lines

The Players:
15 Vienna Sausages
Helmets - 3 Oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese

The Goal Posts:
1 Slim Jim for Each Goal Post
1 Oz. Monterey Jack Cheddar To Anchor (each)

The Stands:
58 Twinkies
1 Pound of Bacon
1 Bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos
1 Bag of Cheetos
1 Bag of Corn Tortilla Chips
1 Bag of Chex Mix

The Blimp:
20 Oz. Football-Shaped Summer Sausage (optional) (on second thought, no, this isn't optional. Go buy one.)

TOTAL CALORIES: 24,375
TOTAL GRAMS OF FAT: 1,285
TOTAL COST: $86.47
TOTAL DELICIOUSNESS: 1 Billion trillion, dude. One billion trillion.