It's My Life

WARNING: This post contains classified information about the true origination of Santa Claus. Please, do not read this post if you still believe a single over-weight man drives all around the world delivering presents to children in one night while driving a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer who know how to fly. Please by all means, do not read this post! This is a tale of a Mommy (that would be me) whose favorite things in life include making her children happy. This is a tale of a Mommy (again, that would be me) who has taught her children about Santa Claus. You know this story, it is common. Santa Claus spends all year making toys. If you have been good, you can write Santa Claus a letter and tell him what you hope and dream he will bring you when he makes his trip around the world on Christmas Eve. This is a tale of a Mommy (yep, still me) who goes goal it is every Christmas to give her children their dreams. This tale starts the day the giant sized Wal Mart toy a...

The Boy started his basketball season tonight.  He started on the "B" team. The first play of the game, he got a steal and immediately scored two points! I know there is no "I" in team. But as a Momma, I counted. He had a total of 7 points in his first high school game. (Yep, he sunk a three pointer!) In the end, the "B" team won their first game.

Thanksgiving at My Momma's was this weekend. I love My Momma's cookin'. I had been looking forward to the trip to her home all week long. We went up Saturday, the same day as the annual Braymer Craft Fair. My Momma loves to go to that craft fair so we stopped by there on our way to her home. Miss Medical Student, who is so far so good safe in Norway, asked that I post a photo of the good food we ate. So here you go! We had turkey, ham, sage dressing, cheesy corn, candied sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, and My Momma's homemade egg noodles (that is what is in that huge silver kettle!) YES, everything is a carb. I love carbs! I know I should not but I do. For dessert we had pumpkin pie and my favorite, cherry pie. My middle brother and I have a long standing fight over who gets to cut into the cherry pie first. Once again, I won! Ironically, my niece has a cute book of mask. After this meal, one of the mask was so appropriate. What can I say, "Oink...

2011 Class 5 Champions Staley Falcons! We went and brought it home!

I made a Thanksgiving candle a few weeks ago, here . I took it to my Mother-in-laws home for Thanksgiving dinner and everyone loved it. My sister-in-law has a secret Santa. She is suppose to give small gifts once a week leading up to Christmas. I love secret Santa's but my office is kinda too small for one. She and I got together and made a candle tonight for her Secret Santa. She secret person has two favorite scents; lavender and vanilla. We took a plan lavender candle and jazzed it up tonight. Using Microsoft Word, we found a font we liked and printed a monogram letter out, using 125 font size. We put a piece of tissue paper over the printed out copy of the large letter. Then we traced the letter onto the tissue paper and added a circle frame. Next, she trimmed up the tissue paper fairly close to the edge of the circle.  Next, we took a piece of wax paper, layered the tissue paper, then wax paper onto the candle. Holding the wax paper from behind, heat the des...

I was up early today. It was not even work related. It is Black Friday. But I was no where near a box store trying to get a "good" deal. We got up early to cheer on our local football team. They left at 8:25 a.m. this morning heading to the Edward Jones Dome, Home of the St. Louis Rams. They are playing for the Class 5 State Championship title. The Boy, My Momma, and I got up early to create a sign to take to the send off. Not bad, if I might say so myself. We whipped this out in 30 minutes. It was cold this morning...much colder than yesterday. It was windy. We stood outside for only half an hour but it felt much longer. As we waited for the team to prepare to leave, I could not help but get all wrapped up in the excitement. What high school sports player does not dream of winning a state championship? I think they all do! Making dreams happen, no matter how big or small that dream, is so exciting. Not just for the players, but for the parents, grandparents, sib...

 Our day started with The Husband taking all the kids fishing. He is so smart. His plan allowed for activity, decreased noise, and increased sanity for everyone involved! It allowed me to make up some pumpkin bars. For the first time I used real pumpkin, not from a can. They were so yummy! Today, we were at my in-laws home.  I am a blessed person, we often have combined celebrations. My side of the family is welcome at my in-laws home and vice versa.  It is nice to be surrounded by love! And of course, would it be Thanksgiving without some football.  My family of kids! The rest of my family. And this is only the first celebration. We have another day of giving Thanks on Saturday.

I am just going to put this out there. I am a nervous wreck! As a parent, or even as a parent substitute, we find at times our children do things that concern us. We want to teach them autonomy so we encourage them to make their own decisions. When they are younger we can intervene in those decisions and direct them before disaster occurs. As they get older those chances for intervention become less frequent and we can only rely upon the years when our influence mattered to come through. It happens with friend choices. It happens when your teenagers starts to drive and "go out" on the weekend. I must be currently feeling what my parents felt when I went off to college. Of course, we do not let our children  know how concerned we are. We want to give the illusion of support. But you all know, we don't sleep till they get home, we can't think of anything else until we hear from them. As you may recall, I introduced you all to Miss Medical Student here . She is n...

There is a religious hymn we used to sing in church frequently, in fact, we sung it on the very first service after I became a Mom. The lyric that  stands out to me every Thanksgiving says, "count your many blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God has done." So in an attempt to honor Thanksgiving, I shall name my blessings, one by one. 1. I am blessed with my health. After having a health scare you realize just how precious your wellness is. When I was diagnosed with cancer in August 2010, the doctor told me that untreated I would only live another 12 to 18 months. I am nearing that expiration date. I am alive and healthy! Thank you for my health! 2. I am blessed with a specular husband. He is a great provider. He is caring and attentive. He is compassionate. He is strong and study. 3. I have a fantastic son. He is smart. He is caring. He is sarcastic (why do I find this a blessing, I have no idea!) Generally speaking, even though he is ...

Attending craft fairs is a pass time of mine. I love them. I am guilty of walking around a craft fair thinking to myself one thought..."I can do that!" I have even thought several times, why don't I ever do one of these things. The biggest reasons I don't is that it takes a lot of creativity. I know a lot of talented people but I personally want to go to a craft fair and be blown away! I want to see new things. So after I got sick and I started creating my bucket list, I put being a vendor at a craft fair on my bucket list.  Yesterday, with my mother and mother-in-law, we made that happen.  We had a small booth at a local high school's booster clubs annual craft fair. It was a long day. Set up started at 6:00 a.m. When we arrived, we were met with a host of high school volunteers to help us unload our car and take us to our booth. The doors opened at 9:00 a.m. and we sold until 4:00 p.m. The end result, we certainty made enough to cover our cost. We migh...

Thanksgiving is just around the corner! I have been decorating the house for the past few weeks. My Momma harvested some Bittersweet for me. It looks amazing on my mantel. Today, while walking around World Market I found a Mexican Pumpkin candle. Tonight, I decorated it. So I gather my supplies. My candle. Tissue paper. Wax paper. Copy paper. Markers. Scissors, Embossing Gun. Next, I put the tissue paper on top of the copy paper and used the markers to draw a design. (you need to put the copy paper under the tissue paper because it bleeds through. you can also tape the tissue paper to the copy paper to make it a little more steady. ) I used recycled tissue paper so it was a bit crinkly. Trim up the tissue paper, as close to the design as possible. Then take the design and put it on the candle. Wrap the design and entire candle in wax paper. Holding the candle and wax paper from the back, take your embossing gun and heat up the design. This is pretty cool. It does n...

When I got sick last year I felt a need to tie up loose ends. I had a few unresolved things I needed to resolve.  I had a few apologies to make from my past, and I had a few thank you's to give. I took an inventory of my life and knew where I shined and when I did not.  I wanted to acknowledge my short comings. To those I was short to. Set things right, if you know what I mean. Clear the air. So several of you heard from me. Thank you so much for listening to me. There were two relationships I had really hoped to repair, or at least set on a different track. Both of them, were friendships I made when I lived in Colorado. I lost contact with each of them during a super deep, super dark part of my life, my divorce from The Boy's father. It was never that the relationships became unimportant to me, it was more of a matter of not knowing how to care for myself and just sinking inside myself. I lost my own way for a few years. It was all I could do to survive. I was pretty ...

I love the 80's. I think I immersed myself in about every style trend that came out in the 80's. Neon, jelly shoes, knickers, big hair, off-the-shoulder sweaters, friendship pins, and of course leg warmers. I am happy to see that leg warmers are coming back in style. And they are so much cuter now than they use to be. So you can imagine how excited I was during a recent shopping trip to Hobby Lobby when I saw leg warmers! I picked up a few supplies to jazz up these little leg warmers for The Short Chic. Pink Polka Dot leggings, a variety of ribbon, and some glitter buttons. This morning I sat down at my sewing machine and sewed the pink ribbon to the top of the leggings.  It was not hard, just a tight stretch around the sewing machine. In the end, the ribbon looks pretty good around the top of the leggings.  Next I took 7/8 inch Hot Pink Grosgrain ribbon and cut a piece several inches long. I ran a basting stitch along one side of the ribbon. Afte...

You failed. You all failed.  Every single last one of you failed. And you failed miserably. I am a sports mom. But I do not live, breath, or die sports. If you cut me I bleed red...blood. I do not bleed my high school, college, or even professional teams colors. Sports are entertainment to me. They are not life. What is important to me; my health, my families health, and my children.  Too many children are hurt in this world on a daily basis. And I am here to tell you, they are not being hurt by strangers who lurk in dark spaces. They are hurt by those adults in their lives who are there to protect, nurture, and love them. Maybe because I see this dark side of our country that no one else wants to see, I do not have a hard time believing that something "just ain't right" about what has gone down at Penn State University. You all put football and winning over what matters in this world. You turned your backs on small children being sexually abused by a gro...

I am rushing! It is 2:40 p.m. and I am suppose to leave for the airport at 3:15 p.m. I have just spent the last 2 1/2 hours making and decorating homemade cupcakes for the basketball team. Why do I do this to myself? The Boy told me just the day before that the basketball team was having a Pre-Season party to reward all the boys who have been conditioning for the past two months. He did not sign up to bring anything! WHAT was he thinking. First of all, I love stuff like that. Second of all, has he not heard the saying, a way to a man's heart is through his stomach? Tryouts were the very next week. So, despite the fact that I only had less than 3 hours before my flight, I whipped up some homemade cupcakes. I am not above bribery! Maybe better bakers would have a supply of fancy flours on hand and could whip up some cupcakes from scratch. I am a busy Mom, so I keep a supply of box mixes on hand. A few months ago I read a blog post (gosh, I wish I had bookmarked it!) ab...

She rules my word. We had an entire Mommy/daughter weekend. We played Princesses. We stayed up late. We ate pancakes for breakfast. We watched a lot of Nick Junior! We laughed. We snuggled. And we played dress up. She was Cinderella. I was Prince Charming. Her stuffed leopard married us. (Please no one tell her it is not a legal ceremony! I would hate to ruin her moment!) In the month of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for boy's fishing weekends.  They allow extra Mommy/Daughter  time!

What does a girl do when her son goes to visit his Dad for the weekend?  Oh yeah, then your husband leaves town to go fishing? Leaving just us two girls home by ourselves? What is a girl to do? I KNOW!! You invite a bunch of girls over and have a Pinterest Inspired Girls Night...IN! Which is exactly what we did last night. My friend Melissa came up with calling it P.I.G.'s night. I thought it cleaver and it is now stuck. In order to prepare for our night, I scoured over my Pin Boards and came up with a main course, dessert and a craft or two that we all could do. The Cutting Edge of Ordinary's Gnocchi Mac and Cheese The Cutting Edge of Ordinary  has a recipe for Gnocchi Mac and Cheese that I have had pinned for some time. I love gnocchi and I love mac and cheese. I was hoping that this recipe would be pure heaven and I have to tell you, it did not disappoint! My Gnocchi Mac and Cheese Oh and dessert! I was going to make healthy baked apples made in...

Even though we were on the phone at the time, I know my best friend rolled her eyes at me when I told her I drug home nearly 10 pounds of apples from Oregon. She is practical. I am emotional. She would never lug fruit home when you can buy fruit here. I did not have the heart to tell her there were other things in my bag besides apples. My confession:  I also brought home those yellow beets and red carrots in the above photograph. I can't easily get those vegetables at my local market. I decided to cook them while they were still at their peek. It is a cold rainy day here. So I thought what a better day than today to roast some veggies.  I roast veggies a lot. Mostly root veggies like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, garlic and onions.  Tonight I roasted those red carrots and the beets. Growing up, I hated beets. I thought they were the yuckiest thing on the earth and totally tasted like dirt. A few years ago I was having a work lunch with a friend and she had yellow...