A Giveaway, of sorts.

I like reading blogs. Alot. In fact, I would say that its about 60% of what I do online, besides obsessively checking Facebook and reading articles about Harry Potter. I like blogs of all sorts, from my friends and their daily lives to those famous mom blogs that are too funny (seriously, if you don't read RFML on a regular basis, you need to now. Go, do it. Then come back to me please!)  and some fashion blogs (though I seriously lack in that department). I have found that many of the more "famous" blogs out there, who have more followers than people I have even met in my entire life, always seem to have giveaways. Not giveaways in the sense like, "Hey, I've got some old crap in my garage and I'm giving it away! Come by and pick it up!" No, no. Giveaways like "If you comment on my page and follow my twitter and email me and text me and Facebook me and....then you could be entered to win all this free makeup from Clinique because the Clinique presidents liked my blog and therefore sent me all this fabulous stuff so I am giving it out to one of you, who I'll pick at random." Phew. That was a mouthful. Ya'll know what I am talking about?

Well, my blog isn't that cool. I have no corporate sponsers and I believe my only readers are my relatives and three friends (maybe four). So I'll never have a cool giveaway like a free frip to Paris. But I thought to myself that that shouldn't stop me from having one! Let's call it The Unpopular Blog Giveaway, sponsored by me. Cool, right?

So here's the deal, to enter, you have to put your work into it. First, go to wikipedia and find the article on the state you were born in, then go to the line in the article that corresponds with the month you were born in, and using any words found in that line, create your own movie or book title. Leave a comment with your winning title and my panel of judges (well, just me) will select the winning entry. Additionally, all non winning contestants will automatically be entered into a drawing for the second place prize.

For example, I entered "California" and the twelfth line (since I'm born in December) read as

"American victory in the war led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded Alta California to the United States. Western areas of Alta California became the state of California..."

so my movie title is "The State of United Victory: The Guadalupe Areas." Who knows what that movie would be about!

Here's the important stuff, the prizes:
-First place will recive ONE candy bar of their choosing and an entire blog post written about them on my blog.
-Second place will receive ONE candy bar of their choosing.

Choose wisely.


Fine Print. My husband thinks that I am a complete nerd for doing this, but I am doing it anyway.

A little try at DIY

I have some really crafty friends. Friends who make their own scrapbooks and cards, who make dresses out of old t-shirts, who make purses and wallets, and the list go on. I have awesome friends. Unfortuantely, I am not that crafty. It also seems that every time I find a new "mommy blog" on the interweb, not only are they super crafty and pros at DIY projects, they even have their own little shop on Etsy with all their cute things. Apparently, being cute and crafty is a requirement to be a mom, a category that I don't grade the highest. Yes, I can scrapbook, and yes, I can whip up a cute project for my kids to do every now and then. I can't, however, make my own curtains out of scraps found along the roadside and have them happen to match my bedroom. In fact when I was telling Dave the other day that I would like just a little sewing kit for Christmas with some needles and thread and such to do mending type things around the house, he jokingly laughed and said, "Why? Isn't that why we live so close to my mom, to send our things to her?" Ha. Ha.
With a little inspiration from my dear friend, Erin, I attempted a little project of my own. For a while, I have had a nice little black and white bedspread that I love. The furniture in my room, however, was very not black. She has a dresser in her room that was at one point white and is now black. She said it was pretty simple to do, all she used was spray paint! Well, seemed easy enough for me! Off to Wal-Mart I went with a renewed crafty sense of purpose and energy.

The Before Shot.
I have one book shelf, one night stand, and a kids rocking chair I found at a garage sale for 25 cents! The chair had a little rust, but since I was feeling brave, I got a can of white spray paint to change the it from green to white.

My great husband helping me out. He's such a trooper.

Here I am, midway through the project. As you can see, it was pretty dark, so we stopped and finished up another day.


And the finished projects, if you please....

I am pretty happy with how they turned out. My bedroom definitely feels more uniform now! I am glad I did it! Here's the rocking chair...

I am pleased with the chair as well. Clara reeeally loves it. I just need the help of Lauren or Jes or someone else to help me make a cover for the seat and back. It's not too horribly ugly now, but I would like it to match Clara's room somehow, with pinks and reds. If you can help a girl out, let me know!

I am glad I got brave and did some little projects. I feel a little better the next time I want to do something around the house!

Singin' in the Rain

Though it is completely sunny and mild out now, I promise that it was rainy, dark, and stormy earlier. And this is what happened:

Things that don't belong

In honor of my SIL's "Things that are supposed to work" post, I thought that I would do my own rendition of "Things that..." In this case, it is in regards to things that in their own right, are okay, but in a different situation or used for the wrong purpose can be bad.

1. Mice in trashcans. This one is fairly obvious. Mice are okay, but in cages. Trashcans are okay, for holding trash. It is not okay for a dead mouse to be in a trashcan. Nope, sure isn't. I was empyting my laudry room basket which is downstairs, fairly large, and mostly holds all the lint that I throw away from the dryer. It also doesn't have a bag in it. Upon emptying into the outside trashcan, I found a dead little mouse snuggled up amongst the lint. I tried banging the laudry room can against the larger trashcan, but the mouse just won't come out. I was therefore forced to get some paper towels (alot of paper towels) and scoop it up. Blech. I don't know why it was stuck there, but it was. I can only imagine at one time the lint was warm and the little critter climbed in thinking he had found the eureka of all warm places to be. Little did he know more and more would be piled on top of him, resulting in his untimely death.

2. Ants in brown sugar. I was going to make cookies today, and when it came time in the recipe to add the brown sugar, I realized that my little air tight container was all out. I went into the cupboard to get my half-empty bag of b. sugar to fill up the container. As I was dumping it all in, two ants fell out of the bag in a little sugar avalanche. Disgusted, I threw out all the brown sugar and postponed the cookie making until later. I have since bought some more and was able to finish my batch. This situation could explain why we have been finding so many ants in the kitchen lately. They had found a pretty good stash! May I point out that these are not your run of the mill "cute, little" ants. No, these are the mean older, larger cousins of those ants. And they suck.

3. Clothes in the bathtub. This is never a good idea, especially if you are a three year old boy. Clothes, are good. They keep us from being naked. Baths are good, they keep us from being dirty. Combined, they can create a grumpy momma. I explained this a bit in my last post, but here are some pictures to prove it:

I couldn't really be mad, could I?

Caught in the act...

4. Girls on pans. Girls are always wonderful, pans can be useful. What is not really helpful is a girl on a pan, but it is awfully cute.

She was doing this while I was trying attempt #2 of the day for making cookies. I'm totally biased, but she's just the sweetest thing I have ever seen. Here's a bonus picture just for fun....

This is the first time that I have said "Smile" and she actually did something that resembled a smile. Big girl!

5. Things that do belong together:

James and Clara. Milk and Cookies.



Home Again.

I don't know why I clean up my house and make sure everything is in order before I leave. The moment I walk in the door from a trip and unload the car, the house looks just the same if not worse than when I cleaned it up before we all left. I just don't know why. I guess it would be doubly worse if I didn't clean it the first place. Oh well. That has to be some cosmic law of the universe that a once cleaned house will be quadruple-y worse upon your return. (Other cosmic laws include when you leave your son clothed in the bathroom and presume he will take off his clothes and then step into the bathtub, he will confuse a couple of steps and leave the clothes on while entering the tub. This however, is just a cosmic law and by no means not something that happened in my house tonight. Except I do have photo evidence and I do have some 4T clothing items hanging to dry in my bathroom right now).

We're back from a wonderful trip down south. It's always nice visiting Corie and her family. It's like a vacation. Nice place, good meals, great conversation. I couldn't ask for more. Dave was away coaching football camp for four days (on a military base, no less. I found out what a cadence run was. Well, I knew what it was, I just didn't know that the thing that it was had a name), so rather than be home by my lonesome, the kids and I endured the long drive in the heat with an un-air conditioned car and made it safe and sound. James is really fond of his cousins, Lily and Tessa. Clara is really fond of her cousin, Faith, more affectionately known as "Bee-be.....Bee-be...." The three of them are growing into quite the little group. They all play together so nicely, and seem to really enjoy hanging out together. The night before we left when I was telling James we were leaving the next day, he got really sad. I told him, "Aren't you excited to see Dada again?" In a purely heart wrenchingly sad James face he said something along the lines of, "Can't Lily and Tessa come too?" And continued to go on and describe how he wished that Dada, Lily and Tessa could all be together-then he'd be perfectly happy. To console his little heart, I offered that we go on a walk before bed. I asked, "Would that make your heart happy?" "Yes, but it will be a little happy to walk, but a little sad to miss Lily and Tessa." He also threw in something about his heart glistening. My dear boy.

I'm glad to be back with my hubby though. I think the four of us function much better when we are all together. We're heading into a busy season though, football is in full swing, Dave goes back to work at the school next week, and I start back teaching my girls in about three weeks! Eeek! We'll be some busy beavers, for sure.