what a rainy day

We are so not used to this kind of weather, it was an all out soaker this morning for both the bus stop and then pre school drop off. We are having a serious drought here in Ohio, and unseasonably high temps, it has been 90 this week. It's been awhile since I had to contend with jackets, umbrellas, puddles, back packs...all at once. But after I dropped the last of my passengers off, I was headed to do errands when the start of one of my favorite songs came on the radio: Add It Up by the Violent Femmes. Right after that, I stopped to get gas (in the rain) and when I got back in, another classic was beginning: Yaz's Don't Go. Not many Yaz fans in the world, and you very rarely hear them on the radio. It certainly put me in a good mood, and kept me moving on this blah day. I am also inspired to tackle adding tunes to my MP3. Remember, the Sansa I used to love? Well that thing has become a real pain. I downloaded 200+ songs during my 3 months free at Rhapsody courtesy of Best Buy only apparently the joke is on me (and many others I have found via the internet) b/c when my 3 months expired, so did the songs. It took me a whole day of online research to clear them all from the player, and now slowly I am trying to add back some music. And apparently a secondary trouble spot is that when you clear everything out, the mp3 player really doesn't know how to re-organize itself. So I have about 15 songs on there now, I cannot create a playlist (yet?!) and it is not even organizing them correctly by Artist. It lists the Dixie Chicks 3x's and I only have 5 total songs by them in there. Very frustrating. If I had unlimited time, which I don't, I still would not choose to spend it doing this. But in the end, music is a good thing and I need some tunes if I am going to continue walking and getting fit! Pin It

we're a puzzle

Last night, while in my bed (I know, BAD habit to start) Shelby said: Look Mom, we are a puzzle.
See, often before she nods off, she will ask me to hold her hand and even though I am breaking some cardinal rule by allowing her to fall asleep in our bed, and then later move her to her own, dangit it is sweet! So we are holding hands, and she says that: we are a puzzle. We had just done three, 24 piece puzzles, about 10 times. She is way into a puzzle phase and our hands intertwined reminded her of how the pieces of a puzzle go together. Dangit, it IS sweet, right? And a metaphor for life too. Really, think deep. Pin It

art show

With school in full swing for both girls, some amazing works of art are coming home. These are the two features of the week! Self portrait, by Shelby. Apparently she assisted in much of the cutting, but my favorite are the distinct brown eyes, just like her own. Next, we have the Jesus pennant by Olivia, with the inverted U. Both of these are keepers, motivating me to go purchase another plastic storage tote, so I can get back in the habit of keeping one for each girl all year.

Pin It

a fun surprise

I was just reading through the 9/14 weekly digest on Erin Lincoln's blog at Creating Keepsakes and saw a note about "inverse scallops" and thought that sounded cool. Imagine my surprise when I clicked and my layout opened up!! The pink one of Kacie shown right below. Yea, me! Wish those people would just go on and call me up and ask to publish some of my pages :)

Here it is: link.

I have been really working on cleaning and purging over here. I know 2 hours a day to myself (or yourself) may not seem like much, but to a stay at home mom, who after 6 years has found herself alone a few days a week, man it is like the jackpot. Funny though, I really miss my girls. Today Shelby was in a carpool for the first time, and honestly, I was a bit sad not to be the one to pick her up AND it made the morning feel so long. She did great, it is me with the growing pains, eh? But during that time, I walked for 20 minutes ( I did that yesterday too--me time=good thing), dropped off another stack of stuff to St. Vincent De Paul, and swept and mopped all my downstairs floors. Unheard of accomplishments for me! Pin It

fewer posts

yet more creating and cooking going on behind the scenes. I save all my pics into Picasa by Google, and for some reason, all week, it is not allowing me to share those directly from there to here--which is much simpler and quicker. Ah well, love technology when it works for me; not so much when it defies me.

I am trying so hard to eat well, and eat less overall and snack less. Instead, it has created an obsession of thinking of little else but food, and when I can eat next. Drat. I have a 20 year HS reunion coming up and I'd love to attend with less spectacular love handles.

I made a few new recipes for dinner. The rice took much longer to cook, and was just mediocre so no sense sharing that recipe. I made Rachael Ray's Turkey Croquettes which I have linked to the side, and those are good, a bit labor intensive though.

I also made the caramel apple recipe shown here . Yum. Olivia licked one beater and then moved on to a spoon, ending by declaring she wanted that on her next birthday cake (which is not until July by the way). If you were to put caramel icing on a cake or cupcake, what kind would you choose? Chocolate, pumpkin muffins? Looking for a good fit.

I made a few new digi layouts this week too. The one of Shelby is made from the "Goodbye to Summer" kit at mydigitalmuse.com. The one of Kacie was actually a template which is pretty darned cool, eh? Those digi papers are from MDM too.

Pin It