First Random of the new year

1. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being a cranky-baby-hissy-fitter, how much of a complainer are you?  I would say a 4 or a five, depending on the situation.  Maybe a 2 in others.  It’s strange how big things can happen and sometimes they go right over my head, but something silly might go all over me.  I know.. strange.

2. When someone else is talking, do you listen, or are you thinking about what you're going to say in response? I try not to think about my response, as much as listen to them. But of course, at some point they expect a response, so there is a little bit of that too.

 
3. I just deleted 1062 messages from my email account. Do you have any plans for a clean sweep this month--of anything?  We already did.  Cleaned out my email box. I had kept emails from the dark ages and ppl I don’t even email anymore.  G.O.N.E.  And we did some other cleaning over the holidays. Felt so good!

And now, here are some brilliant questions from a gal named Angie at Angie's Ad Lib who graciously offered to let me borrow her brain. Please go over and see Angie because it was so nice of her to help me out. Thank you so much, Angie!
4. Tell us about your perfume. Was it a gift? What does it remind you of? Do you have a signature scent?  Soap and deodorant.  Perfumes can stir up my asthma. : (

5. What is your best organizing tip for the new year?  Keep up.

6. What is your favorite comic strip?   Peanuts, Far Side

7. Do you sleep with a fluffy or flat pillow?  We are verrrry particular about pillows at our house. Very!  We each bought two pillows at the Sleep Number Store when we bought our bed. (I’m a 45)  One of them is a memory foam pillow, which is firmer. And then there’s a very soft, squishy one also.  It’s always drama when we go to hotels to try to find pillows that ‘work’ for us both.  And there is always a lot of flipping going on… to get to the cold side. I even bought regular pillow cases to go with my flannel sheets because I can’t find a cold side on flannel. (Lands End)

8. What color is your kitchen? Why did you choose that color?  It’s yellow. So is my dining room and living room. They are connected. The decorator and I picked the color. And before you get all la-t-da on me…. she was a mom from my daughter’s school and she did decorating part time at the time and charged by the hour. I think I spent a grand total of one hour with her and did the rest on the fly, but according to things we had discussed.

9. What’s the most interesting bumper sticker you’ve seen?  I don’t like bumper stickers.

10. Do you prefer an expensive writing tool or whatever is lying around? (Are you a Montblanc or a Papermate?)  I have a Pilot pen that I loooooove. It’s not super cheap, but it’s not ridiculous either.

11. What chore doesn’t feel like a chore – you just enjoy it (at least most of the time)?  I like dusting with my swiffer dusting wand thingy.  Um… other than that my chores pretty much feel like chores. lol

12. If your parents often repeated themselves, what is something one of them said more than once?  I can’t think of anything, right off the top of my head.  But my mother in law always tells her kids to “be good, be careful, and have fun”. And they reply “never, never and always” and out the door they go.

To check on the random, hop on over to Lid’s place at 2nd Cup!

a little bit more to the story

The other day I was at a department store.  Shopping. Which is something I don’t do very much of… especially for myself. Anyway, I was looking at some winter tops. There was a lady there holding up a Christmas sweater vest kind of thing and trying to decide which green top looked the best under it. 

Now, I don’t usually just start talking to people. Not very often anyway. But on this day for whatever reason, I did.  She kept holding the sweater up to a kelly green top and then up to a green apple/lime green top. I told her I liked the lime-ish green top the best. And I also told her that we painted our daughter’s bedroom that color.

She acted surprised.  “Really?!” she said.  Yep.  Took three coats to complete it but we think it turned out really cute.

She told me that her daughter wanted her room painted that color and she told her no. And then she told me I was a good mom for painting my daughter’s room that color.  Isn’t that funny?!

I didn’t tell you the story to tell you that somebody thought I was a good mom, but I just got a kick out of that lady. She was so sweet… even before we got to the part about my mothering. lol  I told her thanks and we chit chatted some more.

I think I might have told her about this, because I was just sooo excited about it.  And I guess I still am because I keep bring it up, huh?!

But there’s a part of the story I haven’t told.  I was having lunch with a friend and she said she wouldn’t mind playing around with this project for me. So she made it for me.  She’s quite a whiz with Photoshop and all that fancy stuff.  I just told her what I thought looked good and what I thought we could tweak.  And after a few tries, we came up with this.

Thanks AM! As I’ve said before… so stinkin’ cute!

a little more Christmas fun

Before the Christmas season is completely old news, I thought I’d share a couple more highlights… or maybe I should call it some more fun stuff from those days.

The cat had a really good time.

She loves hiding under paper.  Her best side, no?!

I made this for the hubs.  Isn’t it cute???  I found a bowling pin at an antique store and spray painted it antique white and taped off to paint a red stripe.   Then I used sponge letters to spell DAD and added the stars, both in red. I touched up the edges of the D’s because they weren’t crisp enough for me. I think it turned out really cute.

I guess I should explain the reason for the gift though. He decided late last year that he needed to lose some weight.  So get ready to hate him girls.. here’s what he did!  He stopped eating snacks and started doing the Wii Sports Resort. And he did a lot of bowling on there… thus the little nod in the gift. 

But the fact that he’s lost 30 some-odd pounds by skipping snacks is pretty amazing… and a wee bit annoying at the same time.  But good for him!

And then there’s a little bit of Merry Christmas To Me!  I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of rubber stamps for scrapbooking with my Christmas money.  I’ve borrowed stamps and liked them, but resisted buying them for myself, but they’re a better deal than stickers.  Once it’s on the page, it’s over. So I’m going to try to use more rubber stamps. I used a couple of them on my scrapbook calendar for this year. Cute.. but I still need a little practice.  : )

We also made a gingerbread house a few days before Christmas. It turned out cute… but we kept chipping away at the icing.  Very klassy….but yummy!  We put a dot of icing on Miss Boo’s nose and a tiny red candy (and took her picture). 

Rudolph’s goofy stand in.

I’ll spare her the drama of posting that pic on the world wide webby of fun.

So that was a little more Christmas fun, but now the season is done. Happy new year y’all.

blogging in the new year

So it’s New Year’s Eve, and here I sit. Blogging.  I’m sure I’m not the only one, though.

Many of you have done a year in review, and honestly I really don’t want to review this year.  For the most part, it was just hard.

So I think I’ll stick to a Christmas break in review kinda deal.  We’ve really enjoyed having time off during the holiday.  We’ve had some family time and just relaxed without work and school stresses pressing in on us. And that’s been so nice.  We’ve watched movies together.  We’ve eaten together. We’ve gone shopping together.  I could go on and on. 

We’ve even watched it snow together.  I can’t say that we played in it… because we didn’t.  I kind of hate that, but I also hate the cold. I was a little surprised that hubs and Boo didn’t want to get out in it, but we HAD been “out in it” technically returning home from the resort place, and I guess after all that drama, we just weren’t up to it anymore.

But I took pictures!  Out the front door.

And out the back door. OK.. I actually didn’t open a door to take that one.. I parted the blinds with two fingers and took the pic with the other hand. It’s good to have a talent, I guess.

But I think this pic sums up the weather we’ve had of late... with or without the snow.

Just wake me when it’s over.  This pic totally cracks me up.. she’s hugging her back foot!  Yes, that’s my unmade bed.  And yes, that’s about a billion blankets. 

Winter, I am not a fan.

Happy New Year everybody. Stay safe. Stay warm! : )

a new one

I’ve started a new blog… as a tag-along to this one.   

I’m just doing this to save you from the daily ramble about that stuff, if you aren’t interested. I don’t know if it will work out for me or just end up being a pain.  I might enjoy the new blog or I might kill it. We’ll see.

But anyway…Hop on over and check it out.  

WFMW-posters and sticky stuff

My last post was about the totally cute poster we had made for Miss Boo.

Remember?!

I just love it. It makes me smile every time I walk past her room. It’s just so stinkin’ cute. And because one person several of you asked, (and a few of you are probably curious) I thought I’d share how this whole thing came to be.

We went to Ikea several months ago and in the pet section, they had these cute pics of cats and dogs really close up. They were cute, but all I could think of was my cat is cuter than those cats. But those large pics gave me an idea.

So I took a pic of the cat.

And had it doctored up to suit Boo’s taste.

I had noticed an ad months ago on weareTHATfamily for a place called Online Poster Printing. I had checked them out a few months back so I knew right where to send my pic of the cat to be made into a poster.

And she could not have been more pleased and surprised!

And we were thrilled with the speed of delivery and the quality. Very impressive!

So we hung it on the wall. I didn’t want to use tape because it’s kinda tacky and this was a nice poster. I’ve used these…

in the past and love the way they work so we used them again. The poster won’t slip and we can take it off the wall to move it without messing up anything. Love it.

Online Poster Printing and Command Poster Strips work for me. To see other Works for Me Wednesday posts, hop on over to weareTHATfamily.

*Note: Nobody gave me these products and nobody is twisting my arm to say anything nice about them either. I bought them myself and I like ‘em, so I decided to tell you about them! : )

Oh yeah..something else...there's another post under this one. I was a busy girl today.

last random dozen of 09!

1. Do you find it gross to share drinks with family? Friends? Yes.  Kids = backwash city! :p

2. What have you learned this year? (You didn't see a question of that weight coming, did you? At least not for #2.)  I have no idea. I guess I’m not a weighty thinker today.  LOL

3. When do you dismantle the Christmas decorations? Ha! We took them down on Christmas day. Presents gone. Christmas over. I’m always glad to see the decorations come on the day after Thanksgiving… and then glad to see them go as well!

4. Something you wish to accomplish before the end of 2009 is:  I dunno.  Get warm maybe?! 

5. How do you feel about winter (after Christmas)?  See #4. I hate cold weather.  The good thing about seeing January come is that eventually it will be warm again. Hurray!

6. Have you participated in after-Christmas sales? Nope. It’s cold and snowy and we’ve stayed in for the most part.

7. Do you have plans for New Year's Eve? Nope.

8. Is there anything special awaiting you in January? Nope.  Boo goes to the ortho to get fitted for braces. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing her in those.  I think they’re cute. I know that probably sounds weird.

9. If your life this year was a movie, what category or genre would it be? (Romance, Comedy, Drama, Thriller, Suspense, Farcical, etc.)  Drama.  My dad died this year and that was a huge, stressful deal.  But of course, my family makes me laugh every day… so ya gotta throw comedy in there too. : )

10. How much time per day do you spend blogging? Please do not lie. I will know.  What, are you Santa or something??? LOL  Um… a lot.  I read a lot. And then I write too, of course. Some posts don’t take much time, although I tend to read my posts over and over and tweak them to make sure sentences don’t read awkwardly etc. And that takes time.  And depending on the subject matter… sometimes heavier topics take longer than silly little photo driven posts. 

11. Who runs your household? Let’s see.  There are things my hubby does.  He does the bills. And he helps with homework. And I see to a lot of other things.  If there is a problem with the house, I hire whomever and get it fixed.  We remodeled and I hired and handled the contractor and the plans.. hubs never even met him.  Hubs remembers birthdays etc, but I usually buy the cards.  It’s a split.  We each have different strengths and things that matter to us.

 
12. Share one hope/dream for 2010.  Lose some weight. Spend more time with God.  Ooops, that was two things.  I hope the blog police don’t come after me. LOL

To see everybody else’s Random-ness, hop over to Linda’s place at 2nd Cup!