Cranberry bliss

Dust off your crockpot, ladies and go check out A Year of Crockpotting. I found this blog intriguing... I mean really ... who the heck can even think of 50 palatable crockpot recipes nevermind 365? Apparently Stephanie can and she does a great job at it, I might add.

So tonight out of sheer curiosity, I tried Stephanie's Cranberry Sauce recipe and I'm here to tell you ladies... it's total cranberry bliss! I did add in a smidgen more sugar and about a 1/4 tsp. of vanilla but my, oh my, it'll be hard to go back to canned cranberry sauce again.

Give it a whirl. You won't be disappointed.

Black Friday

So here we are... one week until the consumer driven holiday called "Black Friday". Unlike my colleagues, I just don't "get this" tradition.

The thought of getting up in the wee hours of the morning, driving to over-packed stores with generally unpleasant, fiercely competitive consumers and then standing in checkout lines that are at least 6 people deep... just leaves me cold. Bah humbug.

To me, this holiday just exemplifies the consumerism and commercialism of Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a gal who loves finding a great sale but to me Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for what we have and less about what we want on Friday.

Traditionally in our home, the day after Thanksgiving is called Pajama Day. We spend the entire day in our Pajamas. We spend our day watching movies, playing board games, baking and just generally appreciating being home together on the holiday weekend.

This year, however, thanks to Gidget a new tradition is going to be born in our home!

Introducing a new holiday for us crafters... "Make Something Day"!

"The Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. is typically marked as the busiest shopping day for Americans. But we live in a world that can no longer handle our consumptive habits here in the west. And while we pile up on things we don’t need a large portion of the world exists without basic human needs being met every day. We applaud Buy Nothing Day… but it isn’t enough for us. We believe that giving is a central part of being human. So, we replaced the negative with something positive: Make Something Day. Go ahead and give gifts this holiday season. As they say, giving is better than receiving. But that doesn’t mean buying something is. So, we encourage folks to avoid shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Instead, stay home, put a log on the fire and try making something for someone."

Come join the movement and pssssst.... pass it on :-)

The Other Woman

My husband loves her. My kids adore her. My dog, God bless him, is indifferent towards her. Meet "the other woman".



Sure she's younger than I am and so what if she can clean better than I can (I mean who really gets underneath the beds to attack the land of the dust bunnies), she works tirelessly without a single complaint and she can recharge her batteries in less than hour...

But can she cook delicious meals, help with homework, chauffeur her children to various scouting and sporting events, decorate her home for the holidays, stay up all night and console sick children, make 3-year-olds laugh... clean tile floors....

Uh-oh.. look out Ms. Roomba, there's another woman in town.



Oh yes, one day you will be mine.

I believe!

I believe I'm a winner! And you won't believe what I've won!

Let me take a step back...

A couple of weeks ago, I heard the lovely sound of silence in my home. That is a rarity in my household. No sounds of sibling rivalry, no blaring TVs nor sounds of video games bounced of the walls of our home. Just true blissful silence.

And then I got worried. So being the nosey attentive Mom that I am, I decided that I better make sure that my children had not killed injured each other.

As I walked slowly down the children's hallway, I decided I better check on my son first. Although the older of the two, he always seems to be the victim in these types of incidents because as we all know "boys don't hit girls"... at least in our household anyway. After a quick peek through the door, there was my "little" boy all wrapped up in a blanket totally engrossed into a book. Who woulda thunk?

So on to my *ahem* delicate flower's room. I took a breath and opened her door and there she was laying on her bed writing a letter.

"What'cha up to, sweet pea? What's up with all of the crumbled paper?"

"Well Mom, since Christmas is our next big holiday, I thought I better get going and write my letter to Santa!"

"Uhmmmm, you do realize, sweetness, that Thanksgiving is this month, right? We just don't gloss over that holiday."

"It is? Then how come all they keep showing on TV is Christmas commercials?"

"Because they can't make enough money off Thanksgiving. It is truly a holiday that revolves around celebrating the birth of our country, celebrating our diversity of heritage and the freedom to worship."

"What did you say?" (As she continues writing) "I thought Thanksgiving was the holiday with the big parade."

"It is... oh nevermind... can I see your letter to Santa?"

Her letter, like most 8-year-old girls, was chock full of girlie stuff like Hannah Montana items, High School Musical, Shining Stars, Nintendo DS, clothing, stuffed animals, books and the icon of mostly every girl's childhood dream an EZ Bake Oven.

However, unlike most 8-year-old girls, at the closing of her letter was the following:

"The most important gift is please, please, please... Can I finally meet you this year? Nothing else matters I just want to know all about you and hear about your life in the North Pole".

I smiled at her and gave her hug and silently wondered ... just now how the heck am I ever going to pull this one off?

And then God smiled at me... and lovingly brought me to The North Pole Secretary. As luck may have it, this darling elf was holding a contest for a free letter from the North Pole. And as you have guessed by now, I won!

So please, if you get a chance, please stop by her website. She is officially open for business and not only is she Santa's official secretary :-) she is also a wonderful, loving, adopting Mom trying to raise funds to support her newly adopted children. http://www.northpolesecretary.com/

Ho-ho-ho.

Okay I'll admit it

I'm a slacker...
No .... a perfectionist...
No... a procrastinator.

Hmmmmmmm, maybe after taking a glimpse around the house I'd say a bit of all of the adjectives and add in the word slob just for fun LOL.

Ever since I can remember, I've always fallen into two categories. Either "living in the now" (let's worry about that tomorrow) and or I'd plan every detail to the point where I'd get overwhelmed by my task list and just scrap the entire project. Is anybody else like that?

My poor blog is an example. As I walk around the house, a zillion blog subjects drift through my mind. But then I remember I have to cut out 28 pilgrim hats for my class, my dog throws up, my daughter needs help with her homework, my son remembers he needs to design a budget that tracked his spending for 3 WEEKS in 30 minutes for his Cub Scout meeting, my husband can't find the stupid remote AGAIN, somebody drops milk on the floor causing the vomiting dog to clean the floor with his tongue causing somebody to trip over the vomiting dog, causing a massive search for my daughter's favorite shirt was of course is at the bottom of the hamper on top of the REMOTE which I had been searching for the past 2 days!!! Welcome to a typical Tuesday afternoon in our house.

So I apologize now, my dear friends for not updating my blog more regularly. And I'm sorry you missed out on my lifechanging blog posts that once danced through my head LOL. Maybe one day I'll get the hang of this blog stuff... but I'll worry about that tomorrow :-)