Exceedingly Mundane

Happy New Year and here’s to a wonderful 2010! I hope to keep up with the blog, at least some, in the new year. I had a couple of long breaks in 2009, and missed out on “documenting” some of the things we were doing, and things going on. I hope that I can do a little more of keeping up in the new year.

I won’t go back and blog about Christmas, although it was a good one. We had three Christmases – one at home for me and Tim on Christmas Eve, one at my sister Gail’s with her family and my dad on Christmas Day, and one on the next day (Saturday) with Tim’s family. We had a great time seeing everyone and hanging out. We brought our nephew Zack (14) back with us on Saturday and he stayed several days. Tim took him to play golf, we took him out to eat every day (bad for the waistline, but nice not to have to cook or clean up much!), we went to see Sherlock Holmes, and we played a lot of Wii!

I fell short of my reading goals for the year 2009. I only read 59 books which is not a lot for me. I think I also failed to blog at all about any book during the year. I have been doing updates and “blurbs” (not reviews, I am not very good at writing reviews of books) over at GoodReads, so hopefully if you are a reader too, we are hooked up over there. I didn’t complete either reading challenge that I joined, although I was close, just one or two books short. I won’t join any this year, I think, but just read for the sheer pleasure of it. 🙂

We’re trying to get back into a routine, after the holidays and Tim having a week off from work. Routine is a good thing for me. I thrive on it and suffer when I get out of my schedules and routines.

The weather outside is frightful! Or delightful, depending on which camp you’re from 😀 I love the cold weather, but only when I get to stay inside, have the heat running, drink hot tea or hot cocoa, and bundle up under my favorite afghan, LOL! The highs this week are predicted to not go out of the 30’s and 40’s, so that is cold for us, definitely winter. I always appreciate my creature comforts more during weather like this!

Hope everyone had a very blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year – here’s to a great 2010 for all!

Some various, random and assorted items:

Living in the Deep South, we don’t have much fall and winter. I’ve lived here all my life, so I’m accustomed to it. As odd as it sounds, I’m very cold-natured, but I love the colder times of the year! Tonight, the weathermen are predicting a low temperature of 39. I’m ready for it to be 32 or below, but I’ll take what I can get 🙂

If the prognosticators are correct (and that trusty farmer’s almanac), they are saying we are going to have a colder than normal winter. Fine by me! As long as I don’t have to be out in it, LOL! For one thing, I think we need more cold weather here to kill the fleas and ticks, and mostly the mosquitoes.

For another thing, there’s so many things I love about this time of year. Enough for a bulleted blog post! Here’s some of the things iLike 😀 about fall and winter:

* wearing sweatshirts, sweatpants, jeans, boots
* wrapping up in my soft, cozy blanket
* smelling and feeling hot towels and sheets right out of the dryer
* watching some of the leaves finally change color a bit here
* once the leaves are off the trees, I can see all of my pretty birds in the backyard
* baking!
* football season 🙂
* burning candles and having them make our home seem that much more cozy
* if it gets REALLY cold, we might actually turn on the gas logs and have a fire
* washing dishes in hot soapy water, just to warm my hands up
* hot apple cider with red hots
* or hot cocoa with marshmallows
* making soup, stew, chili and homemade bread

Ok, I’m sure there are plenty more, but those are the first ones that come to mind. How about you, do you have a favorite thing about this time of the year?

I bought a new set of sheets for our bed a couple of weeks ago. Exciting, huh?! Believe it or not, it’s not something I do often. I change our sheets weekly, but I take the set off, wash and dry them, and put them right back on! I don’t change them out to a different set very often (I’ve blogged about this in the past, here, three years ago), and really – I only have a couple of sets that fit our bed (ours is a queen and the guest room is a double).

Anyway, I was always under the assumption that the higher the thread count, the softer the sheets were. I never paid any attention to the type of cotton – 100% cotton, cotton blend, Egyptian cotton, sateen, etc. Apparently I should have!

I washed our new sheets and put them on the bed, excited to have nice new crisp clean soft sheets. WHAT? Soft, you ask? They’re 450 thread count (100% cotton sheets), so I assumed they’d be soft. But — they’re not! They’re rough, scratchy and not at all what I had hoped for. So, what have I been doing?

Washing them. Repeatedly. The first week I had them, I washed them 3 times! And they are getting softer. Of course, not fast enough for me 🙂 To be fair, I had some old jersey knit sheets on our bed, which are very very soft. And I’m sure my last set that I used regularly before that have been washed so many times, they can’t help but be soft. But I was really hoping for these to be soft, right out of the package.

So – help me out for the time in the future when I venture out to buy new sheets again. What do you use? The highest thread count you can afford? Are you sure to buy Egyptian cotton? Sateen cotton? Some kind of blend? Leave me a comment and let me know!

P.S. Please note that flannel sheets aren’t “allowed” here, because I live with the human heater (aka Tim). Mr. Hot Natured thinks flannel sheets and electric blankets are horrid creations and aren’t allowed in the house under any circumstance! 😀

I got a belated birthday present a few days ago!

Tim had offered to get me a camera originally for my birthday, but I said, no, I already have a digital Rebel, I don’t need a smaller camera. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had a really good idea. It’s nice to have a small one to stick in my purse or tote around and not carry the digital Rebel (bigger, bulkier) in some instances. This one takes good pictures and little movies, something my Rebel doesn’t do (so we had bought Tim a flip camcorder for Christmas). Anyway, it’s nice to have, and I know I’m incredibly spoiled (or blessed, however you prefer to look at it!) to have two cameras.

So, that brings me to a question – is there anything useful I can do with my old digital cameras? I have a couple of older ones, that I used before I got my digital Rebel. They’ve been sitting in a corner, collecting dust, and not being used. They are each a few years old, and I doubt anyone that I know would want them (they all have newer nicer cameras, for the most part). Is there anyway to recycle this kind of digital device? Or any worthwhile charity I could donate it to? Does anyone have any good ideas? I’d hate to just take it to Goodwill or try to put it in a neighbor’s garage sale or something.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! 😀

What does this look like to you?

To me, it looks like cough syrup. But, it’s not. It’s what I’ve been putting in my morning coffee for the last few weeks. I have blogged before about my love of flavored coffee creamers in the past, and we’re definitely coming up on my favorite time of year – when Coffeemate brings out their holiday flavors like gingerbread, peppermint, etc. I normally buy other flavors of Coffeemate (as many in the lowfat variety as I can) to use throughout the year. But a few months ago, I tried buying a bottle of flavored syrup at Sam’s Club, and just using fat-free half and half in my coffee. I think the syrup lasts a lot longer and I think it may be a bit cheaper to go this route. Either way, it’s always nice to change things up a bit 😀

This is the cough syrup flavored syrup I’ve been using:

The raspberry tastes good, although I think I like the vanilla and caramel flavored syrups better. I just can’t get past the look of it! It’s a bit disconcerting to put that red syrup in my coffee, it looks just like cough syrup! And, with the red syrup and white half and half, my coffee comes out looking pink! 🙂 Good thing it tastes good….

Have a wonderful day!

Well, here I am, falling behind on blogging again! I have lots of things to share, but I can’t seem to sit at the computer and get them translated into any kind of “meaningful” blog post, hahaha! Most recently would be my birthday, but shhhhh, we don’t have to talk about just how old I really am! 😀

I had a nice birthday this year, although very low-key. Tim took me out to eat (dinner at Chili’s, lunch at Zaxby’s), and let me pick out whatever I wanted for my birthday. He wanted to buy me a camera (and I just might “let” him get it for me soon), but I didn’t think I needed another camera. I have a wonderful digital Rebel that he got me a couple of years ago for my birthday, but it is heavy and sometimes cumbersome to lug around. He wanted to get me just a small point and shoot to keep in my purse, and after thinking about it and “chewing” on it for a while, I think I might ask for it as a belated gift, after all 🙂

While we were out shopping the day before my birthday, he asked what I wanted and I said, well, if I see something I like, let’s just get that. So, that’s what we did! I got a book I wanted (the new Nicholas Sparks, “The Last Song”), and a warm fuzzy blanket to wrap up in now that it’s feeling more like fall around here. I also got this:

It’s not a Le Crueset, although I had mentioned to him a while back that one day I’d like to splurge and get a red one. He said, I’ll get you that if you want, but I just don’t see paying 250 bucks for one of those. And he’s right. And I’m sure this one will be great, and I can replace it several times over if it doesn’t hold up like the name brand one. This one came from Sam’s, and we usually have really good luck with the things we buy in there!

Also, on the day of my birthday, he sneaked off to Fresh Market and got these for me:

My birthday was on a Sunday this year, and our beloved Saints were playing a big game against the Giants. I kidded Tim all week that I was going to tweet Drew Brees and ask him to be sure and win on Sunday, since it was my birthday, LOL! I didn’t but they did pull out a win, going 5-0 for the first time since 1993. For this converted Saints fan, that was a pretty nice gift too!

Back soon (hopefully), with another post. Hope everyone is having a great day, and week 🙂

I haven’t had a chance to blog lately. There’s several posts I have “brewing”, but first I wanted to do a quick catch-up.

Last weekend, my sister Suzanne came for a visit. We had a busy weekend, including a birthday party for our two year old great nephew, Sam. Then, we had a lot of family over for a visit, and we cooked out some hamburgers and hot dogs. My dad drove back and forth to visit several times, and my sister left on Tuesday flying back home. I got sick Tuesday morning and have been sick most of the week. Ugh, it’s never fun to run fever and have aches and chills. 🙁

I’ll try to be back soon with a “real” post, but until then, just wanted to do a quick update 🙂

I often joke with Tim about the saying “hunter/gatherer”, because that really shines through with the two of us. Tim is a hunter, but only goes out to get what he needs. I’m definitely a gatherer, and some would probably say, a hoarder. I don’t like to run out of things, like toilet paper, dishwashing soap, shampoo, and mostly – food! Tim is always joking, telling me, you’d think you lived way out in the boonies, instead of a mile from a grocery store, the way you stock up on stuff!

I have a big pantry, but mostly, it is just really deep. I know I should be grateful to have a lot of storage space in my pantry, but it’s sooooo hard to find things because whatever I put in the front of the shelf, obscures whatever is stored or stacked behind it. I’ve been going back and forth for a while now, wanting to declutter it and reorganize it, and I finally got around to it.

I threw out almost half a garbage bag of food. Things I had bought for a certain recipe and never used. Hey, if I haven’t used them in the past couple of years, I’m probably not going to use them now. Half opened packages of various seasonings. Cans that were past their expiration date. Etc.

One of the main goals was to clear up room on my counter-tops. I have a pretty set of white canisters to hold my flour, sugar, etc. But, I don’t have a lot of counter space and Tim was always fussing that we need more room. So, I bought a couple of the Oxo Good Grips storage canisters, and packed up my pretty ones “for when we get a bigger house, and I get a bigger kitchen”. 😀 I made more room on my counters, and right now at least, I have more room in my pantry.

I did NOT take before pictures. I would like to say that I forgot, but it’s more like I was ashamed. I had stuff packed in and really had no idea what was buried in the back of most of the shelves. I’m not sure how long my nice, clean pantry will last, but right now, I’m really enjoying it! It makes me more motivated to keep it this way, but I know that sooner or later, my hoarder/gatherer gene is going to kick in and I’m going to make a massive buying trip to Sam’s Club, and that will be the end of my clean pantry! LOL! 🙂

Here’s a couple of after shots…

Bottom of the pantry, the bottom shelf is so deep, it has a lot of wasted space, but, oh well!

A close-up of the Oxo containers, I really really like their products, and these are no exception:

Top of the pantry… I really like having that rubbermaid small basket on the top shelf. I can’t reach that shelf without climbing in a chair or ladder, but I can pull down that basket that has some small bags of rice and pasta in it. Works really well for me 🙂

If you know me in real life, you know I am a creature of habit and routine. And you know that it is sometimes hard for me to break those habits and routines 🙂 So, it might come as a surprise to some of you that we no longer get a newspaper every day. I know… gasp! 😀

I grew up with a daily newspaper. My mom worked the crossword and Jumble every morning, and my dad read the paper with his breakfast and coffee. Once I got out of college and got into my first apartment, I subscribed to the local newspaper. Since I’ve lived in our house, for over 16 years, I have received a paper every day on my driveway. My sister works in the newspaper business. My dog loves to retrieve the paper every day for a treat:

So, you can understand that I’m having a bit of a problem adapting to no longer getting a daily paper. Tim has been wanting to cancel it for a long time. We’re trying to cut some things in our budget, so this seemed like the easiest one to do (he wants to cut the landline, house phone soon, and I’ve been fighting that one too, mostly since he works from home full-time, currently). Our local paper does have a website, and I am trying to get used to checking it daily for news. They also twitter headlines, so that’s been the main source of me geting my local news. Sigh, it’s just different. I can’t sit at the kitchen table with my meal and read the paper. You’d think me, the computer girl, would really like getting her news on the computer, but so far I’ve had a bit of trouble adapting. 🙁

At least Tim did compromise and let me keep the Sunday newpaper, so I can see the ads and coupons 😀 One day is better than none!

Couldn’t think of a snazzy title… I tend to use misc, random and odd and things like that a little too much 🙂 “Stuff” will have to do, since it is just a bunch of silly stuff!

* Things are busy here, yet not in some ways. Tim is working most every weekend, in the middle of the night, which really messes up his sleep patterns. He was up all last weekend, and I got up at 4 AM to put a roast in the crockpot. I discovered that a) 4 AM is not a natural time for me to be awake and b) once I’m up, cooking in the kitchen with all the lights on, it is very difficult to fall back asleep!

* I’m so glad football season is back, as well as fantasy football. Once again, I tried to draft my own players and ended up botching up my team. Oh well, at least it’s all for fun. It will NOT be fun around my house this weekend, as Tim and I go up against each other in our fantasy football league this time 🙂 On a happier note, both of our teams are doing well. Our college alma mater (USM) and Tim’s beloved Saints. Oh, the hope for our Saints springs eternal every fall!

* Beau has been very worked up lately. We’ve had a lot of grey days and rain and “looks like rain”, so he has not been outside as much. He has a lot of pent-up energy and some days he is hard to deal with. Of course, I should be a good doggie parent and walk him regularly, but I tend to open the gate and let him run wild in the area behind our house 😀

* I’ve been cooking a lot, and finally trying some new recipes. I have been motivated because we’ve installed a new recipe system on our website (more on that in a future post, I have one brewing in my drafts). Of the new recipes, most have been hits but there’s been a couple of misses. One was last night, I tried a crockpot orange chicken. I should have known better, and I did, but I wanted to try it anyway 😀 Tim doesn’t do citrus in any way, shape or form. I liked it though, so I’m debating on whether to post it on our site.

* I haven’t been reading as much as normal. I haven’t been watching many movies. It’s hard to pin down just what I have been spending my time doing, LOL! But we are picking back up all of our fall tv shows. So far, we’re back into Heroes, NCIS, the new NCIS: Los Angeles, Survivor, Bones, Fringe, and Mentalist. I think we have a few more to go. I wanted to try Flash Forward, but we already have two shows recording in that time slot, hehehe!

* I had a bunch of credit built up at Amazon, including some gift cards I have won at Swagbucks (check it out, and use me as a referral if you’re interested!). I ordered a bunch of books and I’m eagerly awaiting their arrival. Of course, I just went to the library, so I have a stack of books to read, but still. I love to get a box full of books on my doorstep in that brown Amazon box! I’ll post a picture when they get here (I always use free shipping, so it takes a lot longer!)

Ok, I’m sure there’s more… I have an update to my recycling post that I made a couple of weeks ago. And then there’s the wildly interesting post I have in my drafts folder about cleaning out and reorganizing my pantry, riveting stuff, I tell ya! Anyway, I’m still trying to blog, but I think a lot of people have given up blogging, as well as reading blogs. I still do Facebook and Twitter though, so maybe that is where I’m spending most of my time!

Have a wonderful, blessed day!

Tim called me outside a day or so ago, and said “You have to see this!”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I was just glad it was not a snake! We’ve had some rain here lately, although not as much as some areas around us. It’s been grey and overcast though, and it hasn’t dried out much, without the sun out. Apparently, it’s great weather for growing mushrooms!

Here’s what he wanted me to see:

And he put his golf club up next to it, to show how big it is in comparison 🙂

It’s such a little thing, but it makes me so very happy! I love, love, love the seasonal drink from the Sierra Mist people, Cranberry Splash. My memory is really bad, but it seems like it normally shows up in stores around Halloween, or at least before Thanksgiving. Yesterday, yesterday, the first day of fall, I found it in my local super Walmart!

Tim was joking, but he said “you should start stocking up now, you love that stuff so much!”. And you know, he’s right. I do!! I remember distinctly going to the grocery a week or two before Christmas last year, to stock up and buy some before it was gone out of the stores, and it was already gone. I need to start stockpiling the stuff NOW! 🙂

Hope you’re having a great day too, and some little insignificant something makes you really happy 😀

I was reading an article in our paper yesterday about Blockbuster closing nearly 1,000 of their brick and mortar stores. I believe the same article is here. Anyway, it made me wax nostalgic on two things:

1) We haven’t wanted to drive to a video store in several years. We were already tired of slogging to the local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, looking for the movie we wanted to be in stock, when we wanted it. We tried Netflix a couple of years ago and have been happy with them ever since. I don’t particularly like to get out and drive to get a movie, when I can have it delivered to me through the mail. And a plus for Netflix – we can watch a lot of things online.

Which brings me to my second point…

2) Just where the whole movie/tv watching thing is going. Waxing nostalgic – I’m old and apparently getting older all the time 😀 I remember the days when we had two rotary dial, plug in the wall phones in our house. There was no such thing as an answering machine, no phone you carry around with you. These days, my phone is always with me, I can text, surf the Internet, play games, keep my shopping lists on it, and a myriad of other things. We’ve sure come a long way. Same with TV and movies. Growing up, we had one tv and three channels. There was no such things as the remote control. Or more precisely, *I* was the remote control. If my dad wanted to change the channel, he just asked me to do it 🙂 My, how things have changed. Not only do we have the channels and programs we have now (not all good, in my mind, some of the stuff on TV is bordering on trash), and the chances to watch them. DVR’s, On Demand and soon, streaming video and movies will be the way to go. We already hook up my laptop occasionally to our big screen TV, and watch things from Netflix like that. I foresee us getting a device to stream tv, movies, etc one day in the not too distant future.

Anyway, it constantly amazes me about how far things have come in my lifetime. Yet, I get stuck in my ruts. I don’t like driving to a store to get a video, so we use the mail order one. So, we have not tried Redbox yet – have you? I understand the appeal, it’s cheaper and fairly easy, I’m assuming. I was not all that surprised to read in the article that RedBox is owned by Coinstar, the brilliant people who started putting coin counter machines in stores and stuff. I think it’s smart, as is Redbox. But, I just don’t want to have to get out and go to a store to get a movie. How about you?

Vote in the poll, if you want, and let me know!

[poll id=”16″]

Are you ready for some football? We are! It only lasts for a few months, but football season is definitely my favorite time of the year 🙂 I barely watched football before I met Tim, but I love it now, and I love how much he loves football. I love that he explains it to me, and seems to enjoy going to games and watching football at home on our pretty awesome tv. He’s a lifelong Saints fan, and he’s converted me too. Oh, and I like that we both play fantasy football in our family league 😀

So, I’m busy planning “game day food” for our upcoming football games and getting out my Saints t-shirts and Drew Brees jersey. I’m ready to root for our favorite team. 😀

The Saints are Coming, The Saints are Coming!

U2: The Saints are Coming