Exceedingly Mundane

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since the Challenger disaster. I suppose there are events in ones lifetime, where you always remember where you were and what you were doing. I’m sure 9/11 is for all Americans, and for me, the Challenger accident is, as well.

I was in college. Every Tuesday, we had chapel (I went to a small Presbyterian college). I remember before they started the chapel service, they told us what had happened. We prayed for the astronauts and their families, and after a short time, they dismissed everyone. I lived in the newest dorm, which also happened to be close to our chapel area. Our lobby was packed after we were released from chapel. (Notice I said lobby, guys were not allowed upstairs in the girls dorms and vice versa.) We watched the coverage for a long time. I think I even skipped lunch that day, but had to leave after for either a lab or an on-campus job, I don’t remember. I just remember being numb and so shocked by what had happened.

Do you remember where you were or what you were doing when this accident happened?

This is the time of year that I get the most cleaning out and decluttering done. I think it’s a combination of two things: a) post holiday, wanting to get pared down and back to normal and b) the weather dictates that I stay inside and the grey days lend themselves to cleaning out and purging.

I finally started today! Not a lot, but a good start. Tim took the day off to go deer hunting, but decided at the last minute not to go. So, we got up in the attic and cleaned out a large cache of boxes and stuff. I tend to “collect” empty boxes (say, from Amazon!) all through the year, so I will have empty boxes to use for birthdays and Christmas presents. I also have the tendency (being the packrat that I am), to keep boxes for certain kitchen items and other gifts that I receive. Today, we cleaned a lot of those out, and broke them down for the recycling bin. I also took a couple of big bags of stuff to the Goodwill store.

It feels good to get some stuff cleaned out! I still have a lot left to go. Receipts and paperwork are the worst for me. I still have some closets and drawers to go through,too. But at least it’s a start! 🙂

Have you cleaned out or decluttered anything since the holidays? Leave me a comment and let me know! 😀

We’re waiting to see what the weather will do today. It’s already started sleeting here, and they’re calling for a lot of ice, freezing rain, sleet (what’s the difference between those, anyway?!), and maybe even some snow. The snow is fine, the ice is not. Ice brings down limbs on power lines and then we have no power, no heat, no way to get warm, cook food, etc. I really hope we don’t lose power.

Yesterday was such an unhappy day here. The Saints played their playoff game against the Seahawks, and LOST. So sad that the season is over. Last year was so much better 🙂

Hope everyone is having a great day! 🙂

What do you guys do with old Christmas cards? The ones you receive from others, whether they are the photo kind of kids or families, or just plain Christmas card greeting cards. Do you save them? Throw them out? Scrapbook them? Do something else with them?

I have been saving them, but I have a pretty big collection of them. I have several years worth in a couple of photo boxes. I am afraid I’m equally as bad with birthday cards, I tend to save those as well. I chalk it up to two things 1) I’m sentimental and 2) I’m a packrat. I think both stem from the fact that my mom was neither. She threw everything out. And I mean everything. Drawings I made for her as a child. Ornaments I made for her in Sunday School. Birthday and Christmas cards. Everything. She even threw out or gave away some old handmade quilts that were made by her mom and aunt. What I wouldn’t give to have those quilts!

Anyway, I’m trying to decide about tossing Christmas cards from years past, but apparently I’m looking for affirmation or back-up here, LOL! What do you do with your old cards you receive from others?

Thanks, and have a wonderful day!

So begins a new year! I am always amazed at the end of a year that it appeared to have “flown by”. 🙂 I must be getting old or something.

We had a busy end to the year, as always:

* Tim was off work the week of Christmas, but went back to work the week between Christmas and New Years (he works from home though, remember!).

* We got all of the packing up and putting up of lights, decorations, tree and Snow village, done (always a relief).

* We watched several old movies on Netflix streaming (Holiday, The Big Sleep and It Happened One Night).

* We had some of our nieces and nephews over for New Years Eve. Some really bad thunderstorms rolled through that night, and everyone was pretty soaked when they arrived. Tim grilled out steaks and we hung out for a while (although I didn’t make it till midnight here. I usually watch the ball drop on TV at Times Square and that’s good enough for me, LOL!)

* We watched football and worked our annual puzzle on New Years Day. This year, we did a panoramic puzzle (our first) of Niagara Falls. I think I like panoramics better – more straight edges pieces and a little easier, haha!

Now, it’s time to get this year going. I have to learn to write 2011 on checks and things. I have to start over on my reading lists (I read 57 books in 2010, way below my normal average, but good enough for me. Tinnitus has really affected my reading, although it’s gradually getting better). I always look forward to January and February. I like to clean out and declutter. I like being a homebody and being inside with the weather colder and drearier outside. I look forward to spending more time with Tim, because once it warms back up, he’ll be out on the golf course most every day. So, bring it on!

Christmas has come and gone for another year. We had a really good Christmas, as always, but a busy one this year. We saw our first living nativity this year, the weekend before Christmas. It was very cold, but a great production by a church near our house (not our church though). I had been to a drive-by live nativity years ago, but never a big production like this. We both really enjoyed it 🙂

We went and got our teenaged niece and nephew (Brittany and Zack) a few days before Christmas, and they stayed a couple of days with us. We ate out (a LOT!). We watched The Karate Kid on DVD. We played the Wii. We went to see Tron: Legacy at the movie theater in 3-D. We went to Lifeway to get new devotionals for the new year. We had a great time with them, and hope they come back next summer!

Friday, Christmas Eve, went all loaded up and headed to Tim’s parents. We played games, for the first time, as a way to pick our gifts. We gave gifts to the parents and kids, but amongst the siblings and spouses, we played games for points and then did a form of dirty Santa (although with 3 guys and 3 girls, it wasn’t all that dirty!). I got a nice lighted snowman for my gift (I love snowmen!). Saturday, Christmas Day, we drove to my sister Gail’s house and spent the day with that side of the family. My nephew Trent, his wife Shanna and their 3 kids were here (first time we had seen them in over 2 years). We missed seeing Jeremy, Kathryn and their kids (and new puppy!), but saw everyone else. Gail treated us all to a non-traditional Christmas dinner (chicken spaghetti, bread and layered salad), which was wonderful and so nice to have for a change. Don’t get me wrong, I love turkey, but this was great for something different 🙂

Sunday, the day after Christmas, Tim and I finally had our little Christmas at home. He got the new Taylormade golf driver he had been wanting (and helped me order, and has been playing with for a couple of weeks, LOL), some clothes and things. I got new Snow Village pieces (fun, my first ones in like 10 years!), a hoodie, a Yankee candle and some truffles. Wonderful Christmas! While we were opening presents, it snowed some, nice flurries that didn’t stick, but still awesome. It never snows here around Christmas!

I also ran to Target the day after, for my annual run for paper, cards and bows. I never buy them before Christmas for full price, I always wait until afterwards and stock up for next year. I also bought some garland (half price) for our mantle, something we’ve been wanting for a while. We bought lights earlier for it, but never got the garland. So next year, it will be fun to pull all of that out and decorate with it 🙂

Oh, and the day after Christmas, in Target, they already had Valentines items in the dollar spot! LOL!

Hope you all had a joyful and blessed Christmas! We did, and I’m sure we’ll have a quiet New Years Eve and weekend. I’ll plan to take the tree and decorations down before New Years. My mom always thought it was “bad luck” to have it up on the new year. Personally, I think she just didn’t like to have it around any longer, and wanted the clutter and mess gone – and I’m sort of the same way, LOL!

I don’t know why I’ve always walked by these in the grocery store every year, and never picked any up to try. This year, I rectified that and bought a bag of Cuties Clementines a week or so ago. And… I really like them!

I think it’s a nostalgia thing for me. I am pretty sure that Santa put an orange in my stocking every year, growing up. I remember thinking the oranges were O.K., but I wasn’t fond of the peel and all the seeds. Maybe later, Santa switched to tangerines. And those were better, but these little Clementines are good! They’re small, so a good size for portion control, and easy to get into.

So, how about you… is there a food that is really nostalgic for you this time of year? Something your mom or grandma always made, or put in your stocking, or you always got to have this time of year? Leave me a comment and let me know!

P.S. ALL of my presents are wrapped, I’m dancing a happy jig over here! 🙂

Well, here we are on the second weekend in December. Wow, this year has alternately drug by and flown by. Some days during the summer, it seemed like summer would never end. Some days when
my tinnitus was so bad, I wasn’t sure I’d make it through a day. Then, at night I couldn’t sleep and wasn’t sure I was going to ever sleep again. But summer finally ended, with our hot temps, and I’m glad to say that my tinnitus is a bit better, too. It’s not gone — I’ve given up hope that it will just go away, and although I pray daily for that mercy, I’ve resigned myself that I will hear it every second, for the remainder of my life. But I have made many changes with diet, food and medicines, and either a combination of those or something *has* helped. I’m thinking the gingko biloba has made the biggest difference, but it might not be that. Either way, it is better and I’m learning to co-exist with the noises in my head.

Summer finally ended, and my favorite time of the year began – football season! The Saints are currently 9-3 today (game in an hour or so, so hopefully 10-3 soon, LOL!), and we are cautiously hopeful about the remainder of the season and their playoff chances. We’d obviously love to see them do well again, after so many years of being perennial losers.

OK, for an update of this weekend:

We’re a day shy of two weeks (yikes, typo, thanks Michelle!) days from Christmas. Wow, where has this year gone?

This is the second weekend that Tim is having to work a ton, for his big project at work. Last weekend was so bad. He worked three nights in a row, including one night where he didn’t go to bed until 7:40 AM. I cannot pull all-nighters any more. Just can’t. I feel so bad for him, but am so grateful that he has a job and works so hard to take care of us and provide for us.

I’ve gotten most of the Christmas presents wrapped. I have 3 or 4 left to go. I got the Christmas cards finished and mailed a few days ago. I’m seriously contemplating NOT doing any baking at all this year. My mother-in-law does a ton, and we just don’t need it around our house. I won’t have anything to take the neighbors and that’s my only drawback. I’ll have to think a bit more on that.

Yesterday was semi-warm (60’s) and today a front has blown through and it’s COLD. Current temp, 39, wind chill 29. Cold for us.

Yesterday, I planted pansies. In years gone by, I always had pansies planted by Halloween. I didn’t even want to plant them this year, I’m OVER planting annuals, but Tim talked me into it. And he helped 🙂 I hope they survive our overnight temps of 20’s for the next couple of days.

And yesterday, I ordered, for the first time ever, Amazon’s Deal of the Day! LOL! They had a stainless steel Breadmachine bread machine on special and I used some of my Swagbucks money to order me one 🙂 I hope it is a good one. My last bread machine (Sunbeam/Oster) has been going strong for 11 years, and while it still works, it doesn’t mix the ingredients as well, and it’s gotten really LOUD. Distracts everyone in the house while it’s running. So, Santa Stacy ordered herself a new one 🙂

Oh, and I’m still LOVING, absolutely loving, my Kindle! Tim got me the Wi-Fi one for my birthday and I just love it. I’ve gotten so many great free books from Amazon and I’ve downloaded a couple of Christmas books to read. I really love reading on it, it’s so light and easy to hold 😀

You know what they say about the best of intentions? Yes, that was me a couple of months ago when I thought I was back into blogging. Oh well, I really have been meaning to update the old blog! I actually don’t know where to start 🙂

Since I blogged last, we’ve been busy! We have:

gone to our great-nephew Sam’s 3rd birthday party
Tim hurt his back and was out of commission for a short while
I’ve had a birthday (and got a Kindle!)
my sister Gail ran her second 5K
Had Halloween at our house and went trick or treating with small kids for the first time
my sister Suzanne came to visit from Florida
I went to my yearly doctor visit and found out my cholesterol is high (ugh)
I’ve been trying to cook and eat better (haha!)

and now… we’re about to have Thanksgiving and Tim’s birthday. A lot going on, and I’d like to record some of it to remember, but a lot of it is “old news” by now!

Let’s start here – I wrote this post a couple months ago about a prize I won online. I watch the Rachael Ray show pretty regularly, and try to enter most of the contests they offer online. I won a nice prize, a Shark Pocket Steam Mop, and it came in a couple of weeks after they notified me that I had won. It was very cool, because it was delivered the morning that I clean our floors in the kitchen and breakfast room. I already had the room empty, swept and ready to mop when the doorbell rang!

So, I gave it a good test and I have to say, I really like using an electric steam mop as opposed to a wet mop. It uses just water, so I no longer use chemicals on my floor. The pads are interchangeable (it has 3 sizes of “heads”, one regular, one extra large, and one triangular which is great in the bathrooms) and you can wash the microfiber covers. They’re white, so you can REALLY see what dirt is coming up off your floors. The best thing, hands down, about using this steam mop is how quickly the floor dries. It’s dry just a couple of minutes after I mop over it. I love it 🙂

I’ll try to update soon with a picture of my Kindle and the cute case I ordered for it, and blog about that soon. I might update with some photos of family events, but then again, I may just put them on Flickr.

Hope everyone is having a great day, week, and great fall! 😀

Once again, I don’t have anything earth-shattering to blog about. Just some random tidbits floating around in my head!

* The weather here is gorgeous! It finally feels like fall and not so much like summer. I’ve joked most of my life that we have two seasons here in the Deep South – really really hot and not quite as hot! Last week, it started cooling off some and was in the 80’s during the day and 50’s and 60’s at night. The last couple of days have been even better – 70’s during the day and 40’s at night. Awesome! I’ve had the windows open and been enjoying not only the cooler air, but hearing my birds at my bird feeder, the insects chirping and even occasionally my wind chimes singing 🙂

* Once the weather starts feeling better, I start thinking about needing a few new pieces of clothing for fall and winter. I have mentioned before that I really don’t like to shop (not for clothes anyway, food and electronics shopping make me happy though!). I particularly dislike shopping for shoes. And purses. And underwear. Ugh. But, part of me wants some new boots this year. I have never owned a pair of cowboy boots and some part of me wants a pair. Maybe even a pair of short ones, I saw some in a store when I was at the beach with my sister and her family. So – if you buy boots this year, will they be tall or short ones and what style? Is there anything that’s really “in”, not that I’m much of an in-style kind of girl!

* We got our replacement coffee maker in the mail, finally. Our Cuisinart On-Demand coffee maker started having problems after about a year. It’s under warranty for 3 years, so we called them and set things up. We had to cut the cord from the old one and mail to them, and then they told us that our unit was on back-order. So we waited, and waited. It finally came in last week! Tim is happy and I’m pretty happy too. I had bought a cheap Mr Coffee at Walmart to use while we waited on the new one to come in. Now, I drag that one out every day from the garage to use for my decaf coffee. So, I’m back to drinking coffee some days 🙂 If you remember, I gave up caffeine to help with my tinnitus, but I do miss sweet tea in the summer and coffee in the winter. I am now enjoying the Decaf Moose Munch flavored coffee I bought at Harry & David last month!

* I’m still on the fence about getting a Kindle. My birthday is coming up, and I actually have enough credit at Amazon to get one (from doing the Swagbucks and MyPoints programs). I’ve been going back and forth between thinking I want an iPad to thinking I want a Kindle, to most days thinking, I love paper books, why on earth would I waste money on an e-Reader. Tim encouraged me to download something to my Mac and read it on there. Luckily, Amazon gives away a lot of really good free books and I’ve downloaded quite a few. I read one, “The Pawn” by Steven James on my Kindle for Mac app. I really enjoyed it, good book and it was easier to read on the laptop than I had anticipated. So now I’m swinging more that way than before!

* I’ve been doing better on the cooking front. I’m making menu plans more often and sticking to them, and I’ve also made a concerted effort to try some new recipes. I’ve got a few that have been deemed keepers, so I’ll try to post a link to those soon – in case anyone is interested! 🙂

Hope you’re all having a great day and week out there in blog-land!

I love winning things in online contests! I haven’t won anything big in a while (well, big is relative, of course). I have won a few books lately (and believe me, I LOVE to win books!), but nothing much “bigger” than that, money wise.

Just a few minutes ago, I got an email from the Rachael Ray Show’s website. I have watched (recorded to DVR and watch at my leisure) the Rachael Ray daily one hour show for several years now. I signed up when they first launched their “Club Rachael Ray” which is where they offer give-aways. They give prizes to their studio audience pretty much every show, and many of those they offer online. I try to enter them regularly, and have never won anything.

Today, they emailed me that I had won a Shark Steam Pocket Mop! Now, for someone who likes to keep house and cook, this is a great thing to win! The email said to watch my mail in the coming weeks, so I imagine it will just show up on my doorstep one day in a few weeks. Which will mean I get excited all over again! I’m sure I’ll post again then, with a photo 🙂

I’m pretty excited! It will steam clean my tile floors, without using any chemicals. On the Target website, it’s listed at about $120 bucks, so a nice prize to win 😀

We left the beach a day early, so we could head home, pick up Beau from his kennel (poor baby, he didn’t eat hardly at all while we were gone), and go shopping for food for our annual Labor Day Party.

When Tim and I got married, our families did not know each other. So, we started having Labor Day parties and also Super Bowl parties, to invite both sides of the family so that they could meet each other and get to know each other. Everyone is very comfortable now (14 years later), so we really look forward to our Labor Day party every year. We had just seen most of my family at the beach, but my Dad came back early also, so he drove up for our party. Most of Tim’s family came, except his younger brother and his family, whom we really missed. We don’t see them as much as we used to and we really miss them! But his other brother came, his family and Tim’s parents, so we had a really good time. I didn’t take a lot of photos, but wanted to remember that we had our party 🙂

It was another meat fest here! Tim grilled burgers, hot dogs, sausage and ribs. I fixed corn dip for an appetizer, crunchy slaw, my mother-in-law brought her awesome potato salad and Terry and Emi brought their delicious baked beans (both pretty famous in our family!). We bought a chocolate cake for Zack’s 15th birthday (we were a couple of days late, his actual birthday was Saturday), so we got to celebrate that too. We hung out, played the Wii and had a really great time!

But not recipes for Spam!

A couple of random thoughts this morning:

1. I don’t understand people who leave spam on my little blog. I mean, it’s not a high traffic blog, nor does it have anything controversial or even overtly interesting on it. I’m SO grateful for Akismet though – the spam filter I installed a while back to catch all of this nasty spam. I’m constantly amazed and disgusted at the kinds of spam that Akismet catches. Ugh. At least it doesn’t get out there, but I hate seeing it all on my moderation page.

2. I’ve been trying to get back into a cooking groove. For a while now, I’ve just been making things that are easy, or things that I’ve made many times before. I’m making a concerted effort to try new things. Most of them have been winners, although some have been better than others. All of these are new to me, and all are from places online. I have tried to give credit from the website where I found the recipe, but sometimes I don’t always write it down or print it out. I have just entered several recipes on our family website, in the Recipes section. Here’s a sampling of them:

Sausage Calzones, with homemade dough – here

Pizza Pot Pie – here

Butter Honey Wheat Bread – here

Homemade Taco Sauce (here), which I used in this Skillet Taco recipe

I am going to try a new recipe today for a homemade spaghetti sauce. I’m on a kick lately to reduce sodium and cut down on the processed food I buy and use. So many additives in the canned stuff, packet mixes, etc, as well as that nasty high fructose corn syrup. I hope it turns out ok, because I sure do like using jarred spaghetti sauce, it’s so easy!

This has been a busy weekend! Lots of good stuff though 🙂

– Date night Friday night was an in-house date. We went and picked up some fast food and then watched a Harry Potter movie (#3, Prisoner of Azkaban)

– Saturday morning – Tim played in the church golf tournament. I went walking with Beau and my neighbor and we walked a longer route than normal (3.25 miles).

– Late Saturday morning – I went and picked up my mother-in-law Linda and our niece Brittany, and we had a girls day out. We went shopping at Hobby Lobby and Kohl’s. We picked out a ton of cute new clothes for Brittany for school and I even splurged and got 2 new sets of scrapbook stickers at Hobby Lobby. GOLF ones for Tim and birthday ones. I showed considerable restraint by not buying more, they were 50% off! We all went out to eat at one of my favorite places for lunch – Corner Bakery. I had the Chicken Pomodori panini and fruit, delicious 🙂

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During my long blog break, Tim and I both got new MacBook Pro’s! He got his first, and then when my three-year-old problematic HP laptop started giving me more problems, he decided that I needed a Mac and he ordered me one too! I don’t have any pictures of me with my Mac, but I do have a cute picture of Tim unboxing his 🙂 Mine is just the same, except that it has more software on it:

I thought after working in the IT field for years and only working on Windows machines that I would not like moving into the Mac world. Boy, was I ever wrong! I love it. LOVE. IT! Mine is so easy to use, has so many great features, and I really and truly do not ever want to use a Windows PC again. I can’t recommend them enough. I told Tim the other day, we’ve really turned into Apple-heads 🙂 I love my very old iPod (not even a video one, that tells you how old it is!), our iPhones and now our Mac’s. I hope we never have to go back to a PC environment. The Mac’s are more expensive, granted, but we both do a lot on computers, and it is so nice to have a great one to use.

I haven’t learned everything about it yet, but I’m working on it. Time Machine still baffles me a little. Sometimes getting apps to download (free ones, hence probably most of the problem) doesn’t seem as seamless as other times. But the pro’s definitely outweigh the cons – I rarely have to reboot my Mac, I have had lots of things open and never had a crash, I never have any kinds of problems with it, it has a great display and an awesome battery. I love iPhoto and how easy it is to put photos on Facebook, Shutterfly, etc. I like Safari, but my favorite browser Chrome works like a champ on the Mac. So many things to love 🙂

If you have time to leave a comment, let me know…. do you use a PC or a Mac? If you use a PC, would you like to try a Mac if you had the money/time/etc to check it out?

Have a great day!