Exceedingly Mundane

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Five
October 19, 2007

Appetizer
If you were a dog, what breed would you be, and why? Oh, I’d be a golden retriever. They are loyal, happy and love their owners unconditionally

Soup
What does the color purple make you think of? Royalty. Or occasionally that movie and book 🙂

Salad
Approximately how long does it take you to get ready each morning? About 45 minutes to an hour, depending on where I’m going and what kind of clothes, make-up are involved 🙄

Main Course
How many cousins do you have, and are you close to them? OK, this opens up a whole different can of worms. I had one uncle I knew, and one I did not. The one I never had any contact with (he and my dad were not on speaking terms), had 3 children, I think, so they would be my cousins. However, I don’t know their names and have never met them. I grew up without an extended family – never really seeing uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. Then, I marry Tim. Tim who has a huge family. His mom is one of 8 and his dad one of 5. He literally has dozens of cousins. I tried to count them one time and wasn’t sure I got them all. I think I counted 27 or 28 first cousins. I’d be hard pressed to name them, but I’ve met almost all of them through the years. I know some of them pretty well, he had some really great cousins 🙂

Dessert
Take your initials (first, middle, last) and come up with something else those letters could stand for. (Example: SFO = Sweet Funny Otter) Ugh. I haven’t had any coffee yet, so these kinds of things are hard. How about SKH — Some Kick Heroes ? Or Stuff Kelvins Heat? Gosh, I’m not good at this 😀

Not going to blog much today. I’m going to be lazy some today, go run errands later and hopefully read some on my book. Isn’t that exciting? I won’t be blogging though, or spending much time reading other blogs. I’ll try to catch up tomorrow.

Last year, I posted this bit about “On this day in History”. Apparently, today is a bit of a mundane day in history, as well!

Two years ago, the post was “What does your Birthdate Mean?”

It’s sometimes hard for me to believe that I’ve been blogging over 2 1/2 years. This is post number #1875. Yikes! 😀

Back tomorrow with Friday Feast and maybe something remotely interesting 🙂 Have a great day, everyone!!!

As seen on Kailani’s blog, An Island Life, a couple of weeks ago…

What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now? Tons of different ones. We have Lever 2000 body wash, I have some Dial body wash, then two scents of Bath and Body Works

Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator? Nope. I have some other fruit, but not watermelon

What would you change about your living room? Gosh, where to start!

Are the dishes in your dishwasher clean or dirty? Dirty. I ran it yesterday, and always unload it as soon as it’s finished.

What is in your fridge? Lots of food! Hehehe. Milk, orange juice, leftovers, yogurt, lots of cheese, lettuce, carrots, condiments out the wazoo

White or wheat bread? Wheat

What is on top of your refrigerator? a decorative plate, some cookbooks, my George Foreman grill

What color or design is on your shower curtain? Maroon, striped

How many plants are in your home? 3 live ones that I want to get rid of and several fake ones

Is your bed made right now? Of course!

Comet or Soft Scrub? Both

Is your closet organized? My side is. You know who hasn’t worked on his.

Can you describe your flashlight? Pink. Really old. Tim has a lot of black, guy type flashlights in the garage and cars though

Do you drink out of glass or plastic most of the time at home? Plastic most of the time

Do you have iced tea made in a pitcher right now? Yes

If you have a garage, is it cluttered? Hmmm, a little. But that’s outside, so that’s Tim’s domain

Curtains or blinds? Both.

How many pillows do you sleep with? One

Do you sleep with any lights on at night? No way Jose. I have to have it dark to sleep. Just the little LED glow from electronics is more light than I like

How often do you vacuum? Once or twice a week

Standard toothbrush or electric? Regular one

What color is your toothbrush? Pink!

Do you have a welcome mat on your front porch? Yes, it has fall colored leaves on it and actually says “Welcome” in the center!

What is in your oven right now? Not a thing

Is there anything under your bed? Yes, and this is a forthcoming Question of the Day

Chore you hate doing the most? Probably dusting or cleaning the shower

What retro items are in your home? Nothing really. I have one antique, a love seat from my grandmother’s family that is probably 150-175 years old

Do you have a separate room that you use as an office? Yes, our spare bedroom

How many mirrors are in your home? I had to count! Six, decorative plus bathrooms

Do you have any hidden emergency money around your home? Umm, possibly

What color are your walls? Most of them are a neutral with a hint of a light peach to them. I hate them. I want to paint but I hate to paint. Master bathroom is a faux two-tone khaki and the kitchen is yellow. The only rooms we’ve repainted!

Do you keep any kind of protection weapons in your home? Yes, Tim does

What does your home smell like right now? the Yankee Candle “Harvest” candle I’m burning right now

Favorite candle scent? anything that smells like something baking or sweet

What kind of pickles (if any) are in your refrigerator right now? kosher baby dills

What color is your favorite Bible? Black

Ever been on your roof? No. But Tim has been up there many times.

Do you own a stereo? By stereo, if you can count the conglomeration of receivers, cd changers, woofer and surround sound speakers, yes!

How many TVs do you have? Three

How many house phones? Three

Do you have a housekeeper? Me!

What style do you decorate in? Comfy cozy

Do you like solid colors in furniture or prints? Most everything is a subtle print

Is there a smoke detector in your home? Yes, two sets. The builder installed electric ones, which we thought was stupid, because if the power is out, HELLO, they wont’ work. So right beside each of the electric ones, we installed battery powered ones.

In case of fire, what are the items in your house which you’d grab if you only could make one quick trip? Assuming Tim and Beau were safely out, I’d grab my laptop, my iPod, and as many photo albums and scrapbooks as I could get

Feel free to grab and play along at your blog, if you’d like. Leave me a message if you do, so I can come visit and read all of your answers! 🙂

I was going through another old magazine yesterday and saw another one of these fun polls. These are in Woman’s Day magazine, in case you’re interested (since I keep stealing their ideas and posting them here!). This is one of those magazine subscriptions I get for free – I cashed in some points at one of my “read emails/take surveys” points sites online, and I get several magazine subscriptions free every year from doing that. Anyway, here’s another good one.

If money were no object, where would you go on vacation?

1. A Theme Park like Disney World, in style with deluxe accommodations
2. On safari in Africa
3. A cultural tour of Paris, Rome and London (museums and art, baby!)
4. The sunny islands: Hawaii or the South Pacific

Cast your vote now 🙂

Wow, I am always so humbled and appreciative when you lovely people stop by, read my boring posts and leave me such sweet comments. Then, when someone goes out of their way to give me an award, I’m even more amazed! 🙂

Theresa, over at Theresa’s Life, awarded me with this “You Lift Me Up” award recently. Thank you so much, Theresa! I am so glad to have found your blog, and that you found mine 🙂

Shawna, over at Scamp’s Place, awarded me with this “Fabulous Award” – and believe me, she will beat me in any kind of contest as to who’s more fabulous. Shawna rocks! Thank you so much Shawna, for thinking of me, and believing that anything about me or my blog is fabulous 🙂

You ladies are all awesome. All of the wonderful friends and family who stop by here, all of my old and new blogger buddies, and everyone who comes by to visit. I pass both of these awards on to all of you – as an open kind of tag. I think you’re all great 🙂

Last week went according to plan. In fact, I even cooked more meals than I had planned. We skipped “Date Night” and I cooked (or at least fixed food, football food), all weekend. This week is going to be a lot easier – lots of eating out and a sandwich night! Not very exciting, but nice for me to not cook as much 🙂

Thanks to Laura at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

last Friday – we skipped “Date Night” – I fixed Shrimp Fried Rice, Potstickers and Eggrolls

last Saturday – we didn’t go out of town, and our alma mater played football Saturday night on TV – we had cheese sticks and “Pigs in a Blanket” 🙂

Sunday – more football food – this time Wings

Monday – Tacos, refried beans

Tuesday – Grilled Pineapple Chicken, Grilled Pineapple, Pan Roasted Potatoes

Wednesday – Sandwich Night

Thursday – hopefully dinner out at PF Chang’s (our new one opened a few weeks ago and we haven’t been!)

Friday – hopefully Date Night, if I get to pick, I want to go to my favorite Italian place

Saturday – TBD, may be out of town

Sunday – TBD, football food of some kind

I just posted a couple of photos over on my Project365 blog (here) of the fall decorations I got today. Nothing elaborate. Since we don’t have kids, we don’t really go all out for Halloween. We hand out candy, and we’ve dressed up in the past, but not in the last several years. Last year on Halloween, I was all alone, as Tim had to be out of town on business. We had just gotten Beau less than 2 weeks before, and believe me, all of the excitement, the kids voices, the doorbell ringing, was hard on my new puppy dog. I think he’ll be a lot better this year!

The weather has been so nice the last couple of days. I’ve turned the AC off temporarily and just had the windows open. I think that will come to an end on either Sunday or Monday, as our temperatures will be headed back into the mid to upper 80’s. It’s been nice, and I’m certainly ready for more cool weather.

I picked up some fall decorations today for the front (hay bale, pumpkin, mums, etc), and we drug out our “plastic” decorations. I opened up the big bags of Halloween candy from Sam’s Club (Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Nestle Crunch, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, etc) and put it in my big Halloween candy bowl. I bought a few pansies and planted them in some planters. I still have to get a lot more pansies and plant in the front yard, but otherwise, I think I’m ready for fall!

Here’s my weathered, battered, quite old scarecrow out front. Be sure to check out my Project365 blog for a couple of cute photos of Beau out front. 🙂

Happy Fall, Ya’ll!

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Four
October 12, 2007

Appetizer
When was the last time you were surprised? Probably the last time Tim came in from work with something from Sonic for me. I think it was a caramel mocha Java Chiller 🙂

Soup
Fill in the blanks: My eyes are ________, but I wish they were __________. My eyes are green but I wish they were brown. Or not, I sorta like them green 😀

Salad
If you were a Beanie Baby, what would you look like and what would your name be? You know, I’ve never paid any attention to Beanie Babies. I know nothing about them. However, I was going to answer Sweet Pea (since I thought maybe I might be considered sweet). Tim said that I should say “Booger” and leave it at that. 😛

Main Course
Name two things you consistently do that you consider to be healthy habits. I try to walk fairly often, I try to drink water every day, and I stay away from most red meat and almost all fried foods.

Dessert
What brand of toothpaste are you using these days? Do you like it? Why or why not? We’ve always used Crest. Right now, we have some regular paste and some of the Cinnamon Rush gel. Yummy! 🙂

Today’s Question of the Day is all about the dishes you use at your home.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, yet terribly conflicting for me! I love dishes and dinnerware; I have no idea why. If I had the room, I think I would have at least 2 sets to use everyday, and some seasonal ones as well. As it is, I barely have room for the everyday dishes I do have and use. My “good china” is a set of fine china that I inherited from my grandmother, and I have never even used it. (It’s probably 75 or 80 years old, or more, and definitely not microwave safe!) It’s been packed up and stored in the attic as long as I’ve had it. For everyday use, I have had Mikasa French Countryside since before we were married, although I just had a few place settings before I got registered for our wedding. We now have a set of 12 dinner and salad plates, and both sizes of bowls (soup bowls, which are larger, and salad bowls which are smaller). Oddly enough, I use all of the bowls and cups, the small plates, but I rarely use the large dinner plates. They have a large “rim” or “lip” on them, and they just don’t fit in my dishwasher well. So, a couple of years ago, I picked up 4 red dinner plates that are “flatter” at Target and we use those for two nights meals. They’re cheaper though, than my Mikasa, and they are scratched up and getting really chipped after all of the use they’ve seen. I need to replace them, and hope to do that soon.

As I said, I’d LOVE to have room for another set of dishes, but I just don’t have the space. Part of me would like to pack up the 12 place settings of plain white dishes I have and go with a set of colored dishes, or a mix and match of two or three colors. I’d love to get some Fiestaware, in a couple of coordinating colors, or some other mix and match dinnerware. I realize that the white is much more practical, and that’s why I have been using it for the last 12 years or so 🙂

I also love seasonal dinnerware, especially at this time of year. I’d love to have something fallish, but more than that, I LOVE Christmas dinnerware. I actually have some Christmas dishes. Years ago, I started getting a few pieces of Pfaltzgraff Winterberry, and had slowly built up enough for us for a few days (not enough to host Christmas dinner, but then again, no one ever comes to our house for Christmas, we always have to travel everywhere). I don’t have room to keep it in my cabinets year round, so it is packed up in a Rubbermaid tote and is stored in the attic. Last year, for the first time in several years, I had Tim bring it down from the attic, and I packed up some of our everyday dishes, and pulled out the Christmas ones to use. It felt so good to have new dishes!

So, finally, I’ll stop blabbing about my love of dishes and what I have and mostly what I WISH I had! Today’s Question of the Day is for you – what dishes do you have and use? How many sets do you have? Do you have “nice” china as well as everyday dishes? Do you have any seasonal dinnerware? Are you happy with what you have or are you wanting something new? Do you understand my obsession with dishes and do you share it?! 😀

Have a wonderful day everyone!

I finally finished the five books in the “Firstborn” series by Karen Kingsbury. I had read the Redemption series a year or two ago, and I loved those books. I think they are still my favorite of all of these Baxter family related books that I have read, but I really did enjoy the Firstborn ones. I had a hard time getting them all at the library. I think I kept running into several other people reading them at the same time I was, as I had to get on the wait list for most of them.

What can I say about these books? They’re really well-written, contemporary Christian fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed them! I like reading series books because I like to see characters developed, I like to see storylines extended and played out. When you combine these books with the Redemption series, you’ve already got a series of 10 books. Now, once she finishes writing all four (or is it five?) of the upcoming Sunrise series, the next books following these same people and families, I will have to read those. I love having storylines that just keep growing and evolving and extending.

I didn’t do individual reviews on each of these books, and this isn’t really meant to be a post on my review of these books. Mostly what I wanted to do was write down one thing that really got me in this last book, “Forever”. In Forever, the author presents (by way of the matriarch of these books, who has since passed away) a list of “Ten Secrets of a Happy Marriage”. Maybe these came from another book. I don’t read much non-fiction so these might be borrowed or paraphrased. In this book and this list, there’s also mention of the “love languages” and I have yet to read that book, although I have a copy (“The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman). Anyway, irregardless of the source or author, these are wonderful guidelines, and something I need to remember. Every single day. Tim and I both try to work hard, every day, to make our marriage stronger, happier, and more fulfilling. Some days he does better and some days I do better, which I guess is normal. Anyway, I thought if I put them here, I’d have them to refer to easily. Especially since this is a library book and I don’t have a copy on my bookshelves. 🙂

As listed in the book… “Ten Secrets to a Happy Marriage“, by Elizabeth Baxter:

1. God has you here to serve one another. Love acted out is serving.

2. Women need respect and nurturing. Love your wife so she knows you’d lay your life down for her. Continue to date her and admire her. Share a hobby – find something you can do to have fun together.

3. Laugh often.

4. Be patient. Love crumbles quickly under the weight of unmet expectations.

5. Spend more time trying to fix yourself than your spouse.

6. Keep short accounts. The Bible says “Do not let the sun go down while you are angry.” Make it a habit to forgive.

7. Determine up front that divorce is not an option.

8. Learn about love languages. Not all people show love or receive it the same way. You want a back rub and your spouse wants a clean kitchen. The love languages are fairly simple: acts of service, time, physical touch, gifts and words of affirmation. Learn them. Love is better received when it’s in the language that a person speaks.

9. Words of affirmation are a love language for all men.

10. Men are born to be leaders. He cannot lead unless she gives him the confidence to do so. If you love your husband, build him up. Confident men do not seek love outside the home.

Happy Reading, everyone!

Is there any chance that I could convince all of you out there to slow down and stop posting to your blogs? Please, pretty please?! I’m so far behind reading my favorite blogs. It used to be that I couldn’t keep up and my feed reader usually said I had over 100 new posts to check out. Now, for the last 5 or 6 days, that number has increased to over 200 new posts. Yikes. Talk about feeling overwhelmed!

Life is just a little busier lately and I am spending less time on the computer. So, I’m really far behind. I’m going to try to get around to reading all of my favorite blogs later in the week. I have so many! So many family and friends blogs, so many great blog friends, a lot of book and foodie blogs that I enjoy reading. I just can’t keep up 🙁

That brings me to a “Question of the Day” – how do you keep up with the blogs that you like to read? Do you use Bloglines or Google Reader or another feed reader? Do you just have a list of blogs you liked bookmarked on your computer? Or maybe a listing on the side of your own blog that you use to check on your favorites? And about how many blogs do you read on average? Just a ballpark figure, you don’t have to count or go check… would you guesstimate that you read 10, 50, 100 or 300 blogs regularly?

As for me, I used to just keep a bookmarked list on my computer or blog, but I outgrew that rather quickly. Then I switched to Blogrolling, but later tried Google Reader, which I like a lot. I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now to check on all of my favorite blogs. I have over 150 in my list, so I get lots of new posts all the time! How about you – leave me a comment and let me know! 🙂

Hope everyone has a super-duper Tuesday!!!

Last week went according to plan. We ate at a new pizza place last Friday on “date night” and it was really good pizza. We’ll have to find another new place to try this weekend. I’m not feeling very motivated on planning or cooking this week. Not sure if I’ll stick to this or not, but it’s a plan to work from.

Thanks to Laura at OrgJunkie for organizing and hosting this each week! Go check out her blog and you’ll find tons more recipes and menu plans.

Sunday – we had Potstickers and Fried Rice (potstickers from the freezer, I made the rice)

Monday – Spaghetti, broccoli

Tuesday – Grilled Chicken Sandwiches, sweet potato fries, veggie or fruit

Wednesday – Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese (carryover meal from last week)

Thursday – Waffles and Turkey Bacon

Friday – Date Night

Saturday – TBD

Sunday – Football food (either wings and cheese sticks or Frito Pie, haven’t had that yet)

I was going through an old magazine the other day (still a work in progress, this “going through and throwing out my huge mountain of magazines” project), and I ran across a quick poll they posted. I thought it was a good question, so I thought I’d ask here.

What would you do?

If you found a $100 bill on the sidewalk, what would you do?

1. Put it in my wallet (hello, new shoes!)
2. Pass it by. Gross. Germs!
3. Give the money to charity
4. Add it to my savings

Cast your vote now 🙂

Feast One Hundred & Sixty Three
October 5, 2007

Appetizer
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you look forward to your birthday? Oooh, what a timely question, since mine is coming up later this month! Let’s see, before I met Tim, I didn’t care much about my birthday. But, now that I have him to drop hints to, I have a big time and always look forward to it 😀 I’d say about a 7 or 8 now.

Soup
What is one word you don’t like the sound, spelling, or meaning of? Gosh, I’m sure there’s a lot of these and much better choices, but for whatever reason, the only word I can think of right now is abominable. I have trouble pronouncing and spelling that word. I’m sure there’s more 🙂 There’s lots of words I do like though (like lagniappe, conundrum, queue and others) 😀

Salad
Do you wear sunglasses when you’re outside? If so, what does your current pair look like? Always. My eyes are very sensitive to the light and sun. I get a headache if I go outside for very long and it’s bright or glary. It even bothers me if its cloudy outside. I have to have sunglasses.

Main Course
If you were to write a book, to whom would you dedicate it? Tim of course!

Dessert
Name a beverage that you enjoy Cherry Coke Zero

This week’s topic: Decorum

Do you have “issues� with too much profanity or overly explicit (ahem) “romantic� scenes in books? Or do you take them in stride? Have issues like these ever caused you to close a book? Or do you go looking for more exactly like them? (grin)

Well, I imagine that I’m going to be the fuddy duddy of the group today, with this meme. I do have issues with both books and movies that have too much profanity in them. Or explicit “romantic” scenes. Or graphic violence. I don’t choose to watch movies like that. In the last several years, I have really almost refused to go to the theater to see movies like that, and if we rent them, I really prefer that Tim watch them without me. That’s not how I choose to spend those two hours of my life. I’m the same way with books. I don’t like a lot of profanity or explicit stuff, either romantic or violent. I don’t choose to fill with my life with things like that. So, I tend to read cleaner books, “women’s fiction” that is not too descriptive, or Christian fiction. It just fits me a lot better. 🙂

Happy Reading!