A Peaceful Holiday Season

Peaceful is the only word that comes to mind to describe Christmas at our home this year. The hubby and I didn't exchange gifts this year, but we treated ourselves to a night out to dinner and a play. A local theater company presented It's A Wonderful Life...the musical. It's A Wonderful Life is my all time favorite movie (tied with To Kill A Mockingbird) so I loved every moment of the performance. I did receive a precious Christmas gift from my girls. A necklace with a beautiful heart shaped pendant and on the pendant are 4 rings with each ring containing a birthstone representing their birth month. What a priceless gift!
I haven't been in such a bloggy mood in the last several weeks. Not too much to blog about honestly and I have been at a loss for words. I don't want to keep rambling on and on about our home renovations, which has monopolized a majority of our time. I'm just enjoying my winter break from classes and trying to get geared up for more classes. Here are a few pictures of our time at home over the holidays...enjoy!

A Little boy & A puppy dog tail.....

Wow, I haven't posted in quite some time now, but I thought I would share a few pictures. Hey, wasn't it Halloween just a couple of weeks ago???

It's A Girl!

I would like to introduce to everybody our sweet little girl. She is absolutely gorgeous and I can't believe that she is now part of our family. Her name is Cali and she weighs a whopping 2 1/2 pounds and is 4 years old. Isn't she sooooooooo precious?

With little honor I present the........

Congratulations auto industry executives. You have officially earned my vote in the Jackass of the Day Award! I haven't blogged in over a week now since my time has been filled with spending time with my little man, end of the semester assignments, Thanksgiving planning and home renovations....Wheeeew, just listing it makes me tired! One thing I do stay on top of is the happenings of our great Country(and other blogs).

After AIG's bailout, and their lovely 4-star vacation retreat to recouperate from their bailout stress .....uhhmmmm ya uhuh okay (thats sarcasm by the way). Of course, this is $450,000 dollars later at our (taxpayers) expense. All I had to say at the time was, "What The Hell?" Oh, and we can't forget the bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then to place a cherry on top of the mess our country is in, the auto industry is seeking a government bailout. I do understand that the auto industry is an important market in the US economy, and provides jobs for many middle class families across the country. The middle class families that are the staple which keeps this great country strong.

I take pride in being frugal, and I have some suggestions to all of the Mr. CEO's of the auto industry or Mr. CEO of any other industry for that matter. First of all, a paycheck of $28 million plus bonuses thoughout the year is a little (okay A LOT) excessive! Yes, I know, you donate a lot of money to different organizations to help the needy (big tax write off), but I'm certain that you could make your money stretch (like my family does) with let's say a minimum of a $20 million dollar pay cut. I'm sure, Mr. CEO that $8 million would be sufficient for your auto industry expertise.

Next, I would have to say that when you fly back and forth to your home on the weekends, you could ride first class for $1000 rather than $20,000 round trip on a private jet. Wow, a $19,000 savings every week. I've just saved your company $988,000 in airfare for the entire year! This would equal the wages of over 20 blue collar workers assembling your cars, trucks and SUV's! Just imagine if you rode in coach alongside all of the blue collar workers of your industry....Wow, you could even save more! Like my family, we make sacrafices......Amazing concept! Wow, in one year I have just saved over 20 jobs and saved $20 million dollars....unbelievable! Oh ya, the grocery store accepts coupons too, and sometimes they double them!

In all honesty though, I try to teach my children that you have to work hard and many times to make ends meet you have to cut corners or go even go without. I lead by example! Shame on you Mr. big industry CEO! Through your actions that are presented by the media, you try to show my children how to operate with greed and dishonesty, but what you have actually provided me with is a valuable tool to show my children what not to do!

Remembering Our Heros

It just doesn't seem enough, but I would like to simply say "THANK YOU"

Warning....this is not my decor!!!

Okay, so my husband and I were going through our dinosaur computer to see if there was anything we needed to save when we ran across some hilarious photos. In 2002 my hubby received orders to be stationed aboard the USS Bataan in Norfolk, Virginia. We decided to travel from Texas to Virginia for 4 days to meet with a realtor and find a home prior to the actual move. We talked about what type of home we wanted before we arrived to Virginia and we decided that for our budget we would pick a home that needed a little fixing up. Baaaaah haaah ha ha ha! Let's just say that we all live and learn ;)

Homes were so scarce at the time that we really didn't have much choice but to select a home that needed a few (dozen) updates. Our home was on the market for one day when we uttered the words "We will put an offer on it!" With a total of three offers placed on the home, including ours, we anxiously awaited to hear if we were going to be first time homeowners. Then we got the call from our realtor and the cute little "rustic" gem was ours! Looking back I am glad I have these photos so I can appreciate all of our hard work!





These are the photos of our kitchen when we viewed the home in 2002. What were we thinking??????? So not my decor at all!




This is what I did when my hubby was underway on a 6 month deployment. Better, but way too themey!





Our work in progress. What an improvement!!!

Presenting Kaiden........aka Mr. John Deere farmer

Well here he is all dressed up for Halloween! I had so much fun putting together Kaiden's costume and all for under $10! In fact, I believe I only spent around $7 for the entire project. We already had the hat, t-shirt, black paint, box, and a half a can of green spray paint. All I had to buy was another can of green spray paint, yellow paint, the headlights (that actually worked), reflectors for the back, and I printed off some John Deere Logos off of the Internet. Kaiden walked around telling everybody he was a John Deere tractor. He was beyond too cute for words, and he absolutely loved all the attention he was getting at the mall!

I got the idea for Kaiden's costume just from his hat and t-shirt. I am from the Quad-Cities area which consists of Davenport, Bettendorf (Iowa) Rock Island and Moline (Illinois) area. Moline is the birthplace of the John Deere tractor. My parents sent the t-shirt and hat when Kaiden became part of our family in 2007. Kaiden wears his hat constantly, and it makes me so sad that my baby is outgrowing his hat. When we visited back home this summer we took Kaiden to the John Deere museum and he enjoyed seeing and climbing up on all of the big John Deere combines. I Googled John Deere Halloween Costumes and found the cutest tractor costume ideas and I absolutely knew that was the costume that I wanted to make! Maybe next year I will make a International Harvester tractor cosutme to pay tribute to my father who worked and retired from there after 32 long years!

Drinking On The Job

Ahhhhhhh, finally we are getting rid of our lovely 1969 wood paneling from our family room. I have disliked that room since the day we moved in our home in 2002. I hated trying to decorate because no matter what I hung on the walls that room or placed on the fireplace mantel the room still screamed out 1969.

My husband has been working diligently since late August remodeling our kitchen and now he is getting ready to drywall our family room. After that is complete we are installing wood laminate flooring throughout our whole house (with the exception of the bathrooms and laundry room). He certainly deserves a nice cold one for all of his hard work! Honestly, he really hasn't had time to sit down and have a cold beer, but somebody else did 39 years ago!

While my hubby was ripping down the paneling we found a little suprise. I always thought that it would be cool to find a bundle of money in a wall that someone kept there for safekeeping, but no such luck. Somebody was certainly enjoying their work day 39 years ago!


Woooooo Hooooooo, the paneling is finally going bye-bye!

SUPRISE!!!

Look at the bottom of the can....tab top can. I remember those from back in the day. Wow, I'm really showing my age huh?

Found the tab! I hope the construction worker had a great day building our house. I wonder if we will find anymore cans.

New running total.....

I headed out to the Dollar Tree this weekend to get a couple more items for Kaiden's Halloween costume.

So here is the grand total I have spent so far on his costume.......$4.12. I think I am going to be under my $10 budget!

Creative costume planning

Ah yes, Halloween is only a week away now. Honestly, I am really not into the "so-called" holiday. I really don't decorate with all the spooky spiders, skeletons and other yucko stuff. In our home we are more into the basic fall theme, such as pumpkins, scarecrows and fall leaves. You know, the more pleasant (happy) side of the "so-called" holiday, or shall I say we make it a positive event.

I have to admit that I do love to be creative and make costumes rather than buy one. When all three of the girls were little I didn't have much of a choice, and I had to be creative because we didn't have the money to go to the store and buy pre-made costumes. Last year we bought Kaiden a pumpkin costume for $15, but this year I plan on being even more thrifty. My budget is $10 and I have already spent $1.12, so we will see if I can do it! Yes, you can go and spend $50 (or more) at Disney, but I like to use my creativity and think outside of the box. Speaking of the word box, a box will be part of Kaiden's costume this year, which was a freebee. I'm so excited about my idea and I can't wait to share it with everybody next week. Here is a little hint:

WOW, THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN A YEAR AGO!!!

Guess who is 4?????

Yep, you guessed it! Our little guy turned 4 on Sunday, October 19. He is the sweetest little boy and we couldn't imagine our lives without him in it!

Homecoming 2009

Watching Shanna and Lindsay walk out the door today in their spirit week attire really hit home for me. For one, I cant believe that they are seniors, and two, where in the heck did the time go? Tonight the whole family is headed over to the Western Branch Bruins homecoming football game. I figured out that the next time we go to a senior homecoming game will be Kaiden's homecoming in 2022. Sorry for the blurry pics. Uhhhhhhhm, It was the camera not the operator....uhhhhmmmmm, yep, that's what it was.

I'm a blog slacker!

Yep, I've been a major blog slacker. I seem to always find the time to read other blogs (which I love to do). The past couple of weeks have just whizzed on by as we are trying to finish up our kitchen renovations. I'm trying to divide up my time between Kaiden, classes and home renovations. Sometimes it just gets so overwhelming and things get off balance. I get oh soooooooo cranky (stressed out) when I feel like things are off centered in my life. Even though Kirstie, Shanna and Lindsay are older and have a lot going on in their lives with school and work, I always try to take the time out to talk to each one of my girls, or sometimes all of us just load up in the car to do a little girls day out and go shopping. Lately things have seemed a little unbalanced so I knew I needed to use my time more wisely and wake up earlier to get a little "me time" and overall get an earlier start on my day.

I woke up and decided that today was going to be an awesome day and I wanted to start the day off by making myself a nice cup of hot coffee since the weather has finally started to cool off a little. As soon as I started to brew the coffee I remembered that when I went to the grocery store the other day I bought the new pumpkin spice flavored creamer. Yummmmmmy! Now you know you are getting old when you get excited about coffee creamer...lol I blindly grabbed a coffee cup out of the cupboard and as started to put the creamer in my cup (okay, I admit it I like a little coffee with my creamer).Anyways, I looked down at my cup and this was the cup I had grabbed out of the cupboard:


Ahhhhhhh, yes indeed, it is going to be a great day!

THRIFT STORE THURSDAY....almost Friday

Can you say $1.49??? Yes, that is correct, my next thrift store find was a whopping $1.49. By the looks of it I am guessing that it was previously a candle holder. There were old dusty (1980's) flowers wrapped up all along the base with its lovely greenish petina color....yuck. I knew I could spruce this one up easily and decided this little project WOULD NOT be spray painted black. My plan is to use it for every holiday and I didn't think black would be great for Christmas or Easter! Heck, the spray paint cost more than the darn thrift store find and I really like how it turned out! Now that its been brought back to life, it will start off by being my decorative mini pumpkin holder.