Posts

Posted on

What’s For Dinner? Time To Menu Plan

It’s almost 5 o’clock and I still have no idea about what is for dinner. I’ve been pretty bad about this for awhile now. It’s so darn stressful having to think of something for everyone to eat at the end of the day when I’ve been working all day. I enjoy cooking but I hate figuring out what to cook.

I really should work on meal and menu planning. It would be great to come home at the end of the day and just start dinner, or even better have it all finished in the crock pot and waiting for me to serve. That sounds much more relaxing than standing in front of the fridge, freezer, and pantry every night for 30 minutes trying to figure something out. It makes me cranky sometimes when I can’t find something easy after a long day and I’m exhausted and just want to eat and sit down.

I think maybe I will start meal planning I know it would make grocery shopping easier because I would only have to buy what’s on my list from the meals I have planned. Sometimes I can spend hours in the grocery store just wandering the aisles and tossing stuff in the cart. I can spend $100 or more easily and get home and not have anything to make a complete meal. I guess I just have to get to it and start. In the mean time, pizza it is for tonight.

Posted on

Wedding Planning and Research is Relaxing

Jill has been totally amazed by how much stuff I’ve been doing for her wedding. They haven’t even set a date and I’ve been looking up all sorts of things from wedding favors, to unity ceremonies. She called me this morning to say thanks you when she was reading my blog while having her morning coffee.

I told her it was the least I could do. But really I might even be more excited to do this than I have been about anything in a very long time. That’s probably why I’ve jumped in head first and have been going a little research crazy about planning her wedding. Her only fear is that I will get burned out because I’m doing so much. She doesn’t want me to overwhelm myself.

I told her not to worry because doing all of this fun research is actually really relaxing. It makes me feel excited and I get a rush browsing wedding websites and Pinterest in search of new ideas and themes I had never even dreamed of when it came to a wedding and reception.

The way I see it by the time I’m done planning her wedding I’ll be an expert and can help other friends and family do it all over again. I’ll have all of the research done and we’ll just have to browse my stuff. Then again, I could be dreaming and completely delusional. I guess we wait and find out.

Posted on

Unorthodox uses for things

Guest post by Linda Bradshaw

When I was teaching decorative painting at the adult education classes at night, I often found myself needing more than two hands to accomplish what I wanted to do. Sometimes I needed to prop up a teaching aide on the easel board, but it would not be convenient to put it down on the tray. A lot of times it would just topple off of the bottom tray. It was a real challenge! So one day I was in the hardware department of the local department store, looking for a solution to the problem and found some spring clamps that would solve the problem – I could use one of them to clip the teaching aide(s) onto the side of the easel pad. I’m pretty sure that was not the original intention of the clamps, but they do a great job and I’m glad that I found them!

Posted on

Educating Myself About Annuities

I don’t really know that much about anything at all when it comes to annuities. It wasn’t something that anyone ever took the time to explain to me or teach me about. Well I keep hearing the term tossed around so I thought I would educate myself. I did a little bit of work by searching online and came across annuity advantage.com.

Annuity advantage.com gives you all kind of information for you to learn about, compare and even buy different kinds of annuities. Hopefully after a little while spent on this website along with subscribing to their annuity rate newsletter I won’t feel so in the dark when people are discussing annuities.

Posted on

The Best Birthday Presents To Get and Give

What is the best birthday present you have ever received? Was it some elaborate and expensive gift or was it a service that some one provided for you?

I think the best gifts are those that tell me that the person giving me the gift really took the time to think about what I would like. I enjoy gifts that people give from the heart and of themselves. I love it when someone decided that they want spend time with me instead of just tossing a gift card in a car and calling it a day. Don’t get me wrong I love gift cards because I can pick out what ever I want to get for myself, but some times I would rather just spend an afternoon with some one and or maybe share a meal together.

I love date nights for gifts too! These usually involve a gift from more than one person too. My hubby of course and then who ever volunteers to watch our kids while we go out and enjoy ourselves. Babysitting is a fantastic gift, it gives me a chance to have some alone time to get out of the house to be an adult or run errands. I’ve also used baby sitting to just catch up on sleep.

You know when you have those really long weeks and you don’t get more than 5 hours a night for a few days in a row. Those are the times when I cash in those coupons that my friends make for me for a night of free baby sitting. My friends come pick up the kids and then I can go back to bed and I love it! If I’m smart I’ll try to plan ahead and see if the kids can do a sleep over so I can sleep in.

So I guess date nights and baby sitting are my top gifts. What is the best gift you could receive or have received?

 

Posted on

Tips to Selecting Wedding Favors

Wedding favors are the little items that every one gets to take home at the end of the celebration to remind them of the union of their friends or family. There are a wide variety of  wedding favors to choose from that will compliment any wedding theme and style.

Affordable Wedding Favors – When I had my wedding the most important aspect of our wedding favors was that they were affordable. Affordable does not mean some cheap toy that will break after the first use.  Now days you can purchase very reasonably priced wedding favors or even buy materials to make your own. As with most things, when you buy in bulk the cost per item goes down.

Practical Wedding Favors – Once you set a price point for your favors you have to determine what kind of favor you want to give. I enjoy receiving wedding favors that are practical and something that I will actually use. Functional items are nice and will remind your friends and family that you were thinking of them every time they use your favor. Bottle stoppers and led key chains are among my favorite in this type of favor.

Personalized Wedding Favors – Then there is the question of whether or not you want to personalize your wedding favors. You can do this by adding stickers or gift tags to bags, boxes, or tins. You can also choose to have something embossed or engraved. The possibilities are endless when it comes to making things your own. And don’t forget you can personalize both functional and consumable wedding favors. For example, if you want to give away those yummy almonds just put them in a favor bag, box, or tin with your label on it and you are all set.

I hope these tips make determining what wedding favors are right for your wedding that much easier. What do you look for in a wedding favor?

 

Posted on

Worried about Trisha

When Trisha told me that she had to stop at the store and pick up some kind of detox in a bottle I was not impressed. If something is illegal, you should not do it. Plain and simple. I read her the riot act – I thought that she had stopped doing all of that bad stuff years ago. I told her that if she does not enroll in a program like 48 hour detox by the end of the month I was going to call in her entire family and all of her friends to perform an intervention. She was not impressed with the riot act at all. I’m worried about her.

Posted on

Selecting Your Wedding Decorations

Wedding decorations can turn any location for your wedding and or reception into something special. If you have no idea what you want as far as decorations go maybe try starting out with a theme and move on from there. Flipping through wedding magazines is a great place to start to get ideas also.

Wedding decorations include more than ribbons and flowers. They encompass everything from cake toppers to wedding favors, and even accessories for the bridal party. Choose wedding decorations that invoke the style and feeling you are looking for. If you are going for a fantasy wedding theme it would make sense to romantic setting with candles and pastel colored flowers.  A fairy tale carriage would make a addition to your decorations for a story book wedding. You could have centerpieces and place holders reflect that idea at each table.

If there is something that you are looking for that you can’t find it’s always possible to hire a company to do custom wedding decorations for your wedding. This will give you the opportunity to have exactly what you want down to the very last detail. Most companies will be happy to provide you with excellent customer service so that the bride and groom are happy and are able to have the wedding of their dreams.

Posted on

I Want To Brag A Minute

Okay, I want to brag for a minute or so. I’ve been working really hard to keep my new year’s resolution to work out 3 times a week and so far I’ve been doing great with that. But, That’s not what I want to brag about. I want to brag about the fact that my kitchen has been spotless for the past 12 days.

My sink has been spotless every night before I go to bed and the dishes haven’t piled up because I do a load every night as soon as the dishwasher is full. Then in the morning I empty while I’m making myself coffee so the sink never has a chance to have a dirty dish left in it because the dirty dishes can go straight into the dishwasher as soon as we are done with them.

It has felt absolutely amazing to go to bed and wake up with a clean kitchen. I don’t know what inspired me but I hope that I can continue it because it feel s amazing. I suppose it will just take some discipline and determination to keep going and to not give up.  Why would I want to stop doing something that makes me feel so fantastic?

Posted on

It’s always a good time to buy jewelry

One of the things that I’ve noticed lately about the some of the local jewelry stores that I like to go to is that in addition to the traditional rings, bracelets, and earrings, and necklaces is that they also sell individual beads that you can buy to custom-make your own jewelry. My favorite beads look like Cloisonné beads, and come in a wide variety of colors. They are so pretty that it would be nearly impossible for me to pick out just one favorite!

Recently I was learning about how some gems are treated with heat, radiation, bleaching, or laser treatments to improve the color or clarity! I was really surprised to learn that from the website of a jewelry store salt lake city. I’m constantly amazed by how much one can learn about things without even trying!