Check out the Giveaway at ecoMILF (Mother Into Living Fair)

ecoMILF is giveing away a Sigg water bottle with a great story behind it. Check it out. Enter the drawing.

http://www.ecomilf.com.au/ecoMILF/ecoMILF_blog/Entries/2009/9/25_neverever,_chocolate_confessions_and_a_give-away%21.html#

Getting Off My Lazy Butt

I've been a little lax the last couple weeks about my excercise. It's been cold and rainy so I didn't really want to go out walking but today I decided that I'm going to end up sitting on my a$$ all winter if I use cold as an excuse. I walked down to the store to pick up some veggies and stopped by the library to get some reading material. Fate decided to reward me for walking and both of the books I wanted (but didn't dare hope to find) were sitting on the new arrivals shelf waiting for me. I love these authors and reread their books almost every year but I'm too cheap to buy them in hardback so I get them at the library and read them. Then I have the leisure to find them at a used bookstore for adding them to my home library.

Birthday Party Wrap Up

Well, just because a birthday party is absolutely wonderful and went off with minimal issues doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of work and require a recovery period after :P

My nephew's birthday was last week and we went a little overboard (I blame the grandma) for the party. It was awesome. A Circus theme was chosen so we had face painting (my long suffering and good sport of a husband), a clown making balloon animals (me), bean bag toss, a petting zoo (two goats and two little pigs), a little race car track, a jumping jupiter, and a bunch of games. If most families tried to pull this kind of party off it would take quite a bit of money but we did it for hardly any. The most expensive part of the party was probably the Jumping Jupiter and that only cost $100 to rent for the weekend because we could rent if from the base recreation dept. Every member of the family was able to contribute something whether it was cooking, crafting, making a bean bag game out of scrap wood and paint, or getting some friends to lend their animals to the cause. I love my big crazy family especially when we're being crazy in a good way.

Me in all my clowny glory. We were talking about the costume and realized that Mom made it more than 20 years ago. It's been worn by almost every member of our family at one time or another and been everywhere from a VBS in Barrow, AK to a children's cancer ward in Romania.

A bad shot of the wonderful bean bag toss game Mom made out of a piece of scrap wood.

My sister being a good sport about all the random flower balloons her son wanted her to wear that we eventually just made into a hat to free up her hands.

My hubby painting a "pink sports car" on my (hopeful) future niece.

My nephew and his Grandpa playing in the jumping jupiter.

The duck pond.

Mom makes the best birthday cakes.

A Really Weird "Fangirl" Moment

Just in case you needed any confirmation that I'm a few degrees off true North ....

I follow "a great leap in the dark" and "the tiny house blog" and while I'm not entirely sold on the "tiny house" concept for myself (I love my fabric stash), I really admire the ingenuity of tiny house builders and the underlying reasons for which they build that way. To that end, when my hubby and I saw a mobile "tiny house" on our drive home today I simply had to follow and get a picture or two (and a really weird look from the man in the truck hauling it).

http://agreatleapinthedark.blogspot.com/

http://tinyhouseblog.com/

Coming up on the tiny house. You can see its sister house up ahead.

A closer view as we pass. I love the sign over the door

"Motel 3 - no phones - no cable - no room tax - no vacancy"

Pay-It-Forward ... Soon

On the off chance I actually have any readers :)


Sara, the owner of the wonderful blog "Blessed Simplicity," has allowed me to enter her pay-it-forward giveaway. I am very excited about this whole concept. I had read about the giveaways in other blogs but I was always reading about them months after the fact or just to chicken to ask to be included. I am planning and plotting the project I will do for my pay-it-forward giveaway once Sara is done with hers. I've got the fabric all picked out and several ideas of things to make (I guess it says something about me that the fabric determines the project and not the other way around). Keep your eyes open and I'll post for victi... um I mean ...volunteers when it's my turn to pay-it-forward.

Blogs - A Window Into Someone Elses World

Ok, I have to admit to a very serious psychological problem ... insatiable curiosity and an inability to blindly believe what the news media tells me. I can't help but think that most news stories are pushed that little bit extra to make the issues or events seem a little bit more interesting. So, when I hear a news story about a polygamous family or niqab wearing french women, I try to find several blogs written by people who are in the culture or situation to try and get a better, more complete, perspective. Often times I don't completely agree with the belief systems I encounter, but I always appreciate a well thought out point of view and I always appreciate having a better understanding of the people I share this world with.


So, if you think the blogs I follow are a little disjointed, this is why. And thanks to everyone who lets it all hang out (even if you sometimes have to put up with ignorant comments left by idiots who probably haven't read more than three words of your actual blogs). I appreciate your courage and I want to grow up to be just like you.

Tearing the Place Apart - No, Literally

This weekend my parents, honey and I did demo work in the MIL apartment attached to our house. The MIL apartment is the oldest part of the house and the previous owner didn't really take care of it. It was a sad collection of patch-job repairs and unupdated electrical work. We decided that rather than adding our own layer of just-make-it-work repairs, we would gut it down to the frame and start from the beginning. We found a few surprises along the way - random places where the wall had plywood instead of Sheetrock, an old door that had been turned into a counter top in the kitchen, a weird wall made of 2X2s and hard board.

(honey, mom and dad at the scene of the disaster)

(loading all the unsalvagable debris to go to the dump)

(Part of where the kitchen used to be. I'm standing where the cut up old door/counter top used to be)

(Where the bedroom used to be taken from the living room. The weird gap in the flooring is where the 2X2 and hardboard wall was)


(Where the living room used to be. Taken from the bedroom. Honestly, this is a good thing)

At the end of the day it was so wonderful to be able to look and see the progress we'd made in turning our house into the home we want it to be.