The Last Song

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

This was a very good book in my opinion.  I have to take Nicholas Sparks somewhat sparingly though because of the fact that almost all of them are loves stories, with a tragedy somewhere in there, and then happiness by the end.  I almost always cry when reading them, and I don't like to cry all the time.  I don't think that they are the same books, just a similar story, so once a year is good for me.  Still he always writes with a passion, and I do enjoy that.

This book was about a teenage girl, who is rebelling against life in general.  She doesn't want to go visit her father, but her mother forces her to go for a visit.  She ends up having a wonderful summer, falling in love with a boy in the area.  Learning more about herself than she ever though possible.  Then tragedy strikes.  Things aren't seeming to work out the way she wanted them to.  She ends up staying longer with her father than anticipated, but she is enjoying it.  Finally she goes home and becomes the woman that she wasn't in the beginning.  I could relate to this book.  I was a rebellious teenager at one point, and now I'm finally grown up too.  Even if I don't want to be all the time, I've grown up to the point that I realized the error of my ways.  So relating to this book was easily done.  I was smiling, crying, and falling in love, myself.  So overall, as with all Sparks books, this was a hit.  I can't wait to see the movie.

I have many more books to catch up on.  I was lucky enough to visit half price books and pick up a few more.  I've also joined this site called paperbackswap.com.  I love this site.  I enter books that I've read, ship them out, receive a credit, and then can get a book that I want delivered to me.  It works for me.

My next book that I'm reading is One For the Money by Janet Evanovich.  I've heard many great things about the whole Stephanie Plum series from a few friends of mine, so I've been eagerly awaiting a chance to get them.  So I ordered this one, and have started reading it as of two nights ago.  So far so good!  Have a great and wonderful Christmas!

Wishing...

Wishing you and yours a Very Merry Christmas!

Let me tell you about the day....

We woke up...I made coffee, because who can live without coffee, right??  Then we proceeded with our day. (Is proceeded a word? it just doesn't sound right.)
 Our first stop was Lowes, I absolutely LOVE Lowes!  First let me tell you about the Lowe's build to grow classes that they have for kids.  My little ones love to make their little toys or treats.  This whole month they have been doing a Christmas train, it started with the caboose, the passenger car, and today they made the engine train.  Very cute!
Then we went to Walmart, Old Navy, Bed Bath and Beyond, and finally Target.  We didn't find the deals we wanted, so we spent a total of $0.  Walmart in HH was supposed to have a ubuild monopoly deal going on for only $5.  Old Navy, was supposed to have $1 scarves, Bed Bath and Beyond is just a fun store to go to, and Target will not price match things when there is a limited amount of time IE door busters etc.  L-A-M-E!!!
So then we ran by the Walmart in K, no luck on the ubuild monopoly, I was starting to get my hopes up, but we headed out to CC to go to a beer brewing store anyway for the hubs.  And guess WHAT?  We found the Ubuild monopoly for $5.....then I obviously I had a coupon for it $3 bucks off, so I got it for $2, I would have gotten it for just the tax, but I used my other $5 coupon early.  MEH!  I still got it for only $2.  It was $15 at Target.  S-W-E-E-T!!!!
Unfortunately, Paul's beer store, was not stocked the way it should have been.  I guess those snow storms are taking its toll.  Its okay though, he still was able to find things online for his Christmas present.  So we came home so he could research.  He really wants to try to brew his own beer for Christmas, so why not.  Its no more or less than what I would have gotten him, so why not?
After getting home, we decided to rent some movies from redbox.  Ohhhhh, I love redbox.  How can you NOT?  $1 for a movie...its great!  Better than netflix, (although I still like netflix), its still cheaper.  I can get whatever movie I want, and only spend $1 as long as I watch it that night.  Since I joined, I got a free thank you rental, so we got 2 rentals for $1.  Nice, huh?
Then off to goodwill I went, because I like goodwill.  ITS COOL PEOPLE!!!  I found two interesting frames, and a Nancy Drew book for Autumn for Christmas.
We then proceeded to Bath and Body works.  FIRST off, you should totally add them to your facebook, and sign up for emails.  I get free things all the time with them...ALL THE TIME!!  First we got their new scents Bali Mango, Fuji Passionfruit, and Hawaii Coconut.  They were just the 2 oz lotions, but we still got two for free, and I spent $1 on the last one.  3, 2-oz lotions for $1.08 (tax, blah), very cool if I do say so myself.  We did play the system a little, I printed two of the online coupons for free lotion, Sierra really wanted one, and I wanted one, I chose the coconut, and mango for Autumn as a stocking stuffer.  Sierra chose the passionfruit, and the girl was being nice so she just let us have it.  To be fair, I had the two coupons, but they are only supposed to give one per customer...not sure if Sierra counts as a customer just yet....lol.
We then hit up the other goodwill.  I'm telling you people, ITS COOL, and don't judge.  Yes we go to goodwill.  First off, the girls LOVE it.  They typically get a new book, or cheap toy or something when they come with, and I can see if there are any goodies.  We ended up getting 24 books (most of them for the kids, but some were awesome, brand new hardcovers for me), I spent 27 bucks on them all.  They had a military discount of 15%, so it ended up being a little cheaper than it could have been.  AND I have MORE Christmas presents for the girls...and they will literally NEVER know the difference.  

So, have I mentioned how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE saving money.  It just feels sooo great to save, even if sometimes its only a $1 here and there.  Every $1 counts when you are a military wife!!

Now I must move onto something completely off topic....I WON this ADORABLE set from cleverlyinspired, and I ADORE this site.  She has so many wonderful ideas for crafts, cooking and more.  I highly recommend her site, if you get a chance you should totally check her blog out!  Its literally chock full of awesome ideas!
But I regress...here is the ADORABLE set that I won for the girls:

 How cute is this???

 This was an 18 mos old baby girl dress...I had her wear it as a shirt.  She'll probably wear it once or twice more, and then we'll give it to my little sisters daughter.  It will be super cute as a dress too huh?

I also won a baby doll dress, and an actual dress that would probably fit Autumn, but Sierra can wear it any time of year.  Its the red plaid, but no ho ho ho on it, so she can wear it whenever she'd like, and believe me.  She's a DRESS wearer, she LOVES her dresses!  She can't wait.

I love giveaways!  Thank you cleverly inspired!

Introducing...

My sweet little niece: 

Layla Grace

 Little old lady feet!

  She's so precious!  Congrats to my little sister and Charles, she's a beauty!

Book Review

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

First off, let me say that I was riveted, almost from the beginning.  The beginning can get a little confusing for a few minutes.  Once you "get" what is actually going on, things start to make sense, and then the book gets really good.  From the title you can automatically assume its about a wife of a Time Traveler, and while correct, its also a romantic love story, that both is tragic, and complete.

Me, being a military wife, some of this actually kind of reminded me of our life.  How my husband is absent a lot of the times.  How sometimes I don't know where he is.  I don't have to worry about WHEN he is, but the worry is still there.  The main character in the book is a very strong, patient woman, loving and understanding, she only has eyes for her beloved.  Her husband, Henry, integrates himself into her life, from the time that she is just 6 years old, until she is much older.  I don't want to give the book away, or tell too much, but I wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I will be looking for others from this author as well.  The writing was superb, keeping the reader interested, and not lulling too much.

I haven't had a chance to see the movie, but I am very excited to see it.  I think it could have been done beautifully, and I am very interested to see what Hollywood did with it.  Overall, I highly recommend this book!

Currently reading: The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

I can't wait to see the adventure Mr. Sparks will take me on..yet again!

Favorite Ornaments...

 Hurricane jar filled with multicolored ornaments, LOVE IT!

 More....

 Hand painted by me, gingerbread man...I painted this when I was pregnant with Sierra, just before she was born.

 I absolutely adore our angel!

 Autumn made this when she was in preschool

 Disneyland a few Christmas' ago!

 Last year I bought this at a Christmas markt in Germany, I miss the Christmas markets!

 Another from good ol' Germany

 I love it

 Some Texas love anyone?

 The girls advent calendars for this year.  There are 25 bags, I bought some goodies from the dollar store, for 22 dollars, I had the brown paper bags from a long time ago, and I printed off the template from another blog.  I also dug out my ribbon in my gift wrapping bag and hole punched, then tied them, so the girls can't peak!  Now I just have to find the blog that I used to print the template, and you can have an advent just like me, for soooo much cheaper than buying one....or more.  BTW-we had enough for two more kiddos!  =)

I love the holidays!

Laundry Room Love

I've been working on my laundry room decor, its one of the smaller rooms in the house, so therefore, will be the easiest/cheapest room to decorate.  I bought a really cute Laundry sign from HL the other day, and I've seen some really cute ideas around blogland, soooo...I decided to add my first bit of decor to my laundry room.

I had a mirror in this frame, unfortunately, it broke.  So instead, I painted this wooden frame black, got some letters from HL, traced them with scrapbook paper, I love it because it has velvet type stuff on the black area.  Then I hot glued them onto a black ribbon, and hot glued that onto the back of the frame.  Let dry, and then I hung it up!  I love it!

Christmas decoration....

Courtesy of my sweet little girls!

We decorated today, or rather, the girls decorated the entire tree!!  They won't always want to do this, so why not?  Right?  I love it!

Silhouette giveaway!!!!

Tator Tots and Jello is having an Ahhhhmazing  giveaway.  A Silhouette machine!!!  I had to blog about this for an extra entry, I just had to.  I would LOVE to have one of these to make so many fun projects, and you should enter too!!  Go check it out!

Weekend fun...

This weekend, I decided to finish up some of my crafts that I've been wanting to do.  I finished my wreath, and I am in complete love with it.  It was tedious, but easy to do.  First I bought all of my supplies at HL, big fat orange ribbon, stick wreath, fabric, a letter.  I started on the fabric flowers, I learned how to make them by going here, she has a great tutorial on how to make them.  Like I said, it was a tedious job, but they turned out so nicely when I was finally done.

 I got the idea for this wreath from Kristol over at the Magic of Ordinary things, she did one very similar, and I kind of just went with it.  Of course, I made it my own, but I have to give credit where credit is due!

 I am in much love with this.  I hot glued the flowers onto the wreath, tied my painted letter with the pretty ribbon, and used a command strip to adhere it to my glass front door.  Voila, awesome looking fall like wreath.  Now I have to figure out which wreath I want to make for Christmas....hmmm....

 

Next I made the girls their backpack hangers.  I've been wanting something to put on the wall so that they have a place to put their backpacks.  So Paul and I went to ReStore a while ago, and I found a few little things to paint, but I didn't know what to paint on them.  I saw another blog where a girl had taken some wood, and made a towel holder for her bathroom.  I thought, wow, I could do that but I don't need a towel holder.  So instead, I made this.  Hand painted the letters, drilled some drawer pulls into the wood, and sanded it a bit to make it look weathered.  The girls love it, and now they have a place to put their bags instead of just letting them go on the floor.  Nice!

 

I've been seeing these little magnets all over the place.  You take a clear rock that you can get at any hobby store, cut out some scrapbook paper to fit, glue on with some clear glue, then glue on your magnet, and voila, you have an easy peasy magnet!!  =)

I have a few more projects up my sleeves to work on this week, of course with Thanksgiving around the corner, I may not get to them all, but I can certainly try, lol.

A finished project!

I'm so excited about my little table.  I <3 it so much!

I don't have any before pictures of the ACTUAL table that I finished, but luckily we have two of the same tables, so I took pics of my next table project, lol.

 Not the prettiest thing, that's for sure.

 But she has good structure, and good bones...bought her and her sister at goodwill for $20

 They both had some water damage, the stain was coming off, stains...yeah.

 Can you believe these things have been in my house for months now?

 Now look at her!  Don't mind the messes, or the Polish pottery coffee mug...lol.

 I sanded the crap out of her, then I primed her all over, and then painted her, she looks so pretty, and I'm so proud!

Christmas project for a soldier...

Pretty much all of my friends are military families, or have been.  One of my friends asked for people to send Christmas cards, or handmade cards, or anything for her soldier for Christmas.  I have a bunch of bead board from a project that I was going to do for some of my family, so I decided to do the same project for them.  I had to get a picture of them, and her and I chatted back and forth.  Its done, and I wanted to show it off.  I think it turned out really nicely, and I can't wait to make more.  You can see the tut for it here

Aren't they a pretty family!

Idea from: this blog!

Working...

Well kind of...I am working on some projects, but I think I need to stop getting more projects to work on, because my garage looks like a hardware/craft store threw up in it...ha ha.  So I've managed to sand down the table I'm working on, complete with saw dust in my hair and everything.  I felt very accomplished, and dirty.  Primed most of it yesterday, probably going to put two more coats of primer on it today and start with my first coat of paint.  I'm so excited.  Its not a fancy table or anything, just the little table that I usually put my computer on or paint on, so nothing too fancy, but its my first piece that I'm painting, so I'm excited.  I just really really wanted to see how it would turn out and all.  It is taking longer than I thought though.  Anyway, I also have some frames to paint, I need to figure out what to do with one of my shelves, I probably need to sand and paint over it again.  I spray painted it wrong, and it has dribbles.  Lets see, what else....oh I have a backpack holder that I'm working on....soooo many projects so little time.
Since I really don't have a craft room, I've taken over the garage for now.  Luckily it isn't hot out there right now.  Plus the things I'm doing need to be done outside of the house.  My inside projects are done in the living room.

Let us ignore the messy clutter of my garage, most of that is crafts, and there is my table.  We have another one, so I can take a before shot of that one, because I will be working on that one as well.  I have a few mirrors to work on....multitudes of army crap that Paul has to go through...(we'll see if THAT ever happens), and so many more things.

Okay change of subject.  Yesterday was great, I went out with my friend shopping, and it was much much needed.  Who doesn't love some retail therapy.  We went to Hancock fabrics (which is just awesome, but a little pricey on the rotary kit that I was looking at, especially when I found it at walmart for 15 instead of 50...yikes).  Then off to Harbor Freight.  What a cool store, its kind of a guy tool store, but smaller, but hey, they give me free things, and I really can't complain about that.  Yesterday I got a free multimeter (because I had a coupon), and a free led light.  Oh I'm sorry, I did pay a little, I bought a .49 paintbrush, and paid a grand total of .53 for it all.  Sweet!

After the tool store, we went to Michael's which is the bane of my existence.  I could spend hours in there...and thousands of dollars.  But I don't have thousands of dollars, so I found a magazine, saw a craft I really wanted to do, and bought the items for it.  BUT Michael's won't let you use their 40% off coupons twice, like in different transactions...lame, and they also won't let you use your coupon on a magazine.  So I didn't buy the magazine there.  Then my friend M and I went to Sam's club, where we found that Prime Rib...is very very expensive.  I also saw that they were sold out of the pink large lego boxes...boo!  Then we went to the goodwill, and I got some great things.  A super cute coffee mug, but it needs to be cleaned, so pic coming later.  A really pretty framed mirror that needs a little updating, and the perfect silver vase for my Christmas project coming up.

After that we were hungry, so on our way home, we stopped at Jack in the box.  The lady offered us free tacos...we wondered what exactly we had to do to get said tacos...but they were completely free.  We ended up getting four tacos, two burgers, and a drink all for under 4 bucks.  Wow!  So all in all it was a great day...but it didn't end there....

After I came home, I primed my table, waited for the girls to get here, and had to run to Home Depot to get a few little things.  Then I took the girls to their fundraiser night at Chuck E Cheese.  They had 10 free tokens, plus I spent $5 so that they'd have a few more tokens.  They got to play some games, play with chuck E, and they even got some silly little prizes.

We came home, ate dinner, and my day still didn't stop.  I forgot my spray adhesive for a project, ran to walmart, found it, and looked everywhere for that darned magazine I'd seen in Michael's, and when Walmart didn't have it.  I figured I'd just go home....I ended up turning around and going to Hobby Lobby thinking maybe they would have it.  I was in there a minute, found it and guess what....Hobby Lobby WILL let me use my 40% off coupon on a magazine.  So a 6 dollar magazine I got for 3 bucks.  I love cheap stuff!

Okay, so that was my rundown of my super exhausting shopping day.  Needless to say I came home and PASSED out!  I couldn't even keep my eyes open.  So today, is a project day, and I'm not going to go much of anywhere.  So wish me luck, and if you got this far...thanks, lol.

Ahhhh internet at my fingertips again...

Today has been BRUTAL.  Ha ha.  First off, WHAT in the world did I do before I owned a computer and had internet?  Sheesh!  As I've said before, my computer is still in pieces on the table, we are awaiting the part, but it is on its way.  Then Paul's computer restarted, and of course, he has this fancy fingertip thing on his laptop where you can't get on it unless his fingertip goes over the little fingertip reader.  So what does this all mean for me...well I was computerless today.  LAME!
I did manage to clean, do laundry, and watch a bunch of HGTV (love that channel btw).  Then picked up the kids from the schools, came back and read a magazine, yes a whole magazine.  Finally, I made dinner, which was AWESOME, recipe coming, but no pics, sorry.  My husband came home, and swiped his finger...now I'm stuck on the computer for the next few hours I'm sure.  I need to play catch up.  You see, I have this whole routine on my weekday mornings, I get the girls out of the house for school, then I sip my coffee and catch up on facebook, and the blogs that I follow (which is quite a few).  So now not only do I have to catch up on the weekends blogs (we were busy), but now I have to catch up on today's blogs.  Sigh....
Okay, now onto dinner.  Delicious.  First off I made some rosemary chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli, and garlic butter breadsticks....
Brown rice is easy, I get the success in a bag stuff, and since I was microsteaming the broccoli, I did it on the stove.  The broccoli, I have a pampered chef micro cooker, and usually just throw some frozen veggies from Sam's in there and microwave them with a little water for 5-7 minutes.  Its easy and fast, and I don't have to pay for the pricey steamers (which are still great, but I get a HUGE bag of frozen veggies at sams for the price of ONE of those steamers).  The garlic butter breadsticks are from Pillsbury, which I had a .40 coupon for, so it was cheaper!  BTW, these are really really yummy.
Now onto the Rosemary chicken, talk about EASY peasy!  First, I took 4 chicken breasts, and sauteed them in my skillet.  Make sure its pretty warm before you throw your chicken in, it will seal in the juices.  I'd rather overcook than undercook my chicken, so I let it brown nicely on medium for quite a bit.
Anyway, while your chicken is cooking, mix up this handy sauce.
4 tsp vegetable oil
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1/2 cup Italian salad dressing
1 tsp rosemary

Mix it all up.  When the chicken is done and nicely browned on both sides, take it out of the skillet, throw in your rosemary sauce mixture, let it cook for about a minute.  Then add the chicken again, turn the chicken on both sides so it really soaks up the sauce.  Let cook for a minute, and then you are done!!  A yummy, easy, fast, and mostly healthy dinner.
(I also made some blueberry muffins for dessert, yummmmmm!!)

I started on a new project.  I'm attempting to paint a table.  Its all streaky though, so I think I messed up. I'm going to have to see if I can salvage it.  Luckily it wasn't an expensive table, but I want it back, even if it looks quite ugly.  I'll post pics when I'm done.

For now, you get to see my girls after one of their Lowe's Build to Grow things.  If you haven't done this with your kids, its great.  The girls LOVE building their own toys, they are always proud of what they've done, and hey its something to do....oh and its FREEEEEEE!!  Everything is better when its free!

Okay, and off I go to play catch up!  Yay!

Yay, its back!

So guess what????  My Mom found my power cord for my camera battery at her house the other day (I knew it was there).  She sent it to me, and my batteries are charging as we speak I write.  Now I can take pictures, and love on my camera.  Now if only my computer weren't in pieces on my dining room table still, I'd be good.  No offense to my husband, but his computer is just NOT the same...mine is a 17 inch, his is a 15 inch, so I'm constantly typing things wrong, because I'm not used to things being so close together.  Plus his computer desperately needs to be wiped.  Its sooo slow.  Its so annoying to be on it, its that slow.  Dial up anyone?  Seriously that is how it feels.  I mean its pretty bad that the computer can't keep up with my typing speed.  I'm not the fastest type-r in the world, so this is just ridiculous.  Sigh...soon!  When Paul gets paid, I will be ordering the part immediately, and hopefully have it within a few days, then my hubby gets the task of putting my entire computer together!  At least he's home for this and not deployed.  If he were deployed right now, I'd lose my mind!  I wouldn't have a computer to be on, and I wouldn't feel confident enough to do all of what he's doing by myself.  No way, I'd take my own computer apart.  But he's the technologically saavy one in the relationship.

 EEEK!

I have some pictures on my computer that I was going to post on my blog.  I made a delicious pumpkin spice cake a little bit ago, and I wanted to post the recipe, but its just not the same without the pictures.  So I'll wait.  I am going to go through the garage and figure out more stuff to put on craigslist.  We could use the funds, especially because of my broken computer part.  So get this...we can't have a garage sale...well we can....we just have to go by these idiotic rules.
First I found out from a friend that the city where we live charges a $5 fee to have a garage sale....I mean HELLO??  REALLY?  Its a garage sale!  Not only that, but you can't have any signs pointing to your said garage sale.  You can only have one in your YARD.  Again...REALLY??  I mean I live in a neighborhood.  I doubt I'd get even the $5 I'd spend to have the stupid yard sale if I had one sign in my yard.  I have seen people who have found loopholes though...they park their car on a street and their car has a huge yard sale sign in it.  So that's a plus.  Then I also found out, that if you fail to pay the fee initially, you can get charged a $750 fine.  WTF!!!!  Like I said, its a yard sale...and we are in Texas.  How dumb of a rule is THAT?  No wonder I've hardly seen any sale signs since we got here.  I was thinking that people would have yard sales all the time, they did in Dallas where my mom lives and they don't have dumb rules like this.  So rather than paying the $5, trying to park my car on the side of the highway, and maybe getting a $750 fine...I'm just going to start craigslisting everything.  I don't really want to go through all of the trouble of having a yard sale, if I literally have to jump through hoops.  We just aren't in a great area to have a yard sale, we aren't in the middle of town, or anything, we are kind of on the outskirts, so most people won't be coming this way for a yard sale anyway.  A neighbor of mine had a yard sale and I noticed that nobody was there...usually there is always SOMEONE there.  But not many people came by.  So craigslist it is.

 

LOVE MY STAND MIXER!!

  (if you look closely, you can see my bread maker too!)

Speaking of which, I big puffy heart craigslist.  Who wouldn't, its a free place to put on the stuff that you don't want or need anymore.  I've found some great items on there, and I find neat things all the time.  When we first got here, I got a bread maker that I love for $15, its great, works, and had its instruction book with recipes included, yay!  I also got my Kitchenaide stand mixer for 100 bucks!  Its blue, and purty...may not match everything in my house, but its a STAND MIXER!!  I've always wanted one, just didn't think I'd use it often enough to pay full price for something like that.  WRONG.  Its my new fav. appliance.  I find myself searching through recipes where I have an excuse to use it.  Lets see....oh we found our bar stools on craigslist for $60 for all four of them.  They match the house and are good enough for what we needed them for, plus when we moved in, we didn't have our table, so the counter top worked really well as our table.  So yeah, craigslist=awesome.

 

My cute stools for our breakfast bar!

I've been trying to find more things to do.  I'm running out of crafts.  =(  I think I'm just going to have to slow it down too.  Some of my crafts have cost more than I'd like to admit.  But I have some really cute things to show for it.  I have three walls in mind for some decor.  I want to do a plate wall...although the plates I have don't match yet.  So I need to search it out more.  I also want to do a cross wall, with different shapes and sizes of crosses.  Hobby Lobby will be my choice for doing that wall.  I'm going to just slowly start making my collection.  Last, I want to do an empty frame wall.  I have a very pretty red wall that would be perfect for them.  I just need to find nice frames.  So yard sales here I come!  Oh and goodwill, again, big puffy heart.

My Happy Thanksgiving banner hanging on my wall in my living room.  Made with cardstock, glitter glue, coffee filters, and stickers...oh and twine!