Welcome to my Life!

The other night we had beef stroganoff for dinner. I'm not sure if Ellie didn't like her dinner or if she was full and I just didn't get her down from the table fast enough.

We were all just sitting there visiting and Chelsey said, "Oh my gosh" and starts laughing hysterically. I look over at Ellie sitting next to me and this is what I saw!

What a tornado I have on my hands. Sure, she's all cute and innocent most of the time-NOT! Look at those big blue eyes, though; how could I possibly get mad at her?

Oops!

I made this card for Janell's card swap in August. The problem is that I made them at the first of the month and put them away for the 20th (when they are due). Well, life sort of happens and with Treven's birthday and back to school, they just weren't on my mind and I forgot to take them to her. Next thing I know, she has already posted the months cards on her blog. So, now I have 5 of these little babies for birthdays! I love the pink sparkley jewels on each of the cherries-they just make me happy!

Robin- I missed a post yesterday, but I have one for each of the other days in September. I'm with ya, sista on the challenge! I'll try to post every day in September. I love seeing your blog; it's almost like seeing the boys more often and watching them grow up!

Something New

I was reading a blog the other day and they post a weekly menu. I liked the idea a lot because you can go back through and see what you are eating way too often or not often enough. I'm going to try it for awhile and see if it helps in my menu planning. (It might help, too if it's somewhere permanent as mine seem to disappear from the fridge all the time!)

Monday: (getting wood) roast, baby carrots, red potatoes

Tuesday: (working) grilled pork chops, fried red potatoes, corn on the cob

Wednesday: (working) sausage lasagna, garlic toast

Thursday: (craft day) chicken and gravy over mashed potatoes, green beans

Friday: (organization day) taco soup, cornbread

Saturday: (yard day) chicken alfredo pizza, green salad

Sunday: (wood day) fried chicken, creamed potatoes and peas, cheesy biscuits

I know it seems like a lot of chicken meals, but the kids love chicken and Ridleys had it on sale this week so I loaded up. Whatever meat is on sale that week is what we eat the most of! Also a lot of potatoes on the menu because Woody and Bert both gave me big sacks of beautiful homegrown red potatoes and I don't want to waste any of those!!!

Labor Day Plans

So, to start our Labor Day weekend, Gary and I went out last night. I really have been missing all the people from Annie's so we went down to the Sage and sat on the deck. It was such a beautiful night and it was nice and peaceful. Several of our old "locals" were there so it was good to see them and catch up with them again.

Today I am running to town to get the chainsaw ready for more wood cutting. Then we are going to mow and Round-up and then I am going to help Woody get the beans canned. I picked our beans yesterday and between picking and snapping, I spent 4 hours on them! Today will be easy compared to yesterday; my job is to stuff the jars....I think I can handle that! Tonight we are going to just hang at home with the kids and have a yummy dinner and maybe a movie.

Tomorrow we are going to laze around for the morning. Make breakfast, clean up, then we are going to go to my friend, Diana's for a end of summer BBQ. Hopefully there are lots of people coming; weather is supposed to be kind of yuck. We had thought about taking the boat out one last time, but the Idaho weather just doesn't want to cooperate!

Monday will be spent cutting more wood. Predictions are for a long, bad winter so we want to be extra prepared. It's always better to get too much than not enough! We were still burning wood clear into May and as cold as it's been getting at night, it won't be too long before we start burning now. Last week, we popped a tire getting a load so hopefully that doesn't happen again! I'm going to throw a roast and some carrots, potatoes, and onions in the oven on low so we have a nice, hot dinner waiting for us when we get home-I know I will be too tired to cook as I am getting old and worn out!!!

Hope you all have a great three-day weekend! Be safe!

Treven's Pirate Party

When Treven turned 7 a week or so ago, he decided he wanted a party. We went with a pirate theme and had so much fun. These are the cupcakes that we made with the chocolate pirate coins on them. Some of the kids went crazy over the coins and ate several of the coins and no cupcakes!

I wrapped a clue in Treven's last gift that sent them on a treasure hunt to find his gift from us. When they realized the gift was the clue, there were kids running everywhere looking for the next clue! I had hidden 5 or 6 clues and it was a mad dash...the final clue talked about the treasure in an old worn-out truck. We have a Toyota that the engine went out of and Gary just hasn't had time to put a new one in. That was where I had the final gift. All but one of the kids went right past the Toyota to our Ford that we use to haul garbage to the dump and get firewood in! Hilarious that they all picked the wrong truck...maybe it means we have too many worn out trucks on our property! LOL!!!

One of the games we played was a cannon-ball toss...otherwise known as a water balloon fight! Gary, my mom, Sally (my s-i-l), and one of the boys moms filled about 200 water balloons. We divided them in half and put them in coolers. We then divided the kids into teams and let em go. The only bad part was when they ran out of balloons! We also played Pin the Patch on the Pirate and a water game that they had to soak up water in a sponge and run it to another bucket about 100 feet away and transfer all the water from one bucket to the other. There were several groups of brothers at the party and they each went on opposite teams. It was really funny to watch them compete with each other!

We asked all the kids to come dressed as pirates and most of them did. They were all so cute! Two of the kids even blacked out a few of their teeth and one boy came with a gold hoop earring. Even my niece, Whitney came dressed as a pirate! She was the only girl here, but she had fun with all the boys anyway. If you look close at the picture of the kids on the treasure hunt, she's the second one running for the treasure...she kept right up with those rowdy boys! The kids had a blast and Treven had one memorable birthday!

layouts of Lake Cleveland

In an on-going effort to stay somewhat caught up on the kids' scrapbooks, I put together all 4 of these layouts on our Lake Cleveland trip. I bought a kit from Close to My Heart last year called Twitterpated that worked really well for these layouts. I also used up leftover stickers from other projects for the titles so they are all a little bit different.

Using the same basic layout for each of the layouts really helped things go faster, too. I did all 4 pages during one of Ellie's naps. (Which aren't near long enough!)

Blog Hop Starts Today!

For this months Blog Hop, the theme was "sew much fun!" The project could be anything as long as there was some sort of stitching somewhere. I made these fun flowersack dishtowels for our family auction. The eyes on the fabric even glow-in-the-dark; how cool is that?

Here is a closer look at the eyes. I just sewed a strip across the bottom of the dishtowel and then I sewed on the huge rick-rack. I also made a set that was red with white snowflakes and instead of rick-rack, I sewed a strip of small white pom-poms. I forgot to get a picture of those, though. I had "sew much fun" with these, I think I will make a couple more sets for each holiday and maybe some more just because. A girl can never have too many dishtowels!

My second project was curtains for Mikayla's room. She has white walls and not much color in her room, so we picked a sheer black material for the swag. Then she picked this polka-dot fabric and we stitched fabric flowers to hang on each corner of the swag. They took a couple of tries to get the flowers the same size and shape; it was a bit harder than I thought it would be. It turned out really cute, though and added some pizazz to her room. For more creativeness, check out the following blogs. You can link directly to each site from my blog list to the right of my blog.

Forever Lois

A Creative Day

All Things Robbin

Hope to see more people join us for the Blog Hop! Remember next month's theme is "Falling into Fall" I can't wait to see what the ladies are up to for autumn ideas! I know I have several ideas floating around in my head!