How I Spent My Summer (Vacation)

I did some pretty fun stuff this summer.  Because I did so much, and because my Fall is always complete chaos I am just now finding the time to write about it all. 

Back in May I attended my first ever blogging conference- Gleek Retreat which is right here in Michigan.  It was held in Holland and I got to connect with some new bloggy friends and reconnect with some old ones and a great friend from my highschool (and younger) days.

I felt like I learned a great deal and I hope to attend next year too!

From April until September I freelanced at an ad agency and my blogging got skimpy but I still had a chance to participate in the Shout Out to Eat Out promotion with Chili's! Hubby and I got to try out the Chili's Triple Dipper appetizer and then I got to share one with you!  What a yummy date night that was!

Date nights are great but I also had fun celebrating Father's Day at Wendy's with Cory and the girls (plus one) with free Frostys.  Another great opportunity for a blogger.  A blogger who will never have other opportunities if she doesn't blog more often ;)

Cory and Jayden enjoy a Frosty and French Fries.  The perfect combination of sweet and salty.

 

It was the perfect treat after a hot day in and out of the pool.  Jayden, Ryann and Ryann's friend Lauren (in the middle) completely agree!

So, as you can see I've had some fun.  As of early September the freelance job at the ad agency came to an end.  I still bill an hour here and there, and am slowly picking up more "jobs" in addition to the unpaid work I do for soccer, girl scouts, church, school, etc.  But hey, I'm happy.  And that's all that really matters.  Right?

Potatoes? No, Tomatoes. Learning to love them.

I love tomatoes.  Enough said.  Blog post over.

One of the favorite joys in my life is walking to my garden in the summer, picking a tomato, slicing it up and eating the whole thing.  My lips and cheeks are puckering just thinking about the taste.

Four people live here and we are a house divided.  My husband is not a fan of the tomato and that is putting it nicely.  My youngest daughter has not yet discovered the joy of a tomato, in fact she actually says it's "potatoes" that she doesn't like.  But if I put a tomato anywhere near her she cringes.  But my oldest daughter has discovered that she likes tomatoes, she- is on my team.

I love to cook with tomatoes.  Sauce, diced, stewed, whole, and canned tomatoes are a great way to add juice and flavor to many things including one of our favorite recipes.  This recipe doesn't have an official name.  It's just a crock pot meal that a friend posted on a message board years ago.

You will need:

• One pound stewing beef
• 1 can tomato sauce (we use Hunt's)
• 1 small bag of frozen peas
• 2T Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 onion chopped
• salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste.
• Add a can of stewed tomatoes for more sustenance, and more health benefits.

Place all ingredients in crock pot, stir, cover and cook on high for three hours or on low for 10.  Serve over linguine, other pasta, or mashed potatoes.  Top with Parmesan.

This recipe makes me happy because our garden hasn't even been planted yet this year, heck it snowed last week, and making this crock pot tomato stew is one way I can expose my family to the benefits of tomatoes in the off season.  I recently read the article Tomato Consumption and Health: Emerging Benefits and was very interested in a few of the basic tomato facts, such as:  

• Tomatoes are the most consumed non-starchy vegetable.
• Tomatoes are the most significant source of dietary lycopene.  Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant that gets more powerful after cooking.  Which, this time of year, most of the tomatoes I use are cooked!
• Tomatoes are one of the top contributors of potassium to the American diet.
• Tomatoes are good for your heart. (It’s easy to remember because they’re red.)  They are low in calories, but rich in fiber.
• Emerging research underscores the relationship between consuming tomatoes and tomato products with reduced risk of certain cancers, heart disease, ultraviolet light-induced damage, osteoporosis and other conditions.

A favorite of mine is Hunt's tomato products. All of Hunt's products are grown in California, 100% Natural, and they come in a lot of varieties including No Salt Added.  Only Hunt's uses the natural FlashSteam process to lock in the natural tomato goodness of every tomato in their diced, whole and stewed varieties.  And each Hunt's tomato goes from vine to can in just hours so home cooks can enjoy the summer-fresh taste of tomatoes all year round.

If you think I'm just tomato happy then check out the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and see how tomatoes and other healthy foods can benefit your life.  These guidelines recommend one or more servings of tomatoes a day, as part of the new red-orange vegetable sub-group.  Now if someone could just convince my husband that they really taste great too!

I received a stipend from Hunt's and The Motherhood in exchange for this blog post.  All opinions, ideas and statements are mine and mine alone.

Particulates and C.O.D.

My husband and I both like to believe that we could stand the sight of a dead body.  In fact, we think we could go so far as to touch one and determine cause of death.

We are obsessed with autopsys and ways to remove the flesh from bones.  We love it when Hodgins says "particulates" on Bones, and we enjoy Hodges acting like a douche on CSI.

David Caruso, his one-liners and sunglasses, make us squirm and question our sanity and yet, we watch CSI Miami every week.  We are obsessively enjoying the USA Network's NCIS marathon on weekends and weeknights and love piecing together the past seasons that we have missed.

We laugh when we hear the Bones theme music because we watched all of the first five seasons last summer sometimes 3 or 4 episodes a night.

He is baffled by Sela Ward's eyebrows on CSI NY and I think Danny looks better with glasses.

This season we have added Blue Bloods and The Defenders to our list of crime dramedies (yes, many are funny too) we watch almost every night.  A list that also includes The Mentalist and NCIS LA (with LL Cool J).

Oddly every one of these shows, except Bones,  is on CBS.  We don't change the channel much.  But we have found something we enjoy doing together and we do it a lot.  Complete with a soundtrack by The Who. And future hopes that we will get to apply all of the knowledge we have accumulated from hours in front of the TV.

Did somebody say football?

Football is big in my house.  With my husband.

He has a Superbowl gathering every year.  His dad, brother, my step-dad, and a few others all come over, play poker, eat heartily and watch the game.  My Mom and my friend Molly are usually the only other ladies here and we all sit around playing on our laptops and posting on each other's walls.

This year we are pre-Superbowling it as well.  Tomorrow means good snacks and play off games.  Plus I've entered this contest at Snackbowl2011.com.  All you have to do is upload some pics or a video telling the world why you host the best parties and you could one of 1,000 prizes including being honored at the Pro Football Hall of Fame and $5,000!!!!!

Chances are good that we will win over here at this house, but if you feel like ruining our chances then you could enter too.  You can also vote for other entries and win daily instant prizes.  It's kind of fun to see what peeps will do for prizes.  Especially prizes associated with football.

So take a look, enter the contest, get some snacks and watch the commercials with me on Superbowl Sunday.  Because I worked in advertising for over 12 years and the commercials are the parts I don't miss.

Disclosure:  I was compensated by Collective Bias for this post.  All opinions of the contest and products involved are mine and mine alone.

Back to Basics - Some Like it Hot

Sometimes I laugh at myself because I think the olden days must have rocked.  This from someone who makes her entire living working on a computer.

I like it when I can do things I call "traditional".  I realize that many things new and old, can be traditional.  But these are the things that seem so basic to me, and they are things I don't recall doing as a child.  Camping.  Strawberry Picking.  Canning your own hot sauce.

OK, so that's really my husband's tradition and it's something he did last summer for the first time.  People LOVE his homemade hot sauce.  We take it camping and it gets rave reviews.  We put it on the table at gatherings people love it.  And now it's almost gone.

For Christmas my Mom and Step-Dad got Cory a Ninja.  A Ninja is this super-powered blender/food processor thingy and he can't wait to pulverize some peppers in it.  I went shopping today to see if I could find some canning-bottles, if you will, so we didn't have to re-purpose old, empty bottles of Frank's for him to make his creation.  The section was less than full.  But that's OK, I found a great Ball Freezer container, so at the very least he can freeze his excess hot sauce and refill the old Frank's bottle as needed.

I think tomorrow is the the designated hot sauce making day.  He's on vacation and I'm going to vacate the house.  The last time he made this stuff I cried every time I walked in the kitchen.  But I will allow him this time, because that's just the awesome kind of wife I am.  Do you have any tissues?

More check-ins at Walmart Supercenter #4584

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Disclosure:  I was compensated my Collective Bias for this shop.  All opinions are mine and mine alone.

A ship without a sail, boobs without a bra

I've been feeling a little blah lately.  I don't think my health is the greatest, and my weight has crept up and for the first time ever I can feel it effecting my everyday life.  I don't like it.

It took a lot for me to admit that to myself.  It's taking a lot for me to admit it here.  And when I tried to have a conversation with my husband about it, well I guess it was the wrong time and his response was to rattle off World Series stats.  OK, so my timing wasn't great, but he had just turned the TV on.  Just.  It's not like he had watched every minute of every game.

Of course, and really, I don't like to air my dirty laundry here, but sometimes.... well, I don't think I'm heard around here much.  Maybe it's martyr syndrome, but I do a lot.  I handle a multitude of actual paying "jobs".  I volunteer at my girls' school, we run the concession stand for the soccer club, I am a co-leader of one daughter's Girl Scout troop and leader for the other.  I do a lot.  But I don't think the other three people who live in this house agree.

My six-year-old seems to always point out the things she feels I don't do. Such as, make her dinner.  Because apparently when you make someone dinner and they wait 45 minutes to sit down, then decide they don't like it, and you won't make them anything else?  That means you never make them dinner.

I want to be heard.  I want someones full attention.  I don't want to be asked when I am going to pay the Verizon bill.  It makes me defensive.  I've tried to hand off the family finances and yet I am still in charge, so don't ask me those questions, with that tone.  Yes, that tone.  Well, I hear a tone.

I want to be told I am doing a good job.  I want to hear, "It's such a relief to have YOU take care of ALL of this.  Thank you for alleviating my stress."

I guess I am just selfish.  Perhaps needy.  Maybe I really am just brat.  Or maybe when I squeeze you tight because I am overwhelmed with love, I just want to be squeezed back.

All that, and physically I feel like crap too.  Happy Friday.

It's MY house, and if you don't like it...

No, no, I am not kicking anyone to the curb.  But I AM wondering. I'm wondering.  What if?

What if we hadn't moved to Brighton?  What if we had stayed in Jackson near family and friends?  Well I can tell you!  Our lives would be A LOT different.  But these are the things I wonder when I feel I am living in the Money Pit.

Sure, things seem good to the untrained eye.  But even the untrained eye can see we need a new roof.  We plan to get started on this new roof as soon as we are reasonably sure it's done snowing in these parts.  So, hopefully in June we will start that project.

There is also the hole in our shower.  The one where the tile caved in as I leaned on it.  Nice.  That project is still in the planning stages.  Do we retile the shower?  Do we remove the tile and buy a simple enclosure.  Hmmmm decisions.  And money.

The funny part is how untrained our eyes and ears have become in our house.  For instance every single door hinge in this house makes a noise of some sort.  Every time my girls open and close their doors, whether in sweet serenity or complete anger, there is a squeak, a squawk, or something that screams through the house.  After all this time we have simply gotten used to it, but really, let's invest in some new hinges or at least a nice can of WD-40.

Another annoying problem in MY house are that many of the door handles have minds of their own.  Some knobs must be pulled before turning and opening.  The bathroom handle had to be removed so that we could enter said bathroom.  Let's not forget the door knob that works the best, the one that requires the least effort.  Of course it's the one on my... I mean our bedroom door.  Yeah, how convenient is that?

It's always something isn't it?  I guess I am just happy that I didn't fall through the floor into the basement while showering, luckily I only bruised my elbow.  Little things or big things, there are always things that need to be done.  So don't come here looking for perfection, no sir.  This is MY house...

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are mine.

When it rains it pours

The last few months in our house have been a challenge.  Some would be depressed by the laundry list of things that have broken or gone amuck, but I choose to see it as a comedy of errors and try to chuckle at our obvious misfortune, because really, what else can you do?

In the last six months or so we have had our dryer stop heating, the wall in our tiled shower cave in, the microwave stop working, the garbage disposal die, the basement carpet drenched by a sump pump mishap, (yes, another one), the bearings and front brakes go out on the truck, and a pipe rust-out in our well, and that problem led to a whole series of water problems.

My husband's facebook status often showed his dispair and the straw that broke the camel's back came in the form of, well we thought anyway, our refrigerator loosing its ability to keep things cold, or frozen.

The beauty in all of this was the lack of extra money we have in our account right now.  Yes, you heard me correctly, and yes that was an echo you heard reverberating out of our account.  Because if we had the kind of money we used to have, or the unlimited credit we used to have we would have just went out and bought new appliances, or paid someone to rush right out and fix whatever problem we had occur.

But because our money situation has changed so much we have no choice but to compare shopping prices on new purchases, research the mechanical problems, and enlist the help of family and friends who don't mind digging a five foot hole in our front yard on New Years Day, because really who needs water anyway?

By looking for the best shopping deals and taking our time we were able to fix things ourselves (ok Cory fixed them) and let me tell you- a $15 used thermostat is much better than $300 - $400 for a whole new dryer.

So in the end, our new habits saved us a ton of money.  Oh, that refrigerator that supposedly wasn't running anymore?  Well, let's see... when you take the inside of the freezer door off to clear the line for your water dispenser and to make your ice cube maker produce ice that is less sandy (both caused by the sediment that rushes up into your plumbing when you have a pipe burst), you should probably realize that having the door open all that time may set off your defrost cycle.  But fear not!  As soon as you remove all your freezer items and put them elsewhere, your appliance will turn back on, which is what I told my darling hubby would happen, but how would I know that?

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are mine.

Happy 40th to my Sweetie

He couldn't be more tolerant, more supportive, more loving, more handsome, more of a pain-in-my-ass or more perfect for me. He understands, he trusts, he tells it like it is, he stands up for himself, and has "a pair". He's a great husband, father, son, friend, employee and student, and he turned 40 today. I wish for him everything he's ever wanted, and more.

Noise

This afternoon I tried something new, courtesy of my husband. After you remove your mind from the gutter I will tell you what I did.

As I write this I am sitting at the library. Remember the library? I'll leave returning to your roots and the simple things in life for tomorrow's post, but today it's all about peace and lack of noise.

As Cory put it when I told him I was running out for fabric softener (and a mocha, who am I kidding?) "Why don't you go to the library for a bit so you can get some work done?"

Seriously? I was feeling all lovey to the man for realizing that some time in a quiet work environment away from home would make me much more productive and creative when he decided to keep speaking. "Then maybe you won't such a crab ass all night trying to work when we're all at home." Thanks.

So I ran to Target for some Snuggle (and a mocha because honestly, whoever decided to put a Starbucks in a Target two miles from my house should be sainted). Then I headed on over to the library and here I am. Almost two hours later I have fine-tuned an article for the Examiner that I can't get to publish and I'm posting in my blog for the second day in a row. Progress!

Oddly I am listening to my iPod and don't find it distracting at all (Theory of a Deadman anyone?) but I'm pretty sure the woman reading a book in the comfy chair across from me finds my typing very distracting, but hey it's a public place and once I get this damn space bar fixed I won't have to hit it so hard. Oh, she's leaving, I think she knew I was blogging about her.

Oh, did I mention I also read this weeks People magazine? At the library. Free of charge. Again, who remembers what a library is? Anyone?

It's funny because when Cory is trying to study for a test and I feel the girls and I are being disruptive I often try to get him to go to the library, or anywhere other than the family room really. But he says we don't bother him. How can my big mouth and two mini-mes allow you to have a complete thought, let alone study world history? I can't tune them out when I am working, but apparently he can with great ease because his GPA offers proof. When I try to work at home the girls drive me batty with their bleeding and hunger, geesh!

Anyway, it's been a nice two hours and now I should head on home. Because while I enjoy the old school feel of the library I also enjoy my modern husband. And he should have dinner ready any time now.

Miracles Do Happen

As of yesterday morning at 7:58 am, my husbands facebook status says "Cory is wishing my beautiful wife a very happy birthday."

Beautiful wife. Do you know how long it's been since I've heard that from him? I can't even remember, that's how long. But you know what? That's OK. My craziness has affected him more than anyone and yet he's right there on my left every night. Spooning me when he thinks of it and offering his chest to lay on when I need that too.

Marriage is hard. I've said it before and I will say it again. You may think what you have is perfect and untouchable, but you are wrong. Marriage is harder than any college course. It's harder than any career, and sometimes it hurts more than childbirth. But it's worth it.

The picture you see was sent to me in an email recently and it was the best in the group as far as I was concerned. La La Land can be created by anyone. But staying in love, or in some cases falling back in love, is very special, because it's the opposite of easy. And if you can maintain love after life smacks you in the face then you are going to be better for it, because not everyone can.

Too Tired To Post

Tomorrow is my almost non-baby's 5th birthday and I have been getting everything ready for her party. Today I will make an abundance of cupcakes for her daycare group and her preschool class. But today is a significant day so I am going to cheat and link you to the post I wrote last year on this day. Add one year to all the time frames and the rest still stands. Enjoy.

February 26th