min-myinnersoul

I told you a few weeks back that the hubs was working on some built-ins...well, he has been doing a great job on them!  Since he was in the building mood, he decided to make a console table with all the scrap MDF he had laying around to hold extra toys. We found our inspiration  Here ..there were plans, but we didn't have enough MDF to make the exact same table, so there was some improv building. The reason it's a $4 table is because I had to make a quick trip to Lowes to get one 1x3 board.  I helped a little(held things in place, painted, moral support), but he was definitely the brains behind the job:o) I'm so proud of my little handy man:o) The canvas baskets came from T.J. Maxx.  The rug is from Marshalls. I found this cute little owl and the sign at Marshall's too.  Lamps and lamp shades(clearance find) from Walmart.  And here are the beginnings of the built-ins. We recycled our entertainment center, and attached it to the wall. Then the hubs made the window seats.

I can't stand it any longer...Fall needs to just get here and stay here:o) It has been a scorcher for the past few days after we were taunted with cooler weather. I am stubborn by nature, and have made soup and homemade bread, regardless of this horrid heat, hoping this will show Summer that I have had enough of it, and am ready for it to go away:o)  Chicken Spaetzle is one of my favorite soups in the whole wide world. I order it from Bruegger's every time I visit that restaurant...which is a lot:o) I looked for their recipe, and couldn't find anything but the calorie count online...I DON"T CARE what the calorie count is...IT"S DELICIOUS! So anywho, I found a few recipes online and kind of tweaked here and there, and this is my version of Chicken Spaetzle. recipe adapted from  HERE 2 chicken breasts (about 1 lb total) 2 cups water 4 cups chicken broth  1 1/2 tablespoons butter 1 large onions, chopped 1/2 cup chopped celery 1 cup diced carrots 2 garlic cloves, fine

Conventional thinking is that without patents,we would not have innovation. Mankind would stagnate in the Dark Ages. Really ??  This port is triggered by the drama between Apple and Samsung . In the tech industry, everybody is suing everybody else over patent infringement. Hundreds of patents are granted over what goes inside one mobile phone. Is this all necessary ? These days, that business seems to be driven by lawyers rather than technology - M&A activity in this industry seem to be driven mostly by patents.The patent industry has exploded so much that this blogger even blogged about the ridiculous patents that have been granted . The central premise that innovation will be stopped if there are no patents is nonsense. Right through human history, innovation has flourished with no help from the patent office, thank you.  Patents are a recent human invention - perhaps in the 15th century. Innovation has not exactly been stifled throughout human history.  You may say, ancient his

So last night, life got in the way. The hubs needed to get the lawn mowed, dinner was made late, phone calls and emails needed to be taken care of, and S.R. ended up with a fever just before dinner. Our family night didn't happen...that's just the way things go sometimes.  But, even though all of this was going on, we still got to take just a moment together and indulge in homemade Peanut Butter Cups....one word....yuuuuum! I found the recipe in the current All You magazine(September edition) If you want to take a swing at these little delectables,  you can find the recipe  HERE WARNING:You will not be able to eat just one!!!! Have a great weekend y'all!

Ok, so I said I would post about these on Monday...well Monday has turned into Thursday for sure...but I am finally getting around to sharing with you our newest endeavor....allowances...enter shiver/shudder. We now have to make our children be responsible little helpers...which makes us have to be more responsible because we have to remember to remind them to do their chores....and on top of that, we have to remember to keep $6 in 1's on hand, so that we can make sure they get their $3 a week. Sheesh! Who knew it was going to be this involved:o)  I kid, I kid:o) E and S.R. have been great about getting their chores done for the past two weeks, and we are so grateful. Not only are they learning valuable lessons in doing a job and doing it well, they are lightening the load on their poor pitiful mother;o) So here are said money/allowance holders. All items used to make these money holders were purchased from Hobby Lobby except the buckets. I found the buckets in the dollar section a

Today S.R. started preschool. She was so excited, and I was happy that she wanted to go. She was lost yesterday without her big brother to play with. I expected there to be an adjustment period....  This little thing is a ball of fire, and sweet as sugar.  I had so much fun taking her pictures. She already has a dramatic flare, and this type of thing was right up her alley...center stage, with all eyes on her.  This is a rare shot of her being still..it doesn't happen often;o)  I am so glad that she lets me play with her hair...now that it is FINALLY growing out. Just like with E, I let her take some goofy shots. I caught her here when she didn't know I was snapping pictures.  Attitude in it's purest form...:o)  This has to be my favorite though...daddy's little girl.  This child has been a light in our lives. She always has a smile on her face, and can light up any room that she walks into. God knew what He was doing when He sent us S.R. She is independent, but still w

It's official. I am the mother of a kindergartner. It was a great day for my little guy. He has a fantastic teacher, he knew 6 kids in his class, and he got to do all sorts of fun things that only kindergartners get to do. He was all smiles when I picked him up today, and that made my heart swell because just a few hours prior, I was doing my best to hold it together. Where has the time gone? Wasn't it just yesterday that I was holding a little lump in my arms...and now look at him..all grown up, at least according to him:o)  We had a little fun yesterday taking some back to school photos. Usually it's a nightmare trying to take shots of the kids. They are always little pills when it comes time to take pictures. You'd never guess it by looking at these shots...  Mini marshmallows will work wonders on 4 and 5 year olds:o) They behaved wonderfully when I started popping them in their mouths.  After we got some serious shots, we started goofing off....love this shot..this

I hadn't met her for 35 years. After school, we went our own ways. Our leaving school was chaotic- we were not even supposed to leave that year, but the powers that be, changed the rules and packed us off to college. Literally overnight we had to run; for the town we were from had no college and we had to go to the big bad city. There was no time for goodbyes. No time for farewells. We simply ran. Thirty five years later I got a call from another ex schoolmate giving me a number. She's at this number ; call her there, the friend said . I did  and discovered that she was in the same city as I am in. Fancy that - no contact for such a long time and then all of a sudden, here she was not more than 5 miles from where I lived. I called her and was delighted to find the same old voice of the days when we were school kids. We were planning for a reunion back in school in a month's time and would she come ?? She took literally 30 seconds to say yes.  We drove down  together to our

Usually on Friday's you can expect to hear about the previous evening's family night. Well, every once in a while, we have what is referred to as a "family date night." That usually includes dinner and a movie...last night was just dinner at Red Robin. We had a delicious but very expensive dinner, and then the hubs picked up some ice cream. We also got to go on an evening bike ride, or as S.R. likes to call it, a "bike walk." So instead of giving you ideas about how you can spend time together as a family today, I wanted to share with you our latest endeavor...chores:o) The kids are very good at helping out around the house, and we thought now would be a good time to introduce an allowance. So, me being me, I needed to make something cute and crafty to help them keep up with all of the chores that need to be completed through out the day.  I looked online for various ideas of chore charts, and decided to make my own.  This one is E.'s  And this one is S.

We are getting ready for school around here. The kids are super pumped, and so are we since both of them got the teachers we wanted them to:o) I have been labeling the day away. We meet E's teacher this afternoon and drop his school supplies off. Just a few more days of last minute play dates and odds and ends that need to be done before they go back and leave me all alone:o) I am also working on some chore charts and hope to share those with you guys here in the next day or two. Have a great rest of the day!

I am now in some serious trouble. It appears, I am responsible for all the stuff you lot comment on my blog. If anything you write is untrue or misleading, it looks like I will go to jail. Good Lord! As usual, this blogger is guilty of hyperbole. But, as has been repeatedly stated, any prose, sans some journalistic license, is a sure cure for insomnia. So with some hyperbole, I am musing about Diageo's Facebook page, that has got into trouble with the Australian authorities . If you don't know Diageo, it is the company that makes Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys etc. Because their Board has been told that they must be "in" to social media, they have a Facebook page for their brands such as Smirnoff. The site encourages reader comments, opinions, etc, which you would expect to be a fairly harmless thing to do. Now anybody, who knows anything about social media, know that the vast majority of comments on anything (notable exception, this blog) will be vulgar,

Friday means it's time to share our family night theme again.  We watched the Wonderful Wizard of Ha's this week. It was a mix between the Prodigal son parable from the Bible and the Wizard of Oz...it was so cute, and the kids loved it. For my weekly email to the hubs, he received the menu below. I found the picture from  Christians Best , and used  Picmonkey  to add the menu.   If you think you might want to re-use this picture, feel free to copy and paste...or go to the link above, and create your own. Here is our delightful spread for the evening.   We had homemade strawberry lemonade in mason jars, and since we were watching Veggie Tales, I decided to add in a few veggies:o)  We were supposed to have mini hamburgers for dinner, but I forgot to thaw the hamburger meat...we made a quick trip to visit grandparents on Wednesday, so I didn't fix the  Ham and Cheese Sliders  that evening. They were a quick and delicious fix! The hubs loved them! For dessert, we had Bob the To

I am finally getting around to posting the pictures of the loft we made over. This loft was given to us by some very dear friends. It was given to them, but they couldn't use it b/c the ceilings in their basement were too low. So they graciously offered it to us, and we gladly accepted:o) When we first received it, the loft was around 4 feet longer..which was way too big...so the hubs took some length off and it now sits at 4 feet wide and 6 feet long. I think it's about 4 feet off of the ground. It fits perfectly in the corner of our bonus room. We had talked about dividing up the room, and having one half be the kids play area and the other half be more of a t.v./theater type area...so this is step one...well actually we skipped right to step two because we should have painted the walls first:o)  We have had this loft for a couple of months now, but the kids weren't really all that interested in it because there wasn't anything drawing them to it. A friend of mine tol