Almost Wordless Wednesday….

Happy Hump Day! Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. We spend Thanksgiving with family and had a great time. And it was even better because I did not cook or have to clean up….lol!


The last few days have been all about preparing for Christmas. Decorating and shopping  have been taking up a lot of my time. Hence, the lack of blogging!


So, I am off to continue my journey for the perfect presents…..


But, before I venture off into the wild crowds, I will share the only one photo I took of my boys on Thanksgiving! Aren’t they handsome??

Money??

Happy Almost Thanksgiving…..lol!!  Is your turkey stuffed and your pumpkin pie in the oven?? Well, this year I am not cooking. I usually host Thanksgiving and I do enjoy doing so. But my cousin wanted to switch this year, and so I get Christmas instead.  It is a harder holiday to host, but I get that I need to play nice. We all need to take turns, right?  


With that said, my house will look like this on Christmas morning…..

In my post last week I talked about gifts and how much is the right amount to spend on the kiddos. Do they need to get the same amount of presents? Well, it got me to thinking. How are we paying for all of this?? LOL! Seems as though the holidays are costly no matter how much you spend. Not many people have extra spending money these days.


After the holidays, I always look forward to the new year when we do our taxes. Just like most of the population, there are years we have to pay and years when we get some money back. Of course I want to get money back to help pay off the Christmas bills! I always call our accountant right after the holidays to schedule an appointment. But although I think I call early enough, we sometimes don’t get in with him until right before tax day.


It made me think that it could be time to try to do our taxes on our own. This way we can do it when we want. And  just in case we need an e-file tax extension! I know a lot of people who go this route and it seems to work well for them. Regardless, I guess it needs to get done one way or another, right? LOL!


Happy Turkey Day!

A Surprise Party….

There are very few times in life when we are surprised. Maybe when we get engaged. Or when we have our first child. But these days, many of us need to ‘prepare’ for these big events and we don’t want to be surprised. Well, I can say with a smile that my sisters and I pulled off a surprise 60th birthday for my mom last week. There was a lot of preparing and thus it has had me quite busy lately. But it is over, it went great, and now I move on to focusing on the Holidays.


The first part of preparing for any party is the invite. And instead of having one printed or buying invites, I designed it myself.  I scanned the internet for some fun sayings and went to work. We went with a ‘shoe theme’ since my mom is a lover of shoes….lol. We combined that with fun words like ‘sassy, and ‘fabulous.’ The colors we chose for the party theme were black, pink and zebra print. I printed the invite and out in the mail they went.



Next was the favor. I was so excited to come across these adorable high heeled shoe wine stoppers. Aren’t they great??



They fit our theme perfectly. I made a tag, wrapped them up, and called it done!

Oh, I bought a few extra’s so some of you may be seeing these for Christmas….lol!


We thought it might be fun to make a collage of pictures of my mom over the years and display it at the party. So, that became another project. Searching through pictures is always fun though. We decorated the board and tied the collage into our color theme. Bad news, I forget to take a picture…lol!

By the way, when my mom saw this she said to us ‘aren’t you supposed to make a collage for a funeral?’ Real nice mom!


The cake. We were going to have a true custom cake made of a pillow with a shoe on top. But after pricing it out, it was not worth the money. Instead, we hired a magician for a little bit more….lol. But we found a great Italian bakery that made a fun sheet cake for us. It was chocolate cake with ice cream, covered in fondant. I love how it turned out!


The thank you’s. Of course I made those too. Are you seeing a pattern here?? “I” made most if the things for the party….lol. Ha, ha...so much for having 3 other sisters!


Oh, I guess I should show you some pics from the party…lol.
Okay…this is my mom walking into the restaurant. She just thought she was meeting her friend for dinner. That is her ‘surprised’ face…..


Here is my mom and all of her grandkids, except for my Anthony. He was exhausted at that point and wanted no part of the camera. So, yes, there are 6 boys and only 1 girl!


My littlest sis Jeanna, older sis Michele, my parents, me, my other little sis Nicole…..


That about wraps up the party! We all had fun, shared great food and good times.


Now I can prepare for my Black Friday shopping!
Have a great day...

Enjoying leftovers more than the Thanksgiving meal ....

Guest post written by Hannah Bennet I'm not so sure what it is about Thanksgiving  leftovers, but I would just much rather  prefer to eat the leftovers than the actual food.  I just think that all of the typical Thanksgiving foods  are so much better than when they're fresh. I've  always been that way, so I make so much more  food on Thanksgiving than I know that we can  possibly eat so that we can have it for Thanksgiving  afterward. So I like to cook with that in mind. I was online  looking up some good leftover recipes to use in the  days after the big meal, when I ran across the site  www.clearwirelessinternetservice.com. I looked  through it a little bit and after that I decided to  change over my home internet service to one of  those packages that I read about on that website. I did find some pretty good recipes, including a  wrap that you make using turkey slices and leftover  cranberry sauce. Is it bad that I'm more excited   about that than the actual Thanksgiving meal?  Maybe a little bit, but I'm not ashamed of it. -----------------------------------------------------

A necessity…..

Happy Thursday! Hope you are all having a great week so far!


With the grand opening of my Etsy shop, I was in need of a business card holder. I sat down the other night and in 10 minutes, whipped up this little puppy! Isn’t it cute??




Now I have a stylish holder that I can pull out at the PTA meetings….LOL!


I just added a few new items to the shop, so check them out. And thanks to all who have placed orders with me and helped to get my little business started!

Have a great day……….

Preparing….

All women love flowers, don’t they?  Flowers make me smile. The smell and the bold and beautiful colors seem to make me happy. Well, most of you know that my little sister got engaged a few months back. We planned her engagement party with success and now we move on the wedding. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean that I have volunteered to help her as much as possible. Having planned my entire wedding, I think I have some good advice to offer…lol.


We started to look through some magazines and tear out some ideas of wedding centerpieces and bouquets. Then we hopped on the computer and looked for flowers online. We found some amazing ideas!!


High centerpieces, low centerpieces, candles and jewels….so many options to choose from! We were talking about even possibly doing them ourselves since flowers can be so costly. And in this economy, saving every dime you can, makes a difference! I am not sure we will take on that task though. There is a lot involved in making sure the flowers stay fresh. And I don’t know if I am ready for that responsibility….lol!


Well, I know that we have a lot to plan, little details to fuss over. But thankfully we have a year and half to figure it out!!


Have a great day!

Almost Wordless Wednesday….

Christopher getting ready for his first trip into the woods…..



Happy Hump Day!

Dear Santa….

Happy Tuesday blogland! I hope everyone is off to a great week so far. Oh, I should say ‘Happy Election Day,” right?? LOL! My kiddos are off today and we have a ton of errands to do. Christmas shopping is one of the things on my list.


Which brings me to the issue I have with myself. Have you started to get the million toy catalogs yet?? Well, we have and my kids have ever so carefully flipped through the pages of each one. Inspecting each toy. Being sure to make perfect circles around every item on their list.



That list looks about right. There must be a hundred things that they each want. Are these things that they need? No. But Christmas is supposed to be about getting what you want, right? I am sure that most of us don’t NEED much. Thankfully.


We try to get them as much off of their list as possible. But, do you try to spend the same amount on each kid? What if one has a ton of items that are relatively inexpensive? Do I get him more so I spend the same? Do they need to open the same amount of presents?



Of course, we try to teach them the ‘real meaning’ of Christmas. We donate toys to needy children. I take them to buy presents for people so they understand it is about giving. But let’s be serious, they are 5 and 2. They want presents!!



All I know is that I never got half of the things that kids these days get. A $225 IPod would never have made it off of my list. Are we spoiling our kids too much?


I just hope that I can teach them to appreciate all that they have while trying to let them enjoy a great Christmas!

Almost Wordless Wednesday…..

Halloween….it is was a blast. The kids had so much fun. We are going to be on a sugar high for quite awhile. I think I have enough candy to last me until Easter!!


The boys were……


They picked their costumes and since they are obsessed with the Mario Brothers, it seemed only fitting for my two little Italian boys to play  the part…lol.


We were so busy trick-or-treating that I didn’t snap many pics. When we stopped at a neighbor’s house she was kind enough to take a picture of me and the boys. My costume was a little sad this year. I was a witch, but it was totally last minute so I didn’t really do the make-up and the whole broomstick thing. I wore a hat and I sewed up a skirt that had some spiderwebs on it and I called it a day…lol. The kids were just happy I had some costume on.


Now, we all know that time is going to fly by since Halloween is over. Be prepared for Christmas music starting this weekend!!


Have a great day!