Christmas recap….

The aftermath of Christmas is still upon us. There are boxes everywhere, toys to still be put together and leftovers to be discarded. But all in all, we had a great Christmas. The kids got everything on their lists and more. So much that it opens up another project of re-arranging the playroom and the toy closet. Great, more work!! LOL!


Christmas Eve we did the big Italian fish dinner with my side of the family at my parents house. The kids had a ball with their cousins and Santa even made an appearance!



Then we opened all of the presents that Santa left at our house Christmas morning…..



Now, by this time I am exhausted, but I need to man up because I am having 20 people over for Christmas dinner. Yes, my husband’s side this time. Thank goodness it all went pretty smoothly. Well, except for the fact that I almost burned the prime rib. But that is a whole other story….lol. I was so busy that I barely took any pictures. We managed to snap a quick photo when we were opening presents yet again!



Geez, I am glad it is all over. Holidays are a lot of work. Now, on to a better New Year and hopefully back to regular blogging!

I will be okay….

I am still here. I have been completely overwhelmed. And not because of Christmas as I had been telling you in my last post. Sadly, we have had 2 deaths over the last 2 weeks. And one was my half brother. Not that any of you even knew I had a half brother because I have never mentioned him. I actually have two brothers. We were not close in our adult life, yet we were together constantly when we were kids. He was a only 30. 


I am emotionally and physically drained. I am so behind on my shopping and wrapping because of what happened, and understandably so. I haven’t even thought about what I am cooking for the 25 people that are coming for Christmas. But it will all be okay. I will be fine. I will do what I can and if something isn’t done the way it would normally be done, well, then, so be it.


Life it too short to worry about the small stuff. I hope that something positive comes of the sadness from these last 2 weeks. And I know it will. I know I for one am going to re-evaluate the things that are important in my life. 


I have missed all of my bloggy buddies and I hope to be back to ‘normal’ soon!

A shopping discount…

TGIF!! Hope you all are having a great week. Christopher is off today for parent/teacher conferences. So, I am bracing for a ‘good report’…..lol. I am sure it will fine.





I just wanted to let you know about a little discount for my Etsy shop that is going on. Head over to visit my friend Daphne from Flip Flops and Pearls to check out the details. And while you are there, stay while, she is a great Southern gal with a beautiful family. I just love the accents on those ladies….lol!


Off to meet the teacher…….

Almost Wordless Wednesday….

Holiday cheer is filling the air around our house!  To keep with the spirit and to de-stress from all my shopping, I went to get my nails done the other day.

Cute, right??





Happy Hump Day…..

A message from Santa…

TGIF!! Hope everyone is having a great week. Are you gearing up for another weekend of crowded malls?? I know I will be one of those people STILL scouring the racks for the perfect presents….lol. But, I have crossed a lot off of my list this week, so that is a big accomplishment!


One thing my kids always look forward to this time of year is a personalized email from Santa. Hello, when we were kids we were lucky to get a LETTER from Santa. But I guess now he emails!! Someone had told me of a site a few years back and I wanted to share it with you. Many of you may already know it. It is www.portablenorthpole.tv.



It takes a few minutes to get set-up, but it is worth it. You are able to customize the message with a photo of your child. You can also add in their age, grade and what item they most want this year. It even lets you add pictures of important events that may have occurred with your child so Santa can look back and ‘see what kind of year’ your child has had.


It really is very fun! When I told my kids they got an email from Santa this week, they were jumping up and down!! And of course we watched it a gazillion times. Check out the site, your kids will thank you. Oh, and I use it as leverage when the kids are bad too. Santa can always resend his email to put your kiddo on the NAUGHTY list…..lol!


Have a great weekend….

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!

Happy, Happy Halloween…..

Happy Halloween everyone!! I hope it is a beautiful day where you are. This morning it is sunny but chilly. I will take it. Not sure if you saw that the Northeast got hit with SNOW this weekend. Yes, you heard me correct. SNOW. In my 35 years of life, I never remember it snowing before Halloween.  We had to cancel some Halloween plans due to the weather, but we will make up for it today!!


In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to do a little baking. I usually get together with a group of friends and we do a big Halloween thing with the kids. And I would normally make tons of goodies. But this year since all of the kids started Kindergarten, it didn’t happen. Schedules are crazy these days.


Now, you all know how much I love Target. And I love it even more when I score a great find. Well, get a load of this……


No, get a closer look……..

Do you see the price?? .44 cents…….SCORE!  


You can’t even buy a stick if gum for less than a dollar these days. I was thrilled. I rushed home to bake these puppies. I added a roll of Pillsbury Halloween cookies and I had some nice treats to bring to my friends house!!


Yes, I know what you are thinking, I didn’t really BAKE.


But hey, a find like that at Target is better than baking!!


Be safe today and have a Happy Halloween!!

Almost Wordless Wednesday on a Thursday….

A day late and a dollar short….isn’t that the saying?? LOL! Things around here have been nothing short of crazy. This is my first post all week. Where does the time go??

I wanted to share a pic that my hubby sent me last week from on top of one of the buildings at Ground Zero. It is truly a spectacular view (although not sure I would want to be up that high…lol)!!

Until tomorrow……

Open for Business…..

I have finally taken the plunge. I am joining the 9 million other mom bloggers and opening an Etsy shop……



The name of my new venture is Sew Simply Jenni. Do you like it??


It will have a variety of accessories for her and her home. Most of which I have featured at some point on my blog.


There are cosmetics pouches, pillows, aprons and more. I will always be adding new items. Ok, maybe not always….being a mom and wife still has to be first priority….lol.


Please, if there are any items you are interested in, but don’t see, let me know. I will can always try to make it.


This blog has taken me on a great journey this past year and I just want to thank everyone for all of your inspiration as well as your friendship.


Now, head on over to my new Etsy shop and start your holiday shopping!


Oh, and I want to thank Shannon for designing my new logo. She rocks!!


Have a great weekend!

Almost Wordless Wednesday…..

Peek-a-boo……I see you!!


Surprise….I am in here!

It’s coming, it’s coming….

I know you are all so excited. You can’t wait, right? Do you even remember what you are waiting for?? Of course you do....


It’s my Etsy Shop!!!


Don’t get too excited because there aren’t going to be that many items in the shop just yet. It takes time. And time is limited when you have two kiddos…lol.


I am hoping to have my big reveal this Friday. So be sure to stop back and check it out!!

Young bloggers....

Today I have a special treat for you my bloggy freinds. No, it is not a yummy apple crisp dessert or advice on my amazing parenting skills (yeah right....I am kind of questioning myself this week as far as parenting...lol). It is a little inspiration. Inspiration to show you that creativity can come in many forms and is within all of us. Even at the ripe age of 16. Abby is a 16 year old high school who has started a blog to share with the world her creative side. She loves to bake and craft. She loves to blog. Abby is stopping by to show us a fun tutorial. I hope you enjoy it and take time today to do something creative!!

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Hey everyone! I blog over at i---create and I love every minute of it. On i---create, there are a variety of crafts and pictures I love.  I hope you can come by and take a look! Thank you so much for having me. I am going to show you how to make Clothespin Magnets today!



These clothespin flower magnets are very cute and fairly quick to make! They are great for hanging up artwork on the fridge or lockers at school.  From start to finish to make 3 will take about a hour.


Here's the tutorial!


Step 1: Paint the tops of the clothespins. I had to do 3 coats of white before they were opaque.


Step 2: While the clothespins are drying, cut out 9 circles of fabric.  They should be about 1 inch wide. (the cap I am using is from a large tide bottle.

Step 3: Fold the circle into quarters.

Step 4: Put a dab of hot glue onto the clothespin and press the petal down. If it pops up like it did in the picture, just place a little hot glue on top of the petal and press it down.

Step 5: Repeat the petal process until there are 4 petal on the clothes pin.  Next, add a second layer of petals and place them as shown in the picture.




Step 6: Make the center petal as shown in the picture and place it in the middle. Make sure you have a large portion of hot glue in the center before you place this petal. Aren't these flowers getting cute!?




Step 7: Add a magnet if you like.  My magnet is from a large roll of magnetic tape. You can buy it at a craft store for under $5. Magnet dots would also work.


I hope you enjoy making these and thanks again to Jennifer at Circle of Love for having me!



P.S. Here are some more of the magnets I made.  Some would say I have an obsession! Currently they are in my locker and they make it look super cute!
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Have a great weekend!

Almost Wordless Wednesday….

Happy Hump Day! Hope that everyone is having a great week. We had a great extended weekend as the kiddos were off Monday for Columbus Day. We spend some quality time with friends and together as a family. The hubs was off on Sunday so we took the kids pumpkin picking out east near the Hamptons. We are fortunate enough to live within an hour of all of the great farms that are on the eastern tip of Long Island. It is so crazy…..it is like a whole different world out there.

Most of Long Island has neighborhoods where the homes are close together. So close that I hear Ethel behind me talking on the phone…lol.  But out there it is so different. The homes have acres of property and it is truly just serene. Along with that peacefulness comes REALLY, REALLY high priced homes and taxes that are as much as some people’s yearly salary!!  Thankfully we get to enjoy going out there this time of year for apple picking and pumpkin picking. Not sure we will be moving there anytime soon : )

Needless to day, here are some pictures from our latest trips to the apple and pumpkin farms!!

This is the closest Christopher will ever get to milking a cow!!


There were hayrides and tractor rides as well as wooden play structures for the kids to enjoy.



At the pumpkin farm, Christopher got to walk a goat!  He was so excited.


They even had potato sac races……


There were very few pumpkins left to pick….lol. We did manage to get 3 small ones, thankfully!


All in all, we had a great time. I love this time of year. I did, however, come to the conclusion that I will NOT be a farmer in my next life!