Today is the last day to win $25.00!
I almost forgot.. today is the last day to enter the Anniversary Contest for SpacyTracie.com! You have until midnight tonight Pacific time. That’s 9 PM for you east coasters. Or something like that. Time conversions are not my strong point, sorry.
Good luck!
Technorati Tags: contest, gift card, win
Happy Halloween!
I love this time of year. Halloween to me signifies the beginning of the holiday season; my favorite time of year.
Every Halloween I have the day planned just so. When the hubby gets home we have a big dinner. The kids will eat less candy with full bellies, right? RIGHT? We start the trick-or-treating early and we’re home in time to inspect all the candy, throw out the crap and joking hazards, then snuggle in front of the fire while we watch Halloween shows. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?
It’s never quite happened like that. Last year I remember requesting to get off an hour or two early from work and being told “sure if it’s not too busy”. Of course there was some crisis and instead of getting off early I worked more unpaid overtime (this was pretty much a daily occurrence). Then had to race around the house as we slapped together our costumes, find the flashlights, and made sure everyone was going to be warm enough. We headed out the door an hour behind schedule with no dinner yet. This meant constantly taking candy away from poor Cody who was hungry and could not resist the temptation of carrying around a bag full of yummy treats. We raced around the neighborhood only to find many were already out of candy, then had to race across town to drop kids off and pick others up from their Halloween activities. Ended up grabbing some fast food along the way and got home in time to inspect candy, brush teeth and off to bed… exhausted.
This is pretty much how we’ve spent our last several Halloweens. Not this year! I have a much less stressful job so far. I’m off for the day and as soon as I hit publish for this post, I’ll be laying out the costumes, finishing the laundry, then preparing dinner. This just may be the year we get the Halloween we always plan and wish for. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.
How do YOU like to spend your Halloween?
By the way, if you’re looking to kill some time and want to play a Halloween game, Jack shared this with me today: Halloween Hangman. Be sure to have your speakers turned up. This is a fun one!
Technorati Tags: halloween, trick-or-treat, happy halloween, halloween fun, halloween plans, halloween hangman
Lighting the Landscape
When we bought this house one of the things we admired was the pretty outdoor lighting it had in both the front and the backyard. Our old house had none of this and it’s amazing how much ambiance and atmosphere a few outdoor lights can add to a home.
Shortly after we moved in we discovered that lighting was not put in with kids – especially rowdy kids like ours, nor hyper and sometimes insane dogs in mind. Cody rearranged the rocks in the front yard one day as a surprise for us and it turned out those rocks were holding one of the light fixtures in place. So now it’s all crooked. The lighting in the backyard? Toast. Thanks to our Goldies.
So one of the things on my wish list is to replace the lighting outside. I’ve been looking into LED landscape lighting for a few reasons.
- LED lights are 90% more efficient than halogen – anything we can do to save a little money around here is always appreciated
- They are long-lasting which equals more savings
- LED lights do not give off heat
That last point is the big one for me. Ever since I saw the aftermath (after being woken up by the sirens) of a friend and neighbor’s house that caught fire in the middle of the night I’ve been terrified of a house fire while sleeping. (No one was hurt thankfully.) Escaping a house fire has been a reoccurring nightmare since I was 6 years old.
Technorati Tags: lighting
It’s been one of THOSE days
It’s been the kind of day where at 4 PM you’re wondering if it’s time to put the kids to bed yet.
It was the second day on the job for me. I made the mistake of logging in a half hour early, before I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes or even had a cup of coffee. My co-workers saw me on and it was training time! Right then and there. I learned a bit more about the systems and procedures and it was all good, but it meant that I was distracted as the kids walked out the door to get on the bus for school.
As a result, Cody forgot to get his lunch into his backpack, or his school books for that matter. In fact all he managed to get into his backpack was his sister’s Gameboy. I noticed the lunch and books sitting on the counter.. The books were just reading books and he had money in his lunch account, but I didn’t find out about the Gameboy till much later when he was home from school.
After work I got busy cleaning the house and doing some laundry. I always hate it when I get behind on cleaning/laundry because the whole family seems to take advantage of the mess. What’s one more sock on the ground? Who cares if coats are hung up. It’s easier to wear when it’s on the floor of the closet, right? The recycling papers and plastic I asked one of the boys to take out last night made it as far as the laundry room garbage. They didn’t think I’d notice if they stuffed it all into that tiny garbage and carefully covered it with a piece of paper. Finding various clothing items including MORE (how is this possible??) socks, toys, cups, spoons behind the couch was only adding to my joy.
When the boys got home from school, I promptly reminded Cody about making sure he had his books and lunch as I went through his backpack to see if he had homework. Right away I find some watercolor paints and an “FYI” from his school. This is Cody’s first ever FYI. (FYI’s are when you do something wrong at school that parents need to be notified about.)
As I read it he was standing there, head down but looking up at me with sad guilty eyes. He took his sister’s Gameboy to school, and the aid found him at recess trying to paint it black with the watercolors. His story was his sister didn’t want it anymore and he felt it should be black (it’s pink). The note also said they were sending home the Gameboy with Casey.. but Casey did not have it. This resulted in a quick call to the school, a chat with the principle, then me running to pick up said Gameboy before Melissa noticed it missing. Fortunately the black paint came right off with zero effort.
As I am writing this, my best friend in the world somehow just knew I was having one of THOSE kind of days and shared with me this video. I laughed my ass off. It was exactly what I needed to lift the mood I was in. Thank you, Cathy-friend. I love you!
The Mom SongTechnorati Tags: rug rats, calgon take me away, The Mom Song, William Tell Overture
Anyone want to fix our faucets?
It’s funny… now that I have a job, all of a sudden there’s a billion things I want to get done around the house. Many of these things could have been taken care of when I wasn’t working. But it was easy to put it off since I had all the time in the world, right? Ha! Right now we have one of our sinks taken apart because it had issues and a piece of it that needs replaced sitting on Jack’s desk.
One of the things on our to-do list is to fix or replace some of our bathroom faucets. None of them work 100% right. They are all pretty fancy and look great but there is something different in every bathroom. Some don’t drain right, which isn’t necessarily and issue with the faucet itself, but more of a matter of someone did not install them correctly.
I’ve been looking online at Moen faucets. The second faucet on this page is the one we have in our downstairs bathroom. There are two bathrooms upstairs and they each have a different faucet style. It’s great that this site offers such a wide selection of stylish faucets for both kitchen and bath, including smart single handle faucets and two-handle designs, but I thought it would be much easier to have some uniformity. However, when I saw this Bathroom Faucet Buying Guide though, I discovered we won’t be able to have the exact same faucet in each bathroom. The sinks upstairs are completely different than the one downstairs. It’s all good. At least there are a LOT to choose from!
Technorati Tags: faucets, bathroom faucets
