Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the beautiful mothers out there, and even the ugly ones!

 bahahahaaa....that was a joke people.

This is my mom, I call her Lafawnda.

She helped mold me into the person I am and for that I am super grateful. She also always has and continues to spoil me and my family rotten. My favorite thing about my mom is she likes to pretend that all her kids were perfect while we were growing up....or maybe she is in denial, either way.

Being a mother is the hardest thing in the world. It never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever stops and even when you are alone or getting a break you still always are thinking about what your kids are doing and if they are ok. The best thing about being a mom is how your kids love you unconditionally (at least they do when you are little, I have heard horror stories about teenagers).

 About 75% of the time I feel like I could be a better mom, have more patience, talk in a nicer voice, play pretend, play hide and go seek and take 10 minutes to find them hiding in the same spot every time. 

But no matter what they just keep loving me. I love my girlies more than anything in this world. I'm so glad they made me a mom, and help me continue to be a better one.

Now onto the serious stuff, this is how my Mother's Day played out in my head. My kids sleep soundly all night like usual. Big Daddy gets up with them at 6am. I sleep in soundly until at least 8am, then I awake to the smells of breakfast in bed and fresh flowers and the cute little homemade cards my kids made me.

My reality:
Nate falls asleep on the couch while watching House on Netflix, he never comes to bed so I can't sleep that well anyway, Sas wakes up twice yelling about who knows what, B Face wakes up once crying, Big Daddy does get up with them at 6am and keeps them quite but I can't go back to sleep. The brings me the most delicious breakfast in bed (SCORE)! B Face helps me eat it. And Sas sits in her room screaming about how it is not Mother's Day therefore she will not come in and say Happy Mother's Day to me because it was last week.

 Love my little family. And I have finally convinced Sas to make me a card even if she doesn't think it is Mother's Day. I will get my hand crafted card DANG IT!

Mormon Crack

(Disclaimer: for those who follow me on Facebook I made this for a birthday present. I did not eat it and ruin my awesome, in the making, weight loss story!! I knew some of you were judging me, I could feel it.)

Mormon Crack (news flash, I'm a Mormon. And you may or may not know that Mormon's typically don't do drugs, therefore this is my drug....get it?..it's supposed to be funny but if you don't get it by now it may be a lost cause for you) is what I have decided to call this oooey gooey sticky crunchy heaven in my mouth creation. It all started a couple years ago when I was at a church bake sale and this bowl of what looked like regular old cereal sold for $90 or some crazy number like that. The weird thing about that is the person who bought it was married to the person who made it?! Well, said purchaser was sitting in front of me and let me have a taste and that was the end of my waistline (not to mention everything else I stumble upon on Pinterest). I quickly had someone snatch up her magic recipe and I made it many times. 

Then something terrible happened..........I moved and the recipe was lost!!! I text the person I got it from to have her send it to me and she never did. Then the horrible cravings set in and I was on a mission to find my oooey gooey friend again. So I finally came across this recipe on Six Sisters Stuff and it was the closest thing to the original recipe I could find, but it still wasn't the one. So here is my wanna be version of "the one" and I'll be honest, once you have it you will want it over and over again. SOOOO yummy.

Ingredients:

1 box of Rice Chex or Crispix

1 box of Golden Grahams
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cups light corn syrup  

If you are feeling crazy you can also add almonds, coconut, little yummy candies or chunks of candy.

Directions:

1. Grease a big ole bowl and mix the cereals and whatever other yummy things you want to add.

2. Put the sugar, butter and corn syrup in a pan on medium heat and stir. Wait until the mixture starts to boil and let it boil for three minutes while you continue to stir. (Sometimes I turn it up to high to get things going)

3. Pour the mixture over the cereal and mix it all up.

4. Spread it out on wax paper (sometimes it sticks) or onto greased cookie sheets. 

5. Put it all back in the big bowl when it has cooled, then take the bowl and hide in a closet with it so you never have to share!!!

Just Call Me Martha

I will start by saying I AM NOT CRAFTY. As a matter of fact my attention span for crafty things is approx. five minutes long, maybe ten on a good day when I am loaded with sugar or caffeine. With that being said, Big Daddy and I have been tapping into our crafty sides and I am loving the results while hating the amount of time it takes to get things done.

Recently we inherited a new huge television from my brother and we had to get rid of the entertainment center we had because the tv wouldn't fit in it. Which lead to our tv mounted on the wall and all the stuff from our old entertainment center sitting on our floor...not so kid proof. Then the search began. You may not know this but Big Daddy and I are rather picky. Our budget was max $300, and we wanted something real wood so it would last forever, or until we were sick of looking at it. Oh, and we also wanted something long and taller than two ft. Weeks later we came to the conclusion that was never going to happen with our budget.

So we searched out DIY dresser/entertainment centers and decided that is what we were going to do. After days of searching on Craigslist we found the perfect one and of course I didn't take a picture of what it looked like before so you can be that much more impressed with the results. But here is a picture of the mirror that was on it, which shows the wood stain color so with a little imagination you get the idea. 

So the mirror is laying on top of the dresser hence the weird angle and the reflection of my garage shelves and garage door, but lucky for you if you look really close you can see part of the dresser below it.

The all it took was a little (many, many hours) sanding, priming, sanding again, and painting twice. I lied, that wasn't all. We also took out the middle drawers and put wood down so we would have shelves for the blu-ray player, Nintendo 64 (woooooooohooo) and other things to make our viewing pleasure excellent, and cut holes in the back for the cords. And of course the new hardware to make it look so fresh and clean. 

Ready for the much anticipated reveal...... 

TA-DA!! Take that Pinterest!

I am so in love!  All we have left is hiding the tv cords, and the best part was it cost us about $160!!!!! So there you have it, I am turning over a new crafty side.

Next project re-upholstering the piano bench.

FYI the color is BEHR Amber Moon

Coupons!

As mentioned previously I am a recovering coupon addict. I am still using all the body wash I bought over three years ago! Well this week Safeway was having a screaming deal on cereal and you didn't even need coupons so I went and partook and got a little taste of that good ole adrenaline high from saving money. But I do believe that couponing is actually a waste of money (GASP!!). Hear me out, if I didn't ever coupon I would have never had to spend hours, at least six, weekly cutting out the coupons, looking online for the best deals, and wandering around the store looking for all the great steals that were clearanced. Not to mention if you are going to coupon for food it is typically processed garbage that you get all the coupons for (I said typically, I am aware not all of them are but let's be honest the vast majority are for crappy food). 

I usually don't buy cereal and now I have over 15 boxes and I am $20 more poor than before. Don't get me wrong that is a great price for the amount I got but I would have only bought one or two boxes a month like I typically do and only spent $4. Then I could have used the remaining $16 out of my budget on the fruits and veggies my kids love. However, I have a small doomsday mentality (thanks to my father who is a total doomsdayer) and I feel the need to stock up on EVERYTHING. Well news flash to myself, I am pretty sure if the world is going to Hell in a hand basket it won't really matter what my stock of cereal and granola bars looks like, I should be more concerned about my stock of shotgun shells so I can protect my two boxes of cereal and steal my neighbors food..... .... 

Back to the real issue, I can see the benefit of couponing but when it comes down to the value of my time, forget it. I would much rather chill at home with my babies than wander around the store for hours looking for the best deals. And I don't want that sugary, yummy, processed crap food in my casa anyway, I have enough problems with self control with my amazing baking skills and I can pronounce all the ingredients in the things I make. I can only imagine what the boxed stuff from the store with the list of crazy ingredients is doing to my internal organs.

I will now only stock up on tampons, shampoos, body washes, diapers and wipes. Then when the world ends I will barter with my womanly products for food. That is all.

valentines day

I am just going to come out with it. Valentine's day is such a waste of a holiday, phew, I feel much better. And Big Daddy agrees with me, what dude wouldn't? 

Don't worry, I don't feel this way about only Valentine's day but also mother's day, father's day, grandparent's day....the list goes on and on. I refuse to waste my money on little red boxes of chocolates that taste like wax. Maybe one day when I can buy the good stuff and order a new car for myself for vday. No, not even then because I refuse to be a robot and buy crap just because marketers tell me I need to. News flash, I have a degree in a marketing related field (history...jk it's not history, it's public relations) and I refuse to give into your evil schemes unless it involves me buying mass amounts of cereal and receiving milk for free (I am a recovering coupon addict). 

Do you know what my awesome little family did for Valentine's this year? We woke up and I made eggs, bacon and toast, I make breakfast every morning so this wasn't special. I take that back we usually have sausage and I was feeling crazy and bought bacon. I had also bought myself some pink tulips the night before for a whopping $5 and they were beautiful! The kids got their cute little Valentine's from their daddy (I raided a clearance bin at Winco and got some sweet stuffed animals and plastic dinosaurs for $.15 and some sweet lip suckers). Then I took the kids to the park, we went home and I wanted them to nap for hours, ya right. Then I gave them a bath and B face got out and pooped all over the floor in the bathroom and then walked in it. Happy Vday to me! Then Big Daddy came home and we went to our friends house and had heart shaped pizza for the kids and we adults had yummy Vietnamese take out. That my friends is how Valentine's should be, just a regular day with the peeps you love. 

 

my hair did

I will start off by saying I am not a person who likes to spend any time on their hair. And I am blessed enough to not have to because of all these luscious waves (thanks to having my girls, my hair used to be a lot more  straight but apparently the more children I produce the wavier my hair gets). Anyway, like I mentioned previously I bought a Groupon and went to get my haircut on Saturday. So the lady was nice she was about my age and I showed her the cute pic of the cut I wanted and she ended up doing an A-line bob with no bangs....huh....I don't know about you but when I get a haircut I assume the people cutting my hair know what would look better on me than I do since they went to beauty school and all. So I liked it the day of ish (yes I meant to write ish, it means I am undecided). It seems to be really thick and heavy in the front but fun and frisky in the back. 

 

As a side note can I just tell you that the hair lady asked if I had ever done stand up comedy. That's right, I am just as funny in real life as I am in my head! Big Daddy is convinced she just wanted a bigger tip because she was getting hosed by using Groupon. He's just jealous. Now back to the story.  

My vision when I was going to get my haircut was that it would be short and I wouldn't have to do anything and then it would look amazing all the time because of my previously mentioned waves! I feel like that is a reasonable expectation, so if you are laughing right now...shame on you. Well I didn't get the haircut I wanted and so far it isn't so get up and go like I was hoping. My mother has also been kind enough to point out that it just needs some tweaking and it will be perfect. That is love right there, nothing like telling someone who just chopped off their hair that it needs just a little love. I mean at least my brother was honest enough to just tell me he didn't like it. I don't even know if I like it. I am kind of hating the short in the back long in the front thing, I kind of just want the cut I went in for!! Next time a hair dresser tells me they don't want to cut my hair how I want I will tell them to shove it and leave. If they do what I want I have no one to blame but myself for not liking the hairstyle. And since I have to look at myself everyday I want to feel like a sexy beast and so far I am feeling like the sides are a little to puffy for my liking.

What is the point of this post you might be wondering. I really have no idea. Maybe that I will never cut my hair again. This is the first time it has been this short in approx a billion years, or eight, but who's counting.Will I go back and get my hair cut the way I really wanted? Who knows, that is up to the indecision of my brain.

And here are the pics of my non did hair, aka, shower, put in some mousse, sleep on it a few nights, you know. One before when it was long and one just taken today. Don't mind the blurriness, I am still trying to master this whole "selfie" thing. I think it might be my new favorite hobby.

lets seeeee

Well, since October I have not been running as much as I should, been doing some Zumba and I have recently started planking for at least one minute everyday. Can I just say that I seriously feel like I am getting buff from the planking. Big Daddy makes fun of me saying it isn't that hard but you know what he couldn't even do it for one minute with one are, such a weakling.

As far as the weight loss contest. We never even weighed in at the end, I guess we all decided we didn't really care and we were truly to broke to pay up in the end. haha, so I declare myself the winner! yay me!!! I decided scales are the devil, and am now going off my belt. The more holes I am down the better. My brother started this liquid diet through his doctors office three weeks ago and has already lost 23 lbs. What a cheater! Slow and steady wins the race...or maybe just takes longer to reach their goals...who knows.

I bought a Groupon yesterday for a haircut so now I actually get to cut my hair. I am typically one who always asks people how they think I should cut my hair, especially the man. His usually response is he doesn't care, but I always just assume he likes my long sexy, luscious locks. Well with this new and improved self I am trying to create. I am making decision about me, myself and I all by myself and telling others to bite themselves (I haven't had a chance to do that yet but I am anxiously waiting). Big Daddy on the other hand is rather excited I don't bore him with the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over again. 

You may not know this about me but I am one of the most indecisive people I have ever met. It runs in my blood. So I am trying to make one decision and just live with the results. Seriously, going through a drive though with me can be a challenge for all those involved because there are toooooo many choices, so I will decide, then change my mind, then change my mind again. It really is lots of fun, I don't know why the people around me don't seem to think so. I have noticed I have passed this trait on to lil Sas and I am hoping to help her nip this "condition" in the butt. I swear we have too many choices in our lives sometimes (but I will leave that for a different day). So here is to the new year and making decisions quick and never looking back. With that said here is a pic of what I am going to cut my hair like! So exciting.

Well that is enough fun for today.