Friday Faves

A belated Christmas present came in yesterday and I'm so excited!!  Mix and Match Cakes by Shay Shull, author of Mix and Match Family  and Pioneer Woman's latest cookbook!  I've heard great things about both of these books so I can't wait to start my reading this weekend.  :)

This has been one of my favorite quotes this week...

I like to think I have taken everything thrown my way and become a better person for it.  I'm definitely not bitter.  I may go off on a rant every once in a while about God's plan but I get over it and accept the path he's leading me down.  Honestly, I don't think there is a soul out there who hasn't questioned HIM every now and then.  

And then there's this...

This sweet bundle of joy crawled up on the bed and laid down on mommy's chest earlier in the week and I just melted into a big ole puddle.  

Don't forget the nails!  This is Petal Pushers

I tried a chocolate brown color I've had for a while earlier in the week.  Its not Essie, but Nicole something or another.  Looked great on but by the end of day one, I had chips.  Could be the brand, could be that I've had it a while, who really knows.  I just know that Essie has been working for me and they have really pretty colors.  

 
One little bit of exciting news (to me it is) is that Monday morning I'm finally going to the eye doctor to get my eyes back!!  I'm so dramatic but y'all, I have been wearing glasses since the end of October and I'm done.  I've been out of contacts and the doctor would not order more until I came in for a yearly exam.  Ugh.  Long story short...the delay in getting in was due to out of pocket expenses and insurance.  Anyway, I like having the option to wear contacts or glasses.  God bless everyone who can wear glasses everyday and it not drive them crazy.  My daddy is one of them.  Momma was too.  I just can't.  Maybe one day I'll change my mind but for now, bring on the contacts!!  So yes, Monday is the day and I can't wait!

I just got a text message from my BFF Marilee that her daughter Cassie is going to be induced tomorrow.  This is her first baby (a girl) and tomorrow is also Cassie's birthday.  So exciting!!

Hope y'all have a great weekend!

A Little Weekend of Love

Saturday morning I decided Bella and I would venture off to Pearland to do a little running around. She had received two of the same Shopkins play sets for Christmas. One of them came with a gift receipt to Toys R Us (thank you Joy) and thankfully, Pearland has one.  My little Boo Boo also got a James Avery charm bracelet for her birthday from the Hillier's and Square's.  We needed to have the bracelet sized and the charms added so James Avery was on our list of stops.

Our first stop was Sonic and a selfie!
 

Bella also still had a little bit of money to spend and let me tell you, it was burning a hole in her pocket!  We arrived and she started talking about a store with makeup that we had been to before and it had jewelry.  I couldn't figure out what place she was talking about but when she saw the pink doors, she squealed and pointed and then I knew.  Charming Charlies.  The makeup consists of lipgloss. Ha!  I promised if she were a good girl, we would stop by there.  Our first stop was Toys R Us where my girl was a little disappointed that they didn't have a bigger selection of Shopkins but opted for a little bouncing yapping dog, a pocket puppy and kitty.  

Charming Charlies was a disappointment for Bella as they no longer have a young girls section.  She still looked around and even asked the sales clerk if they had any lip gloss.  That sales clerk found me later to compliment me on what a polite and well-mannered daughter I had.  Made this momma's day! Bella left with a lanyard (aka, charm necklace) and I left thinking about this clutch....

After James Avery, a late lunch at Red Robin and quiet time looking at books at Barnes & Noble, we went back to Charming Charlies for that clutch and then perused Macy's home sale for a pasta pot. No luck at Macy's so we headed home as we were beat.  Bella told me when we were going home that she really loves girls day when its just her and I spending time together.  I hope she always feels that way.  

Sunday morning I made pancakes.  Heart-shaped pancakes.  I wouldn't call it a failure but it wasn't pretty.  

I'm telling myself practice will help.  Bella loved them regardless and ate every last bit.  The first one I removed the mold too soon and had spillage.  The second one, I used less batter but almost let it sit too long.  Need to adjust my heat.  Again, if I made pancakes more often I would know this.  I also used the griddle that is built in to my stove for the first time ever.  I consider that a factor in my slight success but not failure heart-shaped pancake morning.  I will try again!!

The rest of our Sunday consisted of burning limbs, raking a few leaves, boiling chicken for dinner that night (Crescent Chicken Rolls), baking muffins, watching football and a nap!  

And let me just confess something while I'm here. James Avery told Bella and I her bracelet would be ready after 4:00 Sunday.  I originally had every intention of driving back Sunday afternoon but after we finished burning limbs, I knew I wouldn't want to go.  Bella's tummy was hurting later in the afternoon so I convinced her to lay down with me to take a nap.  I had no intention of falling asleep but I totally did.  We both woke up about the same time and the first thing she asked about was going back to James Avery.  Y'all...I totally lied to my daughter.  I told her the lady from James Avery called while she was napping to let us know they didn't get her bracelet back but would call when they did.  I may have cringed when I told her because I was being an awful mommy in that moment but I just didn't want to go.  She was upset for all of 5 minutes (if that) and then she was good. 

So yeah, bad mommy for lying but good mommy for heart-shaped pancakes.  :)

Y'all have a good one.

Friday Faves

Yes y'all we made it to the weekend!!  Woo Hoo!!  Its been another crazy work week for me so I'm just as excited about it being Friday as I was last week.  2-day weekend but I will take it!

Wanted to show you the necklace my babies picked out for me for Christmas. 

Its the shorter one with my name on it.  Isn't it a cutie?  I love, love, love it.  

 

 Another look.  I think I have worn it every day since its arrival.  Its a Stella & Dot piece.  I love that its shorter so I can pair it with a longer necklace.  Cool huh.  I thought so.  Wink, wink. 

And then another with my chevron necklace, blardigan and Ugg boots.  I've very comfy today while I work.  

So yesterday I had my follow-up at the dermatologist for the spot they removed back in October.  All looks good so I don't have to go back until this October for my ANNUAL check-up.  That had to be one of the quickest appointments ever.  I was in and out in less than ten minutes.  My kind of appointment!  

Since I was done early and only a skip away from a Williams-Sonoma store, I popped in there to peruse their goodies and look for a heart-shaped pancake mold.  When I made pancakes on Bella's birthday she asked for a heart-shaped pancake so I tried to make one.  It wasn't the prettiest but she loved it.  I remembered seeing pancake molds for other things so I thought I might get lucky since Valentine's Day is around the corner.  I got lucky and found this set...  

So guess what we're making this weekend?!!?  Bella was so excited and actually, Christopher thought they were pretty neat too.  We'll see how great they are when I try them out.  Wish us luck. 

I hope y'all have a great weekend!!  Stay warm!!

A Day Off

My hat has always gone off to all the stay at home moms out there.  I've always said I could never be one, and I stand by that.  Having said that, I probably could have made it Bella's first year but then I would have had to get out.  Things were different with me when she came to us.

I'm saying this because Monday was MLK holiday so the kids and I had a day off.  From the time my sweet little bear woke up until she finally fell asleep that night, we played.  We played a lot.  My goal was not only spend the day doing fun things but also prove to my child we didn't have to leave the house and spend money to have fun.  I won that battle but mercy that child wore me out.  Christopher was around in the morning but left to go to his girlfriend's mom's birthday party.  Lucky guy.

We started out with a Frozen board game cousin Stephanie gave her for her birthday.  We played that for a bit and then I had the crazy idea to play Uno.  Y'all, I had to learn how to play all over again.  Laugh it up but I'm not kidding.  It had been that long.  So as I'm reading and learning I'm also teaching Bella.  I also learned they added some new cards to the game which helped me to win a match later and completely tick my son off at the same time.  Chris wasn't up for the first round but came in the room as we were coming to an end.  He helped Bella along when she got stuck.  Second round, Chris played. One of the new cards is a "swap hands" card which I acquired one of the three times my daughter slapped down a Draw Two card to me.  Chris is giggling because he's steadily slapping cards down just moving along through the game nicely and promptly calls Uno when the time comes.  Bella plays a card that allows me to actually play and I promptly slapped down my "swap hands" card and give Christopher my cards and take his one.  Oh y'all.  You would have thought the world had just ended.  

Chris:  what?!!? What are you doing?
Me:  Read the card buddy, give me your cards.
Chris:  No way, I'm not giving you anything, I'm going out.  That card is stupid, its new and its stupid.
Me: No, its an awesome card that I'm playing right now.  Gimme, gimme.  (laughing)

Needless to say, that was the end of the Uno run that morning and the end of Christopher playing games with us that day.  Lordy mercy, he was upset.

Bella and I then played a Shopkins game she got for Christmas and then broke for lunch.  One of our favorite things to do while cooking, baking or even playing games is to listen to Country Gold on the satellite.  We're sitting at the table eating lunch listening to music....

Me:  Bella, do you know who sings this song?
B:  (thinking for a bit) No ma'am.
M:  Johnny Cash
B:  Who's he?
M:  One of the greatest country/western singers that ever lived
B:  (turns her head quickly back towards me) More than George Strait???!!!!!
Me: (laughing) That's my girl!!!!

I laughed so hard.  Girl knows who George Strait is and knows her momma loves him.

After lunch we pulled out Qwirkle which we got for Christmas.  I learned about this game from my friend Steffani who plays with her daughter Ella.  So I'm reading and learning and teaching and we finally get started when Daddy and Lena stop by.  They love playing games with us so they sat down to visit for a bit and try to help me navigate through some of my questions about the game.  I'm still not clear on a couple things but it was a fun game. We didn't even make it to the end of a round because the resident 7-year old declared she was tired of playing and needed a break. It was around this time Bella decided we needed to go for a walk since it was so pretty outside so we ventured down the street and ended up making a loop by her school and came on back home to play chicken foot.  Now this she loved.  I have a set of Double 12s and Double 15s.  We made it through two rounds of chicken foot before she was done with that and it was on to coloring!!  Y'all, I love to color!  Seriously, it relaxes me.

The book I was coloring is full of doodling pages, coloring, blank pages for drawing, etc.  I gave it to Bella for Christmas.  One of the weekends she and Christopher were at their dads, I pulled this out and started on the page you see above.  She's colored on a few pages as well.  We colored for well over an hour and then I was done.  I was getting lazy at that point so I had to quit plus I needed to start supper.  I wanted to eat early, clean up and then go walking and work my way to an easy jog.  That didn't work out because the resident 16 year old wanted to go run with his buddy at 7:30.  I could have probably gone when he got home but I didn't for these reasons...

~I had lost my enthusiasm by then;

~It was after 8:30 when he returned;

~I still needed to polish my nails; and

~I had just hung up the phone with a friend.

And y'all, I was tired.  Playing games with Bella all day plum wore me out and by the end of the day, I was getting pretty snappy.  But...it was a fun day and Bella agreed!  We will have more days like that just not so close together.  One of my mommy flaws.  I can only take so much.   

Y'all have a good one!

 

Weekend Roundup

My favorite people came home this evening just in time for chicken noodle soup and a buttered pecan bundt cake for dessert. Bella wanted to watch Back To The Future 3 so that's what we were watching in this picture...

I was also perusing one of my Paula Deen cookbooks looking for some new ideas. After the movie, I got the kitchen cleaned up and moved to bed comfy bed for the remaining evening. My allergies have been awful this evening so I've taken some medicine that will help but will also make me sleepy. Bella wanted to watch the first BTTF so we're doing that now until I'm out for the count, or she goes out first. 

We have another day off tomorrow so we are all happy about that. 

Oh...so after Callie's fitting yesterday we did a little shopping. Happy face. 

I found kitchen towels, candles and made my very first purchase at Sephora. Gonna see if I can make my eyebrows look a little better and/or more defined without looking like I let Bella color them in. Ha!  We shall see how this goes. 

Yesterday was really a fun day out of the house and very much needed. 

Hope y'all are having a great weekend. 

Happy Friday

Its Friday Y'all!!!! We made it through the week and guess what?  Its a three-day weekend!!!!!  I don't know about y'all, but you know this girl loves to get an extra day to sleep in.  I'll have my babies tonight but then they'll leave for their dads around lunch tomorrow.  Just a one night stay and back Sunday evening.  Woo Hoo!  Saturday I'm taking my friend Callie to try on and order a bridesmaid dress for a wedding she's in later in the year. She had some minor surgery and is still sore to drive so I'm going to take her.  We may or may not also do a little shopping while we're out and about.  

Wanted to share this outfit I'm wearing today with y'all..

Don't you just love the fun bright colors in this necklace.  Can't remember if I've shared this one with y'all before.  Its an Accessory Concierge piece.  Go check them out, but I must warn you, you'll want it all.  Ha!  And as you can see, its a gold shoe kind of day (nod to my momma).  

Ran across this last night on Pinterest...

Love it.  Another good reminder and so very true.  I"ll leave y'all with that.  Have a super great weekend!!  

Number 7

Lucky number 7.  That's how old my baby girl is now.  How in the world did that happen? I know I say it all the time but time really does fly by and it seems to be moving even faster these days.

This girl is truly a momma's girl.  She is always loving on me, asking for hugs and kisses or giving them to you just because.  She is also a little momma to her older brother.  Sometimes before I can give him the standard line when he's leaving for school or to run and errand, baby girl is hollering "be careful bubba, I love you!"  It is the sweetest.  Sometimes he will holler back, "I didn't know I had two mommies" and she will fire right back, "well you do so get used to it!"  Dish it girl!  She is full of love and gives plenty of it to everyone, even people she just meets.  

Saturday (which was her birthday), she wanted to go shopping.  Unbeknownst to her, she was going to be receiving a delivery that day.  I had no idea what time the delivery would arrive so I took my time getting ready to leave and then had to stall some more.  Finally, these showed up from Uncle Tony...

Y'all, I wish you could have heard the gasp and squeals that followed when this girl realized the flowers were for her.  It was awesome.  Uncle Tony also included a gift card with the flowers so that made it even better since we were on our way out the door to do some shopping.    

Bath & Body Works was having a big sale so that was a must stop.  Let me say, my girl is good at avoiding all things on sale.  LOL!  I still need to teach her a few things.  She picked out a few things and I added some antibacterial soap to my stash at home.  I'll give you one guess as to where we went next...Justice!!  It didn't take her long to have a small pile of things she wanted but it quickly diminished when I explained how much all of it was going to cost her.  I did pick up a super cute backpack with her initial B on it as part of her birthday present from mommy.  We call this her fun backpack.  Something she can carry all her fun things in when going places.  After that, we stopped for a cookie/pretzel snack and then made our way to Claire's.  

We also hit up Hobby Lobby, Target and tried to go to the party store that had moved to Clute but it was closed.  On.A.Saturday.  What.The.Heck.  Needless to say I was a bit disgruntled about that. We were having a birthday dinner party for baby girl Sunday evening.  She wanted her CiCi to make pasta with chicken sauce (also known as regular ole spaghetti and meat) for the party. CiCi was already booked for Saturday but could make it work Sunday evening.  Done.  Bella wanted a fish themed party as well because hello, everyone serves an Italian dish at a fish party.  Do you know how hard it is to find fish themed party supplies on short notice?  It proved to be very difficult.  After looking everywhere and being turned away from the party store in Clute, my backup plan was to get to Party City in Pearland first thing Sunday morning.  Y'all, they don't even have fish themed party supplies.  I did not expect this at all but quickly went into my additional backup plan.  Bright colors!  We had already ordered a cookie cake with a fish on it and while in Hobby Lobby the previous day, I picked up some fabric with fish on it to use as part of the table cloth so we had a couple few things.  Her gift bags to her guests would also have Goldfish snacks, gummy fish and worms in them so we had a little fish going here and there.  

To be honest, Bella didn't really care...she was just happy to have all her family over to celebrate her birthday.  I tell myself that I will get myself together and begin planning her party sooner rather than later but that never happens.  I blame it on this holiday called Christmas.  You may have heard of it.  Apparently its a pretty big deal.  :)

I have to say, watching Bella open gifts had to be my favorite part of the evening....her expressions and enthusiasm is priceless...

  

Daddy had told me he got her a card  but he wanted her to open it last so towards the end of gift opening, he brought out a bag for her.  Inside the bag was a box....

And inside that box was another box...

And inside that box was yet another box....

 This box had a little remote control red sports car!!

Now, to say she was excited about it would be a little dishonest.  She sat there with a look on her face of total confusion (I missed that picture) because everything she received before that was total girlie girl stuff.  But let me also tell you, that after that initial shock wore off, she has played and played with that remote control car more than anything else she received.  I told her I was so jealous because Pop NEVER got me a little red sports car! My sister also chimed in saying she never got one either!  LOL!!

All in all, her birthday weekend turned out to be really fun.  Bella also deemed it the best ever so that made my heart happy.  She received more money and gift cards to Justice we we'll be making another trip in the near future.  I told her she needed to wait and let them get new stock in so she'll have more to choose from.  That may have been a selfish play on my part because two days of Justice was enough for me.  Ha!

Reminders

A little something I saw on Pinterest tonight and wanted to share it. We all need reminders, I know I do...

The Struggle Is Real Y'all

We are on our second day back to routine and let me tell you, its really hard!  Both my children have struggled to get up this week.  I don't know if Christopher has decided that he's over hanging out with his buddies before school or what because this kid has left the house at 7:15-7:20 both days.  Usually he is gone by 7:00.  Heck, he didn't climb out of bed until then today.  And Miss Bella, we are pushing it to get out the door by 7:30.  I'm not gonna lie.  I hit snooze Monday until I couldn't hit it anymore and still laid in bed for too long after that.  Maybe next week will be a little easier on us all.  For now, I'm counting the days until I get to sleep in again. Saturday won't get here quick enough.

Speaking of Saturday, it will be a very special 7 year old's birthday then. Wow how time flies!  My Timehop pulled up a post my sister did on my FB wall on this day 7 years ago anticipating the arrival of her niece and how excited she was.  I was excited and ready too as I was plum miserable. Pregnancy was always rough for me, but the payoff was awesome :). We'll be having a birthday dinner party Sunday evening for the princess.  I'm sure Saturday will be filled with lots of special things, things I have not decided or discussed with the birthday girl.  I'm sure she will have ideas of her own.  That girl.  She is something else.  Something else that makes me laugh and smile every single day. Love her.

I sure hope y'all are having a better week than we are. 

Message from Heaven

I've already shared this story on Facebook and Instagram but wanted to also share it here.  I had been looking at a book of devotionals by Joyce Meyer online.  I wanted to start 2016 off on a positive note and with my change in attitude I thought reading something inspirational daily would help.  While in LJ last week at Target I decided we would pop into Hastings since it was next door and see if they had the book before I ordered it online.  They didn't have it but I found another book by Joyce Meyer, "New Day, New You".  I open the book to read a couple devotions and happen on this page...

What you probably know from reading my blog is this is the day my son Jace went to Heaven and for a long time after his passing I didn't feel right being happy.  It felt wrong to laugh.  I do believe my son sent me a message last week.  I bought this book instead of ordering the other one and I am enjoying it every day.  My original intention was to begin my day with a devotion but I have not given myself enough time to do that so I have chosen to end my day with one.  Its not the cure to my attitude but it certainly helps.  

As for that attitude adjustment at work.  Yeah well, I had to bite my tongue a few times yesterday but I did pretty good.  Just going to try my best to keep positive and not let the negative vibes get to me. 

Y'all have a good one!  

2016

Happy New Year's!! Wishing y'all a very blessed 2016. I'm going to make it a good one!