A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and has a safe and happy New Year!  The last few months for me has been full of quizzes, tests, note taking and taking care of sick kids!  For my birthday I got a gift card for a book store, which I just spent online.  The books shipped today which I can't wait for!  I am excited!  The books are for my embroidery machine.  I need to do some more learning about it so I can put it to good use instead of having projects that get messed up because of whatever mistake I made.  I was told there is a big learning curve when first introduced to the embroidery world.  I will share with you the books as soon as I get them! (This is so exciting for me, better than Christmas!)

This New Year's eve we will be driving teens to a big dance and bar-b-que in the new year with some awesome food.  Also some fireworks!

What do you do to ring in the new year?  Are you making any New Year's Resolutions or goals this year?

New Toys!

I finally got my new toy!  I'm so excited!  My hubby has been playing with his new bar-b-que's for the last few weeks I was starting to feel left out!  My new toy is finally here!  I love to sew, sewing is my stress outlet.  The more I sew the more it relieves!  Anyways my new toy is an embroidery machine!  Fabulous!  I love it!  The kids love to watch it!

This is the first try at it. Oops.  The green is supposed to be the stem & leaves.  And so I tried again after talking to my older sister who has an embroidery machine for many years!

Ta-da!!! It worked!  Sorry it's sideways!  And here's some more!

Now the machine is working on a pink sea horse!  Here it is finished!

And now a teal one.  I love this color!!

And here is the teal sea horse being worked on.

Here's a dolphin!  I flipped it too!

 

This is a fun new mommy toy!  Gives me something else to do while my buddy is at morning Kindergarten.  The sea life blocks are going to be turned into a quilt.  I'll share the final project once I get enough blocks and get it sewn up!

I hope all you readers are adjusting to kids being back in school and that life is good!

Back To School, Quilt & TGIF!

I've been so exhausted from the start of school and not sure what to do with myself I took a nap this morning.  I just couldn't stay away so I closed the computer and slept hard on the couch for two hours.  I looked at the clock and said 20 more minutes, the next thing I knew it was about half hour till the bus for my kindergartener comes.  I don't think I've had a nap that long without interruptions like MOMMYYY can I have something to eat, Mommy so and so hit me!  You get the idea!

Here's the quilt I finally finished!

It's not quite long enough for a twin XL but it would be perfect for the shorter twin.  She loves it!  I love it and how it washed up!

I love the bright colors!  Totally a girl quilt, but my older boys were fighting over it and giving me crap that it's not for them!  They have quilts that I made them when they were way younger and one for me too, but they don't fit their beds anymore!

I hope you like it!  The pattern comes from a book I bought at JoAnn Fabric & Crafts a few years ago.  Have an awesome weekend!

Getting Ready!

We've been really busy here the last few weeks! There's been doctor appointments to update the kindergartener's immunizations, buying backpacks, school supplies and birthday presents.  My oldest's birthday is today!  He's definitely not a baby anymore, but he was my cutest one when born!

My husband also took time off work for a "staycation"!  It was nice to have him around!  He bought a few new toys, a Traeger and a gas grill.  Let me tell you about the gas grill.  We were at Costco shopping this Saturday.  We had a cart full of stuff going on.  Okay it wasn't full yet, but there was stuff for food storage and school lunches.  He got eggs and milk.  We were almost ready to leave and he ran into this grill. The markdown price got him thinking.  I want this (repeat a gazillion times in his head)!!  We put the eggs and milk back and he grabbed the corn on the cob, ditched the cart and headed to the shortest line possible at the front of the store!  He bought the corn and asked how to buy the barbeque too!  They called over someone to help so we didn't hold up the line.  The new guy said he thinks there's a few in boxes in the back & the hubby mentioned he still wants it if he can have the display! Yup, the display is the last one.  The two shorty's and I drove home to switch cars and brought back the gas guzzler and the oldest.  With the help of the employee the three got it in the car, just barely and we drove off!  The hubby kept looking behind him.  I asked what he was looking at and he said he wanted to make sure they didn't realize what a deal he got and thought maybe they were second thinking it!  Half price!  We felt like we robbed them!  I love a great deal!

This Sunday evening I finished my daughter's quilt.  The one I was going to finish in January, but never got around to it!  I'm impressed with how the finished look turned out!  Today the goal is to get backpacks ready for meet the teacher night for two kids and then I will pull out the camera to get pictures and will post them this week!  Tomorrow is the first day of school for all my kids!  Two in high school and the other two at elementary!  Just thinking about my baby makes me teary eyed!  How am I going to get him on the bus with no tears! He is so excited!  I am excited for him, but sad he is leaving me too all at the same time!  He is the only one I have been at home since day one (no work). I'm going to miss him!

Birthday Card

I joined a card swap this past week.  A bunch of us gals are going to get together to swap cards we make.  Every month we are going to get together to swap. This month's theme is Birthday.  This is what I made this last weekend.

It's just a plain white card, purple cardstock cut a little smaller than the card to show a white border, layered with a smaller striped paper.  Two different purple cardstock using the Cricut cut out the stars and birthday blessing saying.  Layered together to make this lovely card!  I need to make a few extra too, birthday season in our family is coming up!  I can't wait to make more!

Do you like to make cards?

Old TV & Teenagers!

It's Wednesday!  Happy hump day!  We're halfway thru the week!  Yay!  It's also scout night for us.  Today is kind of humid along with the hot heat, mid 80's, maybe hotter.  I have almost no energy.  I'm feeling blah.  Lot's has been happening.  I've been running around the last few days looking for chest high waders in a shoe size 13 that doesn't exist on store shelves.  Walmart stocks up to size 12, but not bigger.  Wish I found this out a few stores ago!  The hubby told the teenagers if they fixed the BIG TV that has been in a box since December last year they could have it as theirs.  The same time it got boxed up I went online to Google the symptoms and found one of two diagnoses that could be wrong with it.  A TV place in town said it could be a dust problem or a panel.  They claimed the panel could cost about 600 bucks and said just to replace it.  I found one for 89 plus shipping.  Anyways my hubby just wanted to get rid of it.  He didn't want me touching it and trying to dust it out, especially the fan.  For some reason he decided to let the kids.  They dusted it, wiped it down and guess what??!!!  It works again!!!  Perfect picture!  Definitely wasn't a panel problem, but a dust problem!  I'm kind of mad he wouldn't let me open it up and dust it out myself last year.  Oh well.  It's now the kids' TV for their game room!  Last night we bought a new entertainment center for it.  My oldest has spent all day putting it together.  I'll post pictures of it soon as the room gets cleaned up.  We took the old boxy TV that quit working and the old entertainment center to the thrift store. (Yes if they can't get the TV working they will take it to the recycling center at the dump for it and they get recycling credit!)

Today after he finished building it I applied for school.  I hope this application goes thru.  I'm excited and nervous all at the same time.  I'll keep you posted!

I guess what I am trying to say is don't forget to dust!  If you dust your TV's will last longer!

What's your least favorite chore to do at home?

Friday Funny!

My daughter told me this last week that I have spider webs up my nose holes (aka nostrils). I was kind of surprised so I asked her back if she could see any spiders in there too.  She said no but I had boogies!

My youngest knew he was in big trouble.  He told me when I get mad at him I just need to love him instead of being mad.  He was giving me hugs all day telling me he was sorry!

My two older boys went off to scout camp this last week.  One went to Mount Hood in Oregon and the other went somewhere in the Cascade Mountain range in Washington.  I can't wait to share pictures they took!  Hopefully they come out!

Have an awesome weekend!  I know some are going back to school soon, East Coast and others like us on the West Coast still have another 34 days till school starts!  My youngest woke me up this morning asking if it's September yet, hence the start of the countdown to the end of summer!

Pink Salmon

We cooked the Pink Salmon the other day!  I finally have pictures to share with you!

This is going to be dinner!  My daughter kept asking 'Do I like Pink Salmon'? We kept telling her what's not to like about her favorite color!

Recipe for the marinade as follows:

3 cups of Teriyaki Soy Sauce
1 can of pineapple
1 small to medium Walla Walla Onion
1 cup of Dark Brown Sugar

I mixed all of this in our Ninja Blender except about half of the pineapple.  Drain the juice in the blender and dump in about half the pineapple.  Pulse the blender until marinade is not as chunky but let there be some chunks in it.  I guess what I am trying to say is don't pulse it till it liquefies!  I let the fish marinade for about 2 hours in a glass dish with tin foil over the top in the fridge.  When you preheat the oven to 425 degrees take the fish out and put on your tin foil ready pan.  Soak up any extra juice.  This will prevent the house from smoking up!  Add the rest of the pineapple to the top of your salmon.  Cook for about 20 minutes (every oven varies).  Change the oven to broil and cook for 3-5 minutes.  This is what it should look like!!

Perfect, moist, flaky fish! White rice and green beans went perfect with this!  My daughter couldn't decide what she liked better the rice or salmon!  (She's a rice lover!)  She would take a big forkful of one and then switch to the other!  It was funny to watch her eat!  Last time we had salmon she wouldn't touch it for the life of her!

We still have this to cook up too!  This is the King Salmon; this ended up being the biggest fish caught Sunday the 28th on the trip!  Go hunny buns!  He's already talking about his next trip with just a few buddies from work.


How do you like to cook your salmon?

Fishing Trip

My hubby went fishing all day yesterday.  He left at 1:40 in the morning and got home about 11:30 at night.  Work rented out a charter boat.  No this wasn't free.  He paid good money to go.  I can't wait to sink my teeth into this salmon he got.  I'm drooling just thinking about it!  He took pictures.

Just leaving for the sea.  They are in Wesport Washington USA leaving for the Pacific Ocean.

They got their poles all ready to go!

There were lots of boats in the water!

The water was really choppy and most of the guys on deck got sick & spent time next to the side of the boat hurling into the water!  Makes me sea sick just thinking about it.

Finally caught his first fish just before the 11 o'clock hour rolled in.

Everyone is catching fish!!!

Even a few of these little ones were caught!

AND Here is the Captain of the boat! Thanks dude for getting this crew there & back safe and sound!  What a day the hubby had!  All these pictures were taken by him the hubby.  He said it was an expensive trip but it's worth the experience at least once!  Now I need to go cruise Pintrest for some awesome salmon recipes!

What is your favorite fish and how do you like to cook it?

Mount Rainier & Puyallup River

My husband had a day off recently.  He wasn't quite ready to go home after we got his fishing license and then went out to eat. He turned the car the opposite way than home and started driving.  He was told of this town with a big sporting good store.  (It's not that big!)  He wanted to find it.  It was a cute little town, older place near the valley of Mount Rainier.  There was a fun park we stopped at to let the kids play.  It has these awesome trees. 

I love this line of trees.

This one reminds me of a tree in my grandparent's yard in Utah. (Their kids sold their home this past summer.)

These trees would make some awesome tree houses! At the park we saw this peek-a-boo view of Mount Rainier too.

I love seeing this mountain.  It's so relaxing; it also makes me grateful for all the man upstairs has given and done for me.  Okay, now onto the pictures of the river!

I love how the sunlight glistens on the water!  We stopped at the river to see if there could be a swimming hole to take the kids this summer. NOPE!

Way to deep to swim in even with a life jacket.

The water was way too choppy & swift for kids to swim in it. 

On our way back home my husband pulled off the road so we could take these pictures of Mount Rainier! 

Right after I snapped this picture my husband grabbed the cell phone and snapped the following picture.

He took a few of this same view, as we were standing on the sidewalk, on a bridge, over the river we just visited.  He almost dropped the camera (my cell phone) in the river twice.  My youngest looks at me and says, 'mom it's okay if daddy drops it, he'll have to earn money to buy you a new one.  I'll make sure he does'! What a love bug I've raised.

Oh this river is the Puyallup river that runs thru the small country town of Orting Washington USA.

All the pictures here are taken by me (except for the last picture of Mount Rainier, taken by my husband) with the Samsung Galaxy 4S cell phone.  I love this phone!  The camera is definitely the most used feature on the phone. (Yes, probably even more than talking and texting!)


Have you gone exploring with kids this summer as a family or by yourself?

Christmas In July Craft

I just wanted to share with you a craft I made this last week.  Christmas Nativity.

A fellow crafter in Florida is getting this one.  She loves snowman so I jazzed the backside up a bit for her.

This is silver vinyl on the back.  I hope she likes it!  I think Frosty needs a hat on him!

Here's the other one I have been finishing up painting today.

I used spray paint originally but it was not working out.  The hot sticky weather was keeping the spray paint from drying.  (I know nothing like back east or in the south!)  If you looked closely the wise men have the spray paint on the block and the donkey has a paint sample color from Walmart painted on it.  They are now covered with Teal Lake paint.  I am just waiting for them to dry so I can flip them over again and paint the second coat on.  Then I will peel off the vinyl and paint where the vinyl was.  It's a fun Christmas in July craft to make.  Fast and easy.

Have you made any Christmas In July crafts this month?

Meat & Cheese Rolls

The other day my daughter was having a hard time. Just imagine a temper tantrum about nothing!  I invited her to sit with me and look at Pintrest pins.  This peaked her interest!  I asked her if she could help me find something yummy to eat or a craft to make!  Instantly she found this pin for crescent rolls with meat & cheese in it.   Here's where the pin sends you!  We made these for lunch today!  We didn't use the sauce or as much meat.  I used Swiss cheese & chopped it into tiny pieces. A few of them I used garlic white cheddar cheese.  When we ran to Walmart this morning, we were in a hurry to grab a few things and get back home.  While I looked at cheese my daughter asked me if I could buy some cheese like the last "spicy" one she tried at the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  I told her it was the White Cheddar Garlic cheese.  I found some in a package of slices, no blocks or shredded.  She asked me to make her some with this cheese in it! She loved it!  My picky eater didn't complain about the meat or cheese!

Here's what I used! Get the lunch meat in the deli.  The pre packaged stuff looked kind of green in my opinion!

 

This is what it looks like when it's all cooked up!

A close up of what it looks like inside!  YUM-O!!  I forgot to get an onion so I didn't make the AU Jus dip!  Definitely will make when I do this again!

Three of my children and I gobbled up all that I made!  I think my picky eater husband will like these!  The garlic cheese ones really enhanced the flavor of the roast beef meat used!  Too bad my oldest wasn't here to have any!  He's at scout camp till Saturday!  Thank you for adding this recipe to Pintrest!! Click here for the pin!  Happy Pinning!

What have you experimented in the kitchen with lately?

Mixed up!

I had an awesome day working on my Christmas in July Craft swap crafts yesterday that I totally got my days messed up.  I was told Thursday instead of Wednesday, so instead of reading my emails about the info I mixed it up somehow! It really was Wednesday not Thursday!  Ugh, I hate letting people down. However in the end things ended up okay.  The boys still arrived to scout camp on time. I did however not understand the road signs driving home and was in the wrong lane and crossed the bridge missing the toll payment centers. I'm sure I will get a bill in the mail and it will be more than paying cash which I intended to do, but I will pay it and all will be well.  From mixing things up I am just going to take it easy the rest of today so I don't make any more mix ups and get my other scout to his activity tonight! I guess all is well and at least I got the right kid to camp! I hope all the scouters have fun!

Mom's do this when they have a lot going on!  It's okay! Fix it and make it best as we can!

What children's summer plans have you mixed up lately?

Vacation Time

I love getting away from home.  Then coming back.  I always miss my bed the most.  We went to the Oregon Coast to celebrate the Fourth of July 2013 with family. We had a grand time! We saw family we haven't seen since we moved away from Washington in 2010. The two youngest are not fond of animals or any thing furry. Not to mention spiders, bugs, insects whatever you want to call them.  They scream.  Especially dogs. My daughter surprised us all.  Her first encounter with Diesel the big black lab, she was more shocked that he made the rounds (circled her play space) sniffed her and left.

We had fireworks. We went to the river, twice.  We went to Happy Camp (beach), but it was so windy it made your bones hurt. We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, but it was so crowded we left to get ice cream somewhere else.  The production lines were down too, so no watching how cheese gets made!  We made fires in the fire pit in the back yard at night. We played at the park during the day.  We had some awesome BBQ food.

The guys caught a few crawdads at the river and had bbq them to go with dinner!  This particular one was putting up a fight for life!  He did not want to become food!

This is a view in the forest as they got lost trying to find where the shooting hole is at.

Beautiful picture.  I just love this.

 

 

And ribs!  YUM!!!

Hope you had a great holiday!  Happy Independence Day everyone!

Moo cow

I swear all I hear all day long is mommy I'm hungry! Mom I need something to eat. These kids need to stop eating so much.  It's not out of boredom.  They are plenty entertained.  The youngest is going thru a growth spurt and his sister is trying to catch back up with him and it's just not working! We go thru so much milk, peanut butter and ranch dressing I almost think we need to take stock in these to start getting our moneys worth or buy a cow. MOOOO!

At the baseball game this kid ate three hot dogs! He's always stuffing his face with food! He keeps asking me is it school days yet? Nope not yet...

Have a happy, fun and safe Fourth of July.

How are you celebrating the 4th of July?

Packing Turtles

We're going out of town this Fourth of July.  My buddy decided that he needs to pack his stuff to get ready to go. He snagged his bag from me. About one hour later this is what his stuff looked like. He was yelling MOM I am ready to go!! We still have a few days till we leave!

That's Leo on the top in the grocery bag. Raf and Leonardo are tangled together underneath him and they are sitting on top of the empty bag!! I guess clothes aren't important to a 5 year old, just his buddies!

What toy is your child's favorite?

Funnies For Friday!

TGIF! We made it! I hope everyone has had an awesome summer week and that your weather has been better than ours!

My kids have been kind of crabby this week.  I think maybe, just maybe I can blame it on the super moon we had this last Saturday & Sunday night!

Here's your funny for the week!

My husband really wanted some southern food. I made some black eye peas with our dinner. I asked my buddy if he wanted any and he says NO and then my oldest jumps in, "they like to sing and dance". I'm all what are you talking about? He's all "the Black Eyed Peas music group; like they're going to get up and boogie off your plate"!  "Dancing" peas still couldn't get my buddy to get any!

TGIF ~ Have a great sunny weekend!

Please share your kids' funnies!

Sunset

I feel like I have been missing for a few days!  This week has gone by so fast! Tonight the sun came out just before the day is over. Here's a few of my pictures I took.

This next one my buddy tells me the trees are glowing!

I love the pinks and oranges mixed together.

I love the beautiful sunsets here!  We've had quite the stormy weather here this last week.  It is quite depressing. Tuesday trying to get the car road trip ready we were driving from one tire store to another the rain surprised us out of no where and it started flooding the streets!  My hubby said if he didn't know better there would be a few tornados coming if we were still in the South.  There was a severe thunderstorm alert, but no tornados for our area.

I can't wait for the sunshine that the weatherman says is coming our way the next few days!  Mid 70's tomorrow, mid 80's for the weekend and come next week 90's!! I really hope the weatherman is right!  I need SUN after all it is summer!

Family Time

This past weekend we were able to spend some quality family time at a baseball game.  Who knew four kids and their two parents would have so much fun. My hubby got tickets from the Manager at work. Might I add in there Suit tickets with covered seating, hamburgers, hotdogs, soda, water, popcorn, peanuts, the WORKS!! 

This is Chenney Stadium in Tacoma Washington. (Not the big Safeco Field in Seattle!) We sat directly behind home plate.  The seats couldn't have been any better!

Here's the final score!  We almost lost but the Rainiers recovered and won the game!

Usually it is both teams that are walking by each other high fiving, but only the home team did. Kind of sad the Grizzlies didn't participate in this.

Everyone who knows my husband understands he is not a sports kind of guy.  He doesn't have a favorite baseball or football team.  He doesn't follow basketball or soccer.  After this game he thought it was fun and is ready to go see a Mariners game.  (I think I know what to get him for our anniversary!)

I have more pictures from the game. I will have another post or two this week with more pictures.  I'll tell you about the dog named Muck and other things...

What did you do this weekend?