Bring on the campin'

Memorial Day kicks off our camping season and we just booked our camping trip for that weekend! We'll be camping at Caesar Creek State Park for three nights Friday-Sunday. I like Caesar Creek the best out of the campgrounds that are close to us, because there isn't much around the campground ... once you're there, you're there to camp. (Well unless you're in the market for a junk and you like being around stinky people, then you can go spend time at the Caesar Creek flea market!) Anyone wanna join us?! The more the merrier! You'll have to book a site soon because they'll fill up very quickly. (Go here to begin your reservation or email me! We have site 242, the 'rents have site 241.)

I love my car and my car loves me

The longer I drive it, the more I love it! My car rocks. So happy I got it. I keep discovering cool things about it. For example, if I have the front wipers on, and I put the car in reverse, it turns the back wiper on automatically. How nice! It also turns the audio down a little bit when the car slows into first gear and stops. It turns it back up when it starts going again. Again, how nice!

Give me ideas ...

For the next two weekends the girls and I will be needing something to do! Mike has wrestling matches on both Friday nights and all day both Saturdays. What to do, what to do!

Easy peasy

I am all about things getting done quickly and easily. Give me an easy, quick way to get a mundane task done, and I'm all for it. I buy moist cleaning wipes just because it appears to be easier. Not having to actually spray the windex on the mirror to clean it seems to make the cleaning job more efficient. Just swipe a wipe. Easy. So anyway, I knew this trimmed and ready chicken from Tyson was for me. And it is. I plopped the chicken in a pan, presto bamo, it's done and dinner's on the table. Loved it. Want an easy chicken recipe? Here's one: thaw out a can of frozen lemonade. Grease up a medium sized baking dish (I think mine is 9X13). Pour a little of the lemonade into the pan so the bottom is covered. Lay the chicken (use breasts or cutlets) into the dish. Pour the rest of the lemonade on top. Cover with foil. Cook at 350 for 45 minutes. Take the foil off. Cook for another 10 minutes. Delicious! The lemon adds zest to the chicken. The girls eat it because I tell them it's fruity chicken.

Bad pictures or just not interested?

I'm confused, yet I have a theory. Etsy keeps a count of how many views a listing gets in my store. My current most popular item is the "Penmanship Pendant." It's gotten 198 views as of the writing of this post. (yet no one has bought it!) It's hard for resin pendants to be visible in Etsy, because the competition is fierce. Do a search for "resin pendants" - there are 2,655 listings! I'd like to think that my pendants are in their own little world, because they are different than most of the pendants out there. I was most excited two weeks ago when I made the sequin heart pendants. There weren't any sequin heart pendants on the site, and I thought that they'd be popular. But they're not! I think either people are too inundated with Valentine's related items on Etsy, OR, my pictures do not do the pendants justice, so people are not interested. The heart pendants are my all-time favorite of anything that I've ever made (and that is saying a lot). They sparkle and twinkle and are really unique. But they don't look that cool in the photos. Ho hum. Thoughts? Bad photos? Boring pendants? Not cool? Too many heart things on Etsy already?

Less talkie, more action

I have been following the news about the housing market interest rates for quite a while since we're going to be putting our house back on the market. Is it just me, or does it not seem like the government keeps talking about lowering the interest rate, but nothing happens? The federal reserve meets, I think they cut the rate, but then I don't hear much more about it. There's a story today here about how they're "probably" going to cut the rate again, which would mean that the prime lending rate would go from 6.5% to 6%. 6% is good, right? So if this happens will the housing rate improve? I'm confused! I thought that last time the rate was around 5-6% people went nuts refinancing their mortgages. I don't hear people going nuts. Enlighten me.

Wear RED on Friday!

This Friday, February 1, is the fifth anniversary of National Wear Red Day. It's the day to wear your favorite red clothes or accessory - a red blouse, a red dress pin, a fabulous red handbag - put on red lipstick, or sport a red tie and red socks. Go red in your own fashion to show your support for women and the fight against heart disease!

Disability awareness ad at the Superbowl

Watch for this Pepsi ad during the SuperBowl - it will be 60 seconds of silence. I think this is awesome.

Let's think warm thoughts

My car told me it was 11 degrees today. In an effort to think of happy warm days, I provide you with this picture:

She's still doing it

Lydia is still at it. No pullups this week. I. Can. Not. Believe. It.

Car companion

Lydia wanted to bring her doll into preschool today and I wouldn't let her because they're not supposed to bring in toys. So, as all good mommies would, she strapped her doll into her seat belt so she'd be safe all day. I had forgotten the doll was there and she gave me a quite fright when I went out for lunch. (this doll just freaks me out a little in general, I'm not sure why - I think it's the color of its skin, or maybe its eyes ...) I sent this picture to my mom's phone so Lydia could see it and Lydia kissed the phone and said "I miss you!" teehee :)

Engrave it baby!

My Engrave It came in the mail today! (I ordered it from Publishers Clearning House, how funny!) Now I can leave my mark on the pendants. I practiced tonight, and it seems to work pretty well. I wrote "Two Stars" on the back of two pendants and you could actually read it.

She did it!

WELL, just as I posted the "I've had it" post yesterday about potty training, Lydia DID it today! She wore big girl panties all day today, and got her Princess CD player tonight! Way to go Lydia! She seems to be into it now, tomorrow will tell if she keeps it up!


<------- What a cheezy grin, huh? teehee

Welcome, welcome!!

He's done it folks! Mike has a blog! http://cutshappening.blogspot.com/ He's been wanting to start a blog for awhile now and finally did it today in between waiting for parents to show up for parent/teacher conferences, haha! Way to go Mikey - looking forward to reading!

Too funny

During my lunch break I surf other people's blogs and I've come across this delightful blog called Dooce. She talks tough and you might not like her frankness or her language, but I do. She cracks me up. She has an entry today describing her family's adventures trying to leave the driveway for a road trip. Read it here. Before kids, Mike and I could leave to go anywhere and there was never a cross word between us. We'd get in the car and go. With kids, it's a totally different story. First there's the kids shoes to get on and a lot of "I wanna do it myself!" screaming and me losing my patience because "doing it myself" means that it takes 26 minutes! Then someone always forgets something or needs something and there's a few trips up and down the stairs looking for things, and then finally the kids are all ready with their coats and mittens and hats on, but then we realize that Mommy doesn't have her shoes on yet and can't locate her purse so she's tripping over everyone because they'll all READY and waiting impatiently by the door. Needless to say, I related to Dooce's post today.

I've had it

Lydia will never be potty trained. We've tried everything. We've tried bribing her with a toy. Worked one day. But then she had accident after accident. Took the toy back. She doesn't care. Bought her special new big girl panties. Gave her a big lecture about it, about her needing to be a big girl now because she's over three years old, blah, blah, blah. She doesn't care. She'll be fine for a few hours ... I'll constantly have to remind her to try to go to the bathroom ... she'll say she doesn't have to go ... three minutes after that, she's peed her pants. It goes like that every day. She's only gone ONE day without having any accidents. That's the day she got her toy. I think now that was just a fluke thing. I'm done, done I tell ya!!! She'll be the stinky kid going into kindergarten with a droopy size eight diaper on!!!

P.S. Need I remind you that Arlene has been potty trained since October.

I need a table cloth

I have an old table with a bad cracked melamine top, so I keep a table cloth on it all the time. Since I have toddlers, the table cloth needs to be vinyl and a color other than white. Right now we have a very bright, very hokey Valentine's Day table cloth on the table. I'm sick of it already. I need to find a nice, cool, hip, modern, matching table cloth. Size "oblong, 52X70" or I could do 52X90 and cut it to size. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. The only table cloths I can find are granny looking with stupid flowers. I don't want flowers. Or I find gaudy ones that don't match. My table is white, my walls are light purple. Help me!

It may be that time again

Well, I've been thinking that it's time again to re-list our house. Remember our attempt last year? Refresh yourself here. The trouble is that the market isn't much better than it was last year. I'm not that anxious to put it back on the market ... I've enjoyed allowing a layer of dust to settle. We'll probably complete a couple of cosmetic projects before we put it on the market. I've been wanting forEVER to replace the carpets ... we need to price that out to see how much it would cost. I'm also thinking about painting our basement ... it's got wood panelling on the walls now. I'm thinking those projects would make the house more marketable. The goal (we think) is to get it on the market at the beginning of March ... and cross our fingers, toes, and eyes that it has some action and gets sold. What we won't be doing this year is tying ourselves into a builder while we're trying to sell ... last year while our house was on the market we had our sights set on a builder and were making plans to get that house built, but it all hinged on the sale of our house. Which made it stressful and put all sorts of timelines on us. So ... this year, we'll just take it in steps. Listing our house. It sells (before October!) Building a new house!

Busy beading

Tonight I did some beading projects ...

A name bracelet for a friend of a friend.

A watch for my mom made out of garnet stones. Pretty!

A bracelet for me!

A cell phone charm, how cute! That's a Petoskey stone bead at the end. The downer is that my phone doesn't have a hook for it so I can't use it. Drat!

Crowded Zzzzz's

Lately, the girls won't go to sleep unless they have at least six stuffed animals or dolls or books in bed with them. Their toddler beds are not that big, but they insist on having extra "friends" with them! (These pics are so sweet aren't they? tee hee)

Self portraits

The girls made these at their art class this past Friday. How funny! Arlene's on the right, Lydia the left.

Quite successful, yes indeedy!

I am one happy Etsian, I must tell you! I've made SIX pendant sales in the past 10 days! Whoooeee! I got a custom order too ... a woman who owns a boutique shop in Quincy, Ill. is having me make a pendant with an image of the Quincy water tower! It is so cool! She said she might be interested in having me make more to stock her shop! Holy cow that would be super cool! I've had two pendant sales to gals in the UK. There are surprisingly a bunch of Brits shopping around on Etsy. Which makes me wonder if us American gals are known for our crafts or what. Because there aren't a lot of Brittish sellers on Etsy, but a lot of buyers. Hmmm ... maybe the Brits sit around drinking tea saying to themselves, "Whilst we drink our tea, let's go to Etsy and check out those American girls and their bounty of crafts." Well, I guess if they were Brittish pirates, they'd say "bounty." The COOLEST (yes, that's three 'cools' in one blog post, I know!) word that I am going to try my best to use in everyday conversation is "pressie" as in "present." This one Brit girl wanted my "Crafty Defined" pendant for a friend. She wrote to me and wanted to know if I wrapped the pendants, and I told her I could if she wanted me to. She wrote this: "Hi Wendy, I've finally got round to buying my friends pressie! Thanks very much for all your help with the packing, etc, I've found some suitable papers and a box now, thank you anyway! The pendant really is lovely, I hope she'll like it as much as I do!" I mean really, it does not get any better than that!


*I thought the smiles on those dolls were funny. Yes, they're for sale on Etsy.

Mother Dearest!

Lydia has started this new thing where she's calling me "Mother" - it FREAKS me out! The first time she did it I thought it was just a passing thing, but no, she keeps doing it. I'll ask her to do something, and she'll say, "Yes Mother ..." in this dejected tone. Hearing it makes me feel like an old bat. I don't know where she heard that! Probably TV! Speaking of which, I'm about ready to ban all TV in our house. Tonight, Arlene called Lydia a "dummy." She said it with such brute force like she KNEW it was a bad thing to say. I made her apologize and then I gave them both a lecture about how they are to NEVER call people names because that hurts people's feelings. I tried getting it out of them who they heard that name from. First they said Daddy said it, but I didn't believe them. (If he did, I'll kill him!) Then they're telling me that Arthur says it. (From the PBS show Arthur.) I didn't really believe that either. Then they're telling me "boys" said it. What boys? They are rarely around any boys. At this point they're just grasping at straws trying to tell me what I want to hear! I'm blaming TV! I told them that dummy was a bad swear word and that they weren't allowed to use it anymore. They know that swear words are bad, because they'll ask me, "is dangit a bad word?" and I'll say "no, you can say dangit if you really have to," or they'll say, "is shoot a bad word?" and I'll say, "no, you can say shoot if you want." I'm hoping "dummy" falls into that category and that they'll know they have to ASK first before they can use it, to which the answer will be NO! Or hopefully this is just a phase and it'll pass!

Being sick sucks

The girls and I traveled north for a very delightful visit with Amber this past weekend. All was fine and dandy, we had an awesome visit, until I woke up Sunday morning and puked! What the heck! I can't even remember the last time I puked - I think it was the morning after my 21st birthday! Ug. I've puked a few more times and ran a fever since Sunday morning. I have basically been in bed since then. I've finally resurfaced into the land of the living this evening (on Tuesday). Feels good to be back, but weird that I was so out of it.

The business of TV

Okay, this really bothers me. I'm not even sure why. These two gals were on the show The Apprentice. Ereka (on the left), was on season one of the Apprentice, which I watched religiously (I was pregnant at the time and didn't do a whole lot other than lay on the couch, ha!) Ereka is now the host of HGTV's "KidSpace" - a design show about redesigning a kids' room to meet their "growing needs." How do you go from trying to be The Donald's second-hand woman, to painting walls on TV? I don't get it. She's kind of a bad host, too.

WORSE!!! This other gal, Kendra, (on the right) actually WON the Apprentice! She was the first woman to win the show. And now she's hosting the HGTV show "My House Is Worth What?" And she's not a very good host either!!!

I thought that the whole point of being on the Apprentice was to BE The Donald's apprentice? I admit I figured that the winners wouldn't actually work with him, but I guess I didn't figure that they'd be on home improvement TV shows!! It just seems wrong or something!

I apologize ...

I apologize, dear blog readers, for my lack of posts this week! It's been an insanely busy week at work and at home. Stay tuned, I'll post more when things calm down ...

Cheers 'n Jeers

Cheers

* 60 degree days in January!
* Seeing the sun after countless dreary days!
* My first Etsy sale of 2008! YAY!
* To a clean, organized office! (I cleaned my office Friday and forgot about it until I walked in this morning. What a nice surprise!)

Jeers
* Toddlers who constantly have drippy noses!
* Coffee that tastes like motor oil, especially on a Monday morning when coffee is N-E-E-D-E-D to function! (my co-workers make awfully strong coffee!!!)
* To forgetting my lunch today, and not having a car because it's getting fixed. I might starve.
* Bra staps that just WILL NOT stay put! (Sorry male readers, but really, this is quite annoying. Something you'll never understand!!!!!)

There are lots of exclamation points in this post!!!!!!

EEEEE or eeee

I feel quite foolish. For the past FOREVER, I've been saying "Etsy" with a long hard EEEEE. As in EEEEEtsy. Well, yesterday, I was watching videos on Etsy, and the workers at Etsy pronounce the site "ETsy" as in the way you say the "et" in the word "get." ETsy. What the hay! I mean I guess they are saying it correctly, since they work there and all, but it sounded so WEIRD. That's not how I had been saying it. I just always thought that it was EEEEtsy. I tell people, "I have an EEEtsy shop, yay!" I can't bring myself to say it the correct way. It sounds foreign. The word makes no sense anyway so I can say it how I want, right?! Right. I'm sticking with that.

Who's your candidate?

Take this quiz!

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/page?id=3623346

There's also a ton of candidate information on the site. It's pretty cool actually.

The "Match-o-matic" paired me with Edwards.

My new favorite word

We watched Super Nanny last night ... we couldn't help ourselves, it was a train wreck. I absolutely love the way Nanny Jo talks. I wish that I had a super dysfunctional family just so she could come into my house and talk to me. My favorite word of hers is "whilst." "Whilst you are busy watching TV, the children are misbehaving!" Precious. I'm going to try to use "whilst" in my every day speech. (I already used it in a previous blog post!)