Baby Jesus is coming to our house

As my child gets older and develops more of his own personality, he comes out with more and more funny sayings. I have decided to try and start posting at least once a week, a list of Daniel-isms and funny anecdotes for the enjoyment of others. He keeps us in stitches as I am sure he will you.

1. Watching the Grinch movie, for the third time this year, on Christmas Eve, the cat made a noise in Daniel's room. He proceeded to shout, "OH!!! I HEAR HIM! SANTA! HE'S ON THE ROOF! HE'S HERE! HE'S HERE!!!" We explained to him that he must be visiting someone else in our apartment building because Santa does not come until you are asleep. He proceeded to look at us with a very serious face and replied, "Yeah. He KNOWS when you are sleeping. He KNOWS when you're awake."

2. When we were outside throwing out the reindeer food, our neighbors windchime started chiming. Once again we heard, "IT'S SANTA!!! HE'S HERE! I HEARD HIS SLEIGH BELLS! HE'S HERE." Oh to be that young and exicted again.

3. Over the past few days we had been trying to think of something for Daniel to call Jeff's mom as he has always referred to her as "Jeff's Mom." After much debate and deciding NOT to use G2, short for Granny 2 or G2 with an attitude, we decided on Gigi. Jeff started talking ot Daniel about how Brian, Emily and Gigi were coming to see us on Saturday. I told him that he needed to explain to Daniel who Gigi was, but he never did. As I was putting Daniel in bed on Friday night he was talking about waht we were goign to do the next day and reminded me that, "Brian, Emily and Baby Jesus were coming to see him. " LMAO!!!! He had thought Jeff was saying Jesus when he was saying Gigi. He knows that the Nativity scene at Christmas has Baby Jesus in it, and I guess he thought that since it was Christmas, Baby Jesus was coming to see him.

4. We had just gotten done playing Cranium Saturday night and Daniel was playing with his play doh. He came running into the living room and said, "Hey you know what I just made? I just made a whole bunch of funny shiiii (insert long pause here) ps." We all thought he was about to say something else! We were all looking at each other, and when he finally came out with ships we about fell in the floor laughing.

Back from the abyss...kind of

Back to work today. YUCK. But only for 2 days and then I will have 2 more days off. YIPPEE! I really enjoyed having so much time off last week. Gave me a chance to recharge my batteries so to speak.

Daniel had a blast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Every noise he heard was Santa on the roof. It was fun to get to experience the joy of Christmas through a child's eyes this year. I think so much of that is lost as we get older and get caught up in the materialisticness (is that a word? If not it is now!) of Christmas. We attended a Christmas Eve service with our friends. It was a very nice service with a candle light ending. Reminded me a lot of the service at my old church at home. One of the men in the church sang Mary Did You Know which is one of my all time favorite Christmas songs. It always brings tears to my eyes.

Surprisingly Daniel was not up at the crack of dawn on Christmas, but he did come racing into our room once he got up. We opened all of our gifts and let him play while we made breakfast.

It was a very nice holiday overall. It was nice to stay here and not have to run around from house to house either, but we did miss our families. Jeff's mom, brother and my sister in law Em, all came up and visited on Saturday. We had a blast playing cranium together. Even if my teammate did quit on me. (Daniel) He even got a question right before he quit! The question was the definition of hirsute and he said hairy which was the correct answer and not what I would have guessed. Smart kid! LOL.

I may be a little scarce again this week but after the first of the year I will be back full speed ahead I promise. I have even got a few posts already planned.

In the meantime here are a few pics to keep you amused.

Showing off the pj's and robe that Santa's Elves left to be opened on Christmas Eve.

The elusive Mommysaurus. Always behind the camera, never in front of it.

Throwing out the reindeer food to help the reindeer find our house and to make sure they had a snack when they got here.

Luna helped put the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve.

But she could not wait until Christmas morning to open the gifts.

Opening his stocking.

And the presents.

The aftermath.

The joy of going downstairs and finding out Santa had left one more present.

Fighting with his lightsabers.

Playing with the stickers he got in his stocking. That is where they are supposed to go right?

The stress of the holidays wore them out. They had to watch a movie together on the couch.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!

Little bit of a break

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. I will be hit or miss on here for the next few days. Spending as much time as possible enjoying my 5 days off work. I will be checking in some just not as much as normal. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!

WOOHOO! 100 posts!!

A guy in our corporate office sent this to me today. I LOVE it. Thought it was fitting for my 100th post.

Daniel meets Santa

Daniel met Santa for the first time (that he remembers anyway) yesterday. His eyes were as big as dinner plates! He was pretty hesitant at first, but he finally told Santa that he wanted a nutcracker (?) and a Kota the Dinosaur. He does not want much. Just a $300 dinosaur that would take up his whole room! Maybe he won't be disappointed with a bike.

Only 9.5 hours of work left this week. THANK GOD!!!!! I am counting down the hours. (As if you could not tell.) I need a break and these next few days are going to be heavenly. It will make work that much harder once the New Year is over but it will be worth it for my peace of mind.

My Christmas present getting is done as of Saturday. The stockings are all taken care of as well. I even have all of Daniel's presents wrapped! This will be the first year that I do not spend Christmas Eve frantically wrapping presents. Even when I did not have Daniel I was in charge of wrapping my Dad's and sisters stuff. I

still have a few presents for the extended family to wrap/procure but I will take care of the wrapping in the next day or so, and the few other gifts we do need to get can wait until after Christmas. We won't be seeing those people until later in January.

Now if 5pm tomorrow would just hurry up and get here......

My first tag!!!!

Jessica at Don't Give Him Crackers tagged me for a picture meme.

These are the rules:

Go to the 6th picture folder in your documents.*Find the 6th picture in your 6th folder.*Pray that you remember what it is about.*Blog about it.*Tag 6 people to do the same.

I cheated a little bit as the 6th picture was REALLY blurry so this is the next one.

Jeff's mom got him and his brother a tandem jump skydiving lesson for Christmas last year. They finally got to do it in August when we went back to AL. Jeff said that after a few seconds of the free fall it REALLY hurt because his whole face was being pushed back.

I tag:

1. Lisa

2. Liz

3. Bobbi

4. Heather

5. MJ

6. Mrs. B

The green monster is gone!

Whatever bug crawled inside me the past few days is thankfully gone. I do not know why I was so cranky. Must be hormones.

Daniel ended up having a blast last night since he was the only kid. Everyone spoiled him!

My boss sent me a text yesterday and supposedly we will be getting our bonus on Monday. I sure hope so. It would come in handy.

I spent all day today tying up loose Christmas ends, and I think I have everything I need now. I found Daniel a Lightning McQueen bike on sale for $49 which will be his big gift from Santa. I have started the wrapping process but that may take a few days to get done. Although Santa's Elves dropped off a present for each of us today that has special instructions to be opened on Christmas Eve. (PJ's for all of us to wear so we have decent looking clothes on for early morning pictures.) Daniel helped me make some Candy Canes out of pipe cleaners and we hung htose on a tree I made for him out of leftover evergreen pieces. I am going to replace the fake candy canes with real ones after he goes to bed on Christmas Eve. The "magic" of Christmas.

Thanks for all the kind words after my post yesterday. It made me feel a lot better. Hopefuly the grinch will stay gone!

I have officially become the grinch

Starting Wednesday this week has really gone down hill fast.

The clients are mad because we could not work Monday and Tuesday. I am sorry but putting my employees lives at risk on icy roads is just not going to happen! So we have been behind for the past 2 days with clients jumping down my throat about why this has or has not been done.

We usually get our Christmas bonus checks with the last paycheck before Christmas. There was not one. None of the bosses in our corporate office will confirm if we are getting one or not. If I do not get it in enough time to use it for Christmas what freaking good is it!?

I have really been looking forward to our office Christmas party (tonight) all week. Kind of as a way to destress and get to spend some adult time. Now my babysitter has canceled on me. Wanted to know if I could not find someone else as she feels "slightly under the weather." HELLO IT IS 1:30 THE DAY OF THE PARTY AND I KNOW ALL OF 4 PEOPLE IN THIS STATE!!!!

I have been in a rotten mood for the past 3 days and I can't seem to shake it. All I want to do is curl up in bed and cry, but I have too many responsibilities/things to do to even be able to do that.

Free 8x10

Walgreen's is offering their free 8x10 again. Simply use the code FREEGIFT at checkout. There is no purchase necessary! These make great Christmas gifts!

Swords/daggers anyone interested?

All reasonable offers considered.

An Update on Shampoo-less

I posted this a week or so ago.

Thought I would share how things are going for me now.

I have finally found the magic mixture that works for me. 3 heaping spoonfuls of baking soda mixed with a little bit of water so that it turns into a soupy paste. Then I rub it in really good and then take a comb and comb through my hair. I have done that for the past 2 mornings and have had wonderful results.

I have not needed to use the vinegar rinse either. I think the tea tree oil in the rinse was what was making my hair look greasy. I have not been able to skip any days yet without my hair looking greasy but maybe now that I have found my magic amount it will be soon in coming.

My face has cleared up quite a bit around my hairline. I was hoping that would happen! Not sure if that is from me not using shampoo or from me using baking soda on my face as well. I am still not entirely acne free but my breakouts this past week have not been as bad as they were.

I am very happy with my results so far! I can't say it has not been tempting to use some of my old left over shampoo when I could not get the greasies to go away, but I stuck it out and I am glad I did!

A whirlwind of creations

Wow this past weekend was BUSY! But I had a blast!

Daniel very much enjoyed having friends over to make and decorate Christmas cookies.

He looks so cute with his new "I look like Jeff" haircut! No more bowl for him!

He had to try the cookies of course!

As did Hoss.

They were both hard at work.

Then I made up a few batches of sugar scrub from a recipe I got over at Rightmyerrants. This stuff is AMAZING! Although Jeff's feelings are hurt because I said this was my new favorite thing to have in the shower with me. I found the cute containers at the Dollar Store. I am going to add some ribbon and a tag and these will be ready to go.

Liz went with me to Lowe's and I picked up some free tree trimmings to make wreaths with. Needless to say they did not look to hot. So I made garland instead. The wreaths did make amusing hats though.

Now our apt entrance way smells like Christmas not the usual funk it has!

Then I got one of the stockings made.

So as you can see I had a pretty busy weekend. We also went and used the gift card Jeff won to Best Buy and got his mom, his brother and my sister in law's gifts (DVD Player and 2 $25 gift cards) as well as the new Batman movie for Daniel. We spent $4 out of pocket for that stuff! Then on to Bath and Body Works to pick up a few things that I used my $25 gift card I got from my rewards debit card.

It was a very busy but very productive weekend!

A cool Illusion

HEHEHE I have had fun stumbling today at work. This was cool.

Easy Christmas Stocking

Found a link to make an easy Christmas Stocking! I even know how to do the stitch already! (Thanks Lisa) I am going to give these a shot this weekend since we do not have our old stockings.

A reason NOT to eat McDonald's

I have never been a huge fan of McDonalds, but sometimes will grab a cheap dollar cheesburger.

Not anymore!

Go here and see why. That is just weird/gross/nasty!

Hot Chocolate Mix Recipe

I have had several people ask me for the recipe for hot chocolate mix. So here it is:

1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 sups sugar
3 cups powdered milk
Dash of salt

Combine ingredients and it is ready to be used!

I put mine in a mason jar layered with marshmallows. Then I am going to add a mug to the gift as well.

Make sure to send directions with the gift. I foud 2-3tbsp depending on your tastes works great as long as it is a NORMAL size mug, not one of those mugs that you can fit like a whole pot of coffee in.

Found a wonderful new site

Messing around online this morning and found this site. I am signed up to try out their Vintage Valentine Swap. Sounds fun! If you like getting things in the mail you might want to try it out.

Shampoo-less

I have been reading since I was in high school, about using baking soda as shampoo. I have never gotten up the nerve to actually try it though, until last week.

I have recently begun trying to limit the impact that I personally have on the environment, as well as trying to reduce my expenses. Trying this does both. Granted it does not have that much of an impact, as my husband and son still use shampoo, and their bottles will go in the garbage, but I do not want to force them to try/live the way I do. Who knows maybe Jeff will eventually try it.

What do most people pay for shampoo and conditioner? Somewhere between $1 to $10 depending on what brand and where you buy it. (Unless you do the CVS'ing and Rite Aiding etc and can get it for next to nothing) What do you pay for a box of baking soda? Between .50 and $1.50. If you want to add a conditioner of apple cider vinegar, that only costs about $3. So I can wash and condition my hair for a grand total of $4 for several months, as opposed to roughly $10 every month or so.

Now for how it is working for me so far. I read this post last week and then this one, and the one that answered the most of my questions, this one. After reading these, I thought, why not? I can at least try it.

So I whipped up a mixture of 1tbsp baking soda and a cup of warm water and a tsp of honey. I put all that in an empty conditioner bottle and shook it up really well. I hopped in the shower and proceeded to squirt some on my wet head. I was fairly impressed with the results once I got out. My hair did not feel yucky or dry!

The next day I grabbed some tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar on my way home. I mixed a cup of the vinegar with a few drops of the tea tree oil to use as my conditioner. When I washed my hair that night I added the vinegar rinse. I was disappointed to see that my hair looked a little greasy once it was dry. I had read that you can go through a "detox" phase but was hoping that I was going to be one of the few who did not. That was not to happen though.

For the next few days I continued to stay with my routine and did not stray even though I was not 100% happy with the results. I wanted to give it a good try before giving up. I did some more research and decided to try making a past out of the baking soda instead of using a cup of water. and left out the honey (adds extra moisture). A lot of people said that seemed to work better for shorter hair. They seemed to be right! I tried it before meeting Jessica for lunch. My hair still seemed to be a little greasier than I would have liked, but was a lot better than it had been during the week.

Then I decided to cut back on the "conditioner." Several of the blogs and articles I had read said that a lot of the time you do not need to use it every day. Looks like they were right too. I tried not using the rinse this morning, and was pleased with the results. It was not greasy looking at all this morning and it still felt nice and soft.

I am hoping that eliminating all the chemicals in the shampoo and conditioner I was using, that it will help clear up the breakouts on my face as well. There has been evidence to show that sometimes the chemicals can cause hairline acne as well as acne on the back, shoulders, and arms from the shampoo and conditioner being rinsed out and coming into contact with these areas.

This may not be for everyone, but I for one am happy with the results. I will continue to play with the "doses" and see what works best for me.

Weekend projects

It has been a BUSY weekend. But it has been fun.

The snow put a bit of a damper on my spirit, but it didn't keep me from doing what I wanted too. (And let me delay on going to the laundromat to wash clothes.)

Saturday was a wonderful day! Thanks so much for lunch Jessica! I will be moving into Joseph Beth next weekend. If anyone needs me, I will be there.

AWESOME STORE! Bronte was really good too. Good company was the best part though.

Girls lunch. Have not done that in ummmm 9 months!

Then home to pick up my neighbor and go to the grocery store. Then I went to Lisa's and enjoyed her and Liz's company. I had a blast sitting around talking with them! And Lisa made me an awesome Christmas present. Seems like everytime I leave there I come home with a TON more stuff. She gave me some cocoa butter that I came home and made some moisturizer and lip balm with. And some yummy oils.

Today was spent playing in the snow this morning. Then I started cleaning the apartment. Once that was done I pulled out the crafts.

I made wreaths out of old scratched CD's.

Then I made 2 batches of homemade hot chocolate and marshmallow mix for Christmas gifts.

I still have to put the ribbons and recipe cards on them but they are almost done.

Then I restrung 2 necklaces on the better wire Lisa gave me ages ago.

It is time to go relax for a while.

Here are a few more pics of things I did this weekend for your enjoyment.

My apartment door.

The lovely piece that Lisa gave me is now on top of our entertainment center.

The Urkel Twins

I am speechless!

Some kind of wonderful

You know all that stuff that your DH does that gets on your nerves and makes you want to scream?



You don't?



OK then you have THE perfect marriage.



If you are like me, and know what I am talking about, isn't it just amazing how they can do one little unexpected thing, and make all the crankiness go away?



Like last night for instance. I have been pretty cranky here lately. Combination of the stress from work, holidays, little sleep, and all the other things just adding up I suppose. I came home and decided to do leftovers for dinner, so I could sit down and relax for a little while. Jeff normally does the dishes and fixes us a lunch for the next day before joining me in the living room. It took him a little longer than normal last night, but I figured that was because we had quite a bit of dishes. Imagine my surprise when I went to the kitchen after he had finally sat down, and he had scrubbed the kitchen completely clean, put everything up where it went, and it looked AMAZING!!!!



He got a big old kiss for that one!

Free $10 Restaurant.com gift certificate

Feed it Forward will donate$30 million in free restaurant.com gift certificates over the next 30 days. All you have to do is visit the link above and enter three names and email addresses of people you would like them to go too. The cool thing is you can do it once every day! All of those people who you would not be able to do something for, can now receive a small (free to you) gift!

Barter/Trade/Items needed

I am looking for any kind of craft supplies: yarn, fabric, doodads etc. Also looking for item to make home made soaps and the like. Need essential oils, cocoa butter, herbs, etc. Anyone have any thing they would like to barter/gift/sell very cheaply? Also can use old clothes to be repurposed. If you wouldl ike to help email me at ntrantham at unitedautorecovery dot com

I WON!!!!!!!!!!

Chevron is giving away $5 Chevron gas cards. Go here to enter to win.

I defied the odds today and actually won something! I NEVER win. My hard work has paid off! Ok maybe not hard, but I can type my name, address, birthdate etc REALLY fast.


NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY TO PLAY THIS GAME. Game ends at 11:59:59 pm CST on 12/31/08. Open ONLY to legal residents of AL, AK, AZ, CA, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, KY, LA, MD, MS, NV, NM, NC, OH, OR, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA and WV, 18 years of age or older. Void outside the above states and where prohibited.

Jewelry giveaway

Head over here and check out her December giveaway. She makes gorgeous jewelry...then gives it away!

I am hoping that maybe by continuing to enter giveaways I can maybe change my luck and actually win something one day!

$100 Wal Mart gift card giveaway

Go check out The Centsible Sawyer's blog giveaway. She is giving away a $100 Wal Mart gift card. Who couldn't use one of those right now?

Easy Potato Soup

Cold? Hungry? Want something quick and easy for dinner? Then I have the recipe for you!

Put some water in a big pot. (How much depends on the size of your family and how much they eat)

Heat water to boiling.

Add instant mashed potato flakes. The amount will depend on how much water you used. You want the mixture to be soupy. The way I do it is add a little at a time because it will thicken. You want it to be a little thicker than you really want it to be. Then add some milk to the desired consistency.

Now comes the fun part:

Take whatever leftover veggies you have and add them to the soup. Whatever sounds good. If you do not have any leftovers just throw in a couple of cans of stuff. I used leftovers and a few cans of veggies.

Here is what I used in mine tonight: leftover mashed potatos (there were not very many), leftover lima beans, leftover green peas. Then I added a can of mushroom slices, a can of mixed veggies, a can of corn, and a handfull of shredded cheddar cheese. I also chopped some onions and added them. Then I added a generous amount of smoked garlic from these guys, some dried basil, and salt. You will want to add at least some salt as the soup will be souper bland without it (sorry could not resist the bad pun). I threw in some butter and let it simmer until the biscuits were done.

This recipe is really open for whatever you want to add. There are no set guidelines. It is an easy meal, that can be used to clean out the fridge, and is ready in a matter of minutes.

Here is the recipe for the biscuits I made. This was my first time making these and they turned out pretty tasty, and were pretty easy to make