Motivation

The books that I read this year

Below is a screenshot I took (and cropped and then Photoshopped together) from GoodReads. These are all the books I read this year. Only 40 but far better then none.

WWW Wednesdays

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

My answers...

• Currently, I'm not reading anything. I'm busy getting ready for Christmas and had to tell myself no more reading until I'm done.


• Last week I read Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly series. If you are a fan of the Sookie Stackhouse series you NEED to check these out.


• Next I'll be reading Explosive Eighteen  by Janet Evanovich

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read


• Open to a random page


• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page


• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)


• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 

“I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book.”

Charlaine Harris Grave Sight

Time out jar

So unless you're Super Nanny, I think, we can agree that disciplining our children is hard. I saw this on pinterest, I say that a lot these days.



This is a jar to use during time outs. It is filled with water (that I dyed with my gel food color), glue, and glitter (ours has a ton of glitter in it because Emerson kept asking for more colors.)



The idea is that you or your child shake it up



and then watch the glitter settle back down to the bottom.



It is mesmerizing and soothing. Now I just need to remember to use it.

Menu Plan Monday

Sunday - french toast

Monday - hamburgers

Tuesday - baked potato and cheese broccoli soup

Wednesday - chicken roll ups

Thursday - pizza

Friday - chicken wings

Saturday - Steak, baked potatoes, salad

Sunday - Christmas dinner at Meme's house

Calzone

I saw this on pinterest and tried it out. It was so good!! I forgot how much I love my pizza dough recipe.

I used my pizza dough recipe for my bread maker

• warm water - recipe calls for 3/4 cups, I use 1 cup


• oil - recipe calls for 1 tbsp, I use 2 tbsps


• sugar 1 tbsp


• salt 1 1/2 tsp


• dry milk 1 tbsp


• flour 2 1/4 cups, recipe calls for bread flour but I prefer to use all purpose for my pizza dough, I just like the way the crusts tastes with it


• active dry yeast 1 tsp

After that was done I rolled it out on my stoneware cookie sheet. In the middle I brushed on some pizza sauce, I usually make my own but I cheated and used the Great Value brand pizza sauce, it's pretty good. Then laid out the pepperonis and a thin layer of cheese. I've learned that cheese goes a long way on a pizza if you put it on too thick it will over power the pizza.

Cook at 425, for about 20 minutes it took me longer because I was using a stoneware.

When I was cooking it i was worried that it was going to be weird and flat looking, it puffed up a little during baking but it was still more flat then round.

Elf on the Shelf Days 5 - 11

Day 5 Jangle helped the kids out and put the lights on the little tree for them.



Day 6- Jangle read Twas the Night Before Christmas with Bitty Baby



Day 7 - Jangle got into the pantry and got stuck in the raisins.



Day 8 -Jangle popped some popcorn, found a friend - Ethan's Christmas dog, and got out a Christmas movie for the kids. They didn't pay a lick of attention to the movie and after eating 3/4 of the popcorn they threw the rest on the floor. I was pretty disappointed in that behavior, I'm sure Santa got an earful that night.



Day 9 - Jangle and his friend, the Christmas dog, were found playing in our new glasses.



Day 10 -Jangle brought the kids some Christmas books.



Day 11 - The kids messed with him so much the previous day that I hid him, I'm mean like that. I told them that they must have touched him too much and that he needed some extra time in the North Pole to recharge his magic. (If you aren't in on the elf on the shelf info, in the book it tells the children not to touch him because he will lose his magic)

Day 12 - Jangle was back and up on our fan. Note to self: dust fan, oops. Jangle was a little dirty after this.



Day 13 - Jangle turned the toilet water green. No pictures of that because, well, I wait to take pictures until the kids find him and, well, certain events had already taken place in the toilet. So it was kind of eww.

O Christmas Tree

After Ethan finished with school I told them they could decorate the miniature tree. They had previously put a handful of ornaments on the tree and they carefully removed them because Ethan decided that they needed to put lights on the tree. That's about as far as they got because Ethan was upset that it couldn't be perfect. My poor boy and his obsession with perfection. :( I told him they don't need to be perfect, the other trees aren't perfect. To which he replied, yes they are. Which I don't think they are, but I grew up with a mother that was a perfectionist who put over 800 white lights on the tree and all the lights poked up like little candles. Now that was perfect, you needed sunglasses to look at it, but it was spectacular.

Elf on the Shelf Days 1 - 4

Jangle, our Elf on the Shelf appeared at our house on December 2nd. He showed up sitting in our Christmas tree with a little note for Ethan and Emerson.



December 3rd, Jangle got into our stash of marshmallows and made himself a chair



On the 4th, he got into our shopping bag and dragged out Ethan's Sugar Babies. When Ethan woke up and saw him he got pissed and grabbed his candy up and threw Jangle down onto the floor. Over reaction - TOTALLY! He is sick and hasn't been sleeping well so he's been leaning toward irrationality lately. This picture is a recreation with my milk duds.



 

On the 5th, Jangle had a visit from his brother Jingle and they played a game of tic tac toe on my mirror that is above the mantle.

A very eventful day

The day of Ethan's Super Bowl(they didn't win) was pretty eventful for Ethan.  He almost poked his eye out tripping at Oshkosh and then lost his first tooth.

We went into Oshkosh to get Emerson a jacket, she didn't want one (although she did end up getting one) so I asked Ethan to go and look at clothes. He went over to the boys side of the store but wasn't exactly happy about it. He was mopping and pouting and ended up tripping and slamming his face into a metal hook protruding from the wall. It caught him at his cheek and went up to his eyebrow. Thank goodness for the body's reaction to squint or he would have had a very different ending.

When we're out at the outlet there aren't very many places to eat so we usually stop at the IHop. He was eatting his pancakes and stopped and with a very weird expression on his face said "I think my tooth's ready to come out" He opened his mouth and he was right his tooth was ready cause it was just laying there. It has been about 3 weeks and his adult tooth is starting to come in. His baby tooth next to it is now loose. I guess it's time to look into how much the tooth fairy leaves for second teeth.

Elf on the Shelf Days 1 - 4

2012 Book Challenges

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

All of our ornaments freed from their Rubbermaid totes waiting to be put on our big tree and medium sized tree.

I was determined to get a prelit tree this year, then I saw the price of the one I wanted and decided to buy 8 boxes of lights for 1/5 of the price. I was even more pleased with my thrifty decision making when I got out our medium sized tree and remembered that it was a prelit tree and that the lights worked on it for precisely one Christmas, and one Christmas only. I spent the good part of our evening and about an hour the next day removing the lights from the tree and replacing them.

I apparently don't have a picture of our big tree in it's finished state but here are the two trees that are done. We have a miniature tree to decorate tomorrow.