Day 18: Whatever tickles your fancy

Ahhhhhhh!! I'm so glad that I get a free day today! To be honest, the 30 Days of Me is starting to get a bit much!  I start looking forward to these days! I get to talk about all the things that I have been going "Oh! I should blog about that!!" There have been contests that I couldn't exactly enter because I didn't really want to stray TOO far from this! It's okay tho. There will be more contests to enter at other dates. :-)

For my "fancy" today, I want to talk about some GREAT blogs that I follow! I read a lot of blogs. I used to not! I used to read only my Moms blog. She was the only one that I cared enough to read. Then it branched out to some random ones I found by hitting "Next blog" on the top of my blog. I've lost touch with most of those people, but I still read my Moms blog when she actually gets around to writing.

Lately, I've been reading a bevy of military blogs. I'm not going to play favorites, so I'm just going to name a couple that are closest to me by distance. Nicole over at Flip Flops and Combat Boots is such a sweetheart! She just recently got married. She does some giveaways, some recipes, and she did a Summer Essentials Swap! I signed up for it, and my partner is from Lexington! Lexington is one of my 3 favorite places in Kentucky. The Kentucky Horse Park is there! That is like my heaven right there! I have some ideas of what I want to send to my swap partner, but nothing concrete yet. Another local lady that I have grown to love is Katie! Now, she has TWO blogs! She just recently got engaged, so, she started another blog to keep up with all of the wedding prep. She is also another awesome local blogger! I hope to get an invite to Katies' wedding, just so I can blow bubbles as they walk out of the church. Does it matter if I'm the only one blowing bubbles? No! I just want to blow bubbles! *giggle* (Just kidding Katie!! ;-) )

I also have a bit of a crafty streak in me. So, I like to read about different crafts. I especially like the ones that give DIY home crafts. I think my favorite of all of the crafty blogs is Design*Sponge! They have some of the MOST awesome things on their blogs. Be warned though. Do NOT click the link if you don't have an hour to burn just reading through all of the awesome projects and whatnot! Another one that I just recently found that I fell IN LOVE (like head over heels!) with is Positively Splendid. Oh my GOSH! I love this site! If I could marry it, I would give it my wedding ring right now! On my Google Reader, I have a tag for Recipes, Stuff I want, and Stuff to make. Just about every single post at PS has the Stuff to make tag on it! (Yes, I'm serious!) She makes me wish that I could be more creative and that I knew more creative bloggers so I could come up with the awesomeness that's on her site. My favorite sewing blog is by leaps and bounds LittleBlueBoo! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LBB! She makes the absolute cutest clothes!!! They make my heart do little flutters and then it sort of sinks a little bit because I know that I'm not as creative as her. That doesn't mean that I don't love her blog any less!! She does sell her creations and patterns, and one of these days, I will get enough gumption to actually buy one and try to do something awesome like she does!

Another group that I want to talk about are the "combo" blogs and cooking blogs. On the advice of a fellow Military Blogger and Twitter friend Bethany for the tip on this one: ThePioneerWoman is hands down an AWESOME website! Yet another blog that you need to make sure that you have some time to waste spend checking out all of her awesomeness! She's got recipes, photographs, funny stories, giveaways, home decorating, you name it, it's there!! I'm always happy when I see her pop up on the Google Reader. I've entered another one of her contests and I'm anxiously awaiting to see if I've won an 8 piece dinning set of Fiestaware plates! Oh, I would be that happiest girl in the world! *happily looking slightly upwards and to the left with a smile* A girl can dream right?! My favorite cooking blog is A Year of Slow Cooking. Now, anybody that knows me, knows that I can be a bit on the lazy side. I don't always like to cook or clean, but, if I don't have a zillion pots and pans to worry about after dinner is done, I'm more likely to clean up. There are more than 365 recipes to make in your crock pot on this blog. That's my kind of cooking!!

The last set of blogs that I'm going to talk about are my miscellaneous blogs. They don't exactly fit into any of the above categories, but for some odd reason, I love them just as much! The first one I was turned on to when I used to work at the book store. Cake Wrecks is one of the most awesome sites! Some of the cakes they put on there are just... wow! How can they even display or offer them for sale to the general public?! You will just have to check it out to know what I mean! From the same "author" comes EPBOT. It's a sort of hodge-podge of geeky goodness. I can't exactly pin point an exact reason why I love EPBOT so much, other than the geekiness! The last blog I'm going to post about tonight is one that makes me giggle with glee. AwkwardFamilyPhotos is just about the most hilarious, safe for families, websites on the net.

Day 12: Whatever tickles your fancy

Shew!! I've been trying to keep things on topic with the 30 days of me, which has turned into a whole lot more than 30 days, but, that's okay! LOL

Today! I get to write about whatever I want! SO! I'm going to write about me working out again, and the dress I want to make for me to wear to the Marine Corps Ball. (Hopefully Sam is still in at that point in time!)

I can't lie. I'm fat. At least for me. When I first started this exercising adventure, I was 195 pounds. I don't think I have EVER been that heavy in my life, including when I was prego with Bug!! So, I made up my mind that it was time to go on a diet!! I started a while back, I lost some weight. But, I got busy and exercise didn't fit into my busy schedule, so, I stopped. Well, I decided after I quit smoking (3 weeks and 3 days ago! Wewt!) that I need to lost weight and get back into shape. Well, my friend Britt also wanted to lose some weight and get in shape, so, we started working out together. A week ago today I was 3 pounds heavier than I am right now. I know it doesn't seem like much, but, I'm proud of myself! Sam said he can already notice a difference in my shape. I can get into some pants that I haven't worn in a while. I feel good!! I'm hoping to get down to about 140, maybe 135. I'm not worried so much with the weight, I just want to look good again!!

Anyways! The dresses! As some of you know, Sam bought me a sewing machine for our Anniversary. I've always wanted to learn to sew. I do okay now. It's not like I could make anything very extravagant, but, this year I want to try! I want to try and MAKE my Ball gown this year. Of course, I'm not sure of how wonderful it will look. so, I'm going to make one first with a cheap cloth, and THEN do one, so that way I will know if I need help with anything and seek that help before I make the real one.

So, without further ado, here's the dress that I want to make for the ball

I figured that for the "practice" I can make the short one. Make it out of something that might hang. Besides, it's a practice run anyways, so if it doesn't hang, I won't be horribly tore up about it. I haven't decided if I'm going to make the middle one,l or the right one. The only difference is that the middle one has a contrasting bodice and straps, the right one doesn't. I'm leaning towards the one on the right for now. I don't know tho.
What do you guys think?

Time Delays!

So, yes, I know I've been gone a very long time. *bad me!* BUT! I'm back to write again. *I'm such a terrible blogger these days!*

Things over the past couple of weeks has been pretty hectic. I decided that I want to put a porch on the front of the house. One of the houses up the street has on, and it looks very nice, so, Sam and I decided that hopefully by next spring we will be able to afford to put a nice porch on the front of the house, following the peak of the roof. It won't be an overly large porch, just enough for a swing and maybe a little bit more, but, it will help keep the living room cooler, which will lower our energy bill, thus it's a good investment and in time will pay for itself! We also want to rip out the horrendous horrible stinky not so pleasant shrubs that are currently in the front of the house and replace them with some Lilac trees. Both Sam and I grew up with Lilac trees all around, and LOVE the smell (Current candles on the dinning room table: Yankee Candle Lilac Blossoms and Yankee Candle Sweet Honeysuckle) of them and when we were first married Sam promised me that when we bought a house that we would put a Lilac tree outside of our bedroom window so when it bloomed we could have the smell in our room. It's one of the only things that Sam has ever promised me. I also dug up about a 3 foot circle around the Crepe Myrtle and planted some flowers around that as well. Let me tell you! That was an all day project! It started at around 9, I worked for half an hour, went to the dentist, came home, had lunch while my mouth was still numb (I'll save that story for a different day....) and went back to work. I finally finished and got the plants in the ground about 4:30pm. I even broke the hoe trying to loosen the dirt!

On the flip side of the house, I would like to redo the fence and put in a 6' privacy fence. Not so much because we need the privacy, but because the neighbors have a dog that they don't do a very good job of containing, and the neighborhood kids are always running by, and we have 3 dogs. One of those dogs likes to bark at anything that moves, one of the others likes to bark just because the first one is barking at times, and  the other just looks at them all like they've got a screw loose, but will bark at a few things now and again. We also have a pear tree and 2 apple trees that are currently on the other side of our chain link fence that only covers the property immediately behind the house. I would like to try and protect them a bit from all of said neighborhood kids that wander through our yard so we can at least have some of the fruit! Also, I want to knock out the wall to the kitchen and add a sun room of sorts that would serve as our dinning room. The dinning room we have would be turned into a den/office for Sam with a section for books and also my crafts. If course, I think the sun room idea might also generate more heat, which would negate the cost savings that the porch would save us, but, at least we would add more square footage to the house!

The new tank is looking very good! We have some live plants in there that are doing really well that we got when we bought the 1.5 gallon. One of my friends and I were at WalMart and she was getting some of these really neat GloFish, (They glow in a black light!) and I spotted this poor little ivory snail in a little tub. There was no food or anything, and Lord knows how long it had been stuck on the bottom shelf amongst all of the Betta fish! I felt really bad for it, and so my friend bought it for me as a Thank You for helping her set up her tank and pick out her fish. Her name is Lucky. So now we have Blueberry (Betta), Gary (blue-green snail), Squidward (blue snail), and Lucky (ivory snail) in the big tank, and Spongebob in the little 1.5 gallon tank. The only reason he's in the small tank is because I found out that he can breed himself! :-O I don't need a huge infestation of these tiny pest snails in my tank, so he can't go in there.

On that note, I need to go get my car inspected! *sigh* Sometimes this state is SO backwards!!

Life, and other things

So, I came upon one of the other blogs that had written "back in the day." It was before I had moved to North Carolina, and it was basically about my day to day life as I tried to piece it back together from a bad break up that I had with a man that I was very much in love with. Back then I wrote a whole lot more. (Maybe because I had more time?) I wrote about things that had meaning to me, and to others. I'm not exactly sure what happened to that old me, but, I think it's high time I got back to it (at least the writing part!)!! So.... here we go!

Monkey was put on a new medication on Monday. It's called Intuniv. So far, so good!! I went to pick them up from Boys & Girls club last night and the director said that they were on the playground (his problem area) and that he sat in the sand with 2 other kids and made sandcastles. He was then playing with some dinosaurs that he had gotten from the school store and she asked if she could have them because he wasn't supposed to have toys. He gladly gave them to her, and even volunteered the ones in his pocket she didn't know about, and asked politely if he could have them back when they got inside so he could put them in his back pack. I was really surprised! I asked him if he thought the new medication was working, and he said yes, he thought it was. I just hope that since we have found another medication that works so well, that it doesn't have the same side effects as the last medication that worked so well. I don't think I could handle another round of high blood pressure readings like the last time! He is normally a very polite child anyways, but last night he was extraordinarily so. He offered to help me make dinner, which is normal, and help set the table, which is normal, but he also offered to carry all the plates to the table (even his sisters!) which is not normal! Normally, I get all the plates lined up on the counter, take them to the table, get everyones' drink requests, pour them, set them on the table, and by this time I get requests from both Monkey and Bug to start eating, and when everybody gets everything that they need, I finally sit down and everyone eats.

Bug got her room redecorated. We're still working on the paint tho. She got her butterfly net hung around the head of her bed, hopefully this time it stays up! She also got her name spelled out on the wall with big foam letters in blue, green, and pink! I still need to make her some curtains, and apparently replace her blinds, as they are slowly but surely getting broken. She's been doing a pretty good job of keeping her room clean! We had to move the bed to the other wall so she had more room to maneuver around and pick things up. I really think she likes this layout a little better, I know I do! I believe that we have made plans to paint her room a light pink color. It pretty much matches everything that she has. My wonderful mother bought her a bedroom suite that is just absolutely adorable! It was all painted an antique white, and decorated with pastel pink, blue, green, and yellow. It came with a headboard, dresser, and a chest! She keeps all of her bedclothes in the chest currently. She has cute little rugs in her room too. She has a butterfly that stays in front of her dirty clothes hamper, a pink oblong one that is on one side of her bed, and a pink and purple flower with a bug on it on the other side. She's just too cute when you peek in there and she's dressed up in one of her princess dresses talking to her dolls.

I had come up with an idea for the rest of the house as well. For our bedroom, I would like to paint the walls and off white color and repaint our dressers a distressed off white as well. I want to get new bedding that is black and tan. We really like the color combo of the two in there. I also want to build an addition to the kitchen, and make it a dinning room. Maybe more like a sun room/dinning room with some big windows to let in light. Then I would like to take what is currently the dinning room, and turn it into a den/office type spot, take out the sliding glass door, and put that in the new dinning room. From there I would like to put a big corner desk in the "den" with some bookshelves for all of the books that we have lying about, and possibly a spot for me to do my sewing. Off of the new dinning room, I would like to build a deck that would go to the corner of the house and out into the back yard. Now I know that this isn't something that we are going to be able to do right away, but it would be nice! I also want to replace the front door and the storm door with something a little bit nicer, or at least something that won't fly open if a stiff wind hits it! I also want to put a bigger front porch on the house as well, and cover it. It will help keep the heat from beaming inside the living room windows in the summer time and making the house hotter. Sam and I have settle the color dispute for the living room as well. Instead of the horrible red and brown that it currently is (which doesn't match our style, nor our furniture) we want to paint the walls a cream color. We already have the black couches and the sage-green accents!

Oh yes! My sewing! I had forgot to mention that Sam bought me a new sewing machine for our anniversary! It's something that I have been wanting for a while. I remember, growing up, my mom making this beautiful creations on her sewing machine! I thought that she was magic and the best "sewer" in the world! One Halloween, I think I was 9, she made me a pilgrim costume, complete with a white apron and bonnet! I will never forget that costume! I think it was my favorite, looking back at all the Halloween costumes I had growing up. I wanted to be able to make beautiful garments like my mom, and had expressed this to Sam a few times. He went to Wal-Mart and got me a pretty nice sewing machine. Granted, it's not the best sewing machine, but it works, and I'm thankful. I am just a beginner, and I think if I had some complicated, expensive machine with more gadgets and do-dads that I might be overwhelmed and not be inclined to want to even try it! I did make a dog coat already. It was quite the experience! I learned alot more than I thought I would! I have plans on making Bug some summer clothes, and I would like to make her a dress, me a top, and the boys a polo shirt for us to have some spring pictures done. (We still haven't redeemed our Christmas present from J!) I found a really cute fabric online that I want to order, and some coordinating fabric on the same site. Now I just need to find some patterns to make them! I wish that I was more creative, so I could make my own patterns. Never know, someday I might just be the next Alexander McQueen, without the whole hanging myself thing.

Anyways! I should probably go. I have laundry to do, dishes to put away, dishwasher to load, and I have to take back the pants that I bought Sam and Monkey! Monkey's new pants were too big, and Sam hated the color of his new pants!

Merry Christmas... and all that happy jazz.

So, Christmas was here and gone. We had a pretty good Christmas. Living with only one income in the house has been kind of hard! I did find a new job, and I start on the 29th! (Hooray!) We set a pretty strict budget this year, and came in just barely over! I achieved that by using online coupons whenever possible. Sams' birthday was on the 18th, we had Christmas on the 25th, our anniversary is on the 29th, and Monkey's birthday is on the 31st!  We have a pretty busy December!
The kids were really pleased with their Christmas bounty. They both got DSi's. If you don't know anything about Nintendo DSi's, oh man! I would suggest getting one! They have 2 cameras on them, so you can take pictures of yourself, or outside your DSi. The ones that the kids got came preloaded with a few games and such. Now that we have 4 Nintendo DS/DSi's in the house, we can all play our own games, or, we can use the chat feature and chat with each other. (Yes, I know this is the lazy mans way! *hehe*) They also got some new clothes and some toys. They also got a gift card each, which was promptly spent getting toys and other various things that they deemed as necessities after the holidays. My best friend got us a portrait package from Sears. We're pretty happy about that, the kids would rather have the presents tho.
Sam got himself a very nice guitar for his birthday/Christmas/anniversary present. It's black Fender and it's an acoustic/electric guitar. Maybe next year I will get him an amp! For my Christmas/anniversary present, I got a sewing machine! It's been a very long time since I've used one, and so we just simply bought an inexpensive one. Hopefully, someday, I can be as good as my mom. She used to make things for us all the time. I remember her making me a pilgrim costume for Halloween one time, complete with the white bonnet and apron! More recently, she made a clown costume (which is REALLY awesome, by the way) and a vampire cape! I'm sure she has made other things as well, but, I just don't know about them.
I have already found some really neat things that I want to try to make. Hopefully, I don't screw them up. I have my eye on a couple books that I would like to get. Both the kids would like to learn how to sew as well. This gave me quite the surprise from Monkey. He is begging to have a Sock Monkey kit for his birthday. I would say that we may just have to oblige him that request. My mom made him a Sock Monkey a very long time ago, but, Lilly, his dog, tore it up.
Other than that, things have been going pretty well here. Sam is still working on getting out of the Marine Corps. That seems like a never ending project itself! It seems like it has taken forever for things to work themselves out, but, we have been assured that we're close to the end. We're figuring that it will be at least another 6 months before he gets out. In a way, that's the hardest part, not knowing. We don't know when he's going to get out, so he can't look for a job. Nobody will even consider him unless he's 90 days from getting out. We're in the process of trying to save up a years worth of expenses right now. We refinanced the house and his car, both with a better payment. Unfortunately, we didn't win the Powerball last night either. Congrats to the lucky winner in KY. We sure could have used that $128,600,000! I'm sure alot of people could have.
Anyways, It's Sunday Funday here, and I'm behind on laundry and dishes, so it's time to get back to that! I hope that everyone had a great Christmas, and from my family to yours, Happy New Year!