DIY Hair Band Holder

So as many may know I have two very beautiful girls (Brielle age 12 and Katherine age 8) and being that they are little girls it means that we have all sorts of hair ties, bows and head bands! It is a little over whelming but if you ask if they want to get rid of any they look at you like you've grown a second head. In my attempts to get better organized I went through all the hair ties and bows (mine included) and organized them into sandwich bags so that we weren't having to dig through drawers (now just through a bag if they are being picky). Hair bands though were the bane of my existence! They take up so much room and they always got in the way. I remembered seeing something in a random web search some months ago and it just stuck in my head so a couple weeks ago I did it. I know, I know and here I am JUST getting around to posting it.

Sorry the kids bathroom is REALLY pink so it throws the colors off for taking pictures.

It's pretty simple. I took some ribbon (that's actually red and sparkly) that I had actually picked up when I had made the collar for Katherine's cat costume. I took the widest head band the girls had and measured how big of a loop would be needed to easily slip it through but not have it too loose. I made some larger loops and then I made some smaller ones for the small bands and made extra loops for their collection to grow. (There is actually a loop where the push pin is I was going to hide where I connected it to the wall but never got that far. I know I'm horrible!)

It was pretty simple I just folded the ribbon and did a single line with my sewing machine where I had marked I needed for the loop (you could pin it but I was being lazy which probably added more time to this project). Repeated the process for each loop and then folded under the end for the final loop and to give it a finished look.

I know not the best directions in the world and I'm sure you'll find your own way. Your spouse may look at you a little funny when you have the finished product but it works wonderfully and now no more hair bands messing up my drawers!

Darn Snow Days!

Okay I remember being a kid and loving snow days and I'm sure my children love them too but as an adult I loathe them!
Yesterday school got called off due to the ice on the county roads. We may live in the city but the whole reason we bought this particular house was price and school district because our kids go to county schools which over all have better scores than city schools.
We were a little worried about it Tuesday night so after some discussion a friend of mine was going to find out from work if she just could work from home. Her work is very big on the family thing so they told her it was alright since she had a work computer where she could access what she needed so she stayed home with her daughter and took my two kids also. I think the concept here is that 3 kids is easier than 1 because they entertain each other.
I got into work about a half hour later than normal only to find the contracted engineer waiting for me. He looked like he wanted to give me a bit of grief over being late (not that I knew I had a meeting with him since no one told me) but he didn't. Work was long but I put in my time and got out and got the kiddos.
When I got home I popped dinner into the oven, started the dishes and got a load of laundry done and just sat down when my husband got home. It was an average night really and Peter and I stayed up watching old Tom Baker Doctor Who's again.
Let's rewind to Wednesday morning. The phone call from the school district came at 5:30 am at which point I changed the alarm from 6 to 7. Now fast forward to this morning. Peter wakes up, "Liz! You didn't turn the alarm on!" Well sure I did but it was still set for 7 am! To my surprise and joy the kids got up with their alarms so I had Katherine (who had her shoes on too thankfully) grab her coat and backpack and run out the door. She seemed a bit miffed that she had to eat breakfast at school but things happen. I'm yelling out the door, "You'll get a prize for being ready!" I mean what else could I say I was so happy not to have to rush her down to the school in the frozen car. Peter then brings up, "You know what we didn't do...." Well what we didn't do is have Katherine do her homework last night or practice her spelling words and tomorrow is the test! We are going to have to work extra special hard tonight and I expect there to be a lot of frustration and tears. I will have to make this a big prize for my forgetfulness. I also remembered I didn't sign off on her agenda book so she'll get a mark for that which completely falls onto me again.
Snow days really mess me up!
I need to remember that if there is a threat of a snow day to write myself a BIG note to work with the girls on their homework. That or I need to put a daily alarm in my phone. I'm not sure which. With any luck though this will be the last snow day of this school year.

In other hair pulling news Peter kept me up last night asking me what's been wrong lately and I answered as honestly as I could. I've been very tired recently! I don't feel depressed, I'm not especially mad at anyone. I've actually been pretty tolerant of people recently though I have noticed that my jealousy has spiked which I'm trying to put a lid on. We may never have nice cars (in fact the fabric is falling down on the ceiling of the van and my wheel wells are rusting out) and we have a small house and many of our friends have gotten big houses, nicer cars, big TV's, etc. It's hard not to feel a ting of jealousy. I've always grasped for more than what we had and pushed and pushed which is one reason Peter did go back to college and eventually I went back and why we are at this status of life instead of still living government subsidized housing and why now we can pay our bills on time instead of juggling between over due dates. The problem is I think I've pushed about as hard as I can and we are pretty much stuck at this level there is no more upward movement and it's not that this is a bad level to be at but my dream since being a little kid was to have a big house and a nice big backyard to garden and plant flowers in. Mind you when I was a little kid I also thought I needed to have 14 children so I could use all the names I really liked LOL. At some point we have to let go and until I do that I think this inner jealousy of those stationed higher in life will always fester but I recognize it's there and an undesirable part of me so at least that is something. -- I went onto a rant didn't I? In any case, yes something's wrong but really it is that I'm just tired.

I really didn't mean to let some of my deep darkness about myself show up on this post but I'm human and I try to be completely honest with people. I don't want someone sugar coating things to me with some fake smile and I don't want to do that to myself or anyone else. I've tried smiling while crying guess what I didn't stop crying I just made a very ugly face for the world to see.

Keep your fingers crossed for the spelling tonight. I better get off of here or I'll be late to work!

Crockpot Tuesday

Well it's Tuesday meaning I have Bellydancing Class tonight. I try to make dinner simple and fast because I normally don't have time to eat before I go to class but I have to make sure the family is fed and I try to do this to take the pressure off my husband so things like me getting out once a week don't annoy him.

Tonight is BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches with a recipe I through together some time back and it's done well for me.

2lb Pork Loin (I've done a 1 lb too and I don't adjust things it just means you'll have more liquid in the end)
1/2 C Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 C BBQ Sauce (I normally use a Tradition Hunts)
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
3 Dashes of ground clove
a few Dashes of dried red pepper
1 tsp minced garlic

Cook for 8 hrs on low. Remove lid then pull apart pork with a fork (I generally use a knife too just to make it go a bit quicker). Done. If you want (which I generally do but it is not needed) add additional premade BBQ sauce to taste.

Stay warm folks! We are having a Wintery Mix here.

I broke Kroger!

Okay I didn't really 'break' Kroger but I had an eventful check out.
So I got down to Kroger to do my shopping and decided to go ahead and pick up groceries for the rest of the month as I'm trying to stay as close to my budget as I can but I had $115 for the rest of the month if I was to stick strictly to my grocery budget. What killed things was the fact that I restocked a few items last week over at Save-A-Lot that we would use for the next few months and on top of that Kroger had a deal for personal supplies so I restocked that on top of needing more dog food again. It all adds up even if several of these items I won't need to buy again for a couple months.
Well as to be expected I did go over budget.

Not the healthiest of selections I grant you but I never said this family ate the healthiest. A lot of our food is quick fix for when I get off of work. In total it cost me about $135 and all I should need for the rest of the month is milk and bread. So I went $20 over budget but seeing how I was buying 3 weeks worth of food I don't think I did horribly.
So here's where things get interesting. After I had everything scanned and I gave my coupons over to the attendant she started scanning them and half way through I see a Windows logo pop up and the main computer system went down! They had to shut down all 4 self-scans and had to manually input my coupons onto the register I was checking out on. I kept making jokes about how I was sorry I broke their system trying to make light of the situation even though I really did just want to get out of there. In the end I got to check out and realized after I got into the van I left all my catalina's there at the register. I told myself that they were probably already gone and just went home because Peter asked me out to lunch because they were working off site so he wasn't going to eat at work.
I got things pulled out, snapped this shot then got what I could put in the fridge but when I went to put things in the chest freezer outside I found out that I could not open it! With all the rain the seal had got wet and froze! I tried and I tried but it wouldn't budge and I was afraid of doing too much because I didn't want to hurt the seal on the freezer so back inside to tetris the frozen goods into the fridge freezer which was no easy task.
I was so stressed out that while I was eating at the restaurant with Peter and a family friend/his co-worker Matt, I ate ALL of my meal which was huge and I ended up coming straight home instead of doing any other running because my stomach hurt so bad. It took about 2 1/2 hrs napping (I kept waking up still with a stomachache) before I started feeling better and by that time I had to go get Katherine from After School Care to get home in time for Brielle.
Katherine got a scratch (a mark off) for losing her reading book (they later found it but because she had to search she still got marked off) so as a punishment I had her pull the things out of the dryer and put the stuff from the washer to the dryer, put dishes in the dishwasher and fold jeans. During this we had a little conversation and she found out Mommy did chores like this all the time when she was little and suddenly Katherine thought it was the neatest thing to be like Mommy (I'm not sure if that is good or bad since it was suppose to be a punishment). She was so happy about that when she went to go fold jeans, I told her she just had to do her own, she ended up folding my pants, Peter's and Brielle's.
Rest of the night was pretty uneventful. We had breakfast for dinner. Peter and I watched the Daily Show and Colbert. We watched a video a friend posted on Facebook of some pretty controversial stuff that I won't go into and then settled down to some old Doctor Who (Tom Baker!).
All in all not a horrible day though not as productive as I would have liked.
Tomorrow I go back to the work grind and I'm not looking forward to it to say the least. I've got my coffee prepped, dishes are washing and I'm going to pick up the laundry in the bathroom and then see about going and reading a chapter in the book I'm reading.

Hello Monday

Well it's once again Monday and I gave myself the fright of a life time thinking that the kids were out of school on Friday but I was thinking about when I had looked at February's calender.

Some things came to light this past Friday as I was going over the finances and that is that resupplying the house with personal supplies and pet supplies drained a lot of our grocery budget. Technically speaking I only have $115 to make it through the month and we've already gone through our dinning out budget. Could I go over budget and no be bouncing checks? Yes but if I let myself go over budget too much then what is the point to having a budget? So in attempts to streamline and not just impulse buy I went through our freezers and the cabinets to make up the menu for the rest of the month. I still have a huge grocery list to get through the month though because I tried very hard not to make meals too repetitive.

I'm currently trying to decide if I want to buy all my groceries (other than milk/bread/eggs) at once or if I want to continue on my weekly schedule. The good thing about buying everything at once is less chance of impulse buying the bad thing about it is still having to go into the store for those odds and ends so if they have a good sale going I might impulse buy or I will kick myself for not waiting to purchase something during this 'sale'.

In other news I've been able to save one more plant after my green house was destroyed. I'm glad to see some green from my herb but I walked out into the destroyed green house this past weekend and it was so depressing to see all my tomatoes and peppers just black as night.

I had to make the picture really large ;) Do you see the green! It's there I swear!

Peter and I picked up mini-blinds for several windows around the house though I told him not to worry about a few windows. I may change my mind later but for now I don't want to bother with blinds there. We got one set up but we have several windows left to go. I also picked up some really cheep seeds at Menards and the girls picked out a bunch of flower seeds so I guess I really have no choice but to make a new flower bed especially since I just ordered nearly 100 bulbs from Brielle's Orchestra Fund Raiser.

If I can get enough energy I hope to get over to Walmart or Lowes and see what I can do about finding some plastic and some outdoor adhesive tape so that I can patch my green house up for another season. We'll see. I also need to find some potting soil and it may be a little too early in the year for the dollar store to carry it which is where I normally get get it from but it'd be worth the look see because I have a lot of early spring plants that don't like the heat that I need to get started.

I caught up on a lot of my laundry last night though you couldn't tell it now as I've had to do 3 more loads since then. I went through and matched socks and Peter and I got rid of a bunch of the kids socks and our own socks because we'll wear them out or stretch them out and knowing we need new socks we go buy more socks or in the kids case they start to out grow them so we buy more but that's where it stops we then have the bad tendency not to get rid of the old socks! Which means we are buried in socks! So I took the initiative and I got rid of a lot of older socks that were in bad condition. I think a few of the smaller socks got into the girls clothes I need to have them try them on but I still got rid of a bunch which means less to clutter our lives!

I hope everyone has a good Monday. I know I'm going to try to.

Emotion Instability

I'm a bit off my rocker today. I'm emotional just so tired people posting, "Do this and you'll feel better." Since Thanksgiving I've been running and I've been trying to make everything work but I feel like I'm trying to change the direction of the ocean tide. I know that it will change on it's own and that if I wait things will change by themselves but I don't want to wait.
I'm tired of stressing over every little thing but just as things start to come together they always seem to fall apart. Maybe it's just this cold weather and being sick for the past 3 weeks.
The kids have been having fun and Peter even made them lunch so I didn't have to. I love seeing the joy in my children and I try to smile and I don't speak out loud about what is bothering me because I don't want to hurt that joy and wonder they have. My family is everything to me and I have and will put myself through all hell to try and make sure that they don't have to go through it.
I think I just need to find a corner to cry in and get past all this.
I think I just need to stop going to all these blogs where people are just so happy all the time. As selfish as it sounds sometimes I need to know that there are real people out there with real problems. It's not because I want other people to be hurt but because I want to know I'm not the only one (which I know I'm not but it's hard to realize that with the postings out there).
The world is not rainbows and unicorns. People are hurting, people are dying, people are at war and people are starving. My life is by no means the worst and Peter and I have had the good fortune to work our way up the rungs of the ladder coming from starving, working long hours and generally just having a bad time to it to now at least having our bills paid.
Life isn't easy and we do need to make the best of it but if we forget the hard times then we are doomed to repeat them.
I feel defeated and I'm sitting here on the PC where I don't need to be.
Tonight we are talking about a movie night with the kids and maybe having a friend over with his children. We will see.
For right now I'm just going to get ready for the day even though it's already noon and see if that will help with my mood some though I doubt it because I think these feelings are more deeply rooted then that but I have to try because if I stop trying then I've just given up and that does no one, including myself, any good.
I need a faith revival in myself, my life and my spirituality. I'm not sure how I will go about that but hopefully the path becomes clear soon.

Happy New Year - End of Vacation

Okay how can going into a New Year be happy if well... I have to go back to work tomorrow. This doesn't quite equate. I think I could have finally gotten into the vacation swing now but it's all over so I will have to try to figure out this relax thing after work.... yeah.

Anyways the Holidays just flew right by didn't they. I hope enjoyed a little bit of time with their family and friends and I hope 2013 is better than 2012. (I also will keep my figures crossed for when you right checks to get the date right. LOL)

Well back onto my kick of taking vitamins going to try last years resolution again we'll see how long it lasts this time.

Berlinerkranser Cookies

Shortbread Cookies

We made lots of cookies. Berlinerkranser cookies and Shortbread cookies.  So I ended up sending 2 batches to Peter's work for everyone that's had to work over these holidays my husband included who had to go so far as go in on Christmas Day.

 

My cake up there is a from scratch Spiced Angel Food Cake which always goes over well and this is my second time making one which is how I end up with so many shortbread cookies because they use egg yolks and the angel food of course uses egg whites.

While I was out shopping on Christmas Eve attempting to get the last bits of things we needed. I saw a Gingerbread kit and decided that the girls love to make them so it was worth picking one up.

Christmas day we had a pretty simple dinner but I pulled out my good china like I do every year. I love those plates and wish I could use them more often but I know they'd get ruin so fast.

I did end up getting a little bit of relax time one evening goodness around midnight I said to heck with it I'm getting a bath and a book! Since it had been years since I've stolen that kind of time mind you remember I did say it was around/after midnight before I was able to do this. 

That's about it for right now. I didn't find ANY time for any craftiness with the kids which seriously has thrown me off and really makes it feel like less of a vacation. Maybe this spring when I try to fit in another vacation. I just pray that I can.