cheerio y'all

Sunday, December 25, 2011

A post for boot lovers the world over!!!

First and foremost....
WAIT!!! Don't toss that wrapping paper just yet! Here's a little recycling, DIY post from me. Shock!

Now, as many MAY know, and if you didn't...you will now. I have a problem. It's a love of all things boots. I'm not a shoe whore at all, but man I love me some boots. I must say, however, before I post the photo of my closet that there are no Frye boots in my closet. Most of them are off brand clearance boots. Not all, but most. A couple are gifts <3 and well... whatever, I don't believe in $500 shoes so this is my guilty little pleasure.

Anyway - I hate for my boots to be all laid over. They just look so sad like that. Also, cheap or not, it's just not good for them. If you have shopped around for boot savers, oh my gosh! They are $10 in the states, and I've only found them for 10 GBP here. Do the math, that can add up quick! Have I mentioned I'm cheap? Why yes I am. Therefore, I'm not about to pay that to save all of my boots and make them look happier in the closet.

I had an idea awhile back and my initial idea was using plastic grocery bags. However, you've got to really save a LOT of bags and that sucks. It also gives some Oregonians a heart attack knowing those bags may or may not be made of some kind of oil or some tree-hugger something. Although it is being re-used, it still causes further manufacture of more plastic bags that are bad for the environment. (OMG what has England DONE to me?? haha).

So.....here we go:
How to inexpensively keep your boots in shape AND re-use a few things you've got around the house. :)

***disclaimer. these are just some shots of my boots in my closet that has ugly lighting. i cannot be held responsible for the ugliness of these photos. give me a break. hahaha ***

Do your boots look sad like this?

Hold on to your used wrapping paper. What else are you going to do with it? Burn it? Recycle it? Just toss it in the bin?

Now you'll need an old tall sock. Being a military spouse, old long socks are plentiful here. How long till Mike is running around looking for a pair of socks I wonder? haha!

By now, I should hope you've figured out where I'm going with this. Stuff sock with ripped up wrapping paper. Ooooooh yeah. I know. I'm freakin smart. ;)

Fit stuffed sock into boot.

These boots were a good example as they are knee high or over the knee (well for folks with shorter legs than me anyway). So you can see this is great for all lengths.

And....here you have it. Once I'm all done I will have a closet full of happy boots. Staying in shape, recycling old paper and holey old socks. :0)

Obviously you don't have to wait till Christmas to do that. You can use old newspapers or even inexpensive plain white tissue paper you might find at a craft/dollar store. Obviously there are lots of different things you can use, but softer papers would be better as they will fill it up fuller. :)
There you have it!

Hope everyone is having a great holiday!

xoxox

Friday, November 18, 2011

Pyjama Day

I can never read that word and not pronounce it "PIE-Jawma" in my head. No matter how hard I try. ;)

Today was PJ dat at school. Quite a contrast from their regular threads eh? :0) They got to take a favorite animal as a guest as well. Cody chose his stuffed chocolate lab "Sue" and Kade took his new croc appropriately named "Crocker". Something tells me there were probably a TON of mario jammie bottoms at school today. Just a guess....

In other news....

This, my friends, excites me to NO end. I've been dying for the day that I could start reading chapter books with the boys. We have tried a few times, but the attention span just wasn't quite there. FINALLY, Kade and I have started reading our first Harry Potter book. I read a page and he reads a page and MUCH to my delight...I hardly have to help him at all. He really only needs help with the names, understandably so. It will take awhile I'm sure but we're going to go through the whole series. I am shamed to admit I have only read the first two, but I seriously wanted to wait and read it WITH them. Cody listens as he's just now begun his own reading journey but he is doing FABULOUSLY well at it. Love having readers all in the house!

Can't decide, though I need not worry about it TOO much yet, which set to go to next. It will likely be the Black Stallion series, but who knows... :0)

Lastly...I made a snack. Pinterest inspired. Sort of. It went a little wrong in the end. Taste-wise it was a huge hit. Health-wise... well.....it's actually not QUITE as bad as it looks. Apples covered with melted peanut butter, a few marshmallows piled on, a random chocolate chip (which the did not eat) and a little chocolate syrup drizzle. Should've just stopped at the marshmallows I think. hahaha.

Either way, they've asked for it every day since and I've had to come up with some excuse as to why I can't make another yet. Ooops! I'll have to revert their attention away with something else less.....marshmallowy.

That is all. Time to grab PJ'd kids from school, drop off friends at home and then...home to snuggle up for movie night. Tonight's menu is pigs in a blanket. Easy enough. I accept. ;)
I think this is going to be movie-marathon weekend. Gotta get a little bit o' Werewolf action in there somewhere!
Then a date at the "PICTURE SHOW" (hahahahaha man that's too damn funny Mike) to see some Poop Pie in action. ;o) YES we're horribly behind on movies here. Bite me. lol

Have a great one all!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Facebook Ghost

So I kind of failed to ever come on here and explain why I decided to take a little time off of facebook.
More than anything it's just because of the same thing you hear most people say, "I spend too much time on here! Gosh I could've gotten this and that done but I got sucked into such and such on facebook."
Such is the life of the Work at Home crowd, the Stay at Home crowd, the bored at home so and on and so forth. Whatever you are, maybe you are not even at home and always on facebook!

More than anything, I am someone that is a tiny bit of a control freak....ya know, that's laid back all at the same time anyway. However, I've mentioned a time or two that I used to smoke, but now I do not. I also used to drink Dr. Pepper all day. Every single day. Milk or Dr. Pepper. Otherwise it was somewhat random to have some water, tea or booze. Now I do not. I also used to have a SEVERE addiction to reese's peanut butter cups. I won't even lie. Prior to kids...my metabolism could handle it. Hell my metabolism used to smack itself on the chest and dare the calories... "bring it on bitches!!!" and it won everytime.
Apparently, it worked too damn hard though and with no notice whatsoever, it got a little sick half way through my first pregnancy and has remained fairly crippled ever since.

Therefore, 150 calories per can 12x a day (okay not quite that much but still) and 400 calories per pack more than we want to even mention for the reese's cups...then all the tar and cancer inducing chemicals....
Well, seems I was a bit of a slave to all things unhealthy. I had no control over them. I could have, but I just did not ever put forth the effort nor did I really care to. Until I actually tried to not eat, drink or inhale it. Then I found it was somewhat difficult to just stop.

I would try, not really care to put the effort into it and then fail. Then I'd feel bad for failing so I'd fail a little worse just to make up for it.

However, that's not really like me. I am NEVER happy being half way at anything. I don't dig failing. I do it quite often, we all do believe it or not. I'm fine with admitting such, REGARDLESS of what SOME people say, I openly admit my failures and the 2 or 3 times I've possibly been sort of wrong about something. However in my defense I did make it right or learn how to not do it again and hopefully did not fail again and there went a real quick side-track off into ADHD land.

ANYWAY. The controlling person that I can be is not too cool with that ASSHOLE voice that lives up in my head that muffles the one that speaks reason. The one that says, "don't do that, you will regret it." or whatever it says. That same voice that somehow took control of my hand as it would reach for a reese's cups, all the while that reasonable one who was just trying to stick with the damn program is screaming "NOOOOOOOOO don't do it!!!!" yet...the next thing Miss Reason knows is I'm now sitting in the car outside the store revelling in that sweet mixture of chocolate and peanut butter, swigging down the sickeningly sweet caffeine-laced liquid and just pushing my body one cell at a time closer to diabetes, obesity and overall unhappiness. Not due to being overweight...due to not doing what I set out to do.

I have done this many times. If I am good at anything, I think I've now decided I'm good at quitting.
I've quit a lot of things in my day. A lot of them were good things for me to quit, in fact most of them were. All of them, were NOT good for me to quit though. I'm a quitter. I admit it freely.

However, I'm good at trying again. Again and again and again and again until I get it right. I can get a little bit obsessive. Now that I have successfully quit a decent amount of things that a lot of people never seem to be able to quit...I think I have raised the bar a bit too much in my own head.
So I tend to be pretty strict with myself. It's needed though. I can be a bit of a lame ass and seriously do need the discipline. If only I could stick a Drill Sgt voice in my head that was louder than the lazy one I'd be one disciplined MoFo.
As it is....I quit those things. I can do it. I have no issue of that at all. I don't really understand why EVERY ONE can't just quit stuff if it makes them unhappy. I really don't. I mean really, really...... (everyone should REALLY stop smoking. Y'all smell bad and your coughing grosses the rest of us out).

I found myself spending too much time on facebook. Duh. Though I know a LOT of folks well think I spent TONS more time on there than most...you are quite mistaken. Seriously. I had NOTHING on a lot of people I know. I did, however, spend too much time and energy there.
I found myself feeling creatively stifled for a number of reasons. I don't find it funny when I see tags of pictures where people joke about "not now honey Mommy's facebooking."
Obviously, I hope, that joke is meant in moderation. However I will shamefully admit that there were MANY times I said, "in just a minute. hold on...." and then it was 30 minutes later. NOT cool.
Obviously I'm a realist and NOT one of those mushy mashy parents that coddles her children to death and can't make the time to go pee b/c I might miss a moment of staring at my beautiful children. Yeah...NOT so much.
However, I also did not like it when my son's every reference began with "on your facebook?'. Granted EVERYONE talks about it nowdays. it is everywhere, however I don't want that to be what my kids remember of me.
I wanted to take out more time to do some fun stuff with them. Not around them. Not in between checking facebook.

When we were gone on holiday, I did not pay the excessive fees to have my phone online. Therefore I wasn't getting all these notifications all through out the day every time someone posted something. Remember some of my friends are facebook gurus so it honestly was near constant that my phone was pinging at me. I liked that I didn't get notified every time someone bought some shoes or were sitting at starbucks behind someone lacking deodorant or wondering why pickles were green etc....
I liked it so much, that upon our return....I turned the notifications off to my phone. I could seek them OUT if I chose, but it wasn't stalking me at all hours.

Still...I found myself wanting to take a photo of stupid shit at the most idiotic times so I could share something random and stupid on facebook. I found myself doing things specifically based toward facebook. I think I was living part of my life FOR facebook. I mean, if you think about it that way...a lot of us are.
It bothers me.

Then we got some movie, the adverts for digital copy REALLY bothered me. The kid is going on how he can watch movies ANYWHERE! On vacation, at the beach, at the park, when friends are over.... REALLY? Like, what happened to actually enjoying being where you are? Why the hell even bother going to the damn beach if you are going to watch movies on your tiny screen anyway? I mean...just stay your ass at home and save the money/time. It hardly counts as quality time if you have your face stuffed in some screen now does it?

Things like that have been eating at me. I don't like it. Not one bit. Knowing that I am not one of those people that can truly cut down on something and STAY cut back on it...I just chose to do what I did. So far....it doesn't bug me much at all. I get kind of bored, sure. That's the moment I should get up and go DO something else though. I feel disconnected, that's for damn sure. I don't even know what all I've missed out on with my friends due to not being on FB. It's okay though. A couple have contacted me via other avenues a few times and I love them for that. :0)
I wasn't trying to get time away from the world. Nor from my friends etc... JUST facebook itself. Period.

I find that more than anything, upon my return to facebook I will drop all but a couple of my groups. Those seem to be the biggest time suck of all and often harbour a lot of drama, which I simply don't give a damn about. I had enough drama in my life before I could even walk, the hell if I'm going to go out of my way to be in the middle of it. Especially when I can't even show my facial expressions. When there is drama, my expressions can take care of any words that need not be spoken. ;)

Anyway, I honestly just did it for no reason beyond needing the separation. Feeling too anxious when I didn't have it, feeling too geared toward it in everyday moments when I already wish I could drop my camera more and be involved in moments rather than having to record them.
I felt I did not have reasonable control over something, therefore...I removed it. THAT'S some control now. ;)
It is what I would do with any aspect of my life that I felt I could not get down to reasonable, so that's what I did.

It's a little too quiet here. I'm a little bored socially. However, it's okay. I've found myself with a slightly cleaner house (though still not spotless b/c that's just never gonna happen till my free maid shows up). I've felt a little freer. I've been trying to cook more often for my family, which is big. haha! I've been doing up some crafts with the kids. I've been trying to sit down and watch a movie.
I've tried to do some reading, but that just tends to come in waves and as much as I try apparently it's just not reading time just yet.

I've definitely made loads of progress on photo stuff. Imagine the hoarders episode from HELL in computer files. Yeah....... that's likely the biggest thing that has taken place since facebook and I have started seeing other people. I've got a LONG LONG LONG way to go as well.
Next week...I aim to get out of the house a bit more. I've been chained to the house since I started my break feeling like I had too much to do here. I do have a great deal to do still but I'm getting way too pale for England even. I need to get out and do some more exploring and I need to reconnect with some old friends.

Time is running out and I need to do with it what I can. Facebook will be there when it's too dark and cold outside or when I'm bored to tears somewhere else. ;0)

Until then....... don't forget about me! ;)

Sew School

I know several of my friends have expressed interest in dusting off the sewing machine. So I thought I'd share this. Pretty good deal it looks like. :)
There are also some good tuts on there. :)

Sew School