Dating

What do you think of online dating? For about 5 years, I have been involved in my church, teaching middle school and raising my daughter the best I can on my own. I thought that I would come across this great guy somewhere in my busy life, and we would date, fall in love and get married. Maybe even have a baby together. Well, it hasn't happened and both my daughter and I would love to have a wonderful man in our life. So, I decided to try a popular dating website in an effort to meet more men, go on some dates and see what happens. Here's some lessons that I have learned (the hard way) so far on my dating adventures.
1) E-mail back and forth a few times tactfully working in your deal breaker questions (kids, religion etc...) then meet up sooner rather than later. You can get a completely different impression of someone spending 15 minutes with them than an entire week of e-mailing or texting back and forth with them.
2) Enlist some help from a friend. I don't understand why so many people have those horrible pictures taken in their bathroom mirrors. Get a friend to take some good, current pictures of you to use on your profile. Also, have that friend read your profile. Have them not only look for spelling or grammar errors, but also that you have described yourself well and are coming across as the awesome person you are! I even let my friend do some matchmaking for me and was impressed with the choices she made. You have to be open minded to different types of people otherwise you'll find yourself repeating the same mistakes you've made in the past.
3) Give people a second chance. Some people are very nervous about dating. If things didn't go terribly wrong on the first date, give the person a chance for a second date. Sometimes chemistry grows with time and when there isn't an instant connection it doesn't mean there can't be one after another date or two.
4) Be honest. If someone isn't right for you, be honest about it- yet kind. No one wants to be led on or waste their time.
5) Be a good date. Be on time, put down your cell phone, look at and listen to them, laugh at their jokes or stories. Remember your manners.

New Year's Visions

A friend and I were talking about New Year's Resolutions, and she mentioned that every year each person in her family creates a vision board with cut out pictures from magazines to represent their goals, aspirations, and resolutions for the new year. I loved this idea and decided to make it my own. So, this afternoon my daughter and I both designed our own pinterest boards dedicated to our New Year's goals and resolutions. I then made some of the highlights into a wordle using www.wordle.net to frame and display in our house! What New Year's traditions do you have?
 

New year, new soup

My new years resolution for 2013 is to make one soup and one salad each week. This resolution will help me to eat healthier, try new foods, to save money by taking leftovers in to work for lunch, and to de-stress, because to me, cooking is calming! I decided to start a little early on the soup this week- you'll have to excuse me for being a little excited about my new endeavor! I went to Walmart and browsed the vegetable aisle and I found fennel (or anise), parsnips and some other goodies that I'll tell ya about later! I looked on allrecipes.com for some inspiration, then ended up just doing my own thing. I sliced up about half of the fennel bulb and two of the parsnips. Then I put them in the large plastic cup that came with my immersion blender (one of my favorite possessions, by the way) with about 1 cup of chicken broth and mixed it until smooth. I then poured it in a pot with a 1/2 cup more of the stock, one can of Campbell's potato soup, and one can of corn. When it was hot, I added about a fourth cup of cream and removed it from heat. It only took about 20 minutes to make and tasted very good to me, and I've never even eaten a parsnip or fennel before! Please leave a comment if you try my soup out and let me know how you like it!

Soup and salad

Thinking about my new years resolution.

For my new years resolution this year, I want to be more healthy- maybe even loose a few pounds. But I don't want to do insane workouts that make me throw up, eat only grapefruits and cabbage, or anything else crazy like that.

I know how healthy salad and soup is for you, but I've never been too crazy about eating bunny food. So I browsed my local library and came up with a few salad and soup cookbooks that sounded good, and I set my goal: to make one soup and one salad each week of 2013!
I plan to share some of the recipes here on my blog, so stay tuned and here's wishing you a happy and healthy new year!

Have you ever shaved a goosebump?!

I hate shaving my legs. It is such a pain, and makes my showering routine twice as long. I feel like I'm doing underwater yoga in there- you know, downward dog to reach the back of my ankles without getting water up my nose! And no matter how hard I try, there is always a missed spot! God forbid, you cut yourself- you bleed all day long! And why is it that I am always out of shaving cream? Then I'm faced with the decision to substitute with conditioner(bound to cut myself!) or get out to get a new can and risk getting goosebumps. Have you ever tried to shave a goosebump?!
Have you seen this someecard?
I wonder how many women actually go all winter without shaving their legs? Could you?