Boredom Jar

School's been out for exactly one week and already your kids are probably bored.
I can definitely tell you, mine is.  Or was.
Until she got served with the
BOREDOM JAR!


The boredom jar is a simple idea.  I've seen them all over the internet.
Here is how I made mine: I took one large empty container, glued the picture above on the front and back of it, and VIOLA!, a boredom jar.  

Well, almost... The challenge is to fill the container up with small slips of paper with interesting activities written on them that will keep your child busy during long, boring summer days.  In our boredom jar I put some activities that are more fun than others.  I like to call them "sweet and sour".  My one rule is that my daughter can not choose another slip from the container until she has done what was written on the slip that she already chose.  

Some boredom jar activities from our jar are:
See me for a new video game
Movie night
Clean off your bookshelf and donate old books to the library
Go geocaching
Let's bake cookies
Paint or draw a picture
Dress all the barbies up and fix their hair to go out dancing
Make a sidewalk chalk obstacle course for your scooter
Clean out your crafts and organize them
Arrange your stuffed animals, donate at least five to the Children's Home
Weed the garden, plant new seeds
You win a Target gift card- let's go spend it!
Make a craft with seashells
Make a powerpoint about a country you want to visit
Update your pinterest board
Clean out your sock drawer then let's pick out some new socks
Make up a dance to a CD 
Fashion show
Write a story on the computer including clip art illustrations
Park of your choice
Clean out junk drawer

Feel free to leave a comment if you use a boredom jar or come up with any other ideas for activities that I should add to mine!

The brown diet

I feel like everything I cook looks disgusting. I made soup this week and it's a nasty brown color. Tastes great though if that counts for anything. I'm sure after you look at the picture, you won't want the recipe... I diced about 10 purple and yellow fingerling potatoes and boiled them in Thai coconut curry broth until they were tender. Then I added a can of corn, a can of chicken, and a can of sweet potato casserole. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes, added a quarter cup of cream and some old bay seasoning. It tasted sweet and spicy. Close your eyes and enjoy!

Oriental salad

This week I made Oriental Salad!
They have a salad mix called "oriental" that you can pick up at the grocery store. It has a shreddy lettucy stuff, dressing, Chinese noodles and slivered nuts. I mixed this all together along with fennel (still using it!) and a green apple. I used this for my salad of the week by putting it on a flour tortilla along with some chicken salad I made. For the chicken salad, I used 1 can of chicken a teaspoon of mayo and a package of craisons I found in my pantry. This was a yummy, healthy lunch that I really enjoyed!

Easy onion soup

For my second soup of the new year, I wanted some yummy, salty, cheesy onion soup for my sore, sore throat! I made it using the camping onion recipe with a few small twists. I began by taking 2 sweet onions, peeling the outer layer and hollowing a small hole in the middle with a melon baller. I then filled the hole with a teaspoon of "better than bullion" and a pat of butter. Last, I carefully set the onion in foil and poured chicken broth, and a little white wine over it (about half a cup- not enough to leak out!) Close the foil up tight so it won't leak, and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees. When the onions were done, (very soft), I poured them into a bowl, cut them into bite size pieces and placed a few slices of Swiss cheese on top. This soup is seriously delicious!

Salad, yuck

The salad-a-week portion of my new years resolution is going to be the real challenge, since, get this- I hate salad! For my first salad, I found something called broccoli slaw at the grocery store. I mixed it with some fennel (leftover from my first soup) sliced very thin and an apple- also sliced very thin. I added a tiny pack of cranberries and a teaspoon of mayo and teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. I also added a dash of soy sauce. It turned quite the color of ugly, but tasted pretty good! I would definitely make this salad again.

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?

It's Like Winter Here

As you know, I live in Florida. You also probably know that it gets hot here in the summer. Like, unbearably hot. So hot that we don't even go outside. Like, for two months. True Floridians would rather clean their house than go to an amusement park or the beach during the summer. For July and August people in Florida pretty much lock themselves indoors in the air conditioning, catch up on all the movies they never saw when laying on the beach in the spring, pack on 10 pounds and wait for fall to come. For a really fun time we may swim in a spring where the water temp is always around 75degrees, and we can make "water angels" instead of "snow angels". I know you are probably not feeling sorry for us at all- thinking oh, you poor Floridians, boo hoo. It probably does reach 90 degrees where you live even, but I swear it is NOTHING like the heat you experience here.

Spaghetti Tacos and ICarly

My daughter and I loooove the show, ICarly!  We love to do "random dancing", say that things are "jenk" and often wish we could be wild girls like Sam.  

The other morning before school my daughter asked me what we were going to have for dinner that night and I told her I had no idea.  She suggested that I cook spaghetti tacos which is Carly's brother Spenser's specialty on the show.  Well, I thought that it sounded pretty gross, but will do pretty much anything to get my picky child to eat her dinner, so I made them.  They were quick and easy- just boiled spaghetti, mixed it with a little sauce in a bowl and put it in taco shells with some shredded mozzarella cheese.  I only made one for myself because, like I said, I figured it would be pretty gross.  Well, I must admit that they were not too bad- I actually made myself another!

6 word Saturday- Earth Day

Doing our part to clean up!

This year my daughter and I, along with a few friends, took part in the Great American Coastal Cleanup in honor of earth day.  We filled one bag with garbage and one bag with recyclables.  We found quite a few balloons (which are very bad for sea life), loads of water bottles and beer bottles, not as many cigarette butts as we have found in past years, and other various bit of garbage.  The most interesting thing that we found was a wallet filled with money.  It had an ID in it, so we turned the whole thing in.  If no one claims it, we will have a well deserved lunch, but for now, all we got was a t-shirt and a good feeling in our hearts!

Can you describe your life in just 6 words???

My strong-willed child meets the dentist

My 9 year old daughter has been complaining that there was food getting stuck up in one of her teeth.  I didn't think too much of it, but then the other day her tongue was all scratched up from it, so I figured that it was probably chipped and made a dentist appointment right away.  The dentist took one look at the tooth- a baby tooth (thank goodness!), and said that it should probably come out.  He said it was not only chipped, but also had a cavity.  Her dentist is so awesome.  He calls her angel, joked with her about chewing on rocks and promised it wouldn't hurt and that he would give her happy gas to make her feel happy about it.  She turned to look at me with tears in her eyes and said, "I refuse".  I just looked at her like, "what?!"  Then she said it again, "I absolutely refuse", and she stared at me with my very own "don't mess with me, I am the boss" look that I give to my students!  Someday, my daughter will be a force to be reckoned with, but for today, she got the tooth pulled.  Hope the tooth fairy brings her something good- she deserves it!

telling it like it is

One thing I love about kids is that they will tell it like it is!  If my outfit is cute, they will let me know it.  If my shoes are awesome, they tell me.  If my jokes are funny, they will laugh.  When my lessons are good, they will thank me.  Today, one of my students asked me if I "lost my comb".  I'm guessing that the "tousled hair look" doesn't really work for me!

Six Word Saturday and the movies

 Let's all go to the movies!

I've been so busy lately!  My schedule has been so packed that I never even got to see a few movies that I really wanted to see.  I must be the only one on earth who hasn't seen the Hunger Games yet.  And I promised my daughter that we would go see Mirror Mirror, since we are so hooked on the Once Upon a Time TV show.  So, tonight, I'm going to the movies- I'll save you some popcorn!

Can you describe your life in just six words?

Zen Doodles

Have you heard of Zen Doodles?  I love to doodle- in meetings, in church (sorry Pastor!) and while I'm on the phone.  But I have no artistic talent AT ALL.  Basically, I can only draw good horses butts, umbrellas and palm trees.  Recently, I have been hearing a lot about these drawings called Zen Doodles or Zen Tangles.  Basically they have these specific patterns with different names that you use when you doodle.  Anyone can do them and they look good- even mine! I ordered two books on Amazon and am hooked!  A friend of mine, who is not the craftiest person, told me that she has been making thank you cards on blank note cards with zen doodle patterns- so clever!  I made copies of the different patterns in my book, laminated them and made them into a book of flip-cards for my daughter, so that she can doodle in the car!  What can you think of to do with your Doodles?

Awww Yeah!

Just look at that ham!

Doesn't it look juicy and delicious?!  I pulled it off and cooked my first Easter dinner.  I did a ham, green bean casserole and mashed sweet potatoes.  Yum!  Turns out hams are already cooked when you buy them and all you do is heat them up like hot dogs- who knew!  Happy Easter!

And Then I Got All Cocky

And Then I Got All Cocky...
 
Anyone who knows me knows that I love to cook and that I am pretty good at it (even if I do say so myself).  There have been a lot of changes in our family traditions with each holiday that has passed since my dad died one year ago.  For example, on Thanksgiving, I decided instead of going to dinner at my parents house, like we always used to do, that I would have my mom over to my house and cook a turkey.  It was the first time I cooked a turkey on my own and it turned out delicious!  
With Easter just around the corner, and my grandmother here from out of town for a visit, my mom was very stressed out trying to get everything spruced up and planning out Easter dinner.  So, tonight I told her not to worry, that we could do Easter dinner at my house.  I could handle everything.  Since I cooked a turkey, apparently now I think I can cook anything.  Um, I have no idea how to cook a ham!  What am I getting myself into?!

Can you describe your life in just 6 words? Drop by Cate's site and show off your stuff: http://www.showmyface.com/search/label/6WS

Tetherball and Backyard Fun!

About a year ago, I decided to update my backyard for my daughter, who is not so little anymore.  I did some research and finally decided to replace the rusty old swingset that bumped when you swung too high with a tee pee and a gigantic rock (see here).  The tee pee did not hold up so well to the rain and the rock, sadly, was not such a big hit.  So, I decided to add one more upgrade to the backyard: a tetherball pole.  I remember playing tetherball back in elementary school and loved it.  I think this game is going to bring lots of fun times to our backyard!