I hate to think of blog post titles

As I said in the title, I hate to think up blog titles. I know it's supposed to be something to draw in readers and to let them know what this post might be about. But I sit here and I think and I think and I come up with nothing. And to tell you the truth, it sometimes keeps me from posting.

Anyway, I am a huge Pin-Head. Meaning I'm addicted to Pinterest. I have tons of pins on there and I pin more every day. I use my phone to use the mobile version. So if I'm sitting still somewhere, chances are that I'm pinning. I have a board with tons of craft pins. I finally sat down and decided to actually try making a few of them. So here are some of what I came up with. Excuse the yucky pics, I'm in need of a camera update. I have that on my Christmas list. :)

These things were made for me or as gifts for friends. The Love Story sign is for my bedroom.

The Happy Birthday cake carrier I made for me. And I made one to sale. I hope to make this a business someday. It would be my dream come true to be able to make money off of crafts I make at home.

The Welcome wreath is a gift for my best friend's daughter. Her wedding is Saturday. She and her fiance loved it. They just built a new house and I thought this would be cute for them to hang on their door. They've been so busy picking out things like light fixtures and such that they hadn't even thought of decor for their door. So I hit a home run with this gift. :)

The dog bowls are for a friend's pug puppies. She lives in West Virginia, so she hasn't seen them yet. I am going to mail them (plus a few little gifts for her kids) tomorrow.

Now, these next pics... They've caused me a bit of anxiety. I was in Knoxville, Tn with my mom last Friday and I found the cutest Halloween pails. So I bought all that they had. I brought them home and put a name on a few of them and posted the pics on my Facebook page that they were for sale. I had NO IDEA that people would want them like they have! I have taken orders for 14 of them so far. And I don't have that many!! I did email everyone that ordered and told them that I have to go get more. And I explained that there might be a chance that the store is out of stock on them. I hope and pray I can get all 14 of them! It would be a great way to kick start my vinyl business. I am going back to Knoxville on Monday to try to find more of them. Wish me luck!

Tidbits

Lately, I've felt like I've had such a productive week. I got every last piece of dirty laundry washed, dried, AND PUT AWAY. That's huge for me. And I had been doing a few loads every day to stay on top of it. And I had been cleaning my kitchen from top to bottom. I've washed all the dishes I seldom use so I can wash out the insides of my cabinets. I've washed down all the cabinets with Murphy's Oil Soap. I've cleaned the fridge inside and out. It looks new again. Anyway, I think you get the picture. I have really been on the ball.

Enter Sunday... We went to church on Sunday morning and came home to dinner already cooked (see, I told you I was on top of things!). Then Hubby and the oldest son had to go to work. I hate it when they have to work on Sunday. But it happens sometimes. The other 2 boys and I decided to have a chill day that day. We hung out in front of the tv watching movies all day. They didn't have any bickering or anything. It was a really good day actually.

Then Monday comes around. I had a migraine. So I did nothing but lay in a dark room all day. I hate it when I get like that. I didn't even cook. I had some frozen chicken patties in the freezer, so my guys had chicken sandwiches and fries for dinner. And yet, they still managed to dirty up almost every dish in the kitchen!

And yesterday, NOT A GOOD DAY. My husband has a history of having blood clots. About 3 years ago, he had one to get in the deep vein and it caused him to be in the hospital for nearly 2 weeks. Talk about hard! And scary too. I never realized how life threatening a blood clot is. If it is in the deep vein, it can break off at any time and go to your lung. That is very very dangerous. So anyway, he has been having some swelling of his leg along with a bit of pain. Yesterday morning when he came home from work (he works night shift) he said he thought he had another blood clot. So we were at the doctor all day. He had to go back again today, and we have to go back in the AM tomorrow also.

The point of this story is, if I take just a few days off of cleaning, my house looks like a pig pin!! And I have a huge mountain of laundry. UGH. I only have 5 people in my family and the amount of laundry is ridiculous. I can't even imagine how someone that has 5+ kids keeps up with it!

*If you don't hear from me for a few days, I'll probably be at the hospital or in my laundry room. And I really dislike both places. Say a little prayer from my man when you pray that everything will be okay with the blood clot.




*Who am I kidding? No one will miss me. Not with the way I am about updating my blog. LOL It will just be kinda normal if I don't update for a few months again. Hahahaaa.

Pinterest Party!

Since I successfully posted my first linky party last Thursday when I posted Thankful Thursday I thought I'd link to another party. This time it's The DIY Showoff's Pinterest Party! Every 2nd Tuesday of the month, she has a pinterest party. This month's theme is "Autumn/Fall". I'm posting about fall fashion. I love getting dressed in the fall. I love dressing in layers, which is a must with the cool mornings, warm evenings, and brisk nights. And in Kentucky, dressing in layers is a must. As the old saying goes: If you don't like the weather in Kentucky, hang around for an hour because it's bound to change. So here are some of my favorite Autumn outfits that I found on Pinterest.

All images VIA: Pinterest & Polyvore

Pinterest Party

Since I successfully posted to the Thankful Thursday linky party, I thought I would try out another link party. This time I'm joining up over at The DIY Showoff blog. Every 2nd Tuesday of the month, they have a Pinterest linky party. This party combines 3 of my favorite things.... Pinterest, Fall, and Fashion. This month's theme is Fall. You will find links to all different things relating to Autumn. Anything from Fall Decor, Fall Recipes, and Fall Fashion.

I decided to post about fall fashion because the Autumn season is my favorite season to dress for. It can be weather for just about anything in my closet depending on how far into fall we are. If it's early fall, I can still get away with wearing sandles. If it's later, then the boots will be the finishing touch on an outfit. I love dressing for the fall.... The cool mornings, warm days, and then the cool nights means dressing in layers. And here in Kentucky, dressing in layers is pretty much a must. As the old saying goes, "If you don't like the weather in Kentucky, hang around 1 hour because it's bound to change". :)

These outfits are exactly how you find me most days... Jeans, shirt, and cardi. Except I don't accessorize like these pics. But now that I think about it, I don't know why I don't... I have tons of jewlery. I need to work on that.

THANKFUL THURSDAY

This is my first time linking to any party. Ever. I'm not even sure I know how to do it. But I thought there wouldn't be a better blog party for me to chose as my first to link to. Megan is a fellow Kentucky girl that is pregnant with a baby girl named Harper. I have followed Megan's blog for quite a while now. I can't wait for her to have that precious baby girl and to share pics. :)

The Linky Party is called THANKFUL THURSDAY. And I know I have tons of blessings in my life to be thankful for. I almost don't know where to stop on my list. I could go on and on. But I guess I will narrow it down to a few things so I won't bore you to tears.

• MY FAMILY
  I have to start off by putting my family on here. I am SOOO blessed with the husband and boys I have. I have a husband that works hard for us and is very involved in the lives of our boys. And my boys, they are such good young men. All 3 of them get good grades, are well mannered, and never fight. Okay, I might have lied through my teeth on that last one. LOL But 2 out of 3 ain't bad, right? ;) And I'm very proud of my 17 year old for holding down a job. He has saved up the money to buy his own car (it's not new, but it's new to him). And he buys all the things he needs for himself. And he will occasionally come home with a little something for his little brothers.
  
  
  





• My HOME
  My house might not be everything I want it to be, but it's ours. I love where I live and I love that this house has been in my family for so many years. I love the yard we have. It's getting that time of year when we have a weekly fire outside at night. We roast weinies, and make smores. All while we sit and hang out with our kids. Can't get better than that.
  
  





• MY HUSBAND'S JOB.
  This one, you will find me complaining about at times, but I'm really thankful for it. He changed jobs at the first of the year and now works 5 minutes from home. He is still on night shift, but without all the travel time that he had with his old job, it seems like he is home twice as much as he used to be. When I complain about it, it's because he took a pay cut to work there. And with my layoff, it has made things extremely tight around here. But in the end, it's worth it to have him home more. The boys are LOVING having him around as much as he is.
  
  





• 
  
  
  
  
  BEING A SHAM (if only for the time being)
  I am so enjoying this time in my life. I love being home during the day while my kids are at school. I am able to spend time with my husband since he is on night shift. We have been attempting to work on our house and get it the way we want it. We aren't very good at the DIY thing, but we're learning. Baby steps. It's a beginnging. I love that I am home to cook and have a hot meal waiting on my boys when they get home from school. I love being able to sit down at the table and have all of us eat together. Which doesn't get to happen every day since the oldest works, but it happens more now that it ever has!
  
  Okay, I suppose I will end there for this week. Now I will see if I can figure out how to post this on Megan's linky thingy. LOL

UGH!

I had a few posts scheduled, and they've not posted. I'm so annoyed. How do you schedule posts? Did I do something wrong? Is there a book called "Blogging for Dummies"? LOL If so, I need it!

Bad bad blogger

Why do I even have a blog if I'm never going to blog in it? I want to start blogging on a regular basis. Really, I do. I just don't have the gumption to do it.

I always find reasons NOT to blog. Such as: My pics stink. I don't have anything to say. It will take time away from my facebook. LOL You know, important reasons here.

So from now on, I want to challenge myself to posting at least once every 2 weeks. I have tons of projects that I am working on that I could blog about. I just have to remember to take pics. If not pics during the projects, then atleast before & after pics. Taking pics is another thing I'm bad at doing. I can never remember to take pics! But maybe with this blog challenge I've given myself, I will get better about that too. Because no blog post is interesting with out a pic, right? So with that I will leave you with this lovely pic. :)

* Us at a Reds game on the big screen. It has nothing to do with this post. Just wanted to put a pic in here. LOL

Made By Monica

I have finally been putting my Mother's Day gift to work. I've made a few gifts for a couple of my friends that were expecting baby boys. I don't think they turned out too bad considering they're my first things I've made. Now I want to get to work on some cute UK shirts that I've had ideas for. I have tons of things in my head that I want to make, just not enough time to make them. Hopefully that will change soon though. Now that it's summer break I should get a little extra time at home and I won't be so busy.

How sad it it?

How sad is it that I've had this blog for 3 years now and I only have like 30 something posts in it? Boy, talk about lazy!

Mother's Day 2011

This is my Mother's Day gift! I have been wanting one of these for a year now. And my awesome guys got it for me. Well, I ordered it and told them it was my gift. LOL Plus I got a new sewing machine. I plan on making all kinds of crafts with it. I am going to start out by making some teacher's gifts for the end of the year gift. I am gonna print their names out on coasters and a coffee mug. How does that sound? A personalized coaster and mug set? Would you want that if you were a teacher? Anyway, if you would like to read more about the silhouette, go here. Now, I'm off to get my craft on!

Things I've learned over the past 7 weeks.

Some of the things I've learned are:

*If you and your husband are both laid off from work, its a guarantee that your kids WILL grow 2 inches and gain 10 pounds. Therefore making you spend money you don't have on new clothes.

*The cheapo laundry softening crystals are awesome. Really, they are. Try the new purex softening crystals in the purple bottle. They only cost $4 and the smell stays with your clothes for days.

*Couponing is really time consuming. But I guess if you don't have a job, you have the time for it. LOL

*My oldest got his first job. Did you know that working 4 hours a day at McDonalds makes you too tired to take out the trash? Yeah, I didn't fall for it either.

*I have the best family and friends in the world. They really are caring and generous even when you don't /want/ them to be.

*And most importantly, I've learned that my family can live on wayyyy less than I thought it could. And since my hubs is now back to work, we will have an emergency fund started by this time next week!!

My hubs was working 80 miles (one way) away from home. The price of gas was killing us. Not to mention how tiring it was on him to drive that far and then work 10-12 hours a day. So he went job hunting closer to home. Luckily, he found one about 5 minutes from our house. He got hired to be the night shift manager. The company didn't have a night shift at the time (end of FEB) but they were starting one the first part of March. Which was excellent timing (so we thought). He put in his 2 week notice with his job. Which would have meant we wouldn't be without a paycheck. Well...... At the end of his 2 weeks, he finds out that permits weren't in for the job he was supposed to start. So he called his other job and told them he could work 2 more weeks. They said that was great and to come back to work on Monday (this was on a Thursday). So on Friday he called his job to see which job site he was supposed to show up at. They told him they didn't really have anywhere to put him so he could just go ahead and sign up for unemployment benefits. So, he does just that. Well, we get a letter saying he quit his job voluntarily so he wasn't eligible for benefits. UGH! But then I was talking to a friend of mine that works for the Unemployment office and he tells us that if they told him to come back to work and then didn't have work for him (AND TOLD HIM TO SIGN UP) then he would be eligible. So hubs had to contest the claim or something like that. My wording might be off here. lol.

Anyway, since the government is all about promptness *sarcasm* we have waited and waited on the phone conference from them to let us know if he is being awarded his UE insurance benefits or not. We finally got a letter saying it will be next Monday when they call. So please keep your fingers crossed that he will get it. He has since started his new job. He loves it. And we love him being 5 minutes from home. We get to see him so much more than when he drove the 2 hour commute (one way!) every day! If they award him his UEI, he will get the money he would have gotten from the time he signed up for it until the day he started his new job. Let me just tell you, WE NEED THAT MONEY! We have been living on so little money. We've only paid the bills we had to pay. I think I'm probably one payment away from my car being re-poed. :( But he will be getting his first pay check on Thursday, so I will take care of that!

You know, my husband has worked for years and years and paid for his unemployment insurance. So I feel like he should get it. It was circumstances beyond him that kept the new job from being ready on the day he should have been able to start it. Please just say a little prayer that it will work out in our favor next Monday. We really really need it to.

Sometimes I wish...

Things I Love

As you can tell from the pics I've posted, I LOVE all things burlap and neutral. I wish I would have found some of these things before I spent all of my birthday money!! :)

The most dreaded chore ever.

Everyone has that one chore that they hate doing. For some it might be doing dishes. Or for some it might be putting away laundry (which is my 2nd most hated chore, btw). But for me the chore that I hate the very most is cleaning out the car.... Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I have a large SUV and it is a pain to keep clean. I have 3rd row seating and I hate climbing back there to sweep it out and vaccuum it. I also have a light interior. It shows every little speck of dirt. I will totally keep that in mind with the next car I get. We are in our car a lot. We seem to always be on the road going somewhere. My MIL lives 1.5 hours away, so we go down there often. And when we do, we usually hit up the drive through. Worst.Mistake.Ever. I don't want to eat in our car, but we do. It's was just always easier to go through the drive through when our kids were little. There would always be one of the boys asleep or something to keep us from wanting to drag the kids out of their carseats and into the resturaunt to eat. We would have had to add 45 minutes to the drive to the MIL's just to do that. So it was easier to just grab something and go. And it's a bad habit that has stuck like glue with us. And when we get home from the MIL's on the weekends. Its usually late and everyone has to wake up to come in the house. So sometimes the food wrappers stay in the car. And since I don't sit in the back, I don't notice them. Until I go to clean it out.... And then I get so mad that my car is that messy.

And as I've written about here before, I'm now a SAHM. And I'm starting to get on a schedule. I am cleaning my car on Monday. We always have a mess in there from the weekend trips we take, so Monday makes the most sense. And one of the things I plan on doing is getting my car organizer (I've had it for years, just never used it) filled up and ready to use.

The organizer I have is a three compartment soft storage bag. it folds flat when not in use. I plan on filling it up with things I find myself wishing I would have thought to have in the car. In one compartment, I will put all of us a change of clothes. We are pretty spontaneous and there are time we'd like to just spend the night at MIL's house if we had extra clothes. I'll add a toiletry bag with our tooth brushes, and contact cases.

In the other compartment, I will put things I find we need in to have on hand "just in case". A box of kleenex, a small bottle of tylenol and allergy medicine, cell phone chargers, ipod chargers, extra notebooks and pens.

In the 3rd compartment, I'll keep snacks which I hope will cut down on the trips through the drive through. I'll keep bags of chips, granola bars, rolls of paper towels, and hand wipes. I'll start packing a small lunch of sandwhiches if we don't have time to eat before we go (we usually are picking the boys up from practice and leaving from there so there will probably be lots of sandwhiches.). I'll also pack water with us for drinks.

Hopefully all of this will cut down on my MOST DREADED CHORE. Maybe I'll dread it less.

What is your most dreaded chore?

Lists

Since I've been laid off work and became a SAHM, I've been trying to get my house organized. I have never been good at balancing the kids, house work, work, and school. If I have that many things on my plate then something is lacking. And in the last year and a half it's been my house. So now that I'm not working or going to school, I feel like I can finally devote my time and energy to my home. I am a Martha wannabe. I have spent the last two weeks getting a lot of things done around here that I had overlooked. For far too long, I have only surface cleaned my house. I just picked it up enough for it to look clean. And it wasn't tidy. I have way too much JUNK! I've have a paper mountain that I need to level, a mountain of laundry, and a mountain of clutter. So far, I've gotten a HUGE jump on getting it all cleaned up. I have my laundry caught up (mostly anyway). I am trying to get on a schedule that will work best for me.

I've also been 'de-crapifying' my home. I have been boxing up all the duplicate things I have. I mean really, who needs 15 spatulas? And books. Wow. I can't believe how many books we have. My family is a family of readers. We love books. I'm having a really hard time parting with any of them though. But I'm going to have to bite the bullet and dump some of them into the giveaway box. I'm thinking about trying to find a volunteer fire department that will take all my house ware that I don't need. They will know of some family that needs those types of items. I have tons of curtains and comforter sets that I can dig out to donate also.

I'm hoping to get all this done soon so I can devote time to crafting. I have several projects that I want to try. And I don't want to get started on them until I have my house organized like I want it to be. I have an idea I've been swirling in my head.... I'm thinking of starting a home based vinyl business. I would like to start an etsy shop to sell my things in. I hope to get a refund at tax time to help get the vinyl cutting machine I'll need. And if I do get a vinyl shop, I will be sure to post all about it here in my blog. :)

Conversations @ the Nantz nest

So one evening we were at my mom's talking about the show 16 & pregnant on Mtv. The following conversation took place between my husband, my 10 year old SON, and I....

Greg: Did you know that they said girls are getting pregnant just to get on the show 16 & pregnant?

Me: I'm not surprised. It's a sad world when young girls bring a life in this world just for some fame and money.

Trevor: Mom, you don't have to worry about me getting pregnant just so I can get on tv and be famous.

Me: Honey if YOU get pregnant, I'll be willing to bet you'll be on tv all the time.

Trevor: Oh, because I'm just that cool, right?

Me: No moron, because you're a BOY!!!!