Happy Valentine’s Day

Hi everyone, hope you all have a LOVEly day today. We don’t have any special plans today, well other than me going up to Kristen’s school in a few hours while they have their ‘valentine’s Party’, then I’m taking Kristen to see the Justin Bieber movie later this afternoon.

Yesterday I helped Kristen bake a giant heart shaped cookie . . .

She actually piped the decoration on all by herself :-)

Then we sprinkled on pink sugar! She’ll be eating this all week! Jason and I won’t be sharing. . . Jason has come on board and is going to start counting WW points! I am so excited :-) Well, actually I’ll probably be counting his points for him! but I don’t mind that at all. I’ve sent him off to work today with a full lunch bag, including a Jimmy Dean ‘lite’ breakfast sandwich to get his day started right (he never usually eats any breakfast!).

Thanks to my sweet friend Cheryl, THIS was my dinner last night :) Jason does not like seafood at all, so I had lobster tail with salad and a glass of ‘organic’ white wine! I am trying organic wine to see if less sulfites helps my nose not get so stuffy. It seemed to work. I had 3 glasses of this on Saturday night and could still breath through my nose!

Well, this is just a quicky post, must get on and do some housework before heading up to the school. Hope you all have a wonderful day.

x x x x x

The Winner!

 

Hi everyone, Thank you all for leaving a comment on my Yoplait smoothie giveaway. I used the Random Number Generator to pick a number for the Yoplait Giveaway.

The Winner is #4   JEN. S

  

Congratulations Jen, email me your address and I’ll pass it on to MyBlogSpark :-)

If you haven’t tried one of these smoothies yet go out and buy one, Kristen has asked for one just about every day since we tried it. We like the strawberry and banana one best :-)

WIWW

What I Wore Wednesday – Kiki Style! I hate to say it but I’m still in my sweats and shirts with my big ole grey cardigan wrapped round me – it is really cold here.  A couple of days ago though we were up in the 60’s again. Kristen wore her new ‘Major Cutie’ t-shirt and matching hat that we bought from Justice the other week.

 

Actually I don’t think I posted about our ‘girly trip’ to Justice! I posted pics on my FB page after Cheryl took them on her phone. Kristen is quite the tom boy (for those of you who don’t know!)  but the weekend before last she asked if I’d take her to Justice for Girls. I thought she might want to shop for cool girly clothes ;-) but she said she just wanted a ‘mood bracelet’ like one of her friends at school had! Well I took her anyway and my friend Cheryl said she’ d love to come too – she has 2 boys so she doesn’t get to girly shop very often. Just as we were walking out the door , Kristen’s friend Emily knocks! Emily asked her Dad (her mom was out) if she could come with us, and off the 4 of us went for some retail therapy. It turned out to be a really fun morning. Kristen and Emily were trying on all kinds of cute outfits, and I went a little crazy and bought Kristen a ton of stuff!

We bought this blue outfit too, including the hat and purse, but later I took the leggings back (just a tad too tight) and also the top. Kristen said that she could feel the ‘bling’ sticking in her chest. I’ve since learned that we need to get her some cami’s so she can wear tops like this without them irritating her skin. I’m waiting on the 40% voucher from Justice before I go in there shopping again… maaaan their prices are way high!

Cheryl took a few pictures on her phone. The girls looked so cute together. The above pic is the only one Cheryl has put on my FB page so far so I can’t share more yet!  The others were what I took the other day when Kristen got ready to go to the store.

The little Chihuahua and purse she got a while ago from Daddy after he got back from a trip away for work. Rather appropriate though as Beverley Hills Chihuahua II is out on dvd, (which we tried to get out from Blockbuster yesterday but they had none on the shelf, so hopefully we’ll see it this weekend).

  (we’re still waiting for that second ‘big tooth’ to grow in to even up that pretty smile) :-)

One of these days you might see ‘what I wore for Wednesday’ – but I wouldn’t hold ya breath! ;-)

Going strong . . .

Hi guys, another Monday, don’t they come around fast?! This one is great because there is NO school today :-) or tomorrow for that matter, or the next day either. Yup, we’re having a 6 day weekend (started last Friday when school was canceled because of ALL THE SNOW we got) ;-)

I’m still going strong with my healthy eating plan (boy I sure do hope I can keep this up for a very long time)! One thing that will make it easy I’m sure are these . . . .

I love smoothies and I’ve often made them in the past myself. Generally with a combination of fresh and frozen fruit, most often by using frozen strawberries, fresh bananas, yogurt, milk and sometimes I’d use protein powder if I had it. They’re not difficult to make but making sure I have all the ingredients on hand is the what takes the planning. I’ll often have the yogurt in the fridge, but no fresh bananas in the house (which I love in the smoothie cos it thickens it up like a milkshake)

I was contacted recently by MyBlogSpark and offered the chance to try the Yoplait Frozen Smoothies. I am so glad I did. I just made this today and wow, how simple it was. . . and delicious.

I didn’t have to wonder if I had the ingredients in to make a yummy smoothie, I just grabbed a packet from the freezer, added one cup of milk and voila, I got two large smoothies (Kristen enjoyed the other one). I think these will become a regular afternoon snack for me and Kristen.

Each package of Yoplait Frozen Smoothies contains one full serving of fruit (1/2 cup) and 110 to 120 calories per serving. Not only does Yoplait yogurt contain live and active cultures, but when prepared with skim milk and made according to package directions, Yoplait Frozen Smoothies are a good source of calcium.

Yoplait provided me with this product, and information through MyBlogSpark And they have an extra prize pack for one of my readers. If you’d like the chance to win, just leave a comment on this post. The goodies you’ll receive are shown below. (US residents only).

Kristen has already taken the cute water bottle! I love the diet and fitness journal and the carryall/backpack bag is ideal for when I get back to my walking! I’ll be able to put my water bottle and camera in while I’m out walking around the neighborhood :-) I think you’ll love it too!

I’ll draw a winner on Friday.

We got snow afterall!

Yup, we got some snow finally here in TX and NO SCHOOL TODAY!

What a way to start the weekend :-)  And what’s even better is, we have no school on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, we were already scheduled for those 3 days off for teacher/staff development! That means it’s a SIX day weekend!

I woke up at 5am this morning and decided to look out the window to see if the forecast was right, they said it might snow during the night! Sure enough we had about an inch out there, no more. I checked the school website and saw that school was canceled for the day so I slid back in to my nice warm cozy bed.  But I couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up at 6am as usual and made a lovely hot pot of coffee. I figured I’d wake Kristen up when it was light enough to see the snow, but she beat me to it and was awake by 6.30am! She’d looked out the window but it was so dark she couldn’t see the snow. She was thrilled when I told her though, and as you can see from the above pictures she couldn’t wait to go out and see it for real.

 

An hour later the whole cul-de-sac was out there :-)

 

 

Including Boo!

        

Sad to say the sun is out now and the snow is melting fast. That may be it for this year. . .  but ya never know!

Brrrrrr!!!

When I say it’s cold here right now, everything is relative… I mean COLD for Central TX! I know many of you get these temps (and colder) all the time during the winter, but I can’t remember it ever being 17 degrees in the 6 years I’ve lived here.

Yesterday our power went out as we were getting ready for school in the morning. I thought it was just because of the high winds we were getting, but it turns out that it was deliberate! A ‘rolling blackout’ they call it, because the power grid can’t keep up with the demand. After the first 20 minutes it came back on but then for the next 2 hours or so it would go off every 7 minutes just for like 2 seconds then come back on again! I’m not sure if that is what it was supposed to be doing or if, as Jason said, there is something wrong with the ‘transformer box outside in the cul-de-sac? Either way, it meant I couldn’t turn on the tv (Tivo has to reboot every time the power goes out, so it would only just say reboot then the power would turn it off again – not worth putting on!) we turned the computers off too because the backup battery kept beeping… and all this was making poor Boo freak out. He was trembling so much I felt so sorry for him.  Not to mention that the house was freezing. I had the thermostat set to 73 but the temp in the house was only 64! I called in to the store after taking Kristen to school and picked up some packs of wood, and lit a fire yesterday. 

School was delayed 2 hours this morning because they were expecting more power cuts, but so far it hasn’t gone off. I took Kristen to school at 9.15am and now I’m back doing laundry.

I have no photos to share with todays post (would love to show you a nice snowy scene but we have none here in TX) so I thought I’d show you some pictures of ‘snow days gone by’ :-)

This was probably Kristen’s first snow day (that she could walk in). . . taken in MD, Jan 2002 (she was 14mths old).

I love that little hat and glove set. I bought it in England when we took her to visit when she was 8mths old.

The following year (Feb 2003, 2 yrs,3mths) she learned to make snow angels. . . .

. . . . and snowmen!

A few days after this picture was taken we got more snow… we woke up one morning to this . . . . !!!!!

So you see, we’ve had our share of snow, but ya know what? I still miss it!  And I know Kristen would love to see more of it too – what kid doesn’t love to play in the snow :-)

I hope all of you that have a lot of it right now can either have fun in it (with your kiddies) or stay inside and stay warm. Make a hot cup of chocolate, snuggle beside the fire . . . embrace the joy in Winter, for soon it will be Spring again ( and I know you’re all looking forward to that!).

 

Denise

This and That!

I thought I better post here before another week has gone by! Speaking of which, can you believe a MONTH has already gone by – hello February!

I wondered what to write about? Melissa requested pictures of my cupboards! I never did post any, so here they are. . .  the rest of the kitchen is still a work in progress!

As you can see (above) this side of the cupboards is all bowls and plates, and glasses next to them.

 

The left side looks a little less organized, but it’s the best I can do. Top left shelf is a bit of a mixture, middle shelf houses my electric knife, bread cutter, electric hand whisk and scales, bottom shelf is all vitamins and allergy meds! The right hand side is cups/mugs, measuring cups and jugs and a set of casserole dishes. Exciting stuff eh!

What else have I been up to? Card making! I want to get back in to making my own cards with my Stampin Up stuff. I have a few stamps and supplies, paper, pens etc so I want to put them to good use. I’ve been making ‘Thank You’ cards this week, still got a few to send out after Christmas, so these should work nicely. I want to try and make some Christmas themed ones ready for next year, well actually this year – Christmas 2011 :-)  I also want to try and make my own gift tags for my knitted gifts. You can order personalized ‘knitting’ rubber stamps from Etsy, so I will be doing that soon too.

Once I get in the swing of making these I think they’d make a nice little gift set too – half a dozen cards  w/envelopes and a ribbon wrapped around them would be a lovely stocking stuffer, don’t you think?

Biscuits for Boo!

 

We’ve been meaning to bake these biscuits for Boo every since ‘Santa Paws’ left them in his stocking ;-) We finally got round to doing that last weekend.

Kristen loves baking with me in the kitchen :-) And every time we do it, I can’t help but think back to the days my Mam would teach me how to roll out dough and bake pies and make pastry. I have such sweet memories of it, I hope Kristen will have too.

 

Denise