Who’s been playing with my camera?!

Believe it or not, Kristen took ALL of these photos this past week! She wanted to play with my camera and when she showed me the pictures she had taken, I just had to laugh out loud . . .

I bought this soft ‘beer bottle’ toy for Boo at Christmas.. urmm, I mean ‘Santa Paws’ left it in his stocking for him! When you squeeze it, it makes a sound like a can of beer cracking open! and then it sounds like it’s being poured :-)

What made me laugh even more was Kristen giving me a running commentary as I looked at the photos, saying something about a new beer for dogs . . .

“your dog will love it so much he’ll want to sleep with it” she said

“and he’ll even bring you one too!”

What can I say?!

Definitely in need of a hair cut… but you gotta admit, he’s cute!

they BOTH are :-)

CSN Winner!

Thank you to everyone who entered the CSN Giveaway. The lucky winner of the $40 gift card is

ERIN from Little Texas Love Nest

 

 

Congratulations Erin, I will email you with your gift card info.

The Winner. . .

that would be ME!!!  Not for the CSN giveaway – I’ll post the winner for that tomorrow:-)  I was the lucky winner of Debbie’s ‘personal’ giveaway a couple of weeks ago, and last week a lovely parcel arrived from Debbie. I just didn’t get a chance to post pictures because of having Kristen home sick every day.

When I opened the box, this pretty bag was inside.

And these were the pretty little goodies inside!

I just love the cheese platter and knife, can’t wait to use this at our next wine and cheese night :-)

here’s a close up of the pretty necklace, it’s so ‘feminine’ I just love it.

   Can you tell I like the word ‘pretty’ ;-)   Thank you Debbie for your generosity, and for sharing your life with us on your great blog.

You still have time to enter to win $40 to spend at the CSN online stores. CLICK HERE if you haven’t already left a comment.

Back to Normal!

Kristen has been off school sick since last Tuesday, today is the first day back at school! I don’t like that she was off for so long, but she was running a fever so I couldn’t send her in. Monday she was fine, I went to her Valentine’s Day party at school, then I took her to see the Justin Bieber movie (which I thought was really good, and which she absolutely loved). Monday night she came in to my room and said she couldn’t get to sleep? We got up as usual on Tuesday morning at 6.30 but she seemed so weary and just flopped on the sofa. She didn’t look too good either, so I took her temperature. It was over 100! I decided to keep her off incase she was starting to get really sick, and I was praying she wasn’t getting flu. Her friend Emily’s little brother had it the week before and had been hospitalized for two days with pneumonia :-(

So, we had a quiet Monday, she watched tv on the sofa, didn’t eat much, had Tylenol and slept with me again that night. The next day …. same thing! Still a fever but no other symptoms. This went on all week. We are told not to send the kids to school until they have been fever free (without meds) for 24 hours. Friday morning was the first day her temp went down to 98 without any meds! I’m just glad she didn’t get anything worse than a fever and a little tired. Her appetite still isn’t that good either, but she’s been ok over the weekend so I’ve taken her to school today.

I’m saying all this because that is why I haven’t posted anything since last Wednesday! I’m about to make my menu plan for this week and head up to the grocery store. I have a lot to catch up with around the house too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with pictures and a brighter post!

CSN $40 Giveaway!

I was contacted recently by CSN Stores and asked if I would like to do a review or giveaway on my blog. If I did a review I would get a $40 gift certificate to spend at their online store. If I did a giveaway YOU would get the chance to win a $40 gift certificate to spend at their store! It wasn’t a difficult decision – I chose the giveaway!

I’ve seen other giveaways for CSN Shopping and have looked around their site and entered. With over 200 online stores, they have everything from Modern Office Furniture to cute shoes and stylish picnic baskets!

These ones in particular caught my eye!

 

Modern technology never ceases to amaze me – to think that we can sit at our computers  in our pj’s no less and shop for desks and chairs and anything else we need without leaving the comfort of our own homes – yes, Amazing!

One lucky reader will be chosen at random one week from today (Feb 23).  

To enter for this giveaway,

1) leave me a comment  on THIS post. 

2) mention this giveaway on your blog .

3) become a follower of my blog (if you already follow, mention that in your comment for an extra entry).

That’s 3 chances of winning!  Good Luck.

Hungry Girl!

I’m so excited… I’ve just discovered something REALLY wonderful, and I just had to share with you all! OK, if I’m honest some of you will not think this is wonderful at all, BUT some of you might just, like me, be rather thrilled about it!

I’ve mentioned before how a good cookbook to me should be filled with wonderful photos. To be honest I’m not happy unless there’s a picture with EVERY dish in the book. That’s why I like those little mini cookbooks you can get usually at the checkouts at your grocery store, they state quite clearly on the front ‘A Photo with Every Recipe’ :-) Most other cookbooks I’m usually rather disappointed in, the one exception is The Pioneer Woman’s Cookbook which is my ALL TIME favorite, and something I’m trying to cook my way through (but I’m following WW points system right now so that is on hold for a while!)

Anyway, the other day I picked up this book from the library…

I picked it up after watching her show the past couple of weeks that just started airing on the Cooking Channel. Now, at first glance I thought it was like any other cookbook – it has lots of great sounding recipes, but only a handful of pictures grouped together at two different sections of the books. Her website says that now her books are showing the new Weight Watcher points + values for all of the recipes, so I clicked on over today and guess what? Not only can you get the points + info BUT there is a picture of EVERY RECIPE :-)

This is a screen shot of one of the pages. Oh my! I will be browsing this site all day now. Now of course there isn’t the actual recipes on the website, you’d have to buy the book for that, OR do like I did and borrow one for free from your local library. But wow! it is so much nicer glancing at a picture and seeing instantly how many points the recipe has. I’m so excited, I want to try ALL of the recipes now!

She even has a ‘Happy Hour’ book all about cocktails and party food . . . this one is in at my library too, so I’ll have to try and check it out sometime this week!

Are you like me? Do you have to see a picture of a recipe before you feel like trying it? I wish I wasn’t like that, but I’m such a visual person, the pictures are what get me interested, not the list of ingredients!

Well, anyway, I just HAD to share that with you all. If you’re like me and get excited about stuff like this, hop on over to the HUNGRY GIRL website and have fun surfing around it today. And if you haven’t seen her tv cooking show yet, check it out. It usually airs on Saturday afternoons at 3pm.

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