Happy, happy Friday! The weatherman said summer is finally coming with it's 110 degree temperatures in just a few days. I was really enjoying the below average temps lately, but they can't last forever. Fortunately we have a few ideas of how to avoid the heat, I'm thinking movies and ice cream. Here's today's favorites.
- Mopped floors and a couple of kiddos who were not only willing, but eager to help!
- Watching the ultrasound of my grand baby.
There's some cool stuff in my little blogging world too.
- A truck load of summer reading programs. I listed all the Arizona programs I could find over at Arizona Mama.
- I have heard of Buttermilk Syrup; the Tasty Kitchen Blog shares the recipe and lots of pictures of the process.
- Positively Splendid has a giveaway for wood craft shapes that should help keep the kids busy.
- Creating Keepsakes is hosting Free Font Friday - CK Limerick is really cute!
The kids and I love to quote books, comedians and You Tube videos; but we quote movies the most. In A to Z fashion, here are some of our favorite movie quotes. There's only one movie per letter, but none for X - Z. A few of them are a little obscure, but what do you expect from us? I want to thank my kiddos for their help with the contest. We might have to do another round in the future because we left out so many great quotes.
Email your answers to raejeaneasyaspie at gmail com, by Monday, April 25. If you have the most correct answers, I'll mail you one of our favorite DVD's. If there is a tie, we'll have a drawing to break the tie. It's not a big fancy prize, mostly just for fun. The winner (and the answers) will be announced on Wednesday, April 27.
- Excuse me. Did you bring here? Did you rub my lamp? Did you wake me up? And all the sudden your walking out on me? I don't think so, you're getting your wishes. So SIT DOWN!
- Crazy old Maurice!
- Why do we even have that lever?
- Aaaaaaaaaaaassssssss yooooou wiiiishhhhhhhh!
- Corn, corn, corn, nothing but corn.
- Excuse Me!Well that's too darn bad.
- He touched the butt.
- That was totally wicked!
- You broke my smolder.
- It's so pink and fluffy I'm gonna DIE!
- Who's evolved?
- There is no price for awesomeness... or attractiveness.
- Why do you have two noses?
- Float like a Cadillac, sting like a Beemer
- Let's go get some honey buns!
- Pinned ya! Pinned ya again.
- My evil stepsister, you've seen Cinderella, right? Let me clue you in, I win
- I'm tired, and I'm hungry. And my tail's froze. And my nose is froze. And my ears are froze. And my toes are froze.
- What do you want to do? I don't know... What do you want to do? Now don't start that again!
- You better be back by Christmas!
- You know, there's nothing more pathetic than a flame retarded dragon.
- You bedazzled my football!?!
- Where is My hair brush?
After you email me your entries, share your favorite movie quote, and then check out this "Q" blogger participating in the A to Z Challenge. (For some strange reason there aren't too many.)
Happy Friday! I hope you have something special planned for this lovely weekend. We have a beautiful weather forecast with temperatures in the 80's. Plenty of Saturday will find us outside. Until then, here's some great feeds I found on my friendly Google Reader this morning.
- Small Fry & Co. has an interesting series on re-purposing a tablecloth. Today she featuring a lunch bag.
- If you have preschoolers or kindergartners, Room Mom 101 has a cute color activity that would be great for St. Patrick's Day next week.
- I thought Fritos in popcorn sounded a little weird at first, but I liked salt on my cookies - so why not try Your Homebased Mom's White Chocolate and Frito Popcorn?
- I Heart Faces has a great lesson on utilizing natural light effectively indoors.
- Little Birdie Secrets is hosting a giveaway for your choice of adorable handmade goodies from Crafty Pirate. On second thought, don't check that one out - it will increase the competition for my entry!
What's your favorite distraction this fine Friday?
You can tell Christmas is close by most people's blog posts! I hope these ideas will help bring holiday cheer to you.
Have you found any helps for this week before Christmas? Please post a comment and share with the rest of us!
November has come and gone, and way too quickly, I might add. This has been a month of ups and downs - when it rains it pours. Fortunately there was a lot of good raining down with the challenges!
1 - Successful giveaway!
2 - Books read. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen and A Light in Zion by Bodie Thoene. It was so good to read for pleasure again!
4 - Family history names checked for accuracy.
5 - Pies to enjoy on Thanksgiving.
8 - Articles written for the Homemaking Cottage and Arizona Mama
12 - Happy faces around the Thanksgiving table.
14 - Scrapbook layouts completed - only 6 short of my goal.
27 - Blog posts.
30 - Leaves on our Gratitude Garland.
45 - Christmas cards crafted in about an hour!
817 - Page views! Not only was that another record, it was more than 200 above last month!
What made your November?
Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme
TodaysMama and GameStop are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.
1. What is your holiday wish for your family?
- I'd like my family to safe, healthy, and obedient.
2. What is your Christmas morning tradition?
- We get up at 4:30 am to open gifts. When the gifts are unwrapped, we enjoy our traditional Christmas Breakfast. (Yep. That's it's name, Christmas Breakfast.) Some wimpy family members take a nap. The rest of us shower and play for the rest of the day.
3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be?
- A new car. I'm not enjoying temporally being a one car family.
4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money?
- The best parts of Christmas don't require spending money. There are hundreds of Christmas movies to watch; you can pretty much find one on TV any time in December. And there's listening to Christmas music, and baking holiday goodies, and Christmas crafts. I could go on, but I think you get the point. The main reason for even having Christmas gifts is so I can torment my family with a song about me knowing what they are getting for Christmas.
5. What games did you play with your family growing up?
- One of my best childhood memories is playing games with my mom. We played Crazy 8's and Rummy with a plain deck of cards. We also played Uno, Aggravation, and Pay Day.
6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood?
- The only tradition I can remember from my childhood is decorating the Christmas tree as a family. I do that with my own family, but we decorate the whole house!
7. Where would you go for a Christmas-away-from-home trip?
- I'd prefer an away-from-home trip after Christmas. I really enjoy being home for Christmas and basking in the traditions.
- For my after Christmas trip, I'd love to go back to Italy!
8. Check out GameStop and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?
- My kids would love to get in on the Rock Band movement. (I know, we're so behind the times)
- They would also enjoy Lego Harry Potter.
- Finally, we'd all have fun with Just Dance.
That was fun and now I can enter in Today's Mama amazing giveaway. You can too! While you're there, say hi by leaving a comment for me at Arizona Mama.
I've seen other people use Random.org to choose a winner, or pick a number out of a hat. I decided to try something a little different - my Bingo game. I put 17 balls in the cage, one for each of your wonderful comments, and rolled it until the first number came out. It was B 8; comment number 8 was left by Kirsten! Congratulations!
Welcome to the November 12 edition of Favorite Feeds Friday. Can you believe Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away? We made some serious progress on our Christmas shopping and even a little cleaning yesterday! Here's my favorite feeds I found on Google Reader today:
- Raimi from If Your're Happy & You Know It gave a touching Veteran's Day tribute. And she took me on a little trip down memory lane with her picture of my childhood hometown.
- The Mother Huddle shares some non-dinner Thanksgiving traditions. Did I mention Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away? I'm so excited!
- Celebrations at Home has a great DIY gift box and candy recipe!
Thank you to all who have entered my drawing! I'm so excited that CSN Stores is sponsoring the $35 giveaway so I can help one of my fantastic readers with their Christmas shopping. (I won't tell if you spend it on yourself.) If you still haven't entered, find out how here. Remember to comment by Sunday at midnight!
Who wouldn't like a little help with their Christmas shopping? I have just the thing for you, a $35 gift certificate to CSN Stores! I've only heard of CSN recently. They sell housewares, office supplies and furniture, bedding and other home decor items. They even sell bathroom cabinets for your home remodel!
I recently won a CSN Stores gift certificate from Fun Snacks 4 Kids and have a great Christmas gift on its way as we speak. I wish I could tell you what's coming - but Christmas secrets are too much fun!
So if you are interested in an extra $35 to help with your Christmas shopping, here's the details:
- Leave a comment and share the best Christmas gift you've received.
- Contest ends Sunday, November 14 at midnight.
- Contest is open to those living in the U.S. and Canada.
- The winner will be picked at random and announced Monday.
It's a pretty simple and straight forward contest, so comment away. Good Luck!
This contest is now closed. Thanks for playing!
A few weeks ago Kim over at Think Fast had a contest for World Card Making Day. She asked her readers to choose their favorite card and she would pick one random comment to win a prize. It sounded like fun, so I played along. I must admit I didn't pay too much attention to the prize.
When I came back from Disneyland I found an email that I had one. My first thought was "Cool, I'll win that cute card". Imagine my surprise when I pulled a box out of the mail with all these goodies! I'm kind of glad I didn't pay attention to the prize, so I could enjoy Christmas a little early.
I can't wait to scrapbook using my fun new toys. Thanks Kim!
Congratulations Laurie! You were randomly chosen as the winner to the month's subscription to The Homemaking Cottage. Please email me at qualityhighschool at gmail dot com to arrange your subscription!
I've officially been a blogger for a year as of last Saturday and I've learned many lessons from blogging!
- Our family has a lot of fun!
- Blogging holds me accountable. It's one thing to have a desire, another to have a goal, and something totally different to be accountable to that goal by making it public. Even if no one reads my little blog, there is still something binding about having my goals out there for anyone to see and ask me about at any time.
- It also helps me refocus my goals when needed. When I'm running on empty, feeling frazzled and can't get it all done; I can look at life with slightly different eyes and use my time and energy for the things that matter most.
- I understand life's lessons more deeply when I write about them. It's like the difference in learning about a subject and preparing to teach a subject, I get a higher level of understanding from putting what I learned into words.
- Similarly, accomplishments are more meaningful when they are recorded. This blog gives me a place to record my accomplishments - and share them with other moms who might be reaching for similar goals. It also helps me stop and notice the accomplishments of my children, sometimes they grow so subtly.
- Life is pretty in blogland. This can be good and bad. I try not to dwell on the bad things in life on my blog and I definitely don't want to use it as a tool to vent. I want my blog to be encouraging and motivating. On the downside, sometimes life in blogland is a little too artificially sweet. And sometimes, we as women have a tendency to compare our worst with other women's best.
- Just because people don't leave comments doesn't mean no one is reading and enjoying. I've caught myself feeling hesitant to leave a comment on someone's blog; other times I'm just too busy.
- Rereading entries reminds me of cool things I did that I'd like to do again!
Today is the last day to leave a comment here for a chance to win a month's subscription to The Homemaking Cottage!
"A mother's love is like a circle, it has no beginning and no ending. It keeps no beginning and no ending. It keeps going around and around ever expanding, touching everyone who comes in contact with it." - Art Urban
Don't forget to leave a comment here by Tuesday, May 18 for a chance to win a month's subscription to The Homemaking Cottage!
Tomorrow is my blogaversary! This year has gone by so fast. I focused in on the purpose of my blog and come a long way to finding my niche.
Shiloah at The Homemaking Cottage has been so kind to offer a prize for my special day - a month subscription to the online magazine. There's been some really exciting changes over at The Homemaking Cottage and you can win a chance to check them out by leaving a comment by Tuesday, May 18! The winner will be chosen at random and announced on Wednesday.
If you don't want to wait, you can get in on a great deal! Through Tuesday, May 18, Shiloah is running a 50% off sale on subscriptions for 3 months or more. The coupon code is 2010 magazine. That makes a 3 month subscription only $5!
