September Acres

Remember to keep a deck of cards in your desk, just in case!

On my bedside table : "Elsewhere, USA" by Dalton Conley. On my TV : Nothing now. Usually if it's on during the day it's on the Fox Business Channel On the Menu for tonight: Shrimp Alfredo, salad On my To Do List: Work, steam the grout on my tile floors (this will be on the list a while - very time intensive) In the craft basket: Gift tags to make. Looking forward to: Hockey this afternoon w/ my daughter - the semi-warm fresh air while she is practicing. Homemaking Tip for this week: Steam clean your grout - it is so gratifying and it will look like you have a new floor. Favorite Blog Post of the week (mine or other): Putting my husband first by Monica @ The homespun heart. Wonderful post and great comments! Favorite photo from last week: My daughter enjoying her new scooter. Lesson learned the past few days: Keep the kids' birthday parties small. We had way too many kids at the party and although it was fun it was quite chaotic. Next year, we

We went to Kmart today (breaking my 'no shopping on weekends' rule) so my daughter could spend her gift card from her birthday. I wanted to bow out and just send Little Miss with her dad but he wanted me to go since he was gone all weekend. Very sweet. Well, who knew they STILL had Christmas items lingering among the shelves? For $6.14 (regular retail value: $34.93) we are now the owners of this cute vinyl kids Christmas table cloth, curling ribbon, the oh-so lovely tree skirt for the tree in my daughter's room (only a 7 year old would love that one!) and the finger tip towels (which I think will be cute in gift baskets next Christmas). Christmas wrap was 90% off!!! It was hard to resist but I bought some at 75% off and just couldn't see getting more as I still have some wrap from 2 yrs a ago. Please excuse the blurry photo. My daughter ended up getting a Hannah Montana doll which came with a locker and provoked the question: "Why don't we have lockers

to say that I LOVED Michelle Obama's dress she wore yesterday. You know that I voted for McCain but style is style whether you are a democrat or a republican! Love the dress, love the Jimmy Choo's. Now if I were to be lucky enough to have somewhere to wear the dress I would order it in navy as yellow is not my best color. Are you reading this, Isabel Toledo?? The ball gown from last night was lovely but I wasn't totally wowed by it. I felt there were too many pleats on the skirt for my liking. But it was very pretty. And the little girls looked too cute in their colorful coats. I spent inauguration day in my DKNY jeans and Eddie Bauer t-shirt. Hmmm....

We had a PTA meeting today at 3 pm. Our school superintendent was scheduled to be there so I thought it would be standing room only. Boy was I wrong. With the exception of the 3 board members I was the only parent there. Yikes. I am glad I went but really disappointed with the turnout. We were given a presentation about the override renewal which is up for vote this November. They want to get the word out that it's not a new tax, just renewing the old. The override pays for all day kindergarten, music, art, PE, nurses in every school -things like that. It was defeated 5 years ago and then passed 4 years ago. I was unaware that it needed to be renewed. I am hoping that come November people will pass the renewal. I am not totally sold on the need for all day kindergarten but the other things are nice to have and important, in my opinion. I also found out the we have yet another fundraiser coming up next week. We are selling See's candy which will be ready for deliver

I have recently started making my own salsa thanks to a friend who made it for my husband's birthday party. I watched her make it one weekend and thought "I can do that!" It is soooooo much better than even the best jarred, bottled, containered salsa you can buy at the store and you can just taste the freshness. 2 tomatoes (regular old tomatoes - use 5 or 6 if you are using romas.) 1/4 - 1/2 onion handful of fresh cilantro (to taste) handful of banana peppers (in the jar) with a little of the juice added salt to taste Chop the ingredients to desired size, mix together and you're done. You can add or subtract the amounts of the ingredients to taste. It is the yummiest! The other benefit is that I find the chopping process theraputic. I try to make it when I have to time to enjoy chopping. And like with anything homemade it's a nice feeling to serve something healthy to your family and friends. This post is taking part in Living Simply Saturdays at Keeper of the Hom

does Starbucks coffee taste so much better when purchased already brewed at Starbucks than it does when I brew it at home (Starbucks brand)? can I not seem to keep a white shirt clean? In 2 days I have worn and gotten dirty 3 white shirts (dirty as in I needed to pretreat them before washing them). Yesterday's shirt got dirty when the dog fell out of the back of the car (poor dear, she is fine) into a puddle after getting a bath. Lovely. Today's shirts got dirty with coffee (home brewed Starbucks, see above) and the cheese mixture from Aunt Annie's shells and cheese. are bakery cookies so expensive? I took Little Miss to order her birthday cake today and pick up some cookies to take to school for her birthday tomorrow. She has 27 kids in her class (don't get me started on that) so I would have to get 3 dozen cookies at $5 a pop. Not likely, so we are now the proud owners of 'gingerbread donut holes' purchased for $6. Still way too much but better. I just wasn

My daughter's mother (me) is selling Girl Scout Cookies. Yep, it's that time again & really at the Daisy level it's the parents doing the selling. She does ask my parents and our friends but I do the majority of the asking. Luckily these things sell themselves. I have gotten a little flak about the $4/box price but for the most part people love these cookies. You know "when I was a kid they were $1 a box." We had the 'cookie kick-off' on Saturday - a little pep rally type thing for the girls. A lovely idea but the main presenter was a real downer talking about the poor economy and how it might be hard to sell them & we needed to give them reasons why they needed to buy them, etc. Really! The Daisys and Brownies looked confused as she babbled on. Yes, I should be running this show, too. Haha. No thanks, I'll just sell them...

The Arizona Cardinals are 'this close' to going to the Super bowl. Yahoo! It has been a long, hard haul but they have finally made it this far. We have never been huge Cardinal fans but when in Rome... We are Rams and 49'ers fans but since Curt Warner was once a Ram and we now live in Arizona we are on board. Luckily, the NFL realized that my daughter's birthday party is on Saturday so the Cards should play on Sunday. How very nice of them. Looking forward to a good game. The Eagles should be good competitors so it should be fun to watch. Maybe some good football food is in order for Sunday. Nachos, anyone? Little Miss will be 7 on Saturday. She requested her 'theme' to be 'The Dog' . I jumped at this right away because I was dreading the Hannah Montana or High School Musical theme. We are going to have the party at the house with some friends. We'll have pizza and a craft and the kids can play. Pretty low key. We got her a scooter and new helmet.

I am going to piggy back on Stephanie's post topic for Living Simply Saturdays: Saying 'no'. As I made this one of my new year's resolutions, I figured this would be a good time to talk about it. I think we all stuggle with saying no. If you don't, I would love to hear how you do it. I have always been the type that when asked to do something I quickly reply 'yes' without giving it too much thought if the idea sounds remotely enticing. When I need to look at logistics, I often realize that the event I have committed to is not practical or sometimes even desirable. And there are times when it's just something I really don't want to do. I am trying to give myself time to digest the request and see if it really fits in with my current priorities. Saying "let me look at my calendar" or (my favorite) "let me check with my husband" gives me time not only to check but to think about what 'yes' entails (getting a baby

This morning I was waiting for Little Miss to go into the classroom and some of her classmates were talking about how old their moms are. You can probably see where this is going. 'C': "My mom is 28." 'A': "My mom is 28, too." 'J': "My mom is 32." Little Miss (to me): "How old are you mom?" Me: "Older than them." My friend was standing listening to this also and she says to me "Well, I guess I am the oldest." (Bless her, you see why she is my friend.) Me: "You know I have you beat." 28!?!? Yes, I felt old. I guess I should let Little Miss know how old I am, don't you think?

I called the phone company today to see about getting wireless internet here at home. I was expecting a big jump in the bill but instead the service rep informed me that we have been overcharged for the last 16 months to the tune of $95 and would see a credit on next month's bill. Yippee. And the wireless is available, they would send us a new 'box' (I know that is not the technical term) and there would be no extra charge for it, our current service covers wireless once we have the new box. Wow. The first day back to school went of without a hitch. I think Little Miss is happy to be back amongst her friends. There was no hockey today - we start a new session on Thursday so we had no practice today. So after CCD we got to come home. Today was my day to drive the kids to CCD - four of them. I have to admit that having four 6 year olds in the car makes me appreciate the quietness of having one child. :) They are good kids, just a bit noisy when cooped up in the SU

Tomorrow Little Miss goes back to school. That doesn't bother me TOO much, although I do wish Christmas vacation was a little longer. What makes everything crazy is all the other things that go with going back to school. Namely, the extra curricular activities (she didn't sign up for these things herself, I know). I have just really enjoyed having very little scheduled for the last couple of weeks. We could do what we wanted when we wanted for the most part. OK, back to real life now. Tomorrow we are back to CCD and hockey. We get home about 6:15'ish after the day's activities to have dinner, do homework and get ready to do it all again (some of it anyway) on Tuesday. Ditto for the rest of the week. Sound familiar?? I shouldn't complain. I am glad we are able to do everything and that we have the resources to get too and from activities safely, that my daughter is healthy enough to play hockey, our church has such a wonderful religious ed program, etc.

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey Well, it's that time again. Time for resolutions, if you make them. I know many people who don't make them but I usually do. So here's this year's list: Lose weight (very vague but I would be happy with 10 lbs & prefer 30). My daughter will be 7 so it's time for the 'baby' weight to go... Get more orgainized. Visibly organized. I know where it all is (well, most of it) but I don't think you could find it if I asked you to get it - mostly this is the case in my office. The rest of the house isn't too bad (excluding Little Miss' playroom). Again, a vague resolution but it's a big job that I need to break down into chunks. I think 'purge' is the name of the game here. Say 'no' more. Pretty easy, don't you think? And not vague - just say no. I should have no problem keeping this one. I hope. Remove the word 'busy' from my vocabulary. Re