September Acres

The weather in my neck of the woods: Still over 100 degrees. It is fall,right?? One of my simple pleasures: An afternoon nap - :) On my bedside table: I am almost done with 'Twilight'. On my TV: news On the menu for tonight: spaghetti, salad On my to do list: laundry, take snack to church for LM's religion class today, work New recipe I tried last week: nothing In the craft basket: nothing Looking forward to: LM has fall break next week (already) Homemaking tip of the week: Don't forget to have the kids pitch in. They love to help and it really makes your job a bit smaller. Favorite Blog post of the week (mine or other): This one by the Entertaining Mom. Just a reminder to us all that if we cannot resist the temptation that we should leave our phones in the car when taking our kids to the playground. :) Favorite photo of the week: LM was taking Christmas card photos for her sextuplets. Never too early (wonder where she gets that). "It was crazy getting them ...

I thought I would join Life as Mom today for the Favorite Fall Food recipe swap. I need to get in the mood for fall which is a little tough as it will be 102 today! So I thought some food would help. Corn Chowder 2 c. chicken broth or water 2 c. chopped potatoes 1/2 c. carrots chopped 1/2 c. celery chopped 1/4 c onion chopped 1 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper Bacon (about 6-8 strips- or to taste) 1/4 c. margarine or butter 1/4 c. flour 2 c. milk 1 c. Parmesan cheese 17 oz can cream style corn 17 oz can corn (drained) Tabasco Brown bacon and onion. Set aside. Add water/broth to veggies (minus corn). Add salt, pepper. Cover & simmer 10 min. Do not drain. Make white sauce w/ butter, flour & milk. Add Parmesan cheese stirring until melted. Mix white sauce with veggies. Add corn and bacon/onion mixture to vegetables. Heat, do not boil.. Spice it up with the Tabasco . You can also add cooked chicken to the chowder at the end. Enjoy!

Tell me I'm not the only one hooked on the Househusbands of Hollywood? It is on Fox Reality (usually kind of a mediocre channel but I think they got this right). It is WAY better than any of the Housewives shows. First of all, look at these guys. Very easy on the eyes I must say. And way less drama than any of the housewives. Remember Tempest Bledsoe, Vanessa from the Cosby Show? Her guy, Darryl Bell (you may remember him from a Different World ) is at home while she works. Jillian Reynolds of Good Day LA spends her days on the set while (cute) hubby Grant takes care of their little girl. Billy Ashley is married to Lisa, a makeup artist, and he is at home with their 2 girls. Charlie is a stay at home dad to cute little Ryan. His wife is a psychiatrist or something and we never see her on screen as she needs to keep her anonymity for some reason. Danny's wife is a lawyer and he is the househusband. They appear to be very young. All the guys are really likable. T...

Joining the Mrs. again today to unveil the guest/kids bathroom. Go check hers out . Here is Little Misses bathroom. It is also our guest bathroom. It is very small. They just don't make bathrooms like they used to...thankfully! But it serves it's purpose and is easy to clean. It is the only room in our house that we haven't remodeled or painted. One day... This is the view as you walk in the door. Please note the lovely polished brass. Not a fan, but like I said, it works. Behind the door and across from the vanity and toilet. Friends took the photos of LM with an underwater camera & I had them enlarged. Frames from Target. The vanity area. Well, that's about it. Like I said it is small. It will likely be the next room we tackle. Maybe.

says Little Miss this morning after I did her hair. Today is picture day. She wanted curls. She wanted her hair pulled back like one of her dolls. I picked out a cute ponytail holder - pink, green and white ribbons. I placed it on the top of her head so you could see the cute ponytail holder. Not quite right for LM - apparently she looked like a rag doll. Whatever that means. So I switched it out with a boring tortoise shell clip lower down. No more rag doll. She was happy. We are off tomorrow for a wedding that takes place on Saturday. LM is the flower girl. Thankfully, a hairdresser will be doing her hair for the big event. Although our car will be packed to look like we will not be home anytime soon we will be back in a few days. See you then...

I'm joining The Mrs. today. She is showing off her baby girl's room and I am showing LM's. Here it is: I am not a fan of the ginormous bed. The room is small. The bed is not. It is hard to make. And it is hard to make it look cute. When LM was almost 2 we decided it was time to move from the crib to bed. I had a cute little twin bed picked out at Pottery Barn Kids. My husband thought we should look at some local stores (for a small town we have a lot of furniture stores). I knew better. I did. But off we went to look for a cute little bed for LM. That same afternoon this lovely was delivered to our house. That's what you get when a 2 yr old and her dad pick out furniture. Don't say I didn't warn you! :) So, for almost 5 yrs I have lived with this. I have to say that it has been nice for sleepovers. And every so often LM will sleep on the top bunk. She is ready to redecorate and has found a bed in PBK she likes (yea!). We're not getting ...

I cleaned my oven! It wasn't horrible but it needed to be done. And really it wasn't such a feat since it has a self-cleaning feature. But the fact that I turned it on to be cleaned is a good thing. Plus, it made it blazing hot in the house for 3+ hours (what was I thinking, really?) It wasn't SO hot outside that I couldn't open some windows which helped. A bit. This picture is unfortunately not my oven. A girl can dream though. Thursday night my friend Erin asked me to go to a 'Tastefully Simple' party. I had never been to one so I checked with my husband to make sure he was feeling okay and that he didn't have anything going on. He gave me the thumbs up and off we went. I really should not have eaten dinner at all but I did. Lots of yummy things to sample. It was fun and 2 of our other Bunco 'drop outs' were there. Other than Erin and our other 2 friends I knew no one. There were about 10 or so people there. The hostesses girls all we...

I posted some photos of my living room a while back. I realized how blah and boring it looks. I appreciate the suggestions I was given. One of them was 'paint'. We had the walls painted a couple years ago so I really didn't want to do it again just yet so I had to figure what else I could do to get some color in there. I thought about painting a canvas red to match the chair ( below). After talking to my sister she suggested dipping cool whip containers in paint to make the circles and an idea was born. I bought the 3 canvases (20" X 20") at Michaels at 50% off - the three cost $21. I got a quart of paint at Lowe's ($12 - Martha Stewart's Cranberry something or the other). The blue paint was a sample size of Olympic that someone didn't buy -$1. Cool whip container and little round container I had in the kitchen - free. Fleur de lis printed off computer, traced on canvas and painted - free. So for $34 I got this new look. Very David Bro...

to digest this little tidbit of info. I just read this article saying that Ellen DeGeneres is going to be the new American Idol judge (taking Paula's place). Not sure I can picture that yet. I am not a huge Ellen fan- sometimes I think she is funny. Most of the time I don't. It should be interesting, I guess. But couldn't they come up with someone else? Please tell me I am dreaming...

We went to the mountains Saturday for the long weekend. We arrived about 1'sh with Smokey in tow. His first trip with us. Back to the town where he was a 'friend of the pen' (as in penitentiary). Wonder if the thought he was going back? It was a great day for being outside. Little Miss caught up with her friends and ran around. I unpacked the car while Smokey checked things out. My husband rode up with his friend since they had to stop at Home Depot on the way. The guys arrived about 3 and immediately rounded up another friend so they could go for a quad ride. About 3 hours later, while we were fixing dinner they arrived back. They had been back for a few minutes when my husband's friend Dave said I needed to go down and talk to Bill since he seemed confused. 'Why would he be confused?', I asked. 'Oh, he crashed the quad and hit his head on a rock.' Dave said. OH, THAT'S ALL?? So I go down to talk to him and he keeps repeating himself: ...

The evil people at Brach's decided it was time to ship candy corn to my local stores. It is amazing how it jumps into my cart every year at this time. Evil. Little Miss has a sweet tooth to rival anyone so I have to admit to hiding my new purchase so she cannot have access to it. Let's just keep that our little secret...

Finally! The Mrs . unveiled hers on Monday. It took me a little longer... This is the view of the MB when you walk in the door. Tennis ball courtesy of Smokey. The basket on the left is my junk, I mean magazine, basket. I try to go through it every so often - it's about time again. The down comforter is my Walmart bargain - $65. I looked for a long time for a down comforter and everything was way to heavy for us. I just stumbled on this one. It's really light weight. Pillows are: small blue ones-Target, shell one- Pottery Barn, bolster- Marshalls . I am currently on the lookout for a white duvet cover - not too expensive. I had a blue striped one on there & just washed it. I haven't put it back on yet since I wanted to live with white for a while and see if I really like it. I do. I still love the print over the bed after about 15 yrs. Paint on the wall is from Lowes - called Cold Water and I think it is a Valspar color. This dresser was pulled out ...

It's interesting to listen to kids talk to each other. My friend, E, dropped her boys off early this morning so I could take them to school with Little Miss. LM wasn't quite ready when they got here so she was putting on her shoes when I overheard them talking. I am not sure what they were talking about that brought them to this point but here's where I came in: LM: 'T, we could use a coupon.' T: 'What's a coupon?' LM: ' If you want to buy something that costs too much you can use a coupon to lower your cost.' Yes, she's in training. 'Lower your cost'??? Too much Fox Business Channel I'm thinking. Don't worry though, T is also money savvy. This conversation took place in the car: T: 'Did you know you can get free money from the bank?' LM: 'How?' T: 'You take your money to the bank and they keep it for you and match what you put in there.' Really? Wouldn't that be great? Like I said, the...

I came across this article today. The Duggars are indeed expecting child # 19. Now I think large families are wonderful but I think there is a point where you have to think that enough is enough. I wonder about the kids - the older ones are basically raising the younger ones and not having much of a childhood because of it. Although I have to say they all seem really well adjusted and kind. My husband is one of 13 so he has some experience here. He knows the sacrifices the kids and parents have to make with that many kids. He loves all his siblings and certainly wouldn't change anything but he didn't want to do it again. Which is why we only have one. Most of his siblings have small families. One sister has 5 kids and the rest range from 0 to 3. I believe in the saying 'until you walk a mile in my shoes don't judge' but I just don't get it. And how in the world do they pay for health insurance for all of them???