Holidays are here!!!

Happy to report that the holidays are here again "werent we just celebrating new years" I honestly believe the older we get the faster time flies.
Anyhooo very happy because it officially kicks off baking season and I just recently purchased a few pieces of bakeware from Wiltons (LOVE)so Im on my way to succesfull baking lol..... or ill try at least.

Castle cake

Made another cake this time for my four year old baby girl.
So happy to report that she loved it, I do have to say that its getting easier every time.

Have been doing a lot of baking lately (yeah crazy I KNOW mid-summer),but I have been having a blast only problem is my pc has been acting up ughhhhhhhh! I have so many pics to upload don't know where to start. So my recent acomplishment with the help of my beautiful daughter was this Betty Boop cake I have to say I was very pleased it was for her thirteenth birthday and it turned out to be delicious.

ON THE UPSIDE

Cant find time for myself lately, in-laws are temporarily moving in and I keep finding that I am feeling so overwhelmed with things to do but yet nothing is getting done. Making room for their things, cleaning this,emptying out that is really starting to take a toll on my very happy demeanor.....I guess ill just take my always encouraging positive approach to things its only temporary..lol....after all life is always good.:)

My baby turned nine.

Not so small anymore, where does time go? I still remember when my baby was small.

We didn't do much he wanted to go bowling and have a nice dinner, which was just great for me (no cleaning), instead I made him my first home made cake from scratch, and if I may say so myself it came out great

Hi everyone I'm so excited about this holiday weekend ,and I wish all of you a safe, but very fun 4th a July. Throw the diet plans out the door ,and eat until your full then eat some more, enjoy the fireworks , have a beer or glass of wine (no drinking and driving), and just enjoy how lucky we are to live in this awesome country.

Enjoy life

Our daily lives are so full of great things to appreciate it, and yet too often we choose to focus on the things that seem to be going wrong, why does that seem to be the case. Life is filled with many more positive, and uplifting things then bad ones. We always have a choice of going about our day as usual with very little or no satisfaction, getting trough the day like one more chore to cross of our list, or we can choose the alternate option that is always readily available for us in making this track around life meaningful. It really is easier then we make it out to be. Start by waking up in the morning, and look for things to be grateful for, the air in our lungs the sun in the sky ( cliche! maybe, but what would it be like without it, right!!). As living human beings we always have the option of looking at things in two ways good or bad why not opt for the better feeling thought that serves our life, and feeds our soul. For all of us moms, what better then to be the shiny example our children would want to aspire to be like. Time is essential and our power to improve is now be happy, and laugh often.

self tanner

My new summer must have.

Okay so summer is here ,and I love wearing shorts and those cute summer dresses but I have a problem very white legs which might be okay if all of my body matched.....let me just say it doesn't!!! so I went on a mission to find a self tanner that would work best for me ( I never new how pricey they were). I went to Sephora (favorite to explore new cosmetics) first because of there wide range of brands and products ,and one of the girls that worked there recommended one for me so I bought it, it was from a brand called bliss. I tried it as soon as I got home, smelled very good but it didn't work, well at least for me my legs didn't seem to get any tanner but that night I had dinner with my friends with hands the color of an umpa lumpa mind you the product said no gloves needed oh well my friends had a great time at my expense lol .. needless to say I ended up returning it ..big bummer so I stopped by victorias secret loveeeeeeeeeee ,and they had there own brand of self tanners (they were having their semi annual sale yayyyy..me!) so I bought the whole product line that they had since it was on sale. I paid half the price for all 4 products then the original tanner I first tried, and I love it .Bare Bronze is name of the brand from victorias secret . First I use the exfoliator smells so good and leaves your skin very soft then when my skin is dry I spray the self tanning spray, and the last step I do is apply the Bare Bronze gradual tan firming body moisturizer , then just a little daily glow moisturizer . Love my legs ,gave this as a gift to my sister n law for her birthday yesterday.

My foundation

I know I said in a previous post that I was done with my department store makeup, butttttt.... I couldn't do it. I was having very bad breakouts, so I decided to go back to Bare Minerals.I think the only reason I deviated from this brand was because I like shopping online or on qvc ,and there always seems to be something better, well when it comes to foundation I was wrong at least for my skin so I went out and bought it on Sunday along with an all over face color that looks a little like a bronzer (its called a little sun), I am very pleased, my skin seems to be looking better already and its only been a few days.
I'm still going to try and be a little frugal when it comes to eye shadows, lip gloss etc. but no more switching foundations.
One very great item that I did discover because I'm also a junkie when it comes to skincare was a moisturizer by neutrogena called visibly even it has a SPF 30, and it feels very lightweight in the past I've always used cliniques city block SPF 25 that is also very good but I think the neutrogena feels a lot lighter and has a higher SPF count and is formulated with Essential Soy which is suppose to help with skin discoloration. I recommended it to my sister n law and she loves it.

Very good!

Made a delicious juice today in my juicer (1 pint of strawberries, half of a pineapple, one small orange, and a handful of grapes) I can totally replace my soda now!

Happy Family

How should we maintain a strong relationship?
I have been with my wonderful husband for close to fourteen years. We have a great family, and I can honestly say that I still love him more everyday..awwwwww.I am by no means an expert in the concept of marriage, because we continue to learn from each other everyday. Recently a dear friend of mine asked me how do we manage to still maintain a great relationship?, and my answer was "you have to have really low expectations" ha ha ha ha, no I'm only kidding. My answer was that there really isn't one everyone is different and no two relationships are the same. I happen to be very comfortable in just expecting nothing less then what I know I deserve, that is the basis in which I feel I can clearly state it, and in return I treat him the same. I'm never out there comparing our marriage to someone else's , that just wouldn't make any sense. We live in a society were many people feel the need to dictate how others should live (maybe to big of a statement) at least it seems that way at times, and don't get me wrong I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion which I greatly respect (always, I love diversity), but I think that when we listen to their advice we sell ourselves short from the reality that we want to live.

3 carrots, 2 apples, and 1 orange = delicious

Made a juice this morning for breakfast// 3 carrots and 3 small oranges .......ummmmmm......delicious with a slice of whole wheat toast not bad.

JUICING ANYONE?

Starting tomorrow I decided I'm going to put my juicer into use. My husband thought it would be a good idea to purchase one because of all the health benefits there is in having something completely natural (hes a bit of a health nut), and all I want to eat is french fries and a diet coke......go figure right!, talk about opposites attract.
Well I agreed to it only because I'm not good at taking vitamins ,so I'll be blogging about that this week. I'm going to give up coffee and my usual diet DR. Pepper we'll see how that goes (maybe i'll loose some weight.....aahaaaaaa...well maybe.
I do have to say that for me it's just better keeping it simple when I juice
because when you start getting creative you end up concocting a hideously disgusting drink that you now feel forced to drink. Oranges and Granny smith apples are my favorite fruits, because if you want to juice carrots all you will taste is the oranges or apples. So these are my main ingredients to start of with later on in the week all look into mixing it up just a bit.

Going Fishing Yipeee..

Summer vacation is only 7 days away and I am so excited to spend more time with my kids We love to go fishing ( well I like to sit and watch I have very little patience)but I'm still looking forward to planning our trip which is very well deserved if I may say so myself .

I love to just sit and relax in front of the lake. My sister in law and I usually just chit chat while everyone else stares at the fishing poles,the little ones use fishing nets to catch and release guppies......awwwwww. Cant wait.

makeup intervention

Today I decided to clean out my makeup drawer and I was overwhelmed by all the stuff I had that I don't use. I had about 6 black eyeliners 2 mineral foundations 3 liquid foundations........ must I go on? (I know I'm not alone). Ive had this obsession with department store makeup for the longest time I know most of us women do and more power to you if you don't, but I find myself spending way to much money for the newest cosmetics to then leaving them not even half empty, and moving on to the next thing. So I decided to try being a little more aware of how
much money I'm spending///not good/// ,and my excuse has always benn that I use coupons which saves me a lot of money on grocery's but ultimately it ends up the same.
As of today no more I'm using whatever I have left and after that its Target..........any suggestions please let me know.

12 year old entrepreneur

I have to say I have a new found respect for my daughter.

This last week she let me know that her school was going to be having an event and she would need $10.00 to be able to participate so I figured okay I'll have to give her the money this Monday so that she would be able to buy her ticket, not a big deal right since schools always seem to be having a function that requires students to pay their way in.

Well she decided that she would not ask me or my husband for the money instead she would figure out a way to raise it herself. She had found out my sister in law had been having yard sales so she asked me for items that we no longer use and put her own yard sale up on Saturday.

She was up until 12am Friday making her posters and woke up at 6am to put them out and organize her little yard sale needless to say without my help my baby made $90.00. I was so proud of her and to top it off she tried to give me $50.00 of her money (that I didn't take ) but just her offering me it almost made me cry I could not be more proud of the wonderful human being that I am raising.

Teachers

I was on facebook today and a close friend of mine was commenting on her preschoolers class,
and she said how she appreciates educators because of all that they do and this is so true I've
always agreed that teachers are underpaid for the work that they do but to really examine things I find it hard sometimes to have my 3 kids keep up with their responsibilities at home, and they are great kids, ( really they are .....wink ....wink.... j/k) I cant imagine the pressure on our teachers to deal with all their job requirements( which cant be easy), but they also have to deal with a class filled with different personalities and temperament's. On that note my hats off to all of our teachers!!!!

Coffee

I love coffee!!!!!!!
I stumble out of bed at 6:30 am every morning to a new pot of coffee that just the smell of it alone makes me smile. It relaxes me and gets me in the greatest mood,(exaggerating) it warms me up, and I have the energy to get my kids up and ready for the day so I find myself most of the day with a new freshly poured cup and I think to myself why coffee? duhhhhhh alcohol doesnt taste good warm and it wouldnt be very good parenting skills on my behalf if I asked my kids for another can of beer. J/K

DO I HAVE TO

I woke up today so enthusiastic about nothing really.I said to myself I'm going to clean my house wash laundry read a little, and do some blogging .....well.....I got up took a shower after dropping off my kids at school and know I'm sitting hear looking at my laundry trough the corner of my eye hoping it'll go away,.................Maybe tomorrow!!!

LOOSING WEIGHT

So why is it that I was working out, and running about 6 days a week and hardly lost weight ???
I was eating right; to the point that I felt I was depriving myself , and now that I've decided to just be happy with my body I've lost more weight in 2 weeks than in 3months of hitting the gym daily.///Dont get me wrong I'm very happy; the only thing I cut out was eating bread. Can it just be that I wasn't hung up on loosing it this time? Now I feel like I want to go running without the added pressure.

So I just recently decided to start blogging since I'm always online whether I'm looking for beauty products, recipes, and or advice I thought I would join in. I have children so I'm always looking for ways to save money , and if I may add that is something I,m great at. It then lets me
splurge on other things with very little guilt. So for know I'll just blog about that any tips let me now. THANKS