Young and Hip Messenger Bag

Okay, okay I know I should be sleeping. But I was catching up on the blogs I read and this giveaway caught my eye.
This is such a CUTE messenger bag!

Traveling!

Wow! I thought spontaneity was a thing of the past with two small boys, but (hurray) it's not!
My DH and I decided yesterday that we are packing up and going to MI to visit my grandmother for the weekend. I will be back on Wednesday.
So - no Sunday shout outs for this week because my grandmother has dial-up (shutter).
Snow, fun, and family here I come :) :) :)

Sunday Shout Out

The Sunday shout out for this week is the I-can't-wait-until-Thanksgiving edition. Here are the cool crafts/recipes that I am planning on making this year:



Cereal Box Turkeys - What a fun and EASY decoration!





Easy Acorn Cookies - Anyone know where you can get mini nilla wafers?

Tired Supergirl's is doing a 10 days of Thanksgiving giveaway - pretty sweet!

Next week will be the decorating-my-house-for-Christmas edition. Don't miss it!
I love holidays :)

Are you Martha or Maxine?

A friend of mine recently forwarded this to me in an email. My first thought was that it was going to be some Martha/Mary spinoff from the Bible, but it's not.
It IS pretty funny though :)

Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of an ice cream cone to prevent ice cream drips.


Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone, for Pete's sake! You are probably lying on the couch with your feet up eating it, anyway!


To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.


Buy Hungry Jack mashed potato mix. Keeps in the pantry for up to a year.


When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the outside of the cake.


Go to the bakery! They'll even decorate it for you!


If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant 'fix-me-up.'


If you over-salt a dish while you are cooking, that's too bad. Please recite with me the real woman's motto: 'I made it, you will eat it and I don't care how bad it tastes!'


Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.


The Mrs. Smith frozen pie directions do not include brushing egg whites over the crust, so I don't.


Cure for headaches: take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.


Take a lime, mix it with tequila, chill and drink! All your pains go away!

Cleaning and Coffee

Today I am joining in (late) with the crowd over at Blissfully Domestic. This is such a fun site with channels like photo bliss (you should check it out sister-of-mine), homeschool bliss, healthy bliss, blissful kids, frugal bliss, and family bliss - and that's just a few of them!!!
I am blissfully domestic today because I am cleaning my kitchen this morning. I greatly dislike cleaning my kitchen. I love having a clean kitchen; I just don't like the work it takes to get there.
So, to make cleaning my kitchen more fun for myself, I turned on some upbeat, happy music and made myself a cup of General International Foods pumpkin spice latte coffee. Yum. Even cleaning isn't so bad when the ambiance is right :)
What do YOU do to make your "chores" more fun?

Sunday Shout Outs

This week's Sunday shout out is Card Avenue.
A lot of people have gift certificates/giftcards lying around. This website allows you to trade those cards for ones you will actually use.
Pretty neat stuff. I have traded twice already on this website - once for Regal Cinemas gift cards and once for ITunes gift cards.
If you have any gift cards you don't want, try it out!
(Only-sister-of-mine ~ this post is for you! Hint, hint!)

Praying Specifically for the Impossible

"And looking at them Jesus said to them, 'With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" ~ Matthew 19:26 (emphasis added)
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this phrase. I even have a picture hanging in my hallway that says it!
But it occurred to me the other day in my prayer time: I don't pray for the impossible. As I think back over my past prayers I realized that I pray for things that I think God can handle easily.
I started brainstorming over why that's the case and I think it's a pretty simple reason. My view of God is sometimes too small.
So I am inviting you to join me as I challenge myself to begin praying for the impossible. Personally, that means I am now praying for Barack Obama's salvation and a revival to sweep America. That the world will see us as a Christian nation not just in name, but in reality. To me, that seems completely and utterly impossible. But I know that God CAN do anything. That doesn't mean that He will, but He can. And I shouldn't limit God with my prayers.

Sunday Shout Outs

This week's Sunday shout out is thanks to my sister-in-law who alerted me to the coolest way to watch my favorite tv shows/movies.

HULU :)

I've been following the show "Kitchen Nightmares" with Gordon Ramsey, but it goes until 10pm and that's kind of late for my household. Thanks to hulu, I can watch it on my laptop snuggled in bed with my DH. That rocks!

There are also old classics that my husband used to watch as a kid - makes for fun date nights!

Plus, hulu has some full-length movies on its site. And it's totally free! There are limited commercial breaks, but WAY better than if you were watching on tv.
Check it out! Your favorite show just might be on there too...

Way Cool Giveaway over at Simple Mom

Wow! Check it out! Simple mom is giving away a totally awesome looking printer HERE.

You DEFINITELY want to check this one out!

My response to the election results

Sunday Shout Outs

Today's Sunday shout out is about computer games. Because who doesn't like games?

BigIdeaFun - This is a great website to calm kids down in the ten minutes or so before naptime :) Play games from all the Veggie Tales movies plus Jonah and 321 Penguins. Loads of fun!

Zoo Tycoon, Various Downloadable Demos - I am a big fan of zoo tycoon. Unfortunately, the full version is super slow on my computer and usually freezes up, so I content myself with the half dozen or so demos from the makers of zoo tycoon.

Windows Best of Entertainment Package - This is OLD school Microsoft, which means crummy graphics and virtually no bugs. These are all the games my siblings and I used to play on our family's first computer. Classics like Tetris, Jezzball, and Chip's Challenge. Microsoft no longer makes this package, but you can go to the link and download it for free :) It works great!


(Picture Credit)

The Accidental Detectives Mysteries

This is one of my favorite mystery series of all time. First published in the early 90s, by Sigmund Brouwer, The Accidental Detectives series actually appeals to both boys and girls. I knew they had gone out of print and was delighted to discover that they are back in print now with three new books! My little brothers are just about the right age to start reading them (about 8) and I know they will be as crazy about them as I am.
The plots are solidly written. They are not like some kid’s series that are basically the same book over and over with a different cover – no – these books keep you guessing from page one.
They’re not boring either. I started reading “Race for the Park Street Treasure” out loud to my DH and he didn’t want me to stop! The vocabulary is perfect for the middle school age group, the chapters are fairly short, and the action is so fast you don’t have time to lose interest.
One of the best aspects of this series is the humor. I could barely finish reading to my DH because we were both laughing so hard. The ideas the kids come up with are AWESOME. My personal favorite is the wheelbarrow watermelon slingshot. (See which book I was reading above for that one.)
The characters are so well rounded I suspect they are based on real people. Ricky Kidd is the main character/narrator of the books. His friends Mike Andrews, Ralphy Zee, and Lisa Higgins nearly always are in on any and all action that goes on. Ricky’s younger brother, Joel, also plays a starring role in many of the books.
While not overtly Christian, this series definitely comes from a Christian mindset and Ricky usually learns some kind of lesson in each book. I learned a lot more from this subtler approach when I was a kid than I did from more “preachy” books. "My hope is that the characters in my novels will live real lives beyond the walls of traditional church and allow my fiction to give voice to truth." – Sigmund Brouwer
I am SO glad these books are being republished. Then I can get my boys their own set :)

Books in the republished series:
1. The Volcano of Doom
2. The Disappearing Jewel of Madagascar
3. Legend of the Gilded Saber
4. Tyrant of the Badlands
5. Shroud of the Lion
6. Creature of the Mists
7. The Mystery Tribe of Camp Blackeagle
8. Madness at Moonshiner's Bay
9. Race for the Park Street Treasure
10. Terror on Kamikaze Run
11. Lost Beneath Manhattan
12. The Missing Map of Pirate's Haven
13. The Downtown Desperadoes
14. Sunrise at the Mayan Temple
15. Phantom Outlaw at Wolf Creek
16. Short Cuts

Read the 1st chapter of each of the books in this series on Sigmund Brouwer's website HERE. (But be warned: you will want to read the rest of the book and be completely hooked for life!)