2012 Already!?

I can't believe it is already 2012..well 13 hours I mean. Where did 2011 even go!? I feel like these last few months has just flown by. I am not exactly sure how I feel about my 2011. It's hard to think that far back and remember exactly what you did. So I'll try....

My friends and I did start having a girls night every other week...and then it stopped with the holidays :/  I really enjoyed them because I feel like our "others" have a night every week that they set aside and get together to bullshit, how they do it every week I have NO idea. But why shouldn't we get together and strengthen our friendships? I hope we start it up again, but sadly I think even 2 times a month is too much sometimes! I guess that is how you know when you're getting old. God, even as I write that I cringe. How is 2 times a month during the week too much for friends? I take that back. Maybe its just because we do it during the week? I dunno....I'll post in the group later ladies :) (Positive)

We went to Arizona with some great friends. I had so much fun and I realized that I really do like to travel. The hope is to go somewhere once a year. That's the hope. Here's to crossing fingers that it happens. One valuable lesson learned on this trip? Don't vacation when all the girls on the trip are PMSin...just saying ;) (Positive)

My sister moved to a rock. A dangerous rock....with a amazing view. She needs to move home. Now. enough said. (Negative.)

So many of my friends and family have had babies!!!!!! Or should be having them (ahem Staci!). I have finally gotten over my fear of floppy baby head syndrome and can hold newborns. Score for me. (Positive)

I found out that we are nowhere near closer to being able to have a baby of our own than we were 7 months ago. Thank you very fucking much insurance. So that won't be in our cards for 2012. Still an open wound on that one. I just have to believe that Fate decided that we have too much to do before we have babies. That is the only logical explanation in my head for the insane crap our insurance has pulled on us. Stupid Fate. (KIDDING FATE!!! Don't Karma me on that one.....I hope you aren't reading this. Shit.) (So anyways....huge negative on that one.)

We found out that having two dogs is a horrible horrible idea. God that was a horrible depressing 3 months of my life. Warren. I shudder to even type that name. he was clearly the Devil's dog at one point. I shouldn't say that because he had a really hard life, which was evident by his limp, his attitude to strange men (barking and snarling), his intentional not peeing on our 45 minute walks and then going on the carpet as soon as I jumped in the shower, and him almost biting the face off of a lady we gave him to. Sigh. Not to mention how Bernie changed when he was here. My cuddle bug of a dog, who jumps in bed with us at 4am (which is funny when I read my friend Leslie's blog and she talked about kids doing that...who needs kids?! We have a giant dog to do it!) was coming no where near us. I hated how he changed and we learned that this is for sure a 1 dog household. (so another negative...unless you count that we bought a spot cleaner to clean up Warren's pee. Best investment ever.)

I found Pinterest, and have opened a whole new window of my creative brain. I love it. I now have a craft room, a Cricut, and a goal. (I'll talk about that in my post tomorrow:) I have found that I really love to do crafts, and organize things. I guess I already knew that, but Pinterest has helped me embrace it.....and cooking. SO many good recipes on that site. Thane likes it too. :)  (Positive)

I gained like 40 pounds. Not literally but sure as shit feels and looks like it. I work in a workout facility for God sakes..how did that happen!? Well, I know how it happened. I plan to fix it. (huge negative.)

I came to a new realization on how important my family is to me. Thanks to my sister moving to a rock. When she was home for a week or two we spent more family time together than we do in most months. It was great. We got together to just hang out and watch a movie. We never do that. I have seen my nephews more in the past month and a half than I usually do in 6 months. That is ridiculous. Yes, they live 45 minutesish away, but I need to make more time to go see them...and my parents. (Positive)

I should go clean, but I am pretty comfortable on my couch, with Bernie using my stomach as a pillow. (It is pretty comfy now apparently with that extra 40 pounds on it) I just decided I'm going to make 2012 more eventful. Maybe I'll make a list! I love lists. A To-Do list for 2012. I'll blog about it! Bah! Ok. yup. Doing it. Jan 2. That is what I will do. I have to clean my house today...and make a cake for tonight. I don't even want to go back and tally the things I wrote about and see if there were more positive or negative things, because it doesn't matter. I'm sure I forgot a lot of positive things,  because that is how I roll. The important thing is is that I have Thane, Bernie and my family and friends...and this year I got to spend more time with them. I plan to spend even more time with them in 2012. 

So here's to making 2012 the best year yet!! Happy New Year everyone! Thanks for reading to the end. ;)

Love,

Moi

16 Days of Christmas: Home for the Holidays

It is so crazy to come home to SG now. Things haven't changed. At all. A few new stores have come and gone..but in general everything is the same. I really cant imagine living here anymore. I love having Walgreens 3 minutes away...and I love my life in MH. It feels like that town is more my home now, but to be honest, nothing will even be like my parents house.

I love coming to their house. It is so framiliar. They keep saying they want to move, and I hate it. I can't imagine having Christmas in some strange house...with some strange living room. Ick. I love it here. I told my hubs tonight that I wouldn't want them to move because I feel like this is the "central hub" for all my high school friends. SG is where we have bridal showers and baby showers...I like being able to come home to see my friends and then go home to my parents.

Am I rambleling? I just had some 151 proof rum. Jennifer smuggeled it home in her life vest and one in her cowboy boot. It was awesome.

In short: Christmas at my parents is the best. My mom over does it on the decorations and I loooove it. Just wait til I get a house guys....I'll be the same way. Will I have 30 trees? No f'in way. 15? Maybe.

Peace out...
-Pam

18 and 17 Days of Christmas: Christmas Programs.

So I know I know....I didn't blog on these days. I have a great excuse though! Wednesday my sister came home from St Thomas! So I went to the airport with my family to get her :) Then we went out for drinks....and I stayed at my other sister's house..so I had zero time to blog. 

Last night.....God I was exhausted. I was literally so tired my head hurt and I wanted to cry. Fml. I packed to come home and wrapped presents and went to bed as soon as I could. This week has been super long at work and I guess it caught up to me.

So anyways....I will do TWO blogs today to make up for it :) 

Today's topic: Christmas programs. I had mine at work on Thursday. The Blue Stars rocked the stage. I have 5 kids in my 3 yr old half day preschool. Ok, so an half an hour before the show I get a call and find that one of them has a really high fever. 10 minutes later....a call that another one is throwing up every where. Awesome. I'm down to 3. So...I take them to get ready and one of them has a meltdown like it is the end of 2012 and she is Mayan. So ok..she doesn't go on stage. Down to 2 kids. On stage one kid refused to sing and the other did her whisper voice instead of singing. 

Sounds horrible right? No...I loved it. I was SO proud of the two that were on the stage that I think I had the biggest smile ever on my face. As I am sitting on the ground trying to get L to sing loud and stop whispering...it hit me. I am going to be THAT parent. I am going to be that mom that goes to her kid's Christmas program in the ugly sweater that I fail to see how it is ugly with reindeer antlers and blinking lights on. I might even spice it up and wear a Santa hat with a jingle bell on the end so I can bob my head to the music and contribute to the song.

Yes my friends...I will be that parent, and I'm jacked up about it. 

That is all for now. My family just got here :)

19 Days of Christmas: Christmas Lights...

are on my top 10 list of favorite things at Christmas time. If they are done right. If you literally do one bush and that is it...whats the point? I will be the first to admit....our lights suck this year. I am used to icicle lights and last year I took them down and threw them in a clump. DUMB idea. I didn't even try to get untangle them.

So new idea....I wanted old fashioned lights. Mom found out and gladly passed on the lights from their house. Perfect!! Now I don't have to spend $11 a box and still have the same aweosome effect. No. Wrong. She gave us 13ish strands of lights and on many of them there were at least 5 lights either straight up broken or burnt out. One stand, the filament burst and started to smoke while I held it. No deal breaker though..I was pushing through. Deal breaker? When I plugged in an entire strand and a HUGE spark came out of the outlet. Deal breaker! My fire phobia kicked in high gear and I called the Bread Winner, the guy who brings home the bacon, and asked him if I could get new lights so our house wouldn't burn down. He said.....sure. :) 

Then my adventure began. I threw on some boots to add to my beautiful old sweatpants and huge sweatshirt look. I threw on a stocking hat because my hair was a hot mess and set out to the MH to find some lights. Mission Impossible. For real. World of Variety-Zero. Walgreens-As if. Co-op-not the right ones. Ugg...Target trip on Purple Saturday (ya know..the day after Black Friday?) shit..sounds good. So I had to go to Target looking like a piece of white trash the day after a bender...luckily Erika came with me..and bought me a Starbucks. So even though people saw me and thought "oh..she must be homeless." they then saw my Starbucks and were like.."ohhhhh she can afford $5 a coffee...she is just lazy." Perfect.

So anyways. We now have LED lights that just go above our garage, and along our sidewalk like...and around a GIGANTIC tree. Thane's question about the tree was..."didn't we already put lights in that?" Why yes we did babe...2 years ago, and they are still there. You find them! So ya..new lights added. The tree looks great, but I feel the house is missing something. If I had a ladder and wasn't scared of falling off of it onto the concert, I would go along our roof line. But I don't, and I am. So forget it. 

Luckily, our neighbor does this nice little candle thing around his dumb little garden, and has one of those spiral tree things I really want. When you come up to our house the way I come home from work...it looks like it is in our yard and it looks great with the house. So..I'll just claim that.

In short, if you want to see amazing lights drive on 151 towards Dodgeville and right after the first MH sign look to your left. The blue trees, you can't miss them. SO amazing. This guys does more every year. If you haven't seen them.....go check them out. Worth the drive. 

I need sleep. Tomorrow is going to suck. 

Later!

-Pam

20 Days of Christmas: Cookie Making...

sucks. We all had a really good idea! "Let's have a girl's night and make cookies! It is an activity that sucks when you do it by yourself so it should be way more fun as a group!" Lies. It still sucks. Or at least after the first hour it does. By time you get to batch four and cookie number 210 everyone is pretty much cashed out. On cookie 1, you take your time decorating it..making it pretty. By cookie 20 you are dipping it in the frosting...by cookie 178 you are taking a spoon full of frosting, slapping it on the cookie, splashing some sprinkles and "Screw it."

I will say. I had a good time. Hard to believe by how I just bitched, but I did. I love my friends. They are fantastic people  2 of them are preggo...one literally about to pop her baby out! I can't wait :) This will not help the baby fever that seems to be setting in again. Sigh. Anyways, making 4 huge batches of cookies and chocolate covered pretzels would have really sucked monkey butt without them. 

So as short as this blog may be. I am done. I'm tired. I emailed pictures to myself to add..buuuut they aren't delivered yet. They must have taken the pony express way not the world wide web way. Shit. So 20 days til Christmas....and I made cookies. Sweet life. <3. 

ohh last chance...email....lemme check....

Fail.

21 Days of Christmas!!!

21 Days of Christmas....21 Days of Christmas!!!!! (You have to sing that in tune to the ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas song....just an FYI.)

You may be thinking, "But Pam...newsflash...There are 25 days in December before Christmas." Why yes smartass...I know. But I was too lazy to start blogging about this on the 1st, so you get 21 days. Soooo sorry.

I want to make this Christmas different. How? I have no idea. A friend of mine posted that she is doing the 25 days of Christmas with her kids...which is cool. I don't have kids though..soooo that doesn't work. I could do it with Thane..but we are both exhausted all the time, or he is working..soo I'll do it on my own! So. From now until Christmas I plan to do something that is Christmas related everyday, take a picture of it..and blog about it! (I want to get in the habit of blogging again so this may help :)

So Day One: I did this last night, but I'm counting it for today because I think it rocks. I made decorations for my house. I have been finding a buttload of ideas on Pinterest, if you're not on Pinterest you need to be, and I decided that now is the time to start making them. I made time yesterday to do so, because I have decided that if I want to do something fun for myself I do have time..I just have to make time. So instead of cleaning the entire house yesterday, I cleaned part of it and finshed my Chirstmas cards and did some decorations.

So. Usually when we get Christmas cards I tape them to a wall in our living room. Problem: I use scotch tape and our walls are textured so the cards fall down. Aaaannnoying!!!! SO this year I was creeping around on Pinterest and I found this. http://pinterest.com/pin/286682332499408623/ (Her blog is awesome too by the way...I spent almost an hour reading it the other day.) So anyways....I like the sign at the top, but I wanted to put my on each side of our Christmas tree so I did this...




"Wow Pam!! How'd you do that?! It is so amazing!!!" Aww you guys.....well it was easy. I went to World of Variety and bought some red Christmas ribbon, with stars on it, for $1.49 and clothes pins, which were a HUGE rip off....$5 for 50 clothes pins!? P-A-Lease! Ugg. Anyways...I painted 20 clothespins green and then made red dots on them with a Q-Tip and voila! I did paint 2 pins red with green dots to put on the bottom to make the ribbon lay straight.

On to craft 2. I found this all over Pinterest http://pinterest.com/pin/286682332499346710/ and couldn't wait to do it. The day after Thanksgiving I bought 10 plastic ornaments from Target and got to work. I went to Michaels to get a few different colored ribbons to match the ornaments and went to town. Super easy as well. You just stick one part of the ribbon through the ornament hook, which ok..is actually easier said then done if the ornament hole is tiny. Anyways...pull through and hot glue together! Then you have to ask your husband to hold the extra ornaments while you hang them up. The challenge here is to make sure that he doesn't mix up the ribbon color order while holding them. Easier said than done. This was the hardest part :) So here is my version...




So I love this one because all I had up here last year were the snowflakes, and I didn't feel like it was enough. HA! Fixed!!

Hope you liked my crafts :) I do!! Today's craft: Make a Christmas Tree card...that I will never use because we do picture cards for our Christmas cards...but whatever. Maybe I'll get a head start and I can sell them next year ;)

Happy 21 days til Christmas!!!!

Peace Out-

Pam