The Book

I seem to have recovered from all the turkey and stuffing and many, many helpings of pie. Mmmm....pie. Excuse me for a moment while I salivate thinking about the pie...

Okay. I think I can focus now. So! How was your Thanksgiving? Wonderful, I hope, and full of good things like fabulous feasts, laughter until your cheeks hurt, and warm hugs. And naps. I hope you had some good naps over the holiday. You can never have too many good naps, I always say.

Our Thanksgiving was spent shared between my family and my husband's family: Feasting and football with my family and then dessert and more dessert with Patrick's. It's a good, but filling, compromise. We get to see everyone and eat and visit and eat and play and eat. And did I mention eat? I'm pretty sure that I won't need to eat anything between now and Christmas. I'll just live off of the fat stores that I've accumulated over Thanksgiving.

We celebrated our first holiday with most of my family present (we missed you TX family!) in my parents' new home. It was an adjustment in some ways, but it was good. Some things, by necessity of space had to change, but other things stayed the same. My folks' new house doesn't have a dining room like their old house did and their kitchen was too small to accommodate 15 people. But! Their house does have a finished, insulated, and heated garage which we have christened the Ivy Room. And the Ivy Room is where we feasted and where the grandkids slept on blow-up beds. So, you know, it all worked out.

One of the things that didn't change was The Book. The Book, you see, has been a tradition in my family for several years. I found a journal-type book several years ago and gave it to my mom on Thanksgiving. As I gave it to her, I told her I thought it would be great if we could keep track of our blessings and the many things we are thankful for. I thought it would be nice to see how things changed over the years. My mother loved the idea, and each year, adults and children alike have written, dictated, or drawn an entry. It's been fun to look back and see how the kids have grown and to see how each and every time I have written, amongst my many blessings, some food (like cucumber sandwiches or Pinot Noir or bacon) has been part of my list. Go figure.

So each year, my mom faithfully gets out The Book and we all take turns over several days writing in it. And each year, my husband grimaces. The Book, you see, is the Bane Of His Thanksgiving.

My dear husband is my polar opposite in many ways. And one of those ways is in the expression of his gratitude. He is quite satisfied with keeping his thankfulness to himself. And I don't mean that in a bad way. He is grateful for his many blessings. He prays. He tells me and his other loved ones about the ways he is thankful. He just does not like writing in The Book. And y'all know me. I'm all about the writing. When I come in the door, I'm all "where's the book? I need the book! Let me write alllllllreadddddddy!!" My husband? He hides from the book.

It has become my mission to make sure he fills out something. Most years he does. Last year, he escaped without writing a thing. I have no idea how such an appalling oversight happened, but this year, I aimed to rectify it. And this year, his entry was a doozy. It left me breathless with tears. After he wrote his entry, The Book barely had time to rest on the table before I whisked it up and read it out loud to the entire room. We were beside ourselves. This is what he wrote:

I am thankful for the birds,
I am thankful for the trees.
I am thankful for my wife,
'Cause she's the bees knees.

I am thankful for my children,
Though they sometimes are a pain.
I am thankful for my mother-in-law,
Though she drives me insane.

I am thankful for the sun,
I am thankful for the moon.
I am thankful for Thanksgiving,
But it always ends too soon.

Wonderful, no? That my friends is one of the reasons that I fell in love with and continue to love my husband. He is hilarious and even after 18 years, he surprises me. I'm thankful for him and I don't need The Book to share my thankfulness about that.

My mom, by the way, thought it was hilarious as well. Now the ball is in her court and she'll have to find a way to "burn" him back. No telling what he'll find in his Christmas stocking...

Happy Thanksgiving, Pilgrim!

You'd better have a happy one. Or else!

I pray that you all have a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving. One of the many things I'm thankful for is you, dear reader, for continuing to come here and read my ramblings. Your comments and your visits are always a blessing. I'll be back next week, as soon as the tryptophan haze brought on by mass consumption of turkey has lifted.

Count your blessings!

Digital Amusement

Today, my friends, I will share with you a little slice of life here at Chez Sara. You will see, through the magic of the Digital Age, some things that I recently encountered around my house. And then you will nod your head knowingly and say to yourself "Ahh, yes. She has truly gone 'round the bend this time! She calls this entertainment?"

And the answer to that is, yes. Yes I do.

The other day when I was walking through the house, I was noticing many of my childrens' toys lying on the floor. Not a strange occurrence round these parts, for sure. But what caught my attention was the strange mixture of toys and the ways that they were left. It was almost as if my children wanted me to be entertained. I know that really, they just dropped the toys and left them when the fancy struck and that the things that I saw were just products of my very active, supremely warped imagination.

Shall I share? Of course I should!!

First I encountered Woody about to become dino chow.

See the look on Woody's face? Sheer terror at what is about to befall him.

Then I found Swinger Monkey and No Name Dog at the foot of the stairs. Right below our loft. It looks as if a murder suicide has taken place. I'm not sure who pushed who, but I'm thinking the culprit is the dog with no name. Having no name is enough to make anyone crazy. I know that dog. He had issues.

And look! Here's Barbie. If you could add water, it would look as if she were in a hot tub with a bunch of superheros and villains. Also? Because of her size compared to the miniature size of the superheros and bad guys, it looks like the Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman.

Next up is what I like to call Naked Contortionist Barbie. She's not available in stores. (Wonder what kinds of google hits that particular phrase will generate! Heh.)

This is what the Rennaisance Girls are playing with these days. My particular RenGrrl takes her Nascar vehicle off-roading while delighting the crowds with her mad vocal skillz. And the super-sized microphone (in pink, no less) is just the thing to reach the masses.

Weapons? Check. One for each hand? Check. And an extra to tuck in your pants? Check. (Note to self: remind boy children that if they should ever tote a real firearm, pants are not good holsters.) You should know that this is only a fraction of the 487 Nerf-type guns owned by my sons. Truly I find the little darts everywhere.

Look! A tete-a-tete! What in the world do you suppose they are discussing?

And finally, there is poor Jessie. She's lost her arms. How will she ever use her lasso now? What will become of the little dogies? How will she get them along? The world may never know.

I do have an idea of what may have caused Tilly to have an upset stomach though. Probably too much plastic in her diet. I think it must be particularly hard to digest cowgirl arms. Sigh.

It's Not Holiday Season Without Hot Glue And Salt

What, you don't look forward to Christmas by celebrating with hot glue and salt? I suppose you don't have a Festivus pole either. (Sorry, non-Seinfeld fans. You won't get the joke.)

I have started to get some Christmasy things together as Thanksgiving is ONE WEEK AWAY and you know what that means don't you? It means that my 24 hour days which are already flying by much too fast will now hit warp speed. Hence the need for creating a few things before I've even overeaten, bloated myself, gained 253 pounds dined on turkey, stuffing, and many varieties of pie.

While combing other people's blogrolls, I came across a lovely idea from Melissa at 320 Sycamore. She's full of creative ideas, but this one was right up my alley. (You all know what that means by now, right? Simple and inexpensive and easy to complete when you have the attention span of a gnat.) She found a hurricane, a filled candle and a taper candlestick at the dollar store and made her own knock-off Williams Sonoma hurricane candle. For about eleventy bajillion dollars less than WS was asking. Love that! (Have I mentioned before that I kind of have Champagne taste on a Shlitz beer budget?) Seriously, click on over and have a look. I'll wait.

I know!! Wasn't that awesome?!?!

I may have mentioned before that I'm not so great originating the ideas but I'm a heckuva good copier. I can execute, people. I can execute like a madwoman! So I had to head right over to Dollar Tree and then wail in disappointment when they didn't have the tall hurricanes at that particular store. Then I whined a little because I didn't have time to go to another store to look because I had to go pick up my son from the orthodontist. (I now have two children requiring orthodontia. Now you know why I hit Goodwill and the Dollar Tree--because I'm keeping the orthodontist's children in a style to which my own children have never become accustomed. But I digress... [there's a shocker!]) So I decided to take another look to see if I could revamp the idea to suit what I could find.

I found a much shorter candle holder with a thicker base and I liked the shape of it. I found the candlesticks and I used shorter votives to place inside the candle holder. Then following her instructions, I got my hot glue gun out and plugged it in and made a deal with it. I told it that if it wouldn't burn me, I wouldn't cuss at it. Mostly we stuck to our deal. And look at the beauty that came of all that stuff:

Isn't she loverly?

You know what the white stuff is?

Epsom salt!! It's waaaay cheap and it looks really pretty, like fake snow or little ice crystals.

And because I bought a 50 lb. generously-sized bag, I figured that I could find some other things to do with it besides use it to soothe my aching muscles.

So, per Martha Stewart's instructions, I coated some candles with Mod Podge and then rolled some candles in it and then nestled the candles in more salt.

I like the results. It's kind of hard to tell, but these candles almost look like birch logs. So now they look like snow-covered birch logs. Nestled in snow. Can you spot the theme here?

Now Martha had some pretty blue candles that she did this with and they looked lovely, but I didn't have any pretty blue candles. I would have nowhere in my house to put blue candles. So I used what I had. But the blue candles, they are haunting me. I may just have to go buy some and roll them in Mod Podge and salt and give them as a gift. Only time and my tentative grip on sanity will tell...

So there you have it. Easy. Pretty. Salty.

And now if you'll excuse me, for some reason I am craving pretzels...

Say What?

Last week at school, one of my students was talking to a friend in circle time. A little boy across from her was copying her words and actions. The little girl noticed and said to the little boy, "Please stop copying me!"

The little boy looked right at her and said, "I'm not copying you. I'm mocking you!"

Next week's lessons will focus on synonyms and splitting hairs. Ahem.


**************************

Scene: We are at the dinner table enjoying a family meal. Our eldest daughter is discussing homework for her CPR class. (No, not that CPR. This CPR stands for Creating Positive Relationships and deals with sexuality and, well, creating positive relationships. Yes, I've spoken many times with her about these things already. Yes, my husband stammers and stutters when she utters the letters CPR.)

Daughter: Do you want to know what my CPR homework is for tonight?

Husband--looking startled and worried: I'm afraid to guess!

Daughter: I have to talk about three rules I'll have when I start dating.

Immediately the husband and I launch into rules like You Don't Date Until You're 40, You Will Be Accompanied On Every Date By Your Father Who Will Be Accompanied By A Big Gun, Your Brothers Get To Choose Your Boyfriends.

After the talk settles down into a little more serious tone, I say something like, " Well one rule would be something like this: The young man--whomever he is--will always be introduced to us and he will pick you up at the door for each date. No sitting in the car honking the horn."

Older Son: How 'bout this rule? The guy can't take you to sad movies where you'll cry.

Younger Son (who is just 8, by the way): Yeah, because if he does, then when the sad parts come, he'll put his arms around you to "comfort" you. (He even made air quotes on the word comfort.)

We all cracked up. And then I pointed my finger at him and said, "Good thinking, kid. And by the way, YOU will never date--ever! Because if you are coming up with schemes like that at eight, I hate to see what you'll be thinking of at 16!"

Pray for me.

In Search Of...

For those of you who read a blog, but perhaps don't write one yourself, you may not know that we bloggers keep statistics on our sites. We know the geographic areas, if not the cities, people are visiting from, we know how long you stayed on our site, and we can see the pages you visited as well as if you clicked out of our site and onto another. Now, I suppose this is highly useful information if you are using your blog for business or if you have lots of readers and want to figure out exactly who your audience is and what they like reading most about. When I look at this information, I see a handful of readers (thank you, by the way, for reading here and finding anything I have to say even remotely entertaining) some who I know and some I don't. And when I check which posts have received the most hits, it's either some of my "project" posts that I've linked with other blogs, or it's posts about my dog. Apparently people like to see some of the things I've made, but they LOVE that my dog makes me look stupid. If I can make you feel a little better about yourself through my mishaps with my dumb dog, well, that's good! What can I say? I aim to please.

One of the other little bits of information that I am able to get is how you, the reader got to my site. Sometimes you get here directly, because you have my URL and you either type it in or--God bless you, you have it bookmarked. Sometimes, you link through via Facebook, which means you know me and have seen snippets of my posts there and come here to read more. Sometimes my mother has twisted your arm told you about my site in a link through email. Occasionally, someone will find me through another site where I have linked a project or written a comment. But to me, the most interesting way that people find me is through an Internet search.

Now, usually, these people are NOT looking for my blog. Most commonly, people are searching for the lyrics to "Que Sera, Sera" and they have no earthly clue how to spell "Que Sera, Sera." They want to know what those words mean. They want to know what the lyrics are. They want to know who sang it. And usually, they have spelled some variations of "que sa ra sa ra." Sometimes the spellings are unique, to say the least. I have seen:

K Sara Sara
Que Sa Rah Sa Rah
the ubiquitous que sa ra sa ra
the occasional que sara sara
Queue Seera Seera (what in the world are these people waiting in line for?)
Kay Say Rah Say Rah (to which I always reply GO TEAM!)

But lately some of the search words have had me laughing. I'm quite sure that when people type in their search words and wind up on the blogging site of a middle aged, suburban mother who divorces her dog and rants about her crazy neighbors and shows pictures of random decorating projects that they are scratching their heads and wondering what exactly they typed. Now, I know that it's because of my titles or content and it's how search engines work that drive this stuff, but still, it does seem kind of random.

For instance, recently someone found my site using the search words "make a bubble blower with a plastic hose" and they wound up on the page from this summer where the kids and I made bubble blowers using plastic bottles. And several people have used the search words "what to do with leftover cocktail napkins." My thinking is that they are looking for a project. At least that's what I'm hoping, because lets face it, if you are asking Google to help you micromanage your cocktail napkin inventory, then you may have bigger issues than my little blog can help you with.

Some other recent searches that have led people here:

Sketchers "falling apart"-- could be a query about mentally fragile artists losing their marbles, but more likely it's someone who's had the same issues that I have with those shoes and they are winding up at the post where I talk about how I will NEVER buy Sketchers again because they fall apart. Do you hear me, Sketchers? Your shoes cost a pretty penny and they SUCK!! There. I said it. Come and get me Sketchers, I ain't skeerd. (Heh. Bet I lost any chance of them wanting to advertise on my oh so popular blog....)

Lyrics "stick a fork in me i'm done"--Huh. Never heard this song before, but it has country music hit written all over it! Someone should alert Kenny Chesney or Carrie Underwood that their next platinum record is just waiting to be written.

If you got a lot of booty--well, my advice would be cut back on the Snickers, put down the remote, and buy "curvy" jeans. Or on the flip side, my advice would be "Flaunt it!" Or perhaps it's a pirate wondering who to pillage next. Or it could be someone who winds up here and is looking for, um, how shall we say, a different type of site and then is wildly disappointed when they find out that they will see none of that here.

But my personal favorite search lately is this one:

Got lysol in my ear--Ummm...and how exactly did you manage that? I thought that how to spray that stuff was pretty easily done and not so much rocket science. Apparently not. And then, you have to Google what to do next? Methinks that perhaps someone over-chlorinated that gene pool.

And now I can't wait to see what searches bring people to this page. If I get one for "overchlorinated gene pool," I'll let you know.

Oooohhhh.....Shiny!!!

My hands are shaking as I type this. Another run in with a crazy neighbor? Nooooo. I have windows open in my house and it's quite cold outside. Thus, it is quite cold inside. Thus, shaky fingers. The windows are open because I have been busy. You see, when it's too cold to spray paint outside, I simply bring the outdoors in by opening many windows and then I spray paint in my basement.

I think I should've titled this post How To Brain Damage Your Children And Repaint Furniture In One Easy Step. We are all very happy around here right now. I keep telling the children to breathe deep.

Kidding, kidding. Kind of.

Anyway! Yesterday I mentioned that I finished a quick project and that it made me want to squee. Don't kill me, but it involves Christmas.

Now, I love Thanksgiving. In fact, it may just be my favorite holiday, but I love to decorate and make decorations for Christmas. I also love quick, easy, and cheap. In fact, quick, easy, and cheap could be my middle name. That is if it didn't make me sound like a trollop. So let's say I love a project that is quick, easy, and inexpensive. Oh, and it has to look good when it's done. Believe me, I've done my share of quick, easy, and inexpensive projects that are destined for the rubbish heap. (Hey, just for fun, let's see how many more times I can write quick, easy, and cheap, or inexpensive in this post! Sounds like fun, eh? Yeah, I didn't think so either.) So when I saw this project floating around the blogosphere, I figured that I could handle it. It doesn't involve power tools, paint, or a Donald Trump size bank account. Really, all you need is a wire hanger, (NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!! name that movie!) el cheapo Christmas ornaments, and some ribbon. I spent no more than $15 dollars on mine and with the exception of the smaller balls, I got everything I needed at the dollar store.

Are you ready? Okay, drumroll..... (you should be patting your legs with your hands right now...).......


Voila! A Christmas ornament wreath.

I have to say, I love it. Squeeeeeeee!!

It looks pretty on my door.

It looks pretty on my wall.

It looks pretty on my built ins.

Did I say I love it? Yes? Well I love it so much that I have to say it again. I love it!

And it was easy peasy. You just bend the hanger, untwist it, and string the ornaments on the hanger. Then you retwist the hanger and add a ribbon. It took me less than an hour. The only reason it took that long was because some of the balls came off of their hooks and I had to hot glue them back on. But you should be impressed because it's one of the few times that I've used my glue gun and haven't burned my fingers. I am soooo talented, y'all.

Anyway, I'm thinking that I might just need to make another using different colors this time. How about you? If you were to make one, what colors would you use?

I'll just leave you with this warning: be prepared to have glitter in places that you didn't know glitter could go. You're welcome for that fabulous mental image!