Addicted!

First, I'd like to say that I am horrified by the events that occured at the end of the Boston Marathon.  It was another beautiful day with a blue sky, not unlike that back in September of 2001, when tradegy hit and horror rang out.  My hearts and prayers go out to all those involved, to the victims and their families-May God be with you during this time of healing and pain and may you find comfort.  To those who perpetrated this terrible crime, know that you will not bring us down as we as one Nation Under God, will only pull together and become stronger.  The evil that lies in your heart comes from Satan and we will not let him

win!

So, on to my topic at hand-Addicted!

Serious topic.

What is an addiction?  The dictionary defines it as such:

ad·dic·tion/əˈdɪkʃən/ Show Spelled [uh-dik-shuhn] Show IPA

noun

the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.   Reading that definition the first part of it convinces me-I'm addicted.  Now, addictions come in many forms; narcotics, alcohol, cigarettes, food, gambling and perhaps one of the most perplexing addiction of all and the one that I am currently suffering from- CANDY CRUSH SAGA!   I am totally addicted.  How did it happen?  Well, like many it started slowly.  One day I was feeling a little bored and a lot lazy.  I didn't feel like going and doing something, but I didn't want to just sit and watch TV.  So, I picked up my i-Phone and downloaded the App.  I had heard that people were playing it and had even seen some post on FB about it so I decided to try it.  The app is free, so what do I have to loose I thought.  Ha! 

Bright colors, fun music and a fairly simple idea.  Clear the candy.  And so it began...

One level down, easy enough. 

Next level was somewhat more challenging, but not a big deal-onward ho!

Level after level I moved on and I didn't really even know how it worked at that point.  I was just putting three of the same colors together, no strategy involved. 

Then a friend noticed me playing and she asked if I knew what I was doing.  Doing?  No, just playing a game.  That day we took our lunch break together and over lunch, she explained the strategy of the game.  Huddled over my phone, she showed me what the striped candies do and the wrapped candies and OMG have you gotten those multi-colored beauties?! 

Now I was hooked.  It wasn't just about the luck of the draw or how the candy fell, there was a real strategy involved. 

Then I started getting a little face showing up on my screen that emitted tears and told me I had so many minutes left before I could play again.  Out of lives! 

What is this?  But, I'm not done.  I haven't completed this level.  More lives, I need more lives!

Turns out  you can ask your friends to give you more lives, so the requests began.  please , just one more life.  I have to complete this level. 

I am consumed.  Committed to getting through this stupid game.  I am a bit of a newbie, only been playing for a couple of weeks.  Currently I am stuck on level 38.  It's driving me crazy!  I can't get rid of the stupid jellies!  I'm out of moves with just one jelly left.  Oooh!

I knew it was a problem when I dreamt of  calling out sick so I could figure the stupid thing out.  Kidding!

Help!

I can't stop playing.

Have you gotten sucked up in this never ending vortex? 

(What level are you on and can you spare a lifte!)

Swap Me-I'm In!

I'm so excited I just have to tell y'all about it!  For a while now I have seen some of the bloggers that I read talking about 'swaps'.  I never thought too much about it because I thought that it was a private thing or maybe only open to an elite group of bloggers.  Imagine my surprise and delight to find out that I was wrong!  Any blogger can join the swap-even me.  And so, I did just that.  As soon as it was posted that the sign up was starting for the April swap I signed myself right up. 

So what is a swap and how does it work, you might be asking yourself.  I'm here to help you out and tell you all about it.  So this really clever couple of bloggers who are over at The Chaotic Goddes Swaps (don't you love that name!) created swaps for bloggers.  Each month they have a new swap theme and they pair up all of the participants and give you the theme of the swap.  This month's theme is Mug O Comfort.  They set a price range and once you are paired up with someone you write to them ang get an idea as to their likes and dislikes, that kind of thing.  Then comes the fun part-shopping!  You go and choose a gift for the other person that is in keeping with the theme.  This month one requirement is that your gift must include a mug.  That's easy enough!  Then is the ultra cool part-your partner sends you something.  Who doesn't like getting a package in the mail, I ask you?!  After we have all received our little packages in the mail we post the contents on our blogs.  What fun, huh?

I bet by now you are asking yourself how you can get in on this fabulous idea too, aren't you?  Easy Peasy!  Just follow the simple steps over at The Chaotic Goddess Swaps and you too can be part of the fun. 

http://cgswaps.blogspot.com/

Easter

I love Easter!  My heart always feels so full and I get very emotional during this season.  As I think of the sacrifices that have been made, the pain and the suffering, all so that I can be forgiven from sin!  I think of the journey that Jesus made, His teachings, the miracles performed and everything that led to His arrest and crusifixion, and ultimately to the Resurection.  Alive! 

Many of you who know me know that I associate so much with music and to specific songs.  Lyrics set to music make me feel more, experience more, because it is about so much more than words and music for me. 
Lately, I have been playing The Story CD.  Constantly.  The songs are beautiful and the artists who perform them are amazing!  One of the many songs on this 2 disc set that I love, love, LOVe is Alive.  It is sung by Natalie Grant who sings with such passion as Mary Magdalene.  Here are the words that so move me:

Who but You/ Could breathe and leave a trail of galaxies/ And dream of me?/ what king of Love/ Is writing my story until the end/ With Mercy's pen?/ Only You/ what kind of king? Would chose to wear a crown that bleeds and scars/ To win my heart?/ What kind of Love/ Tells me I'm th reason He can't stay/ Inside the grave?/ You. Is it You?/ Standing here before my eyes? Every part of my heart cries// Alive! Alive!/ Look what Mercy's overcome? Death has lost and Love has won/ Alive! Alive?/ Hallelujah, risen Lord/ the only One I fall before/ I am His because He is alive// who could speak/ And send the demons back from where they came/ With just one Name?/ What other heart/ Would let itself be broken every time until He healed mine?/ You. Only You/ Could turn my darkness into dawn/ Running right into Your arms// Emmanuel, the promised King/ the baby who made angels sing/ Som on Man who walked with us/ Healing, breathing in our dust/ the author of all history/ The answer to all mysteries/ the Lamb of God who rolled away/ The stone in front of every grave

Alive! I say that to myself over and over and think about it, He is Alive!  We are alive because of Him!  Death has lost and Love has won! Those words hold such meaning.  Death has lost, because upon death we are reborn into His kingdom because He loves us.  What an amazing thing to know, to believe and to trust.  We, those left behind, we hurt and we grieve but doesn't that sting hurt a little less when we trust in the knowledge that we will be reborn?  That our life truly begins again after death.  I am overcome, overwhelmed and Blessed.  We all are. 
Alive!

We had a wonderfully quiet Easter.  Just Mr. Wonderful, myself, Michelle, Shawn and Isabella.  Tim and Esther were not able to make it.  :(  Of course we understood, but we missed them none the less.
Bella was delighted with the whole day!  Her joy is truly contagious!  A few pictures from our day!

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

Rejoice!

Handy Manny

I have a secret.  A deep, dark, secret that I have not shared with anyone before. At least not  To myself, Outloud, inperson, on my blog.  What is it that hides inside this heart of mine?  Well, I'm in love with another man.  Sortof, kindof, okay totally.  But alas, he can never be mine.  Who is he, Handy Manny.  My hero.  Do y'all know who Handy Manny is, here I'll share a picture of him with you:

Be still my beating heart!  Now you know why we can never be together, as it would be a mixed marriage, doomed from the start.  Animated character and human.  Sigh...

Now, don't get me wrong.  Y'all know how much I love my husband.  I refer to him here as Mr. Wonderful, and I even mean it.  Always, most of the time, usually, sometimes-okay most of the time.  (Except for those times when I feel like he is quickly outliving his usefulness. Kidding! Sortof.)

Anyway, Mr. Wonderful is a man of many qualities, capable of doing many things.  But handy, he is NOT.  Not even a little.  Our yard is the envy of most of the neighbors and many professional landscaping professionals as well-all him.  Totally!  Behind closed doors though, that is where the problem begins.  Allow me to illustrate my point for you.

I had purchased a pair of cornice boards for our bedroom windows and they needed to be installed.  After sitting around the house wrapped in plastic for a couple of weeks, months, years, I had convinced him to hang them for me. I am a very patient woman!

Anyway, Mr. Wonderful went to the basement to retrieve the necessary tools, a couple of  L brackets, a few screws, his electric drill and the re-chargable batteries needed to operate said drill.  After gathering all the supplies, he put the screws and the batteries in his pocket and we headed up the stairs to begin the installation process.  (Whenever he is doing anything of this nature, I have to accompany him.)  He puts down the drill and begins to make this strange face.  He reached in his pocket to get the screws and the batteries and yelled.  It seems that both of those items should not be kept together because they will get hot.  So hot in fact that his pocket caught on fire and when he pulled them out of his pocket, he had burned his hand and dropped the screws on the floor burning screw shaped marks in the carpet.  Now, picture this if you will, my grown husband is standing, jumping around the bedroom with a drill in his hand, his pants on fire and a burned hand and thigh.   What was I to do?  I did the only thing I could think of at the moment and I laughed my arse off!  He got mad!   Can you imagine?! 
(Wish I had my camera handy at the time.)

Since that incident, he has been less than willing to help me hang things or do much of my 'honey do' list for that matter.  In a crunch he'll do them, but he really doesn't like to and it might just jeopardize our happy marriage.  So, I wait for an unwitting visitor (read: Dad, Dad or Son-in-Law) to arrive and pounce on them.  It works, but it's really not the best system.

When reality strikes and we feel so inspired to make a change to our home, we usually have to pay someone to do it and that makes the price tag of simple home improvements go way up!

Now can you understand why the sight of that little man with his tool belt and all his adorable tools makes my heart go pitter pat?  (I am currently in a 12-step group and awaiting a call from the casting director of 'My Strange Addiction'.)

  Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, I want, wanted a new sliding glass door.  The beautiful, amazing, life altering kind of sliding glass door with blinds in between the glass.  Last weekend when we were at the Home Show I saw one and while I was admiring this beauty, a salesman approached us and asked if we'd like someone to come to the house measure and give us a price for the door.  No obligation, no charge, no problem!  Well, he came, he saw, he measured and he gave us a full presentation on replacement windows before giving us the price.  $5,700 and change.  What! Really! It's just one door!

After he left, Mr. Wonderful offered to have our verticle blinds that have been broken for 3 years fixed. 

That's love!

 Now let's see how long it takes him to actually get them fixed.

A Little Box

My dear friends' birthday is on Monday and I won't be able to celebrate with her.  I had hoped to be with her this year (especially since last year I forgot!) but we weren't able to work it out.  Since we will be going to see them in a few weeks, I choose not to send her gift in the mail rather give it to her in person.  But, I wanted her to have something to let her know that I was thinking of her.

Here is what I came up with a little bit of birthday in a box.

I save boxes that are nice and they are stashed all over my house.  This one is nice and sturdy and had snowflakes all over it.  A little creative wrapping solved that problem.

What's inside, here's a peek:

Doesn't it just look like a celebration!  Bright and colorful.

Here is a breakdown of each little item:

A tag that I decorated, on the back is a note to her.

A little bag of birthday confetti that I prettied up.  (It looks better in person, you'll have to trust me on that.)

Banners are all the rage now and I just love them, they are fun and festive and easy to make.

This is a just small banner that she can put on a cake.

A party horn, a couple balloons, candles and a ribbon thing on a stick (what do you call those things?)

And last but not least, a little cupcake.  I couldn't send a real one so this is the next best thing.  I found this at Michael's a couple of years ago and have stashed it away knowing I'd use it.

I had hoped to mail the box as is, but after talking to the postman he suggested I put it inside another box so noone gets tempted to open it thinking it was something valuable.

Hope she likes it!

Randomness

This picture was posted for the sheer cuteness factor, but it doesn't want to cooperate and stay in the right format!  This week is Spirit Week at Bella's school and Monday was green day.

Bunch of nothingness has been going on really!  Work has been kicking me to the curb physically and mentally.  I am getting mixed messages from the management team and am feeling a bit like a ping pong ball.  That's not good and it makes my head hurt!  You would think that the VP's would speak to each other so they know what is going on, but perhaps I am low on the totem pole of their list of things to worry about right now.  My point being, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing and they need to get in sync for the sake of everyone involved-'specially me!

We had a busy weekend, as usual!  Saturday Isabella had a dance competition in Baltimore and we were there for the large majority of the day.  (Dance Mom's was NOT there!)  Her team took High Silver in both Tap and Ballet and her Tap got 2nd overall.  A good result for the first competition of the season. She just loves it!  Her ballet group also got a special award for 'Smooth Transitions' or something like that.  LOTS of little girls in that number and they kind of wove in and out of each other while maintaining their lines and such.  She was happy as she was able to add two more pins on her jacket for the silvers!  By the time we all got home we were pretty much spent-especially our little dancer.
Sunday I got up and put Corned Beef and Cabbage in the crockpot to have for dinner.  YUM!  Jim and I both love it and then had lots of cabbage left over to take to work for lunch.  There was a home show at the Fairgrounds that Jim had wanted to go to, so we wandered around there for a few hours looking at the different booths and collecting canvas bags.  (Maryland is going to start charging for bags!)
Got lots of ideas and now we are working on getting some estimates for things that we want to do around the house.  I want to do things on the inside and he chooses the outside.  Mr. W is of the opinion that because we have countertops there is no need to replace them!  Same goes for flooring, curtains, you get the picture.  We tend to dissagree on those type of things as you can well imagine.


I also decorated the house for Spring.  I am so ready to see it too.  (Spring that is.)  I don't mind the winter, but when it does nothing but rain it puts a damper on things.  We have had some warmer afternoons of late and it is just getting me into that Spring mood. 

This is my little shelf that I decorate frequently for the different holidays and seasons.  It makes me smile!  The small chickie was a $2 Cracker Barrel find, the large chick and the ladder thing are both from Pier 1 (love that store!).  I made the banner after I saw a similar one on Pinterest.  Hard to see but the banner is made from book pages with the eggs on top.  The Subway Art is another Pinterest find, and I can't remember who to credit it with. 

Here's my mantle.  I am really thinking about painting the mantle white.  The bookcases on either side are painted and the mantle just doesn't pop.  What's your opinion?

The banner here I made on my Silhouette, the kids told me that my carrots were too big but I like it.  The bunnies and the topiary are both courtesy of Pier 1 and the little Snow Babies are from my hubby. 

Oh, started Weight Watchers again this week!  Yeah, need to get back on the wagon big time!  I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Snow, Stuart and Staying Home!

Snow!  Finally!  Yes, we finally have some snow.  It had been predicted that we would be getting some snow overnight so everyone has been gearing up for it.  The grocery stores were mobbed!  I needed to go over to the Giant to pick up something for work and it was just crazy!  Bread and milk were scarce to be sure.  I even ran into a woman who started talking to me about what she was buying-candy and lots of it.  She said that she needed to stock up on candy you know the necesseties,  in the event that 'something should happen'.  (Though I am not totally sure what something she was talking about?!) She said that she had read that in the event that you are stuck somewhere and needed to reassure children or calm them down, candy is a good thing for that as it is something that the children don't usually get.  Interesting.  That's the first time that I've heard that candy is good for calming children down. 
Last night when I went to bed at about 11:30 the weather man was predicting that there could be as much as five inches on the ground by 8:00 am.  When I got up at 4:30 and looked out the window I was surprised to see only a small amount of snow on the ground.  I went back to bed and listened to the news and they were reporting slick driving conditions, school closings and even the closing of the federal government for the day, so I went back to sleep.  Ahhh!  It's a good day to stay in bed a little longer.  Telecommuting was definitely an option that I was going to take advatage of today.  So this is what it looked like when I got up for good shortly after seven:

These were taken from the sliding door in my kitchen.  We are expecting anywhere from 8-12 inches.

We'll see.  It is exciting though, it's the first big snow that we have had in two years.  I will update when the snow has stopped falling.

The story of Stuart. 

I keep a box of Kleenex in my car on the floor in between the two front seats.  It is convenient for me to have them there as they are easy to reach when I am driving.  The other day I noticed that the inside of my car was a mess, so  I vaccumed it out and got it nice and clean.  A day or so later, Jim and I were going to run some errands and took my car.  I got in the passenger side and noticed that there were lots of tiny pieces of tissue all over the floor on the passenger side and the tissue that was at the top of the box was pulled to the side and torn.  Jim joked that I might have a mouse in the car.  I kind of laughed it off and said that I'd call him Stuart.  I didn't think too much about it until yesterday.  I had bought a couple cases of water to bring to work and put them in the rear of the car and I noticed that there on the floor were more tiny pieces of the tissue!  I looked at the box in the front and noticed that again the top tissue was torn and pulled to the side and there were even little slash type marks in it.  When I told Jim he suggested that we put a mouse trap in there overnight.  Bella was here at the time and she got all excited about a mouse.  Then Jim suggested that the mouse might be making a nest and well, she about flipped! " A nest, babies!   How cute!  Tiny little mouse babies, can I have them?"  We asked her what she wanted them for and she replied "To feed them to my snake!"  Of coures, what else would she want to do with mice.  It's kind of strange in that she totally love animals and hates to see any animal hurt, but she completely understands that animals eating each other is part of the circle of life and it doesn't bother her at all.

That kid cracks me up!

So, is anyone else out there having a snow day today?

UPDATE: It had stopped snowing by 1:00 or so and turned to rain.  We now have less snow than we had this morning as the temperature was higher than expected and it has melted!  So much for a huge storm!  Also, Jim did set a mouse trap and put it in my car last night.  This morning he went out after Bella called and asked about the trap.  Sure enough, there was a mouse in it!  (Luckily the mouse did not survive the trap as they sometimes do!)  We did not save it for Bella to feed to Sarah as they buy their mice frozen from the pet store to help ensure that they are disease free.  Jim will put another trap in their tonight to make sure the one we caught was the only one inhabiting my car.