Another GIVEAWAY!

As I was linking up my menu, I saw a giveaway being advertised by another blogger. I looked through her site and it's such a fun blog!

The site is called Happy Little Home and she is giving away some stinkin' cute reusable produce bags! They are adorable. If you want to enter her giveaway head here

The deadline to enter is this Friday Feb. 19th (my husbands birthday!!) at 5pm Eastern time!

Menu and a GIVEAWAY!

**I am having an issue loading pictures on to my computer. If they are just in my picture folder they don't want to come up. But I am linking to Menu Plan Monday at

I couldn't leave my post picture-less though!(: So this is the pizza that my little 5 year old made me at school one day!

Food. I plan it, make it, eat it, pack it, cook it, bake it, and clean it up. I swear my life revolves around food! Anyway, here is my meal plan for the week. It is an unusual week for us as we are eating out 2x's for birthdays. But here we go...

Monday: macaroni w/ chili & tomatoes, corn, rolls, PW's potato skins

Tuesday: comfort meatballs (Pioneer Woman recipe), mashed potatoes and gravy with salad and rolls

Wednesday: teriyaki chicken in stir fry, brown rice

Thursday: eating out

Friday: My hubby's birthday! The menu is t-bone steaks on the grill (Mom and Dad only lol)the kids get turkey burgers, roasted corn salad (PW recipe), crashed hot potatoes, salad, and red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting (of course!)

Saturday: my son's birthday! He requested...TACO BELL. He's 8 what can I say?

Sunday: chili pie casserole, green beans, corn bread

Other recipes I am trying this week: PW's pico de gallo!! (:

If you noticed, lol, I am making a lot of the Pioneer Woman's recipes this week. I found her blog through friends and have been a HUGE fan ever since. I was excited for her cookbook to come out but was worried it wouldn't be on Guam.

However, on Saturday, while walking around our Navy exchange store, I saw it! The last copy on the shelf. I picked it up without hesitation and it went straight into my cart. I was so excited I started looking at it on the drive home.

The book is complete and total eye candy. The food, photos, stories...oh I just love it! My husband opened it and looking through the recipes said, "oh this is so not good for our diets!" (:

I ended up with an extra copy, so I am giving one away! If you want to enter to win the greatest cookbook of all time, all you have to do is...leave a comment telling me what your favorite go to cookbook is. If you want a second entry, you can become one of my followers! Pretty easy right?

I also have one other book to give...a copy of Southern Living Comfort Food!

Can't wait to see your favorite books!

Aaargh!

(my friend made this cake! I am upset that I didn't get better pictures of it! She said she got the idea from Family Fun magazine.)

(knowing these were coming down soon, I didn't want to print them off on vinyl. so I just used regular construction paper)

(a bad lighting picture of the invite)

(the front door)

(the bigger flags were not as tedious!)

(balloons hanging from the ceiling fan)

(the cupcakes that went to class. The swords are a little hard to see but that is what the flag is attatched too)

(pirate banner flag surrounding the living room, there were also some outside the house)

My sweet little Ivan turned 5 last week! For the longest time, he had wanted to have an Indiana Jones party. I looked up ideas (thank you Google). But as I started looking at ordering things, I was bummed to find out that more than half of my ideas would not be shipped to Guam!

Frustrated I made a trip to our local BX and looked to see what they had in their birthday section. I then worked very hard to convince my son to have a pirate party instead! Luckily he agreed easily!

For Christmas this year, I got a Cricut by Provo Craft and I love it. In one of the cartridges that came with it, there are a few pirate-y images!

First thing I made was the invitations. I loved how they turned out. I made over 20 invitations. Then I realized that I didn't take a picture of one. So I quickly made one to take a picture of. But I was tired of making all those teeny tiny jolly rogers! The picture of the cupcakes has the flags that I made.

One way I try to save money is by not buying too many "theme" items. Instead of "Pirates of the Carribean" plates, I decided to just use red,black and white.So all the tableware (including tablecloths) were those colors. I also grabbed red, black and white streamers.

I ordered my goody bag items from Oriental Trading co. While they charged me an arm and a leg in shipping, it really helped with the theme! The goody bags included: bracelets with pirate sayings, bandanas, telescopes, pirate necklaces, gold coins, goldfish, a fish gummy candy, Swedish fish, pirate rings, and eye patches.The kids also went on a treasure hunt and found candy necklaces, ring pops and gold coins.

A friend made Ivan a FABULOUS pirate ship cake.

We had lots of balloons, jolly rogers etc. I also printed off "yo ho ho" and "aaargh" to go on the walls.

The day before his party, he brought chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting to his class. Each one had a jolly roger attatched to a sword toothpick and a gold coin. The tiny jolly rogers were all seperate pieces. So I was a tad frustrated as I was making 28 teeny tiny flags. My husband who was watching tv said, "You know those kids are just going to throw them away right? They wouldn't care if there was anything on top." Sigh. I loved the way they turned out though!

My husband teased me about going a little overboard. Normally we don't do this much for birthdays, but my little guy has never had a party before. Well not a friend party. That is why we went all out. He loved it and loves to wear his eye patch around! He wanted to keep the decorations up for "20 more days!"

Being on Guam, I am limited in the stores I have. But I think it turned out pretty well!

Just a few ideas, if you have a little scallywag who is interested in having a pirate party!

FHE

If you were to listen to my children, you would get the impression that we are barely above the poverty level. Living in a shack with no running water or indoor plumbing. They are constantly letting us know that "my life is so hard because_______" with reasons from because I don't have an ipod to we didn't go to McDonalds for dinner.

I realize that they are just kids, but that is not a message that I want to be sending them. So with it being February, and a time for love, our theme for the month is "Love One Another as I have Loved You". We made a chart, which is now hanging on the pantry. Anytime one of the kids performs an act of service, they put a heart with their initial on it. If we fill the chart out we will have an ice cream sundae party for the last week in Feb. With an extra something going to the child who has the most on there.

Last night we decorated Valentines and will be sending them to all the Grandmas. The kids had a great time!

Whole Lotta Love

All right, I have a confession. I am a hopeless romantic. Hopeless. I have loved romance and romantic comedies for so long. I always tell my kids that the best part of any movie is the kissy part! Valentines Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love the idea of having a day to just let people know how much you love them. I ecspecially enjoy giving my kids all the hugs and kisses I want and they don't complain...too much.

When my sister got married, her family in law, introduced her to their tradition at Valentines. She has talked about it a lot, and I decided that I wanted to do it this year. Yes, I stole their idea. But her Mother in Law emailed me that it had been going on for over 25 years now!

Anyway, they celebrate the 14 days of love. A little token of love every day until Valentines Day. So I thought it would be fun to post what I have/will be doing.

Day 1 (today) was a fun note tucked in my kids lunchboxes. Letting them know what I was doing and sharing with them one thing that I love about them. I have a card for my sweetheart but haven't had a chance to surprise him with it. I want it to be found, not handed to him, know what I mean?

Day 2 will be some red Peeps candy that spell I love U and a coupon for one free getting out of walking the dog once. I know they will appreciate that!

So stay tuned, there is a lot of lovin' going on around here!

Holiday lunch bag

One of the things that I try to do is to make lunches fun. And there is nothing like the holidays to make it that way! It is somewhat hard to add things to my kid's lunches because they are not allowed to have toys, cards (like Pokemon)and candy! They can have treats, teachers just prefer no candy.

I like to make their holiday lunches, in the color scheme of that holiday. For Halloween ( I forgot to take pictures) they had orange and black. Their lunch consisted of...

mac & cheese (which I placed a spider ring on top!)
purple grapes
oreos
carrot sticks
grape juice/orange juice
cheetos

(I am sure their teeth were AWFUL after eating cheetos & oreo's! Poor teachers!)

For Christmas I did red & green!

sandwich cut into a tree shape
green bag of Pringles (sour cream & onion)
fruit cup with strawberries
red and green Fruit by the Foot
the bakery had these fun tree cookies. They were $1.24 for 6 cookies. I sent one for the kids and one to share with a friend!

It really is easy to make their lunches fun with very little effort. I am looking forward to a red and pink, heart filled lunch bag come Valentines Day!

Finding a balance

It's been a long time. I don't have an excuse. Just the normal...life, kids, the holidays, church obligations, wardroom (the people Ben works with) obligations...etc. etc.

My life is a little beyond control right now.

Right now I am trying to exercise, lose weight, keep a home running, keep my children alive and well, be a wife, and find some time to myself in there somewhere. So far, I am not managing well!

My kitchen counters are covered with dirty dishes. So this morning, someone had left the lid off of my cookie jar and...it fell and shattered. ): Then my boys got in trouble on the bus, and so I had to go talk to the bus driver. As I was walking back, Ivan wanted to "race." After maybe 5 or 6 steps, pain shot through the back of my left leg. I am now limping as I can't even walk. Get the boys in the car and get to the gate and...my military ID is in Ben's car...clear across island. He is (still) not answering his phone and so he doesn't know what is going on.

And today, like a ton of bricks, I realized I don't have balance. I focus on one thing (right now it's exercise) and let everything else go. Obviously I can't do that. So it's time to realign priorities. I know I can do it! I just need to set some goals. This post is too long already though so I will share them at a later time! (: Until then...