A to Z Challenge - H

No, I don't live up north. Apparently I don't
take picture of my house unless it snows!

A to Z Challenge – H

I missed yesterday for the challenge, but since Sunday is a free day I already knew that I could do a makeup.

H is for Home!

I love my house, I love my home…needs a lot of work and our foundation needs a few piers to get leveled, flower beds are overgrown and all around it needs updating…but I do love my house, my home. My deck is going to need washing and resealing, I am getting to the point of needing to replace some furniture, but no matter what I am always glad when I come home or get to spend any time at home. Especially when my family is home too – although some nice quiet time alone enjoying a glass of wine reading a book is absolutely divine!

I have a little plaque that my wonderful hubby and I purchased within the first couple years of our marriage – “Home is where your story begins.” Nothing could be further from the truth – our homes define us in many ways. We showcase our personal style, raise our children, entertain our friends and family, relax and be ourselves – may even walk naked through it. It’s our place, our space – our house, our home!

Even now while I am sitting in my well worn padded kitchen seat with a table strewn full of paperwork and toys, I am home! I picked this home upon sight when wonderful hubby and I were engaged – it was in the perfect location, right school district, on a cul de sac, with a big yard and horses right behind us in a neighbor’s yard with a hole cut in our fence for them to stick their heads through to get apples. (No I don’t live out in the sticks, and that is what made me fall in love so quick, it feels like I am out in the country, but my grocery store is literally within walking distance!) We had our wedding reception here, in fact!

This is going to be a short post, because I really have not home at all this weekend. I have my lovely red wine in my Love wine glass, a long awaited movie in the bluray player and a very patient wonderful hubby that I would like to spend some time with in my home!

Live, Laugh, Love ~

Vanilla Mama

A to Z Challenge - G

Totally NOT my gravy! But, makes me hungry-link to this below.

A to Z Challenge – G

G is for Gravy! I don’t think I have ever mentioned how much I love gravy! Brown gravy, biscuit gravy, turkey gravy and the king of gravies – Sausage Gravy! I don’t even need the toast, biscuit or mashed taters for it – sausage gravy you can eat with a FORK!

I remember my Grandpa Roy talking about gravy wasn’t gravy unless you could eat it with a fork, and I would have to say that man was right! Every so often I will get a craving for gravy and if I am going to breakfast I will order it – and most of the time I am woefully disappointed!! Lately, I have been making my own…YUMMY!!

I am not going to sugar coat this at all – it is pure fat, flour and my one concession to being healthy, skim milk. Oh yeah and SAUSAGE!! I have used turkey sausage and it works just fine – but good old fashioned Owens is the best. Do I do this often….NO! I haven’t worked hard to lose all this weight only to eat bowls of gravy and gain it back again (I would save that for Cherry Garcia bars!).

I am not really sure what it is about gravy that I love so much. Maybe it is remembering my Grandpa  and Grandma – fried food, gravy in the morning, homemade biscuits on weekend visits; ice cream at night watching TV while Grandpa let me comb his hair; catching bumblebees in mason jars to earn money to spend at the General Store. I think it is a memory thing for me…and lately I have really been missing my family.

Not just the family that lives away and I don’t get to see nearly often enough, but my Mom and Dad, my husband and kiddos. Maybe I am trying to recreate and create memories with them by making cookies, by molding toys, by making gravy on a Sunday morning…small things, little traditions.

Don’t ask me for my gravy recipe unless you want to have a coronary while you are reading it – haha – not only that, but I swear to you I never, never make it the same way twice. It all depends on what I have in the cabinet – one thing I will tell you straight up – DO NOT make gravy with WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR!!! UGH, EWW, NASTY!!! Probably one of the first times I EVER threw gravy in the trash, the dog would not even eat it.

Anyway, off to bed…my work week has not ended for either job. One has an event this weekend that I have to finish getting together tomorrow, thank GOD ALMIGHTY for the amazing, wonderful woman who I am so proud to call a sister who helps me with this! The other I will not have a day off until next Friday – But, I am going to ENJOY that Friday more than any other Friday ever, because I am looking forward to it so much!!

Live, Laugh, Love ~

Vanilla Mama

BTW - If you want a gravy recipe - check out this blog, where I admit it, I stole the picture from!

A to Z Challenge - F

A to Z Challenge – F

FORTUNE!!!

“The time is right to make new “F”riends.”

What a cool fortune for today –it has  an “F” word in it and I just can’t pass it up.  And while making new friends is amazing and fun, it doesn’t take away from the stable, deep friendships that I have with some of the amazing women that I call my sisters now. When I get to the first letter of the name (or first letter of their last name – since I already passed one!) I will have to tell the world how amazing they are with still protecting the innocent…ya know, it’s really hard to protect the innocent from the Vanilla Mama!

What exactly makes a friend? What do you look for in a friend? Usually I am not really on the “make” for a new friend – it just kind of happens. There is a shared laugh, shared experience, some sort of connection that may happen in an instant or there is a kind of slow burn where over time you come to appreciate a person. I have both types, in fact I have a few friends that on the surface you would never imagine that we would be friends – but it is all about connections.

People are made to connect. People are made to form attachments – it goes back to the infancy of our human race…an individual on their own would have an extremely if not impossible time providing food and shelter, even in fact, a couple. Coming together and living in caves, people formed connections, friendships to survive. Forming groups, societies, each person giving their talents – it is how we as a human race have evolved. We are still doing it today –

I am still doing it today, I meet new people everyday in my work – both jobs – I have formed incredible friendships with people that I may never meet in person and I daily I meet people that I could imagine myself sitting across from and having a glass of wine and getting to know them better. How in the busy lives that some of us live do we nurture and feed these connections? Phone calls, IMing, Facebook, FACE TIME, even that amazing little act of jotting a note and putting it in – gasp – a MAILBOX!!

Everyday “the time is right to make new “F”riends,” Everyday! You truly never know when you might meet a soul sister (you know the song is going to start in your head!). You might meet your soul sister (brother) at a basketball game where your sons are playing together…you might meet a soul sister (brother) in middle school that even though you don’t see or hear from very often , you think about and know that you could pick up right where you left off, you could even meet a soul sister (brother) at work and know that you will still be trading silly stories for the rest of your life.

Be open, allow your heart to grow and let someone in. An incredible side effect of writing this blog is getting know other people through their blogs – I may never meet them in person – but, from reading what they have written I think I get a pretty good idea of who they are. Some people are so raw and open that you automatically feel connected, others are a bit more mysterious and you want to know more about them – so you keep reading, you dig a little deeper.

I will say, everyday “the time is right to make new “F”riends,” but no matter how many new friends I make – I will always treasure those friends that have helped me grow into the person that I am today. I won’t delve into this too deeply now – this is about new friends – but, you can always renew your friendship with someone you have known for years. In fact…I challenge you to do that today! Pick up the phone, open up your facebook, dig through your old emails and renew a connection, make a new friend – make a fresh connection!

Live, Laugh, Love ~

Vanilla Mama

BTW – Your lucky numbers today from this fortune: YOUR BEST FRIEND’S PHONE NUMBER!!!

E is for Enough

For my A to Z Challenge to E - I am going to have to say Enough...
I have been working since 9am, have dealt with sprinkler repair, exterminators, a grumpy little man who cried when I dropped him off at preschool, a to do list that never seems to shrink....well, you get the picture. I am just now home from my second job, little man is STILL AWAKE!!! (Umm...DAD 10:15 is TOO LATE for a FOUR YEAR OLD TO BE AWAKE!!!) I have 6 loads of laundry on my bed that I need to fold before I can lay down and the drier just buzzed....Ma'am would you like a little cheese with that WHINE!?

Sigh - "E"nough, I cannot "E"ndure anymore today.

I promise I won't "E"mote and whine like this tomorrow and I will work earlier in the day to write the post. I promise I won't "F"ail! -haha- Already working it in! I am pouring a lovely glass of red wine, slipping into PJ's and digging into the fresh clean clothes - cause let's face it...nothing smells better than clean clothes when you use VANILLA fabric softener. (My poor kids!)

I want to say thanks so much for everyone stopping by, I will be popping over to visit you - ya'll look like fun!

Live, Laugh, Love ~
Vanilla Mama

A to Z Challenge - D

A to Z Challenge – D

Big D, Little D…what begins with D?

Quick – can you answer this question? No, No, No – you are not allowed to google and certainly you are not allowed to search on YouTube! I will admit, yes…I am hanging my head in shame….I had to google this and google lead me to YouTube where I listened to a charming 3-year old read it with his mommy (I had to Google this because my wonderful husband is upstairs getting him to bed as I type – think if I went upstairs to grab the book, I might get in trouble!). I could remember most of it, I remembered the doughnuts and the duck-dog but truly that was about it. It was making me crazy!! Especially since I could hear it in my head the rhythm, the rhyme all of it and of course Aunt Annie’s alligator is forever ingrained in my brain.

My older boys grew up with these books – Dr. Seuss, we LOVED him! My youngest son is not into him so much, but after this I think I will be reintroducing him to them.  The amazing classics that come to mine, The Foot Book, The Tooth Book, ABC Book, The Lorax…and who on earth could forget HORTON and the GRINCH?!

There are so many things that I did with my older boys that I have missed with my youngest child- I read to them more, played with them more, went to the park more with them…of course I was a stay at home mom and I ran a home daycare…and now even though for most of my little man’s life I have been home, I haven’t been engaged. Why?! Because I have help to run a business from my home and that took up so much of my time and now that I still work that job part time and have a full time job outside of the home (because with the job market in my wonderful husband’s industry we have been facing layoffs every year for him and with this family we can’t go without benefits!) – I feel like my poor child is “D”eprived!

I am good at the guilt, I lay it on myself thick “D”aily! It is “D”epressing, “D”owntrodding, “D”evasting.”

But, I will say that I am “D”etermined, “D”edicated, and “D”evoted to my kiddos and to my family – and I will “D”o whatever it takes to make this work.

And with that – I am going to make it short tonight and get my “D”arling husband – because he is probably asleep upstairs with my little man.

Live, Laugh, Love ~

Vanilla Mama

PS – Don’t Google it:

“Big D, Little D, what begins with D?

David Donald Doo dreamed a dozen doughnuts and a duck-dog too!”

our perfectly imperfect life: a 7 day blitz for kirill.

our perfectly imperfect life: a 7 day blitz for kirill.: "On March 17, 2011, the Davis family sat in a Russian courtroom and listened as the judge rejected their plea to adopt Kirill, an orphan with..."

A to Z Challenge

A to Z Blogging Challenge –

I will have to admit this looks very challenging to me – I am not in the habit of blogging everyday…and I am starting behind (only 4 days, but still – oh WAIT, I am only 2 days behind, today is the 3^rd day of the challenge, Sunday did not count!).

So for the next 22 days I will make an attempt to have a post a day (they left Sundays out of the challenge, so that will be my make up day!), that begins with a letter of the alphabet.  Too bad
“Another Baked Good” was on March 29 – I will not try to cheat and use it.

So, here we go with A:

A to Z Blogging challenge begins with A! I signed up, I am committed (may end up committed). I will start with why I started Blogging. I began as Vanilla Mama’s Boat and as much as I love boats, I figured I would have a hard time posting regularly about boats. I also decided that that was too one-dimensional and I wanted to explore some other things. It is all about being true to your dreams….I do have a few! As you may or may not have read (or know about me personally) I do keep rather busy. Example – 2 jobs, 3 kids, 1 dog, ever multiplying dust bunnies and a wonderful husband who puts up with my madness! I really wanted to create an outlet for myself where I could vent, challenge myself and write…mostly write, because in all honesty that is what I love to do! And in that theme of honesty I do not get to do it nearly enough and I am trying hard to make time for it without dropping any of the other balls I have up in the air.

We will now continue with B:

Boats…what about boats? Did I hear someone ask about boats? –crickets chirping – hmmm…Below you will see some of my favorite boat finds and if you are really interested and want some silly stories that might make you laugh – here is a link for “All the Boat Posts.”



Love the NAME of this boat!



Someday....my boat will come!

Sailing, Sailing.....

My Aunt's boat that I can borrow!

Drooool!



I like to visit the REPO'd boat yard....if I tried to buy one now, that's where it would end up!



Moving onto C:

Cookies: Top Secret and Fortune, WHY?

After watching Despicable Me for nearly 1000 times (really only a SLIGHT exaggeration!) my kiddos starting asking for Ms. Hattie’s Top Secret Cookies and being the Mom that always tries to please I Googled the recipes – and guess what, I could not find them!! Found out that my wonderful BluRay version of Despicable Me has a special bonus feature that has the cookie recipes! No real pictures, but none the less – the recipes were there!

My husband and I wrote them down, I typed them up and posted them figuring I couldn’t be the only parent – obsessed fan – that wanted to try to make the cookies. I still have not made them all, there is a least one that I KNOW is going to be hard to make and it is last on my list. Since the little man has not been asking to watch the movie as often…it may wait until he gets back on the jag for it.

Moving onto the Fortune Cookies, as I explained in one post – I have  saved a lot of fortunes, I take them from friends at restaurants, my kiddos bring them to me…you get the idea! Some of the ones I have in my little jar are downright silly, some are pretty serious and some just get me thinking and then I have so many thoughts that it takes me a little while to distill and make it cohesive in a small space. Who on earth would have thunk it! It has been fun and I need to hold myself accountable for a schedule – suggestions?

To recap – A, B, C! Yeah, I am up to date on the challenge…tomorrow is D. Hmmm….let me sleep on it!

Live, Laugh, Love ~

Vanilla Mama