Chocolate Caramel Cookies...

It's official, my boys LOVE this recipe, who wouldn't?  

And I love my new lens!

That was an unexpected bonus... maybe I will cook more, so I can take food photos (to add to my photography collection I am starting... see the link to the right under "more about me")!  Hey honey, the gift that keeps on giving (smile)!!

As a photographer I have to make many sacrifices to get the right shot sometimes... YES! I ate the other half of the cookie, but I promise I will save the rest of the plate for my boys.

Insipirational ideas...

Sometimes I find random, fun, cute things on the world wide web and want to save it for future reference!

I found a way to try and do that!

Tumblr.com!

I accidently stumbled onto Tidy Mom's site here.  And loved the idea when I saw her tutorial on how easy it was to add a button to my tool bar to click and post to my site of collections when ever and where ever I was browsing and found something cool I wanted to keep track of!

Brilliant I must say!  So much easier than adding a link to my blog for all the places that I love to go visit, which is what I was looking to do, but in a simplified way!  Perfect, so I created my own!

And easy shmeasy to keep track of links I want to find again!

Mrs. Clean...

No I have not lost my marbles and become a clean freak!

But in putting away the Christmas decorations somehow there is more "grubby" in my house, or maybe without all the extra holiday stuff maybe I am just noticing it more.

So I pulled out these magic erasers I had gotten on a coupon sale a while back and just never got around to trying out.

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WOW!!!

It started with some food that had originally exploded in my microwave but then after not attending to it right away became cooked on over time.  No before and after photos, it was gross and embarrassing!  But these things clean the inside of my microwave surface SO slick!!

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I was motivated and moved on to the stove top... same thing.... really magic! (mom I bet it would be an awesome tool to keep your glass stove top shining).  It got the greasy grimey stuff that is hard to get off, and the sticky splatter from the stove that gets on that lumpy textured surface of the side of our refridgerator came off with such ease.  The inside of the fridge where a jug of juice got spilled and was cold and sticky... swiped right off.
The scuff marks on the floor, the sink that just won't come white... yep the dingy erased right out.  Even the chrome fixture on the sink, and the grime dripped on our gloss white molding around the dining room, and the black greasy finger prints on the white doors going into the pantry and the handle on the fridge that the boys just grab to look on their way to wash their hands when they get home from work.  Nothing worse than motor grease finger prints on every surface!  But this spongy thing works great!!

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As I was moving around the molding into the living room I swiped something that had left splatter marks on the leather furniture, yep... it cleans the leather great too!  I bet it would do leather shoes or purses nicely too.

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I can't wait to see what it does to the fiberglass tubs and the bathroom fixture and it says mirrors and glass on the box too!  I am so excited, I have lots of dog nose prints (aka dog snot) and you have to rub and rub to get them cleaned from the windows and mirrors around here.  I know, my dogs are keeping a safe distance from me in this whirlwind right now.

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My new love... Mr. Clean!! 

Your getting sleepy...

Oakley went home today... he was such a good boy, and a pleasure to have in our home for the holidays! But I can say he was one happy puppy to see his Dad when he came to pick him up!!

He definitely has the ol' "I need a treat" hang dog look... I hope our dogs didn't teach that to him while he was visiting.

And we only had one "incident" of which Oakley has been cleared from completly because he could prove his innocence by having been in his kennel at the time in question.

We had gone all week protecting his dog food and this huge bag of treats to insure he could take everything home with him that he came with. And on the very last day, this!

The entire bag of dog bones gone while we slept! (I am pretty sure I know the culpret, ahem TAYLOR cough!!!). Luckily Santa brought him a new bag of treats for Christmas that didn't get inhaled.

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Our dogs konk out quite litterally... but Oakley, being in a new place was skeptical about closing his eyes (as you can imagine).

This is our series of "your getting sleepy"... the only time we saw him sleep outside of the safety of his kennel that he didn't have one eye open all the time.

Oakley, we will miss your sweet little face around our house.

And you are welcome to come back to visit anytime!

If you can brave the elements around here :)

Christmas 2010

It's a big file, give it a few minutes to download... if you have the time and the patience to watch it it's our Christmas 2010. Simple, but fun to be together, what a gift!

A free picture slideshow by Smilebox