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Forget paying over 60$ for roses for Valentines day for your sweetie! I’m not a woman who loves flowers, to me, yes they’re pretty… but they die! Plus at this time of year they’re ridiculously expensive.

But keep in mind fella’s  that there are women out there who love flowers and expect flowers so if you are going to be buying any flowers I only have one place i recommend to you. It’s calld Dragon Fly Flowers. All of the flowers i’ve gotten from them are beactifully designed and last forever (at least in the land of flowers) so check them out! So here are a few ideas that you can make for that special someone in your life.  Keep in mind some of these take time… so get cracking!

1) Heart shaped cookie box

This one I make every year. The first year i followed a recipe for a sugar cookie bottom and top, and found it really easy to break. Now I use rice krispies and it’s so much easier to just shape a heart out of rice krispies. You can then use starburst to make the ledge of the cookie box (and use icing for the glue). in the past i’ve picked out the red and pink ones and used those.  And then once it sets you decorate the crap out of it.  It always looks like a 5 year old made my cookie box (refer to my other post about my craftiness). I’ll post pictures of my creation once it’s finished!

2) The I love you because.. box

This one takes a bit of time. You find a little box and you can decorate it with hearts or pictures of you and your loved one. Once you have your box, you can print out small shaped hearts and then write 100 reasons why you love them.  Then each day they can pick one reason out of the box.

3) Heart shaped breakfast

I was at the store the other day and they were selling little heart shaped pans. So this year i’m planning on making heart shaped pancakes for my husband and my son tomorrow morning. It’s easy and cute!

4) Make their favourite dinner and clean up 

It’s always nice when a man cooks for his special lady (especially if it’s usually the woman who cooks.)  With the advent of the internet guys, there are lots of recipes out there that you could easily follow. Some of the better sites out there are, RecipeZaar and Allrecipes.  Pick something she likes (or if you are cooking for him, pick something you know he likes that you don’t eat often.)  Men, if you are cooking for the ladies, don’t make her clean up the mess!  Ladies, leave the mess until the next day and enjoy your partner! If you drink have a nice bottle of wine or Champagne, you can get many nice bottles for under 20$.

5) Let her sleep in

This is my personal favourite, if I could ask for anything this valentines day it would be for a morning to sleep in, and an afternoon off of mommy duty. I guess I’m a cheap date.

The Bottom line

But most of all, enjoy each other and realize that it’s not just valentines day that you should be showing appreciation for one another. Emptying the dishwasher without being asked. Making a special dinner for no reason. Leaving a little love note in their briefcase or in my case inside his lap top, is just small and simple ways to always let them know you love them. Oh and maybe it’s just me but getting a single flower for no reason is nicer then getting a dozen expected roses.

Have a happy Valentines day!

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Emerald Lake, GA

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I was reading a new blog I am following, and came across something really interesting Ann Again brought up.

That women who are SAHM (stay at home moms) have to justify themselves as real people with real opinions in order for the rest of the world to take them seriously. It used to be common place for women to stay at home, now it’s a luxury that most people can’t afford (most familes rely on two incomes.)

I have to admit I was one of these narrow minded people years ago who thought staying at home meant you couldn’t make it big  in the “real world,” so you decided to stay home and play mommy. Please don’t send me hate mail, I no longer hold that point of view and wish desperately that we could afford for me to stay at home.  Before I was a mother, I had no idea just how much work being a mother is. There are no breaks, no vacation, and best of all you do it for free!

Raising a child, teaching a child and loving a child while trying to take care of a home is so completely time consuming and wonderful all the time. It is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done. There are no rules, you can’t call in sick and best of all you don’t get paid, but you PAY to have them–are you sensing my issue with this… NO ONE PAYS YOU lol  So why on earth would women want to do this? I certainly never thought I’d be one of those women who wanted to stay home with her child.  In fact I love my job and love what I do, so why on earth am I going to have a hard time going back?

Because loving your job and loving your child are two totally different things. They give you different things at the end of the day. It’s a different feeling of accomplishement when someone at work says, wow we couldn’t have done _________ with out you! Versus hearing your son or daughter say their first word or taking their first steps, it’s just different. And when you go back to work, you likely will miss some milestone in their lives.

I’m one of those women who’s house is always a mess, there are toys everywhere, plates and glasses on the table, but I guarantee you I have a well entertained  happy son on my hands. The dishes can wait.

Being a SAHM is hard, you have to entertain them, all the time!  You know those days you “slack off” at work because you just don’t feel like it, well you don’t get those at home.  Unless you want to put them in front of the television–which I admit I do sometimes (sometimes mom needs to check facebook) you actually need to watch and entertain them constantly. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love Sesame street, but there is only so much of that show I can handle. That damn Baby bear drives me bonkers! 

But my son will be going to daycare (thankfully my MIL has a daycare at home, so I wont have to worry about strangers taking care of my boy) when I return back to work in less then three weeks.  I think it will enable him to have more interaction with children, learn to share and have some structured play time–At least that’s what I tell myself to justify him going to daycare lol

If I won the lottery, would I stay home? Yes. I never ever thought those words would come out of my mouth. But alas, here they are. I am sad to leave my little boy, not to see him do some firsts. I have always been his primary caregiver and it will be hard not to witness some life changing things from him. But life must go on, I must rejoin the “real world” and now I realize how silly it is to define the real world as the workforce. But what is even worse is that now, women are going back to work and still assuming the majority of household duties along with childcare.

God bless all you moms out there who are raising the future (I know corny) of this planet.  Your job as a mother may be taken for granted by some but not by this mom. Keep up the good work, your children will be better for it.

And last but not least, thank you, i’m sure you don’t hear it enough.

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So my first post about this was all about destroying or gutting the basement. This house was built in 1959 and I swear to God that the basement had not been updated since then.

Well now that the basement is gutted, we have begun to form an image of what it may look like.  I don’t know what happens to men when they start talking finished basements. All of a sudden we’re getting speakers built into walls and a wet bar, when all I wanted were cream walls and a light floor. I mean if this was the house we were going to live in for the rest of our lives (that’s another blog post in itself) then, i really would let him do what he wanted. But this is what he’s shown me so far:

And:

And:

Now I had to remind him that we’re building a basement, not an office space. And I’m not putting black on the walls or rocks on the floor, and by no means are we going to have fake palm tree’s.  I don’t mind the last one, and we’ll just replace the Crown with wine But I digress…

This is what I want:

And:

So you see our dilemma. It’s a little hard to compromise when you see the difference in vision here. Now i’ve got him to budge on the black walls and rocks, we just have to see how much more I can get him to budge… Any suggestions??

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• It’s beginning to look at lot like Winter.

It only took him 10 months 3 weeks and 5 days to do it, but he’s finally mobile.

He has been pulling himself up on every and anything for the past 2 months but now, he is on the move. Mind you he still doesn’t like it. I think he’d prefer to walk. Get gets in a downward dog facing position and tries to push himself up. He also squats and tries to push himself up that way.

So we had to finally get gates. I know I won’t get any sympathy from mom’s who had babies that have crawled early, and I’m not asking for any, but I’m kind of at a loss. We have not baby proofed at all. No wait, I lie… we put those plastic things in the outlet’s.

Now we decided we need to contain him. Maybe that was the first mistake. We bought a gated yard thing. Which makes me feel like he’s in a pig pen. I’m sure he feels the same way, cause he pulls himself up on it and cries instead of playing within it. I have tried sitting in there with him and playing with his toys but he just wants to climb on top of me. I think i’ll unfold it and put it against the electronic stuff. There are just so many wires from all of the “toys” we have that it’s just not safe to let him roam.  Once the basement is done, things will be much better, but the basement won’t be done until June. So back to square one.

He is also going after anything that is NOT his toy. This is driving me absolutely bonkers because we have mountains of toys.

But YAY (please detect the sarcasm) he’s crawling. But look, in the picture the kids are HAPPY to be there! I bet they took that photo within the first 30 seconds of those kids being in there to get a happy look in their face:

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Now that we have a son, I thought it would be nice if he “made” something for his daddy on his birthday.  I had a wonderful Idea while i was at Walmart in the baby section (of all places, don’t even get me started on how much I hate Walmart.)

I saw a baby hand imprinting kit that is a photo frame, and thought.. Perfect! Yes, it would have been if I wasn’t the worlds worst crafty person.  I mean my MIL is fantastic, she makes beautiful hand made cards, handmade gifts for all her kids each year and is an all around  very talented craftswoman. I also have friends who scrapbook and knit or something to that effect, but i’d rather write a blog post, or update a website, or play video games, or cook (ok I’d rather do anything) to get out of doing something crafty.

Its not that I don’t like to do crafty things. I’m just not that organized to make it go really well. I seem to always forget to read some instruction and let’s face it I’m not a perfectionist so what I make usually looks like a 5 year old did it.

Now this is what the hand imprint is supposed to look like:

And this is what it does look like:

I also wish I wrapped presents like this:

But they always come out like this:

Why? Because I simply do not care to try to make it look nice. It’s  just not a priority for me. I envy those who take pride our of their craftiness, and find joy in doing something pretty.  For me, it’s a burden. I’m also not one of those who will go have someone wrap stuff for me, I do it all last minute. So really I only have myself to blame.  My husband however wraps like this:

But it takes an hour for him to wrap one present.

I would also not recommend doing the imprint thing on your own, I had plaster everywhere. I followed instructions had warm soapy water to wash his hand off afterwards, I put petroleum jelly on his hand before etc.  But we managed to get it all over his clothes, on the floor, on me (and I mean in my hair, on my face, and on the table. It was a freaking mess. Not only was it a mess, he kept digging his fingers in the plaster and messing up the “perfect” hand I was hell bent on capturing.

Exhibit A:

Oh well. Maybe i’ll attempt it again, with his foot. Or when he’s sleeping. But next time i’ll get help from someone!

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